151: Archangel

Guy Maddin doesn’t make films so much as he projects his dreams on to the screen.  His movies exist in world (which presumably finds its nexus inside his strange mind) and in a time period that never really happened; the strange place where silent films have dialogue.  Some moviegoers assume that at some point in the history of cinema silent films were simply subtitled as foreign films are today.  This was never really the case, but in Maddin’s films it is an actuality.  To describe his films is a difficult task, but to do so briefly I can only say that they are just what those misinformed movie lovers believe: silent films that talk.

            Most film directors are openly influenced by the generation which directly precedes them.  Want to find out where Tarantino comes from? Watch Scorsese.  But Maddin seems to find his influences not in Spielberg and Lucas, but in Von Stroheim and Eisenstein.  His films all seem thus to have been created in 1929, the birth of the sound era.  The dialogue never seems to be in the scene but simply of it; clearly recorded in a booth and dubbed in postproduction.  This doesn’t matter.  Maddin isn’t going for realism. In fact the only ism he seems to subscribe to is filmism; a love of cinema so true that making his movies any other way would be sacrilege.

            His 1990 feature Archangel is no exception to his quirky style.  I mentioned Eisenstein, but I feel that Fritz Lang deserves equal credit of influence here.  In fact, this movie cries out for a retrospective pitch because it really is “Metropolis (1927) meets Strike (1929).”  At the Arctic Circle sits the Siberian city of Archangel.  In the midst of World War I its inhabitants and the soldiers stationed there fight off both the Kaiser’s army and the Bolsheviks.  A young soldier, Lt. Boles (Kyle McCulloch), has lost his love Iris. She has died but he stills sees her everywhere, especially in the face of another woman, Veronkha, whom he mistakes for his lost love.  But Veronkha is married to Philbin, whom she seems to love with hesitance.  He might love her as well which would cease most of these complications, were it not for the amnesia which allows him only to remember the early portions of their wedding night.  He is stuck in perpetual lack of consummation, in the same way that Boles seems perpetually stuck in melancholia, and for that matter in Archangel.

            Because of the plotline of amnesia and a head wound suffered by Lt. Boles, characters in Archangel seem to drift in and out, changing faces and locations.  In this way, the film, like all of Maddin’s work, resembles a dream.  Things are not definite, they are infinite.  Despite the confines of the screen, this world, however unrealistic, seems to go on beyond the borders of the audience’s perception.  To Maddin it is as real any piece of cinema verite. 

            I recommend this piece as the feature portion of a home movie night, viewed after seeing Maddin’s 2000 short The Heart of the World, which A.O. Scott named to his top 10 of that year. If you enjoy the short, you’re sure to have fun with the feature as well.  It can be a bit slow in places, but it more than makes up for this pacing issue with style to spare.

Grade: 3 Hats Off  

152: The Pillow Book

The Pillow Book (1996) is one of the most visually interesting films I’ve ever seen.  It’s a pity that Writer/Director Peter Greenaway wasn’t as creative with the story as he was with the movie’s look.  Layered and superimposed images cover this film throughout, but the narrative itself is flat and uninspiring.  This is one of those movies that you can almost imagine the writers sitting around saying “and now it’s time to open the second act,” as if the three act structure were a batter’s box stencil waiting to be chalked before a game. 

            Nagiko is a woman with a strange sexual appetite.  Her two primary memories of childhood have shaped her erotic fantasies.  As a girl, her father would paint her face on each birthday as he recited a fable about God painting life into the creatures of the earth.  On one birthday, her mother presents her with the Pillow Book, a recording of sexual encounters, of a 10^th century Lady of the

Imperial Court

.  When she grows, she searches for a lovers who will paint her body as her father once did, whom she can record in her own such diary.  Through voiceover she confesses that she does not know which she finds more satisfying; a good lover who is poor a calligrapher or vice versa.  This search for lovers essentially encompasses act I, and includes her rejection of her arranged marriage, as her neglectful husband finds her specific desires distasteful.

            Act II begins after she moves to Hong Kong and meets an English writer (Ewan McGregor) who fulfills both her passion for the written word and her unrelenting sexual desires.  Their torrid affair leads her to a plot for revenge against his publisher, the same man who was briefly her father’s lover and whom she blames for his fall from grace.  After the plan begins to unravel as jealousy and infidelity take hold, Act III details the revenge she enacts against the unscrupulous and vile printer.  In a pattern that mirrors her earlier search for lovers, Nagiko now seeks out men on whom she can write the passages of her Pillow Book, dangling them in front of the eager and greedy publisher.  The First and Third Acts serve essentially as bookends to the effective portion of the narrative, which simply isn’t enough to save this film.

