The Sound of Fury (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Sound of Fury (1950) – C. Endfield

Launching from the same true incident that was the basis for Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936), Cy Endfield’s film also tells the story of mob violence that ends in lynching.  However, The Sound of Fury really turns the screws on Frank Lovejoy’s down-and-out California transplant, showing him to be guilty (at least by association) whereas Spencer Tracy was wrongly accused in the earlier film.  So, this film is a true noir, as Lovejoy’s first mistake leads inexorably to his tragic downfall.  Things are all the tougher to take because he has a wife and a child, one of the reasons that he gives in to the easy money available in the life of crime offered by slick and sleazy Lloyd Bridges (who provides a tremendous incarnation of the sociopath).  So, on the one hand, we understand that social forces have led to Lovejoy’s bad decision, but on the other hand, we can see Bridges is an amoral opportunist.  When the mob descends on them, we know it is wrong tarring Lovejoy and Bridges with the same brush – but Bridges doesn’t deserve lynching any less.  A subplot showing how “yellow journalism” has incited the crowd is a little less effective and more didactic, but viewers can grasp the take home point that democracy requires a fair trial that isn’t biased by the press. The fact that this democratic ideal was subverted here (and in the real incident) makes this a dark and troubling film indeed.  

  

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) – M. Stuart

I read the book (by Roald Dahl) to the kids and they were very taken by its wonders and its humour (and I hoped that its morality tale would sink in).  Therefore, I was curious to see how they felt about the movie version (the one from my childhood, not the later Johnny Depp remake) which I recalled fondly, despite some vivid early nightmares featuring Oompa Loompas.  I worried a bit that the movie’s images might come to dominate what they saw with their own imaginations but it seems not to be the case -- the kids voted for the book over the movie.  But perhaps that is always what happens when you read a book first?  To recap, little Charlie Bucket longs for a golden ticket that will give him a tour of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory and a lifetime’s supply of sweets – but there are only five such tickets in the world, hidden underneath the wrappers of Wonka chocolate bars.  Of course, after suspense is built, Charlie does find a ticket and he and his Grandpa Joe (Jack Albertson) are taken on a magical and sometimes scary tour of the factory by Mr. Willy Wonka himself, played with a serene sense of perfect ambivalence by Gene Wilder.  Wilder is easily the best thing about the movie, giving exquisite line readings (whether absurd or menacing or bemused), although the various rooms in the factory do have a candy-coated funhouse charm to them.  Surprisingly, the film didn’t seem childish or particularly dated, although the haze of nostalgia might be clouding my judgment.  I had forgotten however that this was a musical (apart from the scary songs sung by the Oompa Loompas after the bad children are dispatched with) and the various songs (including “Candy Man”) work to bring out the fantasy elements of the film.   Of course, the book didn’t have the songs and some of the episodes are different (squirrels not golden geese, for example).  Most significantly, Charlie and Grandpa Joe don’t break the rules in the book.  However, this twist does add more suspense to the film than the book and gives Wilder a chance to turn Charlie’s grim disappointment into ecstatic amazement, something that every child (and adult) deserves to feel at least once.

Sudden Rain (1956)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sudden Rain (1956) – M. Naruse

I’m a sucker for these Mikio Naruse dramas (or sometimes melodramas) where Japanese people talk incessantly and relationships are carefully observed.  I find them somehow relaxing.  Often Naruse focuses on women and their attitudes toward each other (or toward the men in their lives); in that regard, he aims for us to identify with the great Setsuko Hara (who died last year at 95) here. She is a patient housewife, managing things for herself and her husband (married four years), but denying her own needs and interests (in true Japanese female fashion).  I read somewhere too that Naruse films tend to fixate on money problems and Sudden Rain is no exception.  The pivotal event that tips the couple from “kentaiki” (relationship fatigue) into distress is the threat of lay-off for the husband from the cosmetics company where he is a salesman.  Actually, he has to choose between resigning with a 100,000 yen bonus (a vast sum in 1950s Japan) or staying on with the risk of getting laid off with no bonus.  He contemplates moving back to the small village where he grew up, something which he knows his wife would not want to do.  As is typical for Naruse, there is no clear resolution of the issues but, at the film’s end, the couple seems resigned to continuing as they are.

