Morning for the Osone Family

Mitsuko Miura and Eitaro Ozawa

Keisuke Kinoshita's Morning for the Osone Family, from 1946, is an affecting family melodrama set during the final three years of the Second World War. Hanuko Sugimura plays a widow with three sons and a daughter, all of whom are traumatized and forever changed by the course of the war. The drama is almost entirely contained within the walls of their home which grows increasingly dilapidated during the course of the film. The matriarch's brother in law and his wife move in after getting bombed out of their own home and bring added misery with them. The brother in law, a Colonel in the army (and expertly played by Eitaro Ozawa), is an unrepentant imperialist and warmonger. His values clash with those of his nieces and nephews who are more sensitive, culturally inclined, and influenced by Western values. The Colonel gets his comeuppance and a new hope for a more democratic Japan is trumpeted by the end of the film.

The film's conclusion is heartfelt, but also allied to the dictates of Japan's new overlord, Douglas MacArthur. The Colonel represents the nationalistic and fascistic elements of Japanese leadership that America wanted to purge. Some 1600 of Japan's leaders were convicted of war crimes and executed following the conclusion of the war. The Colonel's resemblance to ex-Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who would be executed in 1948, is not accidental. Many elements of the Morning for the Osone Family closely resemble Hollywood films. The opening, set on a snowy Christmas with "Silent Night" on the soundtrack, could have come from a Leo McCarey film. The camera dollies back from the window and pans the room, showing a feast laid out and a host of happy family members. Kinoshita repeats the exact same shot later in the film, but the larder is bare and the family group has been diminished to its two female members. 

The film is uneven and threadbare, but Kinoshita, like McCarey, brings a winning delicacy to the film's character vignettes. Even the Colonel's jingoism is not overdrawn. The emphasis of the human qualities and frailties of the characters make their plight all the more moving as they are trapped in the maw of war. Morning for the Osone is a marker of an 180 degree shift in Japanese cinema. The unquestioning support for the military leadership and unbridled chauvinism that permeated Japan's wartime films are, largely, gone forever. The previously unheard of questioning of authority is personified by the daughter of the film, Yuko, who is portrayed with grit and tenacity by the great Mitsuko Miura. That a young, unmarried woman is questioning the wisdom of a venerated elders shows the seismic changes taking place in Japanese society. 

Bandolero!

Dean Martin and Raquel Welch

This review contains spoilers.

Andrew V. McLaglen's Bandolero! is an unexceptional Western from 1968. The film was conceived by Twentieth Century Fox as a package that reunited McLaglen with the star of his 1965 hit Shenandoah, Jimmy Stewart. Bandolero! also boasts two other key contributors from Shenandoah: screenwriter James Lee Barrett and cinematographer William Clothier. Dean Martin, then still a major star, was tabbed to play Stewart's brother and George Kennedy, coming off a key supporting role in Cool Hand Luke for which he would win a supporting Oscar, got the somewhat thankless role of a sheriff trying to bring the outlaw brothers to justice. Raquel Welch, who was being heavily promoted as a budding star by the studio, plays Martin's romantic interest. The film is greatly helped by its plethora of familiar faces in supporting roles: including Dub Taylor, Harry Carey Jr., Will Geer, Denver Pyle, and Guy Raymond. 

The film has its merits. Clothier's efforts are almost always sterling and Jerry Goldsmith's score, which tips its hat to but is not derivative of Leone, is one of his best. Stewart is outstanding. His teary response to the death of his brother is very effective and he drolly handles the film's attempts at humor. Kennedy is also quite good. His rapport with his deputy, played by Andrew Prine, is one of the highlights of the film. Prine is a familiar face to fans of 1960s and 70s Westerns and action films, but he was not a distinctive enough personality to rise to stardom. He was a good looking guy, he even appeared in a centerfold for Viva magazine, but was too friendly and easy going to exude the machismo that denotes a sex symbol in Hollywood. Bandolero! was one of the better vehicles for his talents, but I feel McLaglen muffs his death scene and Kennedy's resultant reaction.

There is no escaping that McLaglen was a second rate talent. That said, Bandolero!, along with McClintock!, The Shadow Riders, and Shenandoah, is one of his better films. His subsequent films with John Wayne, including The Undefeated and Chisum, are particularly feeble efforts. McLaglen, as he himself noted, was not suited to be, despite his background, the successor to John Ford. The Hawksian first third of Bandolero! works better than the Fordian remainder. He is a desultory action director. The violence in Bandolero! lacks verve and menace. Scenes that should thrill, like the Mexican bandits gamboling down a sandy hill on horseback, just sort of sit there. The pre-credit bank robbery sequence, in which Dean Martin and his gang are thwarted by George Kennedy's Sheriff, does have some snap to it. As do the subsequent scenes in which Stewart, disguised as a circuit riding hangman, frees the miscreants. 

