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

Halfway Home: A Recap with 100 Films to go

            I’ve viewed this most recent batch of pictures faster than I tackled the first 50.  I’m glad to be ahead of the pace I’ve set for myself, but I know that it only gets tougher from here on in.  There just isn’t an easy way to view most of the films I have left.  If I absolutely run out of options I’ll post the remaining titles here and solicit any suggestions or hints as to where to find them.  Still, though what lies ahead of me will undoubtedly be difficult, my resolve is again strengthened by reaching this milestone.  I’m also happy to reflect and realize that these last 50 titles were better than the first.  Here’s a recap of the best and worst.  My thanks as always to any readers sticking with this blog.

The Five Best of the Last 50:

1.      A Matter of Life and Death

2.      Shanghai Express

3.      The Brave Heart Will Take the Bride

4.      David Holzman’s Diary

5.      Ariel

The Five Worst of the Last 50:

1.      Caravaggio

2.      Flaming Creatures

3.      Vinyl

4.      The mirror
5.      Yeelen