Pather Panchali/Aparajito/Apur SansarWritten and directed by Satyajit Ray
India, 1955/1956/1959

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The Criterion Collection set of Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy has been one of the more eagerly anticipated releases in recent years. These masterworks of world cinema, widely acclaimed for decades, have been long overdue a much-deserved superior treatment on home video. Now though, benefitting from a 4K digital restoration by the Academy Film Archive and L’Immagine Ritrovata, and with a wealth of bonus features, these exceptional films are available in the superb presentation so many have been waiting for.

But to start at the source, such a treatment would not have been warranted in the first place were the films themselves not so remarkable, and that they most certainly are. As no less an authority than Akira Kurosawa puts it, “To have not seen the films of Ray is to have lived in the world without ever having seen the moon and the sun.”

Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road, 1955), Aparajito(The Unvanquished, 1956), and Apur Sansar (The World of Apu, 1959), the first two based on novels by Bibhutibhusan Banerjee, the third on an original story by the author, follow Apurba Ray—Apu—from childhood through his early 20s. Apu is played by Subir Banerjee, Pinaki Sengupta, Smaran Ghosal, and Soumitra Chatterjee, in four key phases of his life, and while he is not always the main subject of every drama that occurs, he is the only figure consistently present, and it is through his eyes and emotions that the films poignantly register.

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It would seem in Pather Panchali that Apu’s older sister, Durga (Shampa Banerjee at first, then Uma Das Gupta at a slightly older age), acts as the primary protagonist. She is the one who drives along much of the story, mostly because of her penchant for stealing, which repeatedly lands her in trouble. It is more than 20 minutes into the film before the charming young Apu is given his phenomenal introduction, rising up with wide-eyed youthful exuberance as Durga wakes him one morning. Aside from some basically innocuous childhood shenanigans, the school-aged Apu ofPather Panchali is frequently on the margins, simply bearing witness to the world around him. Still, his relationship with Durga is the most complex and interesting in the film, and when their occasional sibling rivalries subside, the two share in several extremely touching moments of intimacy.

Dramatic tension in the first two films also weighs down upon Apu’s mother, Sarbojaya (Karuna Bannerjee), while Harihar (Kanu Bannerjee) is the relatively carefree father. In a characterization repeated later in Ray’s work, the man of the house is the idealist, the generally laidback layabout, while it is the wife and mother who suffers the anxieties of everyday life. She is also often the disciplinarian of the children, while the father is himself likened to an immature adolescent, at least in temperament. Harihar makes ends meet by being a priest, but on the side, his passion is writing plays and poetry, and it is to those endeavors that he devotes most of his time and effort. While such artistic goals undeniably have their cultural value, in Pather Panchali they contribute to a spousal clash of pragmatism versus naïve optimism. His art is important, but will it pay the bills? That, he does not so much worry about, but Sarbojaya does, for she has no such lofty devotion, at least not any longer; he still has his dreams, she only had hers. The conflict of aspirations and harsh realizations sets up a recurrent narrative challenge awaiting Apu, who, over the course of the three films, will face any number of obstacles thwarting his objectives, those short-term and life altering.

Also established early on, and again resonating throughout the trilogy, oftentimes directly influencing the realization or abandonment of idyllic ambitions, is the natural progression of life: births, deaths, weddings, funerals. As these three films follow several years in the life of one character and give ample attention to many of those around him, a major motif is subsequently that of youth versus old age, how the two differ and simultaneously compliment one another. This is first embodied by Durga, with her mischievous behavior, and by the defiantly stubborn elderly aunt, Indir Thakrun (Chunibala Devi), who lives with the family. Sarbojaya scolds the old woman for acting at times like a child, with the implication in this instance being that the very young and the very old are connected in a way those of middle age are not, that they both view things in a similar fashion, act accordingly, and are correspondingly chided (after all, it’s usually for the aunt that Durga steals fruit). The young and old are, in a sense, free from the burdens and the worries of middle age; they either are not yet there or have lived long enough to surpass such concerns. In those central years is where the trouble lies, though, as seen by Sarbojaya’s varied anxieties and the struggles of Harihar, and that is where we leave Apu by the time of Apur Sansar, with a tumultuous adult life ahead of him. “There are always good times and bad,” says Harihar, and so it goes that in the Apu trilogy; death is ever present and ever varying. There is the prolonged process of the aunt’s gradual passing in old age, the sudden and irrevocably fatal sickness of Durga and Harihar, and the death of Sarbojaya, most likely spurred on by emotional turmoil. Life and death, the trilogy shows, do not discriminate by age.

For all of Harihar’s faults, and however much Sarbojaya may deride his seemingly frivolous ambitions, by the end of Pather Panchali it is he who paves the way for the family’s move and a new chapter in the lives of all involved. Following the premature death of Durga and Harihar’s attainment of a new job, Aparajito picks up with the Ray family in the city of what is now Varanasi. Harihar continues his part-time religious work but soon succumbs to illness, which leaves Sarbojaya again under great duress. For a substantial portion of the film, Apu is not yet the primary point of focus, as that revolves around his mother and father. But it is still by way of his sense of sideline curiosity that much of what is seen is understood and chronicled.

Following his father’s passing, and his mother’s decision to move back to the village, Apu does gradually become the central figure, and he is now faced with his own decisions to make, particularly as they relate to his education. His detached childhood innocence and cheerful way of life is slipping away. Now he is concerned about his studies in Kolkata, which leaves him at odds with his mother, who frets about being left alone. He therefore has to choose between leaving her and their relative comfort in order to act on his own dreams, or to remain and become a village priest, like his father, with his goals relegated to merely what might have been, like his mother.

In Pather Panchali‘s Bengal village, Ray and cinematographer Subrata Mitra find and express an extraordinarily complex beauty in the natural simplicity of the forest. The nature photography glistens with images of sprinkling sunlight, textured foliage, and scenes of tranquil stillness. In this rural tableau, structures organically grow from, and meld with, the environment in a synchronicity of wilderness and settlement. In certain interior sequences, Ray adds to the realism of the location by retaining unrelated, though reasonable, background sounds and voices, never abandoning the notion that there is continually vigorous life beyond the frame. It’s what Ray biographer Andrew Robinson calls a “living backdrop.” While this may make for a richly authentic setting, it is often more than Sarbojaya can stand. For her, “it’s like living in the jungle.” For better or worse then, by the time ofAparajito such a setting seems a million miles away. The soft lushness of their bucolic village has given way to an urban hardness. The family’s new neighbors move freely around and are generally congenial (though perhaps a little too forward), but they remain strangers, and the Ray family, too, are strangers in a strange land.

Later, when Apu arrives in Kolkata, he is similarly stricken with an eager bewilderment, marveling at unexpectedly commonplace features of modernized civilization, like electricity. Though only hinted at in Pather Panchali, the conflict of primitivism and modernity is front and center in Aparajito, as is the blending of the natural and the artificial. One gets this sense right away, as the film opens with residents bathing in the Ganges river as it flows along the man-made banks of Varanasi (we see it again even in Kolkata, as pigs roam free right outside Apu’s multi-storied apartment building). The split division of the natural environment and that of urban development visually reflects the half-and-half position of Aparajito itself, which ultimately finds Apu at a personal crossroads. The surroundings also signal a tonal shift, with an urban location that is intimidating and even frightening in its newness. For this and in other ways, Aparajito is clearly a transitional film and does not work quite as well as a stand-alone feature. Having seen where Apu is coming from, we relate to his perception of foreignness, and do so with considerable anxiety. Ray thus films this middle feature with less obvious vitality, replacing it with the feeling that there is nothing beautiful or magical here.

