89: The Mad Masters (a.k.a. Les maîtres fous)

            Ethnography has to be one of the most difficult forms of filmmaking.  Certainly it’s a different task than scripting and directing action, but as a recorder of the customs and practices of another culture, one also takes on very different risks.  In the case of Jean Rouch’s The Mad Masters (1955), those risks were not fully accounted for.  Rouch was allowed to film the religious ceremonies of the Hauka sect of West Africa, and the resulting film proved controversial to say the least.

            The early footage consists of a brief slice of daily life for the Haukas, mostly migrant workers finding day labor jobs that serve the colonial economy of Accra.  As members pile into vehicles, Rouch’s voiceover explains that once a year the sect meets far outside of the city to perform their major spiritual sacrament.  At a remote location the males of the group ingest a powder that brings on hypnotized trance.  They burn their bodies with torches, foam at the mouth, spit blood, and speak in an unknown language.  Rouch’s camera is curious, but his sparse VO offers little explanation of these events, which comprise the majority of the picture’s short runtime.

            Controversy erupted as a result of Rouch’s editing in the final segment of the film, in which he equates the entranced actions of the Hauka to mimicry of their colonial oppressors.  His contention that the ceremony served as catharsis that prevented violent uprisings ultimately failed, and his film was banned in several British West African colonies.  The film also garnered criticism from African students, who claimed that it perpetrated negative stereotypes of Black African culture, and pointed to the somewhat obvious staging of its events.  Eventually, Rouch acknowledged this staging, choosing to call The Mad Masters a “docufiction”, a term he would eventually ascribe to much of his work.

Language: French (primary)/?

Runtime: 28 Minutes

Available @veoh.com

Grade: 1 Hat Off

90: Memories of Underdevelopment (a.k.a. Memorias del subdesarrollo)

            I was surprised to learn from the 1001 text that Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) was not an independently produced post-revolutionary Cuban picture, but in fact a state-sponsored Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematograficios film.  So nonchalant about the political nature of its early 1960s setting in Havana, it’s hard to believe that Castro’s government not only approved of this picture, but funded its production.  Equally baffling in this context, is the picture’s focus on a single individual and his apathy to the communist overthrow of the Batista regime.

            The individual in question is Sergio (Sergio Corrieri), a former businessman whose prospects are all but destroyed by the socialist takeover.  After sending his parents and his ex-wife to Miami to avoid the violence of the coup, he remains in Havana, resolving to become a writer.  However, the conflict by which he is surrounded bores him, and he doesn’t really seem to care to write about it or anything else, other than the women who fill in his loneliness.  He laments for lost loves while spending days watching television and peeping at neighbors from his balcony, content for a time to live off of the income he makes as a landlord.  The irony of the dilapidated structures that surround his posh apartment building proves all the more odd when again remembering this film’s source of financing, and while Sergio is certainly critical of the “underdeveloped” nature of Cuba under Batista, he dismisses its current status with the same label.  

            When Sergio meets the beautiful and young Elana (Daisy Granados) and convinces her to come up to his apartment for a tryst, his lonely nature is briefly curtailed.  But as with his complaints about Cuba, he dismisses Elana as underdeveloped and uncultured.  He tries to educate her, planning trips to museums and taking her to Hemingway’s house, but she’s bored by the things that he uses to mold her into his ideal.  When her family intercedes in their relationship, claiming that he raped her and ruined her prospects, he’s forced to explain himself to a grand jury.  Acquitted of the charges he continues to wait out the revolutionary changes, only mildly optimistic that the Castro regime will bring about a better Cuba. 

            Memories of Underdevelopment contains three fantastic sequences that each, in their own way, evokes the complexities of the past, present, and future of Sergio’s Cuba.  The first is a not so subtle jab at the former regime.  As Sergio takes Elana to meet with a film director (Gutiérrez Alea) friend, they sit in a screening room watching a montage of all of the footage cut from imported films that were censored by the moralistic Batista.  In yet another staggering irony, Memories is critical of this censorship.  In another sequence, as the lovers peruse Hemingway’s personal affects, Sergio marvels as the American writer’s abilities, slightly jealous and again dismissive, claiming that the author’s possessive feelings about the island were, at best, faux romanticism.  Looking to the past, Sergio realizes the potential futility of his own future aspirations, beset with the feeling that the present might not be as glorious as some would claim either.  Finally, the film concludes with a montage comprised of news reel footage of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Retrospectively in 1968, this was already scathing criticism of events that brought the world to the brink of self-destruction.  Both Kennedy and Castro can be heard addressing their respective people, each assuring them that their nation’s resolve for peace is equaled only by their preparedness for war. 

          

            Irony is where this picture lives, and while good films often touch on ironic themes or actions, this picture immerses itself in them.  Sergio is no more certain of a great future for Cuba at the film’s conclusion than he was at its outset, and yet the picture itself tries to be optimistic.  Memories of Underdevelopment focuses on one, rather bourgeois individual, but tries to make a statement for the proletariat.  It attempts to promote Cuban nationalism through a European-minded protagonist.  Mostly, it is critical of Cuba’s status as an underdeveloped nation, while somehow seeming to suggest that the best way to relieve this unwanted status is to blow more of Cuba up. 

