Suspicion (1941)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Suspicion (1941) – A. Hitchcock

Hitchcock (always a master self-plagiarist) here provides shades of Rebecca (1940), a recent hit for him. So again, we see Joan Fontaine anxious and doubtful of her husband (but this time she won the Oscar she was earlier denied). Cary Grant plays the charming cad well enough for us to think that he could be a murderer (which is what Fontaine eventually suspects – hence the title).  Accounts differ as to whether the censors (or Cary’s backers at the studio) tampered with the ending or whether Hitch wanted all along to portray a woman’s paranoid fantasies.  Indeed, things are mostly ambiguous most of the time – although we can probably agree that Cary is irresponsible and thus rather unlikeable.  No real MacGuffin here but a glowing glass of warm milk that may be spiked with an untraceable poison is a memorable touch.  A key plank in the construction of Hitchcock’s image, if not his best work. 

Early Summer (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Early Summer (1951) – Y. Ozu

Ayako and I had a discussion about what the Japanese title “Bakushu” means – she thought it should signify “beer” and some homework reveals that the correct translation is probably “The Barley-Harvest Season” rather than “Early Summer”.  I’m not quite sure what is being harvested – possibly Noriko (played by Ozu regular Setsuko Hara) who is being urged to marry because at 28 she is at risk of becoming an old maid.  However, Noriko is a modern post-war Japanese woman who wants to make up her own mind.  However, her boss and her family conspire to match her with a rich (though 12 years older) businessman – who we never meet.  Indeed, Ozu very playfully includes numerous ellipses in the plot, never quite allowing us enough information to expect Noriko’s ultimate decision.  Although it comes as a surprise, this decision may actually have had a basis in experiences not shown in the film – that is, Noriko does spend offscreen time with her eventual husband, perhaps a considerable amount of time (and late in the film, some potentially pivotal time searching for her missing nephews with him).  As usual, Ozu also disorients the viewer with his camerawork, often cutting in ways that are distinctly different from the invisible Hollywood style that we know and sometimes from one place to another without warning.  His usual counterpoints are here:  traditional Japan vs. modern Japan, male vs. female, old vs. young, city vs. countryside – but they are used subtly to tell a story about the complexity of families (across three generations) and their sad but inevitable dissolution.

Libeled Lady (1936)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Libeled Lady (1936) – J. Conway

I don’t know if this is officially a screwball comedy (or a comedy of remarriage, as many of them were) but it is pretty damn close.  Myrna Loy and William Powell are delicious as usual (as the libeled young lady in question and the man hired to get her to drop her lawsuit, respectively) but throw in Spencer Tracy (brash newspaperman, of course) and Jean Harlow (his gal, who marries Powell who aims to seduce Loy so Harlow can sue for alienation of affection thus throwing the libel suit against Tracy’s newspaper into doubt) and you’ve got the goods.  The plot/plan in that last parenthetical naturally does not go off without a hitch – but things work out anyway (or do they?).  The four stars are at the top of their game and the script rolls merrily along, inexorably to a complicated comedic conclusion.  Great fun!  

Madame de… (1953)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Madame de… (1953) – M. Ophuls

A stylish and seemingly superficial offering from Max Ophuls that is actually deceptively complex, deepening dramatically as it progresses.  Danielle Darrieux is Madame de (no surname given, which is something of a running gag) who decides to hock the earrings her husband the General (Charles Boyer) gave to her on their wedding day to support her lavish lifestyle.  Of course, her husband finds out (when Madame decides to pretend they were stolen and the jeweller seeks to clear his name).  The earrings then make a circuitous journey, full circle if you will, becoming imbued with an incredible amount of emotion (more than they had originally).  This is one of the fascinating insights of Ophuls’ film – to see that any old object can become a fetish object.  The alchemy involves true love or at least that deep and exciting passionate attachment that can occur between two people (in this case, Madame de and her Italian lover played superbly by Vittorio de Sica, yes, the neorealist director), sometimes if only for a short while.  However, Madame de is already married and the film juxtaposes her marriage to her illicit love, a partnership of position and appearances (and companionship) versus an intense and absorbing (those dances!) mutual longing.  Of course, one relationship is right and one is wrong (or perhaps Ophuls is daring to question this) and fate (or society) will have its way.  Top it all off with amazing tracking shots and set decoration and you have a masterpiece.  

