L’Eclisse (1962)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

L’Eclisse (1962) – M. Antonioni

This time through, I watched Antonioni’s The Eclipse (third film in his famed trilogy) with Richard Pena’s commentary and it shed more light on this notoriously abstract film (he positions it somewhere between traditional narrative cinema and the more purely experimental films of the day – but much closer to narrative, it should be said). As the film opens, Vittoria (Monica Vitti) is splitting up with her boyfriend, Riccardo (Francisco Rabal) who wishes she wouldn’t. She leaves on foot past the EUR tower (another architectural landmark which Antonioni loves to film) in a gentrified area of Rome and heads to the local stock market where her mother is a small-time investor. Little do we know at this point that Piero (Alain Delon), her mother’s broker, will become her next love interest. Although Antonioni sticks with Vittoria long enough to see her visit a friend from Kenya (allowing the director to elicit viewers’ reactions to European colonialism), soon the film shifts gears to observe Piero who likes fast cars and call girls. It is hard to see how he will connect with Vittoria who seems disconnected from people but after some awkward scenes at his parents’ house, the film cuts forward in time, where they seem to be a happy couple.  We see them in certain locations in Rome and then they part, planning to meet the next day.  Instead, Antonioni shows us these same locations without Vittoria or Piero, as if they haven’t bothered to show up (for a full seven minutes). We are left to ponder the meaning of this jarring finale. Has their relationship ended? Are all relationships transient then? Or are we meant think about how the places around us will continue to exist after we’re gone, really gone? Are our actions really just devoid of meaning? Or perhaps the actions of the new bourgeoisie, cut off from the moral foundations of the past, lost or finding themselves only in materialism, are Antonioni’s target, as in the previous films of the trilogy. The digression about the drunken man who steals Piero’s sports car and dies in an accident may tell us as much. In any case, this is one to ponder.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Manchurian Candidate (1962) – J. Frankenheimer

I think it was probably 1990 or so when Bill, Marc, and I all travelled to Chicago (from our separate locales) to visit Laura.  There was a Jackie Chan film festival at the Art Institute (this is how I remember it) and we planned to see something – but, somehow, we turned up on the wrong night and The Manchurian Candidate was showing after having been out of circulation for decades.  What a thrill to see something this weird with no foreknowledge!  Frank Sinatra stars as Major Ben Marco who, as the film opens, is captured with his platoon by Chinese troops in the Korean war.  In a tour-de-force scene (staged by director John Frankenheimer), we learn that they have been brainwashed into believing that they are waiting out a storm at a women’s garden club meeting in New Jersey when in fact they are exhibits of psychological conditioning being shown to Chinese and Russian brass.  Laurence Harvey plays Staff Sgt. Raymond Shaw who is conditioned to be an assassin and set to be turned over to his American operator upon his return to New York. Being asked to play solitaire –and the presence of a particular card -- are the cues that open him up to external control. When Marco starts having vivid nightmares about his time in Korea, he begins an investigation that will ultimately lead to the truth.  Angela Lansbury plays Shaw’s mother, a rabid anti-communist working through her buffoon husband (Barney Miller’s James Gregory) who is a McCarthyite senator. Janet Leigh plays Sinatra’s love interest – or is she a double agent? Their dialogue together is nonsensical at best.  The plot has a number of twists and turns, which I won’t reveal here.  (I refuse to watch the remake).  This is one of the all-time great Cold War thrillers – if you haven’t seen it, you should. 

An Autumn Afternoon (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

An Autumn Afternoon (1962) -- Y. Ozu

More nuanced emotions in another family melodrama from Ozu, again focused on a young woman's decision to leave her family to marry, this time from the father's point of view. Not in the league with his masterpieces but comfortable like an old pair of slippers. (2008 review)

Advise and Consent (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Advise and Consent (1962) – O. Preminger

