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| Pavel Talankin Pavel Talankin and David Borenstein's Mr. Nobody Against Putin is a remarkably brave and revealing documentary. Mr. Talankin worked as an event coordinator and videographer at a large school in the Russian town of Karabash. Karabash is a burg of 10,000 nestled in the Ural Mountains and dominated by an enormous copper smelting plant. Talankin recognizes the limitations of his hometown, but displays an undying affection for its humble landmarks and inhabitants. His aged mother also works at his school as a much put upon librarian. The film chronicles two years in the life of Pavel and his students beginning with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Not only do we witness the inhabitants of Karabash reacting to the conflict, but we see how the Russian government shapes the propaganda fed into the minds of its students. Not only must teachers recite state approved scripts extolling the war, but Talankin has to record this being done and then relay the recordings to the central authorities. He feels that he has become a cog in Putin's war machine and becomes increasingly uneasy. As the war progresses, the school becomes increasingly militaristic, a proving ground for future cannon fodder. Talankin was lucky enough to receive assistance from a Western producer and fled Russia in 2024 along with his film. One cannot forget those left behind, including his mother, who are caught in the maw of a rough and heinous beast. Yet, Talankin does not demean those who support the war. He lets them speak for themselves. In particular, a party toady on the faculty who is rewarded by Moscow for his loyalty. When Talankin asks the man who his heroes are, the man cites the most violent and vile of Stalin's henchmen. Talankin's own mother takes an extremely fatalistic view of the situation. Men fight wars she says resignedly and who can refute her. Mr. Nobody Against Putin is as an expert portrait of a totalitarian nation at war and the manifold complexities of its populace. It is a must see. Just this March, the Russian Ministry of Justice named Talankin a foreign agent. This designation of Talankin as a traitor is a capital crime that carries with it a sentence of death. |
Mr. Nobody Against Putin
It Was Just An Accident
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| Vahid Mobasseri |
I think it is difficult for me to be objective about the films of Jafar Panahi because of the high esteem I have for him as a beacon of light and sanity in today's world. Regardless, I recommend his latest, It Was Just An Accident, with some very minor reservations. Most of Panahi's ten or so superb pictures have been shot surreptitiously and It Was Just An Accident was no exception. Panahi has run afoul of Iran's ruling mullahs numerous times and is currently appealing a one year sentence for engaging in propaganda activities against the state. He has experienced torture and this informs his latest picture. The film's protagonist, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), is an auto mechanic who is gifted by fate to have the opportunity to turn the tables on a hated tormentor from his past named named Eghbai.
Eghbai is the first character we meet in the film, tersely driving through the night with his pregnant wife. Panahi shoots this with a fixed two shot, capturing the subtle interplay between the couple. We are pleasantly surprised when the couple's young daughter pops into the screen from the back seat. Unfortunately, this brief idyll is interrupted by their auto colliding with a wild dog. After subsequently encountering jarring potholes, their vehicle becomes no longer operable. Eghbai, who wears a prosthetic leg, encounters Vahid and prevails upon him to help him find a garage and shelter. Vahid tails Eghbai who we eventually learn was a notorious torturer known to his victims variously as Peg-Leg and Mr. Gimp. When his guard is down, Eghbai is knocked unconscious by Vahid who drives to the desert where he plans to bury Eghbai alive. However, Eghbai plants seeds of doubt in Vahid's mind and he resolves to find other victims to confirm that he has the right man.
This first section, an impressive display of pure cinema with little dialogue, shows how an economy of means necessitated by filming in secret can work to a film's advantage. There are no crane shops or circle dollies to distract us from Vahid's eyes. We are getting to know the man and his dilemma that will inform the rest of the film. As the film develops it becomes more polyphonic in scope for good and bad. The past victims of Peg-Leg join Vahid in his van as they debate whether he is the actual perpetrator and what price justice demands. As the bare-headed modern photographer named Shiva, Mariam Afshari fleshes out an under written role. Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr provides needed comic relief as the volatile Hamid. However, a bride and groom are just along for the ride, stock characters of no import or impact. The debates between the passenger about the fitting fate for Eghbai sound like Panahi on his soapbox rather than conversations. The film regards the quagmire of revenge and I support his hope for a stop to the endless cycles of violence in the Mid-East. However, Panahi puts this message across too baldly.
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| Mariam Afshari |
Sunlight
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| Shenoah Allen and Nina Conti |
Nina Conti's Sunlight is the best sleeper comedy I've seen since Hundreds of Beavers. Produced for peanuts and filmed along the back roads of New Mexico, the film is an affable road movie and comedy oddity. The closest parallel is Albert Brooks' Lost in America, in which a couple also drive a Winnebago across the American West, but Sunlight is raunchier than the earlier film and more desperate. Conti is British and works primarily in the UK as a ventriloquist. Now I usually find ventriloquism as funny as a crutch, but Conti overcame my prejudice. Her routines, usually involving audience interaction, can be found on YouTube. She wrote the film with Shenoah Allen, her frequent collaborator, who co-stars.
Conti has her couple meet cute with Jane (Ms. Conti) thwarting a suicide attempt by Roy (Mr. Allen). Both are in dire straits emotionally and financially. The film's motivation for their road trip is a watch, worth $20K, buried with Roy's hated father. Roy agrees to split the proceeds with the equally strapped Jane if she will accompany him and assist him on his perverse pilgrimage. The twist is that Jane remains in a monkey costume for nearly the entire film. The reason why is partially explained by her back story, but the real reason is that this is Ms. Conti's schtick. The monkey functions, as all ventriloquists dummy's do, as a raging id, venting the comedian self-rage through a device that does not betray vulnerability. This could grow tiresome, but Ms. Conti had the sense to limit her rants and provide the distancing effect of an absurd accent. There are enough hijinks to lift this slight feature until the inevitable romantic clinch and trip to the clink.
The film is not merely a two hander. Both Bill Wise (as Jane's sleazy stepdad) and Melissa Chambers (as Roy's mom) create indelible characters that help flesh out the leads' back story. Both provide wonderful screwball moments without being too cartoonish in their characterizations. Sunlight is modest in its scope, but exact in its portrait of a very human comedy. It is currently streaming on Tubi.
