Mank

A dour waxworks, Mank, displays the limitations of David Fincher. Like ...Benjamin Button and Zodiac, Mank has impressive production values to denote the period, but no particular period feel. Attempts at witty banter seem leaden whether placed in the Paramount writers' room or San Simeon. The acting is all over the map ranging from the deplorable ( Lily Collins, Sam Troughton, Jamie McShane) to top notch (Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Ferdinand Kingsley), but when Gary Oldman gives an unmemorable performance you know something is wrong. Fincher is a talented technician whose personality makes him best suited to contemporary pictures with dollops of violence and psychopathology. Despite being an obvious labor of love, Mank is outside his ken. 

The Joke

Labor Camp employment in The Joke

Jaromil Jires' The Joke, based upon the novel by Milan Kundera, is one of the more unheralded masterpieces of the Czech New Wave. Filmed as the Czech Spring evaporated, The Joker had a brief 1969 release and then was little seen for decades. It tells the tale of Ludvik, a scientist who stumbles upon a way to avenge his unjust term in a labor camp. He was betrayed and denounced by classmates for some flippant praise of Trotsky in a postcard. This misdeed lands him an all-expense paid trip to a quarry where he experiences deprivation, toil, and torture. 

These scenes are told in flashback as we follow Ludvik in the new mod Czechoslovakia of 1968. He encounters the wife of a former comrade who denounced him and concocts a plan of vengeance, He endeavors to cuckold his former classmate, Pavel, with the vain and needy Helena. As we follow his machinations, the flashbacks of his former sufferings are seamlessly woven into the narrative. The past is shown as always present in Ludvik's mind. Jires and Kundera, who collaborated closely, tell their tale solely from Ludvik's perspective. Helena, a television presenter is given short shrift as a character. A twist before the denouement changes our perspective. The film ends with Ludvik offering an admission of his own complicity and guilt.

Kundera has often been accused of misogyny, but I take this work to be an auto-critique on that score. Helena, we eventually learn, has been abandoned by Pavel for a young cookie. This makes her desperate desire for Ludvik's embrace more sympathetic. The film is steeped in ambivalence, especially in light of Kundera's possible status as a Cold War era informer. Whether he was a fink or not is irrelevant in regards to my feelings about The Joke because the work itself conjures the paranoia and cognitive dissonance of the period. Similarly, I enjoy the writings of Curzio Malaparte even though I find his morality and political stance(s) repellent. 

Like Malaparte's work, The Joke goads one out of a passive response to a work of art. By getting us to root for Ludvik's plot and then showing us its sinister underside, the film forces the viewer to question assumptions about the nature of justice and righteousness. Ludvik cannot forgive the wrongs done him and this is his fatal flaw. Jires is greatly helped by the efforts of Josef Somr as Ludvik. Somr, best known for Closely Watched Trains, displays a bulldog indefatigability akin to Walther Matthau in A New Leaf and Charley Varrick. The other characters aren't as deeply etched though Ludek Munzar oozes suave complacency as Pavel. The Joke is not an ingratiating film, but it is jarringly effective.

The opening of Full Metal Jacket, with new recruits having their head sheared upon induction into the Marine Corps, is a crib from The Joke. Many of Kubrick's boot camp shots echo the labor camp sequences of the earlier film. What is the nickname of Matthew Modine's character, but...Joker. More striking to me is the debt owed by Pawel Pawlikowski's superb film, Cold War. The Joke is a carbon for Cold War particularly in its juxtaposition of Soviet era pageantry and traditional folk music. No matter. Great writers from Homer to Shakespeare to Bob Dylan are all thieving magpies. The Joke contains much to forage. I haven't even mentioned the wonderful use of music in this film, but this, I believe is a book topic. It is interesting to me that Jires' next feature film was the surrealistic Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, a celebration of female sexuality without a hint of Cold War politics  

  

Best of 1961

1. Viridiana                                                                  Luis Bunuel
2. The Savage Innocents                                           Nicholas Ray
3. Two Rode Together                                                John Ford
4. Underworld USA                                                    Sam Fuller
5. Through a Glass Darkly                                         Ingmar Bergman
6. Last Year at Marienbad                                          Alain Resnais
7. Breakfast at Tiffany's                                             Blake Edwards
8. The Hustler                                                              Robert Rossen
9. Armored Command                                                Byron Haskin  
10. One Eyed Jacks                                                      Marlon Brando

         Films I Enjoyed

         The Last Sunset, A Cold Wind in August, 

         Lola, Jules et Jim,

         King of Kings, Pocketful of Miracles,

         El Cid, Yojumbo, One, Two, Three,

         West Side Story, The Parent Trap,

         Splendor in the Grass, The Deadly Companions,

         101 Dalmatians, Mysterious Island

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Innocents, The Comancheros,

         Accattone, Hercules in the Haunted World,

         Blue Hawaii, A Taste of Honey,

         King of the Roaring 20s, The Guns of Navarone,

         Babes in Toyland, The Colossus of Rhodes,

         The Pit and the Pendulum, Barabbas, 

         The Absent Minded Professor,

         By Love Possessed, The Children's Hour,

         Parrish, Fanny, 

        The Misfits, Judgement at Nuremberg, 

        The Devil at 4 O'Clock,

        Snow White and the Three Stooges

         