Otto Preminger’s look at machinations in the US Senate is full of tension and intrigue, as Charles Laughton’s crusty southern senator seeks to sink the confirmation of Henry Fonda as Secretary of State.  Fonda’s character has been nominated by the possibly dying president (Franchot Tone) and his friend, the Senate Majority Leader (an excellent Walter Pidgeon), must work to get the votes lined up.  When the confirmation moves to a subcommittee chaired by Utah Senator Brig Anderson (Don Murray), Laughton finds a witness (Burgess Meredith) to testify that Fonda once belonged to a communist discussion group.  Meanwhile, another Senator (George Grizzard) has his own axe to grind when he isn’t made the subcommittee chair.  Peter Lawford, Lou Ayres, Will Geer, and Gene Tierney round out the starry cast.  To tell more would probably be criminal – the screenplay based on Allen Drury’s novel has a lot of twists and turns.  Of course, there are clear links to real US politics – particularly the red-baiting tactics of Joe McCarthy; to that end, it is worth noting that Preminger selected Burgess Meredith and Will Geer for the cast because they had been blacklisted themselves.  As always, Preminger seeks to break some taboos with his film – and again that particular plot twist is drawn from an actual event in US politics.  This was Laughton’s last film and he goes out with a nicely observed caricature. 

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

To Kill A Mockingbird (1962) – R. Mulligan

I’ve never read the book (by Harper Lee) and perhaps I should.  I suspect it captures the nostalgic feeling of childhood memories of “events of significance” even more than the movie does.  And the movie does a very nice job of showing us a grown-up world through a child’s eyes, a grown-up world where things are unfair and people are treated badly because of the colour of their skin.  It is small-town Alabama in the early 1930s and the children are Scout, a six-year-old girl, and Jem, a ten-year-old boy, and they are the children of grown-up lawyer Atticus Finch, played by a dignified Gregory Peck.  He’s a widower with a deep sense of justice who is called upon (and agrees) to defend black Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) who has been accused of raping a white girl.  Of course, the odds are stacked against them and the racism of the town is such that Robinson needs to be protected from lynching from the same sort of men who are later sitting on the jury.  Yet, we believe in Robinson, and in Finch. as wholeheartedly as his children do, and we see the girl’s father, Bob Ewell, as the true villain, almost an embodiment of evil here.  But the movie is not all serious and we also see the children enjoy themselves, daring each other to run up and touch the door of a spooky nearby house where rumour has it that “Boo” Radley, a shut-in young man (who represents a sort of Bogeyman) lives and who may be dangerous (or perhaps not, since he may be leaving small gifts for the kids).  The plot ultimately weaves a number of different strands together into a satisfying whole, even as it avoids any semblance of a happy ending that would claim to have solved the problem of racism.  Off in the future, from the standpoint of the narrator (a grown-up Scout), these events still seem significant – and the effect of the book and the movie on American society, perhaps more significant still.  Yet, more cultural advances would be needed before we would begin to hear black voices telling their own stories rather than having white advocates speak for them (inside and out of the movies). 

Jules and Jim (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jules and Jim (1962) – F. Truffaut

The first thing that strikes you about Jules and Jim is the exuberance (joie de vivre?) with which director Francois Truffaut endows the story.  As in his first two films (The 400 Blows, 1959, and Shoot the Piano Player, 1960), Truffaut experiments with film technique, mixing and matching styles in a way that keeps the viewer interested and shows off what Raoul Coutard (cinematographer) could do.  In fact, the first reel, detailing the relationship between best friends Jules and Jim (and the women they loved before they met Catherine) speeds by so fast, with so much cutting between anecdotes, that it is hard to keep up. Part of this may be due to the use of offscreen narration that fleshes out the story and reveals the characters’ inner thoughts and feelings – there are a lot of subtitles to read!  But once Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), the film slows a bit to better observe their melodramatic relations across the decades from just before WWI until some years after.  I suppose it comes as no surprise that Truffaut takes the male point of view and treats Catherine and her willful ways as both an object of desire and the cause of suffering; perhaps it is a bit ambivalently sexist but Moreau is nothing if not empowered in the role.  Yet, despite the exuberance, there is a profound melancholy at the core of the film – a yearning for a love that cannot be and perhaps an acknowledgement that it may be difficult for a free spirit to maintain a stable relationship with any one person, let alone two (or three), no matter how strong their passions sometimes are.  Those around them can and do get burned. Ultimately, it isn’t clear whether Truffaut is advocating the sort of compromises that most people make to keep their relationships alive or whether he sides with Catherine’s unfettered approach. Perhaps, as the ending suggests, he knows that some candles burn much too brightly to last.  Fortunately, this jewel of the French New Wave is ours to treasure forever.