Bandolero!'s satire of frontier justice is one indication that James Lee Barrett was attempting to expand the concerns of his scripts by addressing more adult and complex themes. Another is the back story that Martin's character was one of Quantrill's Raiders, a fact that his brother, who fought for the North, holds against him. I'd rather not go into the full story of Quantrill's Raiders, who included Cole Younger and Frank and Jesse James, but, suffice to say, they were the closest thing the Confederacy had to a terrorist group. Martin's character is seeking some form of redemption for his past misdeeds and wanting to escape the life of an outlaw. This kind of character is outside the ken of what Martin could do. He could play a drunk trying to reform, but not a bloodthirsty killer.

Raquel Welch is, no surprise, even more of problem in the film. During the final shootout, when she has to fight off an attempted rape, she is up to the physical challenges of the role. Her character is Hispanic, so given Welch's heritage, her father was from Bolivia, this is a good fit for her. However, Welch was never adept at dialogue and moments that a better thespian could have handled become howlers:

              I was a whore at thirteen and my family of twelve never went hungry.

                                How does a man become an animal like you!

                                                    I am not a gringo.

Etc. Welch plays a former prostitute sold for five cows and a gun.

The lesser two thirds of the film are in vigilante pursuit mode as the Sheriff and his posse chase the outlaws across the Rio Grande. In some ways, this means Bandolero! anticipates 1969's The Wild Bunch. However, whatever one thinks of Peckinpah, Bandolero! has dated far worse than The Wild Bunch. Despite Clothier's handsome cinematography, the payoff action scenes, with paint red splotches of blood and cartoonish carnage, seem more ludicrous than intense. The film build little suspense over the fates of the character, which is a pity because Stewart and Martin's characters are killed off in the end. McLaglen was hemmed in by having to make a family Western aimed, as Philip French sagely noted, at the silent majority.✂ The studio marketed the film heavily in what we now call red states. It opened in Texas, but. overall, only did mediocre business. 

Over the course of American history, the romanticization of outlawry rises as economic fortunes fall. The rise of dime novels and penny dreadfuls, referred to knowingly in Bandolero!, accelerated after the Panic of 1873. Prohibition and the Crash of 1929 helped bring about the Hollywood gangster film which would result in the rise of tough and rebellious leading men like Cagney and Bogart. Even a rural bumpkin like Henry Fonda often played figures on the outskirts of society before he enlisted in World War 2: You Only Live Once, Jesse James, The Return of Frank James, The Grapes of Wrath. Is all well with American society if Henry Fonda is a sympathetic criminal? It is not insignificant that when Fonda returned from service he starred as Wyatt Earp in former OSS poohbah John Ford's My Darling Clementine. The Pax American era needed new heroes to keep law and order.

The tumult of the Sixties and the subsequent economic dislocation again turned things topsy-turvy. The popularity of 1967's Bonnie and Clyde signaled to the staid film industry that authority figures were out and that social banditry was back in fashion. Until 1977's Star Wars and despite the Thermidorian reaction of Dirty Harry and his ilk, the outlaw would reign supreme in the daze of easy riders and psycho killers. Times were changing and old stars would have to adapt. Dino himself, reacting to Beatlemania, had crossed over into Country and Western, successfully, in 1965 with Lee Hazelwood's "Houston". Martin's and Jimmy Stewart's film careers were on the downslope, though. as was the Western genre itself. Bandolero! is, thanks to the majority of its cast, pleasant viewing, but it is more of historic interest, as a transitional Western, than as a example of film artistry. 

✂ Phillip French, Westerns, pg.31

MaXXXine

Mia Goth

Spoiler Alert

Ti West's MaXXXine was a slight disappointment to me. I thought his two previous Mia Goth vehicles, X and Pearl, showed signs of artistic growth from West who had toiled on mediocre B horror films for over a decade. At the very least, X and Pearl had established Mia Goth as a viable and interesting lead. Goth is again the focal point in MaXXXine, playing an adult film veteran, Maxine Minx, trying to break into the no less exploitive mainstream movie industry in 1985. The project she tries out for is a horror sequel helmed by a female director entitled The Puritan 2. This film within a film shares MaXXXine's theme which is a critique of American Christian fundamentalism and intolerance. 