                                                                                 

Pocketful of Miracles

Pocketful of Miracles: longer, slower, yet touchingly dated

Viewing Pocketful of Miracles, the final film by Frank Capra from 1961, led me to muse on the fading fortunes of Hollywood's pioneers in the 60s and aging filmmakers in general. An incisive take on this topic was offered by Pauline Kael in 1969:

                The comic underside of the auteur theory is that if a man repeats himself

                unconscionably, his readily apparent tired old gambits can be acclaimed

                as proof of his great distinctive style. And if he repeats himself to the point

                of self parody, then there is the joy of perceiving the old master's brilliant

                new strokes...Hitchcock's new film, Topaz, his fifty-first feature, is the same

                damned spy picture he's been making since the thirties and it's getting 

                longer, slower, and duller.💙

What Kael says about Topaz certainly applies to Pocketful of Miracles. It is literally a remake of a picture Capra made in 1933, Lady for a Day. Lady for a Day clocks in at 96 minutes, Pocketful of Miracles at a butt numbing 136 minutes. Lady for a Day has a snap and vitality that disappeared from Capra's work around the third reel of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. It also has the raucous feel of a pre-Code talkie that is relatively absent from the 1961 remake. However, I find both Topaz and Pocketful of Miracles to be effective and moving cinema.

The general woodenness of the acting, noted by Kael, is detrimental to Topaz; especially the embalmed performances of John Forsythe and Franklin Stafford. I do think Kael misses the dark beauty of Hitchcock's mise-en-scene. I'll certainly never forget the overhead shot of Karin Dor's demise. A shot which encapsulates Hitchcock's major theme, the helplessness of individuals caught within the grasp of the powers that be, a paranoid thread that runs through Torn Curtain, North by Northwest, Notorious, Saboteur and many more.

The verities and felicities of Pocketful of Miracles are more difficult to illustrate. Capra never seemed comfortable with the widescreen format which Hollywood seized upon after the Second World War to differentiate its product from televised fare. Because of Glenn Ford's status as a producer on the film, his role is padded and Bette Davis largely disappears from the screen during its last third. Ford is adequate, but the role would have been better suited to Frank Sinatra, who was attached to the film in preproduction, or even Dean Martin. Hope Lange, at the time Ford's girlfriend, was installed as the second female lead over Capra's choice, Shirley Jones. She is more effective than Ford, as is Bette Davis. While not quite as memorable as May Robson in the original, Davis maintains an inviting warmth and dignity even when she is swilling bottles of gin. 

It is the supporting cast that is at the heart of most successful Capra films. The pleasures to be found in a Capra picture are more behavioral than pictorial. The camaraderie and individuality of the bus passengers in It Happened One Night, the family in You Can't Take It With You and the townspeople in It's A Wonderful Life are what I keep with me from these pictures. Pocketful of Miracles boasts a treasure trove of supporting performances by Edward Everett Horton, Peter Falk, Ellen Corby, Jack Elam, Sheldon Leonard, Fritz Feld, Willis Bouchey, Mike Mazurki and an uncredited Snub Pollard. Only a badly miscast Arthur O'Connell, playing a Spanish count, strikes an off note.

Pocketful of Miracles is a symphonic celebration of Runyonesque street people. However, what was spritely and new in 1933 seemed old hat in 1961. Even a champion of Capra's work, Andrew Sarris, qualified his praise of the film by writing that it was "disastrously, but touchingly dated." 💚  Others were not so kind. Cinematic output by seniors does tend to dodder: think of the later films by Carol Reed, Blake Edwards and George Stevens. On the other hand, the last films by Dreyer and John Ford are among their greatest and, thus, among the greatest films in all cinema. This is not now, nor ever has been, the majority opinion. Critics at the time described Dreyer's Gertrud as "a two hour study of sofas and pianos" and "cinematic poverty".💛 John Ford's 7 Women was released on the bottom half of a B picture double bill. It was ignored or belittled, one reviewer described it as a "maudlin, mawkish, gooey dripping hunk of simpering slush."💜 One biographer of Ford said he directed the film "without evincing any interest or creativity."💓 However, another biographer champions the film as imbued with "unequalled virtuosity and unsurpassed depths of humanity."💜 Never the twain shall meet.

Taste and mileage may vary, but I would give Pocketful of Miracles a chance if you have ever been touched or entertained by a Frank Capra film. I sometimes have an almost diabetic reaction to Capra corn, but was glad I saw this film.

This was the last film appearance for Thomas Mitchell and the first for Ann Margret. Margret is a warm and resplendent presence here and even gets to warble a few bars. Mitchell was one of the most significant supporting actors of the sound era. Subbing for an ailing Jack Oakie, he delivers a suitable valedictory for himself and the film. 

