Best of 1945

1. They Were Expendable                                                                John Ford
2. Les Enfants du Paradis                                                                Marcel Carne
3. The Southerner                                                                             Jean Renoir
4. Rome, Open City                                                                           Roberto Rossellini
5. Scarlet Street                                                                                 Fritz Lang
6. I Know Where I'm Going                                                              Michael Powell
7. Leave Her to Heaven                                                                    John Stahl
8. Ministry of Fear                                                                             Fritz Lang
9. Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne                                                Robert Bresson
10. My Name is Julia Ross                                                                Joseph H. Lewis

         Films I Enjoyed

         Fallen Angel, The Suspect, 

         The Seventh Veil,

         Mildred Pierce, Spellbound,

         Objective Burma, The Spanish Main,

         Detour, The Picture of Dorian Gray,

         The Woman in the Window, And Then There Were None,

         The Bells of St. Mary's, The Clock,

         The Body Snatcher, Incendiary Blonde,

         Anchors Away, The Story of G. I. Joe,

         State Fair,

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Brief Encounter, Dead of Night,

         Ziegfeld Follies, 

         The Lost Weekend, Along Came Jones

         Kolberg, The Corn is Green

        

                                                                             

Dishonored

Marlene Dietrich in Dishonored

I've been waiting years for the Blu-Ray release of Josef von Sternberg's 1931 feature Dishonored, the most obscure of his collaborations with Marlene Dietrich. It more than lived up to my expectations. I would place it in the middle of the pack amongst their films, just below the level of their masterpieces: The Blue Angel, Morocco, The Scarlett Empress and The Devil is a Woman. As in Blonde Venus and Shanghai Express, the lack of an effective male foil for Dietrich detracts from the picture. Victor McLaglen is an effectively virile presence. The effect is palpable when he sweeps Dietrich off her feet and deposits her with a thump on a bed. However, he utilizes a bizarre accent and has little chemistry with la Dietrich. It's a pity Gary Cooper turned down the role, but he, apparently, had had enough of Sternberg. 

I never get enough of Sternberg's visual plays of light and shade. The art direction and costumes are riveting in themselves, especially during the carnival scene which Sternberg recycled to even more bizarre effect in The Devil is a Woman. Sternberg shows off Dietrich at her most curvy, even utilizing a hoop skirt to contrast her with the ramrod, vertically rigid military officers. Her real match, the secret service chief who recruits her from off the streets, is well played by Gustav von Seyffetitz, an always welcome character actor from the silent era. The chief, who christens Dietrich "X-27", has no qualms about sending his agent to her doom; on to X-28, I suppose. Nevertheless, it provides Sternberg with a moving and romantic send off for his heroine where the pacifism of the era and the director's critique of a stern and unyielding patriarchy are beautifully melded in a film about the intersection of Eros and Thanatos.
 

All the Money in the World, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach

Christopher Plummer and Mark Wahlberg in All the Money in the World

All the Money in the World is one of the more successful examples of Ridley Scott's recent work. Part of this is due to a good script which clearly delineates all the twists and turns in the story of J Paul Getty III's kidnapping. It is also because the material jibes well with what has become Scott's go to theme: the futility and emptiness of corporeal power. When Scott has a good script, say in American Gangster and especially The Counselor, the results are interesting. When the script is not up to snuff, as in Robin Hood and Exodus: Gods and Kings, we are left with white elephants.

Even at his best, there is a certain vacuity in Scott's work. When we see Christopher Plummer as Getty Senior surrounded by antique busts, ornate tapestries, expensive paintings and other prized tchotchkes, we are not seeing a particularly realistic portrait of the wizened tycoon, but another of Scott's portraits of hollow titans (always men) whose thirst for power has erased their humanity: think of Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, Joe Turkle in Blade Runner or Guy Pearce in Prometheus. This is precisely what Getty was, but it is not the Getty on display here. Christopher Plummer has too much charm and charisma for one thing. Getty had the looks, charisma and charm of a mummy; at least in 1973. I think Kevin Spacey, booted from the film for various transgressions, may have been more interesting in the role. Plummer always gives intelligent, well-modulated performances, but there is too much of a twinkle in his eye to be convincing as the reptilian Getty whereas Spacey is perfectly cast as cold-blooded opportunists. 