Rabbit Trap
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| Rosy McEwan |
Bryn Chainey's Rabbit Trap, his feature film debut, is an atmospheric horror film set in the wilds of Wales during the late 1970s. Rosy McEwan plays Daphne, a composer who festoons her electronic compositions with found sounds. Dev Pater plays her husband, Darcy, a sound engineer who scours the countryside recording nature whilst his wife works on her compositions in their cottage. The couple seem to revel in their solitude, alternately chain smoking and making love. Despite little in the way of a back story to provide us a clue, troubles from their past linger. Darcy, in particular, is haunted by nightmares in which he is consumed by a beastly shadow self. After accidentally wandering into a Tywyth Teg fairy circle, as one does in Wakes, their insularity is disturbed by a young interloper (Jade Croot). The unnamed lad says he is drawn by the music that emanates from the cottage, but it soon becomes obvious that the boy desperately craves parental figures in his life. Daphne and Darcy oblige, but only up to a point.
Chainey's casting of a young woman in the role of the boy is a real coup. Ms. Croot gives the role an uncanny feel that is a snug fit for a character who turns out to be more a pagan spirit than boy; a sinister Peter Pan if you will. This helps unsettle a film that feels a little too familiar at times. If I had a dime for every rustic UK horror film that featured magic mushrooms in the last two decades, why I'd have a dollar. Still, the production values of this film are a cut above most of its ilk. The cinematography of Andreas Johannssen captures the topography of Wales and Yorkshire in all its alluring and slightly terrifying grandeur. The film's sound design, by Graham Reznick, and the film's score, by Lucrecia Dalt, are both effectively creepy, helping make the film a chillingly immersive experience. All three leads are superb, though there is little in the way of character or plot development. Moody rural horror, then, and a promising premiere film. Rabbit Trap is currently streaming on Tubi.
Blood on Melies' Moon
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| Luigi Cozzi in the basement of the store he manages, Profondo Rosso |
I ran across Luigi's Cozzi's Blood on Méliès' Moon on Tubi and, expecting little, was pleasantly surprised. The 2016 film is also available on a handsome disc by the fine people at Severin Films. By any reasonable set of standards, Blood... is a piss poor film, shoddily written, clumsily staged and ineptly acted. A home movie with CGI asides. Slipshod direction has been Cozzi's trademark for over five decades, so I was prepared for a complete debacle. His directing credits include such dreck as the Lou Ferrigno starring Hercules and the Star Wars rip-off Starcrash. Nevertheless, the 'amat' in amateur means love and the love Cozzi has for films and film history permeates Blood on Méliès' Moon even when its display of film craft would embarrass a neophyte. Cozzi's quest in the film is noble and heroic even if it resembles that of Don Quixote rather than Galahad.
Besides the goofy directing credits Cozzi has amassed, he was a frequent collaborator of Dario Argento. I joked in an earlier column that I was an acolyte in the cults of various auteurs, but Cozzi really does live his life devotedly promoting the work of the giallomeister. A quick comparison of Cozzi's work to Argento's displays the latter's superiority. Argento's camera placement and use of color put him in another league compared to a camp follower like Cozzi. Cozzi is well aware of this, though, and has kept the flame of his comrade's work alive through documentaries and books. He even runs a horror film gift shop in Rome, a gialloreia if you will, called Profondo Rosso after the Argento film. The shop has a basement in which all sorts of Argento related bric-a-brac is on display for ravenous horror fans. Inevitably, the basement becomes the setting for a series of gory murders in Blood on Méliès' Moon.
The film has a ridiculous plot, but if you are watching this flick for the plot you will be unrewarded. Anyhow, a seance gone wrong unleashes a soulless killer in Rome and all humanity is threatened. The bearish Cozzi must retrieve a lost Méliès film to avert doom. Makes sense to me! Throughout, Cozzi expresses the joy he finds in physical media. VHS cassettes and book jackets make shout outs to everyone from Philip K. Dick to Dostoyevsky. Cozzi also interweaves footage from a host of films, including his own, into the mix along with cheerfully primitive CGI effects. As he searches for his grail, he meets up with a friendly cohort of film veterans. He visits a special effects studio, a practical effects studio, and has a yummy looking dinner with Mario Bava's son, Lamberto. All this would smack of self-indulgence were it not for Cozzi's sense of self-abnegation. At one point, Cozzi awakens his long suffering wife to recount his latest nightmare: that he has been acclaimed, or is it declaimed, as the Italian Ed Wood. Well, he rationalizes, at least Ed Wood is famous.
Blood on Méliès' Moon is a tatterdemalion film and an affecting mash note to the cinema.
Michael
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| Jaafar Jackson |
I was pleasantly surprised by Antoine Fuqua's Michael. Expecting a hagiographic waxworks, I was never bored by the, for now, all-time grossing biopic. I suspect that even if Michael was terrible, it would have been a reasonable hit given the entertainer's still fervid fanbase. This is due to a discography that will appeal to tots, teens, and other music fans until the earth is obliterated and beyond. John Logan's script covers the years 1968 to 1988, so there is no decline. Logan and Fuqua do a good job of sketching Michael's main musical collaborators: drill-sergeant father Joseph (Colman Domingo), Barry Gordy ( Larenz Tate), and Quincy Jones (Kendrick Sampson). Those who are omitted are cited in the film's exhaustive end credits. The main omission, besides Michael's sex life or lack thereof, is Janet. She is not listed among the film's many executive producers named Jackson and is absent from the film. Nary a peep about her.