The main plot line of the film concerns a murder mystery which ensnares Maxine. Friends from the porn industry and Maxine's neighborhood end up brutally murdered and have satanic symbols branded on their faces. That the perpetrator is Maxine's long lost preacher father should be no surprise to anyone, since a telltale clue is given in the film's opening scene. West wants to show the Moral Majority of the 1980s as inheriting the malignant influence of the Puritans, but I feel he over eggs his pudding. Religious fundamentalists in America have spread intolerance, but don't generally eviscerate and brand their targets. MaXXXine has been accurately described as a pastiche of the work of Brian De Palma, particularly Body Double which also has a dance club scene featuring Frankie Goes to Hollywood. In my view, that would make it a pastiche of a pastiche. At least in De Palma's ouevre, you get complex and interesting villains, especially when played by John Lithgow. West's villain, a fire breathing stage father, would have been deemed a one dimensional cliche in the 1930s much less today. 

Halsey and Mia Goth

Elements of MaXXXine are first rate. I enjoyed the trashy 80s soundtrack and the film's costumes and production design. MaXXXine presents us a lurid  and vivid 1980s LA as a neon kissed Hades. The performances, however, are all over the map: ranging from expertly assured (Goth and Giancarlo Esposito) to solid competence (Bobby Cannavale, Michelle Monaghan) to promising (Lily Collins, Halsey) to deplorable (Kevin Bacon, Elizabeth Debicki). West has not given his talented cast too much leeway, cartoon blood and drool are on tap after all, but he has given them enough rope to hang themselves. Ultimately, there is little unanimity of effect in MaXXXine's performances. 

A brief comparison to the modern American cinematic master of surrealistic horror, David Lynch, displays what is lacking in West's vision. The rehearsal scene between Naomi Watts and Chad Everett in Mulholland Drive is more subtle and devastating about Hollywood than Mia Goth having to take off her top after nailing her audition for The Puritan 2. Lynch is too canny to embody evil in an individual or group. He knows that evil resides most wholly in an unconscious form that cannot be portrayed literally. When Lynch does portray an evil patriarch, like Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks, he presents the character in a bifurcated fashion. Even the most heinous or craven has two faces. Unfortunately, in MaXXXine, despite having a mythic heroine, we get a one dimensional villain. Moral ambiguity is apparently beyond Ti West and the Moral Majority. 

Moebius

Young Joo-seo and Lee Eun-woo

Kim Ki-duk left behind a startling and troubling legacy of over thirty films before his death from COVID-19 in 2020. A good number of his films contain enough exploitive sex scenes and perverse violence to alienate the more progressively humanist minded of the Western critical establishment. Jonathan Rosenbaum's response to Kim's Samaritan Girl is a good example. Furthermore, accusations of sexual assault and cruelty on the set of 2013's Moebius and other films dogged the director until his death. If that is not enough of an ick factor to drive away viewers from seeing his films, then the brief synopsis usually provided of Moebius can be depended on to clear those remaining in the screening room: in response to her husband's infidelity, a mother castrates her teenage son. Needless to say, viewers predisposed to seeing Moebius tend to favor I Dismember Mama over I Remember Mama. 

That synopsis is actually incorrect. The mother in the film cuts off her son's member rather than his testicles. This occurs during the first reel of the film and, well, things get even stranger after that. Moebius is also a largely a silent film. There are sounds, snatches of dialogue, and lots of moans, but no dialogue. I felt that this worked in the film's favor: the action on screen is so crazed that any dialogue would be superfluous. Then there is the matter of the film's structure which mimics that of the title: an infinite loop. That this loop is an endless cycle of pain and recrimination belies Kim's misanthropic worldview. In Moebius, pain and pleasure, intertwined, are handed back and forth between partners as if they are rods of retribution. There is little variance in the action of the film because its theme is that of the compulsive repetition of human behavior. 

Moebius is filmed in an unfussy and casual style with none of the beautiful photography or lush production design of Kim's humanist masterpiece, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring. I would recommend that film or 3-Iron for an introduction to Kim's work. However, Moebius, despite or because of its hysterical excess, sticks in my mind. The performers are all exemplary, especially Lee Eun-woo's mistress. Ultimately, the film is a pitch black comedy, but its bleak view of human interaction is bound to alienate all but the most hardy souls. They can find this singular film streaming on Tubi. 

In the Land of Saints and Sinners

Jack Gleeson and Liam Neeson

Robert Lorenz's In the Land of Saints and Sinners is an above average Liam Neeson thriller set in Ireland during the height of the Troubles in 1974. Neeson plays a mob hit man mulling retirement. However, when he discovers a local lass is being abused, Neeson takes justice into his own hands. Unfortunately for Neeson's character, his victim is part of a IRA terrorist cell hiding out in Donegal which is just outside of the Northern Ireland border. The cell is headed by the victim's sister played in full virago mode by the ridiculously accomplished Kerry Condon. In essence, the film is a revenge tragedy, for once though it is not Neeson seeking an eye for eye. 