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.

  

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.

Sanjuro (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Sanjuro (1962) – A. Kurosawa

Kurosawa’s relatively light-hearted follow up to Yojimbo (1961) sees Mifune’s character (who identifies only as “thirty-something” with an obviously fake family name) intervening in a struggle against corrupt officials who have tried to divert blame onto an innocent but blunt colleague.  As before, Sanjuro seems to take on the mission on a lark to thwart boredom but really we know he is all about social justice deep down.  Here he takes the role of sarcastic but caring mother hen as he uses his matter-of-fact wiles to help nine naïve young men take down the bad guys.  Of course, the opposition also has their own “sword without a sheath” in the form of Tatsuya Nakadai and in the end, there must be a battle between these two ronin, reasonably good and self-identified as bad.  Before that, there is much bloodshed (naturally) albeit peppered with comic moments.  Observant viewers will note Kurosawa’s expertise in framing multiplayer shots and, of course, action.  Minor Kurosawa perhaps, but thoroughly enjoyable.

Hara-Kiri (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Hara-Kiri (1962) – M. Kobayashi

Kobayashi’s film feels like a horror film or at the very least a potently grim fable.  Told mostly in flashback by Tatsuya Nakadai, a masterless samurai, who has turned up at the castle of the Ii clan, asking permission to commit ritual suicide to end his miserable life.  The stark black and white serves only to highlight the stark coldness of the feudal system and its unfeeling code of honour (that may be really just a front for authoritarians who take pleasure in sadistic treatment of underlings, or so Kobayashi seems to be implying).  As his story progresses, Nakadai’s samurai gradually reveals his hand, undermining the moral rectitude of the clan that has put on such airs of superiority.  Of course, the film crescendos with violence and ends very bleakly.  In 2012, Miike Takashi remade the film in colour and 3D but that version seems almost pointless in its close transcription of the powerful and gripping original. Unbearably tense.

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) – R. Bresson

I take it that this is no one’s favourite Bresson film.  However, I found this return to his stylized world refreshing – there is no one quite like Bresson.  Perhaps the choice of film content was so obvious that some reviewers felt he was going through the motions? Bresson has always focused on issues of faith and how challenges that a person faces might lead them to question their faith.  So, Joan of Arc represents a person in such a challenging position – although perchance it is we the audience or Joan’s interrogators from the Church who are really being challenged, given that Joan’s faith nary wavers a bit.  Bresson is also acknowledging Dreyer as one of his forebears, given the earlier director’s transcendent version of this story, also based on the available transcripts from the trial.  However, Bresson’s version is far different from Dreyer’s ecstatic take and instead almost mechanical in its stoic and restrained approach.  But the inhibited nature of the film (and those typical shots of Joan’s hands and feet, often in shackles) somehow elicits a heightened reaction from the viewer, as if the viewer must contribute him or herself the emotion and spiritual force that have been omitted on screen.  Of course, modern viewers might be led to wonder whether Joan of Arc might have been experiencing schizophrenia, but the final shot of the stake after Joan has been burned suggests that Bresson did not share similar doubts.

Night of the Eagle (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Night of the Eagle (1962) – S. Hayers

Similar to Curse of the Demon, this film pits a university professor against the supernatural in a low-key nothing-but-shadows Val Lewton-styled approach. And there are some genuinely scary moments when all the protection charms are burnt and who knows what is going to happen. The soundtrack is a real treat of scary flourishes. A couple of jump cuts in the plot are all that keeps this from scoring higher.

The Bad Sleep Well (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Bad Sleep Well (1962) – A. Kurosawa

Kurosawa disguises his reading of Hamlet in this tale of big business corruption that still feels modern 50 years later (given the undying ability for capitalism to promote greed). A bit overlong, perhaps, but the evil is both banal and chilling and Mifune is too nice to win in his quest for revenge.