💙 Pauline Kael, Deeper Into Movies, Pgs. 98-99

💚 Andrew Sarris, The American Cinema, Pg. 87

💛 David Bordwell, The Films of Carl-Theodor Dryer, Pg. 171

💓 Scott Eyman, Print the Legend, Pg. 523

💜 Tag Gallagher, John Ford,  Pg. 436

 

Mandy

Nicholas Cage goes gonzo again in Mandy

Panos Cosmatos' Mandy is a whacked out fever dream of a movie. This pulp piece superbly integrates lysergic cinematography, sound and art design, Even the bespoke paperback covers, songs and commercials display wit and ingenuity. Ostensibly, a spam in a cabin exploitation flick with Nicholas Cage and Andrea Riseborough, Cosmatos' film explores how the influence of the counterculture persisted into the Reagan era. I'm not sure Cosmatos is enough of a thinker to fully realize the implications of his themes, but Mandy overflows with visual imagination. 

Nicholas Cage does his usual gonzo act, as he spends the second half of the film wreaking vengeance upon a religious cult that tortured and killed his life partner. For once, after effluvia like Rage, Bangkok Dangerous and many. many more, Cage has a proper context for his howls and cries. This is not to downplay the strength of his performance or his commitment. Cosmatos wisely spends a very deliberate first third of the picture establishing Cage and Riseborough's relationship. This makes the ensuing carnage somewhat earned.

Riseborough is one of the most accomplished actors of her generation. She delivers the film's finest monologue, but is best utilized here simply gazing at the camera. Linus Roache gets to chew the scenery as a cult leader and delivers his most memorable performance since The Wings of the Dove. Yet, the performances are secondary to the manic visual splendor of Mandy. A film that alternately celebrates and critiques acid culture, as it immerses the viewer in it. (12/9/18)

 

Best of 1962

1. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance                               John Ford
2. Salvatore Giuliano                                                            Francesco Rosi
3. Vivre Sa Vie                                                                       Jean-Luc Godard
4. The Exterminating Angel                                                 Luis Bunuel
5. Two Weeks in Another Town                                           Vincente Minnelli
6. Advise and Consent                                                         Otto Preminger
7. Merrill's Marauders                                                           Sam Fuller
8. L'Eclisse                                                                             Michelangelo Antonioni
9. Mr. Arkadin                                                                        Orson Welles  
10. Cleo de 5 a 7                                                                       Agnes Varda   

         Honorable Mention

    

         Whatever Happened to Baby Jane -- Aldrich

         Films I Enjoyed 

         The Chapman Report, Il Sorpasso, Hatari,  

         Ride the High Country, The Miracle Worker, Lolita,

         Sanjuro, Experiment in Terror,  The Trial of Joan of Arc,

         Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Music Man, Cape Fear,

         The Manchurian Candidate, Knife in the Water,

         Hell is for Heroes, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,

         Baron Prasil, Lawrence of Arabia, How the West was Won,

         Carnival of Souls, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Damn the Defiant!,

         Sodom and Gomorrah, Whistle Down the Wind,

         David and Lisa, The Days of Wine and Roses,

         Dr. No, To Kill a Mockingbird, 

         The 300 Spartans, Gypsy, 

         Rome Adventure, Billy Budd,

         Mutiny on the Bounty, Lonely Are The Brave,

         Freud, Birdman of Alcatraz,

         Toto vs. Maciste, The Longest Day                                                         

Shirkers

 

Sandi Tan's Shirkers is an intriguing memoir of an abortive film project. Ms. Tan grew up in Singapore where she was an aspiring filmmaker and writer who chafed against the oppressive atmosphere of her island nation. Mentored by a professor, she collaborated with him and a few of her teenage friends on an indie feature one summer when they were all off from school. Unfortunately, her mentor proved to be a sociopath who absconded with the finished reels of film and disappeared into the ether. After his death some twenty years later, Ms. Tan was reunited with the film reels and the colorful footage of that shoot forms the basis of this documentary.

Ms. Tan ably mixes the film footage, behind the scenes shots, present day interviews with the cast and crew and scenes from films that inspired her. Two of her closest friends forged careers in film and their reminiscences share Ms. Tan's enthusiasm for movies and provide interesting counterpoints to Ms. Tan's point of view. The film is crisply edited and never wallows in self-pity or solipsism. Ms. Tan displays a keen visual sense that lifts this documentary above the ordinary. Shirkers is suffused with loss for a past that can't be recaptured, but is ultimately a triumphant exorcism of an artist's demons. (12/14/18)

As of November of 2020, Shirkers can still be seen on Netflix. 

The Call of the Wild (2020)

 

Chris Sanders' The Call of the Wild is a handsome enough production. Janusz Kaminski's cinematography and the production design by Stefan Dechant are particularly fetching. However, the film suffers from Disneyfication. The anamorphic animals look dead-eyed on the CGI canvas. It misses the mythic pull of London's yarn chiefly because it aims to be a theme park with thrill rides. 