Seven Samurai (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Seven Samurai (1954) – A. Kurosawa

Exhilarating – even at over 200 minutes long – because Kurosawa knew exactly how to judge the audience’s interest and attention span.  With cinematographer Asaichi Nakai he does amazing things with dappled light and furious movement (by horses and men).  The story has many fabulistic qualities – poor farmers find seven disparate men to help them ward off an army of bandits (who descend on them each year) – although Kurosawa’s strengths lie in depicting the little details of their social interactions and their strategies.  Of course, each man has a different quality and backstory – the actors often bring mannerisms to the task of differentiation (Takashi Shimura as the leader often rubs his shaven head and, famously, Toshiro Mifune scratches, pull faces, and clowns around – later inspiring John Belushi).  The first half of the film shows us how the samurai are recruited and form the seven whereas the second half is all battles scenes (with a little romance in the daisies thrown in for the youngest of the force).  As the film progresses, step by step, we are drawn into the action with maps of the area (weak spot to the North), the crossing off of bandits (from the total of 33), and the burial mounds of the samurai (complete with swords on top).  Not everyone survives and the relationship between samurai and farmer may remain unchanged.  A film that can replenish and sustain your energy (like some sort of magic spell).

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) – R. Wise

Robert Wise has a lot to answer for – after all, he is responsible for editing The Magnificent Ambersons when it was taken away from Orson Welles (there is also The Sound of Music).  But he does know how to craft a film – something he may have learned when he was part of Val Lewton’s stable of directors doing low budget but effective horror films in the ‘40’s.  You can see this craft in films like Odds Against Tomorrow or The Haunting…and in this film which is based on boxer Rocky Graziano’s autobiography (with a screenplay by Ernest “North by Northwest” Lehman).  Paul Newman is young and hungry as Rocky – and once you get used to his cruddy Brooklyn accent, his performance is electrifying.  Method acting probably but it works and everything hangs together just right.  Wise creates a good sense of time and place and, although predictable, the story is punchy and compelling.  You can see how this may have influenced Scorsese’s Raging Bull. Won an Oscar for B&W cinematography and it shows.

Peeping Tom (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Peeping Tom (1960) – M. Powell

Essentially Michael Powell’s last film of interest (after decades of work with Emeric Pressburger) – in effect, this film killed his career.  But oh is it bold!  Not unlike Hitchcock’s move to darker (if still playful) material with Psycho, Powell’s film also plays with audience expectations – after all, don’t we expect a serial killer to be unsympathetic?  But Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) seems gentle and shy in his everyday interactions and particularly with his “love interest” Helen (Anna Massey).  Yet, he’s twisted inside, due apparently to some vicious experiments by his biologist father (played by Powell himself, in a brief filmed clip) who wanted to understand reactions to fear in children.  This, too, makes us want to “understand” Mark – who is still creepy due to his tendency to film everything he sees (and his sideline shooting nudie pics).  Powell indicts the moviegoer for his/her voyeuristic tendencies (as does Hitch in Rear Window) – or perhaps he is indicting himself for wanting to control what is being filmed?  Mark imposes himself on reality and films it – but his terrible childhood seems to incline him toward filming women’s reactions to fear, as he kills them.  He then plays the footage back in his own hidden projection room – private snuff films that may or may not arouse him.  No doubt, it’s clear just how volatile and challenging this material would be in 1960 – and it still retains the ability to shock today.

     

Stroszek (1977)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Stroszek (1977) – W. Herzog

Apparently, this is the film that Joy Division’s Ian Curtis watched the night he died and it is pretty bleak.  Herzog’s very unique perspective on life is made manifest by the script he wrote, the actors he chose, the locations he found, and an incredible dancing chicken.  Bruno S. (previously the star of Herzog’s Kaspar Hauser) plays a street musician who has spent most of his life institutionalized – in fact, he is playing himself, although there is apparently little improvisation in the film (so we are really getting Herzog’s “ecstatic truth” version of Bruno).  After being released from jail, Bruno hooks up with Eva, a down-on-her-luck prostitute, and they get messed around by her pimps. Berlin turns so depressing that they decide to travel to the USA with Herr Schweitz (an elderly eccentric, also featured in Kaspar Hauser) who has a nephew in Wisconsin.  Arriving there (after a journey that evokes many moods), they get a trailer home, jobs as a mechanic and waitress (respectively), and settle in outside a truckstop.  Herzog’s dead eye sees some black humor in this situation – as the characters struggle to make a living and American capitalism tightens its noose around them.  In the end, there is only the dancing chicken – an apt metaphor for our workaday lives if ever there was one and fully in keeping with Herzog’s heightened (but dark) sense of the absurd.