Given the restrictions inherent in an authorized biopic, Logan does a pretty good job at outlining the rise of a pop icon. The film has a propulsive rhythm to it, with Fuqua aligning the visual choreography in sync with the music. Logan has logically constructed his screenplay. Even the gaps in the narrative, the biggest leap is from 1971 to 1978, make some sort of sense. This leap serves to introduce Michael the young man (nephew Jaafar Jackson) as we say adios to Michael the boy (Juliano Valdi). The gap also eliminates a few speed bumps, like the shift from Motown Records to Epic and the film version of The Wiz, to the film's up, up and away trajectory. Joseph (deceased 2018) is the heavy of the film, though I think he was worse in real life, and, not surprisingly, Mr. Domingo threatens to run away with the film's acting laurels. However, the cast is uniformly excellent. Jaafar Jackson is not the disaster one feared and, in particular, moves as adeptly as his uncle. The filmmakers were wise to blend Jaafar's singing voice with Michael's, as the original was singular. I also appreciated the efforts of Nia Long, Miles Teller, KeiLyn Durrel Jones, Laura Harrier, and, playing another gross and comic record executive, Mike Myers. Fuqua keeps the cast loose limbed and focused.
By stopping the narrative in 1988, the picture avoids the Wacko Jacko lowlights like the accusations of pedophilia and his face falling off. The flick ends with the warning, "the story continues", but I don't think anyone is brave enough to tackle Michael 2. Fuqua and Logan plant the picture with cultural touchstones (Peter Pan, James Brown, The Three Stooges) that underpin Michael Jackson's legacy. As with Elvis Presley, that legacy encompasses all that is good, bad, and weird about American culture. Michael is not as contrary to the facts as such traditional Hollywood biopics as Night and Day. It does feature plastic surgery and Bubbles the chimp. However, Michael does not have the audacity to truly portray how weird the subject was. My fantasy version of Michael 2 would include the vignette provided by that undependable narrator Dr. Z (aka Dana Gould): Bubbles, exiled to an outdoor pen after becoming too big and violent to live in the mansion, hurls his excrement at handicapped visitors to Neverland Ranch.
Classe tous risques
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| Lino Ventura and Jean-Paul Belmondo |
Claude Sautet's Classe tous risques is a superb Gallic gangster film from 1960. It is a fluid genre film that upends some of the conventions of the genre. Lino Ventura stars as Abel Davos, a lifelong hood who we first meet in exile in Italy. He has a wife and two young sons and he yearns to return with them to France even though a death sentence hangs over his head there. In order to finance this move, Abel and his partner in crime, Raymond (Stan Krol), commit a daring daytime robbery in Milan. On the run from the Italian police now, Abel and Raymond hijack a small boat and try to sneak into France with Abel's wife and children in tow. They are met on the shore by gendarmes and a gunfight ensues which results in numerous deaths including that of Abel's wife and Raymond.
The opening thirty minutes of Classe tous risques are a terrific example of terse action cinema with a minimum of exposition and dialogue. Sautet admitted he modeled his style on the lean pursuit Westerns of Budd Boetticher, especially Seven Men From Now. Sautet and screenwriter José Giovanni based the screenplay on Giovanni's noir novel, but reworked the book. The film includes an omniscient narrator, but the narration is more spare and ironic than in the novel. Giovanni was quite a sinister figure and gleaned the source of this tale from a buddy in stir. He penned many a noir tale that ended up as films including Le trou, Le deuxième souffle, and Symphonie pour un massacre. Classes tous risques was Sautet's debut as a director. He had worked as an assistant director previously for such luminaries as Jacques Becker and Georges Franju. He had just filled in on a film after the director had been fired. Ventura had been the lead in that film and, impressed by Sautet, recommended him to Classe tous risques' producer.
After the shootout on the beach, the film changes tone somewhat and becomes a mournful meditation on friendship, or the lack thereof, and fatalism. Ventura's hangdog looks are perfect for a tale that limns an arc of decline. Abel has to hole up in Nice with his two young sons. I don't recall another noir that has its protagonist in such a predicament. Thus, Ventura gets to show two sides of his talent in this role. Ever since his film debut in Touchez pas au grisbi, Ventura, a former champion wrestler, had been stuck playing, as he put it, "gorilla' roles. He does get to show off this aspect of his talent in the film, dispatching a number of opponents with brute strength in striking, well-directed action scenes. However, Abel's scenes with his sons display a vulnerability and sensitivity heretofore unexplored. Sautet even coaxed spontaneous and believable performances from those kids. Abel knows that he must ditch the tikes, but needs help. He calls up associates from his old criminal days in Paris. They seem reluctant, but do eventually agree to hire an ambulance and a driver in order to squire him and his sons covertly to Paris.
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| Sandra Milo and Belmondo |
Even the smallest roles in this movie give it texture and bite: an old friend of Abel's who works in at a maritime museum, a bratty step-daughter of Dalio's fishy fence, and an innocent maid at Belmondo's hotel are all memorably drawn and executed. Sautet is not a particularly distinctive stylist, but his work does seize upon the world at large in all its breadth. If I had to type him it would be as an analytic objectivist like Otto Preminger. Which makes sense since Sautet like Preminger was feted by the Mac-Mahonists in Paris. Sautet had many ups and downs in his career. Classe tous risques was initially a flop, but has built up enough of a following to land in the Criterion Collection. When Sautet was not directing, he worked as a very successful script doctor, akin to Elaine May or Robert Towne in our country. He did leave us many excellent films that he directed himself including Max et les Ferrailleurs, Un cœur en hiver, Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud, and Classe tous risques.
Miroirs No. 3
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| Paula Beer |
Christian Petzold's Miroirs No. 3 is another rewarding and disquieting expansion of the German writer/ director's oeuvre. At 86 minutes, it is a terse yarn with crisp and telling editing by Bettina Böhler. The film centers on Laura (Paula Beer), a depressed music student who we learn is studying in Berlin. Traveling through the countryside, displayed in the film in all its autumn finery, Laura and her boyfriend experience a horrible auto accident and the boyfriend is killed. Dazed after the crash, Laura is taken in by a seemingly kind older woman named Betty (Barbara Auer). However, it soon seems that Betty is the one in need of support.