When the somewhat older Apu is successfully on his own, his mother remains concerned for his safety and for his health. She becomes a solitary, tragic figure, even more than she already was, and the sadness registers prominently on Bannerjee’s face (she, along with the child actors of Pather Panchali, gives the best performance of the trilogy). When Sarbojaya purposely doesn’t wake the visiting Apu one morning, hoping he will miss his train back to the city, her pathetically guilt-ridden expression speaks volumes.

After Sarbojaya dies, and with Apu finally left by himself, he is now free to act on his life without the constraints of familial responsibility, with no attachments, no ties to bind him to his previous existence. One thing that remains, however, is the enigmatic majesty of trains, that perpetual symbol of movement, progress, and modernity—three key themes of the Apu trilogy, and also a feature that carries connotations of Apu’s steadily dissipating childhood wonderment; one of the finest scenes in Pather Panchali, the first scene actually shot, involves Apu’s astonished viewing of a passing train. (In Aparajito, the opening shot is taken from a train, and in Apur Sansar, Apu lives near a rail yard. But by this point, the thrill is gone.)

The adult Apu in Apur Sansar is a talented writer (following in that half of his father’s footsteps), who has earned something of a reputation for his college work on village life. This, it would seem, is the one way for Apu to keep his upbringing alive, for now he is fully entrenched in modern life, a life of restaurants and movie theaters, slacks and button-up shirts. Still, he lives modestly, and still he struggles to find his way. While attending the wedding of a friend’s cousin, Apu quite unexpectedly finds himself in the midst of an unraveling ceremony. Seen to be in the right place at the right time, and despite the fact he initially decries the proposal as being from the “dark ages,” Apu reluctantly steps in to take the reticent groom’s place. His unanticipated marriage is no doubt a major step in his life, and it is a step he is drastically ill-equipped to take, emotionally and financially. But Aparna (Sharmila Tagore), his new bride, is beautiful, and besides, it is nevertheless another, perhaps inevitable step in life, a way to accomplish some semblance of mature, adult stability.

For a time, Apur Sansar takes the shape of a common, modern domestic drama. Though Aparna is less educated than Apu, she pleasantly assumes her new role and together the two share some of the trilogy’s most pleasantly tender moments. Apu’s life is destined to be marred by tragedy, however, and this too is not meant to be. When Aparna dies during childbirth, Apu abandons the boy, and after he spends time in a period of bearded, nomadic wandering, he is faced with yet another decision about the next path to take.

Apur Sansar ends with a beautifully arranged final sequence, a satisfying conclusion to the series, one that conveys, for the first time, Apu’s now full engagement in a world of his own (hence the third film’s subtitle). It is, as critic Terrence Rafferty writes, “a passage that both evokes the past and implies a future—a moment in which two people, one grown, one not, stand on a threshold.”

Far more of an amateur production than the latter two films, Pather Panchali was created with a small, inexperienced crew. It also has a less straightforward narrative than the following two features, opting instead for a fluid slice of life depiction of the Ray family, with a perceptive authenticity in detail (setting, clothes, props, habits, etc.) rather than plot. This first installment, a groundbreaking leap forward for Indian cinema, is likewise therefore less reliant on classically effective emotional cues (though Aparajito and Apur Sansar are by no means melodramatic), and stylistically, as in the nature scenes noted above, it is also the most visually dynamic. For these reasons, it is the best of the three films. Regarding its liveliness and intensity, Chatterjee says the movie is, “like an eagle swooping down and carrying our hearts up to the sky.” It is no surprise Pather Panchali had a successful New York premiere even though it was shown sans subtitles. There is no translation required to such visual resonance.

Generally though, while his films are always aesthetically pleasing, Ray frequently films without any blatant synthetic flourish, but with a background as a graphic artist and having worked under the tutelage of Jean Renoir, he was fully capable of elegant pictorial compositions, striking camera movements, and emphatic editing when necessary. There are times when he incorporates an explicitly stylized punctuation to the already dazzling intrinsic imagery. In Pather Panchali, for example, there are two such shots: when he dollies alongside the aunt in an unconventional profile close-up as she walks in front of hanging rugs, and when Sarbojaya is seen walking inside her darkened house by candlelight, shot from the nighttime shadows outside.

Enhancing Ray’s masterful writing and direction, a number of other individuals played integral roles in the greatness of these three features. First, and perhaps foremost, is Ravi Shankar, whose stirring score is inseparable from the imagery and tone of the films. Then there is cinematographer Mitra, editor Dulal Dutta, and production designer/art director Bansi Chandragupta. Ray may have been the guiding force behind the scenes, but without the contributions of these and other key figures over the course of several years, what distinguishes this trilogy would never have been so fully and magnificently realized.

While a trilogy was not his original intent, it’s good Satyajit Ray ultimately chose to continue following Apu. Pather Panchali stands on its own as an exceptional motion picture, Aparajito carries further the themes and complex character relations, and Apur Sansar rounds everything up, but the three films together, as one universally affecting document, make the trilogy the incomparable cinematic accomplishment that it is.

Bad Boys/Bad Boys IIWitten by Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland, and Doug Richardson/Ron Shelton and Jerry Stahl
Directed by Michael Bay
USA, 1995/2003

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Say what you will about Michael Bay—and people have said a lot about Michael Bay—the man knows how to make an action movie. Bad Boys, from 1995, his first feature film, and its sequel, from 2003, which is making its Blu-ray debut as part of a 20th anniversary collection from Sony Pictures, are just two notable examples. These films are bursting at the seams with car chases, gunfights, explosions, and more, much more. There isn’t a whole lot beneath the surface, but there doesn’t really need to be. What these two films set out to do, they do very well, and what Bay does best, he does better than anybody. That may not always (hardly ever) be critically acceptable in terms of “quality cinema,” but the result is skillful, vigorous, generally entertaining, and extremely profitable. Cases in point: the two Bad Boys films.

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Before getting to the action, though, which is the most impressive and laudable element of every Michael Bay movie, Bad Boys is built on a standard buddy film template, with a clash of personalities joining together when necessary in the interest of professional duty. Will Smith and Martin Lawrence play Miami narcotics detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett. While they have differing tactical methods, the two prove essentially efficient, even if they leave in their wake a trail of dead bodies and collateral damage. Neither work exactly by the book, but the movies wouldn’t be much fun if they did. Their character contrast is not only in temperament and methodology, but also in their individual history and their private social status: Marcus is fairly domesticated with a wife and children, relying on his paycheck, and keen to play it safe; Mike is a bachelor, a ladies man, from a wealthy family, and more than willing to take risks. Marcus is high-strung and anxious; Mike is smooth and confident.

In the first film, when Mike and Marcus must swap lifestyles, this disparity perfectly sets up the humor latent in their conflicting personas, thus serving the purpose of the movie’s primary comical conceit. In the second Bad Boys, Marcus’s sister Syd (Gabrielle Union) enters the picture. She works for the DEA and, unbeknownst to Marcus, is in a relationship with Mike, which suggests his womanizing ways have passed since the prior film. That is one point of tension between the partners. But further complicating their relationship is the revelation that Marcus has apparently had enough of Mike’s recklessness and has put in for a transfer.

This is about the extent of the films’ character development and evolution. The deepest example of Mike and Marcus achieving any sort of profound realization is in the loyalty, the brotherhood, that despite antagonism nevertheless remains. By comparison, the bad guys in the two films, who are hardly worth mentioning, are simply bad and generally inconsequential…save for them being the bad guys. Their major point of differentiation is that in the first movie they deal in heroin while in the second they deal ecstasy. Compared to this standard nefarious triviality, Mike and Marcus are reasonably substantial individuals.

