"City Lights"

As they have with The Gold Rush, Modern Times, The Great Dictator, and Monsieur Verdoux, The Criterion Collection has released another stunning Blu-ray/DVD transfer of a Charlie Chaplin classic, rife with a surplus of features. City Lights (1931), which Criterion itself calls, “the most cherished film by Charlie Chaplin … his ultimate Little Tramp chronicle,” is certainly a film easy to love and admire; it’s The Tramp at his most endearingly hapless, his best of intentions always hilariously undermined, and it’s perhaps the most emotionally affecting Chaplin film.

The Kid has the unforgettable Jackie Coogan desperately reaching out for his newfound father figure, and throughout, the young boy and Chaplin tug at the heartstrings. But City Lights, especially with its transcendent final scene, trumps the more manipulatively straightforward sentiment in the earlier feature. Much has been made of this supremely effective conclusion, its careful balance of natural performance with unadulterated presentation. Famed critic James Agee said it was “the greatest piece of acting and the highest moment in movies.” Chaplin acknowledges the moment’s potency, attributing its power to the acting, or the lack thereof: he had “a beautiful sensation of not acting, of standing outside myself. The key was exactly right.” Albert Einstein, Chaplin’s guest at the Los Angeles premiere of the film, even teared up while watching the final moments, and as critic Gary Giddins notes in his essay accompanying the disc, those waiting in line to see the film were probably perplexed as the “[a]udience emerges from a previous screening evidently choked up, flushed, hankies dabbing eyes. What kind of comedy is this?”

Before this justly famous ending, there is 80 minutes of characteristic Chaplin comedy and pathos, slapstick and romance, sight gags and distress. The love that develops between Chaplin’s Tramp and Virginia Cherrill’s blind flower girl is a beautiful one, but it’s one founded on a lie, or at least an unrectified misunderstanding. Based on a deceptive car door slamming, she believes he is a wealthy aristocrat. She’s attractive, sweet, and innocent, so he’s not about to correct her. He woos her and cares for her; truth be told, he’s a little intrigued by her blindness. She, in turn, continues to fall for him. While others mock the Tramp for what he is, she begins to love him for what he pretends to be. But what will happen if and when the jig is up? City Lights, then, is at once an exceptional love story (its subtitle is “A Comedy Romance in Pantomime”), but there is also tension based on the maintenance of the illusion Chaplin is attempting to enact.

The same holds true for the film’s parallel relationship between The Tramp and the Eccentric Millionaire (Harry Myers) who, when drunk, sees the vagabond as a kindred spirit, bombarding him with drink, women, and money. When sober, he’s dismissive of the apparent bum. The continuing drama and comedy that arises from these moments of false or impaired perceptions and decisions is meticulously crafted and hilariously executed. The Tramp frequently finds himself where he shouldn’t be, by his own doing or by a cruel twist of comedic fate. In a sequence favored by Chaplin himself, The Tramp gives boxing a go in the hopes of making some money for the flower girl’s eye operation. Derivative of his short The Champion, an excerpt of which is included on the disc, this sequence is a sustained exercise in cinematic staging and choreography, as the embattled Tramp is amusingly and sadly futile in the ring. 



So much of the humor in City Lights, as with most silent comedy, is based around the physicality of the performers, and the pantomime of the aforementioned subtitle is crucial to this film. By the time City Lights was released, the sound film was here and here to stay. Years had passed since Don Juan, The Jazz Singer, and The Lights of New York, three key films in the gradual development and permanence of the “talking picture,” but Chaplin, the most famous of silent filmmakers, was still holding out. In his commentary track for the disc, author Jeffrey Vance (“Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema”) notes that the film was in fact an “act of defiance.” And in an interview with Chaplin, included in the disc booklet, he gives his own artistic reasoning for the hesitance: “Movement is near to nature … and it is the spoken word which is embarrassing. … Pantomime to me is an expression of poetry, comic poetry.” With City Lights, he would concede to some sound effects (most amusingly, a honking noise in place of dialogue, a sly mock of the “talkies” and of the pompous speech-making of the characters) and a recorded score that Chaplin wrote, but for now, the Tramp still wasn’t talking (he only would, sort of, in his final appearance in Modern Times).  

Despite off-screen troubles, most notably with the inexperienced and apparently lackadaisical Cherrill, and even with the film being 2-plus years in production, including 180 days of shooting, and even with takes numbering into the hundreds (342 for Chaplin’s and Cherrill’s meeting – shot, thankfully, over the course of several months), City Lights comes across as an effortless film. This, however, was not the case. As the documentaries included on this disc demonstrate – “Chaplin Today: “City Lights” and especially “Chaplin Studios: Creative Freedom by Design” – Chaplin the filmmaker was a scrupulous craftsman and deliberate artist. In the latter featurette, we see fascinating footage of Chaplin’s set and studio, revealing an impressive behind-the-genius methodology. Having his own sets and working on his own time was a vital part of his creativity and his creative freedom; by this point, he had earned it. Archival footage from the production, also included on the disc, further showcases Chaplin’s process, where we see his direction of himself and others. Knowing what was at stake with this film (if it failed, Chaplin’s likelihood of staying out of the sound film business would be substantially diminished), the sense of urgency and the need for perfection is evident in his mannerisms, his obvious frustrations, and his expressions of joy when things were going well.

City Lights was Chaplin’s personal favorite, and Vance continually mentions it as the preferred Chaplin movie of everyone from Martin Scorsese to Stanley Kubrick to Jean Renoir. The American Film Institute chose the picture as the 11th greatest American movie of all time and the same organization named it the top romantic comedy. Internationally, the 2012 Sight & Sound poll placed it at No. 50 from anywhere, ever. As Vance concludes, it “[c]ontains all the best elements of Chaplin’s work.”

REVIEW FROM: Sound on Sight

John Carpenter’s ‘Assault on Precinct 13′

With his filmmaking career beginning in the midst of the new Hollywood and its touchstones in American film history, it’s perhaps easy to see why the work of John Carpenter has been somewhat overshadowed by more celebrated filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, or Francis Ford Coppola. He found a niche in the horror genre with the landmark Halloween, and he proceeded to make one idiosyncratic, wholly original, and generally skillful film after another. Some were rather uneven, particularly in recent years, but for every Memoirs of an Invisible Man, there has been The Fog, Escape from New York, The Thing, or They Live. Carpenter’s list of credits boasts some exceptional work — inventive, daring, visually, and technically creative — but amongst these titles, one film stands out as a favorite of many cinephiles in general and Carpenter fans in particular. Assault on Precinct 13, just his second feature film, has been released on a collector’s edition Blu-ray/DVD combo, looking and sounding better than ever with several new bonus features. The sharp transfer highlights every bit of ‘70s grain and Douglas Knapp’s exceptional cinematography belies any budgetary restraints the film may have had. Carpenter’s score is as effective, if not as memorable, as his arrangement for Halloween, and here, it sounds superb.