I couldn't find a clip of the film, so here's a quick tribute to Setsuko Hara:

  

Modern Romance (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Modern Romance (1981) – A. Brooks

Albert Brooks makes things funny and painful (even excruciating) for viewers at the same time with this extended skit about an extremely neurotic film editor in an unstable relationship (the instability is his own doing).  Kathryn Harrold is his impossibly patient girlfriend who works in a bank.  Things start with Brooks breaking the relationship up because he feels it isn’t working; cue a slow motion trainwreck night on Quaaludes.  Brooks tortures himself (and the audience) with every false and real move that a man might make when experiencing attachment anxiety.  Of course, he screws everything up – but somehow manages to return to relational harmony (and then royally screws things up again).  The plot aside, it is the little moments that count with Brooks.  We smirk as he gets suckered in a sporting store or when he ridiculously recreates George Kennedy’s footsteps on the Foley stage.  The character Brooks plays isn’t as intellectual as Woody Allen nor as stupid as the fictional George Costanza (two erstwhile peers in pain) -- instead, he is the everyman who worries too much.  As a director, Brooks knows how to draw out a specific incident such that viewers can see the pain coming -- but it still resounds with comic reverberations when it hits; he makes a lot out of a little. I laughed.

Pitfall (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Pitfall (1962) – H. Teshigahara

Teshigahara’s first feature is strikingly original, from the impressive blend of long shots and unusual angles to the very strange plot.  The latter involves a war deserter turned labouring miner who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time and is stabbed to death by a mysterious man in a white suit and gloves.  Rising as a ghost, he observes (but can’t interfere with) the efforts of the press and police to find his killer – and suspicion naturally falls on his identical double, a union official.  If it sounds as though I’ve given away too much about the plot, this probably doesn’t matter because the film continues to surprise (and delight) with its weirdness.  Teshigahara called it documentary-fantasy and perhaps it does take a rather matter-of-fact approach to the proceedings (unique camera moves aside, of course), even when they are unrealistic.  He followed up with Woman in the Dunes (1964) and Face of Another (1966), both highly stylized and also scripted by novelist Kobo Abe, who wrote Pitfall as well.  A sixties artefact to be sure but still refreshing today.

  

Your Name (2016)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Your Name (2016) – M. Shinkai

Apparently the most successful animated film in Japan since Spirited Away (2001) (and an exception to Studio Ghibli/Hayao Miyazaki’s domination of the genre), Your Name is an unusual combination of weird and saccharine.  On the one hand, we have a Freaky Friday-styled body swap that has something to do with a meteor hitting Japan and possible space/time travel.  On the other hand, the body swapping occurs between a teenage boy and girl who cheesily may be “meant” for each other.  But things are mostly not too cloying (some J-Pop interludes notwithstanding) and the plot is set up to be mysterious enough (with occult overtones) that a second viewing might be rewarding (I did get confused at one point although this might be due to the distraction of watching this on an airplane).  The animation itself echoes the Ghibli love of landscapes and nature without quite rising to the same level.  But I don’t want to undersell this film which is interesting and unpredictable and therefore worth a watch for adults (not for kids).  Japan’s animation output is still strides ahead of comparable films from other countries, respecting the intelligence of the audience and delighting visually at the same time.  Perhaps, though, it is the “otherness” of Japan that leads to this conclusion?

Vivre Sa Vie (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Vivre Sa Vie (1962) – J.-L. Godard

In his third feature, Jean-Luc Godard continued to playfully innovate with film form, even as he focuses on the economic plight of women that leads them to turn to prostitution.  Godard’s wife, Anna Karina, is (again) delightful and charismatic despite the circumstances of her character.  She starts as a record shop assistant hoping to break into film but loses her apartment, tries (nude) modelling, and then runs into a friend who became a prostitute to support herself and her kids after a divorce and follows suit.  Godard breaks the film into 12 parts (it is subtitled “film en douze tableaux”) with brief intertitles announcing the content of the next section. As usual with Godard, the text is the thing and the characters chat away endlessly in interesting intellectual digressions; for example, later in the film, Nana (Karina) has a sit down with a French philosopher who argues that language is the basis for thinking.  Karina references Sartre (particularly his concept of “bad faith”) more than once (and the title itself points to existentialism methinks).  Most stunningly, she goes to see Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) and tears up at the dramatic performance of Falconetti (and her giant shorn head in close-up).  Godard also uses many close-ups of Karina (when he isn’t showing us the back of her head, as he does frequently) and, as shot by Raoul Coutard (1924-2016) in black and white, the film (and Paris) looks overcast and beautiful.  The end result is pretty exhilarating with Godard in the middle of his most entertaining period (before he became truly difficult and cryptic).  Nevertheless, this film too will take some unpacking.