I must warn the reader that I will now spoil the plot. Petzold does so himself, following Hitchcock's dictum that the audience will experience the thrill of anticipation if the audience knows a ticking time bomb is about to explode rather than just detonating a bomb without warning. At one point early in the proceedings, Betty calls Laura "Yelena", a slip of the tongue that told me and I'm sure many other viewers that Betty is using Laura as a daughter substitute. We soon meet Betty's husband and son who seem partially estranged from her. They both operate a slightly shady garage. Not much really happens except for unhealthy family dynamics until the son blurts out the truth about Yelena. There is a twisted sense of healing achieved for all concerned. Laura starts out being treated like a child by Betty who tucks Laura in like a toddler. When she ultimately learns the truth about Yelena, she acts outs like a teen. She ditches Yelena's wardrobe which Betty had given her and dons again the psycho grungy duck sweater she wore at the film's beginning. She leaves her temporary nest, as all children must do.
I feel Miroirs No. 3 is an autumnal and ironic comedy, like Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry. This explains Beer's Mona Lisa smile in the final shot. In this bourgeois satire, the characters are too terse to communicate. The males tinker with their gadgets while the females have at least the balm of culture in the form of painting and music. There is no score per se, but this heightens our awareness of the film's use of songs. They range from Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to Ravel, part of whose piano suite gives the film its title. The music expresses what the characters feel more that the feeble words they provide for one another. In some respects, this mirrors the formal intent of Petzold. This film is not one of his magnum opus masterpieces (which include Barbara, Phoenix, and Undine), but it is a first class étude. All the actors are superb and Hans Fromm's cinematography is as striking and unsettling as a Courbet.
Sirat
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| Sergei Lopez |
I was a tiny bit disappointed by Oliver Laxe's Sirāt. The Galician filmmaker still must be considered a comer at the age of 44, but I prefer his previous features, Fire Will Come and The Settlers. Sirāt, set entirely in the deserts and mountain ranges of Morocco, represents an opening up in terms of scope in the director's work, but at the loss of characterization. The film's slim plot concerns an aging Spaniard named Luis (Sergei López) who is searching the arid country with his prepubescent son, Esteban, in tow searching for Esteban's sister. They attend a rave and pass out leaflets with her picture. They attach themselves to a caravan of two buses hoping to find her at the next rave. The duo are not prepared for a cross country trip across Morocco and it is only with the assistance of the ravers that they are able to survive. Luis and Esteban ultimately bond with the motley crew and the boy has his hair braided and shaved to mark the moment.
Laxe's primary thematic concern has been the clash of cultures, perhaps not surprising coming from a Galician, and Sirāt is no exception. However, I found the motivations of his characters to be awfully thin in this picture. Part of the reason is that Laxe has filled his supporting cast with non-actors who seem to have been hired more for their appearance than their ability to project a character. Mr. López has extensive and impressive credits, including Pan's Labyrinth and Happy as Lazaro, but Luis is too taciturn a character to explain his back story or motivation. I do suppose it is realistic for the other characters not to chatter about themselves since they are zonked out all the time on different herbs and spices. It is difficult to find words when in the throes of ecstasy.
However, Laxe starts bumping off his characters halfway through the film and I was surprised how little I cared. No spoilers, but it began to feel random to me. Luis' unarticulated mission ultimately feels foolhardy and the title, which mean "path", becomes ironic. The film does capture an aura of pre-apocalyptic jitters. It looks great and sounds great, but it never struck a tragic chord with me. Laxe, though, has the technical ability to make a great film and, hopefully, one day he will.
Une affaire de femmes
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| Marie Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert |
Claude Chabrol's Une affaire de femmes, which was released in the US in 1990 under the unsatisfactory title Story of Women, is set in Cherbourg under the Nazi occupation. It focuses on a lower class woman named Marie Latour (Isabelle Huppert) who finds her calling as an abortionist after taking it up to make ends meet. The film was based on a novel by Francis Szpiner who is better known in France for his careers in politics and law. Marie Latour is based on the real life Marie-Louise Giraud who was guillotined in 1943. In the film, Marie is saddled with a traumatized husband, Paul (François Cluzet) who returns from a POW camp after the first reel to reunite with Marie and their two small children. Marie wants nothing more to do with her quietly seething husband and takes up with a young wheeler-dealer named Lucien (the dashing Nils Tavernier) who has profited by collaborating with the Nazis.
Part of the reason I think Une affaire de femmes is second tier Chabrol is its predictability. As soon as scorned Paul learns that Marie has taken a swanky lover, we know he will rat on his wife to the authorities. Paul never seems truly damaged, just sullen and frustrated because the talented Mr. Cluzet is busy tamping down his natural charisma. I also don't completely buy Ms. Huppert as a semi-literate. A bigger problem is the film's shaky point of view. During the course of the film, we learn that the tale is being told later in life by Marie and Paul's son, Pierrot. However, Chabrol doesn't really adhere to Pierrot's perspective, so that reveal comes off as clumsily as the film's one onscreen shooting. On the plus side, Marie's relationships with the women she encounters who need her services are superbly and empathically rendered. Best of all is Marie Trintignant as Lulu who befriends Marie and mentors her on expanding her client base. A seaside tracking shot of the two conversing is the highlight of the film.
Roger Ebert suggested that Ms. Huppert was the perfect performer for Chabrol and I concur. Whenever Chabrol needs her to show what Marie is thinking or feeling in the film, Ms. Huppert is able to make it plain to the viewer without punctuating the proceedings with unrealistic demonstrativeness. Marie is the only multi-dimensional character in the film and Huppert is able to range across a wide spectrum in displaying both her character's grasping materialism and lyrical love of music. It is a commanding performance and was duly rewarded with the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival in 1988. She has gone on to prove and continue proving that she is the premier film actress of her generation. Une affaire de femmes may not be one of Claude Chabrol's best films, nor one of his worst, but it does contain one of Isabelle Huppert's best performances.
