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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just
what was, or still is, "it"? According to British novelist Elinor Glyn,
who coined the term, at least as far as it's referred to here, the
phenomenon can mean various things: "a strange magnetism that attracts
both sexes," for example. Well, whatever "it" is, Clara Bow had it, and that's why she was ideal to play the part of Betty Lou in Clarence G. Badger's 1927 film titled - fittingly enough - It.
Based
on the ideas put forth by Glyn in her writing (though the storylines
are totally distinct), Bow personifies this enigmatic quality. In the
film, when the author makes a rather random appearance, she is asked
about this "it," and what "it" designates. "'It' is that quality
possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With
'It' you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man,"
she states. "It" is "Self-confidence and indifference whether you are
pleasing or not and something in you that gives the impression that you
are not at all cold." Yes, "it" is all of that. With Clara Bow in this
role that is now inseparable for her on-screen persona and, in many ways
erroneously, her off-screen self, she is a jubilant being of
exuberance, sexuality, playfulness and she is a figure of the times. Bow
is one of the most underrated and frequently neglected female stars of
Hollywood's silent era, and this is easily her most recognizable
performance.
In It,
Bow's Betty Lou works in a department store. Monty (William Austin),
friend of the store's wealthy owner, Cyrus Waltham (Antonio Moreno),
notices her. In a unique self-referential way, Monty becomes infatuated
with this craze surrounding "it." He tries to find "it" in the various
girls employed at the store, and he does in Betty. He develops a liking
for the girl, but she has her eyes set on Waltham. In a daring way for
the time, Betty is the scheming and assertive woman; she makes a plan
and ambitiously goes for it. Is it superficial? Is it purely for money?
Maybe, at first anyway. But her decision to be her own woman and do
everything in her power to succeed in her goal positions her as a
powerfully independent female force.
What
makes this film noteworthy, beyond this audacity, is Bow's screen
presence. She's certainly not "America's Sweetheart," little Mary
Pickford, and she's no demur Lillian Gish. Bow is closer in spirit to
Louise Brooks as a sort of emblematic free spirit of the flapper era.
She is immensely attractive and her alluring personality is enchanting.
However, she does indeed possess something else, something special. She
has that "it" factor. It's somewhat of a copout to say there aren't
really words to describe how Bow is presented in this film, but it's
true. She did exude a unique quality that had to be dubbed simply "it."
Aside from all this, It
is itself a pretty good film, one of the funniest silents I've seen not
involving the usual suspects of Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, etc. There are
some hilarious bits of dialogue, much of it in the slang specific to the
period, and some of it just plain goofy in its phrasing: "Sweet Santa
Claus, give me him" … "I feel so low, old chap, that I could get on
stilts and walk under a daschund." And the situations our main trio of
characters find themselves in are quite amusing, especially given the
customs of the 1920s.
It
was another of the films shown at the TCM festival, my fourth of five
seen on that particular day, and to see it there was special for two
reasons. One was the live orchestral accompaniment. Silent films were
never really silent. There was nearly always music, sometimes even sound
effects and narration, so to see the film with the score being
performed right in front of you was a tremendous experience. The second
major highlight was just to see the film on the big screen, in 35 mm.
Say what you will about Blu-ray restorations you can see on your 70 inch
television, but nothing matches a sharp film print projected in the
Egyptian Theatre. You can see stills of Bow on the internet or in film
books, and you can watch her movies from the comfort of your living
room, but you've never really seen Clara Bow, and you've never really
experienced how she radiates, until you've seen her look, her smile, and
her coy suggestiveness and delight on the big screen.
That being said though, I can't recommend It enough. So in the end see It however you can, and enjoy the delightful charm that was Clara Bow.
In 1946, when Notorious
was released, Alfred Hitchcock and stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman
were at the top of their game. Since his first American feature, Rebecca, in 1940, Hitchcock had in the past six years made Foreign Correspondent (1940), Suspicion (1941), Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and Spellbound (1945), among others. As for Grant, in the past half-dozen years he had starred in His Girl Friday (1940), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Penny Serenade (1941), Suspicion, Destination Tokyo (1943), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and Night and Day (1946). And Bergman, having also just worked with the director on Spellbound, was primarily known for Casablanca (1942), Gaslight (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary's
(1945). Now this is more than just a laundry list of excellent American
films. When the trio was united for this Ben Hecht-scripted thriller,
they were bringing with them a past marked by renowned and hugely
popular movies. Notorious, to say the least, had a lot going for it. And boy does it live up to those expectations.