Anatomy of a Murder (1959)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Anatomy of a Murder (1959) – O. Preminger

One way that the movies competed with TV was to offer content that couldn’t be shown on the small screen.  Preminger’s courtroom drama is a case-in-point.  By dealing with rape and the subsequent revenge murder in detail, the cast is able to use descriptive details and words such as sperm or panties that would be too much for younger (or conservative) viewers at home.  Jimmy Stewart is the “humble country lawyer” who is craftier than he looks and may or may not be allowing sullen Ben Gazzara to use the temporary insanity defense to excuse his shooting of the man who raped his wife, Lee Remick.  Remick plays the flirt well and allows the film to explore the question of victim-blame – although rather than suggest that she brought it on herself, the script implies that there wasn’t a rape at all but rather consensual sex which led Gazzara to fly into a jealous rage.  But was he insane at the time?  George C. Scott plays the slick prosecuting attorney brought up from Lansing (to the Upper Peninsula where the film takes place) to combat Stewart.  What results is a suspenseful drama with a few surprises and some panache (particularly in the context of 1959) from all concerned.  Eve Arden and Arthur O’Connell are solid in supporting roles (on Stewart’s team) but this is Stewart’s show and he doesn’t disappoint (but he doesn’t push himself into darker territory like he would in Vertigo or the westerns he filmed with Anthony Mann). But the ending does make you think.

A Place in the Sun (1951)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

A Place in the Sun (1951) – G. Stevens

Montgomery Clift is like a deer in the headlights when he stumbles into Elizabeth Taylor and her snooty social circle.  You see, he’s from a poor and sheltered background and the luxuries of the idle rich are quite beyond him. At first, he resists, maintaining his working class mentality and wooing dowdy Shelley Winters.  But when Liz (I mean Angela) seeks him out and pursues him (which her parents think is a whim or acting out), he falls hard.  Unfortunately, there’s a problem – he’s gotten Shelley (I mean Alice) in the family way; he’s trapped and won’t be able to secure that place in the sun with Liz.  In this regard, the film might be considered a noir, particularly when Monty (I mean George) foments his plan, consciously or not, to get rid of Alice.  Knowing that the film is based on Dreisser’s An American Tragedy, it seems hard to not read it in terms of class differences – just those words “American” and “Tragedy” in the context of today’s reality make you feel that George/Monty is forever locked out of a world where his dreams can come true and that the American Dream is really a Tragedy because it invites desperation and disappointment.  George Stevens brings his competence and craft to the film (shot in black and white to avoid letting color brighten its story); glamour and charisma emanates from young Liz; and Monty’s method approach is absorbingly thick. I’m debating with myself whether a director with a darker touch who could flip this more firmly into a true film noir would have ruined its mysterious stunned quality or whether Stevens got it exactly right, showing us the fantasy world that only the 1% can attain without raising any doubts that it would be beautiful (for this must be what American Dreamers perceive).    

The Cyclist (1987)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Cyclist (1987) – M. Makhmalbaf

Peculiar tale of an Afghani migrant to Iran who, in order to raise funds for his wife’s emergency hospital stay, agrees to ride a bicycle in a small circle for seven days non-stop.  Of course, this is a circus, especially when extreme bets are placed on the outcome and the opposing forces seek to influence the result – both have teams of doctors attempting to fill Nazim (or breeze, nee Ateh) with either vitamins or Valium.  Director Mohsen Makhmalbaf creates a weird feeling of hyper-reality which might be the result of the woozy Arabic music, the occasionally bright colour scheme (many blues) and the strange and surreal proceedings.  Standing back a bit, it seems that the film could be seen as an allegory for the exploitation of the desperate among us -- perhaps Afghanis in Iran, particularly, but humans more generally.  What won’t they do for money and what sort of sick game might it be for those who are rich and powerful to make sport out of or money as a result of suffering.  Yet, the film never feels preachy or horrible, just strange and rather suspenseful – will Ateh complete the feat or not?