This is the third feature directed by Mr. Lorenz, he produced numerous Clint Eastwood pictures, and he has yet to craft a distinctive film as a director. He does give his talented cast extra beats and asides that let them carve out their characters, but the film lacks the overwhelming momentum a revenge tragedy should have. The cinematography by Tom Stern, also a compadre of Eastwood, presents a handsomely burnished view of Ireland that never feels affected. The Morricone inflected score by the Baldenweg siblings is one of the year's best. The screenplay, by Mark Michael McNally and Terry Loane, aims to be an elevated thriller, but it overreaches. Neeson's thug is really a sensitive sort. He reads Swift and Dostoyevsky and yearns to grow a garden. The parallels the film seeks to draw between the central relationship of Crime and Punishment and that of Neeson and his best bud, a local police chief who is less clueless than he lets on, don't resound in any particularly enlightening way. There is no sense of an earned redemption in this tale.

Nevertheless, because the policeman is played by magnificent Ciarán Hinds, we treasure every instance of repartee between the two. Ditto the contrast between the dependably stolid Neeson and Condon as a spitting viper. All the cast is first rate including Colm Meany as a local mobster and Niamh Cusack as a lady down the way Neeson is sweet on. Mark O' Regan has a moving death scene and assays a worthy version of "Carrick Fergus". Best of all is Jack Gleeson as a cocky lad groomed as Neeson's heir apparent by the mob. Gleeson, best known as the unforgettably evil Joffrey on Game of Thrones, adds a shot of youthful mischief to the largely sclerotic cast. Whether saving Neeson's bacon, singing a cheesy Gilbert O'Sullivan tune as he buries a victim or airing dreams of youthful escape, Gleeson gives In the Land of Saints and Sinners the spritz it needs.

Quick Takes, July 2024

Ken Uehara and Eitaro Ozawa in Port of Flowers

Keisuke Kinoshita's Port of Flowers, from 1943, is an endearing comedy set on an island in the north of Japan. Based on a play by Kazuo Kikuta, a theatrical titan in Japan who remains virtually unknown in America, the film concerns two grifters who come to the island intending to fleece the locals. However, they both are charmed by the open-hearted sincerity of the islanders and the younger of the two falls for a local lass. The onset of hostilities with the Allies further galvanizes the community to make real the con-mens' scheme, a shipbuilding endeavor. The direction is remarkably assured for a first feature. A delicate touch is evident, especially with the close-ups. The material is not earthshaking and a tolerance for jingoism is required, yet viewing Port of Flowers is a congenial experience all the way to its sweetly melancholic ending.

Clarence Brown's Wife vs. Secretary is a subpar MGM melodrama from 1936 starring Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, and Myrna Loy in a romantic triangle. The script attempts to be sophisticated and snappy, but ends up hackneyed and rote. Gable and Loy achieve some sizzle as a happily married couple while Harlow has to play noble this time. The most erotic moment between Gable and Harlow occurs when she takes his shoes off. It is that kind of a movie. Brown's best moments don't involve any dialogue: tracks and pans of disapproving eyes as Gable and Harlow dance and Harlow watching a couple flirt and dance in a Havana nightclub. The film features able support from May Robson, Jimmy Stewart, and George Barbier. 

Park Sye-young's The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra, his debut film, is an arty Korean horror film about a monstrous fungi that is formed in a funky mattress. The monster plucks the titular bone from his victims and, well, that is about it plot wise. What the film lacks in plot and character development, it more than makes up for in visual imagination, grotty textures, and icky sounds. More promising than fully realized, the film will please adventurous horror fanatics. Only 65 minutes and currently streaming on Tubi.

Richard LaGravenese's A Family Affair has been stomped on critically, but I thought it was OK romcom fluff. Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron are the lovers in this May to October romance, but Joey King delivers the best performance as Kidman's daughter who is shocked to find her mother schtupping her movie star boss. Predictable fare, yet LaGravenese's direction is limber amidst the usual tropes. I found that the film's critique of its self absorbed characters resounded trenchantly against the film's background of Malibu and material excess. Currently streaming on Netflix. 

William Dieterle's Jewelry Robbery, from 1932, is a small pre-Code gem. This breezy 70 minute Warners flick is set in a soundstage Vienna and has William Powell stealing Kay Francis' diamond ring and her heart. Ms. Francis shows off her decolletage, back, and gams while Powell distributes reefer to befog the investigation of his larceny. Dieterle's direction is sometimes overly broad, the choreographed chorus lines of constabulary and thieves particularly, but I can't imagine anyone disliking this movie. Powell is especially superb. Unlike other stars from this period, he does not try to seduce or dominate women. He is a courtly gentleman in their service, yet hip. His ultimate role as Godfrey awaits. 