The Tin Drum (1979)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Tin Drum (1979) – V. Schlondorff

It isn’t always comfortable viewing, this story about a boy (Oskar) who at age 3 refuses to grow anymore.  Of course, he still grows through experience (and apparently sexually).  The actor playing Oskar was really 12 at the time – but he looks like a little boy observing and sometimes doing very adult things.  All of this occurs against the back-drop of Poland in the 1930s and 40s; Hitler’s rise (and the corresponding human folly) is the ostensible reason for Oskar to stop growing (to protest against the adult world). However, we are only sometimes alerted to the societal changes that the Nazis brought to this corner of Poland (particularly in the treatment of Charles Aznavour, a Jewish toymaker, and of course on September 1st, 1939) – because director Schlondorff’s attention is elsewhere, on Oskar’s family and their own problems, likely due to the source novel by Gunter Grass, which is by all accounts pretty weird.  As is this film.  (I feel like there is a metaphor or some other symbolism hidden here but I can’t quite locate it – people act cruelly to each other at both the personal and societal levels?).  Probably unforgettable.

Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Je T’Aime, Je T’Aime (1968) – A. Resnais

Perhaps taking a cue from his friend Chris Marker, Alain Resnais tackles time travel in his fifth fiction feature.  A bunch of scientists convince Claude Rich to serve as their guinea pig in a risky experiment after a failed suicide attempt suggests to them (or their computer) that he might not care if he dies in the process (although mice have survived in the earlier trials).  As intriguing as this is, Resnais takes the premise and makes an even more insane film than you would expect.  It turns out that, rather than spending one discrete minute in the past (a year prior) as intended, Rich gets stuck in an endless loop bouncing around his past.  This allows Resnais to show us various scenes from his life (pre-suicide attempt) in a Burroughs-styled cut-and-pasted jumbled order for the next 60 minutes.  So, this is a film of wall-to-wall non sequiturs and I say keep ‘em coming.  The puzzle to be solved involves piecing together the events of a life from these snippets.  But even if you let the moments wash impressionistically over you, a gestalt still emerges. Perhaps Resnais (who died this year) was trying to represent our fragmented stream-of-consciousness which dips in and out of the past, remembering moments here and there, and consequently influencing our present, emotionally, cognitively, behaviourally -- and doing it with science fiction.  For this, I hereby dub him the grand master of high concept (but truly Resnais’s themes of time, memory, and longing are a key to his greatness).

The Shame (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Shame (1968) – I. Bergman

Liv Ullmann and Max Von Sydow are civilians who find themselves caught up in war in this astonishingly potent film from Ingmar Bergman.  As the movie opens, we find them alone in their remote island farmhouse. They speak of political tensions and hostilities that seem to have led to some cultural collapse (the symphony orchestra for which they worked has shut down).  But soon convoys of soldiers are rolling through, then fighter planes (which eventually firebomb their area).  After a run-in with the “liberators”, they are rounded up by the “defenders” (my terms) and interrogated (roughly).  They are forced to choose sides and become compromised.  The local resistance group targets them.  Under pressure, they violate their own moral principles.  They fight with each other. Things become bleak and apocalyptic.  In the end, who is ashamed?  Is it God? Is it humankind? Is it world leaders? Is it the characters in the film? Is it you and me? How can such things happen – and continue to happen? 