            Vivian Wu is efficient here in the daring role of Nagiko, but her performance is lost in a film that picks up speed too late and relinquishes it just as it’s getting good.  The real surprise is the casting of McGregor in a role that his Star Wars followers would likely be shocked by.  Frankly, he’s a distraction, but it may be internal retrospective career typecasting that yields that feeling on my end.  I find him so brilliant in the same year’s Trainspotting, but here he feels so out of place.  I almost wonder if that was what Greenaway was going for.  In either case, it is interesting to see another risky role he took before he hit stardom, albeit ineffective. 

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off       

153: Muriel's Wedding

Few films that I’ve encountered on the list have been as surprisingly fun as P.J. Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding (1994).  The film has been a semi-underground international hit since its initial mid-nineties release in Australia, but has experienced a recent surge in interest due to its citation as an inspiration for the musical Mamma Mia! (2008). I haven’t seen that film, but even despite the presence of Meryl I doubt that it is as good as this picture.  Watching it I was reminded of Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom (1992) and how that film took something I have almost no interest in (ballroom dancing) and made it my life for an hour and a half.  At its conclusion I wanted to flamenco more than at any other time before or since (or hopefully ever).

            Here a similar phenomenon occurred with the music of ABBA.  Now I don’t mean to hate on Icelandic pop stars, but let’s just say I’m not exactly the “Dancing Queen” type.  However, a good movie can inspire even the coldest of Scrooges to hope for Christmas and the hardest of conservatives to cry for peace.  Toni Collette, in an inspired performance, embodies a woman, Muriel Heslop, who lives for the hope of a beautiful wedding someday.  She finds solace from the mundane constraints of her lower middle class life in Porpoise Spit Australia only in the music of ABBA, and because she loves them, we love them too.  I haven’t exactly been Bjorn again or anything, but Collette somehow makes this quirky character, and by rights this film, work and had my toes tapping to “Fernando” by its conclusion.  This vicarious jubilation cannot be overrated, as it is what sets the good movies apart from the very good movies.

            This isn’t a love story for everyone. It probably isn’t a love story at all, but it is a story about the hope for love and the love you find from the people who support you in that hope.  At the film’s outset Muriel isn’t so much thriving on hope as she is surviving on it.  Her domineering father and trashy siblings certainly don’t make her life easy, and to top it off her “friends” have just asked her to stop coming around.  Through a small con she makes her way to a resort island where she meets an old high school classmate (Rachel Griffiths) who exposes her to the possibilities of happiness through liberation from her parents.  For a brief moment, Muriel feels like her life has become a good enough story for ABBA to write a song about. 

            After moving to Sydney she is still searching for love.  In the meantime she decides its best to start trying on wedding gowns just incase she does find Mr. Right.  Things seem to fall apart and come together all at once and before she knows it, she has found someone who will marry her.  Whether he is “the one” or not doesn’t really seem to matter at this point.

            Much more happens thereafter, but I’ll leave it for you to discover yourself.  In the end, this is a terrific film about hope, and friendship (the scenes between Collette and Griffiths are fantastic), and the upsides of being true to oneself.  It’s a delight for ABBA lovers I’m sure, but more so it is a testament to the power that we give music, whatever kind it may be, in our lives.  It helps to create our dreams and heal our broken hearts when we’ve reached our Waterloo.

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off          

154: Shine

It takes some time for director Scott Hicks’ Shine (1996) to deliver on its auspicious title, but when it does it delivers in spades.  About an hour into the film there is a scene that better displays the human capacity for passion than any vignette of sex ever could.  In a concert hall a young man sits at a Steinway.  He is accompanied by an orchestra and plays to a packed house, but to him the only ones in the room are his fingers, the keys, and Rachmaninoff.  He plays furiously.  He no longer needs the notes on the page.  His hands have formed the memory of how to play them a thousand times over.  His mind is consumed.