Taking its cue from Howard Hawks’ Western classic Rio Bravo, Assault on Precinct 13 pits a group of disparate and desperate individuals holed up in a police station (actually precinct 9) against a band of gang members bent on revenge. In his commentary track on the disc, Carpenter describes the picture as an “exploitation action picture modeled after Rio Bravo,” exploitation also apparently what the distributors had in mind when they advertised the film with the sensational tagline, “A White Hot Night of Hate!” The Hawks allusions are also revealed in the name of Laurie Zimmer’s character, Leigh, as in Leigh Brackett, writer of Rio Bravo and other Hawks films (see also: Charles Cyphers’ Sheriff Leigh Brackett from Halloween). Carpenter also edited Assault on Precinct 13 under the pseudonym John T. Chance, John Wayne’s character from Rio Bravo. Howard Hawks fun facts aside (and there are many scattered throughout Carpenter’s career), Assault on Precinct 13 deviates from wherever its inspirations may lay to form a tense and tightly constructed thriller, just 91 minutes long, equal parts action, drama, and horror, with a dash of black comedy thrown in for good measure.

It’s worth noting, as mentioned in a shabbily shot interview conducted after a screening of the film in 2002, included as a bonus feature on the disc, that Carpenter is also quick to acknowledge the influence of George Romero’s seminal Night of the Living Dead, an inspiration, he says, to “everybody who has made a low-budget film.” In this Q&A session, where star Austin Stoker was also present, Carpenter essentially gives the same information as in the commentary, but he does reveal some fresh pre-production detail. And while he could easily be seen as the ultimate auteur – writing, directing, scoring, editing, and occasionally shooting portions Assault on Precinct 13 – he never shies away from spreading around credit. Neither does this disc: art director and sound effects editor Tommy Lee Wallace gets his own commentary track and solo interviews feature Stoker and Nancy Loomis reminiscing about their careers. More interesting, however, would have been a conversation catching up with co-star Laurie Zimmer, who, though striking in this film, quit acting just 3 years later.

In South Central Los Angeles, a sort of brutal and treacherous urban milieu that would serve as the backdrop for many Carpenter films to come, members of a gang (an “unusual interracial” one, according to TV news reports) seek revenge on police officers who, the night prior, killed a handful of their comrades. Heavily armed and clearly depraved, they set in motion the events that crash into the unwitting hero, Lieutenant Ethan Bishop (Stoker). He’s a good-natured officer on his first night out, and he’s given the less-than-glamorous assignment of watching over a decrepit police station set to close its doors. Joining him in this disparaging and temporarily mundane endeavor is Captain Chaney (Henry Brandon, Scar from the John Ford masterpiece The Searchers, reason enough for his casting), Leigh and Julie (Loomis), two secretaries about as enthusiastic to be there as Bishop is. After a brutal murder that still is the cause of considerable surprise, the victim’s father pursues the gang. He manages to kill one hood, which only further infuriates and deranges the rest. They chase him to the police station, where he enters in a state of shock, thus bringing together the two groups in a contest neither had planned. Concurrently, a bus carrying three inmates is in transit when one of the convicts grows increasingly ill, causing the bus to stop at the station. With the sick man are two other criminals; one, Napoleon Wilson (Darwin Joston), a violent offender with a heart of gold, is sentenced to death. Now that this combustible group is firmly in place, and with the tension mounting as the gang assembles outside, lights go down, telephone lines are severed and the siege begins.

The film is truly haunting in its depiction of the ruthless hoods who, as we see dramatically and controversially early on, are capable of extreme and brazen violence. As the film sets this tone from the start, the threat is instantly heightened and never diminishes. Visually, Carpenter also emphasizes the horrific potential of their intentions by silhouetting them outside the police station as generally anonymous, dehumanized creatures. It’s a technique similar to countless zombie films, where the menace is a mass of beings rather than distinguishable individuals. The way the thugs prowl in the darkness, creeping in and out of the light, gives the lingering impression of their mobility and their constant presence. The dynamics of their advancement on the station, of their ability to approach and enter any number of ways, stands in marked contrast to those contained in the building. By comparison, our heroes are limited in their maneuverability and their options. This setting restriction was as much a result of the film’s roughly $100,000 budget as it was an effective narrative device.



In his commentary, Carpenter reveals much about the shooting of movie, from his casting of college friends to his creative geography, whereby shooting was conducted all over LA and later weaved seamlessly into a cohesive sense of definite place. Carpenter also professes his love for the widescreen, a format – his favorite – he was quick to become a master of. This was his first time shooting in Panavision and he describes repeatedly his attempts to balance the frame, his striving for simple, precise visuals, and how this new ratio contributed to what he feels is the film’s slow pacing.

More than anything, throughout his commentary Carpenter brings up the Western and the genre’s impact on his career. Of course it’s obvious here, but the evidence is also present in everything from Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken character in the Escape films to the blistering and grimy setting for Vampires, which features shades of Peckinpah and Leone. In the interview with Loomis, she notes how an original title for Assault on Precinct 13 was “The Anderson Alamo,” and during the 2002 interview, someone asks Carpenter why he has never made a real Western, a good question and one that sparks all sorts of cinematic fantasy.

Still, despite its indebtedness to previous films and filmmakers, Assault on Precinct 13 ends up entirely unique. Even with a 2005 remake, which deviates considerably from the original, Carpenter’s film manages a lasting potency. Like so many great films from the 1970s, it is dated in superficial appearances only. There’s something stimulating about its low-key production and B-movie status. Toward the end of his commentary, Carpenter laments somewhat dismissively of the film that, “They don’t make them like this anymore.” However he meant the comment, there’s no doubt about it: he’s right.

REVIEW  FROM: Sound on Sight

"The Magnificent Ambersons"

Every American film made since Citizen Kane has, to a certain extent, lived in the shadow of this acclaimed production. Widely and frequently heralded as the greatest film ever made, Orson Welles' 1941 feature looms large in the annals of motion picture history. Now, imagine you are Welles himself, and Citizen Kane is your first film. What's more, you are only 26 when the movie is released. What could you possibly do next? How do you meet such lofty expectations?

This was the dilemma faced by Welles when he embarked on his second feature, the 1942 adaptation of Booth Tarkington's award-winner novel, The Magnificent Ambersons, a source he had previously had success with on the radio. The production is unquestionably ambitious. It's grandly staged, expertly shot, finely written and terrifically acted. But upon its initial preview, it was deemed too much, too somber and too serious, and the studio, RKO, began cutting away. Without Welles' cooperation, nearly an hour was excised from the film, the cut footage never to be seen again. Even the film's score was not spared. Famed composer Bernard Herrmann, who had done the score for Citizen Kane and would be most recognized as the sound behind so many Hitchcock films, asked to have his credit on the picture removed after he heard how the studio had tampered with arrangements.

As Welles himself put it, "For five or six reels things weren't so bad. I thought, 'Well, that isn't so bad. They didn't do too many things – only a few stupid little cuts.' And then all hell broke loose…It was a much better picture than Kane – if they'd just left it as it was." What we do have runs about 88 minutes, 88 fabulous minutes. Ultimately, the troubled production history of The Magnificent Ambersons is exemplary of one of cinema's greatest "what could have beens." With the original, almost mythical 10-hour cut of Erich Von Stroheim's Greed, the lost sequences from Welles' picture are some of film history's most tantalizing lost treasures. Thankfully, we can at least get a sense of what we're missing here with the inclusion of a detailed summary of cuts and alterations included in Peter Bogdanovich's invaluable "This is Orson Welles."