(Did I mention the film also costarred Claude Rains? He would receive his fourth Oscar nomination here.)
It’s
a classic Hitchcock plot: Alicia Huberman (Bergman) is the daughter of a
man convicted of treason against the United States. While she may not
agree politically with her father, presuming that she would nevertheless
have connections to his disreputable and dangerous associates living in
South America, the US government, specifically agent T.R. Devlin
(Grant), asks her to spy on the group. Perhaps she can infiltrate their
circle and head off whatever plans are brewing. As luck would have it,
one of the leaders of this shady assemblage is Alexander Sebastian
(Rains), who just so happens to have had a fancy for Alicia. It’s
perfect. She can get close to him, see what’s going on, and all’s well.
Only it’s not. Alicia and Devlin inevitably fall in love; she’s
reluctant to do everything her relationship with Sebastian might entail,
and Devlin grows jealous at the thought of the same. In the middle of
this are of course the familiar tropes of government secrets, suspense,
spies, and sex. There is also the frequent Hitchcock device known as the
“MacGuffin,” in others words, the item the characters are after but the
audience doesn’t really care about.
Notorious
has everything. It’s a masterfully crafted film, full of wit, intrigue,
romance, and tension. There are at least three sequences in the picture
that stand out among Hitchcock’s best (and that’s saying something
given his body of work!).
As
per the production code of the time, on-screen kisses could only be
just so long. To undermine this, the perennially clever filmmaker mixes
in the requisite kisses between Grant and Bergman with intimate moments
of charged embracing, subtle glances, and seductive dialogue. Over the
course of several minutes, Hitch doesn’t break the kiss code; he does so
much more.
Technical virtuosity was also something noteworthy in nearly every Hitchcock film, and in Notorious
we get a brief shot that is simply amazing in its execution. Bergman
has secured a key crucial to the development of the plot. It’s a small
feature, but it’s vital. To accentuate this, Hitchcock begins an
elaborate crane shot from several feet in the air, hovering above a
party. Gradually, the camera moves all the way down, through the crowd
to ground level, and eventually concludes in a tight close-up of
Bergman’s hand grasping the key. It’s a flamboyant maneuver that may not
necessarily add anything to the characters or the story, but it’s a
stylistic feature that adds considerably to the visual design of the
film and the mechanical showmanship of Hitchcock.
Finally,
there is arguably the most suspenseful moment of the film. Grant and
Bergman have descended to Sebastian’s wine cellar. They know something
is amiss down there, and it probably has something to do with the wine.
Eventually they discover bottles with labels that don’t match the
others. Grant browses through the bottles, while unbeknownst to him one
is getting pushed closer and closer to the edge of the shelf. If that
falls, the jig is up. The glass will shatter, someone might hear, and
the contents will go everywhere. It’s pins and needles until … crash!
But it doesn’t contain liquid at all. It’s some sort of mineral ore -
this is the MacGuffin.
Notorious
was another film I saw at the recent TCM Classic Film Festival, and
while I’ve always loved Hitchcock one really gets a sense of his skill
when you see a film of his on the big screen with a crowd. It’s
remarkable how, even after all these years, Hitchcock still commands his
audience. The theater was brimming with anxiety, good humor, and rapt
attention. During this wine bottle scene there was a palpable and
audible sense of tension: squirms, gasps, the whole works. And many of
these people, including myself, had seen the film before. We knew what
would happen. But it’s still so powerful and effective. Hitchcock
certainly knew what he was doing, and he did it better than anybody.
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Roberto Rossellini had more than made a name for himself with the Neorealist trilogy of Rome, Open City (1945), Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero
(1948), all masterful works of post-war cinema, but his career began to
take a notable shift in the decade that followed. Aside from taking new
narrative and stylistic approaches, beginning with Stromboli in 1950 Rossellini also had a new leading lady, in real life and in his movies – Ingrid Bergman – and neither he nor she, nor their filmmaking career, would ever be the same.