            David Helfgott is one of the most promising young classical musicians in the world, but at the height of his promise he succumbs to his demons.  Tortured by years of emotional stifling by his overbearing stage father, he has no way of handling the success that seems sure to come his way.  His mind is fragmented and seems evermore prone to lapses from reality.  He wishes his father loved him. He wishes that he could play Rachmaninoff’s notes in a way that might somehow draw that love out.  He wishes that the human heart were as easy to tune as the piano.  As with so many gifted musicians, his mind can comprehend the most difficult of melodic and harmonic structures, but causes him to break from reality as well.  David eventually finds himself in a home for the mentally unstable.

            Years later, when he reemerges, his love for music has not subsided.  With the help of those who become his friends he is able to find joy in playing piano that he has not experienced since young childhood.  In finding his happiness, he brings it to others as well, playing nightly in a small bar.  Shine is a story of redemption that sparkles in some areas and lacks in others.  Structurally, it jumps between the past and the present in a way that feels unjustified.  It also hints at taking narrative avenues that it has no intension of following, and when it does decide where it’s going it has the abrupt wrap-up of a “Full House” episode.  But the performances here are where the luster lies.  Geoffrey Rush won an Oscar for his portrayal of the rejuvenated adult Helfgott, while the underrated Noah Taylor embodies him as a young man.  Likewise, Armin Mueller-Stahl was nominated for his excellent work as David’s domineering father.

            These brilliant performances in combination with the disjointed structure make for an uneven film, but one that leaves little to be desired in its portrayal of the capacity of the human spirit.  In some way it insinuates that artistic genius can be developed through severe suffering, but that good will ultimately triumph.  I’d be cynical about this message in a lesser film, but, while it is not pitch perfect, here I’m inclined to be swept away by it.  Beautiful music and virtuoso performances make Shine worth any viewer’s time.

            I believe that the reputation of this film has suffered as a result of the fact that Roman Polanski’s The Pianist (2002) was released six years later.  That film is better than this one and includes its own Oscar winning performance (Adrian Brody).  It ostensibly appears to be similar and has its own moving message about the human spirit.  However, both of these films deserve to be seen, and it is my hope that no potential viewer sees one at the expense of seeing the other.

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

155: Senso (a.k.a. The Wanton Countess)

I’m starting to believe that Luchino Visconti is much more talented than I initially suspected.  The first film of his that I saw was Il Gattopardo (a.k.a. The Leopard; 1963).  I was prompted to it by Ebert’s “Great Movies” series, but must confess that I found it to be anything but what he claimed.  Thinking back I suppose I was distracted by the presence of Burt Lancaster as an Italian Count, a performances a la Richard Harris in Red Desert (1964; # 157) as far as out of place actors go – ostensibly at least.  There appears to be a similar miscast English-speaking actor in Visconti’s Senso (1954), the Hitchcock favorite Farley Granger (who passed away earlier this year), but after his solid (though clearly dubbed) performance I’m inclined to reevaluate Lancaster’s work.  The Count he played in The Leopard was the role Visconti, a descendant of Italian royalty, was born to direct.  He cast Lancaster to secure financial backing for the picture, but I suspect his regal screen presence offers more to the role than I’d been willing to grant on that first viewing. 

            Now, having viewed Senso, I feel as though I’ve seen the feminine side of Visconti’s work.  As I was watching I couldn’t help thinking that this effort could easily be described as “the Italian Gone with the Wind.”  Its period and subject matter are certainly similar at least.  Livia Sepieri (Alida Valli) is the wife of a Venetian Count at the outset of the Italian expulsion of the Austrian occupying forces in the 1860s.  She is a supporter of the fight for independence, and is loyal to her cousin, a leader in the rebellion.  However, almost against her will, she falls madly in love with an Austrian cavalry officer (Granger).  Their love challenges her beliefs in country, family, and loyalty in general, and forces her to make choices she’d never imagined.  Fittingly, this film begins with a lengthy scene at an opera house; a better setting for melodrama than any other.  The heroine ironically remarks to the officer on their first meeting, “I like opera very much, but not when it happens off-stage” before she is thrown into the torrid affair.

Now most of my readers are likely to have noted my general distaste for melodrama.  Here, however, I am consumed, washed over by the beauty of this story – certainly more so than with the oft-cited “American masterpiece” to which I compared it.  This is everything costume dramas should be and more.  The emotion of these characters and the ways in which they deceive each other and ultimately themselves is engrossing.  Granger has a scene that would have been a career-maker had this been an English-language first release. 