Violent Streets
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| Noboru Andō and Akira Kobayashi |
Hideo Gosha's Violent Streets is a terrific yakuza film from 1974. It ranks with the best of the dozen or so of his 24 films that I have seen: Three Outlaw Samurai, Samurai Wolf 2, Goyokin, and The Geisha; all outstanding. I have been a champion of his work since seeing Goyokin, still my favorite, at the Vinegar Hill Theatre in Charlottesville in 1984. May it rest in peace. Violent Streets is only one of three modern day films Gosha directed. He was best known for working in the samurai genre. Certainly, he stands as one of the outstanding action directors of the late 20th century. Every bit as stylish and interesting as Sam Peckinpah or John Woo.
The protagonist of Violent Streets is a retired, for the moment, yakuza named Egawa (Noboru Andō). Egawa owns and manages a flamenco club named the Madrid located on the Ginza. The first fifteen minutes of the film establish Egawa's back story and the tone of violence that dominates the film. While a flamenco trio entertains, Egawa dispatches a quartet of rude hoods with clever aplomb. Then, to fully establishes that he is beyond the pale, he violently rapes his drunken mistress, Minami (Minami Nakatsugawa). She alludes to him loving another woman (Miyoko Akaza) who is now married to a yakuza boss. We eventually learn that Egawa had to leave organized crime and hand over his fiancee to broker a deal. The Madrid was his consolation prize, but he holds onto it tightly as if it were his last shred of self-respect. Andō was a tough customer himself, getting his trademark scar while serving a stint in prison before appearing in over fifty films. He is superb at putting up a stoic front that masks the seething need for vengeance inside him.
Violent Streets is a thorough composed picture, every shot that goes into its brisk 96 minutes is there for a reason. When the first segment entirely set in the Madrid concludes Gosha inserts a flashing green pedestrian walk sign to connote a transition. The film opens with the title backgrounded with barking dogs. Animals are a constant motif in the film (dogs, chickens, and a parrot), highlighting the barely evolved level of the characters. Another motif is that of performance, there are numerous shows within shows in the film ranging from classical theater to striptease. There is even a "lesbian' sex show featuring a performer who we learn is a kick-ass trans assassin (Lady Joy!). This is a movie of masks and that is one way to interpret it. Another is that show biz is a guise, a mask for organized crime. Indeed, as in the contemporaneous Charley Varrick and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, it is the titans of big business who are the ultimate criminals.
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| A masked marauder |
Return to Silent Hill
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| Jeremy Irvine |
Christophe Gans' Return to Silent Hill is a reboot of the Silent Hill horror franchise that commenced in 2006, with a film also directed by Gans. The original is not a good film, but it has some mitigating assets that make it one of the better video game adaptations. The script, by Roger Avary, is ludicrous, but Gans manages to elicit solid performances from a good cast including Radha Mitchell, Sean Bean, Laurie Holden, Alice Krige, and Deborah Kara Unger. The CGI for this film was ahead of its time and the production design is impressive.
Likewise, Return to Silent Hill's attributes are wholly contained by its look and design. The script, co-written by Gan, is drivel and, this time, the acting ensemble is second rate. Whatever power the original film had derived from its sense of place, a mining town in West Virginia. There was a sense of ecological decay that is lacking in the new film, mostly because Silent Hill is now set next to a pristine lake in Serbia. Silent Hill becomes not a place, but a state of mind. Unfortunately, the film's script provides a jumbled back story that provides the viewer with few tangible plot threads to grasp. The monsters that haunt Silent Hill, the only holdovers from the original film, are vague unconscious emanations that have little connection to Return to Silent Hill's flimsy plot.
Shadows in Paradise
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| A bad date at the bingo parlor: Kati Outinen and Matti Pellonpää |
Aki Kaurismäki's Shadows in Paradise, from 1986, is the first distinctive Kaurismäki feature. Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen play Nikander and Ilona, a couple whose rocky romance we witness through the course of the film. Pellonpää ended up appearing in 18 Kaurismäki features and Outinen five. Most of the supporting cast reappear in Kaurismäki films multiple times. Along with his nascent stock company, almost all of the attributes of the filmmaker's work are fully formed and on display in Shadows in Paradise: a concern with the economic struggles and romantic travails of working class people, deadpan humor, and an unfussy visual style.
The jobs of Kaurismäki's character are central to their identities, a trait he shares with, of all people, Howard Hawks; another unfussy visual stylist. The credit sequence establishes Nikander's daily routine driving a trash truck and collecting garbage. It is a model of classical filmmaking in which there is not a wasted shot, something that holds true for the remainder of the film's scant 74 minutes. We glimpse multiple times that totem of the capitalist work place: the punch clock. Nikander and Ilona meet cute at her place of work, a supermarket where she works as a cashier. There, she utter her first magic words to Nikander, "37.20." Workplaces are shown to be cutthroat, but the director tosses off the message instead of beating the viewer over the head. As the manager of the supermarket says to Ilona when he lays her off, "A supermarket is a merciless machine." Worse is the fate of a co-worker of Nikander's who dreams of owning his own trucking concern and building a better future for himself. He drops dead of a heart attack on the job before those dreams can be fulfilled.
The world of Kaurismäki would be very bleak without the vein of humor he provides. The stoicism of his characters is pronounced to the point of absurdity. Compared to Kaurismäki, the characters in other Scandinavian films, like those of Joachim Trier, seem animated. During the course of their romance, Nikander is able to open up to Ilona about his meagre aspirations, but won't reveal to her his first name. He is an extremely diffident and clumsy Casanova. He takes her to a bingo parlor on their first date which almost immediately puts the kibosh on their relationship. His enticement for a second date is even worse: let's go see my institutionalized sister. What a card! Yet, Nikander's caveman straightforwardness eventually wins over Ilona. She briefly dallies with the manager of a department store, but ultimately decides she is not cut out to join the petit bourgeoisie. When Nikander threatens to punch out her new swain, she realizes she has found her true lug.
The other leavening agent in the dour films of Kaurismäki is his use of music, both on the soundtrack and in live performance. Kaurismäki loves to use rock music for his transitional scenes. The scenes of people in transit in Shadows in Paradise almost all feature blaring rock instrumentals. The live performances range from cocktail jazz in bourgeois haunts to the Schlager music that accompanies the working class drinking themselves to sweet oblivion at their haunts. It is the counterpoint to their life of toil, a brief respite until the workers trudge back to the salt mines. The pattern repeats in most of the best of Kaurismäki's work: Ariel, Fallen Leaves, The Match Factory Girl, La Vie de Boheme, Drifting Clouds, The Man Without a Past, and Le Havre.