Still, nothing about any of this is particularly earth shattering, and Bay himself acknowledges the poor script he was working from with the first Bad Boys. But what kept his interest, and indeed, what makes the films entertaining (along with Bay’s visual initiative—more on that later) are the charismatic Smith and Lawrence. While there is no heartfelt association between these men and the audience, we don’t mind spending a few hours with the two of them. There may be an overabundance of the incessantly chaotic bickering that occurs in most partners-in-opposition film scenarios, but there is a strong chemistry that works. To make up for the initially lackluster screenplay, Bay allowed for Smith and Lawrence to improvise a good deal of their confrontational agitation. Their corresponding talents show in the naturally humorous combative banter and the amusing interactions with others, from their colleagues to the hapless boy showing up to take out Marcus’ daughter. Sometimes the two, especially Smith, strut and pose to play up the visual coolness of their swagger, but it’s all in good fun. In fact, while it’s perfectly understandable that Will Smith would want to broaden his range and venture into more dramatic opportunities (though the success of that outcome has been debatable), there is obviously a reason why roles like these are what made him a star.

The main attraction for any Michael Bay film, though, and the two Bad Boys are no exception, is Michael Bay. Some may argue with justification that Bay’s cinema is all style and no substance, and true enough, Bad Boys is a largely cosmetic series, but it does undeniably have style. Bay has an extraordinary knack for visual flair, and in this sun-kissed Miami setting, the films are sleek, glamorous, and spectacularly realized. Bay’s mobile camera, his integration of low and canted camera angles, his use of dramatic slow motion, it all works superbly in this cinematic milieu of hyper-dynamic action. With this is Bay’s music video aesthetic, accentuating frenetic editing, fluorescent coloring, embellished lighting, and a largely effective sense of pacing. Though he notes the quick cutting in the first film was partially a result of his having to cover up some of the faulty sets (he comments on the film’s “low” $19 million budget and points out he personally put up $25,000 in order to get one explosion), both films proceed at a satisfactorily expedient tempo. A criticism regarding some of his more recent films is that their length borders on self-indulgent gratuitousness (the last Transformers was 165 minutes long), but for both Bad Boys, he keeps things dynamic, building on a steady momentum.

These stylistic hallmarks are all evident in the first Bad Boys film, which is flashy but never overly so. But for better or worse, Bay turns the visual voltage up to eleven with Bad Boys II. Everything about the second Bad Boys is slicker and more extravagant: there are better cars, and more of them; better car chases, and more of them; better stunts, and more of them. The violence, pursuits, and explosions are gloriously over the top and the action sequences are lengthier and much more elaborate. WithBad Boys II, Bay was working off a considerably higher budget (about $130 million), which, along with nearly 10 years of technical advancement, also increased the amount of digital imagery. This he seamlessly and creatively integrates to admirable effect. Most impressive in the sequel are the digitally enhanced single takes, Bay using the CGI at his disposal to have the “camera” seemingly swoop in, out, above, below, and through realistically impossible structures, often without a perceived cut. The films are also increasingly expansive in terms of settings and set pieces, with the action tracking over large portions of the Miami area (and beyond, in the case of the sequel). Less remarkable, though nonetheless vital to Bay’s overarching approach toward action, are common elements like glass breaking, water spraying, and debris flying. It may not all be substantive, but it is expertly accomplished.

Now, of course, the above is not to suggest the Bad Boysfilms are great works of cinematic art. Though enjoyable, they have more than their fair share of flaws. Leaving the narrative issues aside (Bay says the first film has logic you could drive a truck through), there is a treatment of women that is questionable at best. Bay by no means holds a monopoly on such a liability, and (male) filmmakers have been doing this since the advent of the medium, but with the lingering close-ups, suggestive angles, and mostly clichéd presentations, both Bad Boysfilms are marred by an objectifying sexualization or a demeaning physical portrayal of most featured females (a holdover from Bay’s Victoria’s Secret commercials?). I don’t believe there is any maliciously sexist intent in any of this, but it is present. There are also issues with the comedic tone of both Bad Boys, which ranges from good-natured wisecracks, often punctuated by funny pop culture allusions, to sophomorically crass commentary. The jokes in the two films, either voiced or visual, include a host of dubious material: gay jokes, rat sex jokes, erection jokes, ethnic and racial jokes, cadaver jokes, fart jokes, and, when Marcus accidentally downs some ecstasy, drug jokes. Some admittedly work; some most certainly do not.

Perhaps something like 13 Hours will change this, but one of the easiest and most common charges against Bay is that for what his films are worth—for those who are even willing to give his films some worth—their value is largely derived from superficial qualities. They look good, the characters are amusing enough (if occasionally annoying and not heavily engaging), but the films are, ultimately, frivolous exercises in overblown action and special effects. Be that as it may, and the Bad Boys films do skirt this territory, though they are less reliant on effect-driven exhibition than theTransformers series, for example; I can’t help but find his work immensely enjoyable.

Bay was not yet 30 at the time of production on the firstBad Boys, and he had years of successful and widely acclaimed music video and commercial experience behind him. It’s with this background that he developed the type of artistry I admire, one of pure visual bravado. Without getting into a whole theoretical/historical justification of Bay’s filmmaking, movies like Bad Boys fall in line with a cinematic concept going back to the purpose of movies at their inception: inventive imagery, pure spectacle, in Tom Gunning’s immortal words, “the cinema of attractions,” where story and character are secondary to simply seeing something incredible, technically if not logically. With Bad Boys and elsewhere, the argument I go back to with Michael Bay is that even if his films aren’t serious, aren’t especially well written, and do get carried away in terms of their barrage of action content, they ultimately still look amazing. Is that enough? I don’t know, sometimes I think it is.

New on Video: ‘Code Unknown’

Code Unknown
Written and directed by Michael Haneke
France/Germany/Romania, 2000

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Michael Haneke’s Code Unknown, the director’s 2000 follow-up to his brilliant 1997 film Funny Games, opens on group of deaf children playing sign-language charades. It’s an oddly provocative opening, in that it instantly leaves one to speculate where such a scene is heading, and yet is curiously soon forgotten as the film proper begins, only to be recalled again at the very end of the movie. While this may appear as an arbitrary insertion of an apparently irrelevant parenthesis, there proves to be more to the inclusion than one could initially gather when the scene is first presented. It would indeed be impossible to understand its full significance until the film concludes, for like these children attempting to guess the phrase or word mimicked by another, Code Unknown is itself about figuring out behavior, trying to deduce and comprehend the meaning behind individual actions and expressions, to solve a cryptic code of conduct and human interaction.
Haneke assigns Code Unknown the subheading of “incomplete tales of several journeys,” an apt accompaniment given the fragmentary nature of the film. Certain scenes stop and start abruptly, many without any sort of establishing shot or concluding narrative signal; the vignettes, in their singular, isolated presentation, do feel occasionally incomplete. But as the stories gradually evolve amidst a montage of spatial and temporal shifts and character (re)introductions, a larger world begins to form. Spanning diverse locations over an indeterminate period, Haneke paints a broad multicultural picture, one that has as its basic grounding a preliminary sequence introducing the primary characters, from there branching off to side stories providing prior and succeeding context.

