The Spy in Black (1939)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Spy in Black (1939) – M. Powell

This first collaboration between Powell and Pressburger already contains some of the lyricism that would feature so prominently in their later great films (I Know Where I’m Going!, The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus, etc.).  Surprisingly, the film follows Conrad Veidt, a German U-Boat commander in WWI, when he is assigned to the small Scottish Orkney Islands as a spy.  His mission is to receive secret plans from a British traitor that would allow him to destroy the warships stationed here.  His control turns out to be Valerie Hobson, undercover as a schoolteacher in the small village (after the real incoming schoolteacher is disposed of in an unfortunate way).  But things are not always how they seem to be!  Powell moves smoothly and easily between the wartime U-Boat scenes and the close up personal drama in the village (where Veidt and Hobson may be falling in love!).  A memorable portent of things to come and a solid and engaging spy story on its own.

  

Fireworks Wednesday (2006)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Fireworks Wednesday (2006) – A. Farhadi

A young bride-to-be is exposed to real married life when she is hired to serve as a maid for a squabbling couple.  As with Farhadi’s later dramas (About Elly, A Separation, The Past), there is a mystery here.  The wife suspects the husband of having an affair.  Young Rouhi is caught in the middle.  Farhadi only offers us (and her) sketchy bits of information about what is going on.  We have to construct the narrative ourselves and often for a moment, we might expect something different might happen than what actually does.  This is great movie-making -- and the anti-thesis of the Spielberg/Hitchcock suspense tradition in which everyone sees the same heavily manipulated movie.   This is not to say that Farhadi doesn’t know exactly what he is doing – like his colleagues Kiarostami and Panahi, he is playful but also uses cinema to raise serious issues.  The fireworks of the title (before New Year’s) are seen at night in what must be a slice of reality (filmed on the streets) but they are also symbolic of the couple’s fiery relationship, which of course is fiction.  Hard to know whether the young bride’s dream of married life (and her partner) are fiction or reality – but Farhadi seems to be giving her an eye-opening.

  

Animal Crackers (1930)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Animal Crackers (1930) – V. Heerman

The Marx Brothers tore into my living room tonight.  However, at first, I wasn’t so sure about it – their film seemed rather too scripted.  But then, as I loosened up (and the movie did too), I fell into its rhythm.  I never quite guffawed, but I appreciated the chaos and the well-timed reaction shots of Margaret Dumont.  Perhaps the jokes were just too familiar for laughing out loud and they always do fly by fast: elephant in my pajamas and so on.  Groucho is Captain Spalding, recently returned from Africa, and Dumont is hosting a party in his honor.  At said party, a famous painting is to be unveiled – but then it is replaced with a copy and another copy and then all three paintings are stolen (by Harpo, of course).  Except when it’s Chico -- who also plays the piano … wittily.  The censors apparently struck out some jokes but not the Marx spirit which is subversive enough to come through anyway. The result is not quite up there with Duck Soup but it still makes you want to take everything less seriously.

Red Psalm (1972)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Red Psalm (1972) – M. Jancsó

Miklós Jancsó’s Red Psalm is a psalm, or hymn, to socialism, featuring song and dance in a Hungarian meadow. Jancsó uses long takes with choreographed comrades in peasant dress (or nude) and a wandering minstrel on guitar.  They are opposed by the military and by the church – and of course by the oppressive land-holding classes.  The Internationale is often sung.  Socialists die in their conflicts but they also win over and sometimes kill the opposition.  All of this is staged theatrically in the meadow.  There is no plot but only the message (although apparently this is based on a real peasant revolt in the 1890s).  At times, there are hundreds of actors.  The shots are incredibly long and the camera moves from group to group, high and low, weaving between people and the many horses that are ridden amongst them; any mistake would have meant starting all over again.  The film is often beautiful, including a shot of a burning church and another of a stream running red with blood.  Indeed, there is much symbolism, highlighted by red ribbons…and blood. Solidarity is strong and compelling here in 1972 – the only sad and sombre note is that their optimism (underscored by an awareness of the difficulty of the struggle) has not been realized more than 40 years later. Instead, things appear to have gotten worse not better for the cause. Viva la revolution!

  

Closely Watched Trains (1966)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Closely Watched Trains (1966) – J. Menzel

Czechoslovakia was another country to have an exciting “new wave” of cinema in the 1960’s (with Milos Forman, who later made his mark in Hollywood, one of the leading lights).  This film, directed by Jiri Menzel, won the Academy Award for best foreign film and it is an affectionate comic delight.  Demonstrating that growing up – and losing your virginity – is something that preoccupies young people regardless of any political conflicts going on in the background, the film follows Milos Hrma, a young man who starts his first job as a small town train dispatcher and who suffers from premature ejaculation.  You see, his girlfriend wants to do it and his older colleague at the station is always doing it in the stationmaster’s office – but, there’s that problem.  The film is basically anecdotal, a fond “coming of age” story but it ends with an absurdly dark twist (that somehow can’t be taken seriously, despite what we know about the Czech experience in WWII, when the film takes place).  Menzel and his team manage to make the station feel real and lived in, with a number of eccentric characters and believable incidents, all the while taking the film into new territory with clever editing and nicely composed shots.

The Big Lebowski (1998)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Big Lebowski (1998) – J. Coen & E. Coen

Sublimely ridiculous or ridiculously sublime?  Somehow the Coen Brothers managed to create a pair of hilarious and vivid characters (laid back but put upon Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski and aggressively wrong-headed Walter Sobchak) and situate them in a sprawling “mystery” plot that riffs on The Big Sleep, the early 90’s, the art world, bowling, pornography, nihilism, and just about anything and everything else that popped into their brains at the time.  But it all holds together (more or less and not worse than The Big Sleep), courtesy of Jeff Bridges as the Dude and John Goodman as Walter, and contains enough laughs to have become a phenomenon.  Just think of John Turturro as the Jesus in a purple jumpsuit taunting our heroes at the bowling alley.  Or the amazing dream montage set to The First Edition (with Kenny Rogers) song, “Just Dropped In (to see what condition my condition was in).”   There are dozens more absurd, knowing, and very funny moments.  All you can think is “who thinks this shit up?  (“Cussing” is common here, despite Sam Elliott’s suggestion that they tone it down).  But we know the answer – it springs from the very bizarre brains of the Brothers Coen: one of their very best.