Just Before Nightfall (1971)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Just Before Nightfall (1971) – C. Chabrol

It’s rather ghoulish in the end, but Claude Chabrol’s film maintains suspense all the way through – despite the fact that we know that Michel Bouquet is the murderer from the first moments.  Bouquet and Stephane Audran also starred as husband and wife in Chabrol’s earlier, excellent The Unfaithful Wife, and this is something of a reprise or rejoinder.  Audran was Chabrol’s wife at the time and this period of his career saw a lot of exceptional thrillers in the Hitchcockian mode.  Chabrol and Eric Rohmer had earlier written a famous book about Hitch, focusing on his Catholic interest in guilt – and guilt also takes center stage in Just Before Nightfall.  You see, despite no suspicion falling on him, Bouquet just can’t live with himself after the possibly accidental death of his friend’s wife during S&M play. He just wants to blurt out that he’s the killer – this leads to a great deal of suspense.  Somehow, though, you just can’t see that ending coming. But it is entirely consistent with Chabrol’s wicked sense of humor.

Red Desert (1964)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Red Desert (1964) – M. Antonioni

Antonioni goes “no holds barred” and “pulls out all the stops” to create a color film of such crazy artistic intensity that every shot is a perfect composition.  I provided my own voiceover commentary, a commentary of continual astonishment (which still did not take away from the electronic psychotronic noise soundtrack).  Let’s put it this way:  not only are the costumes, props, and sets perfectly selected (or painted) to have the ideal complementary colors, but there is often motion in the shot (such as a billowing cloud of steam that expands above two characters who are made tiny at the bottom of the screen, apparently oppressed and inconsequential as the frame is taken over).  Geometric shapes abound (squares, triangles, circles), often as part of giant still life shots focused on industrial landscapes, into which a character’s head will sometimes protrude moments later.  In other words, this is an event picture where incredible set-ups are the norm.  At the time, Red Desert was criticized for having a negligible plot and truly it is easy to lose track, as the characters basically do nothing for most of the film (Monica Vitti has post-traumatic stress from an auto accident and feels detached from her husband and child and life itself but may be open to advances from dubbed Richard Harris).  You could make the case that the visuals help to enhance the themes of alienation and insignificance.  The environment can easily overwhelm the characters and this is even more problematic due to the industrial waste and pollution that poisons it – in color.  Another masterpiece from Antonioni.

Le Jour Se Leve (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Jour Se Leve (1939) – M. Carne

One of the touchstones for Jean Gabin’s mystique – cool, yes, but also violent and doomed.  Of course, in 1939, all of France felt doomed, so this image resonated.  Director Marcel Carne (who was later maligned, possibly injustly, as a collaborator) brings poetic realist touches to an otherwise straightforward boy-meets-girl-who-is-infatuated-with-a-sleazy-older-guy narrative.  The flashback structure, wherein Gabin remembers the events that led him to murder Jules Berry (remembering while holed up in his apartment with the police at the door), is handled well, more like a dream than reality.  Arletty is excellent as Berry’s ex-lover and Gabin’s fling (but not the object of his amour):  cynical and jaded and disappointed. The ending (doom arrives) caught me by surprise somehow – this is one that I will look forward to watching again to better perceive its true arc.

  

  

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Lady from Shanghai (1947) – O. Welles

Classic film noir from Orson Welles, famous for its nearly incomprehensible plot, but rife with stunning set-pieces (the aquarium, the funhouse, the hall of mirrors, Acapulco, San Francisco’s Chinatown) and odd characters (Everett Sloane as Arthur Bannister, Glenn Anders as George Grisby).  Welles stars as Michael “Black Irish” O’Hara, sporting a not quite passable brogue, who falls for Rita Hayworth (as Mrs. Arthur Bannister), his soon-to-be ex-wife in real life, and ends up on trial for murder (in the film), defended by Bannister himself, a famous trial lawyer (and trickster).  O’Hara’s narration seems trustworthy but no one he meets on the yacht trip from NYC through the Panama Canal and on up to San Francisco possibly could be.  He tells us himself that he was a fool for chasing Mrs. Bannister who may or may not really love him but when Grisby hires him to kill Grisby, he really should have walked away.  Nearly every scene contains a flourish of some sort or another, lending a degree of ostentatiousness that feels different from the more integrated stylishness of Citizen Kane; here, the backgrounds are busy and details might be thrown in on a lark (because Welles likes Chinese opera perhaps) and the whole thing starts to feel crazy and cock-eyed and not nearly as serious as noir would later get. But Hayworth in her blonde makeover is unfathomable as the archetypal femme fatale, getting done over by her own husband, on screen and off.  Not to be missed. 