Bergman
was a great admirer of Rossellini’s work to this point. She expressed a
desire to work with him, which she would first do in the 1950
production noted above. But a more than professional relationship
developed and the two fell in love. Both were already married, and she
became pregnant and decided to stay in Italy. This did not sit well with
self-appointed moral superiors in America. She was, after all, the
seemingly wholesome and innocent Oscar-winning star of Casablanca (1942), Gaslight (1944), Spellbound (1945) The Bell's of St. Mary's (1945) and Joan of Arc
(1948). As the outrage spread amongst various religious and social
institutions condemning their relationship, they carried on, and while
their marriage didn’t last in the end, it did produce (along with
daughter and future star Isabella Rossellini) some extraordinary films,
including Europa ’51 (1952), Fear (1954) and the film discussed here, Journey to Italy (1954).
With
these films, Rossellini was starting to distance himself markedly from
his Neorealist roots, occasionally to the surprised disappointment of
critics. Journey to Italy was one of the first hints at the
sort of modern cinema that was to develop even further as the decade
went on. While later films by fellow countrymen Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni would soon be greeted as movies ushering in a whole new era of motion picture art, Journey to Italy
was among the initial films to explore relationships and individual
psychology in complex ways, with a more restrained and ambiguous
presentation.
In
an occasionally stolid yet at times deeply affecting fashion, the film
follows husband and wife Alex and Katherine Joyce (George Sanders and
Bergman) as they travel to Naples in order to arrange the outcome of a
deceased relative’s villa. That goal has little to do with the plot of
the film, however. Instead, we are more focused on the gradual
disintegration and evolution of their marriage. Their animosity toward
each other becomes clear early on, and it fluctuates as the picture
progresses from subtle jabs at one another to all-out aggression. They
go their separate ways at times, finding respite in solitude or in the
company of others, but though they decide a divorce is the best course
of action one gets the sense that they are not fully committed, that
perhaps there is more to their marriage, and their arguments, than
what’s shown on the surface. We see this is indeed the case near the end
of the film, when two fascinating scenes test their feelings for each
other. By being in these two particular places at the specific times
they are, they are confronted by life and death in exceptional ways, and
their characters and their ideas and plans are altered.
What places Journey to Italy
into the “art film” or “modern” category is the way in which Rossellini
presents the drama. Everything is extremely intimate. We are with these
two at their most volatile and vulnerable. But at the same time, we’re
not granted access to their innermost thought processes. Their feelings
and subsequent actions are not always clear or fully explicated. We’re
fascinated by Alex and Katherine, and we’re absorbed in their
relationship, but we’re kept at a distance. In a way, while Journey to Italy
takes place in what seems like a whole other world than that in
Rossellini’s Neorealist works, it’s not totally unlike the objective
stance taken in those war-time films. In fact, it may be even less
manipulative and controlled (neither method is necessarily bad though).
And in an approach similar to Antonioni’s so-called “Trilogy of
Alienation” (L'avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L'eclisse (1962)) and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960), Journey to Italy
also comes across as being as much about contemporary society, culture
and relationships, and the larger strains that affect all three, as it
is about specific individuals.
Rossellini’s
career would continue to shift in style and substance; he would return
to war themes and settings, he made a docudrama in India, and later he
did some extraordinary historically-based television projects. Bergman,
who would also work with other international greats like Jean Renoir and
Ingmar Bergman, was eventually welcomed back into the Hollywood and
American community (her first film back in the US was Anastasia in 1956 and she won a Best Actress Oscar for her performance).
For me personally, Journey to Italy was one of 9 films I had the pleasant opportunity to watch at the recent Turner Classic Movies Classic Film Festival.
While this included some great features (all of which I’ll be writing
about over the next couple weeks), I find that I keep thinking about
Rossellini’s film more than others. It wasn’t the best movie I saw at
the festival, and it wasn’t the first time I saw it, but something about
it has stayed with me, and I’m eager to see it again already. It’s a
testament to the way in which Rossellini carefully crafts the film - one
may not become immediately enraptured by the picture, given its pace,
tone and lack of “action,” but the impact grows progressively and
profoundly.