Freud (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Freud (1962) – J. Huston

John Huston may have enjoyed the challenge of putting Freud’s theories (not his life, exactly) on screen, given the direct parallel between repression of sexual thoughts by the superego and repression of the same by the Hays Office censors.  Surely, he also smirked when he put Monty Clift into the lead, knowing that the actor suffered great torment over his homosexuality (leading to emotional and alcoholic problems that troubled this production).  Indeed, Huston himself voices Freud’s inner thoughts on screen in occasional narration, suggesting his role in directing/dominating Clift.  Somehow, despite being all talk talk talk (therapy), the film mostly succeeds and is fairly gripping and noir-ish when Freud faces his own internal conflicts in a dark dream (not unlike Hitch’s Dali sequence in Spellbound or Bergman’s Wild Strawberries scene).  Susannah York’s ongoing somatoform problems, Larry Parks’ kindly but less brave attempts to treat them, and Eric Portman’s dastardly (but secretive) supervision of Freud’s early work are all pieces of the puzzle – but all roads lead to his relationships with his parents (of course).  For me, it is hard to know how much the audience of the day was able to fill in the gaps of Freud’s theories from what is onscreen but the more you know, the more you may see (notwithstanding the schematicity necessary in all film).  Not the travesty it could have been and in fact consistently absorbing. 

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962) – T. Richardson

One of the key films of the Free Cinema (kitchen sink) movement in Britain, sort of a translation of Italian neorealism to working class English settings.  In this case, Tom Courtenay plays a young lad from Nottingham who finds himself sent to a reform school (borstal).  There he catches the eye of the headmaster (an aging Michael Redgrave) who seeks to capitalize on Colin’s (Courtenay’s) nascent running skill for a big sports challenge with a local public school (i.e. private school in the UK system).  The beautiful B&W cinematography often becomes lyrical on the boy’s runs through the woods around the school, where we are also treated to flashbacks that tell the story of his home life: ailing dad, busy mum, first love, trouble with the law, ambition not to give in.  This latter trait (which in later times would be manifest as punk rock perhaps) sets him up for conflict with the headmaster.  Director Tony Richardson laces the film with jump cuts, jazz, and other touches borrowed from the concurrent French new wave – but these add rather than  distract from the proceedings. 

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.

Le Doulos (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Le Doulos (1962) -- J.-P. Melville

This could be my favorite Melville film.  He masterfully hides things from the audience, leading us purposefully astray.  The central characters are also taken in and make poor decisions as a result.  The film is shot in contrasty black-and-white, not unlike some of the low-budget American noirs that Melville must have loved, but much more artful in set design, mise-en-scene, symbolism, jazzy soundtrack, than many of those.  The opening tracking shot alone is worth the price of admission. We follow Faugel (Serge Reggiani) who has just been released from prison and needs to settle old scores and get back to work.  Unfortunately, his next job goes wrong because the police are tipped off by an informer (le doulos of the title).  From there, the plot cascades in a complicated fashion until all is revealed in a sudden rush with three characters sitting in a bar talking over flashbacks.  But yet their fates still await them in a final coda.  

Knife in the Water (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Knife in the Water (1962) -- R. Polanski

Often beautiful to look at it in sumptuous black and white, Polanski's first film, a three-hander, already maintains a chilly distance from the characters. The distance between the characters is also probed, as two men (husband and the young hitchhiker) variously brag about their abilities or show off in front of the wife.  The camera catches the sunlight and provides a tactile sense of reality, but everything is surfaces and, in the end, no one has been let inside.

La Jetée (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

La Jetée (1962) -- C. Marker

I found a spare 30 minutes to watch La Jetee (and some related ephemera on the Criterion DVD) to commemorate Chris Marker's passing.  A series of still photographs conveys the narrative (with voiceover narration).  It is after Paris has been destroyed (by nuclear war?) and survivors are sheltered underground.  They begin experiments in time travel to find food, water, energy etc.  A man returns to the past, his own past, but as a stranger, a visitor.  He falls in love with someone he remembers seeing at a distance at the Pier at Orly Airport where he also saw a man die.  Later, people from the future help him to escape his present.  There is something about watching still photos (OK, mostly still) that creates calm and a sense of focused reflective attention -- this gives you time to process the associations that Marker's images elicit (if only Twelve Monkeys didn't get in the way, as interesting as it was).  Love, childhood, memory, animals, future, past, existence.