Fallen Angel

Paranoia strikes deep in Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel

Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel, from 1945, is a moody noir that falls just short of greatness. Ostensibly a love triangle featuring Alice Faye, Dana Andrews and Linda Darnell, the film is actually a hexagon with intrigue and hidden voyeurs around each corner. Darnell's Stella is a waitress in a hash house in dead end Walton, California. She is typed as a slut playing the field for baubles and bubbly. Preminger emphasizes Darnell's legs with low angel shots each time she enters the diner and Darnell vamps effectively. Alice Faye thought that Darryl Zanuck, who was involved with Darnell at the time, tilted the film towards the younger actress' favor in the cutting room. After filming, Faye returned home to raise her two daughters with Phil Harris and did not act in a film again for nine years. Perhaps she heard the death knell of her stardom as many actresses in Hollywood do today when their casting shifts quickly from ingenue to hag.

Dana Andrews was at the peak of his stardom. At his best, with Preminger, Wyler, Fritz Lang and Jacques Tourneur, Andrews could produce notes of futility and fatalism beneath macho swagger. Andrews's Eric Stanton is deposited in Walton, somewhere between LA and San Francisco, because he lacks bus fare; noir partly sprang from the depression aura of economic helplessness. One of the many effective crane shots from this film heightens our feeling of isolation and desperation as he enters town. However, Marty Holland's source novel doesn't have a character as interesting as Waldo Lydecker and this attempt to recapture the success of Laura is not a complete triumph.

The love scenes between Faye and Andrews don't really come off. The painted backgrounds feel chintzy, but a better reason is that Preminger is not a romantic. He responds more to the bug lust of two scorpions like Stella and Eric. Faye does her best with an impossible part, a chaste heiress who plays church organ. She underplays her tremulousness nicely, but the picture is more concerned with vice than virtue. Preminger has a reputation for being an indifferent and hasty director of actors, but the leads are good here and the supporting cast is sturdy: Ann Revere, Charles Bickford, John Carradine, Bruce Cabot, Percy Kilbride.

What most redeems Fallen Angel is Preminger's handling of his camera. His stationary shots of the fictional Walton convey a sense of small town desolation and solitude that recall Edward Hopper's paintings. When he moves the camera, it is to show the emotional impact of events upon characters: a dolly into Andrews and Darnell dancing shows them whetting their sexual appetites and a crane shot of Andrews witnessing Faye's arrest heightens our sense of Eric's paranoia. Paranoia is a constant theme in Preminger's noirs. In Fallen Angel, it is shown to be an apt response to a troubled world.

Pet Sematary (2019)

Among the buried in 2019's Pet Sematary

Kevin Kolsch and Dennis Widmyer's Pet Sematary is a stolid remake, lacking the campy glee of Mary Lambert's 1989 version. This adaptation focuses more on the family dynamics of the besieged nuclear unit. Jason Clarke and Amy Seimetz are finely understated as Mom and Dad. The child actors are exemplary. King's ideas, such as they are, are boiled down to their basics and reconstituted. One thinks of better, more forceful adaptations of King's work echoed here such as The Shining's deconstruction of the American Family and The Dead Zone's utilization of a big rig as a harbinger of fate.

The film is drained of local color. Despite putting Mom in a Maine T-shirt, the setting is anonymous. Even the talented John Lithgow huffs and puffs to no avail. Pet Sematary is competently made, but lacks zest, energy and memorable moments. No eggs were broken in the making of this omelette.

Fast-Walking

An unusually quiet Timothy Carey listens as Tim McIntire rants

James B. Harris' Fast-Walking, from 1982, is a seamy prison picture that I can't totally reject out of hand. Howard Hawks reputably said that all you needed were three good scenes to make a movie and Fast-Walking has at least one. Otherwise, it is an uneasy mix of 30s prison cliches, 60s Black Power tropes, violence, and nekkid ladies. I hope Kay Lenz got individual bonuses for each nude scene. She is fine as a femme fatale named "Moke", but it is an absurd role that requires her to ride a Harley, shoot guns and poison darts, and lock lips with James Woods. Hazard pay! Woods is well cast as a sleazy prison guard. He is OK here, nothing near his work in The Onion Field and Videodrome, but I respect his willingness to be unlikeable. You can't smirk in pulp or noir. Woods liked Harris enough to later star in Cop, Harris' best film.

