42: The Puppetmaster (a.k.a. Xi meng ren sheng—Original Mandarin title)

            There just isn’t much that’s compelling about Hsiao-hsien Hou’s The Puppetmaster (1993).  An attempt to chronicle the Japanese occupation of Taiwan through the story of one Taipei man’s experiences during the period, the film fails to make either the political conflict or the man himself particularly engaging.  Character’s throughout the film are difficult to distinguish amongst the myriad of stories, both narrated and presented, and the occupation never seems to weigh too heavily on the primary protagonist, despite the seemingly considerable losses he faces.

            The man is Tianlu Li, a real figure who survived the lengthy period of Japanese control from 1895 to 1945 partly due to his status as a vaunted puppetry performer.  The genuine Li narrates much of the action, even appearing onscreen sporadically to recap an event in its entirety.  This narrative strategy works only to a point, because it leaves viewers to question why some stories garnered cinematic recreation, while other simply received the minstrel touch.  Both can be effective in their way, but neither particularly shines here.

            Li’s stories detail some of the major events of his life, beginning with his birth, but the narrative flow is uneven and often disorienting.  Major breaks in the story yield lengthy performances that add little to the film’s arch, and often severely alter the tone of the picture.  Perhaps Hou intended this effect for the sake of juxtaposition, but the tactic was completely lost on me.  Li’s stories also have the tendency to neglect important events, such as his marriage, and the birth of several children, but devote great time to events that would seem to be of lesser narrative merit.  Again, this may have been a directorial technique lost on this viewer, or perhaps a cultural barrier that I’m unaware of.

            In either case, the bulk of the film revolves around conversations with various relatives that only sometimes concern Li himself and/or the reigning political troubles.  An early scene does detail the Japanese military’s instruction that native males must cut off their distinctive “pigtails,” but the issues of the international strife all but disappear for a solid hour thereafter.  In this regard the film completely fails to effectively balance the political context with the character elements.  Likewise, characters are so vaguely drawn that rarely do they surpass in title their function in Li’s life, and thus the film is peppered with an endless string of “aunties,” “stepfathers,” and “grandmothers.”

            There is a distance between the audience and the characters of The Puppetmaster that Hou never seems to close; a shame really as there are some truly beautiful images in this film.  They are few and far between, but the well lit landscapes of the picture are quite lovely.  However, much of the film is engulfed in the shadows, and equally lacks a narrative guiding light.  By the movie’s conclusion I felt little connection to Li, and had gained no further understanding of the occupation, and thus I walked away dissatisfied.

Language: Mandarin (primary)/Japanese

Runtime: 142 minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 1.5 Hats Off

43: Les Vampires

            There’s no doubt that Louis Feuillade’s 1915 serial epic Les Vampires is one of the most daunting tasks facing anyone trying to tackle the 1001 list.  Listed at various lengths that differ between sources, this ten part silent feature runs at least 399 minutes, or just shy of seven hours.  Obviously, you’ve got to be committed to the task to take on this movie.  However, I found that during the roughly twelve hours (including breaks) that it took me view the picture, I was rewarded in ways I had not anticipated.  It had been almost 9 months since I last reviewed a silent film, and though I’ve seen several in the interim, I was struck once again as I prepared to write this review by the power that these films have.  To watch a silent film, particularly works from 1915 or earlier, is to watch the language of cinema being born.  Why does a dissolve mean what it means?  These earlier pioneers had to figure that out for themselves, and to view the results of their experiments can be a joy.

            It would be useless to attempt to describe the plot of Les Vampires, as it contains so many twists, turns, minor characters, and major developments that any such venture would be futile.  It should suffice to write that it concerns the exposing of a secret society of the criminal underground by a Parisian investigative reporter named Philippe Guérande (Édouard Mathé).  Throughout the ten episodes, Guérande plunges into the depths of “The Vampires” to discover that their power and controlling influence goes far beyond even what some of the members are aware of.  He exposes and disposes of several of the groups “Grand Masters,” but perpetually squares off against the cunning and elusive Irma Vep (see how those letters can be rearranged), a sinister henchwoman if there ever was one.  Vep is played by the acrobat Musidora, who performed all of her own dangerous stunts for the film, and garnered considerable stardom from the role. 