            This was the first post-revolutionary Cuban film to be released in the United States.  It was shown in 1973, five years after its initial release on the island, and was selected by the New York Times as one of the best films of that year.  In what might be the saddest irony of the film, Gutiérrez Alea was not allowed a travel visa to receive a special award given to the picture by the US National Society of Film Critics

Language: Spanish (primary)/English

Runtime: 97 Minutes

Available @video.google.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

91: Marketa Lazarová

            I was struck by the opening sequence of Frantisek Vlácil’s Marketa Lazarová (1967).  The first moments of this 13-century medieval bohemian epic portray the desolation and unflinching cold of a time and place in a manner that is utterly visceral.  Low angle cinematography draws the audience in as voyeurs of a bandit attack on a coach, placing viewers close enough to the action that they might feel compelled to reach out and touch the frozen snowy landscape.  Unfortunately, the film peaks here, leaving nearly two and a half hours left in which it resides in narrative mediocrity. 

            Early on, I couldn’t tell whether the poorly executed additional dialogue recoding (ADR) voiceovers were intentionally echoed for a stylistic touch.  Certainly Vlácil couldn’t be justified in thinking that they were cohesive.  While I was initially intent on not letting this element of the film distract from my viewing, it became impossible to ignore when the picture’s diagetic sound took on the same obtrusive quality.  Still, I was mesmerized by the stimulation of the visual pallet which this movie offers.  Shot in a black and white that is at times stark, the film also includes sequences of an absolute dreamlike state.  It’s quite heavy on the symbolism as well, as its plot supposedly pertains to the clash between paganism and Christianity that racked Eastern Europe during the period.

            I say “supposedly” because I spent the 162 minutes of this picture’s runtime trying desperately to figure out what was going on.  Perhaps I enjoyed the opening sequence so much because the beginnings of films always breed confusion, as we get to see the characters before we really know them.  Here, I never once throughout felt that I really understood any of the characters, let alone their motivations.  War films can be difficult to follow because it’s tough to pick out certain characters when they’re all wearing the same thing.  A similar quagmire is likely to befall many a viewer of this piece of Czechoslovakian cinema, as animal skins don’t tend to be easily distinguishable on black and white film.  Add to this factor the bearded element of many of the characters herein and it leaves only the eponymous female lead and the one-armed son of a warlord who stand out amongst the crowd.

            To be fair, there are several aspects of Marketa Lazarová that work quite well.  The soundtrack, comprised primarily of vocal music that feels true to the period, evokes an element of medieval Europe that is simultaneously religious and bleak.  Surviving harsh winters and retaining long-held beliefs were the major elements of life in this time and this place, and in conveying that fact the film succeeds.  Still, it lacks an element of humanity with which most audiences could relate.  In fact, upon its preview screening Variety acknowledged the artistic merits of the picture while predicting its commercial failure, calling it “a stunning work – unsuitable for general commercial release.” (Schneider, 483) 

            Indeed, this is a style over substance work that has likely remained in the semipublic conscious due to the efforts of film snobs who can appreciate its loose (barely there) narrative.  By its conclusion, the film descends into a mess of unjustified voiceovers that confuse both the audience and the characters alike.  While the cinematic merits of this picture are high, its quasi-narrative, involving the kidnapping and rape of a young virgin who has been promised to a convent, isn’t exactly the Saturday afternoon matinee aimed at teen audiences that it might sound like.

Language: Czech

Runtime: 162 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

92: Before the Revolution (a.k.a. Prima della rivoluzione – Original Italian Title)

            The work of Bernardo Bertolucci is never particularly easy to digest, often difficult in both structure and content.  In a peculiar irony, his most acclaimed work is perhaps his most commercial film.  1987s The Last Emperor, which took home nine academy awards, including statues for Bertolucci’s writing and directing, might be, as a foreign language film, one of the least seen Best Picture winners of that or any decade.  The Italian auteur is probably best know, or at least most discussed, in stateside film circles for his direction of Last Tango in Paris (1972), the final X –rated film to ever garner serious Oscar attention, in which Marlon Brando lubes up ingénue Maria Schneider’s rear end with a stick of butter before having his way with her.

              Bertolucci rose to prominence with The Conformist (1970), and on the strength of that Italian-language political thriller his earlier Before the Revolution (1964) was given a major release in 1971.  Foreshadowing his 1970 film, Before the Revolution is a drama with political undertones that can be exceptionally difficult to follow.  Indeed, entire segments of the development of the primary relationship in the film seem to be missing.  Though not as directly as with The Conformist, we see here the political ideologies of an individual shape and contort his personal relations, without any specific interaction between the two facets.

            The young Fabrizio (Francesco Barilli) is distraught after the death, and possible suicide, of a close friend.  He finds comfort and excitement in forming a sexual relationship with his unhinged aunt, Gina (Adriana Asti), ten years his senior, who is visiting Parma for the Easter Holiday.  The film’s slow start gives way to several beautifully composed visual and musical interludes, that using minimal dialogue partially express the progression of Fabrizio and Gina’s affair.  Their attraction is torrid, but Gina’s actions often confuse and frustrate her lover/nephew.  As his involvement with the Parma communist movement increases, his jealousy within the relationship follows suit, nearly boiling over when Gina takes him to visit an old friend of hers, Puck.

