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Van Heflin on the run near the long gone Los Angeles funicular |
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Mary Astor and Van Heflin |
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Van Heflin on the run near the long gone Los Angeles funicular |
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Mary Astor and Van Heflin |
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Anne Baxter, Michael Wager, Kurt Johnson, and Sean Young |
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Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell |
Anthony Mann's Side Street, released in 1949, is a solid if unspectacular noir, the director's last film in that genre. Sydney Boehm's script has postal worker Farley Granger filching some ill-gotten gains from the filing cabinet of a crooked attorney. Soon, he is a man on the run around Manhattan, sought by the mob and the police. Cathy O'Donnell, reuniting with Granger after the critical success of They Live By Night, plays his pregnant wife. Since her character has a baby during the course of the film and Granger is otherwise engaged, they hardly have any onscreen time together. Ms. O'Donnell gets to employ her patented luminous masochism as her character worries herself sick about her beleaguered spouse. The vulnerability of Granger's character is a good fit for his limited talents. Hitchcock would seize upon the vulnerability locked within Granger's stiff pretty boy routine in Strangers on a Train. The only time Granger gets to act butch in Side Street is when he bullies bank clerk Whit Bissell, who whimpers convincingly.
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Jean Hagen |
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Juliette Binoche and Alexis Loret |
André Téchiné's Alice et Martin is a 1998 romantic melodrama that, as with many Téchiné films, has a backdrop of family trauma. Alexis Loret plays Martin, an illegitimate issue of a cold and cruel father (an effective Pierre Maguelon). Martin had gone to live with his father at age ten and was devastated at being separated from his beloved mother (an ineffective Carmen Maura). After his father's death, Martin wanders the countryside like a vagabond until he is incarcerated for petty theft. Afterwards, he takes shelter at the Paris apartment of his step-brother Benjamin (Mathieu Amalric). Benjamin is gay and a struggling actor who shares his flat with an unsuccessful violinist named Alice (Juliette Binoche). Martin falls for Alice and begins stalking her. He also has a meteoric rise as a fashion model which he regards ambivalently. Alice, initially put off by Martin's creepy manner of courtship, eventually fall for the lug.
Alice and Martin take off for a romantic sojourn in Spain. There, Alice tells Martin that she is pregnant. He is flummoxed by the news and seems unable or unwilling to plan for the future. In a long flashback, we learn of his culpability in his father's death. Martin feels that he must make amends for his crime. Despite the opposition of his father's wife, Martin confesses to his crime and goes to jail. We see the very pregnant Alice struggling to make ends meets as a wedding musician. She vows to wait for Martin until he is sprung.
Martin's contrition is supposed to be an act of repentance that results in a just verdict and peace of mind for the troubled youth; like Raskolnikov's confession in Crime and Punishment. Unfortunately, Alexis Loret's blank performance muddles that effect. Martin is only twenty, so he is a bit of a tabula rasa, but he is also supposed to be suffering from mental health issues. Loret was in fact a model that Téchiné plucked from obscurity for the role, so it is not a surprise that he could not summon a performance that outlines the darker shades of his character. Still, this throws the emotional payoff of the picture out of whack. Loret cannot help look like a bit an amateur compared to Binoche and Amalric, two pillars of French cinema who are at the top of their game here.
Téchiné's script, written with Olivier Assayas and Gilles Taurand, is incisive and gives some indelible monologues to both Binoche and Amalric. However, as in his best films (Ma saison préférée, Wild Reeds, and Thieves), Téchiné proves himself to be better at conception than execution. He is a much more skillful writer than director. He is adept enough at interior drama, but flails at exteriors and scenes of action. His outdoor tracking shots add nothings to the dialogue. The filming of Martin's father's death is an almost complete botch. Flaws like these prevent Alice et Martin from attaining the greatness hinted at by its best performance. Instead, it is an effective, if downbeat, soap opera.
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Enrique Lucero |
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Susan Strasberg and Ann Todd |
Still, the film rises above its premise through the gorgeous lens of Roger Slocum whose varied credits include Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Servant, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Travels With My Aunt and Raiders of the Lost Ark. In toto, his life work exists as an impressive and eclectic body. On Scream of Fear, Slocum is able to elevate the cheap set into a believable space where peril resides. Holt has Slocum shoots most of the drawing room scenes with one character in foreground and the other players positioned diagonally in the mid-distance. Effective ratcheting of suspense or boring neo-Expressionist portentousness? Opinions differ. In the Village Voice, Jonas Mekas gave it the back of his hand calling the film "bad in every way." Christopher Lee, who appears in the film as a sinister seeming French Doctor, thought it was the best film Hammer ever made.
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Ann Todd and Christopher Lee |
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George Murphy and Andrea Leeds |
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Peter Sarsgaard |
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Jonathan Feltre |
Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, from 2007, is a deliberately slow peek at a love triangle in a Mennonite community in Mexico. Stolid farmer Johan has six children and a good relationship with his wife Esther, but has baffled himself by falling in love with another member of their community named Marianne. This domestic crisis is handled with equanimity by all concerned, even Johan's preacher father. Johan questions whether his love for Marianne is part of God's design or a temptation instigated by Satanic forces. The slow pace of the film mirrors how the members of the community live, not within the frantic pace of modern life, but in tune with the rhythms of the natural universe.
We are not treated to the history of the affair, but are plunged into the film midstream. The film is bracketed by five minute tracks into a sunrise and and a sunset. The characters of Silent Light are grains of sand within a unfathomable cosmos, but are able to discern traces of divine grace within the vastness of nature. The film has moments of great beauty, but feels, at times, too calculated. There are precious few moments of spontaneity in Silent Light. The flick feels too much like a calculated mashup of Days of Heaven (adultery on the plains) and Ordet (God's benevolence touching all). Certainly, the miracle that ends the film on a grace note did not cause this non-believer to quake with the impact of a revelation.
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Alfie Williams and Ralph Fiennes |
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Ralph Fiennes and Jodie Comer |
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Mary Pickford |