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Juliette Binoche plays Anne Laurent, an actress who one day runs into Jean (Alexandre Hamidi), the younger brother of her war correspondent boyfriend, Georges (Thierry Neuvic). After going their separate ways, Jean callously tosses some trash at Maria (Luminita Gheorghiu), a vagrant sitting on the sidewalk. Amadou (Ona Lu Yenke), a Malian immigrant, sees the offense and confronts the boy. They fight, the police are called, and Anne takes Jean while Maria and Amadou are arrested; she is deported to Romania and he is harassed though subsequently released. From this initiating action, the film follows each of the characters as they deal with the direct and more subtle repercussions of the incident.
When Anne first encounters Jean, he says he tried to get into her apartment but the code was changed, and when he tried to call her, all he got was her answering machine. Like the averting of this intended communication, Code Unknown is concerned with connections both missed and made. Haneke charts these people and the way they interact as perceptively as he covers the places they inhabit. In choosing to film in long, single takes, with the actors’ movements dictating the direction of the camera more so than any sort of strictly ornamental design, he shows a world that vividly comes alive as any given scene unfolds. As the main characters come and go, interacting with their surroundings, this uncut stylistic choice allows us to also witness others around them, and we are invited to consider the stories of these strangers as well, especially those in the more populated public places (an original title for the project was, in fact, “Strangers”). There are often those who, though on the periphery of the primary narrative, nevertheless make an impression. Some are up to no good, others want to do the right thing; one scene with Anne on the metro shows both facing off. As the full significance of those to whom we are introduced is not necessarily clear at first—their back-story, motivations, and personality traits only developing as the film continues—we find ourselves uncertainly drawing conclusions of character. Much like those in the film, we identify features and inferences based on our own assumptions and even prejudices. Anne’s occupation as an actress is a symbolically revealing one, giving the implied suggestion that she, like everyone else, is essentially playing a part in a larger drama. Think of Shakespeare’s As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players; They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts, His acts being seven ages.” The parts here, and their respective scenes, range from the dramatic (Anne hearing apparent child abuse) to the banal (she does so while ironing), the two often mingling as in life.
With its expansive structure, Code Unknown looks at the respective issues of both adults and children, and in its surveying fragments, we see lives marked by moments of minutia and downtime and moments of great anxiety, from plowing a field to attending a funeral, and everything in-between. There are those who live lives of relative comfort versus those who live lives of hardship and struggle. In this film that brings together multiple points of view concerning Europe’s immigrant culture, Haneke, who was himself making his first feature outside his native Austria, is also examining the impact of diversity, in terms of cultural, economical, and generational collision. In classic Haneke style, it’s not always a pleasant merger, but it is chaotically realistic (though he does call the film his “mildest”). And as per his norm, Code Unknown achieves its emotional potency due to a steadfast simplicity, a direct presentation of behavior with all its blemishes. As much as his camera may give the spectator the impression of observational objectivity, however, several of the characters find themselves in conflict over whether or not they should get involved in the problems of others; should they stand up for one who has been wronged and defend the innocent, or should they sit back and disengage from the troubling world? The “code,” then, could also be the unclear rules that govern a society, the shared conventions that influence and guide behavior. Jean may have been disrespectful, but should his actions be necessarily countered by violence? That’s not the answer either. So what is? As the title of the film suggests, that code is unknown.
This type of multi-character, multi-leveled narrative is a somewhat familiar construct, but one with endless variations. And under Haneke’s continually clever direction, the result is one of the most formally audacious and ambiguous attempts at such a character-driven mosaic. As with Funny Games three years prior, Code Unknown was nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Though it would lose out to Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, it ultimately came away with a special Prize of the Ecumenical Jury and further established Haneke as a major figure in the world of international cinema.

Mulholland Drive
Written and directed by David Lynch
USA, 2001

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Included with the original DVD release of Mulholland Drive was a note giving David Lynch’s “10 Clues to Unlocking This Thriller.” These were teasing vagaries like “Where is Aunt Ruth?”, “Who gives a key, and why?”, and “Pay particular attention in the beginning of the film: at least two clues are revealed before the credits.” As provocative as these clues are, none are particularly helpful when it comes to deciphering the mysteries of this mesmerizing film. Still, as points to ponder, they do add even further dimensions to one of the best, most fascinatingly perplexing films from a director who knows a thing or two about fascinating and perplexing films.
Leading up to the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Mulholland Drive, which does not include these clues but does contain interviews, a deleted scene, and behind the scenes footage (as per Lynch’s home video instructions, however, there are no chapter stops), there was much online anticipation and discussion concerning the film. One repeated refrain was that it is a typically uncategorized horror movie. Certainly, like most of Lynch’s work, there are more than a few unsettling moments, with the threat of danger looming in one sequence after another, and at least one stunning jump-scene works just as well after repeated viewings as it did upon seeing the film for the first time. But if one is going to place Mulholland Drive into the horror genre, one must also accept that it is just as much, if not more, a comedy.

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In fact, to think of Mulholland Drive as a strictly horror film is to take both Lynch and the film itself far too seriously. As evidenced by the aforementioned clues and their almost comically unhelpful suggestions, as well as Lynch’s own penchant for coy, self-analytical ambiguity and the film’s inclusion of The Cowboy, the hokey, mannered dialogue, the moments of overt absurdity (miniature old people gyrating their way out of a blue box), and the mere appearance of Billy Ray Cyrus, Lynch is obviously having some fun with the film and its prevailing craziness. There are times when even the fictional characters seem bemused by what others are saying and the strange way they behave. This potential for cross-genre categorization owes a good deal to Lynch’s distinct approach toward both humor and horror; no one else out there has quite the same sense of what is funny and what is terrifying, and no one else so creatively mingles the two. A pervading unease may emanate throughout the film, particularly in its later sequences, but when you have a scene featuring a rather heavyset woman being accidentally shot and thinking it was simply a ferocious bite of some sort, it is hard to be too caught up in any conventional notion of fear.
As generally bizarre as the many elements of Mulholland Drive are, there is, at first anyway, an established story. Betty (Naomi Watts, in a breakthrough role) arrives in California fit to burst with fantasies of stardom and the wide-eyed wonder of naive Hollywood dreams. Unexpectedly greeting her at her aunt’s house is the mysterious “Rita”—not her real name—played by Laura Harring, who is suffering from memory loss following a car accident. Together, the two try to unscramble Rita’s confusion and piece together the disjointed puzzle of her life. In time, they also fall in love. The major side plot involves the tumultuous casting for a film, and the difficulties this process causes for director Adam (Justin Theroux), who, much to his chagrin, becomes beholden to the men pulling the strings behind the production, and maybe even behind more than that (among the shady figures is iconic Lynch actor Michael J. Anderson as Mr. Roque).
For a time, there looks to be a relatively straightforward trajectory of storylines. Despite the occasional moments of outward irrelevance, those illogical scenes that may only marginally become significant, the predominant stories join in a basically rational confluence of narrative. But by about the 90-minute mark, something happens. After Betty and Rita visit Club Silencio, an uncanny theatrical venue Rita suddenly wakes up speaking about, and the camera soon thereafter zooms into an inexplicable blue box, from there, nothing is ever quite the same. The film concludes with an onslaught of disparate sequences bearing only confounding resemblance to the previously assumed plot, bringing together a convergence of identity confusion, creation, and collusion. Certain familiar elements and characters reappear, but rarely, if ever, in their previous context, and to what new purpose they now function is never quite clear.