I’ve been talking lately with my fellow movie blogger Jake (whose work you can view at http://filmadventhrough.blogspot.com/) about a factor that most non-critics base their entire opinion of films on: watchability.  Watchability is the only criteria by which any of the X-men movies could ever surpass anything by D.W. Griffith, and yet this is the element that most people think about when choosing to pop in a DVD; “Is this going to be an enjoyable experience” they think.  Admittedly, even we amateur critics ask this exact same question when we begin a film, but we can still be satisfied by a movie that does not fulfill this idiom.  Because we are self-righteous nerds we can marvel at the emptiness conveyed by L’Advventura (1960) almost as much as we delight in the excitement conveyed by Rio Bravo (1959).  We like this criteria of watchability as much as the average filmgoer, we just don’t need it in the way that causes them to turn off Citizen Kane (1941) twenty minutes in because they “don’t want to watch a movie about newspapers.”              

After seeing Senso as well as the brilliant Rocco and His Brothers (1960) I’m starting to see the watchability factor of Visconti going up.  His films are genuinely enjoyable experiences, and his humanity is more vast than The Leopard lead me to believe.

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off         

156: Sans Soleil (a.k.a. Sunless)

Chris Marker is known for not crediting himself.  Perhaps he does so to further guard his anonymity, which he must have a penchant for as a result of his stint in the French Resistance during the second World War.  It is said that he took his nom de cinema from Magic Markers; entirely possible and certainly apt, as he has the tendency to disappear into his films.  Here he goes so far as to have a woman (Alexandra Stewart) read the voiceover he has written for the experiences he displays in the third person, only referring to the director as “he.”

Still what he shows us is extremely but ironically personal; his distant commentary on his own past and experiences he has had with films.  This movie stands in contrast to his narrative La Jetee (1962; #189), in which the voiceover seems personal and the still images distant.  That film was about the reflection of an unknown future on a past that may not have happened, whereas this picture deals more with the definitive present.  Like many of the other globetrotting documentaries of the early eighties this is a reflection on customs and clashing cultures.  The past interacts with the future to create the reality of the now before it is replaced, day by day, second by second, and frame by frame. 

I’m sure this sounds vague, but this is a film to be seen, and difficult to do justice to with description.  It’s comprised of footage shot in Tokyo, Iceland, Guinea, and San Francisco, where marker searches for locations Hitchcock used for Vertigo.  If you’ve read my review of La Jetee you know that it was the base material for Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys (1995) which also drew heavily from that classic.  I imagine that watching this footage or the film in its entirety without the voiceover would be disorienting, as it seems to jump between locations and visual themes. 

       

Strung together by a soundtrack that aurally resembles B-sides of Pink Floyd albums, we see a Giraffe being hunted, the small tribute statues to cats at a suburban Buddhist Temple, and the generated images of video distorted by graphic alternators.  Somehow these images manage to generate a humanist tone, as all at once this film is political, feminist, religious, reflective, and startling.  It’s also kind of about emus in a way that if this sentence has already interested you, you’ll likely enjoy.

Grade: 3 Hats Off    

157: Red Desert (a.k.a. Il Deserto Rosso)

While watching this film I got a strange sense of déjà vu.  It’s a movie that visually equates industrialism with the loneliness of a female protagonist searching to find meaning in an empty life.  Frustrated, she tries to fill the void through an attempt at sexual liberation, but finds no comfort therein.  Sound familiar to any of my readers?  Could this be a description of Goddard’s 2 or 3 Things I Know about Her (1967), a picture I reviewed just weeks ago? Perhaps, but where that film left me frustrated, I have to say that I found Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert (1964) slightly above par.

            This is a flawed film to be sure, but I have feeling that at the time of its release it was taking audiences down roads that had not yet forked into cliché.  I feel that by the release of Goddard’s picture most audiences, and much of society, had gotten the point.  As with that film, here we see the industrialization of a city tearing apart some of its essence.  It is a port city and the husband (Carlo Chionetti) of our heroine Giuliana (Antonioni favorite Monica Vitti) works in the shipping industry.  Their marriage seems happy enough, and they love their young son, but since a car accident Giuliana has been distant and fragmented.  She seems unable to carry on conversations with anyone other than her husband’s new business associate Corrado Zeller, played by Richard Harris.