The casting of Mark Wahlberg as Getty's fixer is a worse fit. When cast as a mook or a mick, as in The Departed and The Fighter, Wahlberg can be extremely effective. Here a dollop of sophistication is needed and Wahlberg is as sophisticated as a meatball grinder. I know Wahlberg is a name and a competent performer, but how could anyone believe he would be well cast as someone named Fletcher Chase?

Happily, the two other main performances are home runs. Charlie Plummer is astonishingly good as the young Getty, a reminder at how adept Scott is in drawing fine work from young performers. Even better is Michelle Williams, who pretty much carries the film on her thin shoulders. Expert at both vocal and physical performance, Williams' provides the heart of the film as a mother determined to save her son. Scott's work is often icy and glacial, it needs the heat of an impassioned performer like Williams or Russell Crowe to bring it to life. Scott's oeuvre is a mixed bag, half tabula rasa, half stylish and intriguing. Primarily due to Williams' performance, All the Money in the World is one of his more effective films.

Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, from 1968, is an entirely different kettle of fish. In essence, this is an art film whose relation to the commercial narrative cinema is tangential at best. The title itself announces that Huillet and Straub are not seeking to tell a tale, but to present sequential annals of time that pictures Bach's life, mostly through glimpses of his wife, children and music. There are numeral historically accurate recreations of Bach's musical performances with Dutch musician Gustav Leonhardt impersonating the maestro. Huillet and Straub intersperse the film with various Bach related scores and documents. This makes the film more an exploration of the semiological possibilities of the cinema than its narrative ones. This limits the appeal of this kind of film. I know that other members of my household will not be clamoring for me to bring home another disc by Huillet and Straub anytime soon. 

Still, I was riveted by the film and I am rather lukewarm to the composer finding him, at times, more mathematical than musical. Leonhardt's period appropriate performances let the music breathe in a way that most modern arrangers, synthesizer twiddlers or Glenn Gould do not. In a weird way, the minimalist direction reminds me of David L. Wolper productions like Appointment with Destiny and You Are There from my youth. This is not a diss. These shows entertained the young history buff Biff greatly and their pedagogic impulses are not dissimilar from the ones behind the historical films Rossellini did for television. What directorial touches there are moved me, particularly a slow dolly back from Bach to include the ensemble as they chime in to join the master. I was a Straub and Huillet virgin until this film, but seeing it will spur me to seek out their other works. Even in this age of streaming gluttony they are hard to find, Netflix certainly has none of them, but I will endeavor. (8/29/2018)

Saint Laurent

Gaspard Ulliel as Saint Laurent

Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent provided me with an ultimately frustrating viewing experience. Mostly focused on the glory years of the designer between 1967 and 1976, Saint Laurent hops back and forth through time telling the all too familiar story of a visionary who excels at his work, but is unable to forge a meaningful personal life. The film bogs down in endless party and disco sequences that artfully portray the ennui of the designer's existence, but drain the life out of the narrative. At least thirty minutes could have been lopped off the 150 minute running time. Jeremie Renier and Louis Garrel are effective as the men in Laurent's life, but Gaspard Ulliel projects only the narcissism and not the genius of the title character. Lea Seydoux and Aymeline Valade, as Laurent's muses, have little to do but pose like disco dollies in the numerous party sequences.

What's frustrating about this film is that occasional sequences have a bite and snap to them. The scenes in Laurent's atelier do give us some insight towards his relationships, or lack thereof, with his coworkers. A scene of Renier alternately browbeating and stroking executives of Laurent's holding company provides a welcome look at the hard nosed business practices behind the frilly façade of fashion. Two veterans of the cinema get a last hurrah. Dominique Sanda appears in one scene as Laurent's mere and creates an impression that evaporates amidst the film's torpor. Helmut Berger has a few kicky scenes as the older Laurent. He even gets to view his younger self on television chewing the scenery in The Damned. Unlike that ghastly performance, Berger delivers notes of rueful intelligence here. Too little, too late. Tant pis. Saint Laurent has run out of energy and inspiration by the time Berger appears. A handsome, well crafted and fitfully entertaining film, Saint Laurent is a missed opportunity.

Saint Maud

Jennifer Ehle and Morfydd Clark in Saint Maud

Saint Maud is an assured and discordant debut from writer-director Rose Glass. Maud is a private nurse for Amanda, a dancer and choreographer dying of cancer. Maud has recently undergone a spiritual conversion and is eager to share the love of Christ with Amanda. Amanda has no truck with religion and seems intent on living it up before her demise. The pull and tug between mistress and servant makes up the core of the picture. Morfydd Clark as Maud is not as accomplished a performer as Jennifer Ehle, who fully embodies Amanda, but Glass balances her compositions and knows when to cut away from the younger actress.