            At Puck’s serine property the older man confesses that he is no longer able to pay his mortgage, and that the land will soon revert to collectors.  Bertolucci plays his own political cards rather close to the chest in this sequence, neither fully lamenting the loss of Italy’s feudal system nor totally supporting the communist land ideal.  Regardless of politics, the scene is stunning, expressing both the beauty of the Italian landscape and the sorrow of the failing land owner.

            After Gina departs from Parma, Fabrizio is engaged to a woman from a prominent family.  He sees his former lover only once more before the wedding, staring down at her in the audience from his fiancé’s private opera box during a performance of Macbeth.  The two meet in the lobby of the opera house for a brief moment, but have little time to discuss anything before the show ends.

            Bertolucci is in many ways the director that film snobs dream about; one who “doesn’t spell everything out for you.”  This is certainly true.  Before the Revolution moves slowly at first, and then gives way to a frenzied, almost fragmented visual collage of sequences that only feel loosely connected at times.  Visually, it is absolutely breathtaking, with Bertolucci filming his hometown in a soft black and white that expresses the love of cinema which I feel is absent from the work of Buñuel.  A minor character in a short scene here tries to discuss movies with Fabrizio, and I’m overcome with the feeling that he’s meant to represent the director.  Bertolucci was only 22 when he began shooting this picture, but his lifelong love of film is already on full display.

Language: Italian

Runtime: 115 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

93: The Man who had His Hair Cut Short (a.k.a. De man die zijn haar kort liet knippen – original Dutch title)

            I must say that director André Delvaux’s The Man who had His Hair Cut Short (1966) is an enchanting movie.  It announced the arrival of Belgian cinema into the international film forum, and created a surreal style that would become synonymous with that country’s pictures.  Like a dream it weaves an odd spell that transfixed me as I watched.  Ghislain Cloquet and   

Roland Delcour’s black and white cinematography is somehow simultaneously stark and ethereal, lending the film its airy state.  Structurally, it is an odd picture, with a lengthy segment that is only justified by later dialogue, but it retains its focus just as it is about to skip off the rails.

            Govert (Senne Rouffaer) is a respected teacher at an academy for girls – Mr. Miereveld to his students.  The film opens as he contemplates the graduation of his senior class, particularly the gorgeous Fran (Beata Tyszkiewicz), whom he has secretly loved for years.  She’ll be leaving his life without ever knowing what she has meant to him.  Gorvert prepares for the day’s festivities in his study, hoping that the book he’s ordered for Fran has come in.  His wife sends his daughter in to bring him his tea, but he has other things on his mind.  Wanting to look his best, he stops at the barber before proceeding to the ceremony.  As you might expect, despite not being particularly handsome he takes great pride in his appearance, ordering the strait razor shave and the tightly kempt cut. 

            There’s an element to the haircut scene that could feel like heavy-handedness to some viewers, but that I felt was spot on.  Tight close-ups of the meticulous process add an intimacy to the relationship between man and barber, and by association bring the audience closer into the nature of this meticulous man.  Once the process is complete he’s off to school, arriving just a moment too late to the ceremony.  He sits in his place, hoping as the retirement and service awards are handed out that Fran will glance just once in his direction.  The look never comes and he is devastated.  He searches for her frantically after the commencement, but misses her time and again, getting only to view her from afar as she sings a song about inevitable endings during a goodbye concert. 

            Years later, having left the school with a broken heart, Govert finds himself working as a legal clerk.  He’s convinced to join a medical officer of the count on a trek to autopsy a body that was found adrift, and may be a missing bank examiner.  This is the odd sequence of the film that doesn’t seem to fit, and yet I don’t know that it could be easily cut.  While most of the gory details of the procedure are obscured by the wooden casket walls, the audience is forced to suffer along with Govert as his imagination makes the process torturous.  Finally, with the evidence inconclusive, the medical investigators call it quits.  Deciding to stay in the town for the night, the men all get rooms at a posh hotel.  Unnerved by the events of the day, Govert’s mood changes abruptly when he encounters Fran on the hotel stairs. He immediately launches into an explanation of the autopsy before realizing that he has almost spoiled her appetite as she heads for the dining room. Later in his suite he envisions a rendezvous between himself and Fran, but what actually takes place changes his life in a much more profound way by connecting all of the pieces that have come before.

            The Man who had His Hair Cut Short isn’t a long film, but it is a deep picture.  It manages to fit philosophy and guilt and an odd redemption into its quick pace.  It is beautiful aesthetically and poignant thematically without ever even approaching a preachy dynamic.  It is simply the story of one man’s ability to fool himself into thinking that a woman could in some way attain perfection.  Like so many great tragic films the pain here comes from the obsessions of a character and the illusions that he allows himself to believe.  At once both real and dreamlike, The Man who had His Hair Cut Short is a testament to the power of self-deception and the tardiness of self-realization.