The opening sequences of Mulholland Drive are filled with clichéd dialogue resembling something between an antiquated melodrama and a poorly written soap opera (again, making it very funny), and Watts especially excels in these early sections, where her sugary sweet persona is enhanced by the kind of purposefully bad acting only good actors can do well. Here and continuing on, behavior is peculiarly exaggerated, with erratic laughter, eccentric actions, and characters displaying no trace of naturalism whatsoever. The dialogue is just plain enough to be comical, and just odd enough to be creepily ominous: “Could be someone’s missing, maybe,” “Someone is in trouble. Something bad is happening,” etc.
Like the dialogue, some of the more memorable moments in the film deftly ride the generic line of comedy/thriller, as in the hilariously intense Luigi Castigliane espresso scene (Luigi played by Lynch composer extraordinaire Angelo Badalamenti), and the famous Winkies sequence, with its foreboding conversation about a frighteningly realistic dream and a man who perhaps lives behind the establishment. Scenes like these are among the most impressive in the film, but the question is, are they in accord with the film’s larger premise? Not necessarily. But do they heighten the movie? Absolutely.
This sort of necessity of the unnecessary seems to fly in the face of standard narrative conventions, but in Lynch’s omniscient hands, it contributes to part of why a film like Mulholland Drive is so enthralling. The film is designed to encourage inevitable attempts at interpretation and understanding, but it is largely a futile effort to find a rhyme and reason for everything. Why Lynch is so exceptional, then, is that despite this awareness and acceptance of a never realized complete comprehension, one still wants to go back and attempt to figure it all out, even if it becomes readily evident that to do so would be an impossibility. His films manage to coalesce in spite of the randomness, so that while by the end of the film much is left uncertain, everything still seems, in an odd way, unified. Lynch presents a world that is so detailed and so expertly realized that it is thoroughly acceptable, even as it is paradoxically implausible.
In the Criterion interview with Watts, she says the titular road carries with it symbolic connotations of being a place where both great things and bad things can happen. Aside from just Mulholland Drive, the film is a haunting love-letter to much of what defines Los Angeles, the sights and sounds of which Lynch has long had a stated affinity. Shots of the cityscape with its patches of light and darkness give the film a surreal sense of location, a depiction of L.A. as if in a dream (clearly befitting the film’s tone and Betty’s own declaration of the region being a “dream place”). It also has to do with Lynch’s visual sensibility, which though at times can be rather flashy is often also skillfully subtle. Go back to that Winkies scene. Adding to the tension there, building on an understated anxiousness, is a hovering, restlessly mobile camera. Its impact is effective, but it’s only obvious if one really looks for it; otherwise, it is simply felt psychologically as part of the audio/visual tapestry of the film. This is what Lynch also speaks about regarding his distinctive union of image and sound, and the investigation of what comes first and how the two connect. Most notably due to Badalamenti’s immense contribution, the sound design of Mulholland Drive is superb in its mixture of score, diagetic sounds, and ambient noise. In separate interviews, Lynch and Badalamenti speak of capturing or creating a “mood,” and as much as anything, this dense atmospheric quality is what makes Mulholland Drive so unnerving.
Amidst the general plot of the film, springing up from time to time and expanding the overarching mystery of the picture, are seemingly arbitrary inclusions of unusual characters, settings, or props. Details like an untouched breakfast, a familiar ashtray, a phone, a blue key (the same shade of blue that repeatedly appears throughout the film), all lead us to assume—and to subsequently search for—a veiled implication based purely on their recurrence and Lynch’s stress of their presence via calculated close-ups. In his interview with the director, Chris Rodley points out the movie’s obvious clues, but also notes, “there are many other things that are important visual and audio indicators that are not obvious. So at times it does seem as if you’re delighting in teasing or mystifying the viewer.” Lynch denies this notion: “No, you never do that to an audience. An idea comes, and you make it the way the idea says it wants to be, and you just stay true to that. Clues are beautiful because I believe we’re all detectives. We mull things over, and we figure things out. We’re always working this way. People’s minds hold things and form conclusions with indications. It’s like music. Music starts, a theme comes in, it goes away, and when it comes back, it’s so much greater because of what’s gone before.”
David Lynch has embarked on a number of side ventures—painting, coffee, music—but he is a man born to make movies, and one sees this with Mulholland Drive in his complete mastery of all aesthetic facets, from lighting to framing to camera movement, to say nothing of the stories he develops and the singular worlds he subsequently creates. Whatever his intentions, and however much he chooses to acknowledge his cinematic mischievousness, one thing is certain: such inscrutability is enough to keep many, including myself, coming back to his work—and this film in particular—over and over again.

‘Diary of a Lost Girl’

 

In just two collaborations, the German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst and the Kansas-born Louise Brooks created a screen personality that left a permanent mark on the history of film. The iconic Brooks—impeccably dressed, seductively smirking, short, jet-black hair—had been seen in films prior, most notably in Howard Hawks’ A Girl in Every Port (1928), but it was in Pabst’s Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (both released in 1929) that this embodiment of tumultuous 1920s mores struck a strong and enduring chord.

Brooks in these two Pabst features could not be more dissimilar, however. Lulu, the freewheeling temptress of Pandora’s Box, is miles away from Thymian, the young, naive innocent of Diary of a Lost Girl. As this latter feature begins, Thymian enters the picture all in white, in accordance with her recent confirmation. She is a virginal image standing in sharp contrast to the enveloping immorality that surrounds her; the flowers in her hair point toward a natural purity that is repeatedly offended by the modern world and all its brutality.

For Thymian Henning, this brutality comes in many forms. There is her father’s assistant, Meinert (Fritz Rasp), who sexually assaults the adolescent girl resulting in their illegitimate child. Then there is Meta (Franziska Kinz), the family’s new housekeeper, who arrives after Thymian’s father, Robert (Josef Rovenský), impregnates the previous one, something he is apparently wont to do; the attractive Meta’s appearance causes shrewd grins from the men and disdainful glances from the women. Assuming the role of Thymian’s primary nemesis, the conniving Meta discloses to the Henning family that Meinert is the father of the baby. After refusing to marry the deviant, Thymian is subsequently sent to a girl’s reformatory while her daughter is given to a midwife. At the reformatory, Thymian and the other young women are subjected to an assortment of abuses. This institution where uniformity and regimentation rule supreme is also a twisted haven of unwelcome lesbian advances (conveyed most disturbingly when the headmistress leers with perverse orgiastic ecstasy at the exercising girls).

Managing to escape with the assistance of family friend Count Osdorff (André Roanne), Thymian joins fellow reformatory inmate Erika (Edith Meinhard) at a brothel. Thymian thinks she can work by simply giving dance lessons, but in her ignorance, she is quickly in for more than she bargains for. It briefly appears the once prosperous Osdorff could come to the rescue of Thymian, but having been disowned by his wealthy uncle he is now a penniless wastrel. Together, the two comprise what Meta refers to as “the vagabond and the lost girl.” Thymian is obviously falling in with the wrong crowd, but with nowhere else to go, it is better than the alternative, even if still not the best.

Some time later, Robert and Meta visit a nightclub where Thymian happens to be “entertaining,” and her father discovers just what his little girl has been up to; that he would be bothered by her lifestyle is, of course, the height of hypocrisy. Having left his wife, Robert is soon in debt to Meinert and Meta is soon with child. Not long after, he dies, and the disclosing of his will intensifies the animosity between all involved.

Still, despite all the wrong she has been victim to, Thymian nevertheless attempts to do the right thing. There are moments toward the end of Diary of a Lost Girl when the potential for contentment seems imminent, but no sooner do these glimmers of optimism occur than they are quickly upset by a world that remains marred by suicide, exploitation, deceitfulness, and contemptuousness. And it’s a pervasive and wide-ranging world of despair. Once it becomes clear that Thymian is fully lodged in a life of ill repute, a dissenting club patron says she is now truly lost, “just like the rest of us.”

Thymian is a perpetual victim of circumstance, the byproduct of poor luck and her generally harsh environment, particularly her familial upbringing. Mother Henning sits idly by in the face of her philandering husband but is quick to scold Thymian. Her father, meanwhile, does express a degree of sympathy toward his daughter’s predicament, even though it’s clear what kind of a man he is (perhaps that is why he is less quick to judge). As legendary German film scholar Siegfried Kracauer states, “Pabst harps on the immorality of her middle-class environment, so that the brothel almost appears to be a health resort.” Here, as in the so-called “street films” that were prevalent in Germany during the period, Kracauer writes that, “[T]he prostitute with the heart of gold testifies against the bourgeois decadence.” Thymian lives a life spoiled by those who take advantage of her ingenuousness and by those whose selfishness and unfeeling apathy leaves them bitter and cold. The midwife exemplifies this callous, casual cruelty. When Thymian goes to retrieve her daughter, the woman smugly shrugs her shoulders and simply states, “She just died,” which we assumed when Thymian passes a man carrying a child-sized casket. If the final lines of the film— “With a little more love, no one on this earth would ever be lost!” —ring a little false and hokey, it is because of the all the nastiness we have bore witness to for the previous 112 minutes. It will take more than a little love to save this world.

