The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) – P. Sturges

What the miracle actually is, I’ll leave to you to find out.  It’s revealed quite late in the piece and it’s a testament to Preston Sturges’ clever screenwriting that you can’t guess despite the clues.  The screenplay is as madcap as the one he wrote for The Palm Beach Story and Sturges again proves himself as willing as any good satirist to traipse on moral norms, tweaking the Hays Office and/or the audience (who apparently loved it).  When saying goodbye to “our boys” headed overseas for WWII, Trudy (Betty Hutton) accidentally gets herself married and in a family way. The trouble is that she doesn’t remember the night or the husband and apparently used a fake name on the certificate.  In steps humble Norval (Eddie Bracken), excused from service for high blood pressure (or is that nervousness?), to save Trudy’s reputation.  William Demarest is a riot as Trudy’s exploding constable father and Diana Lynn is wicked as her sane sister. The film is so funny, Sturges brought Bracken and Demarest (a regular) back for another take in Hail the Conquering Hero.

Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sayat Nova (The Color of Pomegranates) (1968) – S. Parajanov

What strange artefact is this? What arcane language of symbols and signals is being directed at me, the humble viewer? I find myself totally befuddled but in awe of the majestic imagery created as so many sequential still lives purporting to tell the life history of an Armenian poet (Sayat Nova himself).  He was born, he grew up, he fell in love, he entered a monastery, he died.  However, not a word of dialogue is spoken and the soundtrack instead buzzes with middle eastern sounds and we can read a few scant phrases of his poetry.  Supposedly, those with knowledge of Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian cultures and history can readily decode the mystical and religious messages on display (for example, the pomegranates apparently seep their red juice into a puddle the shape of the former Armenian state) – and these were enough to cause much political trouble for Parajanov in the U. S. S. R. (so much so that the film was cut upon release).  However, the average modern viewer will probably just get hypnotized, as I did.

The Gay Divorcee (1934)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Gay Divorcee (1934) – M. Sandrich

Ginger and Fred’s second outing is a delightful comic affair (sharing much in common with their other films, particularly Top Hat which has much of the same supporting cast: Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore, and Erik Rhodes as a ridiculous Italian).  As is typical, Ginger spurns Fred’s initial advances (and he manages to embarrass himself) but ultimately swoons for him.  This time they need to get rid of her current husband before their relationship can take off.  Now whether Ginger and Fred would make a good couple in “real life” (as opposed to “reel life”?) is hard to know – just maybe they have the same smart ass sense of humor. But otherwise she is too brash for him and he might actually be more interested in dancing than romancing.  And there is a 17 minute fantasia here (“The Continental”) for them both to show their stuff.

Sunrise (1927)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sunrise (1927) – F. W. Murnau

Poised on the very verge of the sound era (with a pre-recorded soundtrack including sound effects but no spoken language), Murnau’s Sunrise represents the culmination of cinema as dream (and his first and only Hollywood film with no constraints).  With characters named only “The Man”, “The Wife”, and “The Woman from the City”, the screenplay operates as a fable purporting to tell a moral tale at an abstract level (“a song of two humans” is the film’s secondary title and the themes are Manichean).  However, it is the rich details of the mise en scene (country vs. city) – magically created from ceiling wax and shoe polish and other items in Murnau’s bag – that absorb and transport the viewer, and enable her or him to gasp as The Man nearly drowns The Wife to pursue a naughty relationship with The Woman from the City, to weep at the outcome of this harrowing event, and then to weep again when forgiveness is granted, love is renewed, and all moves toward a epiphanic happy ending (save only for a terrible storm and, of course, not for The Woman from the City).  Truly, each shot in Sunrise is a painterly vision, crafted by hand and in the camera (with no help from CGI). Just think at what might have been if Murnau hadn’t died in a car crash four years later.