But now to the film at hand, and let none of this belittle the extant version of the movie. By any standard, The Magnificent Ambersons is a great film, and fortunately, enough of Welles' imprint remains. First, we have Welles as the narrator. A captivating voice before he was ever an on-screen personality, the filmmaker's instantly recognizable delivery is enchanting from syllable one. Is there any director, save for perhaps Werner Herzog, whom one could so pleasantly listen to for hours on end? He then sets the stage in a fashion not unlike Kane; we are abruptly thrust into the world of the picture via a barrage of visual and narrative techniques: fast-cutting, direct to camera comments, flashbacks, deep-focus cinematography, an assortment of camera placements and maneuvers, and on and on. Welles was nothing if not a masterful purveyor of uniquely filmic devices.

Unlike Citizen Kane though, which traces the rapid rise and fall of a man as he bursts head-first into the modern world, there is automatically something solemn and much more ominous with Ambersons. Here is a film that features characters reluctant to enter the modern age. Ambersons is, on the contrary, an elegy for days gone by, for ways and manners of the past, for lives that once were and are never to be again. We feel bad for those in the film, yes. But there is one whom we never fully get behind, one character who causes the audience to never quite become totally sympathetic for the frivolity of the old-world Ambersons. That would be the son of Isabel Amberson and Wilbur Minafer (Dolores Costello and Don Dillaway), the arrogant George, played by Tim Holt. Welles' narrator tells us of how the townsfolk express their distain for young George (and older George for that matter). They eagerly await the day he "gets his comeuppance." Truth be told, so do we. And yet he is our protagonist.

The character we do like though is Eugene, played by Joseph Cotton (co-star of Citizen Kane and one of the most endearingly likable screen presences in Hollywood history). In an unusual case where the older stands for the new and the young embodies the old, it's Eugene who seems confident and comfortable with the forward movement of time, as opposed to George who, in Bogdanovich's words, "represents the dying plutocracy." Eugene's optimism about modernity is explicitly conveyed in his profession: he's an automobile inventor (Welles' father tried his hand at the burgeoning business at one point). Post-locomotive, the automobile is the preeminent symbol for a faster, more mechanized and possibly more dangerous - physically, socially, politically - result of modern ingenuity and desire. It's clear which side history is on here. After deaths in the family and the awareness of a mismanagement of money, the Ambersons are in a perpetual state of decline throughout the film, while Eugene, on the other hand, continues to prosper.



There is more to The Magnificent Ambersons than this metaphoric contest between eras, ideologies and sociocultural implications though. "One shouldn't ever be conscious of the author as lecturer," said Welles. "When social or moral points are too heavily stressed, I always get uncomfortable." At the heart of the film are its relationships: George and Lucy (Eugene's daughter, played by Anne Baxter) and Eugene and Isabel. But these are rocky at best. George is rude and conceited and continually insults Eugene … not the best way to win over his daughter. And Eugene and Isabel, concealing a love that bloomed in their teenage years, have to overcome, first, her marriage (which, in a twisted but nonetheless realistic way, they do when Wilbur dies), and then the impediment of George's disapproval. Throw into the mix George's aunt Fanny, who also harbors a love for Eugene. Agnes Moorehead's performance as the peripheral aunt would be the film's only acting Oscar nomination. (Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White - Albert S. D'Agostino, A. Roland Fields, Darrell Silvera; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White - Stanley Cortez; and Best Picture would round out the film's other nominations.)

In the end though, it's perhaps Major Anderson (Richard Bennett), the grand patriarch of the family, whom we feel most sorry for. Outliving his wife and a daughter, he survives just long enough to also see his empire crumble. Shot in the dark in medium close-up, with only the flicker of a fire illuminating his aged and weary face, Major Anderson, by the conclusion of the film, is a shell of a man. He speaks of nonsensical trivialities and seems unaware (willingly, by mental instability, possibly both) of the drama that unfolds around him.

As for Orson Welles, to those who managed to see the film before it was relegated to the bottom of a double bill, it should have been clear that Citizen Kane was no fluke. This kid was for real. But things would never quite be the same for this wunderkind filmmaker; more struggles and, amazingly and against all odds, more astonishing films would follow. Here though, visually and aurally, the same noteworthy trademarks are present: the deep focus staging, the endlessly fluid camera movements, baroque lighting designs, expressive editing and overlapping dialogue. The entire Welles arsenal of cinematic devices are fully on display. Welles doesn't even do end credits like other people. Here, he reads the roles and the respective names ("Stanley Cortez was the photographer … Robert Wise was the film editor … Here's the cast…."). Then he concludes: "I wrote the script and directed it. My name is Orson Welles. … This is a Mercury Production." It's chilling, in the best possible way.

"The True Story of Jesse James"

The character of Jesse James, at least as he is commonly personified in the mythical terms of Robin Hood-esque anti-heroism, seems to be ideal fodder for the thematic proclivities of director Nicholas Ray (They Live By Night (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), Johnny Guitar (1954), Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and Bigger Than Life (1956)). Though not of the same caliber of quality as most of Ray’s greatest works — but closer behind than perhaps it gets credit for — The True Story of Jesse James, made in 1957 starring Robert Wagner in the title role, nevertheless stands as a solid representation of the auteurist notions commonly attributed to Ray. In this film, despite being a remake of (and actually briefly using footage from) Henry King’s Jesse James (1939), we get – stylistically, narratively, and thematically – a bringing together of much that makes Ray’s cinema so special.

The film begins with the bank robbery that would, we find out, be the nail in the coffin of the James brothers’ increasingly reckless and risky crime spree. But it doesn’t take long for the film to move from the ensuing pursuit as primary focus to instead begin the telling of this tale through flashbacks, striving more for a depiction of what brought Jesse, his brother Frank (Jeffrey Hunter), and the rest of his family and cohorts to this point. This goal of rationalization and explication is overtly proclaimed by the repeated comments made throughout the film by characters seeking to define, understand, and clarify Jesse’s actions. Who is Jesse James, they ask, what made him? Why does he do what he does? This is what Ray’s picture seeks to uncover.

It certainly doesn’t take the poetic, self-consciously stylish approach to Jesse’s life as Andrew Dominik did in the immensely underrated and magnificent The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), nor does it reach for the psychological depths (at least not consistently) as Samuel Fulller’s I Shot Jesse James (1949), which actually focuses more considerably on Ford. However, what it does do is find a comfortable middle ground amid these two other great films dealing with the same topic. We get at once an almost journalistic recalling of Jesse’s life – as the opening titles tell us, a factual narrative of what really occurred is the picture’s aim – yet a majority of what we see is subjectively told through flashbacks, how the characters remember things happening. So, like Jesse James the legend, Ray’s film too falls between what supposedly really happened and what others personally said happened.

As noted, a considerable portion of the film is devoted to uncovering what made Jesse do what he did. It seems that this particular take on his life finds three main motivations: pure and simple badness, the Civil War, and authority, specifically older authoritative figures. Not only does this again fall in line with much of Ray’s work in the way it seeks to explain its characters (see James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, James Mason in Bigger Than Life, and Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell in They Live By Night as examples), but it also looks back to these and other previous films in some of its very explanations.

Beginning with the idea of the war as catalyst, Jesse’s mother, played by Agnes Moorehead, blames the battle and the “yankees.” She points to the northern, oppressive domination over their southern lifestyle as a reason behind Jesse’s actions and mentality. This is echoed later in the film when Jesse and Frank round up their posse and discuss how the intimidating northerners have made them all suffer and how robbing the banks wouldn’t be too bad anyway since they would only be full off northern money. The war waged on their territory threatened not only their land and way of life, but also their “southern pride.” Like Joan Crawford’s Vienna in Johnny Guitar, this sense of pride is enough of a justification for resistance, for taking a stand against the imposing forces. Jesse and the others feel threatened and abused and aggressively act out accordingly. In addition, this sense of disillusionment and bewilderment with the world they gradually find themselves in harks back to Ray’s noirs and their post-war opportunists, schemers, and lost souls.