Powell stars in the more routine Lawyer Man, also from 1932 and also directed by Dieterle. Powell's role is more roughhewn and randy than in Jewelry Robbery. He plays a lawyer practicing in the Lower East Side of New York who has a roving eye. The film chronicles his career ups and downs and his success with the ladies. Joan Blondell, criminally underused here, plays the loyal secretary who tolerates his philandering until he wises up and makes her an honest woman, as they used to say, in the final reel. Powell is his usual wonderful self, but the film's villainous gangsters and legal shenanigans are rather dull. 

Nag Ashwin's Kalki 2898 AD is a three hour Indian science fiction movie that cobbles together bits from Star Wars, Mad Max, Transformers, and Hindu cosmology to good effect. Despite its length and its juggling of four story lines. Kalki... is a bracing dystopian fantasy for adolescents of all ages. The villains, heroes, and anti-heroes are vividly drawn and the momentum never flags. I particularly admired the performances of Prabhas, Amitabh Bachchan, and Anna Ben. I thought it was better than either of Denis Villeneuve's Dune films or RRR. A sequel awaits.

You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet

Sabine Azéma and Pierre Arditi

Alain Resnais' You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, from 2012, is a droll and fitfully entertaining swan song to a magnificent career. The film, which concludes with Frank Sinatra's rendition of "It Was a Very Good Year", has the autumnal glow of an artist looking back on his career and his collaborators. It is another example of Resnais engagement with theatrical modes during the final stage of his career. The film concerns a group of actors, all playing versions of themselves, gathering together for what they think will be a memorial service for a beloved playwright. Instead of a funeral service, the attendees watch a video of a recent and punky production of the playwright's Eurydice, a work all the attendees have appeared in over the years.

The watching actors can't leave well enough alone and soon are collaborating with the players in the video. The fourth wall is broken and so is the third dimension as the boundaries of the villa dissolve into the surreal dream land of art. The film is, at times, too hermetically sealed with the referential self-regard of a French intellectual, but the sweetness of Resnais' intention prevents things from becoming overly academic. As one character puts it, "All the people we knew live on in our memories." Even when facing death, like Orpheus, Eurydice, and Resnais, the show must go on. The love Resnais displays towards his actors, nearly all of whom Resnais has worked with before, is palpable. There are many marvelous performances, especially by Sabine Azéma, Resnais' wife and muse for four decades.

Three Times

Shu Qi and Chang Chen

Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Three Times, from 2005, is tripartite masterwork that evoke three periods of Taiwanese history through the prism of a central romantic relationship. In each section of the film, the lovers are portrayed by the same duo of actors, Shu Qi and Chang Chen. They give us a master class in acting, fully inhabiting a distinctly different array of characters. Hou gives each segment a slight variation in style, but there is visual cohesion in his use of fades to black, slow pans back and forth for group scenes, and a fixed camera when lovers are alone together.

The first section, subtitled "A Time for Love", is set in 1966. Titles and graphics are an important motif and theme in the film as we see communication evolve in Taiwan from calligraphy to cell phone texts and GarageBand. Shu Qi plays a pool hall girl who attracts the interest of a soldier. The course of love is hard to navigate in a romantic fog, so the film opens with "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" on the soundtrack as a warning. The soldier persists in his pursuit and is rewarded because of his doggedness. The second section, subtitled " A Time for Freedom" and set in 1911 tells the tale of a courtesan who yearns to cohabit with her favorite. The constraints put upon her by traditional customs are mirrored by the characters' concern about the subjugation of China by Japan. Hou films the second section as a silent film with intertitles for the dialogue. Fortunately, he chose to film in color because the costumes and sets are gorgeous.

The transitory nature of time is an important theme in almost all of Hou's films. As we travel through the decades in Three Times, attributes of life are lost and found. China was able to shake free of Japanese influence and women gained a degree of freedom, but traditions that served to bind Chinese culture, like the traditional songs Shu Qi sings, virtually disappeared. Shu Qi plays a Western Pop influenced singer in the third section set in 2004 and subtitled "A Time for Youth". She is in a lesbian relationship, but is boffing a stoic graphic artist(!) played by Chang Chen. The girlfriend is none too pleased, but Shu Qi's character falls for the lug and rides off with him at the end of the film. The use of motor bikes and cycles in the two more modern sections of the film suggests the increasing mobility, social and otherwise, in Taiwanese society. The Taipei of the concluding section of the film is crowded, busy, and clamorous, in direct opposition to what we see of 1911 Taiwan.

The romantic pairings of Three Times move through stages of concubinage, courtship, and, ultimately, ambivalence. So, as Hou views it, there is a cost to the growth of individual freedom in society, but, though he mourns the past, he doesn't want to go back and knows he can't. Hou's style is deliberate, some characterize it as slow, but I am glad he takes the time to luxuriate in the moment.   