            The lengthy cast of characters spends much of the film’s considerable runtime chasing one another across Paris rooftops and through deserted allies, and while these scene to become a bit tedious, they are also notably fun to watch.  There’s even an early moving traintop scuffle.  Interspersed with these chases are a number of instances in which characters, both good and bad and for various reasons, find themselves stuffed in a trunk or locked in a safe.  Yes, this too gets a bit tiresome and confusing, but these gags do carry much of the film’s suspense—the 1001 text is quick to point out that Feuillade didn’t quite understand how to employ a cliffhanger.     

            Still, Les Vampires, with its labyrinth of trap doors and secret compartments is visually and conceptually ahead of its time.  Some of the sets give James Bond villains’ lairs a run for their money, and watching a caper that’s nearly a hundred years old provides a great deal of context for the crime genre.  Consider this next time you’re watching a contemporary police procedural.  Look at how often the plot relies on the use of cells phones in a film like The Departed (2006).  Now consider that not all of the primary sets in Les Vampires even have telephones, and observe closely how the phone conversation that is included in the film is shot.  Characters split the screen, as they do often in 1950s films, but there is also a third shot of a bridge that occupies the middle of the frame.  Both telephones and movies were new enough in 1915 that a shot had to be included that dictated the spacial relationship of the characters who were speaking over the wire.  That’s the development of cinema.  We don’t need a third image filling the screen between Leo and Matty Damon because we all know what is being implied.  1915 audiences wouldn’t have had a clue as to what to think of a cell phone.

            Les Vampires really is a film of a different time.  It’s a movie of calling cards and gentlemen in hats, and character’s have names like Venomous and Satanas  Though perhaps not as thrilling to contemporary audiences as it was to those of its day, this movie undoubtedly influenced the development of the thriller genre.  I can’t say I’m eager to restart this movie again anytime soon, but I can say that I enjoyed the seven hours I spent with it.  The English-language graphics version that is currently up on Youtube isn’t seamless, but it’s a damn fine effort.

Language: Silent

Runtime: 399 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off  

44: The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (a.k.a. Il Giardino del Finzi-Contini—Original Italian title)

            Sometimes during this quest to see all of these films aspects of the viewing that are beyond the control of the movie’s director affect that viewing nonetheless.  Down to the last 44 titles, I’ve been forced to make a few (and in context, minor) sacrifices.  I’ve had to watch deteriorating VHS copies of some of  these hard to find films, and in many cases that means altered “full screen” projections and no audio options.  Thus, if dubbed dialogue is my only option then dubbed dialogue I shall endure.  Though I hate to say it, sometimes these alterations might actually help me to sit through these titles, as I’m more alert while trying to imagine how the full 1.85:1 aspect ratio cinematography might look.  On the other hand, these alterations can be distractions that pull my focus away from characters and narrative. 

Such was the case with Vittorio De Sica’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1970), where I was unable to avoid the thought that the 4:3 ratio and dubbing bastardized the film a bit.  Eventually, this distraction achieved a second level manifestation, and it began to take a concerted amount of effort not to wonder, while still watching, what the most heinous crime against cinema in the form of alteration  could be.  Surely any serious film lover would agree that colorization, that awful trend of the early 90s, is a sin above others.  But is it worse than say, the gross reduction of a 4 hour cut of a film to a more theatre friendly 2 hour version?  Does it matter that the director will undoubtedly then release his cut of the film on DVD?  What about alternate endings?  Are they offensive slights against the theatrical version or just fun options to find as Easter eggs?  Ultimately these sins, or potential sins, are in the eye of the beholder (viewer), and will affect them only to the extent that they wish to care.  I suppose that means that all sins of alteration are relative…accept for colorization, that’s just evil Ted Turner.