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Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were rapidly growing to prominence in the British film industry by the time they made I Know Where I'm Going!
in 1945. In a relatively rare move, then and now, the duo shared
written, produced and directed by credit, though they each came from
varied backgrounds of individual accomplishment. Powell had
started working with Rex Ingram on silent productions and Pressburger
wrote his first film in 1930. World War II brought them together, and
film history would never be the same.
Pressburger was fleeing the Nazi rise
to power and Powell was becoming cinematically involved with the
British war effort. Their first collaboration was The Spy in Black
(1939), a film starring Conrad Veidt, who was also getting out of
Germany while the getting was good. The years that followed saw the
release of such classics as The Lion Has Wings (1939), 49th Parallel (a film made in 1941, set in Canada, and at least partially designed to help nudge American involvement in the war), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
(1943), a marvelous picture that caused considerable ire amongst the
British military class due to its humorous depiction of wartime pomp and
regulation. Just prior to I Know Where I'm Going! the two released A Canterbury Tale (1944), an ode to the people of the English countryside against the backdrop of war.
This penchant for the depiction of
rural individuals and their natural surroundings was a major facet in
The Archer’s output. Powell especially became enamored with the Scottish
Isles, where most of I Know Where I'm Going! was shot. In this
film though, the locale is much more than just a setting. It serves a
pivotal role in terms of narrative and characterization, acting as a
catalyst for the story’s unfolding and informing the mind, body and soul
of the individuals presented.
The film stars Joan Webster as Wendy
Hiller, an ambitious English woman who is set to marry a wealthy
industrialist. She’s brash and has always been a self-determined and
confident young lady. Her sense of certainty is thwarted, however, when
she arrives at the island of Mull, hoping to board a ship bound for the
island Kiloran where her beau awaits. The weather and the natural
elements of the area do not cooperate though, and it puts a kink in her
well-developed plans. With harsh conditions plaguing the region she has
no way of getting across the water. She is stuck in a location and with
people that are far removed from her background and her intentions.
These are simple, unassuming and unpretentious people. They are careless
in the best sense of the word, and they live their life unabated by the
negatives of contemporary society and urban mores. While there, Joan
meets Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey), a naval officer and pillar of the
community. He’s at home there and his home is very much a part of his
character, in ways that she only gradually discovers. He quickly
develops a fancy for the girl, but she is still set on her approaching
wedding. As obstacles get in her way, she begins to change … in
demeanor, thoughts, and feelings. She becomes less sure of where she’s
going.
This is a magnificent looking film.
Powell, who operated in the role of director within the duo, captures
the location with great care and realism; it’s unadorned by any sort of
artificiality, and this gives the imagery of nature’s fury a very strong
sense of being a force to truly be reckoned with. Simultaneously, this
attention to detail also coveys the beauty of the scenery: trees, grass,
the wind, the water, everything vigorous and in perpetual motion.
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp was The Archers’ first color film, and a superb Technicolor picture it was, but it’s hard to imagine I Know Where I'm Going!
in anything other than black and white. Its ethereal presentation of a
place untouched by time seems all the more palpable in shades of grey.
(Likewise, it’s unthinkable to picture some of their later works – the
masterful Black Narcissus (1947), The Red Shoes (1948) and The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) – in anything but vibrant color.) Another great color film, A Matter of Life and Death
(1946), which was actually shot in black and white and color, was the
film Powell originally wanted to make at this time, but he could not
apparently obtain the Technicolor cameras. I Know Where I'm Going! is by no means a paltry substitute.
In terms of performances, it’s Roger Livesey who for me carries the film. Livesey had to replace Laurence Olivier in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,
and the result was a simply astounding depiction of Clive Candy (the
eponymous “Colonel Blimp”) as he ages from a strapping young man to an
overweight, balding older gentleman. Here too his distinct voice and
pure screen presence is something special and unique. An interesting bit
of trivia found on imdb.com notes that “James Mason was originally cast
as Torquil but declined when told he would have to ‘live rough’ in the
islands. Ironically Roger Livesey never went to the islands because he
was in a West End show at the time. A double was used for long shots and
all close ups are shot in the studio.” This is a fascinating detail to
keep in mind while watching the film, and it just goes to show how
accomplished all involved were as filmmakers.