Language: Dutch

Runtime: 94 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off

94: Tristana

Another Buñuel.  This is, I believe, the third film from the respected Spanish iconoclast that I’ve reviewed, and I’ve got at least one more to go.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed his The Young One (1960; # 162) and taken aback by the cruelty of his Las Hurdes (1933; # 133), but I have to confess that Tristana (1970) left me feeling little more than bored.  This came as somewhat of a disappointment, superfluous to the disappointment of watching a boring movie, as I found on the IMDb that this was named by the Spanish cinema centenary in 1996 as the tenth greatest Spanish film ever made.  I was also keenly aware that it was named to Roger Ebert’s 10-best list of 1971.  Perhaps my expectations were too high.  

            As I’ve mentioned before, my thoughts on Buñuel aren’t quite set yet.  I loathed his Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) when I saw it at 20, and felt the same boredom I was burdened with here during his Belle de Jour (1967).  I realize that what Buñuel was doing in his time was revolutionary, but from the viewpoint of a contemporary audience I don’t think that some of his most acclaimed works say anything much at all.  He may have originated ideas, but many of them have been so thoroughly rehashed since that they’ve lost almost all of their appeal.  I realize that this is how many typical contemporary film fans treat anything made before Star Wars (1977), but in the case of most Buñuel film’s I feel that this criticism is legitimate.  I love films from the golden age of Hollywood and feel that in many ways they trump modern movies, but most classics have been dubbed so, and thus survive, because they express a joy of cinema that is absent from many of Buñuel’s works.

            Still, I can’t say that I’ve hated everything I’ve seen from Buñuel.  I recently saw his final film, That Obscure Object of Desire (1977), which like Tristana stars Fernando Rey, and thought it to be a moving examination of the way men wish to possess women, and the way women resist.  This is much of the same theme of Tristana, and I can’t help but question whether Buñuel returned to this type of material because he felt he’d missed the mark with the earlier film.  I doubt that this was the case, as possession was a theme the director dealt with frequently, but I’m still inclined to wonder. 

           

            Tristana is a simple enough story.  The title character, played by the beautiful Catherine Deneuve, finds herself under the guardianship of Don Lope (Rey) after the death of her mother.  He acts as a father figure toward her, until he’s overwhelmed by her beauty.  He seduces her, but carefully explains that she, like he, is free to love whomever she wishes.  Tristana falls for the young artist Horacio, much to the chagrin of the older Don Lope.  She leaves Lope for a time to be with the painter, but asks to return to his home when she is diagnosed with a cancerous tumor.  She wants to die in his house, reminded of the comfort she once knew there as a girl.  Don Lope is overjoyed.  After an operation saves Tristana’s life but leaves her an amputee, she stays with Lope, living in his home but refusing his advances.  Through years of subtle cruelty she watches his life fade away.

            Deneuve is effective here as always, but as with Belle de Jour and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion  (1965) she plays a character that is so cold that she’s unlikable, particularly in the film’s later stages.  Obviously this is what Buñuel wanted, and it is a bold choice for any actress, particularly one so lovely, to habitually choose such roles.  However, I prefer Deneuve in her lighter roles in the Jacques Demy musicals of the 1960s.  Yes, it’s easier to like the pretty girl when she plays the flirt, but that’s how it goes.  I applaud Catherine Deneuve for her career choices, and for almost her entire canon of work, but her emotional distance here makes Tristana a tough watch.

Language: Spanish

Runtime: 95 Minutes

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

95: The Ear (a.k.a. Ucho – original Czech title)

            Though Karel Kachyna’s The Ear was produced in 1970, I learned from the IMDb that it didn’t see a major release until almost 1990.  Watching the film it’s easy to see why.  The dialogue and story here add up to a criticism of the soviet government and portray paranoia about that government’s power.  Certainly this alone limited the film’s capacity to be shown in Eastern bloc countries, but I’m not quite sure how Western audiences would have taken to this film either.  The Ear has a unique blend of style and script that in a retrospective pitch could aptly be described as Hitchcock meets Antonioni; a combination that works here, but might not have been palatable to mass audiences in 1970.

            The story centers on Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohatý), a deputy minister in the Prague government, and his quick-tempered wife, Anna (Jirina Bohdalová).  The two arrive home late from a government cocktail party to find that they’ve locked themselves out of their gated home.  After fumbling about to get into the garden they begin to pick at each other, arguing about the minutia that inevitably invades movie marriages.  She blames him for locking them out as he claims that she forgot the keys.  When they turn up in the back door, it’s hardly funny to either of them.  Also less than amusing is the fact that the power in their home is out, but oddly enough the neighbors seem to have light.  Anna tries to lighten her own mood by hitting the bottle, but Ludvik starts to connect puzzle pieces in his mind.  Who were the men lurking about outside the garden?  Why were he and Anna chauffeured home in a ministry car?  Why was his boss absent from the party?