The town pastor, Rev. Jethro Bailey (John Carradine), looks to the influences of evil, of the devil himself, as the origin of Jesse’s deeds. Perhaps, he seems to suggest, Jesse has simply become a bad man. In one of the most dazzling sections of the film, Bailey recalls how, just hours after Jesse and wife Zee’s baptism, James begins his life of crime. We see though, as Zee and Jesse’s mother combat, that this conversion was actually instigated by northern sympathizers attacking the James home and killing a friend and less by Satan. This nighttime attack sequence is one of the film’s finest, using its primary technical features (color, sound, the mobile camera, and Cinemascope) to produce a gorgeously shot, haunting assault on the James household. The intense use of color (something Ray was certainly a master of) and sound in particular (here actually, it’s the lack of sound – sharp gunfire puncturing the otherwise silent scene: no score, no natural sounds, no voices) create a vivid moment of confusion, panic, and action, all dramatized by a play with light and shadow.

The third main suggestion for Jesse’s exploits comes from sequences and dialogue that point towards a general dislike and distrust for authority: commanding northern soldiers, adults, law officers, etc. Of course, Rebel Without a Cause springs instantly to mind here, and the comparison is not at all far off. Jesse is very much a youthful character, and given the close production proximity of Ray’s most famous picture (though most think of it as Dean’s most famous picture), its clear that he still has something to say on the matter of the older, authoritarian impact on the freewheeling, young. Like so many rebellious teenager films from the 1950s (Brando’s The Wild One in 1953 as just one example), Ray here presents the outlaw hero as one who is bucking the system and confronting the establishment as much as anything else.



Sticking with the Rebel Without a Cause comparison, and also recalling Bigger Than Life, Ray draws attention to notions of domesticity with this film as well, and the sense of supposed normalcy that goes along with it. After renting a house, Jesse and wife Zee (Hope Lange) discuss what they’re going to do with it, their family, and the town they now live in. Idealistically, they strive to be immersed inside the community, while conversely, perhaps impossibly, living outside the law. This conflicting existence is abruptly cut short when Jesse announces that he must leave for another job. It seems that while they may buy into the illusion of a settled down home and place in the neighborhood, Jesse’s chosen field will forever disrupt their hopes for a “normal” life.

Aside from the previously mentioned nighttime attack, The True Story of Jesse James is full of typical Ray flourishes in terms of style. Making complete use of the widescreen frame (again, something he does extraordinarily well), Ray composes a majority of his shots not only packing the frame from all sides with details, more often than not significant ones, but also adding a dimensional depth to his compositions. Having characters or objects placed prominently to one side or one section of the image foreground, in close-up, Ray also draws attention to what may be going on behind said character or object, sometimes much further in the background, highlighting it in the open, unoccupied widescreen space. It’s this combination of depth and the horizontal that makes for some very striking and realistic images. A line of individuals can stretch all the way across the frame, while their surroundings are simultaneously given due prominence. Added to this is Ray’s use of the tracking shot, further emphasizing the horizontal constriction of the film. When Frank brings a wounded Jesse to a family member’s house (where Zee is introduced) Ray again combines beautifully the horizontal with depth of field by tracking along their wagon while, at the same time, moving in on the fallen Jesse. Effectively utilizing smoke, light, and camera angle as well, Ray at one point films a nighttime train robbery quite masterly, causing a nightmarish sense of hypnotic pandemonium.

The film also has its moments of humor. Jesse is asked what line of work he’s in and he responds that its banking and railroads. And later, much amusement is had (by the audience and by Jesse and Frank) when the brothers attend the trial of a captured gang member. Using aliases and thus unknown to those around them (no one has seen their faces) they speak openly and confidently to the prosecutor and, later, the detective assigned to their capture, neither of whom have any idea who they’re actually talking with.

Played by Wagner, Jesse here (like Brad Pitt playing him in Dominik’s film) is an attractive figure, a further element of the Jesse James myth. It’s important that if he is to be likable he is also to be handsome. At first, it does seem like Jesse gets into bank robbing with the best of intentions. It’s just going to be this once; he doesn’t want to make a career out of it; it’s for his family, his home. But this doesn’t last. In a self-destructive manner not totally unlike Bogart in In a Lonely Place or Mason in Bigger Than Life, Jesse abandons whatever positive ideals he may have had and heads down the path to his downfall, to loneliness and violence. Near the end, Jesse is a man obsessed, blind to dangers. He’s quick to kill anyone who wrongs him in any way. And, in contrast to not making a career out of bank robbing, he refers to their crimes as “our business.” Jesse seems to himself have bought into the Jesse James myth. This is comically made clear when, after gang member Cole offers some money to a poor elderly lady who gave them food and temporary shelter, Jesse, following his reading of outlandish published tales about himself, gives her $600 dollars, enough to pay off her entire mortgage and encourage the tales of his good nature and kindness. Once the man from the bank has collected the funds, however, Jesse immediately robs him.

After attempting to rob a bank in Minnesota, out of their normal territory and under paranoid circumstances, everything begins to go wrong. The town where the bank is located is remarkably united, everyone seeming to pitch in by blocking the gang’s escape and firing at them, killing most. This is in opposition to the tragic disunity that has developed within the gang. Jesse’s paranoia, his frenzied behavior and heedlessness, is one of the film’s most prominent psychological developments (this rivaled by the end of the film when Jesse realizes that even his own children have succumbed to the fable of Jesse James, his son and daughter playing with a wooden gun, the former “shooting down” the latter causing her to cry).

Finally though, it’s the betrayal of a friend that leads to Jesse’s demise. His being shot in the back by Robert Ford is well known and well documented – in western stories and films – and this picture is no different in its presentation. Ford, initially introduced in this movie off-handedly yet ominously as “Robbie,” is weasely and instantly suspicious (this no doubt aided by our established knowledge of his role in the story). Once shot and lying on the floor, the crowd that gathers is a testament to Jesse’s fame. Ford runs down the road proclaiming that he just shot Jesse James; the crowd runs the other way, toward Jesse. One character earlier commented that when the public doesn’t need Jesse James that will be his end; this was clearly not yet the case. Indeed, on their way out of Jesse’s house they steal miscellaneous objects of memorabilia.

There is much to admire in this typically neglected Nicholas Ray film; many of the hallmarks of his formal and stylistic affinities are present, even if the general story told has been recounted frequently. Working in a genre that revels in the use of the widescreen and color, Ray's The True Story of Jesse James is a more than solid production. If this is indeed how Ray saw the life of Jesse James, if this is how he imagines the scenes and actions that comprised Jesse’s existence to be, then it’s impossible to imagine them ever presented any other way than in the medium of cinema, with rich colors and expansive Cinemascope.