Madonna of the Seven Moons
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| Phyllis Calvert and Stewart Granger strike a pose |
Arthur Crabtree's Madonna of the Seven Moons is a ridiculous melodrama released by Gainsborough Pictures in 1945. Unlike most of the Gainsborough romantic melodramas which are set in Restoration England, the picture is set in Italy before the Second World War. The picture centers on Maddalena (Phyllis Calvert) who, as the picture begins, is a teen being educated in a remote convent. In the first reel, Maddalena is raped by a peasant, the subsequent trauma triggers a "dual personality" in her with tragic repercussions. The film leaps two decades ahead and finds Maddalena married to a rich aristocrat (John Stuart, suitably dull as dishwater) and living in Rome. They are awaiting the arrival of their daughter Angela (Patricia Roc) who has been abroad in the UK for the past five years attending finishing school. She is not her mother's little girl anymore.
Whereas Maddalena has her hair up and is dressed primly. Angela has her hair down and shows as much skin as the British censors would allow. One of the many absurdities of the picture is that Ms. Calvert was only four months older than her onscreen daughter, Ms. Roc. Another is that the notion that the curvy Ms. Roc could have been birthed by the more boyish Ms. Calvert. Yet another is that even though almost all of the characters are Italian they speak with pronounced British accents. I don't think modern audiences can suspend this much disbelief. However, I must say I enjoyed some aspects of the picture. Peter Glenville has the most ridiculously pronounced British accent, but he superbly embodies an oily rake named Sandro. Angela succeeds in loosening up her tightly wound Ma, but an incident at a ball triggers her split personality.
This is when the script of the film, based on Margery Lawrence's novel goes as cuckoo as that justly forgotten author. We subsequently learn that Maddalena has had these episodes before in which she has abandoned hubby and child for a year at a time and then returned offering no explanation. While her husband dithers during her absence, the audience happily follows Maddalena to Florence where we meet her feisty doppelgänger, Rosanna. Calvert gets to let her hair down and show some cleavage as Rosanna. You can tell Calvert is having some fun with the role, unlike her clenched performance as Maddalena. Whenever Maddalena is having a traumatic flashback she curls her lip like Carol Burnett in her old comedy skits lampooning 40s movies and quakes. She looks like she is digesting a rotten apple and I suppose she is. Luckily, Rosanna has a dashing thief for a lover named Nino who is played by Stewart Granger. Granger adds some dash to the film without putting too much sauce on the pasta.
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| Stewart Granger and Phyllis Calvert |
Neighboring Sounds
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| Irma Brown, WJ Solha and Gustavo Jahn |
Kleber Mendonça Filho's Neighboring Sounds is set amidst a three block section of the coastal Brazilian city of Recife. The 2013 picture depicts interconnected lives that range across class and racial spectrums. The main character if there is one is a young mother named Bia (Maeve Jinkings) bedeviled by a neighbors' yapping dog who won't shut up at night. Slightly higher up the economic ladder is Joao (Gustavo Jahn) who manages the condo complex his grandpa Francisco (W. J. Solha) owns. We meet Joao after he has drunkenly hooked up with Sofia (Irma Brown). The movie follows the romantic arc of their relationship. A group of sinister seeming men arrive in the neighborhood promoting themselves as a security team, but they have really arrived to settle a lifelong vendetta. When the score is settled, it brings the film full circle back to the days of exploitive sugar plantations shown in period photographs that commence the film.
The film is a cross cut look at society, like many of Altman's films especially Short Cuts. As with Altman's best films, the acting is exceptional. Some of the cast are amateurs, but you can barely tell. Even Mr. Solha who delivers a marvelous portrait of a fading patriarch boasted a scant six film acting credits. Part of the verisimilitude is due to the flow of Mr Mendonça's direction. His self-written script boasts a number of weighty themes, such as European emigration to Brazil in the 20th century, but they are not trumpeted as if on a soapbox. Rather Mr. Mendonça adroitly slips his themes fluidly into the criss-crossing rivulets of Neighboring Sounds. A part of the mix, not surprisingly gives the title, is the interesting soundscape constructed by Mendonça and the talented DJ Dolores. The film mixes pop songs (Queen, Jorge Ben) with a score that mixes electronica with found sounds, like in the work of Tom Ze. The soundtrack becomes one with the lives of the characters who use sound to vent micro-aggressions and camouflage murder.
Neighboring Sounds has the density of a great novel. I was fully engrossed by it. Mendonça has gone on to greater international acclaim with Bacurau and The Station Agent, but I think Neighboring Sounds is still his best film because of its polyphonic expansiveness.
The Caretakers
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| Janis Paige and Robert Stack |
Hall Bartlett's The Caretakers is a turgid 1963 melodrama almost wholly set in a public mental hospital. The film is complete dreck, possibly the worst American feature of that year. Mr. Bartlett was at least consistent. His 1973 film of Jonathan Livingston Seagull is one of the worst American films of any decade. Bartlett co-wrote the script with Jerry Paris who makes a brief cameo appearance during the film's opening as Polly Bergen runs into him on the street. Ms. Bergen then enters a movie theater and has a public meltdown which gets her a one way ticket to the loony bin. Bergen's performance is the type of Oscar grasping fiasco that can blight a career and it did. The rest of the cast is made up of fresh faces (Diane McBain, Robert Vaughn) and veterans reaching the end of their tether (Joan Crawford, Herbert Marshall). For the record, the best performances are by Ellen Corby and Barbara Barrie.