To be sure, Diary of a Lost Girl is a real downer. Based on the novel by Margarete Böhme and with a script by Rudolf Leonhardt, who also wrote Pabst’s The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), the film is an excellent example of the type of social realism that surpassed Expressionism as the key German cinematic export. Befitting the categorization of New Objectivity, camera movement is largely limited (though there are some impressive exceptions), compositions are sparse and deliberate, and the flat staging clears the way for a population of frosty, pitiless faces, most of whom contrast sharply with the radiance of Brooks but do match the equally unforgiving settings. This film, writes Lotte Eisner, another major figure in the chronicling of German film history, “displays a new, almost documentary restraint. Pabst now seeks neither Expressionistic chiaroscuro nor Impressionistic glitter.” As a stylistic counterpoint, see Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Spies (1928), both from around the same period. Pabst not only stresses a more pronounced naturalness in the performances, but he also prefers the forcefulness of intense shot selection resulting from confrontational and revealing close-ups, rather than dynamic montage or intricate mise-en-scène.

The reconstruction and restoration for the new Kino Lorber Blu-ray of Diary of a Lost Girl was performed by several institutions, most prominently Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung. Not only were a range of technical issues rectified and repaired, but the release also emphasizes the efforts made to reinstate sections omitted or revised due to the censorship of the time. Diary of a Lost Girl is surely a surprisingly risqué film, further contributing to the sexual connotations of Brooks’ persona. Nothing explicit is shown, but plenty is daringly implied. For all of her present fame, however, Brooks was actually billed second, below Rovenský, who had more than 30 films to his credit by this point. But today, it is she who stands out. Eisner at one point wondered if Brooks was, “a great artist or only a dazzling creature whose beauty leads the spectator to endow her with complexities of which she herself was unaware?” As she later concluded, quite rightly, Brooks was both. Though she would only do another five features or so, and within 10 years, her acting career would be over, without her extraordinary charm and versatility, it’s hard to imagine that this film, like Pandora’s Box, would remain so emotionally engaging.

‘Spartacus’

There is a lot to sift through when it comes to Spartacus, before even getting to the film itself. There is the controversial credit bestowed to previously blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. There is the firing of original director Anthony Mann about three weeks into the shoot (some say he asked to leave), followed by the subsequently hasty hiring of Stanley Kubrick over the course of a weekend. There is then the ensuing animosity between the obstinate Kubrick and the headstrong star/producer Kirk Douglas. Finally, there is the film’s placement in popular culture, with ubiquitous spoofs and spinoffs. If one is able to look beyond the noise of its tumultuous production, however, Spartacus remains one of the finest epics to ever emerge from the Hollywood studio system.

Available now on a newly remastered Blu-ray from Universal, this latest home video version of Spartacus is sourced from a 4K restoration and features a conversation with Douglas, a segment on the restoration process, and various holdovers from the prior Criterion Collection DVD, such as deleted scenes, behind-the-scenes footage, newsreels, interviews and more. Even with this restoration, though, the Criterion two-disc DVD is still the release to have.

Following credits created by the renowned Saul Bass, the film picks up in Lybia circa 73 BC. This is an era when Rome rules supreme, doing so on the backs of slaves. This, as the narrator states, is the “age of the dictator,” where men, like Spartacus (Douglas), have been “sold to living death.” Living, of course, being the ironically operative word. When we first see Spartacus, he instantly makes an impression by swiftly helping a fallen fellow slave, and in doing so shows an utter disregard for the valuable salt mine payload they both carry. When reprimanded by one of the Roman soldiers, Spartacus bites the man in the leg, a telling reaction. That he would instinctively chomp on the soldier before he would hit him clearly suggests that Spartacus, in this current state at least, is like a rabid animal, disheveled and carnal, thus setting up his transition into the more estimable leader to be all the more pronounced. When Batiatus (Peter Ustinov) arrives in search of a prospective acquisition, Spartacus is essentially purchased for this very defiance and ferocity. These opening sequences are the sole surviving scenes directed by Mann.

It is at the following gladiator school where the first inkling of classically Kubrickian themes become evident. While Trumbo wrote the screenplay based on Howard Fast’s novel (Fast himself a member of the “Hollywood Ten”), and Kubrick does not receive even uncredited script acknowledgment, familiar features synonymous with the director are nonetheless prevalent throughout Spartacus, primarily the dehumanization of man and the ongoing struggle between those in authority and those who defy the controlling powers. It is also at the school where Spartacus, but more importantly, Douglas, is now clean-shaven and groomed. It is easy to see why Douglas fought so hard for Spartacus. With (frequently bare) chest out and head high, this is the actor is in his prime as a chiseled powerhouse of ubermasculine bravado (Fast has actually questioned the casting of Douglas, labeling the actor an “exhibitionist”).

Through his confidence and natural leadership, Spartacus the soon to be rabble-rouser establishes an instant camaraderie with most of the men, establishing a permanent bond. He also proves to be a morally upstanding hero, as he refuses to defile the sex slave Varinia (Jean Simmons), with whom he instantly falls in love. Spartacus innately inspires devotion, so when the final straw of seeing his beloved whisked away creates a revolt in the mess hall, the result is a profound, if momentary, slave rebellion.

Easing into the leadership role, Spartacus assumes a position of authority and responsibility. Part of what distinguishes him is his capacity for cool, level headedness. He sees the big picture and wants the slaves to be more than just a ragtag group of drunken rebels; with all neighboring slaves free, there exists the potential for an army. The loyalty he inspires frustrates Crassus (Laurence Olivier), essentially Spartacus’ arch-nemesis, who later mocks the “myth of slave brotherhood.” The most illustrative example of this felloweship is, of course, the famous collective call of “I am Spartacus,” as all captured slaves stand up to protect their leader. Even though Spartacus is himself doomed, what he inspired lingers on, so it is therefore not enough for Crassus to abolish the man; he also wants to “kill the legend of Spartacus.” But this is not possible, and thus the film ends with what is a rather optimistic conclusion.

Against all of the above is the backdrop of Roman movers and shakers and the corresponding political upheaval of the time. This, along with the training procedures of the slave school, which Kubrick depicts in fascinating detail, and the warm communal freed slave encampments, are three sections of Spartacus that could warrant a decently interesting film in their own right. Assembled, they make the film one sprawling, multifaceted, three-hour-plus saga.

Beyond Douglas, this cast is one for the ages, boasting a roster of stars that include Olivier, Simmons, Ustinov, Charles Laughton, John Gavin, John Ireland, Tony Curtis, and Woody Strode. While Ustinov came away with the Oscar, it is Laughton who gives Douglas a run for his scene-chewing money. As the scheming, sleazy, and charismatically ruthless Gracchus, he is a captivatingly ambiguous antagonist.

Everything about Spartacus is extremely well arranged and presented. Russell Metty may have decried Kubrick’s obtrusiveness and oversight on what he considered to be “his” cinematography, but the sharply tuned imagery deservedly won an Oscar (presumably there were no complaints after that). As great as Spartacus looks, though, few scenes give the impression of Kubrick’s distinct style, save for a few observationally detached tracking shots, which are quite remarkable. Most astonishing, thanks to Kubrick’s pictorial sense of spectacle and Bass’ storyboard contributions, are the impressive wide shots of slaves making their way over the mountainside and the massive showdown between the slaves and the Roman army. To see this kind of scope, with thousands of real people, shot on 70mm Super Technirama, is quite a sight in this age of digitally produced locations and populations. Spartacus is also noteworthy for its considerably daring content, such as a fair amount of bloodshed (by 1960 standards) and the notorious homoerotic exchange between Crassus and Antoninus (Curtis), which was initially cut for the film’s theatrical release. Today, the encounter seems rather hackneyed, but that dialogue is priceless:

Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral and the eating of snails to be immoral?
Antoninus: No, master.
Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn’t it?
Antoninus: Yes, master.
Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals.
Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.
Crassus: My taste includes both snails and oysters.