The main limitation to Fast-Walker is Harris as a director. He is fine as a producer and writer, but dull as dishwater with a camera. He assembles an interesting cast, Susan Tyrell, M. Emmet Walsh and Robert Hooks all have memorable turns, but generates little cinematic momentum. The one striking scene is between Timothy Carey and Tim McIntire in a cell. Carey, a scene chewer of the first order, is merely reactive as McIntire goes the full Charlie Manson for ten minutes or so. McIntire left us too soon at 41, but makes Fast-Walker a kick every time he appears on screen. (8/9/19)

Maitresse

   

 Bulle Ogier opens the secret door to debasement

Barbet Schroeder's Maitresse, from 1976, struck me as one of his more entertaining efforts. Schroeder seems fixated on the balance of power in relationships: think of the tugs of war between the antagonists in Single White Female, Reversal of Fortune, Barfly and General Idi Amin Dada : A Self Portrait. In Maitresse, a dominatrix schools a young drifter in the proprieties of bourgeoise convention while he, in return, opens up her to a less rigid and proscribed lifestyle.

Gerard Depardieu and Bulle Ogier provide a nice contrast as the two leads. Depardieu plays an aimless sociopath, bread and butter for him early in his career, with apish charm. Ogier, a wisp of a woman compared to her hulking co-star, is wonderful as a seasoned pro used to retaining control whose passion bucket is upended by her lover. Despite the torture and S/M paraphernalia, Schroeder's tone here is wryly comic.  This is a comedy of manners where the mismatched partners must learn to compromise in order to coexist. Ogier and Schroeder announced their engagement after filming wrapped, so it is not hard seeing Maitresse as a cockeyed work of romantic devotion. An early closeup of Ogier topped by a halo of fluorescent light tips us to Schroeder's passion.  (8/8/19)

Union Pacific

 

Emblems of Agape

I found Cecil B. DeMille's Union Pacific, from 1939, to be largely a delight. A love triangle set amidst the building of the transcontinental railroad, Union Pacific lacks the ponderousness of some of his other epics. At well over two hours, it sails along as an epitome of classic Hollywood filmmaking. Robert Preston offers a pungent performance as a gambler and scalawag, giving the film a much needed dose of Eros. Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck do what they can as stiff emblems of Agape. 

McCrea struggles to display his charm in what seems to be a role designed for Gary Cooper. His ridiculous outfit doesn't help, be he is able to inject some life into his terse and cliched dialogue. Stanwyck is ill cast in the role of a feisty railroad rat. Sporting a ludicrous brogue, she plays a gal just out of her teens when she is obviously past thirty. When Preston woos her, he was barely past twenty, the effect is incongruous. Still, Stanwyck was about the best actress in Hollywood at the time and wrings every bit of emotion from her scenes. Brian Donlevy and Akim Tamiroff embody well, respectively, villainy and comic relief.

DeMille's reputation is somewhat embalmed today, but Union Pacific shows what a lively director he could be. His deftness with crowd scenes is evident, as is his skill with pacing. Union Pacific packs in a lot during its running time: two train wrecks, an Indian attack, numerous fights, hagiography and romance; yet it whizzes by. (08/06/19)

Emblem of Eros

At Eternity's Gate

Willem Dafoe in full suffering Christ Mode

Julian Schnabel's At Eternity's Gate is the umpteenth film version of Vincent Van Gogh's struggles, focusing on the last few years of his life. Schnabel uses a handheld camera so the audience can see things from Vincent's point of view and experience his disorientation. This results in an unfocused film that juggles mental health issues, religious philosophy, aesthetics, the beauty of nature and far too many balls of wax to provide coherence. Even Lust for Life, perhaps the corniest version of Van Gogh's life, at least provides a comprehensible artistic vision. 

Schnabel is too talented to make a worthless film. Sections of Vincent painting and sketching have a genuine feel of artistic quest to them. The acting is generally first rate, particularly Niels Arestrup as a crazed veteran. However, the overall effect is scattershot. Schnabel always displays visual imagination, but only The Diving Bell and the Butterfly in his corpus stands out as a wholly satisfying film. (08/05/19)