As far as plot is concerned, Finzi-Continis is short on it.  Like so many films based on novels— in this case the work of Giorgio Bassani—it is built on theme much more so than story.  On a textual level, the movie is about Giorgio, a young middle class student who is beginning to rise in social stature in 1930s Italy.  He plays tennis at the beautiful estate of the Finzi-Continis, a wealthy family whose daughter, Micòl, he’s always been sweet on.  Though the two have much in common and share a fondness for remembering the times in which their childhoods collided, they are nonetheless separated by class.  Giorgio’s father is skeptical about his son’s interactions with the affluent family, and warns his son that the Finzi-Continis are “not our kind of people.”  For her part, Micòl seems to reject Giorgio for a number of reasons, but all of which she keeps to herself. 

Still, there is one connection between Giorgio and Micòl that cannot be denied.  Both are Jewish, and as such Giorgio feels a sacred relation to her.  This however means little to Micòl, and she seems to toy with his affections more than embrace them, until the shifting political climate pushes them somewhat closer together.  The new fascism of Italy imposes laws that restrict Jews from certain activities and practices, but for the most part the Finzi-Continis’ money keeps them above reproach. Giorgio deals with these restrictions more directly and is marginally interested in politics, but neither one seems to fully grasp the severity of the turning tides. 

Throughout the film both characters make choices in their relationships with friends that alienate them from one another and distract them from the coming atrocities of the war.  As I mentioned before, this is a film that plays like a novel and it’s difficult to not think of it within that context.  Perhaps I would have been more engaged by this picture if I’d seen it in its full widescreen presentation and original audio Italian dialogue.  After all, it does have some awe inspiring views of Italy, not the least of which come from within the garden of the title.  As it was, I found it to be bland outside of these occasional visual elements.

Language: English Dubbed/Original: Italian

Runtime: 94 Minutes

Grade: 2 Hats Off

45: Shame (a.k.a. Skammen - Original Swedish title)

            Only two directors, Alfred Hitchcock (with 18) and Howard Hawks (with 11), have more titles included on the 1001 list than Ingmar Bergman.  His total of ten entries surpasses those of Kubrick (with 9), Bunuel (also 9), and Scorsese (with 8), and blows Fellini (7) and Kurosawa (6) out of the water.  For the last 55 years, Bergman has been a notable namedrop of world cinema fans, and it is perhaps for this reason that his films are so often associated with film snobbery.  Bergman films are prototypes for the kind of movies that characters in contemporary American comedies bash as “artsy,” perhaps groaning over a reportedly wasted afternoon spent at some art house cinema that they were dragged to by a former love interest (…or something like that).   

Admittedly, some Bergman films are not without pretension (notably his over praised purported masterpiece The Seventh Seal; 1957), and they aren’t likely to appeal to the audiences who crave car chases and shootouts.  Rather, Bergman, who died in 2007, made pictures about human interactions, and the pain we cause one another with words, spoken and unspoken, and actions, taken and not taken.  The action for Bergman was all in the emotion.  Many of his titles have become available to American home video audiences through releases from the illustrious, but sometimes ostentatious Criterion Collection, a fact that has undoubtedly spurred on more accusations of snob appeal.  However, much to my surprise, his Shame (1968) has not received the Criterion treatment.  What a tragedy, as it is one of his finest works.

Bergman regulars Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow play a married couple – former musicians – who are forced by the realities of war to have taken up berry farming.  They turn marginal prophets and live a mostly secluded life on an island off the Swedish mainland.  They have their problems – she wants children, but he isn’t ready – but are mostly happy.  They celebrate being able to afford a bottle of wine, and they make love in the evenings.  Then their lives, already interrupted by the war, are turned upside down when the conflict literally comes to their front yard.  They are harassed and abused by soldiers on both sides of the argument, and they find that their relative comfort can be taken away in an instant.  As the life they’ve built together begins to unravel so does their relationship, particularly when their loyalties to ideals and to one another come into question.

