November 24, 2023

The Carpetbaggers

Edward Dmytryk - 1964
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There is an inspired moment in The Carpetbaggers where the camera rests on the entry to a bathroom in a mansion. George Peppard is seen walking into the bathroom where Carroll Baker has been taking a bath. We do not see them but we hear the dialogue. I do not know who came up with this idea, director Dmytryk or screenwriter John Michael Hayes, but there are a couple more scenes that have similar moments. In any case, there is a soupçon of visual wit in a film that is otherwise not known for being subtle.

The Carpetbaggers already was pre-sold, based on an enormously popular novel loosely based on the life of Howard Hughes. The pre-release publicity was centered on Carroll Baker's nude scene, part of the European theatrical version, unseen stateside. Producer Joseph Levine may have seemed high-minded with the arthouse releases under his name, but he understood that the audience for Contempt was there for Brigitte Bardot's backside and not Jean-Luc Godard's philosophy. The Carpetbaggers was made in part to challenge the U.S. production code that would be in place for another five years.

The Carpetbaggers is every bit as garish and vulgar as the red velvet wall paper on the walls of the Cord mansion. To call the acting melodramatic is an understatement. The story is almost a parody of Greek tragedy with Peppard worried that he will suffer the madness that took his twin brother, takes on the coldness and cruelty of the father he hated, and has a volatile relationship with Carroll Baker, the girlfriend who became is step-mother. While Peppard and Baker represent the last vestiges of the studio system, the majority of the cast also features older Hollywood stars Alan Ladd, Lew Ayres and Audrey Totter. Only the former boxer, Archie Moore as Peppard's chauffeur, keeps his dignity intact. While Joe Levine was unable to have onscreen nudity in a Paramount film, he does have a scene with the young widow Baker in black diaphanous lingerie, and Martha Hyer in nothing but a white fur stole.

This new blu-ray edition comes with two commentary tracks. The more serious of these is by film historian Julie Kirgo. The first forty minutes are spent discussing The Carpetbaggers, both the novel and film, within the context of the cultural changes in the early 1960s. There is also the expected coverage of the main stars and the filmmaking team. Note to Ms. Kirgo that Edward Dmytryk's The Juggler might still be available on Tubi. Historian David del Valle and filmmaker David DeCoteau provide a casual conversation mostly discussing the cast members. Agreed by all concerned is that in spite of his ill-health, Alan Ladd's performance could have initiated a career resurgence had he not died prior to release of the film.

Edward Dmytryk made a second adaptation of a Harold Robbins novel, Where Love is Gone. Based on the murder of of Lana Turner's gangster boyfriend, Johnny Stopanato, that film is almost as entertaining. The ending of The Carpetbaggers is abrupt, although it is from the novel. Even as a work for hire, the film's conclusion does fit in with several other Dmytryk films such as The Juggler and Christ in Concrete in which a questionable man finds redemption in the end.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:39 AM

October 17, 2023

Piccadilly

E.A. Dupont - 1929
Milestone Film & Video BD Region A

I had seen Piccadilly once before, as a British DVD, roughly twenty years ago. The first thing that struck me, that I had totally forgotten, was that actress Gilda Gray had top billing, her name larger than anybody else in the cast. Gray was originally known as a dancer, credited with inventing "The Shimmy", and had starred in about half a dozen films prior to Piccaadilly. The evaporation of her screen career coincided with the transition to talking pictures. By what appears to be a cruel coincidence, Piccadilly has also been the artistic peak for director E.A. Dupont, and the actress more notably remembered with the film, Anna May Wong.

Gray and Cyril Ritchard play a dance team that is the featured entertainment at the oversized Piccadilly nightclub, run by Jameson Thomas. Ritchard is in love with Gray who is in love with Thomas. After firing Wong for distracting the other scullery workers with her own dancing, Thomas re-hires her to be a novelty performer. Wong is to perform a Chinese dance in an authentic costume. The dance and the costume are both as authentic as chop suey. All eyes are on Anna May Wong with her large helmet, exposed midriff and bare legs. Between that costume and a dance that is mostly arm waving, Wong does not have to do much to make Gilda Gray yesterday's news. While Thomas falls in love with Wong, who knows just how to get what she wants, there is Jim, a Chinese man whose relationship with Wong is the subject of speculation. Two different but connected love triangles made more complicated by race and class.

Director E.A. Dupont was known at the time for his creative camerawork, especially for his 1925 film, Variety, with its unmoored camera mimicking the point of view of being on a trapeze. That film brought Dupont to Hollywood for one production, followed by working in England for a few years. Notable are several traveling shots, one of the hands of bartenders and the hands of the customers, culminating with the camera resting on the hands of Wong and Thomas taking their drinks. Also a shot taken on a bus moving past the various theaters in Piccadilly Circus. Shadows across faces are used for artistic effect. For all the stylistic flourishes, my favorite shot is a tight close-up of Gilda Gray's face as she nibbles on a cookie, satisfied that she has put would-be lover Cyril Ritchard in his place.