Man on the Roof (1976)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Man on the Roof (1976) – B. Widerberg

The police procedural has long been the province of TV shows, so it is easy to forget that there are movies that may be able to do things better (for example, on a bigger budget or in a less formulaic way).  I’m thinking of Kurosawa’s High and Low or Fincher’s Zodiac.  But Bo Widerberg’s Man on the Roof, based on one of a series of Swedish crime novels featuring homicide cop Martin Beck and his colleagues, should be ranked highly with them. After a bad police lieutenant is murdered in his hospital bed, the wheels start turning and Beck and his weary team (each given enough attention to have a distinct personality) begin their painstaking investigation.  As usual, they start with interviews of people who might know something, record searches, and, yes, examination of evidence at the crime scene.  Slowly this leads to a suspect, but just as things are at their most dreary (as investigations are wont to get), the film explodes into a different kind of situation requiring strategic action from the police (and giving the film its title).  The cops (and Widerberg) handle things just as methodically as in the early part of the film (although less successfully at times), leading to the (not unexpected) conclusion.  Still, it is absorbing all the way.

Public Housing (1997)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Public Housing (1997) – F. Wiseman

Frederick Wiseman’s sprawling 3-hour look at the Ida B. Wells public housing estate in Chicago gets into a rhythm all its own (due to Wiseman’s expert editing).  Basically, we see Ozu-like moments of cars or people passing through the complex, then a cut to a particular representative episode in the lives of the people who live in or visit public housing.  It is interesting to speculate about how Wiseman chose these episodes and how he ordered them within the film.  For example, we do see the many problems that residents face:  crime, drugs, insect and rat infestations, teen pregnancies, and poverty.  Some of these issues arise in passing and some are shown more directly, as when a court-appointed diagnostician asks one resident some incredibly personal questions about his history with drugs and alcohol.  In keeping with the themes of some of Wiseman’s other movies, the residents often seem to be subjected to some fairly heavy-handed control by authorities, particularly the police who shake down numerous residents, seemingly without need for much justification. However, the control also appears more benignly in the form of some rather paternalistic (though benevolent) programs to assist residents – to avoid unwanted pregnancies, start their own businesses, find meaningful employment, and the like.  Although his films are rarely directive (they are without narration or overt structure), Wiseman is even less emphatic here than usual.  He doesn’t seem to be hitting any themes particularly hard (unlike in Welfare or High School, for example) and the examples of paternalistic control are mixed with episodes that reveal residents to be self-empowered, aiming to fight their own battles (often against bureaucracy) and to improve the moral character of their community (particularly by trying to involve positive male role models in the lives of kids).  In fact, despite the drugs, poverty, and general down-and-out feeling of the environment, one might think that Wiseman feels more optimistic about the future in this film.  The episodes showing empowerment seem to be placed in the second half of the film, perhaps showing them to be a possible solution to the problems shown earlier. He closes with a motivational address from an ex-NBA basketball player, now working for Housing and Urban Development who is trying to empower the residents to work through the system by appealing to the ways in which minority people have succeeded (including to high levels in the Clinton administration).  Although it could be assumed that these inspiring words might go nowhere when people are mired in the day-to-day issues of tough lives, I’m not quite sure Wiseman sees it that way. He never really shows anyone doing bad things (which could, I guess, be unethical) but only people trying to cope with their problematic reality. In any event, Wiseman portrays the subject of public housing in a nuanced and complex way – showing him to be one of the best humanistic documentarians we have.  

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Brighton Rock (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Brighton Rock (1947) – J. Boulting

Sir Richard Attenborough (RIP this year) provides a psychotic turn as an (impossibly) young gang leader in the seaside town of Brighton.  First, he hunts and kills a newspaper reporter who told too much in the press (leading to a gang member's death). Then, in trying to create an alibi, he more or less dominates a young waitress by pretending he is in love with her to make sure she doesn't talk.  Moody and with a good sense of place -- but also suspenseful (like a good detective story) when Hermione Baddeley's character gets on Pinkie's (Dickie's) trail and starts collecting evidence to turn over to the police.  The ending -- some call it a "trick ending" -- is a surprise and I think I like it (everything pushes you to expect something different, which of course must eventually happen anyway).  Graham Greene wrote the original novel and the screenplay here;  Catholicism does play a role.  A very good Brit noir.