Best of 1963

1. Contempt                                                                           Jean-Luc Godard
2. Shock Corridor                                                                  Sam Fuller
3. Donovan's Reef                                                                 John Ford
4. Judex                                                                                  Georges Franju
5. Muriel                                                                                 Alain Resnais 
6. The Servant                                                                       Joseph Losey
7. The Birds                                                                           Alfred Hitchcock
8. The Silence                                                                         Ingmar Bergman
9. How to Be Loved                                                               Wojciech Has
10. High and Low                                                                    Akira Kurosawa

          Honorable Mention

          The Damned -- Losey, Winter Light -- Bergman,

          The Nutty Professor -- Lewis, 81/2 -- Fellini,

          An Actor's Revenge -- Ichikawa, 55 Days at Peking -- Ray,

          The Cardinal -- Preminger, 

          Films I Enjoyed

           Le Petit Soldat, The Trial,

           The Leopard, Les Carabiniers,

           The Great Escape, America, America,

           The Courtship of Eddie's Father, Bye, Bye, Byrdie,

           Tom Jones, Jason and the Argonauts,

           From Russia With Love, Charade,

           X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes,

           The Sword and the Stone, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow,

           McClintock!, Blood Feast

           Below the Mendoza Line

           Billy Liar, The Comedy of Terrors,

           The Terror, 

           Dementia 13, The Haunting,

           This Sporting Life, Move Over, Darling, 

           Spencer's Mountain, The Raven,

           Lilies of the Field, Irma La Douce,

           Cleopatra, Toys in the Attic, Hud,

           It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World,

           4 for Texas, PT 109

     

          

The King of Staten Island

In the land of the blind...

I've never been particularly taken with the films of Judd Apatow, at least the ones he has directed. His talents seem better suited to the roles of writer and producer. Indeed, projects he has produced but not directed such as Superbad and Pineapple Express seem superior to me than ones he has directed such as Trainwreck, This is 40 and Knocked Up. Thus, it surprised me how much I enjoyed The King of Staten Island. 

The theme is a familiar one in the Apatow oeuvre (and recent American Cinema): a young male protagonist mired in arrested development begins making tentative attempts to grow up. Pete Davidson is the young layabout whose dream is to become a tattoo artist. As the film commences, Davidson's character's behavior verges on sociopathy. He spends his time smoking weed and watching SpongeBob while hanging with his crew of young miscreants. His Mom, played by the ever splendid Marisa Tomei, finally has had enough and kicks him out of the house, forcing him to grow up a little and confront the legacy of the father he barely knew, a firefighter who died in the line of duty.

This is indeed the background of Davidson himself, who was among the cowriters of the film along with Apatow. Both these native New Yorkers give the film a believable sense of place. Whatever Apatow's limitations as a visual stylist, his style is your typical bright Hollywood realism, he has displayed a solid feel for the give and take of heterosexual relationships. The interactions of Davidson and his lady love, expertly played by Bel Powley, and that of his mother and her fireman suitor (Bill Barr) are memorably etched and convey a reasonably realistic sense of interpersonal dynamics. The King of Staten Island shows an arc of personal growth for its characters that I find heartening.

The film is overlong, 140 minutes when it should have been 100 minutes at most. This belies the desire of the filmmakers to transcend the limitations of your typical relationship comedy, but film is too choppy and overloaded as a result. The issue of mental health is briefly mooted and then forgotten. A botched pharmacy robbery, in which the protagonist escapes consequences all too easily, should have been excised. Still, Messers Apatow and Davidson have largely succeeded in what they sought to do. Apatow shows once again that he is particularly adept at casting his players. Rapper Action Bronson is an especial treat as a loquacious stabbing victim. 

  

The Wild Goose Lake

Gwei Lun-Mei and Ge Hu share a spark in The Wild Goose Lake

Certainly the most accomplished and interesting new feature I've seen in 2020, The Wild Goose Lake  fulfills the promise director Yi'nan Diao showed in his earlier features.  Set mostly at night amongst the lakeside demimonde of Wuhan and told largely in flashback, the film has been described as a Hitchcockian noir, but I found it more akin to the man on the run films of Carol Reed, particularly Odd Man Out and The Third Man. Like those films, The Wild Goose Lake features a doomed protagonist, played with Steve McQueen like dexterity and taciturnity by Ge Hu, who is sought by both the authorities and the mob. He wants to turn himself in and give the reward money to his somewhat less than faithful wife, but danger lurks for him around every corner. The mood of the film is fatalistic and paranoid. All of the main characters are being stalked or surveilled. A prostitute tries to help Ge Hu's character, but his fate is sealed and he knows it. The principles are all outstanding, but the pool halls, flesh pits and noodle shops of Wuhan come equally alive in this memorable and moody thriller. 

Best of 1964

1. Gertrud                                                         Carl Theodor Dreyer
2. A Hard Day's Night                                      Richard Lester
3. Woman in the Dunes                                   Hiroshi Teshigahara
4. The Red Desert                                            Michelangelo Antonioni
5. The Killers                                                    Don Siegel
6. Bande a part                                                 Jean-Luc Godard
7. King and Country                                        Joseph Losey
8. Dr. Strangelove                                            Stanley Kubrick
9. Diamonds of the Night                                Jan Nemec
10. The Naked Kiss                                            Sam Fuller                                         

          