There is documented history about the real Spartacus and the period depicted in this film, but if one is watching a Hollywood epic for its historical accuracy, there is bound to be disappointment. Spartacus is far more enjoyable and engaging if one approaches it for the entertaining and inspiring, if occasionally hokey, show that it is. This is studio craftsmanship at its finest, with a number of famous faces, a rousing, Oscar-nominated score by Alex North, Oscar-winning costumes and sets, and the finances to give it all a pronounced polish. True, for most Kubrick admirers the film is bittersweet and ranks low in the master’s canon. But if this is Kubrick when he was not totally immersed in a project and lacked his requisite control, it does a good deal to explain why his more personal movies are the exceptional works that they are. Even second-rate Kubrick is still first-rate filmmaking.

In praise of Christina Lindberg, goddess of Swedish sexploitation

It all started with Exposed. I’m not sure what brought this 1971 Swedish sexploitation film to the suggestion portion of my Netflix account (presumably the roster of Jess Franco films recently added), but after reading the description, I figured it was worth a shot: “A pretty young teen finds her innocence lost when an unguarded night of revelry yields shameful secrets, and a stack of nude pictures that could ruin her life. But to get her hands on the negatives, she’ll have to expose herself even further.” That is indeed the basic plot of the film, which plays out exactly as one would expect for such fare. But what was unexpected while watching Exposed (also known as the much less enticing Diary of a Rape), was the 21-year-old star of the film. Her name is Christina Lindberg.

Exposed, for lack of a better phrase, is what it is. It delivers on everything its suggestive promotional material promises, namely nudity. While not exactly enraptured by its narrative (though I have certainly seen many a more flimsy premise), I nevertheless came away absolutely infatuated. Not by the story, not by the genre, not by the era or country in which the film was made. It was this Christina Lindberg. Now of course, I must confess she is a knockout, a stunning beauty who combines the most erotic of allure with the most innocent of charms. Yet there is something more. Those who are familiar with Lindberg only in passing may dismiss this, knowing her simply as the often-nude sexpot—looking back on these films, she said she had a “natural way to cope with no clothes”—but there is genuinely something captivating in her performance. Her presence frequently gave even the most sub-standard film a surprising degree of watchablity.

Lindberg was born Dec. 6 1950 in Gothenburg, Sweden. She began modeling in the late 1960s, while still in high school, first in publications relatively innocuous, then in the more scandalous likes of Playboy, Penthouse, and others. This led to her first acting role in Maid in Sweden (1971), also while she was still in school (though she was 18), followed by Rötmånad (AKA Dog Days and What Are You Doing After the Orgy?, 1970), which was actually released prior to her debut. About two dozen films followed, 17 just in the 1970s, and six released in 1973 alone. While some of the movies were barely better than atrocious, when Christina Lindberg appears, all is forgiven.

As a whole, Maid in Sweden isn’t bad. It’s a standard coming of age tale (a premise that figured into many similar sexploitation movies), and as such, it gives Lindberg a chance to play up her expressive naiveté. Anyone familiar with Lindberg and her film or modeling work would probably find it amusing that she plays a chaste young girl unwise in the ways of sex, but that was, of course, the point: all the better to make her sexual awakening that much more, well, sexual. In one of several English-speaking roles, the pig-tailed Lindberg plays bewildered timidity extremely well. Ironically, though befitting the youthful lark’s titillating aspiration, Maid in Sweden takes her innocence and packages it in the most suggestive of apparel, as when on a date she wears a white dress that is comically revealing given her supposed purity (the evening ends with a sexual assault that strangely leads to mini-romance).

Maid in Sweden has several similar scenes that display the dual nature of Lindberg’s recurring screen persona. One prolonged sequence, for example, has her Inga character masturbating to the sounds of her sister and her boyfriend having sex (played by real life husband and wife Krister and Monica Ekman). The next scene then has the trio merrily ice skating, with Lindberg looking like a wounded puppy when she is tripped up. This back-to-back balance of blatant sexuality and childlike disorientation is an exemplary Lindberg trait. Off screen, she herself embodied this juxtaposition of being withdrawn and flamboyant. “I was very shy,” she has stated. “I was very shy and it seems a little bit odd when I take off my clothes and such, but I was very shy.”

Just after Maid in Sweden, Lindberg worked with the (in)famous American director Joseph Sarno on two films. She hardly appears in Swedish Wildcats (1972), but she is far more prominent in Young Playthings (1972), where she hardly appears clothed. In this rather odd film, her character, Gunilla, is unknowingly being primed for a threesome consisting of her, her boyfriend, and her best friend (the latter two of whom have already been having an affair). Gunilla, however, becomes far more intrigued by a woman who collects and repairs old toys. This woman, as Gunilla soon finds out, also hosts elaborate costume parties where attendees don make-up and various outfits then act out a variety of erotic folk tales…or something to that effect. Either way, while it takes some work to coerce Gunilla into the ménage à trois, her initial reticence toward that, and the sexually charged routines, is quickly lessened. Echoing the above point about thematic virtue in order to stress the sexuality, at one point she bashfully states, “I’m much too self-conscious.” This despite the fact she is frequently and unashamedly nude throughout the film.

While not the star of the show, Lindberg has a supremely notable role in Sex and Fury (1973), where she plays opposite the first-billed Reiko Ike, quite the sexploitation icon herself. Overall, this might be the best film to feature Lindberg. Some may make a case for the cult classic Thriller (more on that later), but if one looks strictly for an interesting story, decent action, stylistic dynamism, better than average production values, and yes, sex, this hits more high notes than most. Even with Lindberg in a secondary role, her appearance is intoxicating. The film has one of her best entrances, as she descends a lavish staircase under spotlight, her face partly concealed by a mask, which she then removes to dramatic effect.

Sex and Fury is a wildly entertaining conglomeration of glorious bloodletting, a decently engaging revenge plot, political corruption and social upheaval, knife-wielding nuns, Lindberg dressed like Pocahontas whipping Reiko (seriously), fighting, nakedness, and nakedness while fighting. Lindberg’s character, an English woman fluent in Japanese—played by a Swede—is likewise a multifaceted individual. She is a sharp-shooting, ace gambler who has taken on the occupation of British secret agent in order to see her Japanese boyfriend. And of course, she often has to sleep with both men and women in order to sustain her cover. Still, while hers is not the primary story of the film, her romantic subplot is actually quite touching, a rarity in her work.

Making the most of her Japanese stopover, Lindberg followed Sex and Fury with The Kyoto Connection (1973). Like Dog Days, this is a Lindberg film I have so far only been able to view sans subtitles. Unlike Dog Days, the story here is pretty straightforward, negating any need for explanatory dialogue anyway. Lindberg’s character arrives in Japan and is abruptly kidnapped, raped, and held hostage. Through her sexual wiles, which need no translation, she eventually manages to break fee. That’s about it.

Though her films by no means count as “roughies,” certainly not in the pornographic sense, Lindberg, for whatever reason, often found herself on the brutal end of various physical encounters. Even in Maid in Sweden, her very first film, Lindberg’s character suffers the fate of degradation, there at the hands of her sister’s boyfriend, who mocks her backwardness but nevertheless pounces on her in the bathtub before the film’s conclusion. Lindberg acknowledges this as something of a theme in her work—the beautiful innocent girl abused in one way or another. Not really looking Swedish, the small, dark-haired Lindberg had an international appeal, so as for the recurrence of this harsh scenario, she attributes the frequency to the intercontinental financing of her films. Similar themes and characters were desired as producers from around the world put up money on the basis of a specific type of repeated character in a specific situation, however brutal it may be.