Brian De Palma's "Passion"

There have been few American filmmakers over the past 50 years who have had as eclectic and as continually surprising a career as Brian De Palma. From his first feature, Murder à la Mod in 1968, a playful and occasionally bizarre low-budget film where seeds of De Palma's future cinematic preoccupations were already on display, to his politically provocative and structurally experimental Redacted in 2007, De Palma has had as many ups and downs and hits and misses as any filmmaker of his generation. In between, the science student standout turned contemporary master of suspense has achieved fame through his most renowned films, notoriety through his most controversial (usually based on false accusations of misogyny or only partly-false accusations of Hitchcock rip-offery), and he has become tragically neglected as some of his best films have been overshadowed by their Hollywood stature and star power (how many people know that he was the man behind Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), and Mission: Impossible (1996)?).

But for many De Palma fans, and I count myself among his most ardent, each and every film of his yields moments of staggering innovation, virtuosic technique, and a seemingly endless ambition to do something new with the tools of his cinematic trade. As such, I'll confess from the outset that with the release of his latest film, Passion, with Rachel McAdams and Noomi Rapace (the latter one of the most captivating and talented actresses working today), I had the highest of hopes and was pretty sure that no matter how the film turned out, there would at least be portions of typically De Palma brilliance. In the end, these expectations were surely met. Passion is a fine film, exuberant, daring, and cinematically flashy. Granted, it's nowhere near the caliber of his greatest work (for example, the 1-2-3 punch of Dressed to Kill (1980), Blow Out (1981), and Scarface (1983)), nor is it, however, anywhere near his lesser films, liked the much maligned Wise Guys (1986) and The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). Passion is a film by a director fully aware of why and how his films are special; and he's confident enough to revel in these particular talents. If anything, its apparent effortlessness is deceiving. This is De Palma doing what he does best: it's a taut, sexual, suspenseful, violent, and visually dazzling film. There are flaws (the dialogue, performances early in the picture), but for De Palma admirers and those who admire films similar, it really has it all.



Set against the ultra-modern world of an advertising agency fraught with deceit and ruthless ambition, McAdams is Christine Stanford, boss and friend to Rapace's Isabelle James, her protégée. In De Palma fashion, Isabelle also harbors more than a professional preoccupation with Christine. There is an obsessiveness in her devotion, something the two of them are clearly uncomfortable with. When Isabelle's desire and delusion runs up against the desire and ruthlessness of Christine, the complexity of their personal and professional relationship comes to a head and one form of aggression and manipulation follows upon another. It's a sort of psychological twisting and turning not uncommon to some of De Palma's best thrillers. Added to this level of mental torment is the sexual tension running as a combustible undercurrent through all of the main characters. And then, in its kaleidoscopic third act, comes the wave of hallucinatory violence. In this trifecta of psychological distress, erotic infatuation, and stylized, elaborate violence (even with trademark split-screen), you get three key ingredients of any successful De Palma film.

Now, I will concede that there is considerably more style than substance here. De Palma is a visual artist far more than he is one concerned with richly developed characters and a depth of intellectual meaning in his narratives (though some of his films have had these). That is not to say, however, that Passion lacks in either good characters or intriguing drama. Certainly, the final portions of the film are so perplexing and ambiguous that one is left to ponder over the proceedings and motivations long after the conclusion. A jumbled mess of incongruities to some, reason for analysis for others.

This type of division will carry over to the film as a whole. One's reception to Passion will largely depend on one's expectations. It's safe to say that nobody really makes films like De Palma these days, and knowing this, Passion will not be like most other American films. This will no doubt work for and against it. I'd say the best barometer for how well Passion is going to succeed is to base it on individual opinions of previous De Palma features, films like Sisters (1973), Body Double (1984) and Femme Fatale (2002). This is the mode De Palma is operating in here. Passion is a true return to form for aficionados of his work, and it's a good introduction to his brand of distinct filmmaking for those less acquainted.  

"Only God Forgives"

It’s quite possibly the most divisive film of 2013, and since its premiere at May’s Cannes Film Festival, Only God Forgives has been greeted with boos, walk-outs, and an array of scathing reviews. However, since its wider release July 19, in theaters and on several “on demand” platforms, the film has begun to garner some encouraging evaluations. Granted, it’s still a minority who find anything redeeming about the movie, and as more have the opportunity to see it there’s no doubt that other mixed opinions, interpretations, and occasionally quite visceral reactions are to follow.

One of the more virulent appraisals of the film came from critic Rex Reed. In his review titled “Unforgivable: Only God Forgives Is One of the Worst Movies Ever Made,” subtitled, “Ryan Gosling is the new ghoul of gore,” he states: “Gruesomely grotesque and pathologically pretentious, a diabolical horror called Only God Forgives may not be the worst movie ever made, but it is unquestionably in the top five. ... Ultra-violent, demented, plotless, creepy, meat-headed and boring, this is nothing more than a depraved travesty of abstract expression that wastes the film it’s printed on. Get to the point, you say. What is it about? Absolutely nothing, really. Ryan Gosling, looking dangerously anesthetized...” It goes on, but I think the point is clear.

As this review does seem to echo many other sentiments regarding the film, taking it as my own personal springboard I’d like to comment first on a few of the adjectives used to negatively describe the film: “Gruesomely grotesque and pathologically pretentious” and “Ultra-violent, demented ... creepy, meat-headed.” I couldn’t agree more. Only God Forgives is all of these things (and more!), but none of these attributes necessarily make a bad film, just an unpleasant and difficult one. Not all art has to be pleasing to one's sensibilities, easy on the mind, and comfortably digestible.

Before attempting to further justify this film though, there’s the plot, a rather simple and, on the surface, conventional story. Gosling plays Julian, a drug-smuggler in Bangkok. His disturbed and disturbing brother is brutally murdered after he himself rapes and murders a 16-year-old. The brothers’ equally disconcerting mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) demands to know who killed her son and seeks vengeance, vengeance that, she reasons, Julian should enact. Behind the killing, and head of the underworld orchestrating much of the chaos, is Chang (Vithaya Pansringarm). Julian, no stranger to the seedy side of life here, must ride the fence of familiar responsibility and his place within this realm of depravity and crime. This is the basic setup for the film. Now, I’m not going to say that this plot is ground breaking in any way, but there is a plot, so there goes that argument. And in the performing of the scenes as part of the ensuring drama, the acting, to say the least, is certainly minimal. Gosling is mostly mute, brooding (see “thoughtful”), and does seem to be in a perpetual daze. Pansringarm doesn’t really need to do more than appear sadistic and potentially volatile at any and every turn — this he does. The only “performance” is from Kristin Scott Thomas, and her’s admittedly isn’t a great one, but it’s a memorable one. She’s crass, vulgar, obscene, and even at times humorous. When learning of what her son did to the young girl, she responds in a frequently cited line that, on the one hand is deeply cruel, but, yes, is still kind of funny: “I’m sure he had his reasons.” So the acting in Only God Forgives isn’t great. It’s not going to garner any Oscar nominations for its leads. (I get the sense that it never for a moment wanted to.) But these are caricatures, not necessarily characters. They’re crime film types – hence the overtly self-conscious tough-guy poses, mannerisms, and the cutting dialogue. They represent more than they are. This can be enough.



Stylistically, Only God Forgives is as expected. Director Nicolas Winding Refn is a tremendously gifted visual artist. Anyone who has seen his Pusher (1996), Bronson (2008), Valhalla Rising (2009) or his masterpiece, one of the best films of this century, Drive (2011), can’t question his formal craftsmanship. With Only God Forgives though, the argument is “all style, no substance.” Its style is certainly the film’s most notable attribute, so against this visual bombast the minimal plot and subdued acting is going to stand in stark contrast. But a film can be as much about a feeling, a tone, as it can be about people and what they do. That in itself is substantive, and that is what Only God Forgives does exceedingly well. From its neon lighting, to its camera placements, to even its geysers of blood-letting, there is nary a scene here that doesn’t at least look interesting. Put them all together and Only God Forgives achieves a sort of collective sensation of objectionable fascination. 

