Jean-Pierre Melville’s love of American film noir is well-known and
Deuxieme Souffle (Second Breath) is an extended (150 minutes) look at a heist
gone wrong. He always said The Asphalt
Jungle was one of his favourite films, although perhaps Le Cercle Rouge (1970)
more closely approximates the focus on different gang members. Here, we stick mostly with Lino Ventura,
playing Gu Minda, who we see escaping from prison at the start of the film (in
a silent scene reminiscent of Bresson’s A Man Condemned). Melville carefully and methodically
(everything about the film is methodical) sets the stage for us, showing us
Ventura’s former friends, love, and accomplices and their milieu, before he
arrives and they sequester him away in a safe house. At the same time, we see another gang
beginning to plan a big heist of platinum bars from an armoured truck. As with many noirs, the plot is a little
confusing at times (Jo Ricci, a gangster, is the true bad guy, but his brother
Paul Ricci, who plans the heist, is a good bad guy – except his cronies are
responsible for an attack on Gu’s friends).
Of course, everything comes down to honour with Melville and when the police
inspector Blot (played cunningly by Paul Meurisse) entraps Gu into giving away
his colleagues, he will do anything to restore his reputation. In the end, the crooks and the police are
shown to be little different, engaged in a game of wits and violence that
always ends badly. Nevertheless, honour
must be (mostly) maintained by both. If
you love film noir, then you can’t look past Melville and his French take on it
(almost better than the real thing).
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Masculin Feminin (1966) -- J.-L. Godard The Children of Marx and Coca-Cola (indeed) or Antoine Doinel Goes Godard. With stimulating and swirling undercurrents but blunt like a slap in the face. Dated or not? (2010 Review).
This is a strange and paranoid sci-fi
drama that tackles major philosophical questions (such as, “what is identity?”)
in the context of loneliness, anomie, generational gaps, and other major
concerns of the sixties (and since).
John Frankenheimer had the wisdom to cast two different actors as the
same man, Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph at first), who contracts with a
company that promises to rebuild him as a new different person (a reborn named
Antiochus Wilson, played by Rock Hudson), killing off his old self in the
process (a hotel fire, in this case).
The first half of the film shows us Hamilton’s angst in trying to decide
whether his life is worth keeping or ditching and the temptations of starting
again (at middle age, with no financial concerns) in order to attempt to fulfil
heart’s desires (as a painter rather than a banker), the desires that went
unfulfilled in the old life. The second
half of the film shows us Hamilton reborn, with Rock Hudson doing an excellent job
of playing a secretly older man trapped in a somewhat younger stud’s body,
gamely or not so gamely trying to adapt to a more swinging crowd. In fact, “trapped” becomes the operant word
here as Hudson begins to feel he made a mistake… Perhaps more interesting are the numerous
parallels to Hudson’s own “double life” since he was in the closet at the time –
some of his lines take on extra meaning if you think about the fact that he/Hudson
was hiding his sexual orientation just as he/Antiochus Wilson is hiding the
fact that he is/used to be Hamilton. Cinematography
in B&W by James Wong Howe is sometimes experimental and visceral (in
keeping with Frankenheimer’s live TV beginnings). Spooky titles by Saul Bass. Psychodrama music by Jerry Goldsmith. A
downer, of course, but one that can really get you thinking.
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.
This time through Bergman's Persona left
me a little cold. Perhaps I wasn't quite in the mood for its experimental
approach to analyzing human relationships and needs that depicts a steadfast
denial of verbal communication from one party. That said, I fully appreciate
the magnitude of Bergman's achievement here. I found an old review (circa
1990s) and I include an edited excerpt here:
“The film opens with a montage of images
(a bare lightbulb, various cinematography equipment, corpses in a morgue, a
young boy reading and then reaching up to touch a giant image of Liv
Ullman/Bibi Andersson) that clearly evokes the idea that we are about to watch
a "film"--there is even a a portion of the "leader" before
a film begins. Then, the movie turns to traditional narrative structure. A
young nurse (Andersson) is assigned to the case of an actress who has decided
to become mute. I say decided because it is made explicit that there is no
clear psychological or physical ailment that has caused the muteness.
Nevertheless, the nurse is assigned to care for the actress (Ullman). Even from
the start, the nurse is worried that she might not have the psychological
strength/stamina to handle this odd case--she should have listened to her inner
voices. After a short time, the head of the sanatorium decides that the nurse
and the patient should remove themselves to a country house to improve the
treatment. Once there, the nurse becomes incredibly voluble--as anyone would
when faced with a silent companion. She begins to reveal intimate details of
her life, and although I perceived her to be a pleasant and un-self-analytical
person at first, she begins to express doubts and anxieties. Since these are
met with resounding silence, she becomes flustered. When she reads an unsealed
letter by Ullman that mocks her and defines her as an object for study, she
begins to get resentful. Throughout all this, Ullman gives a masterful
performance of reserved observation and occasional emotion. The focus is upon
Andersson and the changes she must go through because of her contact with this
willful mute. Much has been made of the "reversal of personality"
that takes place. Andersson becomes much more cynical and alienated but, for me, there is not too much
evidence that Ullman is significantly altered by her contact with Andersson. We
do learn, after they part, that Ullman returned to her stage career--and she
does seem more connected to life and the real world, but she fails to speak
more than a word (when forced) throughout thefilm. Needless to say, Andersson breaks down as a result of this
"silent treatment" and Bergman evokes this by having the film itself
break in the middle and the images become much more experimental and bizarre
toward the end of the movie.