  

Dead Man (1995)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Dead Man (1995) – J. Jarmusch

Immensely satisfying, Dead Man is a masterpiece from independent maverick Jim Jarmusch, an historically accurate rendering of the American West that follows the spiritual journey of Wiliam Blake (Johnny Depp) from life to death. Not _that_ William Blake, of course, but the misperception does allow Jarmusch to quote a lot of Blake’s poetry, delivered sometimes as faux Native American idioms by Gary Farmer, playing Nobody, Blake’s guide on the journey.  For this is really a road movie, terrain that cinematographer Robby Muller has visited before with Wim Wenders (friend and mentor to Jarmusch); his black and white footage of the serene wilderness contrasts with the stark views of the ugly white man’s town of Machine – both are spectacular.  Neil Young’s solo guitar score is haunting, ruminative, evocative, sacred – the film would not have reached such heights without it.  Most road movies are episodic, as the characters meet other players along the road and have adventures of various kinds and Dead Man is no different;  Blake runs afoul of Iggy Pop, Billy Bob Thornton, & Jared Harris who might kill him and Alfred Molina who wants to sell Nobody an infected blanket.  The white men are portrayed as flawed and violent here (beginning with Robert Mitchum in his final role), at least as compared to the Native Americans (who are not necessarily idealized).  As Blake/Depp travels half-dying (or already dead) from urban decay through pure natural environs to the sea, I am reminded of James Mason’s spiritual journey in Carol Reed’s Odd Man Out (1947), as an IRA leader who is shot and eventually leaves worldly things.  Mason is followed by the cops but Depp is followed by three bounty hunters who meet various untoward ends, allowing Jarmusch to employ some gallows humor.  And, although the movie does have some idiosyncratic anecdotes and Jarmuschian moments, mainly it is a majestic, poetic, astonishing meditation on the rape of the land and indigenous peoples, transmuted into William Blake’s experience and his writing by fire.  At his point in our history, we may all be dead already.

Coup de Torchon (1981)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Coup de Torchon (1981) – B. Tavernier

Sun-baked neo-noir, based on a novel by Jim Thompson (Pop. 1280), and directed by Bertrand Tavernier who transposed it from the U. S. South to a French colony in western Africa in the 1930s. Philippe Noiret plays the local cop who, at first, seems none too bright, preferring to give in to get along, rarely arresting anyone and letting those in power kick him around (including his wife and her n’er do well brother).  So, when he starts putting his plan for revenge into effect – or maybe he just cracks, it’s hard to tell – this viewer wasn’t quite sure what was happening.  But slowly and surely, the rude and the mighty get offed and Noiret finds himself bedding the young Isabelle Huppert, more or less oblivious to what the town might think.  Perhaps his lazy manner provides the perfect cover because no one seems too troubled by the deaths, perhaps, indeed, he did the town a favour…  In the end, Coup de Torchon is more of a character study and a snapshot of colonialism gone bad than a tightly plotted film noir, but its looseness and indirect approach is definitely part of its appeal.

The Sea Hawk (1940)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Sea Hawk (1940) – M. Curtiz

Another rousing swashbuckler from director Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn.  This time Flynn is a pirate captain working for Queen Elizabeth I, plundering Spanish ships and freeing the galley slaves that have been entrapped by the Inquisition.  At his side is Alan Hale and others who may be familiar from earlier similar pictures.  However, The Sea Hawk is a slight notch down from Captain Blood (1935) or especially Robin Hood (1938) because Brenda Marshall makes a duller love interest than Olivia de Havilland (Flynn’s usual starring partner) and Henry Daniell is wicked but not quite as wicked as Basil Rathbone.  Both of these stellar co-stars turned this picture down to seek different horizons.  Claude Rains is here but with little to do.  Still there is no denying the thrilling adventure scenes, often shot in the giant Maritime soundstage at Warner Brothers where giant sailing ships battle each other and men leap from one to the other cutlasses drawn.  Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s score undoubtedly adds to the effect. 

Spotlight (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Spotlight (2015) – T. McCarthy

Investigative journalism can be exciting -- and Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, and Michael Keaton, among others, help to make it so.  Taking a page from All the President’s Men (1976), director Tom McCarthy tells us the story of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize winning exposure of the Catholic Church’s cover-up of an epidemic of paedophile priests.  The story is still reverberating today and around the world.  Despite the absorbing nature of the hunt for clues, evidence, or a smoking gun, at its heart this is a profoundly depressing story.  After all, it is child sexual abuse we are talking about.  Howard Shore’s music is suitably downbeat and ruminative.  The actors temper their zeal with gravity.  Yet, is the issue really given enough of a serious treatment?  Viewers may be able to focus on the newspaper room without having to think too carefully or clearly about abuse, even though we hear victims describe their experiences and are told that many have committed suicide or engaged in self-defeating behaviour.  Not that I’d want to watch a more harrowing version of this – so perhaps the journalistic thriller genre is the best way to bring the issues into the public eye (if they weren’t already).  McCarthy and Josh Singer won the Oscar for their screenplay, which is all talk but engaging and not sensationalistic, and of course the film won the Best Picture Oscar as well.