These are clearly two people who love each other, but war exacerbates every issue between them.  The performances by the leads are stellar, in that they are layered so well.  Behind every declaration of love there is an ounce of malice.  Within every verbal lashing there is the hint of frustration that only comes from love.  Von Sydow and Ullmann had worked with Bergman so much by the time that they shot this picture that it is hard to imagine them giving him anything less than exactly what he wanted.  Still, Bergman was disappointed with the film, feeling that the script he’d written was uneven.  He’d undertaken the project to challenge himself, wanting to confront the issue of war (to my knowledge, completely fabricating a contemporary Swedish civil war) as well as its inevitable effect on relationships. Indeed, no other Bergman picture displays the literal violence contained herein. 

I referenced a Roger Ebert anecdote about the lack of violence in Bergman films in my review of his Winter Light (1963; #179).  I didn’t enjoy Shame quite as much as that picture, but I feel that the director was being too hard on himself in not being proud of this one.  There are other, Criterion certified, films in his oeuvre which I believe it surpasses in quality, and it’s inclusion in the 1001 tome certainly isn’t just a matter of padding Bergman’s stats.

Language: Swedish

Runtime: 103 Minutes

Available* @Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

     

*hidden well

46: Passenger (a.k.a. Pasazerka—Original Polish title; a.k.a. Русский Перевод—Russian title)

That Andrzej Munk’s Passenger (1963) makes the 1001 list as an “unfinished” feature is somewhat of a remarkable feat.  In many cases with list films I’ve been compelled to watch both theatrical releases and later released director’s cuts, but it’s my assumption that the book is closed on Munk’s film, as he died in a tragic accident while filming the project.  The footage he had completed was then compiled, and supplemented with still images that were shot and edited together with the existing material by Witold Lesiewicz.

           
            The result is an eerie and odd movie, no doubt, but it’s easy to see why Lesiewicz felt compelled to finish the project, as Munk’s motion footage, which comprises the story within the frame narrative created by the stills, is so captivating.  A wife, Liza (Aleksandra Slaska), is returning to Germany for the first time, years after the conclusion of WWII.  On the ocean liner sailing for mainland Europe, she spots a woman who brings up a well of emotions within her.  The fellow passenger resembles a former inmate at Auschwitz, where Liza served as a guard during the fighting. 

            She is moved enough by the sight of the woman to tell her husband more about her experiences than she has ever divulged before, and conveys the story of Marta (Anna Ciepielewska), a political prisoner with whom she had a special relationship.  According to her story, Marta served on her prisoner detail, whose duty it was to catalogue incoming items that were confiscated from Jews as they were marched to the gas chambers.  Marta had served as her assistant, and Liza felt that the two had a bond that surpassed traditional guard/prisoner relations.  She even arranged for Marta to have visits with her fiancé, also a prisoner at the notorious death camp.  However, she was unable to save the two lovers when they were cited for infractions, and both to her knowledge were killed by a firing squad.

            This explanation satisfies Liza’s husband and justifies her reaction to the woman, and he accepts his wife’s role in the war as an evil of a time passed.  However, privately Liza is forced to deal with her emotions by recounting to herself, and to the audience, a more accurate depiction of the events within the camp involving Marta.  Much of her recollection focuses on her conscious desire to psychologically control and dominate her inmate assistant.  This battle of intellects and wills constitutes the primary dramatic tension within the inner story, which is also peppered with the atrocities that perpetually surround the two women as their relationship grows and shifts.  At times Marta seems to genuinely rely on Liza, but is it only because she wishes to avoid the ultimate horrors of the camp?

            What makes this narrative fascinating is that it focuses on the attempted domination of one specific “undesirable” by an SS officer, as opposed to the overarching elimination of 8 million people that was the “final solution.”  Steven Spielberg hit a similar note with his examination of the camp commandant infatuated by his Jewish maid in Schindler’s List (1993), but this relationship isn’t so much sexual as it is emotionally intimate.  The two women’s interactions, as well as the portrayal of the odd and torturous rituals that take place within the camp, give this film a unique place amongst pictures that focus on the holocaust.   