That, of course, leads to the film’s grotesquery, its ultra-violence. Who can argue? The movie is incredibly violent. One torture scene is particularly harsh, and a scene at the end involving Julian and his mother is as baffling as it is unpleasant. So what’s the point of this graphicness? There probably isn’t any. It’s just there, it’s who these people are, and it’s yet another level of imagery to unsettle (which in itself can be a “point” of a movie). See this in contrast with the Evil Dead remake earlier in the year. The horror film is far more graphic, there’s far more blood shed, but yet, according to the critical consensus (at least as far as Rotten Tomatoes is concerned) it’s “fresh” at 62% positive. Compare this to Only God Forgives’ 36% “rotten” score. It must not be the actual violence of the film that turns so many off. They’ve seen gallons of more unrelenting blood and gore. Again, it goes back to tone and atmosphere. One may not like these aspects of Only God Forgives, but let’s not cop out by decrying the apparent violence of the film. It seems to me that, especially in this day and age, simply condemning the obvious violence is much easier than analyzing the manner in which it’s presented, the way, and the reason, and that I feel is what Only God Forgives has fallen victim to, and those questions are, in actuality, the more interesting concerns of the film. People don’t want to even try and wrap their heads around the more ambiguous and complicated aspects of the film (that may, alas, lead to positive commentary); it’s simpler to just dismiss because of the violence.

With all of this said though, I don’t mean to suggest that Only God Forgives is an exceptionally great film. It would barely crack my top five of the year so far, and it’s not even remotely close to Refn and Gosling’s accomplishment with Drive. But it’s a misunderstood film. It’s also one that I think is getting unfairly derided by critics. Why? I’m not sure. I think it has something to do with the film coming across as being “too cool for school.” It’s almost like the film, and Refn’s narrative and formal choices in particular, carry with them such disdain for any sort of established acceptability that people feel personally attacked by the affront. Reed used “pretentious” in his review of the film. As far as it being showy and overtly stylish, it is. But as far as it being guilty of pandering to artsty for arts sake critical judgments, it isn’t. In its languid pace, lack of dialogue, and abstract plot, is it really so different than the films of critical darlings like Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Bela Tarr, Jia Zhangke, and, as Reed mentions, Refn’s fellow Dane, Lars von Trier? These are, to be sure, great filmmakers, but why the free pass?

In the days since its wider release, more and more positive comments about Only God Forgives are coming out. Message boards are attempting to decipher some of the film’s potential meanings and symbolism. Aside from being a good thing for the mere reason of getting more people to possibly watch the movie, these discussions are also further evidence of a film with more going for it than initially meets the eye. Anytime one encounters so much debate and such a polarizing reaction to a movie, I can’t help but feel the filmmakers are on to something. In this time of increased complacency, especially when it comes to the mainstream cinema, a film that enrages and engages has to be deemed at least worthwhile. For better or worse, a movie that gets people talking is a movie worth considering. You don’t have to like it (indeed, most will never like Only God Forgives), but to call it one of the worst movies ever made is unnecessarily exaggerated, simplistic, and naive. 

"Popeye"

It could arguably be the most underrated movie ever made. Robert Altman’s Popeye, released in 1980, was widely panned upon its opening and still to this day is seen by many as one of the great filmmaker’s lesser works and one that, just in general, seems rather odd (at best) or simply bad (at worst). But it’s none of this. Altman’s Popeye is one of the director’s most enjoyable pictures and, as some of the more recent Internet comments point out, this film is far from bad and has in time perhaps gained much deserved popular appeal.

That said though, it’s easy to see why Popeye opened in such a pessimistic way. First, you had Altman’s output in the previous decade to contend with. Altman, like Coppola, Scorsese and De Palma, saw some of his best films come out in the 1970s: MASH (1970), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Images (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), Nashville (1975), Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (1976), 3 Women (1977) and A Wedding (1978), just to name a few. How do you compete with that kind of cinematic quality? How does a filmmaker maintain that kind of exceptional productivity? Unfortunately for Altman, this was indeed a tough act to follow, and Popeye was not the kind of movie audiences were expecting from this iconoclastic director (ironically, I think Popeye was seen as too unusual and too unclassifiable, even by though who appreciated Altman for being just that).

Related to this, and also as related to the fate of Scorsese and company, Altman was a filmmaker working against the newly accepted and anticipated norm of Hollywood. This was now the cinema of Jaws (1975), of Star Wars (1977), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Superman (1978), and Moonraker (1979). These were big budget action films driven by special effects and predictable characters in a convoluted plot. Now these films certainly have their merits, and many of this type are undoubtedly quite good, but this was a harsh climate for the likes of Robert Altman, for whom things only got worse in the 1980s, when production of these movies grew and grew in size and scope (and cost) and Altman went in the opposite direction.

In any event, amidst this is Popeye, with a mumbling one-eye-closed Robin Williams in the titular role and Altman regular Shelley Duvall in the part she was born to play (indeed it is her best performance), as Olive Oyl. The plot is simple, like one of its source comics. Popeye arrives in a dilapidated seaside town called Sweet Haven – the production design and set decoration of this place, done by Wolf Kroeger and Jack Stephen, respectively, is one of the most astonishing of the film’s features. There he meets the hamburger loving Wimpy (Paul Doooley), among the town’s other eccentric but likable inhabitants. He has arrived just prior to the wedding between Bluto (Paul L. Smith) and Olive. While Bluto may have his qualities (one of which Olive rather naughtily sings about), the relationship seems far from idyllic. After Popeye and Olive become friendlier, their association is only accentuated by the sudden arrival of abandoned baby Swee'pea (Wesley Ivan Hurt - Robert Altman's grandson). All bets are off on the marriage. Of course, Bluto’s not happy about this, and after learning of Swee'pea’s uncanny clairvoyance he manages to kidnap the baby. Added to this storyline is the reveal of Popeye’s long lost father, Poopdeck Pappy (Ray Walston).

Popeye is directed and acted like a live-action cartoon, and as such several sequences are obviously exaggerated and preposterous. Similarly, the characters are erratic and unorthodox in the extreme and certain scenes become at times simply bizarre. These qualities are not negatives though; in fact, they’re what gives Popeye much of its charm, its delightful playfulness. It’s just a goofy, fun movie. It’s over-the-top and amusingly absurd, but it’s extremely likable and fascinating and Williams’ nearly inaudible one-liners are frequently hilarious.

It’s also a musical of sorts, a Robert Altman musical. Altman, known for his innovative use of sound (overlapping dialogue especially), here also experiments with the conventions of the genre. The songs – music and lyrics by Harry Nilsson – float in and out of certain sequences, many without the clear breaks in narrative that you see in other musicals. There’s not always a obvious indication saying, “Ok, now we have a musical break.” Sometimes we simply hear the music start, the characters sing, and then they just go about their business. Sometimes the music plays for an exceptionally long time and the characters carry on like normal, with their regular dialogue taking on a musical quality, mixed with the actual lyrics. Many of the songs are very good: "I Yam What I Yam," "Sweethaven," and "Sail with Me" are among the most catchy and pleasant. The highlight for me though is Duvall signing "He Needs Me." It’s simply a great song, one that counts among its admirers Paul Thomas Anderson, who used the tune in his 2002 film Punch-Drunk Love, and Duvall does a wonderful job with it. There’s a lot of heart in Popeye, and you certainly see it here.