And speaking of brutal. In 1973 came Thriller: A Cruel Picture, probably Lindberg’s most famous film, the one film of hers most people are at least somewhat aware of even if they don’t know who she is, and one of the most controversial films ever made. It is also somewhat complicated in terms of Lindberg’s filmography. On the one hand, the film is, as its title states, quite the cruel picture. The inserted shots of graphic sex surely stand out, as does some of the violence, the most cringe-worthy example being the on-screen piercing and off-screen removal of Lindberg’s character’s eye (the filmmakers actually used the real eye of a corpse). It should be pointed out, however, that the hard-core shots do not involve Lindberg. Contributing to her move away from acting toward the end of the 1970s was her rather admirable refusal to partake in straight pornography. Full frontal nudity was one thing, explicit sex was another, so stand-ins were used for the close-ups (and they are close up).

Thriller really stands alone in Lindberg’s body of work. If one can get by the unnecessary explicitness of these pornographic inserts, this is a classic 1970s revenge film, one of the best. Part of the reason it is so memorable is that Lindberg’s Frigga is horribly brutalized in just about every way imaginable, so by the time she does enact her sweet retribution, a lot of people have a lot coming to them. Frigga is first raped as a child, the trauma of which leaves her mute. She is then drugged, given heroin to the point of dependency, held hostage, forced into sex-slave labor, physically abused, and emotionally tormented. When she is eventually able to leave for a few hours, she secretly trains in hand-to-hand combat, firearms, and race car driving (Lindberg really did learn karate for the role, and as she did not have a driver’s license, she had to learn how to do that, too). Finally, the time comes. Frigga assembles a stockpile of weaponry, dresses in black from head to toe (including eye-patch), and embarks on a rigorous, blood-spattered rampage. The low angle shot of this angelic beauty turned kill-crazy vehicle for vengeance—adorned in a flowing black trench coat, guns in hand, leaves falling around her—is one of the greatest single images in all of Lindberg’s work. Hell, in all of cinema.

Thriller was actually the first Christina Lindberg film I had ever seen, about 10 years ago. I had no idea at the time who she was and only watched the film because of its reputation and because Lindberg’s patched eye was an inspiration for Daryl Hannah’s character in Kill Bill. Seeing it now as a showcase for one of Lindberg’s most complex performances, and one of her most enjoyable, all those other elements fade away. Its Tarantino-approved popularity is partly why it is also hands-down the Lindberg film in the best condition. No other DVD of her movies looks or sounds this good.

In films like Schoolgirl Report Vol. 4 and Secrets of Sweet Sixteen (1973), Lindberg had relatively smaller roles in multi-part compendium features, which told a variety of sexy stories usually dealing with promiscuous young nubiles. Full disclaimer, I have not watched any of the segments of any of these films if they did not contain Lindberg, and therefore can’t judge any of these titles as a whole. In terms of what I look for and enjoy in a Chistina Lindberg movie, however, Secrets of Sweet Sixteen is just so-so (Lindberg is there, looking great, but the film and her specific character aren’t terribly interesting), but Schoolgirl Report certainly has its moments. There she looks even better, and while the story of her character’s incestuous relationship with her brother may be a bit off-putting, it’s a reasonably entertaining segment. Besides, if nothing else, as the DVD proclaims, it also has “psychedelic dreams with bloody naked nuns and a firing squad.” So, there’s that.

Lindberg’s last great featured role was in Anita: Swedish Nymphet (1973). Not quite to the violent degree of Thriller, Anita still has one of her darker characterizations. Interesting about this film is that it is one where her sexuality figures into the essential plot of the film; rather than just being a film that features a lot of sex, this film is actually about sex. Lindberg plays, as the title suggests, a 17-year-old nymphomaniac. Her insatiable sexual quest leads her down a dark road of despair where she is ostracized and tormented by a lack of self-worth. Somewhat in opposition to those films where Lindberg is the submissive, mistreated girl, here she has an aggressive sexuality that leaves her on the comparatively forceful end of her amorous meetings. Yet through it all, she remains pathetic and psychologically weak, chiefly because she is burdened by an inner turmoil that does not, in most cases, make the sex pleasurable. It is more a stolid routine that corresponds to the nature of addiction.

Certainly, Anita’s sexual promiscuity is exploited in the film, but only to a degree (like when she performs a striptease in front of her parents and their dignified houseguests, many of whom encourage the routine—“It’s not as bad as it looks,” her father assures her stunned mother). As often as not, the affliction is actually treated with a reasonable seriousness, especially as Anita’s sole friend, Erik (a young Stellan Skarsgård), tries to explain and “cure” her illness, approaching her with sympathy and understanding. As far as Lindberg’s performance is concerned, her expressed nymphomania, as dismissive as one might be to the malady, gives her some psychological complexity to work with, further proving there is genuine talent behind the doe-eyed beauty. She quite capably conveys Anita’s desperation with a pitiable quality reflected by the film itself, which is gloomy and generally joyless. Anita, like the movie, has the look of a cold morning after. What this does, and one sees this is several Lindberg films, especially those where she is treated poorly, is it creates a sense of viewer engagement beyond the frivolity of the film’s nature. One sees this poor girl, this small, cute, seemingly helpless individual, and one can’t help but want to comfort her.

Of everything that came after this for Lindberg, I have only seen Around the World with Fanny Hill and Sängkamrater (Wide Open), both released in 1974. There isn’t a whole lot to say about these two films, as Lindberg does not have much of a presence in the former and only first appears 20 minutes into the latter, popping up infrequently and marginally thereafter (though her first big scene is definitely striking, by which I mean she gets very naked). In any case, for the last two major films of Lindberg’s career, both are unfortunately rather unremarkable.

Christina Lindberg was the perfect actress at the right time for a certain kind of movie. While this helped give her a briefly noteworthy career in the 1970s and she is something of a cult figure today, I can’t help but feel her status in her respective field was and remains a hindrance. In most sexploitation fare, the actors are there to do what they do and to do little else, which is fine. Those movies and those performers have their place in cinema history and this isn’t to belittle the work. But many of these actors are seldom able to rise above the common filmic territory (save for someone like Skarsgård). When watching Lindberg, there appears to be a sincerity running counter to the triviality of the films, and a talent, or at least the potential for talent, that has been left underexplored and underrated because of the type of movies in which she appeared. Her films are not “great” by any means, and I definitely would not suggest her acting range was in any way overwhelming. But if qualifications for being a memorable and enjoyable star include leaving a strong impression no matter the size of the role and making even a lesser movie better, she more than fits the bill.

Still, her acting isn’t terrible, especially for what she has to do and what she had to work with. One of the defining traits of Lindberg’s work is the impression that even she knows she is better than what she’s dealing with. While most everyone else in these films seem to be phoning in their performances, not trying too hard, perhaps knowing what type of movie they’re making after all, Lindberg acts with an earnestness that transcends her role and the material. This even seems to be the case with her bigger-name co-stars, like Ulla Sjöblom, who in 1958 starred in Ingmar Bergman’s The Magician, and Heinz Hopf, who had quite the television career before starring as villainous characters in Exposed and Thriller (and later also working with Bergman on Fanny and Alexander). “When I worked I was very serious,” Lindberg said. “I tried to do my best.”

For all intents and purposes, Lindberg’s short-lived acting career was nearing its end before she was 30 years old (an even shorter singing career yielded just two songs). She started studying journalism soon thereafter, wrote a number of articles for several publications, and began working for her soon-to-be fiancé Bo Sehlberg at his aviation magazine Flygrevyn, which she took over as owner and editor-in-chief following his death in 2004. As her IMDb biography sums up, she is today “a keen mushroom picker… an animal rights activist, an environmentalist, and a vegetarian.”

During a few glorious years in the 1970s, though, Christina Lindberg was really something else.