The Caretakers was made with the best intentions. Its brief is to make the case for the deinstitutionalization of public mental health in America. Making that case is Robert Stack as a crusading psychiatrist who has the novel notion that mental patients would be helped best by being treated like human beings as opposed to inmates. Most of the film is taken up by the group therapy session with his borderline patients, Bergen and a motley group of female patients each with a separate tic and traumatic backstory. Opposing the newfangled notions Stack champions is head nurse Crawford, here monikered Lucretia, who wants to treat the inmates as the crazies they are. She touts the safety of the staff as her first priority. The camp highlight is the judo class Lucretia "teaches" in which Crawford and a bevy of beauties don leotards. Crawford sports a bizarre blonde wig. Indeed, The Caretakers is a veritable wig fest, an unsparing look at how the conformist styles of the 1950s were getting a little rococo in the Kennedy era before all hell broke loose. Individual characters' sanity levels can be gauged by how askew their wigs are. It is that kind of movie.
Yes, a movie that is over serious, slipshod, and kooky. The Caretakers feels both endless and abortive. Plot lines, like the film's parallel romances amongst the staff members, feel truncated. Bergen is about to be gang raped by the men's ward when the film cuts to her being comforted by Stack and the cast. What the heck happened! Bartlett utilizes a lot of distorted POV shots when Bergen is first in the hospital, but then drops the technique like a hot potato. Stack was the most emotionless actor of his generation, but the film gives him a traumatic backstory that explains his lack of people skills. He gives a committed performance, I'll avoid the obvious joke, but it ends up over emphasizing the overly earnest humorlessness of the project. Such talents as Lucian Ballard and Elmer Bernstein worked on this picture. All for nought.
Though worthless as art, The Caretakers is interesting as a reflection of changes within the American mental health system. The borderline diagnosis was first formulated in 1938 by Adolph Stern. To boil it down to its essence, it describes patients who veer from neuroticism into psychosis. The concept took some time to be accepted which The Caretakers reflects. It was not until 1980's DSM3 that the diagnosis was codified by the America's psychiatric establishment. The Caretakers presents a false dichotomy between borderline patients and other mental health sufferers. In the film, if you aren't borderline, you are seemingly doomed to wallow in a catatonic state. The Caretakers posits outpatient clinics as the hope for the post-institution future. Needless to say, things have not worked out that way. The legacy of deinstitutionalization stalk the streets of America's urban centers to this day.
I think that the nature of psychiatry and mental health therapy is antithetical to drama. This is probably why the two best American nut house movies aren't really about mental health issues, but are allegorical portraits of the nation: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sam Fuller's truly great and crazed Shock Corridor.
Liliom (1930)
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| Lee Tracy and Charles Farrell |
Frank Borzage's Liliom is an uneasy mixture of fantasy and romantic melodrama from 1930. The source material for the film was Ferenc Molnár's play which also served as the basis for Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical Carousel. A word about Mr. Molnár aka Franz Molnar aka Ferenc Neumann. Even though his plays are rarely performed today in America, Molnar's work was widely popular and revered in the first half of the 20th century. Over a hundred films have been derived from his work which also includes such chestnuts as The Guardsman, The Swan, One Two Three, and The Good Fairy. Liliom was a flop when it first premiered in Molnár's native Budapest in 1909, but a Broadway production with Joseph Schildkraut and Eva La Gallienne in 1921 proved to be a runaway hit and established the play in America. Molnar's work is marked by fantasy and romantic wish-fulfillment, but there is a decided element of realism in his mix. Certainly, Liliom's striking his daughter in the concluding section of this film gives it a slap of reality especially compared to a modern marshmallow confection like Project Hail Mary.
Liliom proved to be a flop at the box office and I think I know why. Borzage and his art director, Harry Oliver (Seventh Heaven, Scarface), give the film a look that is both spare and expressionistic. The fairy tale nature of the tale is reinforced by this look, but it is also designed to heighten the grim determinism of the tale's moral. The lights of the carnival where Liliom (Charles Farrell) works as a barker are visible from the absurdly huge window in the denuded tenement where his lady love Julie (Rose Hobart) toils. The glittering artifice of the carnival cannot mask the base passions and treachery that motivate Molnár's characters. The slashing angles of the steps and bridge where a bungled robbery leads to a suicide emphasize that the characters in the film are caught in a trap of their own devising. Yet, I feel that audiences had had enough of this look, a vestige of the recently departed silent era and its masterpieces by Borzage and Murnau. Liliom is also paced deliberately like a silent film which helps gives an otherworldly feel that is appropriate for the film. However, by 1930, this too felt out of date and the modern rat-a tat-tat rhythms found in Scarface and James Cagney features would soon be ascendent.
The most obvious flaw of Liliom is the miscasting of Charles Farrell in the title role. Farrell had co-starred with Janet Gaynor in a recent spate of hits for Fox and Borzage. Farrell always seems a lover not a fighter. His character is a brash and macho narcissist who beats Julie and is easily led into criminality. Farrell is not nearly brutish enough for the role and his pinched voice doesn't help. Borzage wanted Farrell for the role, over Joel McCrea, and Farrell does have his moments when Liliom shows vulnerability. Ultimately though, he cannot exude the thoughtless brutality of the character. Rose Hobart fares better in her film debut. She was plucked, like a lot of actors in response to the coming of sound, from Broadway. Significantly she was a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. Some have ventured that Janet Gaynor would have brought a nice sweetness to the role of Julie, but I find Ms. Hobart's sullenness to be appropriate for the character, a much put upon serving girl. Like Farrell, Hobart would soon descend to B pictures. Farrell ended up being a longtime mayor of Palm Springs, whereas Hobart would fall afoul of the blacklist; allegedly fingered by Lee J. Cobb. Still, she achieved immortality thanks to the divine intervention and devotion of Joseph Cornell.
The supporting cast of Liliom is largely a delight. Lee Tracy is perfect for the role of "The Buzzard", a smooth-talking brigand who coaxes Liliom into criminality. Tracy would have a brief ascendancy before his misadventures in Mexico. Dan Duryea would eventually don Tracy's mantle as Hollywood's number one weasel. H. B. Warner's uprightness is perfect for once as the "Chief Magistrate". I also enjoyed the efforts of Estelle Taylor (dripping venom), Bert Roach, and Anne Shirley. The film, for both good and bad, is all Borzage. His naive Catholicism makes his romanticism seem corny and out of date to some modern viewers, but I find his films to be fervent and memorable in the brief glory he grants his lovers. Even when his lovers suffer, they do so beautifully. Liliom is currently streaming on Tubi in a good print comparable to the one on the Murnau Borzage Fox box.
