The Flesh

Sergio Castellitto and Francesca Dellera

Marco Ferreri's The Flesh (La Carne) is one of the more successful comedies from the provocative Italian satirist. The ten or so features of his I've seen range widely from good (La Grande Bouffe) to abysmal (Don't Touch the White Woman). To my mind, The Flesh tops them all. Ferreri was known as favoring a loose and improvisatory approach with his actors, but he was more interesting visually, especially in his use of color, than most comic directors of his era. The script for The Flesh, by Ferreri and a host of collaborators, is mostly a two hander with masochistic Paolo (Sergio Castellitto) being tormented by Francesca (Francesca Dellera) at his seaside abode in Anzio. Paolo is a dweeby cocktail pianist who runs off with Francesca after meeting her at a disco. He rejects all contact with the outside world: forsaking work, friends, and family (an ex-wife and two kids), all for his siren. She turns him into a helpless creature, totally dependent on her largesse, but tables are turned at the end. The names of the twosome are supposed to call to mind Dante's tragic lovers from Rimini, but Ferreri only alludes to past mythos in order to subvert and transform it.

Paolo is a schlep who is dominated by everyone, not just Francesca, but even by his own children and dog. Castellitto and Ferreri wisely choose not to make Paolo a complete disaster at his job. Castellitto agreeably navigates Franco-Italian lounge standards, albeit with a kazoo instead of a mouth harp. The score ranges from Paolo Conte to Kate Bush to Queen, all memorably and knowingly used. Castellitto gets to show off his physical dexterity in the role even when his character has been paralyzed. Francesca does this when Paolo has a stiff member so she can utilize his services at her leisure. Castellitto, ironically, is a lively victim. Viewers of the recent Conclave, where he played a conservative Cardinal, would do well to sample this example of the full range of the actor's talents.

Francesca Dellera has little to do in comparison except to loll indolently in various states of dishabilles. She is playing a cartoon of female sexual power; a hard R Jessica Rabbit. Her visual splendor commands the screen with brilliant tongue in cheek. Prince was entranced enough to buy up a Paris theater for a private showing and, presumably, to woo Ms. Dellera. For once, mighty Prince struck out. The film's Francesca uses her sexual power to dominate Paolo. Their relationship is an inverse of traditional sex roles. Paolo hardly leaves the house while Francesca roams free. Francesca applies mascara to Paolo and makes him don a light blue sari with a fetching shawl. Paolo is repeatedly warned to beware Francesca, but falls in her thrall just the same. When she attempts to leave for the next lover/victim on her list, Paolo finally gets proactive. Francesca's fate equates ritual cannibalism with the Catholic eucharist, just like The Golden Bough.

Not that Ferreri is out to make a great statement, but there is a consistent strain of feminist critique bound within the tight framework of The Flesh. The supporting cast is limited to vignettes with the happy exception of the always welcome Philippe Léotard. The feminist tang is most apparent in a sequence at the supermarket where the butcher shows Paolo the various cuts of meat on Francesca's torso and flanks. Women are just a slab of meat in the world of this film. What makes this palatable is Ferreri's reverence for female fecundity. Francesca is not only a sexual beacon and dynamo, but an enthusiastic nursemaid. Paolo can only ape Francesca's regenerative powers by consuming her. The print of The Flesh on Tubi is barely adequate. 

The Bostonians

James Ivory directs Madeleine Potter and Vanessa Redgrave

I've been trying to come to terms with James Ivory as we both near the slow, lurching dance to the grave. I found his work, as I watched it in my youth, overly refined and visually dull. Merchant Ivory was too Apollonian for me while I was enjoying the Dionysian frenzy of Evil Dead, Mad Max, and Possession. The Bostonians, released in 1984, is a Henry James adaptation that is respectful and suitably repressed. I won't conjecture on Ivory's childhood in Oregon, but his hometown of Klamath Falls was and is the very definition of the sticks. Ivory's deliberate and visually chaste style jibes better with straitlaced period dramas than more modern and unbuttoned fare: I would cite Jane Austen in Manhattan, Slaves of New York, and Le Divorce, all failures, as evidence. In the Twentieth Century, I thought the Merchant Ivory team's tradition of quality approach was retrograde cinema. It is telling that The Bostonians was partly financed by both the BBC and Boston's WGBH. However, I find the Merchant Ivory films, even their failures, more interesting than I did at the time and The Bostonians is a relative success.