Kinds of Kindness

Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons

I enjoyed and appreciated Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness more than most did, or, I suspect, will. The tripartite Kinds of Kindness, which was written by Lanthimos and longtime collaborator Efthimis Filippou, is a Lanthimos unvarnished by the lysergic palette and feminist empowerment of the Alasdair Gray adaptation, Poor Things, which won Emma Stone her second Oscar. Ms. Stone is back from that flick as are Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. They are joined by Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, and Mamoudou Athie all taking multiple roles in the three stories in what will surely be one of the film ensembles of the year. Hunter Schafer's single scene marks her as a comer.

Lanthimos is too misanthropic for the mainstream or even a few critics who clutch notions of humanism to their chests as if they were prayer beads. Certainly some in the theater where I saw it seemed baffled by the mélange of carnage, cruelty, Janus-faced messiahs, and polymorphous perversity that Lanthimos and his cohorts present to us. For Lanthimos, mankind is simply part of earth's bestiary where creatures vie for dominance and inclusion. Lanthimos views this with a clinical detachment that rivals that of Kubrick. I don't view the two directors as cold, just determinedly objective. A significant amount of time is spent in hospitals and clinics in Kinds of Kindness. The film is a treatise on the care and feeding of humans. 

Lanthimos pictures a world where individuals are adrift. The traditional support systems in the West, family, church and rationality, have fallen by the wayside. People worship false idols or dream of being turned into a lobster. Whatever one thinks of his worldview, Lanthimos has carved out a distinctive vision in his work that is singular and unsparing. Kinds of Kindness is a minor key work, but contains as many memorable and uncanny moments, Plemons caressing the hair of a suspect, Stone peeling out in a purple Dodge Challenger, as his major films. It is a work of personal cinema in an industry dominated by juvenile escapism.
 

Tre fratelli

Philippe Noiret and Michele Placido

Francesco Rosi's Tre fratelli (Three Brothers), from 1981, is a middling effort from the great Italian director. Rosi and Tonino Guerra based the screenplay on a Andrei Platanov's short story, The Third Son, in which six sons descend upon their ancestral village to attend their mother's funeral. The film moves the village from Russia to Southern Italy where most films by the Neapolitan Rosi are set. The number of sons has been cut from six in Platanov's story to a more manageable three. Each represents a distinct strata of society. Rocco (Vittorio Mezzogiorno) is a lay minister leading a humble existence at a reform school run by the church. Michele Placido plays Nicola, a factory worker in Turin with Communist leanings. He has a troubled marriage and brings his six year old daughter with him to the village. Raffaele (Philippe Noiret) is a judge living in Rome, a model of bourgeois propriety.

Tre fratelli was made during one of the most tumultuous periods in Italy since a parliamentary republic had been established in the wake of World War 2. Terrorism, perpetuated by both the Red Brigade and organized crime, had taken the lives of many public officials culminating in the murder of Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978. This era is well covered in a beautifully written and learned book, Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb, which also covers Southern Italian cuisine and culture. Many of the murdered officials were judges who had sentenced Red Brigade and Mafia members. In the film, Raffaele lives in constant fear of assassination and packs a hand gun just in case. 

This background informs the ideological arguments between the elite Raffaele and the proletariat Nicola. Unfortunately, the dialogue often comes off as talking points. Tre fratelli is weakest when is at its most rhetorical, such as a teacher friend of Raffaele's describing Italy as "bloodthirsty, violent, barbaric" while brandishing a copy of a book of essays by Alberto Moravia. Both the story and film are too acutely schematic for my taste. The skill of the actors, particularly Noiret and Placido, helps to make the more sententious moments of Tre fratelli palatable. Vittorio Mezzogiorno fare less well because Rosi doesn't seem invested in his character's spiritual struggles.

Tre fratelli does have enchanting moments, though. Whenever Rosi shoots from the point of Nicola's father or little daughter. the flick soars. Rosi's magical realism, suffused with the texture of rural Italy work better than the trotting out of ideological positions. The nostalgic flashbacks of the mother's strength during World War 2 glow with heartfelt power. The cinematography by Pasqualino De Santis calls to mind his work on Rossi's Christ Stopped at Eboli, burnished earth tones contrasted with sun drenched stone. Rossi is underrated as a stylist because his style does not call attention to itself. A middling film by Rossi is a very fine film indeed. 