The introduction of William Blake into the story highlights its spiritual themes and no one more than Blake, in Western thought, has illustrated the interrelationship of good and evil. Maud, despite her best intentions, functions as a succubus who hastens Amanda's end. Despite her piety, she is a bringer of death. Because Glass choses to make the proceedings ambiguous, there is no clear-cut resolution of the film's spiritual issues. Similarly, the trauma of Maud's past life, when she went by the name of Katie, is not divulged to the viewer until the final reel by which time the revelation is no such thing.

Still, I doubt Ms. Glass had a cathartic ending or a tidy moral in mind when she created Saint Maud. Though promoted as a horror film, the film is really a psychological portrait of a young woman descending into madness. The horror is solely in the woman's mind, as in Polanski's Repulsion. The whirling vortexes Maud sees exist only inside her head, but convince her that she grasps the Architecture of the Divine in a grain of sand or a glass of beer.

The result of all this would be negligible if Glass didn't ground her tale so well within the tatty seaside burg of Scarborough, UK. Maud gets a glimpse, literally through an ajar door, of the life of the smart set during her time with Amanda, but is estranged from Amanda by her religious fervor and blue collar origins. Maud is struggling to survive in a moribund resort town. However, her mind is not focused on material consumption, but spiritual absolution. Saint Maud honors the ambivalence of religious ecstasy, a subjective state, clashing with the objectivity of corporeal reality. 

Best of 1946

1. Notorious                                                                         Alfred Hitchcock
2. La Belle et la Bête                                                           Jean Cocteau
3. The Big Sleep                                                                  Howard Hawks
4. It's A Wonderful Life                                                       Frank Capra
5. My Darling Clementine                                                   John Ford
6. A Scandal in Paris                                                           Douglas Sirk
7. Diary of a Chambermaid                                                Jean Renoir
8. Cluny Brown                                                                    Ernst Lubitsch
9. Paisan                                                                               Roberto Rossellini    
10. A Matter of Life and Death                                              Michael Powell

       Films I Enjoyed

       The Best Years of Our Lives,

       The Killers, The Stranger,

       The Postman Always Rings Twice, Gilda,

       Anna and the King of Siam, The Yearling, 

       The Spiral Staircase, Green for Danger,

       The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, The Harvey Girls  

       Below the Mendoza Line  

       Cloak and Dagger, 

       Bedlam, Caesar and Cleopatra,

       Till the Clouds Roll By, Tomorrow is Forever,

       Night and Day

Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder in Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Eliza Hittman's Never Rarely Sometimes Always concerns a pregnant teen traveling from her hometown in rural Pennsylvania to New York City to get an abortion. Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), the young woman in distress, is accompanied on her agonizingly distended quest by her cousin and pal, Skylar (Talia Ryder), and the supportive banter between the two makes up much of the film. Both actresses are making their feature debut. It is to Ms. Hittman's great credit that neither performance seems amateurish or actorly. 

The prime fault of the picture is that it is overly polemical. I am sympathetic with Ms. Hittman's point of view regarding abortion, but still feel that she has stacked the deck. Almost all of the men in the film are creeps and the Rust Belt town where Autumn lives is portrayed as a dead end; full of venal Trump lovers.

Still, I was ultimately won over by Ms. Hittman's ability to show her feelings towards her characters and their milieu rather than having her screenplay spell it out in block letters. The cinematography by Helene Louvert, who also lensed Happy as Lazzaro and Pina, is an asset whether showing us a depressed and dilapidated Pennsylvania countryside or conveying the vulnerability of two young women in the big city. Never Rarely Sometimes Always sometimes feels like a chore to sit through, but has many redeeming moments. I won't soon forget Ms. Flanigan struggling through a high school talent show or gamely singing "Don't Let the Sun See You Crying" in a karaoke bar. Never Rarely Sometimes Always has a second rate screenplay, but is redeemed by some first rate filmmaking.