Born Yesterday (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Born Yesterday (1950) – G. Cukor

The plot of Garson Kanin's play doesn't seem too subtle -- a brash tycoon trying to buy influence in Washington DC hires a reporter to teach his "dumb blonde" girlfriend to act more properly -- but, in fact, George Cukor's film pulls it off amusingly. The majority of the credit is due to Judy Holliday who won an Oscar for her portrayal of Billie Dawn, the showgirl who may not be as dumb as she seems.  Her delivery is so off-hand and nonchalant that it throws you off your guard and adds a certain naturalism to what is otherwise a tightly scripted affair.  William Holden is excellent as the idealistic political reporter who teaches Billie about Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and the workings of democracy -- so much so that she comes to realize that her boyfriend is in the process of bribing members of Congress to get his way.  Broderick Crawford is all bluster as the tycoon junk dealer but fulfills his role well.  A bit naive perhaps (when seen from the vantage point of 65 years on) but enjoyable all the way through.

Curse of the Demon (1957)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Curse of the Demon (1957) – J. Tourneur

One of my favourite films and one that I can watch annually (at Halloween) without it losing any of its fun.  Director Jacques Tourneur was a graduate of the Val Lewton School of Horror film-making, where low budgets necessitated a greater use of shadowy implication rather than explicit or graphic horror (see Cat People or I Walked with a Zombie).  Of course, fast forward to the late 1950s and producer interference forced Tourneur to actually show the Demon (which apparently he did not want to do) – but it makes no difference because the rest of the film is so successful in its spookiness.  The plot sees Dana Andrews (who was making his mark as an ambiguous “hero” in late Fritz Lang films at the same time) as a sceptical scientific psychologist attending a conference in England (cue Stonehenge) with the aim of debunking the leader of a “devil cult” (played magnificently by Niall MacGinnis). In the process, Andrews gets a curse placed on him, giving him just 3 days “time allowed” before the demon is to strike.  Andrews starts to slowly lose his grip, but is it the psychological pressure or an actual supernatural haunting that is bringing him to the edge?  Along the way, we see a séance, hypnotism to regress someone back to the “night of the demon” (the original British title of the film), a mysterious windstorm at a Halloween party for kids (complete with scary clown), and of course the demon itself.  To cap it all off, there is actual suspense, as we wonder whether Andrews can escape the curse, while the clock ticks down his time allowed. 

Casablanca (1942)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Casablanca (1942) – M. Curtiz

Yes, the Bogart and Bergman classic (this time watched with Roger Ebert’s commentary track – he’s a natural and engaging narrator). For me, this film has always been about existentialism and not necessarily about true romance (as it is typically advertised). After all, Bogart comes to realize that he must take responsibility for his actions (to make choices that represent good rather than bad faith) and this means sacrificing his selfish impulses (to reclaim his relationship with Bergman and/or to remain a detached drunkard) for the sake of a higher moral principle (to stop the Nazi’s, protect freedom, etc.). So, this is a tale of Bogie’s growing existential angst when he is finally confronted with his own bad faith. True, it makes excellent use of those bittersweet emotions associated with nostalgia, regret, loss – and yes, the hazy woozy feeling of being in love – and the film would not be the same without this affective infusion (aided tremendously by the strains of “As Time Goes By”). I’d also make a case for the importance of Claude Rains and his witty cynical sarcasm – he too realizes that the time for self-indulgence is over and his reversal at the end (though strongly foreshadowed) makes the film that much more satisfying. Director Michael Curtiz keeps everything moving and the supporting cast of character actors is as good as any assembled. I don’t need to tell you this. Always worth your time.

Fat City (1972)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Fat City (1972) – J. Huston

John Huston captures a feeling here, helped tremendously by Kris Kristofferson’s version of “Help Me Make It Through The Night” which plays over the opening credits and then lingers.  Yes, you’ve got it, this is a snatch of early 1970’s melancholia about down-and-out people going nowhere. Stacy Keach is a revelation as the has-been boxer at the center of the picture, falling in with drunk Susan Tyrrell (loose and sloshed) and encouraging impossibly young Jeff Bridges to take up fighting.  He’s deeply ambivalent about his dreams, probably realistically so, seeing that he’s screwed up too much – that last weird zoom shot tells a lot.  So over 90 minutes or so, we get a look at the flophouses, bars, fruit-picking operations, and of course boxing rings and gyms of Stockton, California, at its most run-down.  I’m hooked on this feeling. 