            In his mind, Ludvik toils over a possible infraction; anything that could cause his department to cleanse itself of less than loyal comrades.  He warns Anna that they could be under surveillance, the all-hearing ear of the title.  Flippant and drunk, she chastises him for his suspicions and for forgetting their anniversary, but he is undeterred.  He begins to burn documents in the toilet, hoping to purge any evidence that he supported his supervisor’s policies.  For the first half of The Ear, Kachyna dances back and forth across the thin line between drama and suspense, mixing the finest elements of 1960s Italian cinema with a hint of a taught Hollywood thriller.  This is the film’s strength, and it contains enough twists to keep audiences guessing, employing a particularly effective faux relief sequence at its center.

            Structurally, the picture relies heavily on flashbacks to the party that, while confusing at first, break up and then reestablish the tension as the couple bickers.  What becomes evident throughout the film’s packed runtime of just over 90 minutes is that despite their cruelty to one another, Ludvik and Anna care deeply about their love.  This yields some touching moments toward the picture’s conclusion as the sun rises; moments that remind us that we always hurt the ones we love the most.  What’s shocking is that these small gestures turn up in film with such heavy political overtones.  The twist at the movie’s conclusion both confirms and negates all of the couple’s paranoia, but the humor of its irony probably wouldn’t have played in 1970.

            In a time when the threat of total nuclear war was a daily reality, the domestic instability of soviet cabinet members, and of the government itself, could have spelled apocalyptic destruction.  Indeed, The Ear is a film that, like Dr. Strangelove (1964), becomes funnier in retrospect because of the absolute absurdity of the cold war.  It’s also a film that more poignantly melds marital drama and Big Brother-esque paranoia than most contemporary big budget Hollywood movies.  In many latter-day pictures an element of relationship stress is slipped into scripts to artificially add dimension to a character, a last-minute ploy to attract a female audience.  Here the relationship is the center of the film; essential to its mood and the primary dramatic focus.  In the Hollywood movie the thriller element would be heavy-handed.  Here it is played down, used as a cloud hanging over the head of the principal characters.

Language: Czech

Runtime: 94 minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

96: Deep End

In my research as I’ve begun to work on my last two posts, I’ve come across at least some comparison between both The Heartbreak Kid (1972; #97) and Deep End (1970) to The Graduate (1967).  Throw in the fact that before that I reviewed Dusan Makavejev’s W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) and it’s understandable that I might claim 1967 through 1972 to be the most sex-obsessed time in the history of cinema.  Of course such a claim is almost completely unfounded, as cinema has always held a fascination with sex, but you could see how I might get that idea considering the subject matter of Deep End.  Culturally, views about sex were rapidly changing at this time and this film seems to be one aimed almost directly at the young, male, pre-“Dark Side of the Moon” Pink Floyd fan set that was “concerned” with such changes.   

Deep End, directed by Jerzy Skolimowski, follows the young Mike (John Moulder-Brown), a fifteen year-old who’s just left school.  He finds work in an East London public bathhouse, but his attention is more fixated on the spunky Susan (Jane Asher), who shows him the ropes, than on his attendant duties.  She informs him early on that he’s likely to garner some tips from older women looking to use their imaginations, and that she’ll gladly float him any such customers.  Somehow it takes Mike longer than it should to realize that Susan supplements her income in the same fashion, with a little extra thrown in from time to time.  When the two discuss sex she pegs him for the virgin that he is, but is kind and doesn’t embarrass him.

Mike tries to act courageous around Susan, getting in fights at the bathhouse pool, but he’s put off when he sees her necking with a customer during a break.  He seems to suffer from a hint of that same condition Ebert finds in all of Scorsese’s work, Freud’s Madonna/Whore complex.  He’s appalled by the fact that she’s having sex with several men, especially after she tells him that she’s engaged, but he wouldn’t be quite so offended if she were having sex with him.  He’s turned on when he thinks of her in that way, but turned off by the fact that she enjoys it.  Moreover, it seems to Mike that she likes torturing him by flaunting her promiscuity.  For a time it begins to haunt him, and he takes to following Susan and her fiancé out to the seedy club and porno theatre district.  London swings in this film in a way that few others of the period portray.  In a memorable sequence Mike hides from police and a strip club’s owner, having stolen a life-sized cardboard cutout of what appears to be a scantily clad Susan from the establishment’s entrance.

Confronting Susan on the Underground with the display piece, he makes a scene.  After she refuses to stand for his judgments he takes the poster to the indoor pool at his work, striping down and swimming with the image of his unrequited love.  Days later he turns up at a sporting event he knows is being managed by one of Susan’s lovers.  Somehow he feels that by prevailing physically he can win her heart, or at least share her bed.  When he approaches Susan again she’s unwilling to discuss their situation, and when she punches Mike he loses a tooth.  She seems sorry for a fleeting moment until she realizes that she’s lost her engagement diamond in the struggle, dropping it into the snow.  Mike tries to regain her trust by helping to find the stone, gathering up piles of the accumulation in bags to be melted and yield the small rock.

