Cuadecuc, vampir

Christopher Lee gives us a reading

Pere Portabella's Cuadecuc, vampir (Worm's Tail Vampire) is an arresting oddity. Ostensibly a behind the scenes documentary of schlockmeister Jess Franco's 1970 release Count Dracula, the film stands as a deconstructed iteration of that film and Bram Stoker's source novel. Count Dracula is a color film, but Cuadecuc, vampir uses footage from it reprinted into high contrast black and white. This Portabella mixes with behind the scenes footage of the cast and crew of Count Dracula, also in black and white. Cuadecuc, vampir has an interestingly discordant score by Carlos Santos, the sound of pneumatic drills at one point highlight that the film is a construction, but the film is devoid of dialogue. The exception to this is a short scene in which Count Dracula's lead Christopher Lee reads the description of Dracula's destruction from the novel; a fitting finale.

Because it is silent and in black and white, Cuadecuc, vampir calls to mind such old horror pictures as Nosferatu and Vampyr. It is certainly as disjunctive and dream like as those two classics. Belying its avant-garde leanings, Portabella is closer to Stan Brakhage as a director than to Jess Franco, Cuadecuc, vampir hews closely to Stoker's narrative. The only significant omission is Klaus Kinski's rendition of Renfield. That said, the lack of dialogue from Count Dracula is a definite plus. Cuadecuc, vampir unspools like a dimly grasped nightmare in a scant 69 minutes.     

Cuadecuc, vampir received a festival release in 1971, but languished in obscurity for years. I saw the film on the Severin Films Count Dracula disc that was released a decade ago. For the record, Count Dracula itself is barely watchable. Lee, Kinski, and Herbert Lom do yeoman's work, but most of the other performances are execrable. Franco ping-pongs zooms at us to irritating effect. Like all of Franco's films, Count Dracula appears hastily and clumsily made. The Severin disc includes enough special features to please any vampire lover including a recording of Mr. Lee reading the complete Stoker novel. Cuadecuc, vampir is also available to stream on Hoopla.     

Les distractions

Claude Brasseur and Jean-Paul Belmondo

Jacques Dupont's Les distractions, released in the States as Trapped By Fear, is a slightly above average noir that is more interesting for its acting than its direction. Jean-Paul Belmondo stars in this 1960 flick as Paul Frapier, a feckless reporter who seems more interested in chasing the ladies than in chasing down stories. Claude Brasseur plays Laurent, a former army buddy of Paul who once saved his life in Algeria. We first glimpse Laurent racing a stolen car through Paris pursued by the police. An accident ensues and a cop dies, so Laurent is forced to flee. A chance meeting with Paul leads to Paul helping shelter Laurent and attempt to smuggle him to Spain. However, Laurent is forced to go on the run. He is even reduced to eating pig slop at one point. This is contrasted with Paul making time with pretty much every female in the cast. The police reunite the pair in the requisite tragic ending.

The part of Paul is made to order for Belmondo who is magnetic and adept in the role. The character is just rebellious enough to fit him to a tee: "Fuck the police," Paul exclaims at one point. Brasseur is equally effective, regarding his fate with mournful eyes. Alexandra Stewart is well cast, for once, as a fashion model. Belmondo is able to loosen up the usually stiff actress. Their scenes together have genuine chemistry. Sylvia Koscina and Eva Damien also make the most of their roles as Paul's more casual acquaintances. Dupont's background was in documentary work and his direction here is fairly unfussy. A sequence which shifts from a trained monkey to a caged bird, highlighting Laurent's sense of entrapment, is one of the film's few visual flourishes. The film works best when Dupont has a good location to prowl around, like the Spanish bar in an antique shop that Belmondo takes Stewart to.

Richard Cornu's score is sadly insipid, detracting from the gritty tone of the film. Dupont's handling of the film's denouement is likewise wan. Jean Bassan's source novel provides a crackerjack finale reminiscent of High Sierra, but in Dupont's hands the sequence fizzles rather than pops. Still, anyone seeking to see Belmondo in his prime could do worse than Les distractions.

      

The Naked Island

Nobuko Otowa

Kaneto Shindo's The Naked Island, released in 1960, is a mesmerizing masterpiece. Largely shorn of dialogue, the picture focuses on a farming family of four eking out a living on a small denuded Japanese island. The family mostly raises yams and potatoes on a terraced hill. Because of the lack of rain and foliage on their isle, the unnamed couple have to row to the mainland several times each spring and summer day to fetch water. They then have to tote the buckets of water up a torturously steep hill to douse their plants. The first third of the film establishes the daily rhythm and challenges of the couple's meagre existence. The kids pitch in except when the eldest gets to travel to school and slack off. The perseverance of the family is stirring in a Sisyphean way: their life is a hard and repetitive struggle, but, at least like Camus' Sisyphus, they are able to derive a smidgin of joy as they toil.

The first third of the film ends with a resounding slap of reality that reminds us that, though the film is set in the modern era, the couple lives just as their forebears have for centuries; with much the same values and attitudes. The remainder of the film documents a trying year in the life of the family. Changes of seasons bring new and different chores along with rituals and celebrations. It is these bonding rituals that help the family heal after tragedy strikes. Because of its lack of dialogue, characterization, and plot, a film like The Naked Island needs to be technically assured to be even tolerable. The film is technically superb in every detail. Kiyomi Kuroda's cinematography presents a natural landscape that is both sumptuous and daunting. Shindo mostly shoots his two main players from a low angle, emphasizing the toll taken by their everyday struggles. Opening and closing aerial reorients the viewer. We realize that the totality of the family's world is but a dot in a vast world.

Nobuko Otowa and Taiji Tonoyama, who play the couple, carry the film on their shoulders. It is obvious that they are really doing their own stunts and this gives their performances a stunning verisimilitude. You see and feel their struggle. As Sheila O'Malley has sagely noted, acting is doing and The Naked Island is a prime example of committed performances in which gesture merges with behavior. Apparently the hardships experienced by Ms. Otowa did not embitter her towards Mr. Shindo for she became his third and final wife in 1978. I also must shower superlatives on the score by the great Hikaru Hayashi who composed over thirty operas and over a hundred film scores. It is evocative without ever bogging down into sentimentality, much like The Naked Island as a whole.

The first film I ever saw directed by Kaneto Shindo was his 1964 horror masterpiece Onibaba which I viewed at the Roxie theater in San Francisco. This was in 1987 or so and, happily, the Roxie is still in business today. Kaneto Shindo lived till he was 100 and directed 48 films, most of which remain unseen in the USA. Of his other films, I've only seen 1968's Kuroneko, a good, if not outstanding, period horror film, but The Naked Island will spur me to seek out more of his oeuvre.