          Honorable Mention

          Zulu -- Endfield, Onibaba -- Shindo,

          A Shot in the Dark -- Edwards, Lilith -- Rossen,

          I Am Cuba -- Kalatozov, Three Outlaw Samurai -- Gosha,

          Kwaidan --Kobayashi, Masque of the Red Death-- Corman

         Films I Enjoyed

         The Pink Panther, The Battle of Culloden, 

         The T.A.M.I. Show, The Best Man,

         Man's Favorite Sport, Cheyenne Autumn,

         The Fall of the Roman Empire, Loving Couples,

         Enchanted Desna, Joy House,

         Kiss Me Stupid,

         The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Marnie,

         Viva Las Vegas, Diary of a Chambermaid,

         A Fistful of Dollars, The World of Henry Orient, 

         The Moon Spinners, 

         A Distant Trumpet, The Train, 

         Emil and the Detectives, Black Sabbath,

         The Americanization of Emily, Goldfinger

         Below the Mendoza Line

         The Night of the Iguana, Becket,

         Goodbye Charlie, Paris When It Sizzles,

         The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Pumpkin Eater, 

         The Tomb of Ligeia, Mary Poppins,

         My Fair Lady, Father Goose,

         Send Me No Flowers, Seven Days in May, 

         Fail Safe, The Pawnbroker, 

         What a Way to Go!, Good Neighbor Sam,

         The Incredible Mr. Limpet, Behold a Pale Horse,

         The Carpetbaggers, The Unsinkable Molly Brown,

         Zorba the Greek, Dear Heart, Circus World,

         Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,

         

American Animals

 

Bart Layton's American Animals is one of the more unjustly overlooked features of the past few years. The film examines the misbegotten attempts by four students to steal rare books from the collection of Transylvania University. The film interweaves the narrative with interviews of the actual participants. Layton views his hapless subjects with a fully rounded humanity that prevents the film from succumbing to moralizing.

He is greatly helped by his two leads, Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan, who do a fine job fleshing out this folie a deux. Keoghan seems to have a lock on playing creeps and Peters brings the barely contained hysteria he has ably displayed on American Horror Story.

I was familiar with the story going in, but Layton's skill at ratcheting up the suspense had me palpitating. A find. 

 

El Bruto

Katy Jurado has Pedro Armendariz typed as El Bruto

The melodrama of 1953's El Bruto is much more logically plot bound than is to be expected from a Luis Bunuel film. However, Mr Bunuel, as was his want, didn't just settle for a paycheck and uses this lurid feature to arrestingly explore strands of Marxism, Surrealism and Absurdist humor.

Class struggle is one of the central conflicts of the film. A rich landlord, Andres, wants to evict some poor tenants from his slum so he can make a financial killing redeveloping the land. When a collectivist response threatens his plans, he enlists an employee, the titular brute, to muscle the tenants into submission. After the "success" of Los Olivados, Bunuel was working his way up the food chain of the burgeoning Mexican film industry. He ended up doing everything from distinguished literary adaptations to the charming Mexican Bus Ride in a period every bit as interesting as his later European one. What strikes me was how deft he is here with the early crowd scenes. He contrasts the lone wolf oligarch and his thugs with the unwashed masses gracefully, utilizing multiple speaking parts, but able to invigorate and speed the dramatic action so the baldly Marxist outlook never seems pedantic. 

Armendariz is one of the most important actors of postwar cinema and is somewhat neglected; at least in the USA. He had dipped his toe into Hollywood cinema (The Fugitive, Fort Apache, We Were Strangers), but worked largely in Mexico, where he was a major star. The role of a simple minded fascist thug is not really a test of his ability, but he makes a convincing thug. Katy Jurado is best known for her role as the masochistic Helen in High Noon, but she had roles more worthy of her talent in One Eyed Jacks and Pat Garrett and Bill the Kid. As a raging virago, she has a field day here. When the brute dumps her for a mousy good girl, she exacts a furious revenge.

Bunuel leavens the gloom with humor, particularly in the character of Andres' father, a demented codger. The patriarch is now a drooling child, stealing and hoarding candy. The sardonic streak in Bunuel also emerges as he has the brute declare what a beautiful country Mexico is to his lady love while standing in a pile of rubble. This helps dissipate the nightmarish nature of the world of El Bruto, which is replete with degradation, poverty and charnel houses.

The surrealistic asides of the film usually involve animals or their corpses. Bunuel is stressing that we are material creatures to whom life is but a brief dream. Jurado's character is a destructive force of nature. Bunuel presents her first savagely gorging on grapes as she admires herself in a mirror. Later, she rips the heads off flowers to visually reinforce fatal advice. She ends the film triumphing over her male lover/combatant and sealing his fate. Bunuel has her hiss at a cock as she exits. 

Maybe not a major Bunuel film, but an accomplished and enjoyable one. For anyone interested in the great Spaniard, his memoir, My Last Sigh, even in its expurgated English version, is a droll pleasure.