Several themes became apparent to me
during my watching of this film. For example, "life as theater". Many
images and much of the dialogue in the film reveals Bergman's conception that
life is predominantly acting. First of all, Ullman is an actress herself and
she is plainly "studying" Andersson, perhaps for use in a future
role. The fact that the film is obvious about the fact that it IS a film makes
us aware that these self-presentations have been designed for us ( much like
everyday self-presentations?). A documentary style (in which one person is
never shown during a conversation) makes an appearance early in the film,
making our spectator status even more obvious. Later when the style switches to
intensely personal, we are unable to shake this conception of the
"objective" portrayal of reality--although clearly many images are
parts of dreams (but even Andersson is unsure of their status as
reality/unreality). Regardless, the film portrays human motives for behavior as
largely designed to create a certain impression/identity. Ullman is accused of
having a child to counteract a general perception of her as unmotherly, but
Andersson, too, seems to be fighting the desire to maintain a helpful
"persona" required of a nurse despite resenting her patient. This
forces us to ponder from whence our desired identities come from--from within?
from others' impressions of us (the looking glass self)? an interaction of the
two? One scene even features a camera which exemplifies this construction of impressions
theme. In the same way, the nurse's seeming intense need for feedback from
Ullman provides clues as to just how important other people's responses are for
our own identities.
But it gets much more complicated than
that. If life is merely shadows played out on a stage, then what is the role of
honesty or sincerity? This evokes Sartre's concept of bad faith, basically the
state of acting as though you have a certain motive or certain types of
knowledge when in fact you have very different motives or knowledge that might
call such action into question or at least complicate it. Sartre uses the
(sexist) example of the woman who allows her hand to be held, pretending that
all is innocent and declaiming such when asked, despite really knowing that her
male escort will take it as a sign that affection is assured. Bergman plays on
this theme by having the nurse explicitly ask whether there can be two selves:
one that does certain things and another that is one's general impression of
oneself that does not allow for such actions (the nurse has engaged in an orgy
spontaneously but still thinks of herself as faithful to her lover who was not
involved). What is to be done and thought when "ideas don't tally with
acts"? This is a state we all must be in if we treat life as theatre and
those who are actors even more so. Thus, Ullman's retreat into reticence is
framed as an escape from the continual lying of her career (and our existence).
If we are all constantly in bad faith, how must this be dealt with? When Ullman
realizes it, she becomes mute. When Andersson begins to realize it, she becomes
somewhat insane. To what standard must we hold ourselves? When are we allowed
to be inconsistent?
On top of all this, the film is laced
with horror film type imagery that evokes a constant forboding--lots of eerie
closeups and dreamlike black and white cinematography ( I should mention Sven
Nykvist). Overall, an intense and thought provoking picture."
Melodrama of the highest form from Mikio
Naruse – one of his late films and as usual focused on family dynamics when
something is going wrong. In this case,
a close family friend’s wife has been killed and this weighs especially heavily
on the father, Isao. So, the film takes
elements from the murder mystery and, as things grow dark, from the film
noir. However, Naruse sticks to his
strengths and turns this into an investigation of feelings and how they are
impacted by obligations to others. Still,
times change and the mid-1960s mean that even Naruse is willing to introduce
some startling plot turns to spice things up.
This is the 12th Naruse film I’ve seen and really you can’t
go wrong (try When a Woman Ascends the Stairs or Floating Clouds). I can no longer find a clip from this film, so here are some scenes from a variety of Naruse films:
Melville’s
last black and white picture sees him refining his French updating of film noir
traditions with his special focus on the honor among thieves (a.k.a. the
criminal code). Leon Ventura plays
Gustave “Gu” Minda, who escapes from prison after 10 years (in a very
Bressonian opening sequence) but needs to do one last job to have enough money
to live comfortably when he flees the country.
The first 75 minutes is all set up for an amazing outdoor armored car
heist sequence, one of Melville’s best (with his usual focus on the meticulous
planned and interdependent actions involved in completing a crime). After that,
a long denouement as Minda gets entrapped by knowing police Inspector Blot
(played charismatically by Paul Meurisse from Les Diaboliques). That’s not a
spoiler, because even from the opening titles, Melville cues viewers into the
fatalistic doom-laden story about to unfold. You can’t go wrong with Melville.
Really great wuxia
film, photographed in Shaw-Scope and directed by King Hu (who also made the
awesome A Touch of Zen). This excels in both story and cinematography -- and
who minds a little fake bloodshed resulting from swords, daggers, and poisoned
darts? Golden Swallow and Drunken Cat take on an evil gang and in the process
preserve the good name of the Green Bamboo Wand School (the leaders of which
apparently have super-powers).