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) – T. Davies

It has the quality of old photographs, fading and somewhat discoloured – and when they sing the old songs, memories are surely evoked.  This is obviously director Terence Davies’ goal in this reflection on his family’s life in working class Liverpool in the 1940’s and 1950’s. But we aren’t treated to rose-coloured nostalgia; instead, things are often tense and even brutal. His father (played by Pete Postlethwaite) is surly and violent, beating the kids and his wife, leading to questions after his death about why mum ever married him.  These early childhood experiences make up the first half of the film (“Distant Voices”), revealed discontinuously, evoking emotions more than revealing specific details of life – perhaps emotions are what chiefly remain decades later.  The second half of the film (shot two years later) sees the three children grown up and starting their own marriages, often meeting in the pub with a gang of close friends and their mum.  Other tensions arise, similar and different to those in the first half but now the spirit of community seems to enter as a protective factor (of sorts).  Singing in the pub is a spirited, perhaps escapist, activity but tender feelings well up even as the cast expertly portrays the often ambivalent relations they have with each other or with their friends, growing distant.  Are these still lives? Perhaps Davies sees them as not learning and building from their past experience. But still there is some life spirit here that isn’t being quelled, that comes through, yes nostalgically, but with enough power to think that Davies became the poet that he clearly is through these foundational experiences (both good and bad).

  

Now, Voyager (1942)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Now, Voyager (1942) – I. Rapper

The title comes from a Walt Whitman poem about unfulfilled desires -- and Charlotte Vale (Bette Davis) has them.  She’s been held back (all the way into her thirties) by her domineering mother, so much so that she plays the first scenes of the movie in ugly drag (with unruly eyebrows) on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Fortunately, Charlotte’s sister-in-law brings sensible psychologist Dr Jacquith (Claude Rains) into the picture and he rightly identifies, as Carl Rogers might later deduce, that internalizing her mother’s expectations for her is the crux of the problem.  So, he proposes that she escape away on a South American cruise – where, transformed miraculously into the Bette Davis we know, she meets and falls in love with, an unfortunately married man played by Paul Henreid.  I wonder why the most emotionally stirring films are always about those impossible loves that are never to be, never fulfilled (although there are some innuendoes here about a stormy night in Rio), never ending in a life-long pairing.  Is it because these possible futures remain in the land of “what might be” keeping expectations and dreams high, even when all loves that do result in relationships must crash down to reality and become an everyday, if not humdrum, thing?  Thus the sad dreams continue, unchecked by life.  Charlotte manages to sublimate her longing for Jerry (Henreid) into a mothering instinct, taking over guardianship of his younger daughter for whom her own mother seems to hold no interest. An unusual arrangement to be sure, and probably one that would not, could not, exist today.  So, Davis takes it on the chin, as she does in so many movies, but she comes through tougher than before. With its sweeping Max Steiner score and numerous touching and portentous moments, Now, Voyager, ends up being inspiring to those who want to take control of their own lives and navigate to the points beyond where they might currently be stuck. Onward!   

 

The Insect Woman (1963)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Insect Woman (1963) – S. Imamura

Japanese director Shohei Imamura (who continued making movies into the 2000s) famously said that his films were “messy” and it’s true.  Although afterwards it is possible to trace a narrative line and to consider the point and purpose of events, during the film itself things can be quite unpredictable and sometimes strange.  The Insect Woman follows Tome from her fatherless birth in the countryside in 1918 through WWII where she was forced to work for the landlord (and sleep with the landlord’s son) on to the 50s where she was, in succession, a factory worker and union leader, a maid, a prostitute, a pimp, and a cleaning lady.  Imamura sees her as a pragmatic survivor, much like an ant or a beetle, scurrying about protecting her self-interest and occasionally working for others when it suits her ends. Her daughter (also born out of wedlock, like the two generations of women in her family before her) seems to have similar characteristics, also managing to use her wiles to achieve her own goals: this time, she deceives her sugar daddy (the same business man who “kept” her mother) in order to get money to start a collective farm.  In the end, we see Tome scurrying about in the dirt, like an insect, hitting home the entomological theme.  As sociological commentary, Imamura’s film is intriguing but a bit unclear – is this a feminist film, showing the spirit of women to overcome obstacles, even those put in front of them by the patriarchy? If so, Tome’s willingness to exploit other women (and to do so in a mean-spirited way) flies in the face of that, unless it is to say that this horrible social system corrupts all those who try to achieve some measure of equity and even comfort.  Perhaps that’s it.    