Ghostbusters (1984)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Ghostbusters (1984) – I. Reitman

My favorite movie in high school -- how would it look 30 years later? Actually, it is surprisingly loose and funny -- full of deadpan and sarcastic reaction shots, apparently many improvised on the spot by Bill Murray and the team. Sadly we lost Harold Ramis this year but together with Ivan Reitman and Dan Aykroyd, he helped to create a comedy that is actually funny and enjoyable, no small feat. Probably part of the success is due to the way that the ghost business is played entirely straight and the rest is due to the acting chops (and spontaneous humorousness) of the cast (including Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis). Sure, it has its slick elements (musical montages that speed the plot) but it is ramshackle enough to keep it fresh and this was perhaps the first time for some stock comedy film elements to be trotted out. A good dose of absurdity (the final form of Gozer the Destructor) is always welcome. Enough said, I still enjoyed it decades later, despite the '80s fashion and hair.

I Wish (2012)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

I Wish (2012) – H. Kore-eda

Deceptively simple, as if Kore-eda managed to “capture” reality and transmit it to us, but in actuality meticulously crafted, right down to the soundtrack which may be the key force in getting us on the movie’s wavelength.  I don’t necessarily mean the music, which is pleasant enough indie-guitar and j-pop jangling, but instead the way that the voices of the kids (there are 7 of them in larger or smaller roles) and adults (mostly oldies in larger roles) tend to overlap and join together and emerge naturally amidst the other diegetic sounds, saying natural-seeming things.  Indeed, the movie could be taken as a 1970’s Altman-esque affair, rather de-centralized in plotting (although the focus on the two brothers who wish their parents’ divorce hadn’t separated them provides the main thrust) and featuring a widening array of characters some of whom have only bit parts but still provide loads of color and emotional weight.  Of course, having been to Japan may help one to appreciate the film, making it easier to settle into its relaxed grooves, or perhaps having seen any Hollywood product starring kids will allow even the least Nihon-aware viewer to realize that this film is as far away from that cloying, over-acted, sentimental, and artificial claptrap as you can possibly get. Kore-eda’s other films (After Life, Nobody Knows, Maborosi, Still Walking) are also worth your time, if this is your jam.

Dallas Buyers Club (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Dallas Buyers Club (2013) – J.-M. Vallee

There’s the movie made and the movie not made.  Over at the New York Times, A. O. Scott alerts us to the movie not made by director Jean-Marc Vallee, a movie about the real fight to stay alive and the solidarity and spirit of the gay community in response to AIDS.  That would be a good and potentially provocative movie (to some audiences). However, we need to consider the movie made instead wherein a homophobic and redneck straight man becomes an angel of sorts for those suffering from HIV/AIDS by investigating and then illegally importing experimental drugs that the FDA was slow in approving.  That man (the real life Ron Woodroof) is played by Matthew McConaughey, transformed by a 50 pound weight loss into a gaunt sick man.  Jared Leto plays his transgender business partner.  As you know, both won Oscars. If there can be a feel-good movie about AIDS, then perhaps this is it.  Shot on an extremely low budget, it doesn’t show and instead manages to maintain a spirited vibrancy, sense of humour, and righteousness, even though it isn’t the movie not made.

The Burmese Harp (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Burmese Harp (1956) – K. Ichikawa

Often moving tale of a Japanese regiment at the end of WWII that surrenders to the British in Burma.  This company is different because of their fondness for singing (often “Home Sweet Home” in Japanese, which is used for sentimental purposes but still evokes wistfulness).  One of their number, Mizushima, is nominated to encourage another Japanese platoon, holed up in a mountain fortress, to finally surrender – however, they disbelieve that the war is over and are killed by the Brits.  Mizushima himself is injured but resuscitated back to life by a Buddhist monk.  Mizushima steals this monk’s garb to make the journey back to join his regiment but the horrors that he sees (scores of unburied bodies) and remembers lead him to take a vow to stay in Burma as a real monk to make certain that all the bodies are buried.  His old squad members cannot understand. Ichikawa makes excellent use of location shooting in Burma, often showing his characters nearly hidden in the landscape (suggesting the enormity of the situation in which they are engulfed).  Some say this film ignored the real war crimes committed in Burma but it is assuredly pacifist and anti-war.