He and Susan take the bags of snow to the emptied bathhouse pool and sit in the deep end, melting kettle after kettle and straining them through her stockings, hoping to catch the diamond.  What follows is an ending that combines revealed deceptions, sex, and violence in a manner other films might shy away from.  Resolution is rarely neither clean nor clear when it comes to sexual deceptions and Deep End recognizes that fact boldly.  Mike can never have Susan in the way he desires; she’ll never belong to him in the manner young boys dream about.  Viewed retrospectively I feel that Deep End is more critical of the sexual revolution than many of its contemporaries, indeed in the same manner as The Graduate.  While this film is not the masterpiece that Mike Nichols’ picture is, it does reveal the same truths; that sex can be tawdry and unforgiving, and that it always breeds obsession.  

Language: English

Runtime: 88 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com*

Grade: 3 Hats Off

*While I don’t believe this film has ever garnered major critical attention in the U.S., it’s popular enough in Southeast Asia to garner an oriental subtitled version on the net.             

97: The Heartbreak Kid

            Every so often a film causes you to reexamine your thoughts on an actor.  I’d never given much thought at all to Charles Grodin before reviewing Real Life (1979; #124) for this blog, and probably knew him best as the stodgy and beleaguered dad from the sequel-friendly family film Beethoven (1992).  His work in that film* is likely less than memorable for anyone who wasn’t five years old in 1992, but upon seeing his performance in Elaine May’s The Heartbreak Kid (1972) I was compelled to take a look at his filmography on the IMDb.   Scrolling through I found that Grodin has performed in a number of forgettable films, and has roles that are forgotten, by me at least, in some rather memorable ones.  I can’t recall him in Rosemary’s Baby (1969) as a doctor, or in the underrated but flawed Catch 22 (1970).  In both cases I remember the role, but not Grodin as the actor.  1994s Clifford, possibly the worst use of Martin Short’s or anyone else’s talents ever, jumps off the webpage, as does the 1976 remake of King Kong, as an example of Grodin’s poor career choices. 

            Regardless of the somewhat suspect work of Grodin’s agent and publicist over time, he’s certainly good here in May’s 1972 picture.  He plays a young New York Jew, Lenny Cantrow, who’s just been married to his longtime sweetheart, Lila (Jeannie Berlin).  The problem is that as soon as the two hit the road for their Florida honeymoon, Lenny begins to realize all of the things that Lila does that drive him nuts.  She sings in the car, she eats like a pig, and she talks during sex.  Lenny tries to be patient, but it’s clear he’s having second thoughts.  Things get complicated when he hits the beach for some alone time in Miami, only to meet Kelly (Cybill Shepherd), the blonde sexpot of his dreams.

            For three days he makes excuses to Lila as to why she has to stay in the hotel room while he goes out, and one of the treats of the film is watching Grodin’s character teeter on the edge of madness as his stories get more and more wild.  Finally, he’s had enough and he decides that he has to leave Lila for Kelly.  However, Kelly’s domineering dad (Eddie Albert) is none too eager to embrace his daughter’s new friend.  Thinking back on the middle third of the film it’s difficult to decide which scene is funnier; Lenny’s declaration of his intentions to Kelly’s father and simultaneous confession that he’s on his honeymoon, or the dinner at which he demands pecan pie for Lila after he’s asked for a divorce and ruined her appetite. 

            He eventually follows Kelly back to frozen Minnesota, hoping to win her father over and consummate the relationship formed on the beach.  But when he arrives he finds that she might not be as interested as she let on.  The film’s strength is that Grodin is allowed to embarrass himself to the fullest extent of each and every situation, even when his schemes pan out in his favor.  The Heartbreak Kid is a perfect example of a director’s trust for their material and the actors reciting it.  May makes the wise decision to shoot many of the film’s best scenes in unbroken takes.  Neil Simon’s dialogue, based on a story by Bruce Jay Friedman, is allowed to breathe and take on much of its comedic affect in Grodin’s competent hands.   As minutes go by without cuts, tension builds naturally and Lenny dodges and weaves his way through many an awkward conversation.   An edit in these instances would relieve all audience anxiety, but would shortchange the overall effect of the picture.

            Writing about The Heartbreak Kid, I’m not quite sure why it isn’t a better known film.  I’ve been searching for it for some time now after neglecting to get to it before it was taken off Netflix.com streaming options.  I’m not sure that it’s even available on DVD.  It seems to be a fine example of early 1970s comedy, employing the talents of Simon and Cybill Shepherd just as both were becoming superstars.  My only guess as to why this movie has faded from popular memory is that both Grodin and May went on to more suspect work.  They reunited for the Warren Beatty vehicle Heaven Can Wait (1978), but May never directed again after helming the legendary failure Ishtar (1987), in which Grodin also appeared.  Still, this film is a winner; a comic gem.  For some reason it was remade in 2007 by the Farrelly brothers with Ben Stiller in the Grodin role. The rehash garnered little critical reaction.  Grodin was perfect for this role the first time around and the film deserves to be remembered for many of its performances.  Both Eddie Albert and Jeannie Berlin (cast by her directing mother May) received deserved Oscar nods for their work.                   