  

Phoenix (2014)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Phoenix (2014) – C. Petzold

Many are referring to this film as a contemporary film noir (neo-noir) but I’m not sure I see it.  Yes, the plot has strong similarities to the “returning veteran” subgenre, in which somebody like Alan Ladd returns from war to normal society and has trouble fitting back in, although in this case our protagonist is female, Nelly Lenz (played by Nina Hoss), a Jewish survivor returning from Auschwitz to the decimated German society of the 1940’s. This might make the film even darker than the typical noir, in fact.  Clearly, she has trouble fitting in, particularly because her face has been destroyed and subsequently rebuilt by a plastic surgeon.  She doesn’t quite look like herself, so even her husband doesn’t recognise her when she finally finds him.  So, she keeps her identity a secret.  He may or may not be trustworthy and might even have betrayed her to the Nazis.  When he suggests that she pretend to be his lost wife (presumed dead) so that he can apply for her fortune (held in abeyance by the Allies), she plays along (strong shades of Hitchcock’s Vertigo here).  Those that would hail this a noir seem to think that Nelly might either be out for revenge or might truly wish to subjugate herself to her husband, but Nina Hoss’s fragile performance never seems to suggest the former (to me), thus undercutting the noir edge. True, the final scene, a superb culmination of all that has gone before, grants Nelly more power/confidence, but this seems to well up in her rather than be suddenly revealed as a well-protected secret.  A separate strand of the plot also sees Nelly in counterpoint to another Jewish woman, possibly lesbian, who wants to resettle in the new Jewish state to be founded in Palestine, but in this case, Nelly cannot commit perhaps because she is still in the sway of her husband (or at least has unfinished business with him).  Apparently, this is the sixth collaboration between director Christian Petzold and actress Nina Hoss which suggests a back catalogue ready for mining.  

 

Double Suicide (1969)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Double Suicide (1969) – M. Shinoda

This is Masahiro Shinoda’s high concept staging of a bunraku puppet show with actors instead of dolls (but retaining the figures in black who control everything).  The result is as highly stylized as you would imagine and starkly shot in high contrast black and white with Toru Takemitsu’s minimalist score aiding in the effect.  Based on a tale of doomed lovers by Chikamatsu (also a favourite of Mizoguchi’s), the plot sees Jihei the paper merchant and Koharu the courtesan drawn inexorably to the fate announced in the title of the film.  Even knowing what will happen, it is impossible to look away.  Jihei’s wife and two children are also dragged into the drama (as are his brother and her father).  Everybody is so wrong-headed but erotic compulsion cannot be denied.  The poor puppeteers in black can only look on in sympathy and horror (even as they occasionally assist the players); this adds another odd layer to the proceedings. The only other Shinoda film I’ve seen is Pale Flower (1964), a striking yakuza drama that is well worth your time.

 

  
Double Suicide (1969) [Trailer] from Art Theatre Guild on Vimeo.

Wake in Fright (1971)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Wake in Fright (1971) – T. Kotcheff

AKA Outback; This is one of those “horror” movies where a naïve, possibly too cocky, protagonist gets in over his head.  In this case, John Grant (played rather stiffly by Gary Bond) gets stuck in the Australian country town of Bundanyabba (called “The Yabba” for short) where everyone’s yer mate and happy to buy you a pot or a schooner. In fact, after Chips Rafferty introduces him to the local haunts, Grant finds himself on a non-stop treadmill of booze, gambling, proffered sex, and then drunken kangaroo hunting (with gruesome real footage).  As a viewer, you are as off-guard as Grant, not knowing whether these raucous Aussie blokes are up to no good or not.  Donald Pleasance adds to the sense of unease as a former outsider who has now given up everything for the delirium that pervades the Yabba.  Can Grant actually escape alive before he too succumbs to the wasted life?  The dusty outback looks great and there’s an Aussie authenticity here that just might scare you off from travelling outside the major metropolises.   