For those who have not waded through the thicket of this book's prose or would prefer not to, The Bostonians is a love triangle set in New England and New York in the mid-1870s. Young Verena Tarrant (Madeleine Potter) enters a domestic relationship with the older Olive Chancellor (Vanessa Redgrave) united by love and a commitment to feminism. Verena, the daughter of a mesmeric healer, is a powerful speaker and a boon to the nascent suffragette movement. She attracts male attention, some of which has been wisely elided by screenwriter and Merchant Ivory mainstay Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The third point in the triangle is Basil Ransome, a Southern born lawyer based in New York and distant cousin of Olive's. The names of the characters exemplify their essence as in Dickens whose The Pickwick Papers makes a cameo appearance. A virile war veteran vies with a New England spinster for the soul of America. Male is contrasted with female, reaction with progression. Self-interest with idealism and private life with a public one. I could go on and on as, doubtless, others have in countless academic tomes. The denouement is inevitable as love conquers all and biology proves to be destiny.

The film ameliorates the sting of James' satire of New England, with its quirky devotion to progressive causes, homeopathy, and spiritualism. The film manages to portray a simulacrum of centennial Americana with patriotic songs, fireworks, and lovely seaside vistas that recall Winslow Homer. The cinematography by Walter Lassally was justly praised, but the ramshackle nature of Merchant Ivory productions, Christopher Reeve's agent described them as "wandering minstrels", has its drawbacks. The lighting is spotty and a few outdoor shots cry out for a crane, but such was the threadbare reality for these intrepid independents. Richard Robbins, the most under sung member of the Merchant Ivory menage, offers an effective score that ranges from original music to Wagner to Edgar Poe. 

Madeleine Potter and Christopher Reeve

The best asset of the film is its superb supporting players, all well cast and spot on: Linda Hunt, Nancy Marchand, Wallace Shawn, Wesley Addy, Nancy New, and Jessica Tandy who alone could away with intoning James' batty bromides. Madeleine Potter captures the youthful pluck of Verena, but not the charisma that charms multitudes. Christopher Reeve is always a little wooden, but so is his character who is enamored with his own false sense of rectitude. Reeve was a big, hulking, athletic guy. Physically he is perfect, a fox in the henhouse, but his Southern demeanor and accent are not convincing. Scenes that should have an emotional impact, such as Basil visiting Harvard's memorial to the Civil War dead, don't register. It grieves me to criticize Reeve because he appears to have been an utter gentleman. On the other hand, there is Vanessa Redgrave who jousted with Ivory during filming. In a recent documentary, Stephen Soucy's very good Merchant Ivory, Ms. Redgrave shows she hasn't mellowed by ripping into her interviewer and I would not mess with her whether she was holding an AK-47 or not. Nevertheless, she was one of the most brilliant actresses of her generation and she displays her mastery here. Her lustrous hair pinned back tight, Redgrave looks and behaves, as Olive describes herself, "awkward and dry." Pauline Kael wrote that Redgrave's performance was the only thing she liked about the film.

I have a more positive appreciation of the film, but do acknowledge its moments of drawing room torpor. However, that dovetails with the work's examinations of the strictures of a privileged American life. Ivory and his associates takes pains to show how sweltering life was in American cities in the 19th century. The ladies are swaddled in a ridiculous number of layers that they are eager to discard as soon as they are in private quarters. The strictures of society are literally impinged on female bodies. Ivory's chaste style remains more suited to the corsets of repression than the loosed bonds of Romantic extasy.