12 Years a Slave (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

12 Years a Slave (2013) – S. McQueen

A horror movie in all respects -- except for the usual overt trappings of the genre.  For example, instead of creepy music, we get the dramatic cues of the typical Oscar-winning drama.  This was really the only drawback for me. Director Steve McQueen already displays the terrible realities of slavery: the brutal physical torture (hard labour but also whippings, sexual assault, and lynchings) and the chilling psychological torture (being separated from family, not knowing whether to vie for positive treatment from the master and be judged for doing so by other slaves, the constant wish to take risks to escape). But if he’d treated this like Roger Corman did his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, it could have been even more effective – although I’ll admit it probably wouldn’t have won the Oscar. Chiwetel Ejiofor is outstanding as the free Black man who is kidnapped and sold into slavery (with Benedict Cumberbatch as the kind but cowardly master who allows evil to happen anyway and Michael Fassbender as the just plain evil master). With McQueen’s help, Ejiofor does show us the terror of the man in this predicament (amid the nicely rendered pre-Civil war environs), allowing us to imagine how we would feel and what we would do. The rest of the cast are excellent in support (including Alfre Woodard in a bit part and Lupita Nyong’o in a large but thankless one, deservedly winning an Oscar).  Still, cranking it up even further with the trappings of the horror film could have pushed this to the maximum confrontational level it deserves; it remains a humanistic classic nevertheless.   

Nico Icon (1995)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Nico Icon (1995) – S. Ofteringer

Successful in creating a mood (of total nihilistic depression) through a portrait of the German fashion model turned Warhol Factory denizen and Velvet Underground singer turned goth junkie gypsy.  And how could director Ofteringer not be successful with Nico’s spooky droning chanteuse music as her soundtrack.  Talking heads vie with 1960s and 1970s footage to tell her story, which makes you wonder whether she became hollowed out by the early objectification she experienced and/or whether it was the drugs that brought her down so low.  You get the idea that to come into contact with her would be like feeling the icy fingers of your own death.  I’ll have to pull out her records now (and remember that art is something to live for).

The Rules of the Game (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Rules of the Game (1939) – J. Renoir

Often cited as the best movie of all time, Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece manages to operate on multiple levels simultaneously, thereby increasing its pleasures.  On the simplest, most straightforward level, it is a tale of love and the game-playing that lovers may do (when they don’t know their own hearts or those of their lovers), to keep up appearances and to tease and confound their pursuers and the pursued – although the frankest, most sincere lovers may come up short in such spirited affairs. On the next deepest level, the film pokes at class differences, suggesting that any upstairs-downstairs distinctions (the film is set mainly at a country estate on the weekend of a grand fete) are merely an illusion, with both classes following the same rules (la regle du jeu, of course). The masters and the servants are essentially doubled, with two trios each featuring a married couple and an interloper, playing themes and variations on the plot’s strings.  Finally, at the deepest level, the film reveals Renoir’s angst at Europe’s failure to contend with Hitler’s rise, choosing to ignore or to placate him, keeping up appearances, just as the bourgeois guests at the estate prefer to ignore or overlook the harsh realities before them, not only of the hunt (a truly graphic interlude) but of the shocking behavior, including murder, that goes on but is explained away, following the rules of decorum, by the protagonists.  Truly, everyone may have their reasons – but this may only help to understand not to excuse actions. Evoking a mood of anxiety, uncertainty, and foreboding, and blending it with his interest in theatricality, Renoir has captured lightning in a bottle. This is a film of such rich carefully planned complexity, wedded somehow to seemingly spontaneous chaos, that it bears repeated viewings (this is my umpteenth time) and indeed close scrutiny and undoubtedly contains lessons for our time.

The Dance of Reality (2013)

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The Dance of Reality (2013) – A. Jodorowsky

Unmistakably a Jodorowsky film (with lots of taboo-breaking) but yet somehow more tender than his earlier films (El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Santa Sangre, etc.).  Perhaps this is because the 84-year-old director is in a more reflective mode, looking back at his own childhood and even appearing in person to cradle and console the actor playing his younger self at times.  This could easily be his last film.  Perhaps too Jodorowsky’s growing interest in “psychomagic” as a form of therapy has colored the approach taken to the characters, with more forgiveness granted even as the depiction of his father as a Stalinist brute shows us Jodorowsky’s real pain.  However, things are not that straightforward and there are plenty of opportunities for surrealistic detours into life in Chile at that time (or perhaps it is all fantasy?).  Oddball and slyly comic, sensitive and jarring at the same time, but ultimately the complete and real deal – no one makes films like this, but they should. 