Best of 1965

1. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors                                 Sergei Parajanov 
2. The Saragossa Manuscript                                           Wojciech Has 
3. Bunny Lake is Missing                                                  Otto Preminger
4. Fists in the Pocket                                                          Marco Bellocchio 
5. Man is Not a Bird                                                            Dusan  Makavejev
6. Chimes at Midnight                                                        Orson Welles
7. Alphaville                                                                        Jean-Luc Godard
8. Simon of the Desert                                                        Luis Bunuel
9. Pierrot le Fou                                                                  Jean-Luc Godard
10. For a Few Dollars More                                                 Sergio Leone

                   Honorable Mention

                   What's New Pussycat? -- Donner, The Collector -- Wyler, 

                   Films I Enjoyed 

  

                   The War Lord, In Harm's Way, 

                   A High Wind in Jamaica, The Moment of Truth,

                   Repulsion, A Boy Ten Feet Tall, 

                   Young Cassidy, Major Dundee,

                   Pleasures of the Flesh, 

                   Cat Ballou, Hush...Hush..Sweet Charlotte, 

                   Help!, Darling,

                   Faster Pussycat Kill! Kill!, The Great Race, 

                   Viva Maria!, Red Line 7000, 

                   Mickey One, The Cincinnati Kid,

                   The Sons of Katie Elder, That Darn Cat

                   Below the Mendoza Line

                   The Cavern, Le Bonheur,

                   The 10th Victim, The Knack...and How to Get It

                   Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,

                   Lord Jim, Juliet of the Spirits, 

                   The Hill, Von Ryan's Express,

                   Thunderball, Planet of the Vampires, 

                   A Thousand Clowns, The Agony and the Ecstasy,

                   How to Murder Your Wife, The Loved One, 

                   The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Pawnbroker,

                   The Sandpiper, Harlow, 

                   Battle of the Bulge, Doctor Zhivago, 

                   The Sound of Music, The Bedford Incident, 

                   Beach Blanket Bingo, A Patch of Blue

                   John Goldfarb, Please Come Home, Ship of Fools,

                   The Greatest Story Ever Told

                   Cave Videntium

                   The Hallelujah Trail

The Tiger of Eschnapur and The Indian Tomb

 

Debra Paget skirts the censors in The Indian Tomb

Fritz Lang's The Tiger of Eschnapur and its sequel The Indian Tomb, both from 1959, have been released on discs (by Film Movement) that do justice to these visually stimulating works. The color photography by Richard Angst has an astonishing visual intensity as it illumes the splendid sets and striking costumes. The extras are worthy, but some viewers may be perplexed as to why one of the cinema's great masters should be working on such hoary epics of Orientalist kitsch. 

Lang is best known for such expressionistically modernist masterpieces as Metropolis and M, but he did dabble in exotica. Such early films as Destiny and Harakiri reflect this aspect of his oeuvre and even in Hollywood potboilers such as The Blue Gardenia there is more that a whiff of Orientalism. Furthermore, Lang's silent films contain elements of (or indeed are) pulp serials: The Spiders, Spies and even the Dr. Mabuse films. Whatever the genre, the main theme remains the same: protagonists, usually lovers, battling an oppressive environment and a seemingly predetermined fate. Despite the rubber snakes, indifferently handled action sequences, dubbed actors, rhinestones and overly bright blood, Lang conjures a felt epic true to his thematic interests. 

A good comparison is another bloated epic from 1959, also with lepers and stilted acting, the Oscar winning Ben Hur. William Wyler's film is a slog, enlivened only by the second unit work in the chariot race. I certainly could not sit through the whole thing again, but Lang's epics repay multiple viewings. Lang's pageantry has a more evocative touch to it than Wyler's and he is able to use the epic genre to amplify his themes in a grandiose fashion. 

The main set of the film, the palace of the Maharajah of Eschnapur, is the kind of eye candy we expect of films of this sort. Yet, the palace is soon revealed as a combination prison, interment camp and extermination center. Lang's slow pans literally show us where the bodies are buried. The titular tiger is  a deadly threat, but not as deadly or treacherous as man. In this world, the embrace of lovers is always fleeting and imperiled. 

The two films contain elements of classical opposition. Incidents in the first film are repeated or echoed in the second for thematic contrast and karmic retribution. A victim of a whipping in the first film turns the tables in the second. A fertility dance becomes a dance of death when repeated. The Maharajah cannot part with worldly pleasure and power after consulting a yogi in the first film. When they meet again in the second film, it is with a spirit of renunciation and self sacrifice. This strand of self sacrifice pops up repeatedly amidst the doom of Lang's films; most notably in Destiny, Man Hunt and Moonfleet.

Paranoia and themes of surveillance also recur in Lang's work, most prominently in the films about the omnipotent criminal mastermind Dr. Mabuse. In the Indian Tomb, one character states this theme baldly when noting a giant ceiling fan seems to be watching them. However, it is the deities of India that are shown to be all seeing. When the dictates of Kali and Shiva are transgressed, the consequences are dire. Despite their glittering surfaces, these two films are very much of a piece of the deterministic nightmare cinema of Fritz Lang. Certainly the products of a conscious artist, these films seem to emerge from the unconscious. They lack the exciting dynamics of early Lang, but evince a serene contemplation of mortality and its meaning.