Rocco and his Brothers (1960)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Rocco and his Brothers (1960) – L. Visconti

Looking for a brighter economic future for her family after her husband dies, Rosaria Parondi moves herself and her five sons to Milan from rural southern Italy.  There, they face difficulties finding and keeping work, some discrimination, and the different social opportunities and temptations of the city.  Director Luchino Visconti begins in neo-realist mode (more or less) but the drama soon shifts into a more literary novelistic style, with tension between the bad son (Renato Salvatori) and the good son (Alain Delon).  Salvatori starts out on a boxing career but soon falls in with the wrong crowd, including a prostitute (Annie Girardot) who leads him further astray into petty crime and debauchery.  Delon keeps his nose clean, gets drafted into the military and returns to find his bad brother abandoned by his fling, kicked out of boxing, and deep in debt – he subsequently seeks to reform the prostitute, becomes a boxing champion himself, and tries to hold his family together.  The other brothers play more minor roles but the escalating melodrama envelops them as well.  Indeed, things get very extreme and take this family drama into much darker territory.  As Rocco (Delon) suggests, it might have been better if they’d stayed put and not moved to Milan at all.  Thus, the film is a lament for the passing of community, family, and tradition in favour of more alienated, individualistic, and industrialized pursuits, although Visconti keeps the story on a small scale. 

  

Deadly Fight in Hiroshima (1973)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Deadly Fight in Hiroshima (1973) – K. Fukasaku

The second film in Kinji Fukasaku’s yakuza series is just as good as the first (Battles without Honor and Humanity), although it takes place on a smaller scale and with fewer central characters.  Bunta Sugawara is back from the first film but he stays on the sidelines here, present apparently only to lend some continuity to the proceedings.  In prison, Shozo Hirono (Bunta) meets small time hood Shoji Yamanaka (Kin’ya Kitaoji) who then takes center stage when he becomes a gun man for the Muraoka family and falls in love with the boss’s niece.  All seems to be going well until a rival gang led by insane Katsutoshi Otomo (played intensely by Sonny Chiba in one of his last films before international stardom as The Streetfighter) declares war on Muraoka.  Yamanaka is a pawn in the proceedings and willingly goes to jail for the family…but then the betrayals begin.  Bloody, chaotic, and with a hyperventilating lead performance from Kitaoji, the film keeps the tension cranked (but it is consequently less Shakespearean than its predecessor). Not for the squeamish.

Deadly Fight in Hiroshima by riton23

The Count of Monte Cristo (1934)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) – R. V. Lee

Swashbucklin’ adventure at its best! Robert Donat plays Edmund Dantes, a poor sailor vilely and wrongly imprisoned in an island jail by corrupt French officials.  Indeed, the key is metaphorically thrown away when his phony death certificate is signed by wicked Louis Calhern – thus, his fate is sealed without a trial even (at least not yet).  In prison for a decade or more, he finally meets up with another long-bearded mentor (who has tunnelled for 8 years to reach him) who then schools him in science and all other arts until finally….a clever escape!  But I shan’t tell Alexandre Dumas’s entire story here.  Suffice it to say, with the assistance of a buried treasure on another lonely isle, Dantes emerges as the newly titled Count of Monte Cristo and slowly seeks justice and revenge on those who imprisoned him.  Each episode is rousingly triumphant (as the score cues us to cheer) and Donat’s performance is impeccably classy and full of honour throughout.  Although the supporting cast isn’t all up to his standard, there are a few standout familiar faces (for example, what’s Preston Sturges fave Raymond Walburn doing here as an enjoyably pompous villain?).  Yet things are so wonderfully surging that viewers young and old can’t help but be swept along to the exciting conclusion.  Touché!  

Interstellar (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Interstellar (2014) – C. Nolan

I’m not completely sure it holds together as science (despite the involvement of astrophysicist Kip Thorne) but it (mostly) earns its emotional resonances.  Or I could be wrong on both counts.  Matthew McConaughey plays an ex-NASA pilot turned dustbowl farmer a couple of generations in the future when things don’t look too good for the human race.  Of course, he’s worried about the future for his kids (as we all are).  So, when the opportunity arises to search for a new home world (I’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum), he takes it.  Thus begins an adventure that is probably equal parts Gravity and 2001, with a few other nods thrown in. It can be gut-wrenching in its physical tension but also somewhat incomprehensible in its farfetchedness.  At a certain point (admittedly very late in the film), I simply gave up “believing” and just decided well, OK, then.  Although I’m not sure I was ever fully transported into the world of the film (it would have been a very different experience on the IMAX screen) and this might have been because of the distracting presence of name actors (McConaughey is solid but Anne Hathaway, Michael Caine, and Matt Damon are distracting; Jessica Chastain has too little to do).  Yet for all its loopiness and hokum, it still has enough fascinating moments and technical wizardry (the soundtrack included) to rate as a significant accomplishment.