Isle of Dogs

Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs is in the second tier of his work. The film represents Anderson at his best and worst, sometimes in the same scene. The animation and scenic design are crisp and eye-popping. Antique techniques such as the use of cotton balls to illustrate a dust-up are an entertaining contrast to the usual CGI overload. Anderson's mise-en scene is overly Apollonian, but this is appropriate for another bonbon like Fantastic Mr. Fox or Moonrise Kingdom. The charges of cultural appropriation levelled at this picture beggar belief for so flimsy a fable. Anderson no more wants to seriously address Japan than he did India in The Darjeeling Limited or Ruritania in The Grand Budapest Hotel. As it is, his Orientalism is as eye pleasing as Jean-Leon Gerome's. Music is also usually an asset in Anderson's work and Alexandre Desplat's score is a worthy one. However, the use of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band's "I Won't Hurt You", twice for Christ's sake, is endemic of Anderson's biggest vice: his tweeness.

Isle of Dogs founders mostly because of its narrative, a pedantic allegory about exiles and outsiders. Despite the dire straits of the titular outlaws, there is little doubt of their deliverance and, thus, no dramatic tension. One character seems shoehorned into the film to provide the requisite sweet ache of pubescent love that is one of  Anderson's hallmark themes. The vocal talents are mostly effective with Bryan Cranston and Harvey Keitel delivering moving soliloquies. Isle of Dogs  is a mixed bag that provides enough eye candy, but not enough substance for the brain. (8/3/18)

The Hippopotamus versus Alone

Physical schtick inexpertly filmed: The Hippopotamus

John Jencks' The Hippopotamus, based on the novel by Stephen Fry, concerns a besotted poet investigating a series of miraculous events at an English country estate. As a film, The Hippopotamus is something of a botch. Jencks' comic timing is off. He misframes the pratfalls and ends up undermining the possible hilarity. The film tells you rather than shows you the tale. This actually works in the viewers' favor because the narration by Roger Allan, as the poet, is wickedly droll. On the other hand, a blind man could enjoy this film every bit as much as I did. The film at least preserves Fry's tone which is similar to the acerbic wit and misanthropy of Evelyn Waugh, Kingsley Amis, Fay Weldon and Tom Sharpe. If you are into this sort of thing, Allan's work is reason enough to see the film. The cast is overall fine, particularly Tommy Knight who plays the supposed miracle worker.

John Hyams' Alone shows you the story instead of having a character tell you what is going on and is a better film than The Hippopotamus because of it. The film has an overly familiar scenario: a single woman trapped and menaced by a serial killer. Fortunately, Hyams' approach is lean and efficient. The wordless first reel captures well the woman's plight as she tries to escape her unhappy past by venturing into the foreboding Oregon woods. Jules Willcox and Marc Menchaca play well as mouse and cat, respectively. Menchaca is particularly memorable as an embodiment of the banality of evil, Orygun style. Alone is more of a technical exercise than a fully rounded film, but I appreciated its well-tuned mechanics. 

On the run: Jules Willcox in Alone

Unsane

Claire Foy

Steven Soderbergh's Unsane is another trip down the shock corridors and into the snake pits of the American mental health system. A beleaguered young woman, a solid Claire Foy, seeks therapeutic help and ends up with a week long involuntary stay at a mental health facility. The for profit nature of the facility is stressed; capitalist critiques have long been a salient feature of Soderbergh's work, think of Erin Brockovich, Che and Magic Mike. The film's central plot twist concerns whether we are to believe the heroine's paranoid fears. The monotony of the film's tone and palette renders the impact of the reveal moot. Whether she is being set up by a stalker or is clinically paranoid, our heroine faces a hostile and alien environment which she must overcome with resilient ingenuity.

The stacked deck of the plot, one full of holes, is not what doomed Unsane for me. Rather, Soderbergh's cerebral style, here in low budget renegade mode, clashes with the potboiler script. A more lurid and primitive style, more like Fuller or Ferrara, would have been more appropriate and exciting. Instead, we get a listless art film that must have looked better on the drawing board: much like Kafka, The Good German, The Underneath, Full Frontal and even Sex, Lies, and Videotape. Soderbergh's best work needs a little charm and warmth at the center to balance his pessimism: a Clooney, Pitt or even Channing Tatum. Foy is suitably twitchy, but her plight grows tiresome. The acting, a Soderbergh forte, is generally good with Juno Temple, Amy Irving, and Jay Pharoah the standouts. Ultimately, a fairly minor film from a major American director. (8/6/18)