Sweetheart

Sweetheart marks Kiersey Clemons as a star on the rise

JD Dillard's Sweetheart, currently streaming on Netflix, is a combination of Robinson Crusoe and The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Dillard has decided not to foreground the film's themes, a wise move for a somewhat simpleminded genre flick. The currents of racism and class consciousness emerge only after the protagonist in peril has gained our rooting interest by battling a fearsome monster. Dillard and his compatriots have chosen an opposite tack to that of Robert Zemeckis in Castaway. In that film, Tom Hanks offered a running commentary to his only companion, a volleyball he dubbed Wilson. In Sweetheart, Kiersey Clemons utters nary a word for half the movie. Her skill as a performer and Dillard's unfussy professionalism make this as an engaging B horror outing.

I was reminded of what James Agee said, more or less, to Stanley Kubrick after viewing Fear and Desire, a first feature Kubrick later admitted was pretentious and inept. The film "had too many good things in it to be called arty" was Agee's reassurance to the young tyro. I feel the same way about Sweetheart. Hopefully, more will be seen from Ms, Clemons and Mr. Dillard.

Best of 1966

 

1. Au Hasard Balthazar                                                      Robert Bresson
2. 7 Women                                                                          John Ford
3. Persona                                                                            Ingmar Bergman 
4. The Battle of Algiers                                                       Gillo Pontecorvo 
5. Andrei Rublev                                                                 Andrei Tarkovsky
6. La prise de pouvoir par Louis XIV                               Roberto Rossellini 
7. Torn Curtain                                                                    Alfred Hitchcock 
8. Blow-Up                                                                          Michelangelo Antonioni
9. Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse                                   Jacques Rivette 
10. Daisies                                                                             Vera Chytilova

                    Honorable Mention

                    The Good, the Bad and the Ugly -- Leone, Lord Love a Duck -- Axelrod,

                    What Did You Do in the War, Daddy -- Edwards, The Shooting -- Hellman,

                     The Round-Up -- Jancso

                    Films I Enjoyed

                    Fahrenheit 451, The Chase, 

                    Masculin Feminin, Scorpio Rising

                    Flight of the Phoenix, The Professionals,

                    The Hawks and the Sparrows, Tokyo Drifter,

                    Samurai Wolf,

                    A Fine Madness, Inside Daisy Clover,

                    The Heroes of Telemark, Ride in the Whirlwind, 

                    The Fortune Cookie, The Big T.N.T. Show,

                    A Report on the Party and Guests,

                    Kill, Baby...Kill!, The Diabolical Dr. Z,

                    The Naked Prey, The Group,

                    Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Arrivederci Baby!,

                    The Quiller Memorandum, 

                    The Trouble with Angels, Harper, 

                    Modesty Blaise, Violence at Noon

                    Below the Mendoza Line

                    Cul-de-sac, War and Peace, 

                    Georgy Girl, Cast a Giant Shadow,

                    Dead Heat on a Merry-go-Round,

                    How to Steal a Million, The Silencers, 

                    Night Games, Nevada Smith,

                    Arabesque, Alfie, This Property is Condemned,

                    A Man for All Seasons, Wake Up and Die, Seconds,

                    Hurry Sundown, A Big Hand for a Little Lady,

                    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, 

                    King of Hearts, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming,

                    The Wild Angels, The Bible, 

                    Madame X, Stagecoach, Grand Prix,

                    Is Paris Burning?, A Man and a Woman, Our Man Flint,

                    The Sand Pebbles, The Appaloosa, Fantastic Voyage,

                    The Blue Max, The Devil's Own, Born Free,

                    An American Dream, Walk Don't Run,

                    Batman, The Singing Nun

                    

                     

                   

The Sun

Issei Ogata as Emperor Hirohito in The Sun

Aleksandr Sokurov's The Sun is an idiosyncratic portrait of Japan's Emperor Hirohito towards the end of the Second World War. Sokurov and his scenarists play up the helplessness and quirkiness of Hirohito as he goes about his daily routine in an underground bunker while the empire falls around him. Issei Ogata, best known as the befuddled Dad in Yi Yi, portrays an emperor seemingly more suited to pursuing his interests in marine biology and poetry than in helming an empire.

The film culminates in Hirohito's decision to forsake his role as a national deity. General MacArthur is shown as willing to keep on as Emperor in the interests of continuity and national cohesion. The slow pace, desaturated colors and wry comic tone of the film may be too odd for some viewers, but Sokurov's dreamlike mise-en-scene held my attention.

Sokurov succeeds in showing the insularity of Hirohito's life. A surrealistic dream sequence shows that Hirohito was haunted by the cost of the conflict, but the film elides addressing Hirohito's culpability in Japanese war crimes. However, an offscreen tragedy, seemingly tossed as an aside at the film's conclusion, provides a final sting that casts all that has gone on before in a different light. 

Take Me to Town

Douglas Sirk's Take Me to Town, from 1953, is a delight that will charm even those who have never heard of the great director. Ann Sheridan provides the oomph as a saloon singer on the run from the law. Three young boys who are searching for a wife for their widowed father offer her safe haven at their cabin and she discovers the joys of domesticity. The boy's father, played by the always welcome Sterling Hayden, is a preacher who leaves the boys alone at the cabin while he makes ends meet working as a logger. Hayden succumbs to the singer's charms and, despite opposition by the uptight parishioners, love wins the day.