As mentioned, Popeye’s poor reception would signal the beginning of some tumultuous, though nonetheless productive, times for Robert Altman. After more than a decade of lower-key film and television work, work that is still noteworthy, Altman would burst back onto the Hollywood scene with a film that, oddly enough, sharply jabbed the superficial and ridiculous mechanics of Hollywood itself, The Player, in 1992. From there it was on-again, off-again for Altman. For every recognized masterpiece like Short Cuts (1993) and Gosford Park (2001), he had comparatively lackluster films like Prêt-à-Porter (1994) and The Gingerbread Man (1998). And in the middle of these poles were solidly entertaining pictures like Dr T and the Women (2000).

Altman’s final film would be one of his better recent productions. A Prairie Home Companion was released June 9, 2006. Robert Altman, one of the greatest and most original of American filmmakers, passed away Nov. 20 of the same year, at the age of 81.

"Beyond the Hills"

At the very beginning of Beyond the Hills (2012, Dupa dealuri), Voichita, played by Cosmina Stratan, struggles to make her way through an onslaught of people as they get off their respective trains and head down the platform. Everyone seems to be going the opposite direction of Voichita and she’s forced to awkwardly cut through the crowd. This is a fitting shot to open this excellent film, which is very much about going in a path different from that of the majority. (A brief scene later in a gas station also gives the impression of this girl being torn by the appeals of moden life.) 

Voichita is a young nun living in an ultra-Orthodox Romanian convent: isolated, no electricity, rustic. She has left behind all remnants of her previous life, indeed all remnants of modernity in general. If you didn't know any better, you'd think the scenes at the convent were from a period piece, not a film set in contemporary times. So then, with this opening at the train station (trains always a popular cinematic symbol of modernity), we see a girl who is not going with the crowd; she is a solitary figure in this swarm of hustling and bustling urban life. But she is soon not alone. She's at the station to meet a friend, Alina (Cristina Flutur). The girls grew up together in the same orphanage, and strong hints suggest a lesbian relationship at some point. Alina, who has been living in Germany, is here to visit her friend. With this reemergence of a key part of her past, and with the introduction of this secular individual into her religious existence, the trouble for Voichita and the world she now inhabits starts.

Back at the monastery, Alina, to say the least, has trouble adjusting. She makes advances on Voichita, she acts out, she simply doesn't belong there, and she doesn't understand why Voichita finds the place suitable. Couldn't they just leave together? There's a possible job lined up, working on a boat. All they need are the appropriate papers and they can go away, two friends reunited. Voichita, however, is comfortable where she is. She's not crazy about leaving. Her heart is now with God, not Alina. The nuns and priest try to work with Alina, but their efforts are to no avail. Even if she tries, Alina is there to be with Voichita, nothing more. She can't adapt to their ways and she doesn't really want to. Everyone is patient with her behavior, giving considerable leeway to Voichita, hoping that she will soon realize that her friend doesn't belong. Either that or she herself may have to go. A back and forth of progress and compliance and a reversion back to misbehavior follows, until at one point Alina becomes mentally distraught and potentially dangerous. A stay at the hospital reveals no major physical ailment, so once back at the convent, and after another outburst, the internal presence of the devil is assumed.   

It's here that Beyond the Hills gets into the most prominent and troubling of its thematic concerns. Voichita, the nuns, and the priest take drastic steps to “cure” Alina's apparent affliction: she’s tied down, not given food, kept isolated. To them, this is the necessary process when dealing with the bodily inhabitation of satanic evil. Does it, however, the film asks, have a place in modern society? Are they doing what's right, or just what's right to them? Should this kind of treatment be administered when existing, more contemporary psychiatric means are available? It's a drama we've seen played out in real life, where a child deprived of medical attention and instead treated with prayer passes away. That, of course, is the negative side; but some still swear by the power of faith and point to miraculous healing as proof. It goes both ways, and this is what Beyond the Hills explores.



Romanian writer/director Cristian Mungiu is no stranger to controversial topics. His 2007 film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (one of the best movies in recent years) was a gritty and powerful tale of a woman's struggle to have an illegal abortion, and the same sort of objective honesty displayed in that film is shown in Beyond the Hills. Mungiu has a striking style whereby the camera is placed in an optimal location to best cover the scene and highlight the emotional resonance, and each set-up is notably intentional in its formal design. We are seeing things from an observational and unobtrusive vantage point, and at the same time everything about each shot is remarkably well composed.

A non-judgmental presentation of the characters also runs through both of these films. In Beyond the Hills, we are simply shown these religious figures and are dropped into their lives. There is no ulterior motive on the part of the filmmaker or the characters. Alina might see Voichita's decision as a foolish one, but we don't necessarily agree. Voichita does, after all, seem content and at peace. And even if one finds their methods archaic and in the end potentially dangerous, the nuns and priest are not "bad guys." In fact, it's quite the opposite. Their intentions are so good that when their tactics fail we feel as sorry for them as we do Alina and Voichita. They did what they thought was best; they're not malicious, stupid, or inconsiderate. The final shot of the film, like the first, perfectly captures this mixed emotion. Without giving too much plot detail away: The shot is on a group of the nuns and the priest seated in the back of a cramped vehicle; the camera steadily moves forward to the driver’s seat and focuses through the windshield on the outside world, a world of cell phones, traffic noise and congestion, road construction, etc. They are clearly out of their element. This is not their world. Are they, then, totally at fault? Similarly, we can identify with both girls: Voichita does seem genuinely happy at the convent and her confusion and conflict is understandable; on the other hand, Alina's desperation to reunite with her friend/lover is terribly heartbreaking, her uncertainty also reasonable.   

Beyond the Hills has been extremely well received since its initial showing at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won a well-deserved actress prize for Flutur and Stratan and took home the award for best screenplay (it was also nominated for the Palme d’Or, the festival’s most prestigious prize). It went on to be recognized at numerous other international festivals last year and yet is just now getting its theatrical release in the United States. As such, it could be seen as one of the best films of 2012 and, if going by release date in America, it’s certainly one of the best so far in 2013.

"Scorpio Rising" & "Chelsea Girls"

The 1960s were a time of drastic change in American film. Established studios and their structures were breaking down, and with films like The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider and The Wild Bunch (quite a time, wasn’t it?) the ratings system was faltering and both the look and subject matter of American cinema was undergoing a total overhaul. But this was just in the arena of mainstream narrative cinema. What was happening underground, in the avant-garde, on the more explicitly experimental filmmaking scene?

Two of my favorite films of the era that would fall into this latter category were Scorpio Rising (1964), a 28-minute short directed by Kenneth Anger, and Andy Warhol’s 210-minute Chelsea Girls (1966), made in collaboration with Paul Morrissey. There were many other great experimental works during this period (Michael Snow’s 45-minute Wavelength (1967), which is basically, though not only, a slow zoom within a room as various incidents occur, would be another top contender), but these two have always stood out. 