Immortal Sergeant

Maureen O'Hara and Henry Fonda

An odd mixture of wartime Hollywood bunk and artistry, John M. Stahl's Immortal Sergeant is an uneven, but interesting World War 2 flick. This 1943 film is set in the Northern African theater of the war and concerns a small troop of men sent on a doomed mission into the Libyan desert. The British Commonwealth troops are commanded by the tough and lovable Sergeant Kelly (Thomas Mitchell) who instills a sense of discipline in the men even under trying circumstances. Second in the chain of command is a Canadian Corporal named Colin Spence played by Henry Fonda with no attempt to disguise his flat Nebraskan twang. Kelly spends the first half of the movie tutoring Spence on the qualities needed to lead men. This theme of transferring the mantle of leadership is continued after Kelly is killed in action and Spence has to lead his dwindling force out of the desert. Kelly's voiceover exhortations help guide Spence and his men out of the maelstrom of war. The voiceovers are similar to those of Spencer Tracy in A Guy Named Joe and equally icky.

The film greatly benefits from the presence of Fonda and Mitchell who team together well to put over the film's hokier moments. Fonda, in a film he disliked, pulls his character's monologues off beautifully just as he did in The Grapes of Wrath and Drums Along the Mohawk. Stahl was more known as a helmer of melodramas than as a director of action films, but the action sequences in Immortal Sergeant pass muster, particularly a nifty aerial assault on the troop. Some of the integration of the soundstage footage with the location work is awkward as is the utilization of rear projection backdrops. 

Immortal Sergeant is weirdly bifurcated. Every ten minutes or so, Fonda's character day dreams about his courtship of his sweetheart, the cringe inducingly named Valentine played by Maureen O'Hara. These evocatively erotic reveries of yesterday are the highlights of the film for me, anticipating the tremulous delirium of Stahl's masterpiece, Leave Her to Heaven. This view is the opposite of that of The New York Times reviewer in 1943, Theodore Strauss. for what its worth. Fonda and O'Hara don't have much chemistry, but this works within the context of the film's narrative. Spence is a supposed to be a clumsy and shy suitor, always being one upped by his posh friend, Tom Benedict (Reginald Gardiner). I'm sure you can guess who eventually gets the girl. Sharp eyed viewers will spot Peter Lawford in a small speaking role. Lawford spent his early years in Hollywood playing various British soldiers and air men in bit parts. 

Best of 2023

   

1)     Killers of the Flower Moon                                       Martin Scorsese

2)     The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House        Hirokazu Kore-eda, et al

3)     The Boy and the Heron                                           Hayao Miyazaki

4)     Roald Dahl Anthology                                               Wes Anderson

5)     May December                                                         Todd Haynes

6)     The Zone of Interest                                                Jonathan Glazer

7)     Afire                                                                          Christian Petzold

8)     Tori and Lokita                                               Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

9)     Scrapper                                                                    Charlotte Regan

10)   Fallen Leaves                                                            Aki Kaurismäki

Movies I Enjoyed

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, 

The Taste of Things, Perfect Days,

The Eight Mountains, La Nuit Du 12, 

Showing Up, American Fiction,

Poker Face, One Fine Morning,

Inside, Blood and Gold,

Ballerina, Barbie, Talk to Me,

Return to Seoul, Godland, 

Personality Crisis: One Night Only, Eileen, 

Dungeons and Dragons, You Hurt My Feelings,

Neither Confirm Nor Deny, The Royal Hotel, 

Past Lives,

Theater Camp, Air, 

Madeleine Collins, Rodeo,

John Wick 4, Sharper, The Pigeon Tunnel,

Pacifiction, Oppenheimer, The Lost King,

Sisu, Poor Things, 

M3gan, Wing Woman,

The Killer, Ferrari, Emily, 

Copenhagen Cowboy, Anatomy of a Fall,

Dream Scenario, Enys Men,

When Evil Lurks, Guardians of the Galaxy 3,

The Beasts, Your Lucky Day, 

Paris Revoir, Smoke Sauna Sisterhood,

Godzilla Minus One, Abigail, 

Tell Me a Creepy Story, 

Blue Jean, El Conde,

Little Bone Lodge, Bottoms, Locked In,

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls

Below the Mendoza Line

Meg 2: The Trench, The Iron Claw, 

Everything Went Fine, Priscilla, Dumb Money,

BlackBerry, Anyone But You, Butcher's Crossing,

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, All of Us Strangers,

Full Time, Infinity Pool,

The Holdovers, Saltburn,

Marlowe, Maestro,

The Super Mario Movie, Magic Mike's Last Dance,

See How They Run, Passages,

Sound of Freedom, Adult Adoption, Reptile,

The Covenant, Master Gardener,

Cocaine Bear, 100 Years of Warner Brothers,

No Hard Feelings, Sanctuary, Gringa,

Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,

Knock at the Cabin, Please Baby Please,

Extraction 2, Suitable Flesh,

The Exorcist: Believer, The Blackening,

Nefarious, We Have A Ghost,

Ruby Baby , Champions,

Children of the Corn

Haven't Seen Yet: Napoleon, 

                             