 

Devo

                     

Chris Smith's Devo is a friendly documentary that captures the nervy energy of the new wave unit. I never thought of them as anything but a singles band, but the film captures their roots in the conceptual art of the 1960s. They were pioneers in wedding video images to their music before MTV. The documentary pays scant attention to the band members' families and upbringing in Ohio. The members remain relatively anonymous throughout the film, not that Devo had many wild escapades, they seem like art school nerds who don't talk about their feelings. Also, the point of Devo was never individuality, but a conformity somewhat derivative of Kraftwerk with a dose of spastic punk and funk. Instead of robots, they were devoluted cogs in a corporate machine, dressed identically and wearing Dadaist hats or plastic hairpieces. They were a cult band who lucked into a hit single, Whip It whose video is pictured above, but they were like most pop units with a quick rise and fall.

Smith does a very good job illustrating the Kent State killings of 1970. A number of band members were attending that institution and witnessed the death of four students that day in May, propelling them away from demonstrations and into snarky protest art. The documentary shows that they were ambivalent about popular success, they knew what goes up must come down, but they hobnobbed with rock royalty (Bowie, Eno, Neil Young) and went on innumerable chat shows (Merv Griffin, Mike Douglas) to plug their product. Smith takes full advantage of the surreal kick of their appearances on the tube and their stage show. Lead singer Mark Mothersbaugh has had the most success after the bands heyday as a composer for film and television. He gets the most screen time, which is somewhat apt, but also frustrating. The lives of certain bandmates are hardly sketched at all. Still, the film never overstays it welcome. It is currently streaming on Netflix.

Le Beau Serge

Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy

Claude Chabrol's Le Beau Serge is his assured debut feature film from 1958. The film chronicles the return of François (Brialy) to his hometown of Sardent, a village in central France, for a period of rest and recuperation. François, who has been living in Paris, is suffering from tuberculosis, though this seems merely a pretext for Chabrol to contrast François' newfound urban sophistication with the local bumpkins. François is chiefly interested in the fate of Serge (Blain), his best friend from childhood with who he shares a bond that verges on the homoerotic. Serge had hopes to gain a degree in architecture, but he impregnated a local girl named Yvonne (Michèle Méritz) and ekes out a living as a lorry driver. The child, who had Down's Syndrome, died soon after birth. Yvonne is pregnant again and Serge is terrified that it too will not be a normal child. He spends most of his time drinking himself into oblivion.

Serge is, on the surface, glad to see François, but resentments lurk. Things get more complicated when François gets involved with an obliging local gal named Marie (Bernadette Lafont) who has had a tryst or two with Serge. At a local dance, Serge's anger towards François bursts out and he gives him a savage beating. François lays low for awhile, licking his wounds, while various local emissaries (the local priest, François' landlady) urge him to get out of Dodge. François feels he has to redeem himself before he leaves and the birth of Yvonne's child provides him that opportunity. 

I want to stress what a personal film this was for Chabrol. He was himself a city slicker, born and bred in Paris, but both his parents were from the Sardent region. Chabrol was himself sent to Sardent, out of harm's way, to live from 1940 to 1944 with his maternal grandmother. He retained great affection for the people of Sardent, but remained ambivalent, at best, about rural France for the rest of his life. He often spoke of how bored he was in Sardent and that feeling of rural indolence permeates Le Beau Serge. The locals are small-minded and insular, haunted not only by alcoholism, but incest. The townspeople of Sardent were certainly less than charmed by Chabrol's portrait of them at the time.

Bernadette Lafont and Jean-Claude Brialy

The primary stylistic influence on Le Beau Serge seems to be the transcendental neorealism of Rossellini, an apt choice for a bare bones rural production concerned with metaphysics. Chabrol's directorial touches are subtle, but effective. Notice the backwards dolly of the camera when Yvonne tells off François for his meddling, the camera movement signaling François' retreat from intimacy with the villagers. The most bravura shot in the film follows presently, a pan of the village square. The shot goes left to right, with children playing football in the foreground, while in the background, the village doctor strolls to the bar for a shot. There he announces the death of a village elder, so the sequence displays the continuity of life from birth to death.