Best of 1947

1. The Exile                                                                                        Max Ophuls
2. Out of the Past                                                                               Jacques Tourneur
3. Monsieur Verdoux                                                                         Charlie Chaplin
4. Black Narcissus                                                                             Michael Powell
5. Duel in the Sun                                                                              King Vidor
6. Odd Man Out                                                                                 Carol Reed
7. Nightmare Alley                                                                            Edmund Goulding
8. The Woman on the Beach                                                            Jean Renoir
9. T-Men                                                                                             Anthony Mann
10. A Double Life                                                                                George Cukor

         Films I Enjoyed

         Unconquered, Daisy Kenyon

         The Fugitive, The Foxes of Harrow,

         Great Expectations, Lured,

         Kiss of Death, Devil in the Flesh,

         The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Gentleman's Agreement,

         The Red House,

         Crossfire, Dark Passage

         Below the Mendoza Line

         Secret Beyond the Door

         Miracle on 34th Street, Life with Father,

         The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, The Village Teacher,

         The Sea of Grass, The Egg and I,

         The Angel and the Badman, The Two Mrs. Carrolls, 

         The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,

         Song of Love         

Show Boat

Allan Jones and Irene Dunne in Show Boat

I rewatched James Whale's Show Boat and still feel it is one of the better musicals of the thirties. I am ambivalent about Whale's direction on this picture. He was riding high at Universal with the success of his horror films and was rewarded by the Laemmles with this prestige gig. The crowd scenes are clumsily handled, as are the dance numbers. Once we leave the boat in the third act, all momentum is lost. However, Whale's theatricality, as delineated by David Lugowski, and his expressionism largely jibe with the somber material. When Donald Cook sucks the blood from Helen Morgan's hand so he can legally claim that he has black blood in him, we are not far from a horror film.

Part of the sorrowful strength of this film can be traced to Edna Ferber's source novel. It is rare for a musical to have such dour romances as the ones Show Boat contains, but Ferber, happily unmarried, created a melancholy portrait of the toll transient show life takes upon sweethearts. Ferber is not much read these days, but her work has an intelligence and questioning spirit that didn't always translate into the film versions of Cimarron, Ice Palace, and So Big. This Show Boat is the least watered down of the three film versions, particularly as it pertains to miscegenation, and is certainly preferable to the gaudy Technicolor version from 1951.

Helen Morgan

A number of veterans of the stage show provide winning moments. The aforementioned Helen Morgan originated the role of Julie onstage and is a haunting presence only five years before her premature demise. To hear this grand torch singer assay "Bill" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man of Mine" is to relive a moment of barely remembered American popular culture. Another member of the original stage production of 1927, Charles Winninger is a treat as Cap'n Andy. His summation of an abortive theatrical production is one of the highlights of the film and is a reminder of his roots in vaudeville. Paul Robeson and Hattie McDaniel are always a plus and the new number that the makers concocted for them is welcome, though I do mind the excising of "Life Upon the Wicked Stage".

The film's main drawback to me is Irene Dunne, my second least favorite Hollywood leading lady of that era behind the dreaded Greer Garson. Dunne had been signed by RKO after helming the first road show of Show Boat, so one might think she would have been a neat fit, but she clashed with Whale and, at thirty six, was too long in the tooth to be convincing as the virginal Magnolia. Her awkward shimmies during " Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine" detract from that number and her blackface routine is the film's nadir. She sings OK, but not as well as Allan Jones, who is less wooden than Nelson Eddy. The duets between the two are mildly pleasant, the number of profile shots of Ms. Dunne perhaps dictated by contractual decree.

Chloe

Amanda Seyfried and Julianne Moore in Chloe

Atom Egoyan's Chloe, from 2009, is a flat erotic thriller that apes Hitchcock's glossy surfaces, yet lacks the perverse irony of the master. Egoyan was a promising auteur of the 80s and 90s, but hasn't produced a fully satisfying film since 1997's The Sweet Hereafter. Amanda Seyfried plays the title character, a whore who ensnares gynecologist Julianne Moore and her family in sexual intrigue. The plot is too tiresome to repeat as elements of Teorema and Eyes Wide Shut are recycled to torpid effect. Liam Neeson is ludicrously miscast as a music professor. The scene of him lecturing on Don Giovanni undermines the film's credibility in the opening reel. He has zero chemistry with Moore who is also miscast as a dupe. Seyfried's character is a void, not even the blank faced critique of capitalism that Terence Stamp embodied in Teorema, but a similarly toned young bod. Scruffy costumes and bad hair mock the film's attempted aim of decadent elegance. A dreadful dud.