            Now if the inclusion of the very Irish (and very tough guy) Harris in this very Italian art house film seems strange to you, take solace in the fact that it seemed strange to Harris as well.  Legend has it that once, Antonioni asked the former rugby player to cross a shot in a diagonal direction.  When Harris inquired as to why, Antonioni replied "You don't ask me why, you're an actor. You just do it."  This prompted Harris to punch the Italian virtuoso and walk away from the project.  Antonioni shot the remainder of his scenes in long shot with a double, and Harris went on to star in Major Dundee (1965) for Sam Peckinpah, a director/actor teaming that seems a match made in heaven.

            As a result of this horrible miscasting of a strawberry blonde playing an Italian, it is painfully obvious that Harris’ lines are dubbed.  The aforementioned follicle foible however is not the only hair issue here.  Vitti, an icy blonde in here previous roles for Antonioni, wears what appears to be a bad brunette wig through most of the production. 

            I know I said that this review would be favorable and I’m getting there, but allow me one more complaint.  In a brief scene Giuliana is awakened by a noise coming from her son’s bedroom.  She investigates, only to find the child fast asleep, having left his battery-powered Erector Set robot turned on.  Designed to roll forward until it encounters an object, and then to reverse, the device is stuck between a wall and the small twin bed.  Back and forth, back and forth, back and…. It doesn’t get much more heavy-handed with a visual metaphor for being trapped in a meaningless existence.  Come on Mike; make it a little less obvious.

            Now on to the good.  Vitti is effective here as always, but this performance yielded something I had yet to see in her previous collaborations with Antonioni.  For the first time he uses her less as an object and more as a person with a past, not discovering meaning for the first time, but trying to find it again.  This may be her most human role for her longtime auteur.

            Likewise, the compositions Antonioni places her in are some of his best, as the ships and smokestacks frame her beautifully.  This was his first use of color, and he wanted to get it right, even going so far as to have grass painted the green he wanted.  He was a perfectionist in style that allowed his narrative to meander; taking his time to show us this world before he starts his story.  When those moments come many are exciting, and some revolutionary in their subject matter.  A conversation in a cramped wharf shaft between three adult pairings makes for an interesting scene.  There is also a trademark flashback in which Giuliana recounts to her son a story about a young girl who finds peace in a secluded stretch of beach she claims as her own.  This vignette is Antonioni’s excuse to use his new visual tool to its full capacity and he doesn’t waste his chance.  The colors here are important as the title implies.

            I didn’t love this movie, but I did like it, and I must say it was more than I’d expected.  The relationship that develops between Giuliana and Corrado isn’t groundbreaking, but it is deeper than most of what Antonioni had offered before.  Also, seeing the out of place Harris somehow made this picture more rewarding, but I can’t tell you why.

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off                   

158: Landscape in the Mist (a.k.a. Topio stin omichli)

It’s been almost two days now and I’m at a loss with Theo Angelopoulos’ Landscape in the Mist (1988).  I realize that I started my review of Murmur of the Heart (1971; #178) in much the same way as I have here.  I gave that film a 2 with my “Hats Off” rating system, but I’m wondering now if that grade was representative of my thoughts on the Malle work.  Maybe this is just bound to happen every 25 movies or so.  Seeing something that you don’t know how to feel about can be disheartening when you’re trying to watch and blog these films as quickly as possible.  It can make you question your reasons for attempting a list like this.  That said, I’d like to thank the followers who have picked me up.  It feels good to know these thoughts don’t just die out there in cyberspace.  Still, I’m left with a dilemma.  Does not knowing what to think about a film default it to an applied rating of two?  Well, let’s find out.

                  Angelopoulos’ story is simple enough.  Two children, pre-teen Voula (Tania Palaiologou) and her younger brother Alexandre (Michalis Zeke), set out on a journey from Athens to find their estranged father in Germany.  They are running away from their mother, but we never really know why.  This isn’t the type of movie to give reasons; it takes its delights in experiences.  Along their way, the children encounter the same ratio of good and bad people that one would expect in such a road movie.  Some want to help them, some want to hurt them, but most acknowledge that they will be only a minor character in these children’s story. 

            There are scenes of tenderness and scenes of brutality, but all are filmed beautifully, with a distant tone that implores the audience to hug the line between passive observation and all-out sympathy.  The children aren’t stupid.  They fall into traps that would fool even the sharpest of adult movie characters, and yet their vulnerability is never exploited by the director for dramatic effect.  They are young, the world is big, and the road ahead is long, but their determination is unwavering.  Alexandre has dreams about the father he has never met and speaks about him as if he is certain to be waiting for them at the train station just across the German border.  His optimism isn’t quite sad because it is the truest thing he knows.  He is a young boy with hope.