The acting is exemplary, even from the non-professionals. Brialy is swishly sophisticated and Blain is a proletariot James Dean, a rebel without a clue. The revelation is Lafont, nineteen at the time of filming and newly wed to Blain. Her performance gives layers to what could have been a standard slut role. Her one close-up, a shot she advocated for, is both playful and powerful. 

I want to note that Chabrol is brazen in his depiction of Sardent's misogyny, but he is distant from it, an observer. I think there is a similar distance in his use of Catholic motifs in the film's finale. Leftist critics at the time of the film's release criticized this as reactionary, but Chabrol took pains in the film to criticize the Church. Both pillars of the village, the priest and doctor, are portrayed as craven and self-interested. The birth of Yvonne's child, a healthy baby boy born in the bleak midwinter, is not specifically a Christmas rite (the film was first entitled Spring Birth), but it is an event that gives renewal to the villagers and Serge. Francois finds the redemption he sought in his heroic effort, through a blinding snowstorm, to shepherd Yvonne's caregivers to her aid. I think Chabrol's use of Christian motifs is similar to Camus' similar in Exile and the Kingdom: both are utilizing Christian imagery for more broadly humanistic values. Mother Church was so central to French culture that it is no accident that two existential French geniuses would pilfer its images and themes.             

The Best of Terence Stamp

1938-2025

                                        What I wanted more than anything was a long career                  

     1)   The Limey                                  Stephen Soderbergh                     1999

     2)   Poor Cow                                           Ken Loach                             1967 

     3)   The Hit                                            Stephen Frears                         1984 

     4)   The Adventures of Priscilla...      Stephan Elliott                           1994 

     5)   Far From the Madding Crowd    John Schlesinger                        1967

     6)   Modesty Blaise                               Joseph Losey                          1966

     7)   The Collector                                 William Wyler                           1965

     8)   Teorema                                      Pier Paolo Pasolini                      1969

     9)   Billy Budd                                       Peter Ustinov                          1962

    10)  Legal Eagles                                    Ivan Reitman                          1986

He had an immense onscreen presence. That great stone face with his piercing ice blue eyes was suited for romantic leads and, especially in his dotage, villainy. I tend to prefer him in films where his acting talents were needed rather than films that coasted on his beauty. He could have been even bigger, but preferred to trade in super-stardom for sanity. After his hiatus, he alternated between playing roles that interested him and playing roles that paid the piper. He made a lot of crap to pay the bills, but I also enjoyed his appearances in The Company of Wolves, Prince of Shadows, Big Eyes, Bowfinger, Red Planet, Wall Street, Valkyrie, Young Guns, Spirits of the Dead, and Last Night in Soho.

    

A Minecraft Movie

Jason Momoa and Jack Black

Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie is pleasant and goofy with enough personal touches to keep me from getting grumpy about its wholehearted attempt to capture all cinema goers worldwide above the age of six. Jack Black and Jason Momoa are a good tag team green screen dance duo, but the rest of the cast, with the exception of Jennifer Coolidge, is superfluous, present only for targeted demographics. A phalanx of screenwriters has labored to craft a plot for a video game that had none. Results are, of course, mixed. I thought the villains of the piece, pixilated pigs in a Minecraft hellscape, were not very interesting. The last half hour of the film, in which the cast battles porcine hordes, lacks invention.

However, the first two thirds of the film is replete with the little touches that make Mr. Hess a gifted comic auteur. There are enough successful gags about potato products, pro wrestling, and Idaho to discern a personal touch in the midst of this corporate concoction. Hopefully, next time, Hess will get to direct a film wholly set in Idaho. The casting of Mr. Momoa as a video games maven stuck in the 1980s is a coup and Mr. Black is always welcome, especially when he gets to show off his vocal chops.