Rear Window (1954)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rear Window (1954) – A. Hitchcock

A perennial favourite and one of Hitch’s best (if you haven’t seen it, I’m surprised).  Jimmy Stewart is a world-travelling photographer laid up in his Greenwich Village apartment with a broken leg.  Grace Kelly is his high society girlfriend who wants to get married.  The film takes place on one set which is basically the courtyard beyond Stewart’s “rear window” where he can observe all of his neighbors through their own windows.  So, the viewer is placed in the role of “peeping tom” and Hitchcock makes much of the parallel between film viewer and voyeur.  It does feel a bit sleazy at times.  But when Stewart thinks he’s witnessed a murder (and also a potential suicide), questions about responsibility for engaging with one’s community start to arise.  Of course, the suspense mounts as Kelly and Stewart try to catch the murderer.  After this viewing (my umpteenth), I read an essay by critic Robin Wood that added a new interpretation, one that I had never come up with myself:  As Stewart spends the early part of the film telling nurse Thelma Ritter that he wants to break up with Kelly because she will never fit into his lifestyle, he is potentially identified with Raymond Burr’s wife-killing villain.  As such, the psychodynamic process of defeating Burr is akin to destroying his need to eliminate Kelly.  As a result, he gives into her desire to be married and ends up fully in captivity (two broken legs).  When Burr attacks him and he responds with flashbulbs, he is really shining a therapeutic light on his own deeper conflict.  So, a somewhat wacky interpretation but not without some interest, proving again that Rear Window is a much richer and more rewarding film than a surface viewing might suggest (even for the umpteenth time).

Blue Jasmine (2013)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Blue Jasmine (2013) – W. Allen

I suppose it is natural to approach any Woody Allen movie with trepidation.  After all, you don’t know whether you will get Midnight in Paris or To Rome, With Love.  Blue Jasmine definitely falls into the good half of his output and this is largely due to Cate Blanchett’s incredible performance as a delirious woman free-falling after her investor husband’s arrest for fraud.  Blanchett does the glassy-eyed muttering truth-talking to everyone bit better than anyone; I’d imagine it is hard and would easily come off foolish (and Allen’s scripts often do contain some clunky parts).  Focusing predominantly on Blanchett’s entry into her blue collar sister’s life (played by the excellent Sally Hawkins) in San Francisco with flashbacks to her earlier uber-rich life with Alec Baldwin, the film seems almost plot-less, a free form character study.  And that is also what makes it great. I never realized that it might owe a debt to Tennessee Williams.

49th Parallel (1941)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

49^th Parallel (1941) – M. Powell

An early one from Powell and Pressburger that is a masterwork in sympathetic propaganda.  And when I say sympathetic I mean to say that they choose not to totally villainize all Germans but instead choose to make one or two human.  In fact, it is the German band of submariners who escape when their U-boat is destroyed in Hudson Bay, Canada, who we follow through the film as they escape across Canada.  A lot of British stars waived part of their fees for the war effort to appear:  Laurence Olivier as a French Canadian trapper (!), Anton Walbrook as the leader of a German Hudderite settlement, Raymond Massey as an AWOL Canadian soldier, and Leslie Howard as a British expert on Native Americans camping in the Rockies.   Eric Portman plays the dastardly leader of the Nazi group to evil effect but not without some humanity given his plight.  Powell knows that propaganda should only work (on the intelligent) to the extent that it feels realistic and like it speaks the truth rather than demonizing and over-doing it.  Message aside, one can already see Michael Powell’s genius as a director with montage, fades, efficient use of screen time, and nearly surreal moments of beauty shining through.

L’Eclisse (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

L’Eclisse (1962) – M. Antonioni

Antonioni’s last black & white film is all surfaces and shapes – so much so that the eye is often fooled and distracted and eventually the plot drifts away and only the landscape remains. This is not to say that the plot doesn’t make a statement (about alienation):  Monica Vitti breaks up with her writer fiance and then drifts into a relationship with Alain Delon’s stockbroker – or does she? Vitti is anything but certain.  Delon is more committed to materialism and there are a few signs to suggest that Antonioni sees this as problematic for relationships and for life (for example, a classic shot interposing a huge pillar at the stock market between the couple).  But I haven’t properly “decoded” the film – and it might offer rich rewards to those who do (for example, could the more “primitive” culture in Kenya be more ideal?).  Or perhaps the distance between the characters, their inability or failure to communicate with each other, comes across clearly enough to any passive viewer. Antonioni made a career documenting our quixotic search for meaning and the various delusions that seem to suggest we have found it only to fall away leaving nothingness again.  However, there is nothing here to suggest that the scales can’t one day fall from our eyes – perhaps Vitti and Delon have figured this mystery out. But, if so, they’ve gone and left us, the viewers, alone and still searching.

Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (1958)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Jalsaghar (The Music Room) (1958) – S. Ray

A long time ago, I was mesmerized by footage of Roshan Kumari dancing on television -- which turned out to be a clip from Satyajit Ray's The Music Room.  When I finally saw the complete film, I wrote: "Another tale of the fading landed gentry superseded by the nouveau riche, but Satyajit Ray's film is made ecstatic by the intense Indian classical music, the chiaroscuro lighting, and the decadence and decay on display." However, there are so many sublime moments of musical performance (diegetic and non-diegetic) and such a melancholy air to the proceedings that this film (and Ray himself) must be elevated to the pantheon.

Roshan Kumari from Pere Mestre on Vimeo.

Far From Heaven (2002)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Far From Heaven (2002) – T. Haynes

Todd Haynes’ homage to the films of Douglas Sirk lovingly recreates the 1950s bourgeois milieu (where social norms and pressures to fit in and be perfect dominate) that Sirk probed in so many great films (All that Heaven Allows, Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind). However, he brings some of the subterranean conflicts and desires that Sirk only hinted at to the surface and makes them overt and this both increases the melodrama and reduces the shock that Sirk provides through a lighter touch.  But that’s not to say that the jostling surface and inner realities that Haynes portrays aren’t fascinating too.  Julianne Moore and Dennis Quaid play a married couple who are models of their community … until he confronts his homosexuality and she falls in love with their Black gardener (played with great warmth by Dennis Haysbert, echoing Rock Hudson in All That Heaven Allows and with a tip of the hat to Fassbinder).  If you love Sirk, you’ll love this.

1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992) – D. Markey

A tour diary of sorts from Sonic Youth’s two-week visit to Europe (with support act Nirvana) to play various big festivals, edited and “directed” by Dave Markey who had also done some of their music videos.  At first, when I realized there would be horsing around between each song, I thought “this is going to be too much wankery” – but as things progressed, I found that Markey’s editing of the backstage goofin’ and the various European locales (and fans and radio interviewers etc) actually moved at a pretty good clip and the video experimentation (with color and sound) throughout added value.  But you come for the music and I must say that these are some pretty fantastic Sonic Youth performances with songs drawn from throughout their early repertoire (Schizophrenia, Expressway to Yr Skull, I Love Her All The Time, Brother James, Dirty Boots, Mote, Kool Thing).  Also featured (just to raise the nostalgia value for those who were, say, 23 to 25 years old, in 1991) are Nirvana, Dinosaur, Babes in Toyland, Gumball, and (briefly) The Ramones. This vid is unafraid to get noisy. Those were the days that make me think “bionic ear” and, of course, miss you friends.

Blast of Silence (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Blast of Silence (1961) – A. Baron

I kept thinking “What would this picture be like without the (second person) voice-over narration?” It might actually ascend to Melvillian levels (i.e., Jean-Pierre Melville, director of French noir gangster films such as Le Samourai and Le Doulos)!  Indeed, Blast of Silence is full of incredible location shooting in a New York City that no longer exists and the kinds of mesmerizing shots of a hitman at work or lost in thought that also elevate the French master’s work.  I suppose the voiceover does provide an emotional resonance that would be lost, unavailable to someone watching from the outside (the narrator is omniscient) – especially when it comes to the hitman’s painful upbringing at an orphanage and his lack of success with women.  So, there are more pluses than minuses and, you know, this film could very well have been an influence on the late great French noirs and for that it deserves high marks.