            I can’t stress enough the importance here of the work of cinematographer Yorgos Arvanitis, whose camera movements are at once voyeuristically distant and curiously observant.  This, in combination with the haunting score of Eleni Karaindrou, creates some of the more moving scenes that I’ve ever witnessed.  But Landscape in the Mist is a slow film that takes time to emotionally invest in. It doesn’t have concrete answers, but instead exists in the realm of possibilities. In its most sweeping scene an event takes place (a clear homage to Fellini) which is absolutely beautiful and totally beyond any hypothesis of meaning.  It can’t be explained, but must be experienced.  It will just take some time to get there.

            Early in this movie there is a twist on the movie twist.  Information is revealed that, if true, would be unveiled only in the final reel of a Hollywood film, abruptly changing the perspective of the protagonists.  At the time it is disclosed in this film it feels important, but as the story continues, its relevancy becomes a moot point.  This is another of this picture’s strengths, but I can’t quit bring myself to say that I enjoyed it throughout.  I suppose that the best thing I can write about the film at this point is to acknowledge that once I’ve completed the list, this picture will be in my re-watch column.

            So I guess I’m back to where I started.  The same dilemma persists. In this case I’m again forced to resort to the default.

Grade: 2 Hats Off    

159: The Phenix City Story

If I were hard-pressed to choose a favorite film genre (something more specific than comedy or drama), I’d probably settle on film noir.  There’s something about femme fatales and streetwise fast-talking thugs that just makes me love the movies even more every time I see them.  But while these elements come to mind when anyone utters the term “film noir,” it can be a genre that is difficult to define.  Some historians argue over the “first true noir” as if pinpointing one film makes the progression of the category easier to chart.  Like many, I’d say that The Maltese Falcon (1941) is probably the film which represents a clear change in the approach and attitude of the filmmakers toward their material, shading over to the dark side, but many of these themes were being touched upon as early as the late 1920s in both Hollywood and around the world.  In any case, noir fascinates me as perhaps the very first international film movement.

            American directors barrowed from techniques displayed by many of the German filmmakers who were escaping the brutalities of the Third Reich, and who were bringing their talents stateside.  The themes in the resulting films reflected the darkening international ethos, and when the films were shown in France their critics noted these thematic and stylistic shades.  Eventually many of the critics who noted these changes went on to make some brilliant and dark films of their own as leaders of the French New Wave movement.  As such, we as retrospective film lovers can see the connection between films like Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samourai (1967).  Another thing I love about noir is that it constantly reinvents itself.  Some think of it as a dead genre, but many of the finest films of the last 20 years [The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Se7en (1995), L.A. Confidential (1997), and Dark City (1998)] have been, at their core, noirs.

            Noir is also a genre that can easily be made to fit with others.  Coinciding with the first heyday of noir was the wave of political dramas which occupied the ten years following WWII.  At the tail end of that trend was The Phenix City Story (1955) directed by Phil Karlson, a film which pairs the two brilliantly.  Centering on corruption in the Georgia/Alabama border town of Phenix City, the film’s first 15 minutes play as a television interview of those individuals who lived through this true story.  To be perfectly honest, I found that this initial portion of the film leaves much to be desired, but admittedly it probably played well in 1955, when audiences began to get wise to the liberties that the phrase “based on a true story” allowed. 

            After the narrative kicks in the true attributes of the film begin to shine, as a cast of assorted characters is introduced.  What makes these initial scenes work is that they don’t clearly illustrate to the audience if the people they introduce are protagonists or villains.  This is a smart film that for its era stands out, as it gives its viewers time to make their own decisions about the people of Phenix City.  We are introduced to both lawyers and crooks, but at the outset they are amicable.  The girl who deals black jack at the backroom club casino seems to be well-intentioned, but who knows?  These aren’t people who wrestle with morality; so much as they are people who take the world at face value.  Some are out for profit, and some are simply trying to survive, to keep their noses above the stench of corruption.