The Monkey

                             
Osgood Perkins has carved a niche for himself with modest budgeted horror films, but has yet to make a truly striking and original film. The Monkey, adapted faithlessly from a forty year old Stephen King story, is a mechanical comic horror flick. Twins encounter a wind-up toy that, when activated, brings doom to their loved ones. They ditch the toy in a well, but, years later, the monkey returns to claim new victims. The deaths are played for over the top laughs and they did produce a chuckle or three from me. However, the film is overloaded with traumatic baggage that bogs things down. The protagonist of the story did not have an evil twin and that addition adds little. The protagonist tries to bond with his estranged son, a promising Colin O'Brien, but the subplot is unconvincing and slows the film's momentum.

Part of the problem is Theo James in his dual role as the twins. He is not inept, merely serviceable and dull. He is out performed by Christian Convery who plays the twins in their younger iteration. The acting is variable. Adam Scott is fine in his cameo, but Elijah Wood chews the scenery in his. Perkins himself is amusing as the twins' swinging uncle. The best performances are by Tess Degenstein and Tatiana Maslany, the latter playing the twins' mother. This bodes well for Perkins' next feature, Keeper, which features both actresses. 

However, The Monkey is ultimately mediocre and I am not convinced Perkins is suited to comedy. Even in his relatively successful set pieces (deaths as pratfalls), I have issues with his direction. For example, in the Aunt Ida death scene, Perkins' fixed camera foregrounds the flower vase that the terrified Aunt steps into. This tips the audience off too soon to the punchline. Perkins should have pulled the camera back and let the action unspool, seemingly naturally. Perkins' visual palette is too dour for comedy, anyway. Nevertheless, I admire his work ethic and have faint hopes for Keeper. 

Weapons

                              Julia Garner                               

Even before it was greeted by popular and critical enthusiasm, I was looking forward eagerly to Ryan Cregger's Weapons. Barbarian had been, not spectacular, but workmanlike, displaying an impressive grasp of film technique for a premier effort. Something to build on. Weapons delivers a quantum leap. Whereas Barbarian was situated in one setting with a predictable three act structure, Weapons opens up with a polyphonic point of view through the prism of dreams and time leaps. It succeeds as a horror film, a character study, and an action film. The chase scenes are the best I've viewed since the last George Miller flick. There is not a false note by the cast, all playing flawed characters in a compelling ensemble: Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Benedict Wong, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, Amy Madigan.

The small town setting brings just the right whiff of Hawthorne or Stephen King to the proceedings, an evocation of a community besot with a Puritanical veil of doom. Julia Garner's car is even branded with a scarlet legend. This is balanced by its multi-perspective view of modern life which Cregger admitted was influenced by Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. The characters may intersect on the street, but they represent the gamut of society, often pitted against each other in a world of Campbell's soup can consumerism. Weapons is at its weakest when it trumpets its message: Josh Brolin's dream of a silhouetted assault rifle in a film already overly redolent of Sandy Hook and Columbine is overkill. I'm not going to discuss the plot because the film's strength is its bat shit craziness. When the film leaves the rails, it really leaves the rails and the element of surprise is key. Not for nothing do numerous characters mutter "What the fuck" during the course of the film. Weapons has been so popular that, already yet inevitably, there has been a backlash. Some have questioned the film's believability, but, in regards to a film in which a witch ensorcells a town, I think that this is not a rewarding kvetch.

A clue to the film's approach lies in its of bracketed narration by an unknown girl involved in the film's events. She attests that her tale will shine more light on the actual events than the official version. This fits snugly within the film's vision of a paranoid America prone to conspiracy theories, witch trials, and scapegoats. An American artist, be he Nathaniel Hawthorne or Ryan Cregger, must find greater truth in yarns, legends, and fairy tales than there is to be found in the official tally of events. Whatever its currency, Weapons will stand the test of time as a funny and original horror classic.