 

Smithereens (1982)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Smithereens (1982) – S. Seidelman

NYC looks like shit in Susan Seidelman’s 1982 punk debut but it is the perfect milieu for the youth at loose ends that populate her story.  Most of them seem to have fled to the city to escape their home lives and to join like-minded others slumming it in the scene.  Wren wants badly to be cool and she manipulates and uses others to try to reach this goal and it doesn’t work well for her.  The film is her character study.  She falls in with nice guy Paul from Montana, who lives out of his van but she doesn’t treat him right, instead trying to curry the favour of punk rocker Eric (Richard Hell) who wants to hit the road to L.A.  The soundtrack by The Feelies (songs from Crazy Rhythms) is the perfect accompaniment to Wren’s travails and adds mood and depth in the ellipses between scenes.  The dialogue, though clearly scripted, takes on a naturalistic, almost Morrissey-Warhol sort of feel.  You feel you are there.  But where? In a world that no longer exists, dated, scrubbed clean, erased.  Nice to see this on the big screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival.

 

The Martian (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Martian (2015) – R. Scott

Ridley Scott seems to know what he is doing.  He manages to guide this blockbuster on its safe journey, hitting all the necessary highs and lows and with the requisite smart-ass dialogue in tow.  In many ways, this story of an astronaut left behind on Mars (not a spoiler since this happens in the first 10 minutes) feels like a true story – but of course it’s not (and one wonders if NASA will ever get to attempt anything like manned voyages to Mars, given present and future budget problems).  Still it works as a faux replay of a story that we know will end well – it is just the process of getting to that happy ending that we need to watch.  Scott, aided immensely by Matt Damon (playing his usual average Joe), keeps the plot moving for more than two hours with intermittent crises and successes.  The rest of the cast play as a collective, trying to rescue him.  You can feel the problem-solving happening.  All the pieces fit together.  Even the familiar music used on the soundtrack takes on new relevance in this context (Bowie’s “Starman” and the closing “I Will Survive” which somehow remarkably references outer space in its opening lines).  The CGI is fine.  I was manipulated and I enjoyed it.

The Illusionist (2010)

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The Illusionist (2010) – S. Chomet

It’s another Jacques Tati feature come to life, even though the comic auteur himself died in 1982.  In actuality, he wrote the script (sometime after Mon Oncle) and his daughter asked animator Sylvain Chomet (who also did The Triplets of Bellville, 2003) to create the film, so that no live actor would end up playing her father.  Although not specifically M. Hulot, the Illusionist (named Tatischeff – Tati’s real name) gets into the same serene bungles, as he accommodates to the early 1960’s and the slow fade-out of the music-hall trade.  He isn’t alone in the seedy old hotel in Edinburgh where most of the film takes place – assorted clowns, ventriloquists, and acrobats also live there, feeling despair or seeking other ways to bring in money (Tatischeff moonlights in a garage).  All told, there is a wistful bittersweet air to the proceedings, not least because the illusionist is more-or-less adopted by a young girl (a cleaner at one of the venues he’s played at) who moves in with him and they develop a sweet wordless relationship that ends when it is time for her to move on and him to declare that magicians do not exist.  Oh but they do – not just in the form of Tati himself but also in the form of Chomet who has brought a thing of real beauty to the screen, hand-drawn but computer animated, subtly coloured in reds, greens, and browns, Miyazaki-like in the pleasure it takes in the environments that surround the action.  A wonderful tribute to the French legend and a contribution to his oeuvre (and to animation’s highlight reel) in its own right.

  

Seven Beauties (1975)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Seven Beauties (1975) – L. Wertmuller

Giancarlo Giannini seems to be hamming it up comically in his part as a wannabe macho loser in Naples during Mussolini’s rise to power.  But director Lina Wertmuller puts him through the meat grinder instead.  First, he accidentally kills his sister’s pimp and gets 12 years in the insane asylum.  Then, after raping another inmate, he is freed in order to fight in WWII but deserts and is captured by the Germans and placed in a concentration camp.  In order to survive, he decides to seduce the queen bitch female commandant but she has other tortures planned for him.  Wertmuller cheerfully ignores the boundaries of good taste but manages to say something about shame and degradation.  Is it better to humiliate oneself (and even commit atrocities) in order to walk away alive or should one sacrifice one’s meaningless existence for a moral principle, even when the sacrifice will have no effect?  Maybe we’d all choose the latter (or we’d like to think we would) but not Giannini.  He suffers instead.  There is a Fellini-esque flavour to the proceedings but things get much darker than the maestro chose to go.