Powell and Pressburger would continue to work together until I’ll Met by Moonlight in 1957, before going their separate ways. The latter continued to write novels and screenplays (Pressburger would write They're a Weird Mob,
which Powell directed in 1966.), and the former would make a handful of
features, most prominently and notoriously his second solo effort Peeping Tom (1960), a great, great film that in many ways ended his career due to the ensuing scandal it caused.
The work of these two tremendously
talented individuals was on the verge of being forgotten, despite their
acclaimed films of the 1940s and 1950s, when younger filmmakers in the
1970s began to rally behind them and started calling attention to what
were steadily being reevaluated as cinematic masterworks. The driving
force behind this was Martin Scorsese, who was taken by The Archers’
films from a young age. He and others, like Francis Ford Coppola, gave
new life to the output of Powell and Pressburger. Even if they never
made films as good as their earlier productions, the fresh attention and
the consequent reassessment of their work is incredibly significant and
thankfully continues today. Emeric Pressburger passed away in 1988 and
Michael Powell died two years later. He left behind widow Thelma
Schoonmaker, Scorsese’s editor and another tireless champion of her late
husband’s movies.
The Criterion Collection, that God-send to movie lovers, has treated many of these films exceptionally well, with several available on gorgeous Blu-ray and DVD transfers, all with the usual plethora of bonus features that only heighten what are already remarkable cinematic achievements.
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When writer/director Terrence Malick released The Tree of Life in 2011 it was his first film since The New World,
in 2005. It was also just his fifth feature since 1973. Then all of a
sudden this reclusive, mysterious and profound if not prolific filmmaker
had a follow-up in production for release the very next year. To the Wonder,
which had its premiere in 2012 and has just recently received a wider
distribution, is, to say the least, a complex picture, as with all of
Malick's work, and it may be his most abstract film to date.
Essentially,
the film follows Neil (Ben Affleck, in a nearly mute performance) as he
struggles to maintain a relationship with, first, Marina (Olga
Kurylenko), a French woman with a young daughter whom he brings back to
Oklahoma, then Jane (Rachel McAdams), a former lover who reenters his
life once Marina leaves. Neither relationship runs smooth, and as with The Tree of Life,
Malick intercuts the domestic strife with reflections on the world, on
God (Javier Bardem as Father Quintana gives voice to these issues), on
family and, most prominently here, on love. There's no real story to
speak of. We're simply following these individuals as they go about
their life, from setting to setting in one situation after another; some
locations figure into the (loose) narrative, some seem to serve merely
illustrative purposes.
"Merely"
doesn't really do the imagery justice though. Just as he's become known
for his oblique structural devices and his incomparable use of the
voice-over, Malick is also a preeminent visual stylist. His compositions
and camera maneuvers are breathtaking. One wonders how he captures such
moments of splendor and transcendence, or how he even thought to film
such imagery to begin with. To the Wonder has less of a conventional story than anything he's done before, but it is a sight to behold, and in most cases that's enough.
To the Wonder
has had its fair share of detractors. It has not been largely well
reviewed to this point (notably, one of the most positive pieces on the
film came from the late Roger Ebert – it was his last review). I can't
help but feel this negative reaction isn't really a result of the film
itself though. Had this been his first film in six years, perhaps it too
would have received some of the laudatory praise that The Tree of Life
did. I'll admit that the 2011 film is a better picture (it was my
favorite movie from that year), but with a Malick film it almost seems
as if too much of his distinctive and challenging style is a drawback
for some. In small doses, they're able to accept his atypical
narratives, theoretical divergences and formal boldness, but two films
in two years...that might be pushing things (I think not). Given that
two of its main characters also speak in foreign languages (and another
minor character speaks in a third), it's also possible that the film may
feel too much like a foreign film; certainly, portions of dialogue
sound reminiscent of something by Godard, Resnais or Antonioni. This
blending could prove troublesome for those used to a clear dividing line
between American films and those from another country, and the
cinematic attributes that go along with each.
For me personally, I don't think To the Wonder will hold as high a ranking as The Tree of Life
did by year's end. Frankly, I hope it's not the best film I see this
year. But it's a worthwhile movie, an impressive work of art, and one
that's going to be unlike anything else released anytime soon, or at
least until the next Terrence Malick film. Amazingly, he does have three
other projects currently in post-production, two with a 2013 projected
release date. Too much Malick? Certainly not for me.
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