  

Two-Lane Blacktop (1971)

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Two-Lane Blacktop (1971) – M. Hellman

I’m not a gearhead by any stretch of the imagination, so a flick about two dudes travelling cross-country in a hopped-up ’55 Chevy, engaging in drag racing to make money, isn’t something to which I was intrinsically drawn.  But this film (by Monte Hellman) exists in its own reality, with an aimless pace, numerous moments of quiet idleness (that some may find languorous), and the repetitive purr and whine of engines.  Warren Oates, in his yellow G.T.O. and smart cashmere sweaters (with ascot), steals the show with his cocky but somehow vulnerable older gent who agrees to race the boys to D.C.  Incidentally, the central characters are played by James Taylor and Dennis Wilson, non-actors to be sure, but evocative of a time and place now gone.  Possibly a key existential film (as so many road movies tend to be), if you choose to read it that way.

  

The Virgin Spring (1959)

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The Virgin Spring (1959) – I. Bergman

Burning with intensity, Bergman’s 21^st film is carved from an old Scandinavian ballad, lending it the quality of fable or allegory.  The setting (Middle Ages) and the striking black and white cinematography (courtesy of Sven Nykvist) serve to heighten this effect. But it is the sudden brutal and realistic violence, which is that much more confronting due to its matter-of-factness, that truly commands your gaze and asks you to contemplate the presence and nature of evil.  Max von Sydow’s response may be our first primal stab (ultimately toothless) at this foe and Bergman does not shy away from concentrating our attention on its complications.  As in the Book of Job, we and the characters in this medieval drama are led to question why any God would allow evil to exist (even as the competing Pagan spirits are still being worshipped for their power to influence and harm others). There is no simple answer but at least in this film Bergman seems to be suggesting (through symbols and story) that faith is the way ahead.  His next films offer much more doubt.

Lacombe, Lucien (1974)

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Lacombe, Lucien (1974) – L. Malle

Louis Malle has set himself a particularly difficult challenge here: to compose a character study of an inarticulate man-child.  But he has a purpose, for Lucien Lacombe is meant to represent the kind of French adolescent who might have been drawn to collaborate with the Nazis during the Occupation.  He’s not mature yet and vaguely frustrated with his lot (working at a nursing home in a small rural community) – he might be willing to join the Resistance but is turned down for being too young and unfocused.  So, he is easily seduced by the power and decadence of the collaborators.  As others have suggested, Malle (like Marcel Ophuls in The Sorrow and the Pity) has aimed to portray the “banality of evil” as produced by average individuals who, under other circumstances, probably wouldn’t have acted this way.  That is an open question for sure but the combination of person (Lacombe, Lucien) and situation (Vichy, France) may ignite to produce horrors.  When Lucien becomes attracted to a young Jewish girl, the Gestapo power he possesses allows him to act willfully and to initiate actions that have terrible consequences; we just aren’t sure whether he fully understands what he’s doing.  If this is really how evil materializes, we will all need to be on our guard.  

The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941)

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The Devil and Daniel Webster (1941) – W. Dieterle

There are moments in this film where the straightforward telling of the tale suddenly becomes a bit woozy and wobbly and the supernatural asserts itself.  Chalk this up to the incredible performances offered by Walter Huston (as Mr. Scratch) and Simone Simon (as his “friend” Belle, from “over the mountain”) – they have their creepy characterizations down pat.  The story itself is one we’ve seen before: a poor farmer sells his soul to the devil and becomes a greedy uncaring bastard.  His suffering wife has no choice but to go to the great orator and legislator, Daniel Webster (played warmly by Edward Arnold, after Thomas Mitchell cracked his head open) to try to get the contract over-turned.  Bernard Herrmann’s score turns intensely weird at times (and won an Oscar).    Did I tell you the film takes place in New Hampshire? Of course, it champions the rugged individualism found there but makes a plea for community solidarity too.