                                                   

                              

                                                                                                      

The Heroic Trio and Executioners

The late Anita Mui, Michelle Yeoh, and Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio

Johnnie To's The Heroic Trio, from 1993, is a cartoonish action film done with style and aplomb. In Hong Kong, babies are being snatched to further the diabolic plot of the Evil Master who resides in a subterranean underworld. An invisible warrior (Ms. Yeoh) does his bidding until she is recruited to the light side by the other two members of the titular trio. The film alternates between manic action sequences, well choreographed by Siu-Tung Ching, and quiet interludes intended to illustrate the main character's back stories. The three lead actresses bring the required brio and tongue in chic facetiousness to the project. You end up rooting for them no matter how absurd the carnage. To's combination of light gore and goofy humor sometimes is an uneasy mix, but I was swept along by the sheer visual pleasure of this cheesy spectacle.

Audiences, especially in Asia, were, too, and a sequel was rushed into production and released a little over six months later. Executioners is set some five years in the future after a nuclear apocalypse. The heroic trio reunite to thwart the nefarious plans of a corrupt military officer and a corporate entity that controls Hong Kong's water supply. The violent put-down of a demonstration calls to mind the then recent events at Tiananmen Square. Executioners is a bit dour compared to its predecessor, but if you enjoy The Heroic Trio, you'll want to see the sequel. 

Mannequin (1937)

Spencer Tracy watches Joan Crawford's mannequin act

Frank Borzage's Mannequin, which premiered in Los Angeles at the end of 1937. is an adequate romantic melodrama. A vehicle for two of MGM biggest stars, Joan Crawford and Spencer Tracy, it was the only time these box-office titans were paired together. The well appointed Joseph L. Mankiewicz production boasts sequences that border on lavish, like a penthouse cocktail party and a fashion show, but other Cedric Gibbons sets are appropriately dusty and dilapidated. The opening sequence in which Joan Crawford, the sole breadwinner in her family of four, mounts the shaky and dark stairs of her tenement after a hard day on her feet at a sweat shop puts one in mind of the dispossessed milieu of Seventh Heaven or the Tracy starrer Man's Castle. While this picture is not up to those two, there is enough of Borzage's love of humanity and a certain soft romantic glow to make the viewer pleasantly lulled.

The main fault of Mannequin is its central romantic triangle. Crawford's character is so desperate to leave her Hester Street environs that she begs Eddy (the dull Alan Curtis) to marry her even though he is a self-professed heel, constantly losing money at crap games and the track. Tracy's character, a self-made shipping magnate, spies the two at their ramshackle wedding reception and treats them to champagne, sparking a pursuit of Crawford that lasts most of the movie. We know Eddy is a crumb from the get-go and Crawford's character somehow can't register that fact despite the repeated attempts of her wisecracking best friend, Beryl (a sharp Mary Philips). There is little heat between Crawford and Curtis. Partly this because Curtis has no zing, but also because Crawford is a little too old to be an ingenue. Things seem a bit warmer between Crawford and Tracy, who reportedly engaged in some hanky-panky between takes, but there is little for Tracy to do for much of the time. He looks awful, puffy and, despite the efforts of the MGM makeup department, prematurely aged. There are a couple of scenes of him addressing longshoreman, with terrific character bits from an uncredited Francis Ford, but usually he is stuck handing violet bouquets to Crawford.

This is very much a Joan Crawford picture with Tracy in support. Frank S. Nugent, in the New York Times, heralded the picture as a return to Crawford's "Queen of the Shopgirl" roots and praised her for her "regal" bearing. In the trailer for the film, MGM trumpeted that it was the "Joan Crawford's greatest picture in five years" (since Grand Hotel I guess), a curious endorsement which seems to admit that she had been in a box-office slump. Returns for Mannequin, however, were highly satisfactory. If the picture has not gained much currency over the years, it is because of its utter predictability. There is not much humor, save for Leo Gorcey, very effective as Crawford's shiftless and insolent brother. Ms. Crawford's outfits sometimes verge on the garish.

There are moments, though. Crawford surveying a shabby room. Tracy discarding an untimely bouquet. Crawford's mother telling her to get out of her marriage as Borzage frames Eddy and Crawford's Pa, two reprobates smoking by the fire. Most of the supporting cast is exemplary, including, besides those mentioned above, Paul Fix, Ralph Morgan, Oscar O'Shea, Elisabeth Risdon, and Blossom Rock. If you have read this far, despite my lukewarm feelings, you would probably enjoy this film.