Number Seventeen

Ann Casson and Leon M. Lion

Alfred Hitchcock's Number Seventeen is not one of the more esteemed features in his filmography. A 1932 comedy thriller, it is a hodgepodge of disparate elements. Hitchcock had no fond memories of it, deeming it a failure in interviews. Part of this stems from his lack of enthusiasm about the project from the get go. Number Seventeen was originally a play by mystery writer J. Jefferson Farjeons that debuted in London in 1925. The play was a vehicle for its producer and star, Leon M. Lion. Lion's character, in both play and film, is a tramp named Ben who stumbles upon stolen diamonds and a possible murder in the abandoned London townhouse he is squatting in. 

The play earned enough popularity that Farjeons spun off the character of Ben into a series of mystery novels. Now that the introduction of talkies had made a film adaptation more viable, both Farjeons and Lion were eager to cash in. It was left to Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville, to concoct a scenario more fit for the screen. The first two thirds of the film follows the action of the play in portraying an octet of characters threatening and bamboozling each other in a search for the purloined gems. The finale, invented by Hitch and his missus, cross cuts between a runaway locomotive and a crowded bus as they dash to doom. On a low budget, Hitchcock creates tense cinema using miniatures and a crescendo of editing. The shenanigans inside the townhouse offer him an opportunity for expressive shadowplay. The material is trite, but I second the emotion of William K. Everson who described the film as "vigorous". If the film had been done by anyone than Hitchcock, retrospective critics would have been struck dumb with amazement.

The comic elements of Number Seventeen have not worn as well. This is not due to Mr. Lion's efforts, his timing is impeccable, but Farjeon's dated  conception of the lumpen proletariat. The character of Ben is akin to Alfred Doolittle in Shaw's Pygmalion in its classist condescension. To give Shaw the benefit of a doubt, Pygmalion premiered in 1915 and is decidedly more progressive a play or film than Number Seventeen. None of the characters in Number Seventeen approach a second dimension and the cast is generally second rate. The plot makes little sense. At one point, a character enters by falling through a ceiling. A theatrical non-sequitur that Hitchcock turns into a surrealistic coup du cinema. What one carries from this film are not the plot or characters, but thrilling imagery and editing. Many of the motifs in Number Seventeen will reappear in the master's work later on: trains, rooftops, appearances that deceive plus handcuffs and other restraints. The print of Number Seventeen currently streaming for free on Tubi is first rate. It is a facile film, but a fun one.  

Le Divorce

Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson

James Ivory's Le Divorce, from 2003, is a watchable comedy of manners set in France that features Naomi Watts and Kate Hudson playing sisters. The film is an adaptation, by Ivory and lifelong collaborator Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, of Diane Johnson's wry novel. Much of the wit of the film emanates from the book. However, Ivory, a languid filmmaker for good and ill, lacks that crackle of electricity that can set a comedy ablaze. The visuals are dull and the movement of the actors largely undynamic or, in the rare cases where something dynamic occurs, clumsy. The scenes that offer visual delight are montages of bourgeoise consumerist fantasy: fresh produce, scarves, negligees, and gastronomical pornography.

Hudson plays Isabel, a feckless twenty something visiting her pregnant sister Roxie (Ms. Watts) in Paris. Roxie is a poet with a six year old daughter by her husband Charles-Henri ( a vapid Melvil Poupaud) and is halfway to term on another pregnancy. However, her husband has unceremoniously ditched her for another woman named Magda. This precipitates the divorce of the titles, the negotiations of which are long and contain some rancor. The parents of Roxie and Isabel, played by Sam Waterston and Stockard Channing, arrive to provide moral support, but there is something else at stake. A painting in Roxie and Charles-Henri's apartment turns out to possibly be a Georges de La Tour which could mean that it is worth millions. Charles-Henri's family, headed by his mother (Leslie Caron), are eager to get their fingers on that pie. To further complicate matters, Isabel has an affair with a married older man, Roxie's brother-in-law.