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As an aside, I have only seen one production of Carousel that captured the underlying grimness contained in Molnár's original. It was Nicholas Hytner's Royal National Theatre production. Hytner prefaced the musical with a rhythmic pantomime of Julie and her cohorts working in a mill. This established the dull and repetitive nature of Julie's life and undercut the cloying sweetness that undermines most productions of the piece.
Highest 2 Lowest
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| Denzel Washington |
The film gets better when it slips into action mode in its second half. Lee has always been expert in his use of New York locales and I enjoyed the tunes employed that range from Rogers and Hammerstein to Eddie Palmieri. Washington is always fun to watch and gets to both puncture his own pomposity and remain a kick ass dude. I very much enjoyed his face-offs with Princess Nokia and A$AP Rocky. Nonetheless, this is not a memorable film. Like many a Spike Lee joint, it feels over stuffed and gaseous. The film is at least twenty minutes too long. As with his version of Old Boy, Highest 2 Lowest is an unnecessary redo. High and Low is available to stream for free on Tubi and is highly recommended.
Intermezzo vs. Intermezzo
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| The winner: Ingrid Bergman and Gösta Ekman |
I decided to re-view the 1939 American version of Intermezzo after moderately enjoying the 1936 Swedish version. Both films feature Ingrid Bergman, the later Selznick production was her American film debut. The scenario is standard romantic tripe: an aging violinist falls in love with a comely young pianist. He leaves wife and kids and the new duo make beautiful music together, but this idyll cannot last and the violinist returns to home and hearth. Both films did boffo biz at the box office. I prefer the original, but the American version has its merits.
The American version clocks in at 70 minutes while the original version is some twenty minutes longer. The American version therefore is not as slavish a rendition as Algiers was of Pépé le Moko. 👷 George O'Neil, who adapted the earlier Molander/Ekman script, rightly jettisoned some material, but the remake seems truncated. The Swedish version has more music, though many scenes are verbatim. An early scene in the 1939 film between the violinist Holgar Brandt (Leslie Howard) and his missus (Edna Best) has a few distracting jump cuts that makes one believe a page or two of dialogue was tossed. Similarly the American version excises most of the first twenty minutes of the Swedish version which focuses on the retirement of Brandt's musical partner.
The American version boasts better production values. The 1939 film substitutes a nice faux Riviera village for the Swiss one of 1936. The cinematography of Gregg Toland gives the American film's close-ups a luxe feel. Ms. Bergman glows with an inner mounting flame in both films, but her English dialogue is a little slushy. The supporting casts of both films are very good, but the 1939 film's making Brandt's son younger displays its tendency towards sentimentalizing the material. That sentimentality extends to the use of the Brandt's family dog who is given a bigger role in the later version with lots of comic reaction shots. The use of the pooch as a totem of fido fidelity is beyond the ken of the filmmakers.
👷 One day I will tackle Gaslight vs. Gaslight. I'm a George Cukor fan, but Thorold Dickinson is under appreciated.
Lettres d'amour
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| Odette Joyeux and François Périer review the Révolution nationale |
Claude Autant-Lara's Lettres d'amour is one of the director's better films, a lightweight romantic confection released to appease the filmgoers of Vichy and occupied France when it was released just before Christmas in 1942. The picture was Mr. Autant-Lara's first collaboration with screenwriter Jean Aurenche who based his script draft on his own novella. Messrs. Autant-Lara and Aurenche, along with co-writer Pierre Bost, would go on to work together on a number of films such as Douce, Devil in the Flesh, and The Red and the Black. Aurenche and Bost would emerge as France's leading screenwriting team, penning such acclaimed films as Forbidden Games and Gervaise. Lettres d'amour also is the second of four films directed by Autant-Lara that starred Odette Joyeux, films which first brought him renown as a director.
That said, I have been nonplussed by Mr. Autant-Lara's work after barely staying awake watching The Red and the Black in French class four decades ago. This was before I knew about the director's odious politics or grokked les politiques des auteurs. In fact, the first blast of the auteurs, in 1954, was François Truffaut's essay decrying the work of Aurenche and Bost. In the privacy of my own home, I observe the cultic rites of the auteurist and burn incense to the memories of Murnau, Renoir, Ford, and Mizoguchi, but it doesn't mean I can't enjoy the occasional film by a metteur en scène. I believe it is important regarding aesthetics not to be too doctrinaire. Autant-Lara's direction in Lettres d'amour does little to heighten any mood of romance or anything else, it merely functions to present his, admittedly first class, actors as they declaim. A good example are the not quite whip pans he employs in the courtroom scenes. Shots that ping pong from speaker to speaker. However, I suspect that the director was not fully responsible for what we see on the screen. Lettres d'amour feels like it was severely truncated in post-production. There are omissions and leaps in the narrative which unnecessarily confuse an already tangled plot.
The picture is set in 1855 during the reign of Napoleon III. The emperor is depicted having a chaste assignation with the film's heroine, Zélie (Odette Joyeux), while visiting the rural town where she works as a postmistress. The film primarily tells the story of the romance of Zélie and a young district attorney named François (François Périer). François has been having an affair with the wife, Hortense (Simone Renant), of the local prefect. A love letter between the two is unearthed during a legal proceeding and Zélie is wrongly branded with the scarlet A. François visits Zélie to thank her for her discretion, but is soon smitten and vice-versa. The road to true love has many obstacles, of course, but the goal is achieved. The film climaxes with a ball which reconciles the film's romantic conflicts, but also that between the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. Reconciliation occurs as the characters check out that new dance craze, the quadrille. 🎀 I am a sucker for any film that concludes with a dance off.
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| Odette Joyeux |
✂ In three of the four films Joyeux made with Autant-Lara during the Nazi Occupation, she plays a teenager.
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