            As an unfinished work, there are more questions brought about by Passenger than answers.  Was the woman on the ship really Marta?  Could she have survived? Does this encounter reinitiate Liza’s political hatred?  Also to be questioned is the film’s artistic credibility.  Yes, it is an arresting picture that covers difficult subject matter in a unique way.  But would if have been canonized if Munk had finished it as he intended?  Do the open questions give it more weight?  It’s difficult to know whether the film would have been truly impressive were it not for the artistic compromises brought on my Munk’s death, which significantly alter its tone.

Language: Polish

Runtime: 62 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 2.5 Hats Off     

47: Lola

            The seminal films of the French New Wave are some of the most creative and beautiful pieces of cinema ever assembled.  This incredibly productive and progressive period yielded numerous films that I cannot bear the thought of never seeing again, and I find myself almost consistently impressed when I discover the wonders within the movement’s earliest offerings.  Jacques Demy’s Lola (1961) is no exception, and it also serves well in hinting at the treasures to come with his masterpiece The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).

            Demy’s film, dedicated in opening credit to Max Ophüls, begins mysteriously as an American convertible, driven by a rather cowboy-esque figure, cruises along the boardwalk of the coastal town of Nantes.  The cowboy appears only briefly in this opening sequence, but his presence is central to the remainder of the film, and his early presence sets the movie off.  Some critics feel that the plots and characters of the Nouvelle Vague are essentially interchangeable, and that the films overlap too much in theme.  While Roland, the central figure of Demy’s story, suffers from many of the same strains as other New Wave heroes, by comparison he is distinguishably plain, lacking the charisma of the typical Jean-Paul Belmondo role.  Perhaps this lack of charisma is why Demy chose instead to title the film for Roland’s love interest, the gorgeous cabaret dancer Lola (Anouk Aimée).  

            When the two characters meet after years apart, she recognizes him immediately, but he hesitates, almost struck by how beautiful she has become.  He’d thought of her only minutes before, but never was she so striking in his recollections.  She’s thought of him often too, but in her mind no man can replace her lost love, and the father of her child, Michel.  In this regard, comparison between Lola and Félicie, the protagonist of Eric Rohmer’s A Tale of Winter (1992; # 52), is unavoidable, and indeed both women are content to live out their lives waiting for the return of their former lover.  But where Félicie seemed to engage in sexual relationships out of a need for human contact, Lola finds joy in her trysts, even taking the occasional customer at the cabaret home with her.

            Roland spends much of the film hoping that Lola will show such kindness to him, and thinks that perhaps she may even be convinced to marry him.  They have a connection no doubt, but Roland has little to offer her but a friendly and familiar face.  He’s been fired from his job, and his prospects for finding any type of sustainable or legitimate work don’t seem very promising.  He’s intelligent enough, but lacks the responsibility necessary for any serious work.  The audience is given the sense that he’s read nearly everything in a local book shop, but that he could never be organized enough to manage such place.  There he meets a mother and her precocious teenage daughter, and volunteers an English dictionary to be loaned to the girl.  The mother hesitantly accepts the offer and tells him to come by their home with the book that night, perhaps with intentions peripheral to foreign language.

            What strikes me so much about this film is the interconnectedness of the characters.  They don’t feel forced together, as is the case with so many of the lesser hypertext movies of late, in which characters who were supposed to have nothing to do with one another somehow are drawn together in the end.  The plot of Lola feels legitimately coincidental, to the point where I was hoping for an ironic ending (of any kind) and not dreading foreseeable connections.  This is a strength of the script that is complemented by the cinematography of Raoul Coutard, who makes Nantes a city of dramatic angles and interlocking avenues in which this almost fairytale coincidence seems plausible.  Equal praise should go to Michel Lagrand, whose use of musical variations sets nearly every scene perfectly, with styles from Classical to Jazz.