  

Cria Cuervos (1976)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Cria Cuervos (1976) – C. Saura

Superb blend of memory and reality channelled by a child who has seen and heard too much (played precociously by Spirit of the Beehive’s Ana Torrent).  Ana and her two sisters experience the deaths of their mother (played by Geraldine Chaplin) and father, an officer in Franco’s army, but not after bearing witness to fights over the father’s infidelity (which they later play-act in their bedroom).  Ana may be haunted by the spirit of her mother who appears in the house at night, repeating well-rehearsed lines from the past; or the vagaries of memory may lead to overlapping in the recall of the periods when Ana and her sisters subsequently lived with her strict but well-meaning Aunt Paulina.  Matters are made all the more mysterious by the fact that Chaplin also plays the adult Ana who occasionally speaks directly to the camera.  The title refers to an idiom “raise ravens and they’ll pluck out your eyes” – suggesting that parents are to blame for the consequences of their actions on their kids (and their kids’ adult behaviours).  No doubt, director Carlos Saura also meant the film to be a slap in the face to the Franco regime, suggesting that the years under fascism would have far-reaching and lasting effects on Spain.  But the picture works as a potent tale of childhood, where emotional events are writ larger on budding lives. 

  

Cornered (1945)

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Cornered (1945) – E. Dmytryk

Dick Powell is a shell-shocked Canadian airman at the end of his tether looking for the Vichy French collaborator who killed his wife (and dozens of others) and fled to Argentina.  He doesn’t listen to nobody but that’s probably a wise idea when the people he meet are like Walter Slezak’s oily guide (a.k.a. go between) who leads him straight to the fascists hiding his target only to double or triple cross him (although everyone is out for themselves here).  It isn’t clear whether we are meant to be seeing things from distrustful Powell’s perspective or whether the endless lies told by all of the secondary characters were craftily designed to fool us.  This is a film noir that is constructed to create a world that is confusing as hell.  Even at the end, I wasn’t quite sure until the final minute who had won.  Director Edward Dmytryk was notorious as a member of the Hollywood Ten, jailed for contempt of Congress for not speaking to the House Un-American Activities Committee, who eventually named names.  Whether he inserted a message willingly or not, Cornered does contain some pleas for solidarity against the fascists who could be anywhere, even today. Indeed, the fascists in this film attribute the credit for their own success to the policies and acts of major governments that keep people in poverty and refuse to take notice of them and to treat them with respect. The film looks grimy and burnt out, exactly as a post-war noir should.

  

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002)

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Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) – P. Noyce

Although it elides most real details in favour of an emotional overview, this story of three Aboriginal girls who escape from a virtual prison camp for “half-caste” girls is dramatically compelling and rewarding.  It is also a didactic history lesson, telling viewers (worldwide) about Australia’s policy of removing children from their families in order to propagate a vision of White Australia.  This fear of Blackness is embodied by Kenneth Branagh who plays the official charged with overseeing the lives of Indigenous Australians in Western Australia in the 1930’s when the film takes place. (Children were removed all the way up until 1970 – they are referred to as the “stolen generations” and an apology was only offered by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2008; this movie may have swayed public opinion).  The acting by the three central girls, aged 14, 10, and 8 is a bit variable and the baddies are really bad but the film’s episodic structure, where encounters with kindly and insidious Aussies are interspersed with beautiful landscapes and some voiceover narration, helps to keep things on track and elevates the film to a kind of fable.  At the end, we see two of the girls as elderly adults as we discover that we have been watching a true story.  Shame, shame, shame on Australia. 

  

The Cameraman (1928)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Cameraman (1928) – E. Sedgwick

Buster Keaton’s late great feature (after all of his greatest hits: The General, Sherlock Jr., etc.) is a slow-boiler that favours small gags over the giant set-pieces of the past. Still, by the end it has picked up speed (and a small monkey) and the usual chaos that surrounds Buster is in full swing. The plot involves Buster’s attempt to become a newsreel cameraman in order to impress a girl.  However, he is hapless as usual. Funny scenes include their date at the swimming pool, including a very awkward dressing room bit and a ride on the side of a bus (surely an influence for Jackie Chan).  The Chinese Tong war is impressive.  All told, this ranks up there with his best but marked the begin of his decline when directorial responsibilities were taken away from him by MGM.