            Things are calm until the son (Richard Kiley) of a local attorney (John McIntire) returns home from prosecuting war crimes in Germany.  He wants to go into practice with his father, but his wife (Lenka Peterson) is worried about raising their children amongst the corruption and filth of the town.  Her apprehensions seemed to be justified when Kiley’s character is drawn into a fight with the henchmen of the local crime syndicate.  He pressures his father into joining the citizens committed to defeating the mob politically, but tensions within the family threaten to rip his own marriage apart.  As the violence throughout the city escalates these tensions flare, especially after threats are made against the young children.

The 1001 text points out that this was one of the most brutal crime dramas of its time, pushing the boundaries of the Hays regulation.  While it indeed stretches these limits, it’s certainly nothing modern audiences would scoff at.  But in context this movie was revolutionary in this respect and in its approach to depiction of life in the post-war south.  Racial attitudes of the time are prevalent, and although the film appears to denounce these positions, it doesn’t outright condemn them.  This is ironic as Kiley’s character, John Patterson, in actuality went on to win the Governorship of Alabama on a Jim Crow ticket.  Aside from that sad truth, this is an excellent movie that pits one man against the force of the mob, his single cry galvanizing the masses to one last showdown against corruption.  

Grade: 3 Hats Off          

160: Horror of Dracula (a.k.a. Dracula)

This isn’t the best filmed version of Bram Stoker’s famous novel.  That would be F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).  However, Horror of Dracula (1958) is one of my favorites, along with that great 1922 version.  I’d actually seen this film years ago, on late-night cable as I remember, under its original British title, simply Dracula.  The title was changed for stateside exhibition to avoid confusion with the 1931 version staring Bela Legosi.  While it’s the image of the infamous Count from that picture, with the exaggerated widow’s peak, which has been solidified in the popular consciousness, I feel that this later English B-picture has the slight edge.        

            What makes Dracula pictures so interesting, at least from the filmic perspective, is that so many of them have been made throughout the years.  In a way, we can almost chart the technical advancements of the medium through the multiple retellings of this one horror story.  It’s also a narrative that has been tackled by some of the most interesting directors to ever call “action,” and seeing their various takes on the novel, and inevitably on the films that preceded their own, makes it an intensely rewarding exercise.  For example, a comparison between the Werner Herzog telling, Nosferatu the Vampire (1979), and the Francis ford Coppola treatment, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), would reveal quite a bit about the similarities and differences between these two sometimes megalomaniac directors. 

            Furthermore, it’s always fun to note what additions, subtractions, and changes the adaptor has made from the source material.  In this version, Jonathan Harker (John Van Eyssen) is drawn to Dracula’s castle not naively under the pretense of a real estate venture, but under his own false pretense, as he plans from the outset to kill the count and end his reign of terror.  It’s an interesting twist on the classic tale that points the story in a slightly different direction.  It’s likely that the changes made throughout the narrative were put in place to shave the production budget, and because audiences were already familiar with the story.  In either case, they indeed provide a welcomed shift in the well-known sequence of events.    

            As I mentioned, this is a B-picture and thus it features plenty of hokey special effects and poor make-up jobs.  But where I find these things to be intolerable in Hong-Kong action pictures from the Shaw Bros. studio, I have a strange affection for them in B-grade Horror.  The film is also notable in this respect for its relatively early performances from Christopher Lee (as Count Dracula) and Peter Cushing, who went on to play Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars (1977).   Also appearing is Michael Gough, who is best known for his role as Alfred in the Tim Burton imagining of Batman (1989).

            In all, this adds up to an enjoyable Saturday matinee or late-night couch flick, one that shouldn’t be missed for pure enjoyment of the movies.

Grade: 3 Hats Off

161: The Color of Pomegranates

Titles. No music. Titles. No Camera movement. Silence. Three pomegranates ooze red juice onto a white cloth.  Red equals blood. Blood equals life. Obvious visual metaphor.  A foot crushes grapes. A fish flops between two pieces of drift wood laid on the white cloth.  Now it’s three fish.  Jump cuts.  Numerous intentional continuity errors.  Late medieval/early renaissance costumes. Man kisses bird.  Poetry voiceover.  No Camera Movement! Gregorian chant.  Obvious religious symbolism.  No Dialogue! Sheep.  More Sheep.  Even more Sheep.  Credits. Silence.