            Lola was Demy’s first feature, and though he went on to make other good films, and the great Umbrellas, he never became a superstar of the New Wave like Godard, Truffaut, and Rohmer.  Instead he’s considered a part of the “left bank,” a group of directors whose films contributed to the movement, but didn’t necessarily define it.  Also in that group is his spouse Agnès Varda, whom he wed shortly after the release of Lola, and was married to until his death from AIDS 1990.  Of the Nouvelle Vague set he was the director perhaps most interested in the classic Hollywood style, and while visually Lola is pure New Wave, it does have the magical and dreamlike feel of old Hollywood woven within its narrative…”with a little sex in it” as John L. Sullivan said.

Language: French

Runtime: 90 Minutes

Available @Youtube.com

Grade: 3 Hats Off

48: Secret Beyond the Door (a.k.a. Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door – Onscreen title)

            There have been times throughout the process of writing this blog that I’ve neglected to take into account that movies are supposed to be fun.  Films can serve greater social and artistic purposes, but virtually everyone who comes to respect cinema in these terms initially goes to the movies because it is enjoyable.  The experience of seeing a great or good movie for the first time is, and should be, less about the process of evaluating camera angles and mise en scène, and more about the progression of becoming emotionally engaged in character and story.  In seeing these films and writing these reviews I’ve found that it’s usually the cinematic sludge that causes me to take specific notes, whereas the merits of the best films are easily recalled after the credits have rolled.  Such was the case with Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door (1948), a genre bending noir that has never quite found its deserved place amongst its director’s lauded canon.  

            The somewhat disorienting narrative focuses on Celia (Joan Bennett), a young and affluent New York socialite who takes a trip to Mexico after the death of her caretaking brother.  During the holiday she meets a charming but mysterious architect, Mark Lamphere (Michael Redgrave), and falls madly in love.  Within weeks the two are married.  All is well for a time as they remain in Mexico for their honeymoon, but Celia begins to detect anger in Mark that she cannot describe, nor discern its coming.  She questions her analytical thoughts, believing that she’s just paranoid, and dismisses an incident as a strange coincidence. 

            Things however do not improve when she returns with Mark to the U.S., coming to live with him in his rural estate.  She learns from his sister, who runs the house, that Mark was married before, that he has an impertinent son, and that his first wife died tragically after they had separated.  What’s more, the constant presence in the house of Mark’s supposedly deformed secretary, who was scared in a fire while saving David, the son, adds to the already potent tension.  As if the atmosphere in the house were not strained enough Mark reveals at a party a unique feature that adds to the morose atmosphere.  He gives a tour of an entire wing of the home that is comprised of rooms, which he collects like stamps, in which murders have taken place; each one recreated to look just as it did when these crimes of passion were committed.

            He coldly describes the actions that took place in the genuine rooms, to which this hall is an architectural manifestation of tribute.  Strangely, these crimes all seem to have been committed by men whose desire for their female victims was only quenchable through death.  Odder still, is that for as open as Mark is about his collection, there is one room to which the door always remains locked. (….Dun dun dun!)

            Secret Beyond the Door is a bit of a mixed bag; part horror and part noir, with a note of Freudian character study thrown in for good measure.  It’s part of a movie trend of the 1940s, sometimes described as “female gothic,” that includes films such as Rebecca (1940) and Val Lewton’s The Seventh Victim (1943) that feature strong female characters in danger.  Such films may have eventually inspired the critically lambasted “women in peril” formula, but ironically they are themselves often critically admired.  Rebecca won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1940, and though the Lewton film and Secret were never acclaimed or loved in their own time*, they’ve gone on to garner praise as top notch B-movies. 

            Here, Lang was openly inspired by Rebecca, but his version suffered numerous drawbacks, including budget overruns and clashes between director and star Bennett.  The script also has weak elements, such as a shifting voiceover perspective between its leads that makes for a confusing progression.  It’s not a superior film, and certainly not Lang’s greatest effort, but it is gripping entertainment and for that it’s worth your time.

Language: English

Runtime: 99 Minutes

Grade: 3 Hats Off

*One response card from an early test screening reportedly said the film was “beyond human endurance