Like most of Sirk's films for Universal in the 50s, the film functions as a celebration of American abundance and a critique of American intolerance. The townspeople are unable to view Southern's Vermillion O'Toole (!) with any sexual ambiguity: since she is not a virgin, she must be a whore. Their judgement is immature, much like the youngest boy, Bucket, who either likes things or hates them. The tolerance shown by Hayden's preacher serves as a beacon of mature acceptance.

Take Me to Town is a cheap B Western with musical numbers. It was targeted at family audiences, like most Westerns of the time, but has nice frissons of sexuality. Hayden's character is as much of a sexual object as Southern's. A shirtless Hayden sawing wood establishes him as an emblem of virility, anticipating Rock Hudson's arborist in All That Heaven Will Allow. He is the cynosure of female attention, much like Andrew Scott's "hot priest" in Fleabag. Sirk's elevation of the material is helped by the color cinematography of the great Russell Metty (Bringing Up Baby, Touch of Evil, Madigan). This marked the first time Sirk and Metty worked together, they would reunite for nine more films. It was also the first Sirk time toiled in a Ross Hunter production. The melodramas Sirk and Hunter collaborated on would be the most lasting and influential legacies of both. Sharp eyed viewers will notice uncredited appearances by Fess Parker, Guy Williams and Anita Ekberg.

Best of 1967

1. Belle de Jour                                                                        Luis Bunuel 
2. Playtime                                                                               Jacques Tati
3. Point Blank                                                                          John Boorman
4. The Red and the White                                                       Miklos Jancso
5. El Dorado                                                                             Howard Hawks
6. Marketa Lazarova                                                               Frantisek Vlacil
7. Weekend                                                                              Jean-Luc Godard
8. Gunn                                                                                    Blake Edwards
9. Mouchette                                                                            Robert Bresson
10. Bonnie and Clyde                                                               Arthur Penn

         Honorable Mention

         Don't Look Back -- Pennebaker, Wavelength -- Snow,

         Accident -- Losey, Samurai Wolf 2: Hell Cut -- Gosha

         Films I Enjoyed

        The Graduate, Don't Make Waves,

        The Dirty Dozen, Wait Until Dark, 

        The Fearless Vampire Killers, La Chinoise.

        The Young Girls of Rochefort, Hour of the Gun,

        Viy, Up the Down Staircase, 

        Cool Hand Luke, Le Samourai,

        Two for the Road, A Countess from Hong Kong,

        Japanese Summer: Double Suicide,

        This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse, The Flim Flam Man,

        Reflections in a Golden Eye, Who's That Knocking at My Door,

        To Sir, With Love, In the Heat of the Night, The Jungle Book,

        Games, Tony Rome, 

        The Honey Pot, The Witches,

        Spider Baby, The Happening

        Below the Mendoza Line

        L'Etranger, Far from the Madding Crowd, 

        Sing a Song of Sex,

        The Producers, Two or Three Things I Know About Her, 

        Divorce American Style, Branded to Kill,

        The Trip, In Cold Blood, 

        Valley of the Dolls, The Whisperers, 

        Barefoot in the Park,

        Casino Royale, The Taming of the Shrew, 

        The War Wagon, Hombre,

        The Night of the Generals, How to Succeed in Business...,

        Clambake, The Way West, 

        The Born Losers, The Happiest Millionaire,

        Marat/Sade, Warning Shot,

        Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,

        Doctor Faustus

        Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma

        Camelot, Doctor Doolittle

        

Little Women

Camaraderie in Little Women

Greta Gerwig's Little Women tries to update the old chestnut by rejiggering the narrative in postmodern fashion. This helps accentuate the feminism and class consciousness of the novel. It also serves to position the film as a meta commentary on Alcott and her fiction. However. Gerwig's choices somewhat dissipate the film's emotional impact.

The camaraderie, and feuding, between the sisters is lovingly established in Alcott's novel and serves to cement the reader's affection towards her characters. Gerwig shows these moments as flashbacks in a narrative where the sisters are already separated: Jo in New York, Amy in Europe with Laurie and Aunt March, Meg settled into domesticity with her husband and Beth, as always, back at home at death's door. The warm glow of the March's hearth dims when viewed in retrospect.

Gerwig's choices do yield some fruit. The death of Beth is contrasted with an earlier recovery and that helps to magnify the loss. However, the impact of Amy's fall into the frozen pond is negated because we already know she survives and will skedaddle off to Europe. For those not familiar with the original text, the only clue to the time frame of an individual scene is the length of Saoirse Ronan's hair. 

As usual, I carp too much. This Little Women is enjoyable, if not as impressive a film as Lady Bird. Gerwig does show she can work on a bigger scale. The film has many lovely moments. A sojourn at the seashore has the lighting and ambience of a Winslow Homer. The cast is uniformly fine. Even Timothee Chalamet, a callow and limited performer, is a snug fit as the shallow Laurie. The performances of Florence Pugh as Amy and Meryl Streep as Aunt March are the best done for these roles, thus far. The character of Jo has an overweening single-mindedness that borders on arrogance: a role tailor made for Katherine Hepburn. Ms. Ronan is a little too charming and likable for the role, but is not the disaster June Allyson was. I prefer the George Cukor and Gillian Armstrong versions of Little Women, but this will do fine until the next one comes along.