As you can probably tell, there is already too much material for a two hour film. A subplot with Mathew Modine as Magda's estranged husband who is stalking Roxie for some reason strikes the falsest note, but was too central to Johnson's novel to excise. Modine is left flailing trying to flesh out an undeveloped character, a fate shared by many talented performers on this project; particularly Bebe Neuwirth, Stephen Fry, Thomas Lennon, and Ms. Caron. Ivory and Jhabvala shift one of the climaxes from Euro Disney to the Eiffel Tower. A move done presumably for budgetary reasons, but one that eliminates from the film a golden opportunity to satirize the clash of Franco and American cultures. I also hated the casting of Thierry Lhermitte as Edgar, Isabel's lover. Lhermitte is a handsome dude and a fine comic actor, but is twenty years too young to play the part and, consequently, lacks the gravitas for the role. In the book, Edgar is a septuagenarian who gives Isabel a sentimental and intellectual education: aged Europe tutoring young and innocent American. This Jamesian motif is surely part of what attracted Ivory to this book, but it barely registers in the film. The sum of Edgar's wisdom is reduced to a Emerson quote.

Glenn Close and Kate Hudson

I did enjoy Glenn Close's portrayal of a literary lioness who employs Isabel as a gopher. Close's performance is the only one to capture the erudite bitchery of the novel. Hudson is fine as a relative innocent. I feel Hollywood has under used her by casting her in rote romcoms over and over again. Watts, an outstanding thespian, is at sea here and never believably pregnant. Her poetry reading in the film is remarkably listless, a description I would also apply to the film's depiction of eros. Ivory has always been more effective in portraying repression than sexuality, which I trace to his upbringing in isolated Klamath Falls, Oregon. He does nail the craven materialism of both French and Americans while juxtaposing American openness with French diplomacy. Ivory always seems more at home with the traditional virtues of quality literature than the funk and punk of the 20th century, much less the newest one. Still, his plodding virtues are to be extolled in an era of cinema of unparalleled mindlessness.

Presence

Callina Liang

Steven Soderberg's Presence is an effective, if minor key ghost story. A family of four moves into a gorgeous Craftsman home, but are soon beset by a supernatural events. The film is told from the point of view of the benevolent specter. This gambit by screenwriter David Koepp synchs up nicely with Soderbergh who almost always employs an objective POV. I suppose ghosts could have a subjective reality, if they existed, but the one in Presence does not present one. Regardless of the ghost, Koepp presents a rather melancholic view of the American bourgeoisie which Soderberg amplifies by stressing the distance between his players. Each four of the family members has something gnawing at them that prevents them from enjoying what most people on the planet would consider an enviable lifestyle. They register as types, but the excellent performances by the foursome elevate them into flesh and blood. The villain of the piece has a rather overwrought monologue in which Koepp over explains his motivations, but this is, fortunately, not dwelled on. Instead, the film segues into a fitting climax than combines time present, time past, and time future.

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw

Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth More

Raoul Walsh's The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, from 1958, is a foredoomed project, a comic Western starring Jayne Mansfield and Kenneth More. The script by Howard Dimsdale, based on a short story by Jacob Hay, is a fish out of water comedy reminiscent of Ruggles of Red Gap and Paleface. More plays Jonathan Tibbs, the heir to an English armaments concern. To prove his mettle to his family, he ventures to the American West in hopes of opening up this burgeoning market for his family's wares. Through a series of ridiculous misunderstandings, the pacifistic Tibbs earns a fearsome reputation as a gunslinger and assumes the titular position. Mansfield plays Kate, the owner and featured attraction at the local saloon. After initial resistance, she falls for the high-falutin interloper. Tibbs gains the respect of a local tribe of American natives whose support helps him insure the peace. Wedded bliss ensues.

The main problem with the film is the lack of chemistry between the two leads. More is at ease within the confines of Walsh's relaxed japes. He certainly excels doing spit takes. However, Mansfield, saddled with a needless southern accent, never seems comfortable. She was pregnant at the time of the shooting, but I think the main factor was that she was an extremely limited performer, perhaps only at home within the cartoonish mise-en-scene of a Frank Tashlin. I even think Mamie van Doren was more talented. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the dance hall numbers, usually something to look forward to in a Raoul Walsh film. Dubbed by the late Connie Francis, Mansfield is stiff and lifeless. My eyes drifted to the backup dancers even when Mansfield was wearing an outfit in which fake fur covers and accentuates her pudenda. A birthday suit would have been less obscene.