Anger’s short is a tour-de-force of image and sound. It’s one of the first films ever to incorporate a predominantly rock and roll soundtrack: "Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)," "My Boyfriend's Back," "(You're the) Devil in Disguise," and "Leader of the Pack" are just a sampling of the tracks included. These selections give the film a unique musical quality, as opposed to a more typical all instrumental score, and they also create a keen sense of time, a time associated with this type of music. Scorpio Rising’s imaginatively edited construction combines one striking image after another, building to a frenzy. Color, light, camera placement, montage, it leaves no stylistic stone unturned. And in terms of what is actually shown, Scorpio Rising is also remarkably revolutionary. The film follows a group of bikers, all filmed in lingering homoerotic detail, as they prep themselves and assemble. Nazi and religious imagery abounds, and we are left to draw our own conclusions about this juxtaposition. It’s certainly an examination of the fetishized male body (Anger himself was gay, at a time when such openness was unquestionably more taboo than it is now). It’s also an examination of iconographic idolatry – the comparison between Nazism and Christianity is and was notoriously provocative. Since Scorpio Rising, like nearly all of these types of films, is loose on narrative, one can extrapolate more and more from the picture with each viewing, without the constraints of overt formal guidance. It’s a rapidly paced film, full of ambiguity and astonishing imagery, so you’re left coming away with multiple questions regarding potential meaning, which is, of course, a sign of any great experimental work.  




While Scorpio Rising is comprised of aural/visual bombardment, Warhol’s Chelsea Girls is a more subdued, though nonetheless challenging, film. It records a group of people in New York City as they basically just hang out, talk, drink, ramble, do drugs, etc. While the film was initially around six hours long, Warhol decided to combine certain segments into a continuous split-screen. So now we have, for the entirety of the film, one image, one “story,” next to another, the audio track going back and forth, the segments visually and thematically contrasting against each other (some are in color, some black and white; some seem uncomfortably volatile, some simplistically innocent). It’s a brilliant experiment in film form, film spectatorship, and film exhibition. In these last two categories, the innovation comes from the fact that when theatrically shown the vignettes were projected separately, even randomly; thus they oftentimes didn’t synch up perfectly and the screenings would subsequently vary from theater to theater, from showing to showing. Like Scorpio Rising, the people and the places here also serve a sort of ethnographic function. We are bearing witness to an essentially authentic assemblage of people during a very precise time and place. It’s little surprise that of all people it would be Andy Warhol who would craft such a culture-specific masterpiece of cinema.

Taken together, Scorpio Rising and Chelsea Girls are two markedly dissimilar experimental films, in terms of tone, form and content, but they’re both perfectly representative of the best of what avant-garde American cinema had to offer in the 1960s. While this type of filmic experimentation may seem somewhat unappealing to a moviegoer not accustomed to such unorthodox methods, these two are well worth a shot. They’re comparatively more digestible than other experimental titles out there (no less dazzling and remarkable, but perhaps more off-putting, would be the work of Stan Brakhage from the same period). For those interested in this epoch of American society, these two films are also worthwhile simply as cultural artifacts. And for those who simply want to see something new, something that will challenge preconceived stale notions of cinema and standard film convention, they are not to be missed.

"This Happy Breed" & "Brief Encounter"

David Lean is probably best known for large-scale super productions like Bridge on the Rive Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965), and this is of course not without due reason; these, especially Lawrence, are tremendous films. But when you look at Lean’s body of work you see that there was so much more to his career than these massive, sweeping works of grandeur. Before he became primarily associated with Hollywood achievement (Kwai and Lawrence would both win him Best Director Oscars), Lean directed a number of more unassuming pictures that, in many ways, are even more remarkable.

While these later films were all international co-productions, it’s some of Lean’s strictly British work that is really striking on a more emotional and deeply resonant level. Lawrence for sheer spectacle, excitement and scope is hard to rival, but films like This Happy Breed (1944) and Brief Encounter (1945) strike at the heart, and at the soul.



Both films were based on plays by Noel Coward, and both star Celia Johnson. In the former, Johnson plays mother to three children and wife to Robert Newton. The film follows her family over the course of 20 tumultuous years between the two World Wars. There are family squabbles, issues with the kids growing up and whatnot, confrontations with death on one hand and the joys of marriage on the other, and there are the general stresses of everyday life. The glorious thing about This Happy Breed is the way Lean and the performers quickly establish the locale and the characters then set us off on a touching and profoundly authentic whirlwind of real life drama. We’re with this family for a short time in terms of film duration (not quite two hours) but we rapidly cover so much territory and so many poignant situations that by the end our relationship to the whole gang is considerable. They are average folks and they are delightful. There’s not really a single character we don’t care for, and there’s nary a moment that passes that doesn’t hold some sort of significance for them, us, and the bond developed between the film and audience. Each sequence steadily adds to the impact of the film’s entirety, so that by the end we feel like we’ve been with them every step of the way, at a level of intimacy more notable than most cinematic dramas.  



Similarly, Brief Encounter is also about average and perfectly genuine people in an average and perfectly genuine situation. Here love, more than the grandness of life in total, is the cause for dramatic tension and identification. Johnson is the happily married Laura Jesson. But is she really happy? A chance meeting with Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard) sends her emotions reeling. She loves her husband; they don’t really have any major domestic issues. But this brief encounter becomes something she never could have imagined. Indeed, she probably never dared. He too is married, but they continue to meet several times. The temptation to have a full-fledged illicit affair grows and grows. They are truly smitten with each other, but it’s complicated. They are also decent and devoted spouses. So what to do? Unlike many films that deal with marital infidelity, including many of those made today, nothing here seems exceptionally tawdry. These are genuinely good people. We can understand their relationship and their dilemma. They are so happy together we see how it’s difficult to conclude this ever-evolving relationship. Brief Encounter is also a beautiful film to watch. Shot by Robert Krasker (who would photograph Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949) and Luchino Visconti’s Senso (1954) – two other gorgeous looking movies), the images only add to the dream state of the characters. For Laura, this is exactly what’s it’s like – a dream, a fantasy. But can it be real, can she ever really leave her husband, or is this love only to be a fleeting one? Will she eventually just wake up? Either way, it’s extraordinarily romantic.

While we certainly care for the characters in the trio of films mentioned above (Peter O'Toole's T.E. Lawrence is one of the most appealing screen characters of all time), David Lean’s true gift as far as creating individuals who invite strong and immediate association is most evident in these earlier movies. The world of the later pictures is magnificent and arresting, but the world in these others is more comprehensible and reasonable and easier to relate to. I’m not especially well-informed on David Lean’s biography, so I can’t say where this turning point in film aesthetic occurred, or why. Perhaps we saw a sign of things to come in Summertime (1955), with its exotic setting and lush cinematography. Films made just before this production were somewhat more practical and reserved, films like the hilarious Hobson's Choice (1954) and even the literary adaptations Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948). Maybe it’s just the natural evolution of an artist. Lean broadens his scope of subject matter and in doing so naturally expands his creative canvas. What’s extraordinary is that he skillfully handles both so well.

Ultimately what matters though, is that one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers made film after film of tremendous quality and impact. Even with two Oscars and with the global fame of at least two of his more than 15 feature films, I still think “underrated” aptly describes Lean and his work. Everyone should see Lawrence of Arabia, there’s no question about that, but for completely different reasons, all just as imperative, everyone should also seek out This Happy Breed and Brief Encounter, two delightfully powerful dramas that have lingered in my mind long after my initial viewings.