Language: English

Runtime: 106 Minutes

Available @ Google.video.com  

Grade: 3 Hats Off          

* Beethoven also contains some forgotten roles from no less than Oliver Platt, Stanley Tucci, David Duchovny, and Patricia Heaton.  In an ironic twist, Doris Roberts plays Grodin’s mother here.

98: W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism

            What a weird little movie.  Roger Ebert noted when he chose to include a review of this film in his “Great Movies” series, that he expected there to be some backlash.  Whether said backlash occurred I don’t know, but watching the film it’s clear to see why he was so speculative.  Dusan Makavejev’s W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism (1971) is without a doubt one of the oddest film’s I’ve encountered; a semi-spoof documentary on experimental psychologist Wilhelm Reich (the W.R. of the title) combined with a fictional narrative concerning Yugoslavian sexual liberation.  Yes, you read that right.

            Reich was a European scientist on the run from Hitler for his pro-communist ideals.  After claiming to have discovered a molecule called the “orgone”, a unit of sexual pleasure, he sought asylum in the U.S. when Stalin suspected him of anti-communist behavior.  Somewhere in between switching political ideologies, Reich developed the Accumulator, a wooden box lined with metallic plating that he claimed stimulated orgone movement in beings who sat inside it.  Not surprisingly, the psychologist, whose practices encouraged people to moan and gyrate in large group gatherings, was dismissed as a quack.  His activities attracted the eyes of HUAC and he was jailed for the remainder of his life as the U.S. government burned almost the entirety of his published works. 

            These segments comprise the first third of W.R. before giving way to footage of Tuli Kupferberg, the lead singer of the New York rock group The Fugs, dressing in paramilitary gear and carrying a faux M16 to march in front of NYC landmarks while the band’s song “Kill for Peace” mocks U.S. action in Vietnam.  Kupferberg’s actions draw attention from police, who aren’t quite sure what to do with him, especially after he begins to simulate masturbation with the barrel of the riffle.  There’s also some footage of transsexual icon Jackie Curtis, explaining her sexual inadequacies as a male, thrown in for good measure. 

            The documentary elements of the film fade for a time, giving way to a Serbo-Croatian farce about two young women attempting to find sexual and political freedom.  They both see a connection between sex and politics, but each is primarily interested in a different end of the spectrum; sexual liberation through politics and political liberation through sex.  They team up despite their differing goals, convinced they can find their own brand of communism and their own type of orgasm by seducing a Russian-born figure skater, a genuine soviet.  This all goes horribly wrong for the more politically-minded of the revolutionaries when, after the sex, the skater becomes aggressive and violent.  In a late scene, the woman’s undaunted talking head, severed by an ice skate, continues with her political rhetoric.

            What does this all mean?  I have no idea.  Makavejev claimed that his film was the actualization and execution of the montage theories of Eisenstein, and that the Russian master failed to use them to their humorous potential.  He was certainly an iconoclastic director, and if you view W.R. as his commentary on the absolute chaos of the political upheaval of the late 1960s it makes sense that it could make sense…if that means anything.  It seemed to make sense to the administration of Harvard, who hired Makavejev on as a professor.  

W.R. closes after a psychedelic “star wipe” obscures a procedure of plaster casting, a countercultural trend of the day.  The graphic was added to a version released by the BBCs Channel 4 that Makavejev altered himself.  While, this scene is probably the most graphic in the film without the edit, it’s better with the change, simply because it makes the sequence, and thus the film, even weirder.      

Language: English/Serbo-Croatian

Runtime: 84 Minutes

Available @ vimeo.com

Grade: 2 Hats Off

99: The Ladies Man

            It’s always a surprise to people when they first hear that Jerry Lewis is beloved as a near god in France.  For some reason, a culture that is often portrayed as snooty and disregarding finds Lewis’ particular brand of goofiness to be the funniest material on the planet.  It’s true.  It’s also true that Lewis, though not exactly a forgotten talent, has never quite been given the credit that he deserves as an artist.  As both a performer and a director Lewis shines in his 1961 film, The Ladies Man, and it was while constructing this picture that Lewis made one of his finest contributions to the industry.  Still a novice behind the camera, Lewis wanted to make sure that he was getting each element of the intricate set in his shots.  Not wanting to wait for dailies to confirm that he had his footage, he attached a video device to run in tandem with his 35mm camera, effectively creating the now common “video assist” relay system. 

            Looking at The Ladies Man it’s easy to see why such a system was necessary.  Its four story “dollhouse style” set and intricate camera moves must have been more than difficult to coordinate.  As the 1001 text points out, this element of coordination is on full display in the film’s best sequence, as Lewis’ heartbroken Herbert H. Heebert finds himself awakening in a boarding house full of young women.  This shot alone is worth a viewing of the film, as it weaves its way through the morning routines of more than 20 girls.  It’s the key visual moment in a plot that is otherwise ridiculous, but what else would you expect from Jerry Lewis?

            H.H. Heebert graduates from the junior college in his small town, ready to take on the world and marry his longtime sweetheart.  But right after the commencement he spots her smooching someone else.  Devastated, he tells his parents (his mother is also played by Lewis) that he’s leaving for the big city.  Once in town and having sworn off women, he searches desperately for a place to live that isn’t owned by a beauty.  Finally he comes across a boarding house run by two older, modest ladies.  He signs on, but the following morning is shocked to find that all of the tenants in the considerably sized building are pretty bachelorettes.