In addition, the score by Canadian Robert Farnon is poor, mickey mousing the action with such chestnuts as Rule Britannia, How Dry I Am, and Chopin's funeral march. One favorable factor is Otto Heller's (Richard the 3rd, Peeping Tom) sparkling cinematography. I was marveling at its beauty and wondering why I hadn't seen this section of the American Southwest utilized before, when I discovered that the film's exteriors had been shot in Andalusia in Southern Spain. The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw was technically an English production, hence the presence of Mr. Heller a Czech native who had lived in Great Britain since the 1930s. Britain had passed protectionist legislation requiring that foreign film companies spend profits made in Old Blighty on productions based in England. Thus, most of the interiors of this film and the prologue featuring Robert Morley were shot in England. Unfortunately, the process shots utilizing rear projection match poorly with the footage shot in Spain. 

I couldn't help feel that Walsh had very little personal investment in this project. This was a film that feels more like a production deal, comparable to The Prince and the Showgirl, than a personal project. It was originally tabbed for Clifton Webb and Marilyn Monroe. More, relatively forgotten today, was riding high with comic hits such as Genevieve and The Admirable Crichton. The lack of international success for The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, though it was a hit in England, meant that More never broke out as a name player outside his home country. 20th Century Fox brought in more than a few ringers from the states to make the film seem more American. Old compadres of Walsh like Bruce Cabot, William Campbell, and Clancy Cooper are welcome sights. Best in show is Henry Hull whose film credits date to 1917 and who appeared in three other Walsh films. The gaseous bloviations that Hull's mayoral character  emits suits the actor's theatrical air to a tee.

Better Man

Robbie Williams in Better Man

Michael Gracey's Better Man displays that, after helming The Greatest Showman and Pink: All I Know So Far, he is the premier director of modern musicals. The "Rock DJ" number alone would make Better Man a must see for any lover of the musical genre. Unfortunately, it is contained within a musical biopic of Robbie Williams who plays himself with the aid of a motion capture monkey mask. Now maybe it is because I am a Yank, but I have had little regard for Mr. Williams' music and the soundtrack did nothing to change my mind. When an artist has to trot out "Land of 1000 Dances" as a showstopper, a sense of desperation and lack of a artistic vision are simultaneously evident. What do I know, though, the film soundtrack went to number 1 in both Ireland and the UK. 

Despite the monkey mask, Better Man is a fairly standard biopic chronicling the rise, fall, and recovery of a pop star who owes more to Sinatra than to Rock and Roll. Williams is portrayed as a young loser from Northern England who grabs the brass ring of fame when he is tabbed to be in the boy band Take That. However, fame goes to our boy's head and after various derelictions, he is ousted from the band. Improbably, his solo career takes off, but he mistreats his fiancee Nicole (a delightful Raechelle Banno) and descends into addiction before embracing recovery and making amends. All the while he is haunted by the traumas and insecurities of his past, particularly the desertion of his father when he was young. Unfortunately, this is symbolized by having various simian iterations of his past haunt that cheeky monkey Williams while he performs. One Williams is enough.

Williams knows he has ego issues, he even named one of his albums The Ego Has Landed, but a digital face cannot hide his self absorption. Better Man is two hours and fifteen minutes, at least twenty minutes too long. There are too many scenes of a sullen Williams twitching in the throes of a binge that bog down the film. I did enjoy the supporting cast, though, especially Steve Pemberton, Kate Mulvaney, Damon Herriman, and Alison Steadman. Despite the faux humility of his angry chimpanzee mask, Williams' self-regard is all too evident throughout. When the film ends with a tearful reunion, his pa tells him "you are one of the gods now." Only in the UK, mate.