          
             Above, I’ve detailed Sergei Parajanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1968), one of the worst pieces of “world cinema” I’ve ever had the displeasure to sit through.  I’ve gone from a revue of a Bunuel piece, to one of a film that I’m sure he loved; the type of thing he and David Lynch would sit around talking about how sensual it was in a coffee shop in cinematic hell.  The Netflix.com description of this film says that it’s a biography of 18^th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova.  The film acknowledges in its prologue that it tells his life not through narrative, but through expressions of his work.  I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess it’s probably not my type of poetry.

            Re-cut upon its initial release for being too nationalist in nature (how could they tell?), this is one the soviet film office should have melted down for silver content.  I’m not completely surprised that some theorists and film critics loved this flick, but unless you are fully committed to completion of the 1001 list, or suffering from severe self-loathing, avoid this movie at all costs.  Documentary filmmaker Mikhail Vartanov, a Parajanov apologist, called this film a “revolutionary new” contribution to the language of world cinema.  He was right, just as selecting random words from the dictionary and typing them up onto eight pages could be considered a “revolutionary new” approach to writing a term paper. 

            I am not suggesting here that The Color of Pomegranates isn’t art.  It certainly is that.  And I’m not saying that art should limit itself based on criticism.  That would negate the point.  But cinema, as far as I’m concerned, does have a language that should be observed and built upon by filmmakers.  I see why this picture is included on the list, but I can’t justify it any more than to say it is an exercise in how not to make an entertaining film.

Grade: .5 Hats Off 

162: The Young One (a.k.a. La Joven)

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Luis Bunuel with The Young One (1960).  His work has been some of the most interesting I’ve encountered on the 1001 list, but I can’t say that I’ve admired all of it.  His early surrealist collaborations with Salvador Dali, An Andalusion Dog (1928) and The Age of Gold (1930), are two seminal works of what would come to be known as “art house” cinema, and are known for their use of disturbing imagery to evoke emotional response.  As such, both are monumentally important works in the development of the potential uses of the medium, but neither would score very high on the scale of entertainment value.  There is nothing wrong with this, and both are films that are interesting enough to make them worth a viewer’s time, but I think that their primary value is in their influence and not their watchability.

            In the final years of his career Bunuel returned to his surrealist roots, making films without any indelible meaning that were ultimately too lofty in their intentions.  If this last statement sounds contradictory you must not yet have seen The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972).  However, in the middle years of his output the Spanish director made a brief foray into English and French language films, notably with the French Belle de Jour (1967), which many consider to be his masterpiece.  The Young One is one of his two works in English, and when I read its brief description on the DVD I was surprised.  It’s an exception for Bunuel in both language and subject matter.  He did not often make films about “everyday people.” In fact, he didn’t often make films about people at all.  As I’ve noted in previous posts, this can be a risk, but such choices defined Bunuel’s career.  Often in his movies, characters function simply as the vessels of his message.  Here we have three vessels a bit deeper than most of his figures.        

            A northern black musician, Traver (Bernie Hamilton), who is accused of a rape in the coastal South, escapes to a remote island game reserve.  There he meets the small haven’s only inhabitants, Miller (Zachary Scott) the game warden, and Evelyn (Kay Meersman) the granddaughter of a handyman who has just died.  While the young girl responds positively to her newfound company, hoping to help him, Miller resents the presence of a black man on what he believes to be his land.  The two men tear at each others patience as Traver holds the islanders hostage while he repairs his small boat.

            When the regular boatman and a clergyman arrive to handle the issue of the deceased handyman, they inform Miller of the rape allegations made against Traver.  As a manhunt ensues across the island the overt racism of the boatman becomes evident.  Likewise, evidence emerges to the preacher that his suspicions of an inappropriate relationship between Miller and the young girl are valid.  The strained relationships between all five characters are further pushed when, after capturing an injured Traver, inclement weather forces them to spend the night in the island’s two small cabins.  The cramped structures are a refuge from rain and wind, but not prejudice and suspicion.  As the events play out, Bunuel adopts his usual laissez faire stance, letting the action speak for itself.

Like The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978, # 163) this is a film in which racism deeply affects the lives of its characters.  But where Jimmie Blacksmith felt forced and overstated, The Young One presents Traver’s plight as a fact of life that he understands and has a calculated response to.  This is not a film of easy answers and a nicely-wrapped ending.  Most of the men here have made or must make hard decisions that will affect more lives than their own.  The realism in this aspect is a value that can’t be overlooked, and one that make The Young One my new favorite film by a director I’m still trying to figure out.

Grade: 3 Hats Off