            Guilted into staying he becomes a sort of jack of all trades, fixing the elevator and picking up dry-cleaning.  From this point on the plot devolves into various set-ups for classic Lewis gags, with the entertainment value only moderately staggered.  It’s basically what one would expect from such a film, and it doesn’t try too hard to rise above that standard.  There are a few quirky and inexplicable sequences, but Lewis’ presence holds them together just well enough as he battles a ferocious dachshund and swarms of needy women.  A contrived ending, in which Heebert realizes that he likes being needed as much as the girls like to order him around, is tacked on, and though it misses the mark it doesn’t really seem to matter by that point.

            The Ladies Man is a visually arresting film from a cinematography standpoint, with camera moment and mise-en-scene as intricate as anything this side of Busby Berkley.  It’s difficult to balance this aspect sometimes with the desire to keep your eyes on Lewis, seeming as always to just be acting silly for the sake of it and selling it with all he’s got.  His comedy was never highbrow until Martin Scorsese came along, and it never had to be.  He was just a nutty American guy doing whatever he could to make people laugh.  I think French people like him so much because they see us all like that.

Language: English

Runtime: 95 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off

100: Letter from an Unknown Woman

            I knew almost immediately that I liked Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948).  The film’s opening shot establishes a primary location and a mood that’s pure Max Ophüls’ (credited here as “Max Opuls”), whose ability within the subgenre of melodrama is almost unparalleled.  Yes, I’ve noted my distaste for this type of movie in the past, but in Ophüls’ capable hands drama actually feels as if it’s bigger than life, rather than just being projected that way.  This is the last of his four entries on the 1001 list that I had left to view, and in a way I’m saddened by that fact.  This piece is better, much better, than his effort from one year later, The Reckless Moment (1949; #108), but not quite the work that his The Earrings of Madame de… (1953) is.  Still, it’s a fantastic film, and one that throughout, expresses the beauties of cinema.

            That opening shot descends upon the dark exterior of a European apartment as a carriage pulls to its door.  Text on screen reads “Vienna – about 1900.”  Rain pours as drunken pianist Stephan (Louis Jourdan) exits the coach, questioned by his friends about his appearance at a duel early the following day.  “I don’t mind so much being killed, but you know how hard it is for me to get up in the morning” he responds slyly, with only a hint of melancholy.  Ascending the stars to his rooms he is greeted by his mute butler who presents him with a letter that was delivered during the night.

            Planning to avoid the duel, Stephan orders the butler to pack his things, but his attention is quickly turned to the letter and its opening words, “By the time you read this I may be dead.”  The continued contents of the note unfold in flashback as a female voiceover (Joan Fontaine) divulges the secrets of her longstanding love for Stephan.  As a child, its author, Lisa, lived in the apartment across from his.  Though he took little notice of her, she became wholly infatuated with him.  She stayed up nights, listening to him play the piano and compose his music, imagining being held in his arms.  She snuck into his apartment once, simply to be near his things.

            When she grew her mother’s marriage moved her away from Vienna, but her infatuation only deepened.  Though she was courted by a man from a good military family, her heart always belonged to him.  She returned to the city, just to be near him, never knowing if he even knew she existed.  Almost by chance, Stephan approached her once, when she intended to be watching him from afar.  The two had a passionate one night stand; one of many for him, but a lone instance for her.  Though he promised to find her after a brief business trip, his call never came. 

            Ten years later, having bourn his son and raised him alone, she was married to a prominent member of Vienna society.  Unrecognized, she met Stephan once again at the opera.  Still feeling the bond between them and a love that never ceased, she almost fell victim to his charms again, until she knew that, for a second time, she would be just another forgotten conquest.  Devastated and ashamed, she sends their son away for a time, but on the train they both catch an epidemic of typhus.  The letter Stephan reads has been composed next to his dying son, and its words end abruptly followed by a note.  A nun has written that the letter’s author expired, whispering his name with her last breath.

            Letter from an Unknown Woman is a film of great themes, returned to often by Ophüls.  White flowers appear throughout the narrative, seeming to symbolize Lisa herself, and the repeated use of a set of stairs to highlight the separation of the two primary characters is prominent.  One such scene stands out, as Lisa has returned to Stephan’s apartment to confess her love, only to see him ascending the semi-spiraled void with another woman. 

            As well as being visually arresting, the film also must have been quite controversial for its time.  Not so subtle playboy antics, adultery, and a child born out of wedlock weren’t everyday fare for 1940s motions pictures, especially Hollywood star vehicles.  And oh how those stars shine here.  Jourdan, who worked steadily into the early 1990s, never had a better performance that I can recall, and Fontaine is absolutely enchanting as Lisa.  This is the type of film that actors must have prayed for, with its ironies and its devastating love story.  No wonder that it remains Fontaine’s favorite.

        

Language: English

Runtime: 86 Minutes

Available @ Youtube.com

Grade: 3.5 Hats Off