The blu-ray is taken from the British Film Institute restored print. Most of the film is in sepia tone with some night scenes tinted blue. While commentary tracks are usually expected to cover information on the stars, the director and other top crew members, Farran Smith Nehme shows exceptional research in her information on the virtually forgotten Gilda Gray and Jameson Thomas. There is also discussion on Arnold Bennett's standing as a novelist by his contemporary, Virginia Woolf. Of interest is that Piccadilly was Bennett's only filmed screenplay. A possible collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in 1930 collapsed reportedly because Bennett wrote specifically for a silent film at a time when that was no longer commercially viable. Composer Neil Brand has a supplement explaining his musical choices for creating a score that in part was influenced by jazz and popular dance music of the time. The excerpts of a 2004 panel discussing Wong's life and career, featuring actress Nancy Kwan, is marred by the echoey audio. Of more interest is the sound prologue that was added after the initial release, with Jameson Thomas as a bartender of a small, rural pub about to tell about his time as the owner of a nightclub in London. Although his scene does serve a narrative purpose, the prominently billed Charles Laughton appears briefly as the most belligerent gourmand at the Piccadilly Club.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:20 AM

October 04, 2023

The Storms of Jeremy Thomas

Mark Cousins - 2021
Cohen Media Group DVD Region 1

It was probably a given that Jeremy Thomas would work in the film industry. His father was Ralph Thomas, best known for making Dirk Bogarde a star in the Doctor series and a handful of more serious efforts. Uncle Gerald Thomas made a career of directing the Carry On series. There was also the more distant connection of grand-uncle Victor Saville, remembered mostly as the producer of Kiss Me Deadly. What was not a given were the films that Jeremy Thomas chose to produce. Nothing could be described as mainstream British cinema. Thomas managed to make a career out of producing films that garnered attention based as the work of very individualistic directors that were more likely to earn awards and critical praise than make a dent in the box office. The one major exception was early in his career with The Last Emperor, the first of five collaborations with Bernardo Bertolucci. It is perhaps not insignificant that while Thomas has produced several films by British directors, he has done more work with filmmakers from outside the United Kingdom.

Film historian Mark Cousins' film is part biography, filmography and road trip. With Thomas at the wheel, the two drove to Cannes for the 2019 festival where Takashi Miike's First Love was to premiere. The title was inspired by Thomas' reaction to a sudden rain storm at Cannes that caused others to flee for shelter while Thomas marveled at the change of weather. The storms would also be the reactions to some of the films such as the controversy over Crash (David Cronenberg - 1996) with its depiction of sex. While Thomas is a producer who gets the money and support but generally sees his job as supporting his directors, Cousins does find some thematic connections with several of the films, particularly with sex and violence.

Cousins does make the odd choice of having two actresses, Tilda Swinton and Debra Winger, discuss working with Thomas, both remarking on his intelligence. I would have wanted this insights of the directors he has worked with more than once like Matteo Garrone, Takashi Miike or Jerzy Skolimowski. The road trip depicts someone who likes to drive fast when he can, sing along with the Grateful Dead, and is also thoughtful to have stopped at the Drancy Memorial outside Paris, infamous as the site where French Jews were rounded up prior to being placed in cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. Cousins does appear to like some of his actors praising Theresa Russell, Jack Nicholson, and Marlon Brando, while offering a little anecdote about Tony Curtis.

Even with the brief exploration of thematic concerns that connect the films, only the surface of Thomas' life and career has been touched. Perhaps a film with a longer running time than an hour and a half would have been better. For myself, I would have liked to have known more about the making of that first production, Mad Dog Morgan when the Australian government was helping prop up the local film industry for an international market, with novice filmmakers shooting a film starring a perpetually inebriated Dennis Hopper. There is also the three years that it took to make The Last Emperor and the logistics of shooting Little Buddha in Nepal. What is understood is Mark Cousins' interest in Jeremy Thomas as a kind of unicorn among film producers, truly independent, going against the grain with films marked in varying degrees by their artistic aspirations.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:48 AM

October 02, 2023

Creepy Crawly

Chalit Krileadmongkon & Pakphum Wongjinda
WellGo USA BD Region A

I admittedly have not been keeping up with Thai cinema as I had in the past. It has been a while since I last wrote about any films and even longer since I have seen any Thai horror films. I would think the most ideal way to watch Creepy Crawly would be in a full Thai theater with an audience there to scream and laugh, usually in that order. I should note that the film's original English language title in The One Hundred, which is how the film is known outside the U.S.

There may be a bit of eyeball rolling at the initial set-up. The story takes place soon after the Covid-19 lockdowns begin in Bangkok, March 2020. A group of travelers are required to quarantine in a second rate hotel for two weeks. When cleaning a room, a staff member discovers an infestation of centipedes. We are talking about bugs the size of small mammals, not the insects found in somebody's garden. Dead bodies appear in odd places have met gruesome fates. The hotel manager has everyone locked in. When you are stuck in a crummy hotel with people killed by someone or something, somehow a pandemic hardly seems terrifying.

While none of this is to be taken seriously, there are more than enough glaring plot holes that were either overlooked in constructing the screenplay or were edited out. Much of the potential suspense is dissapated by a major reveal that comes too early. Some of the publicity also mentions that the story was inspired by Battambang, a city in Cambodia. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any online information about this source of inspiration. Does any of this matter? As a creature feature, Creepy Crawly probably comes closest to resembling John Carpenter's version of The Thing, but lacks the older film's attention to detail.

While this may sound condescending, Creepy Crawly is a Thai movie made for the mainstream Thai audience, meaning not to expect more than a diverting hour and a half of entertainment. One of the nicer performances is by Chanidapa Pongsilpipat as one of the hotel maids. At one point, her face is in close-up. There is no cutting to what she is looking at but Chanidapa conveys the sense of horror with her eyes slowly widening. The Thai television star with the anglicized name of Mike Angelo provides a few martial arts moves. The most information I could find on the cast and crew was under the title, The One Hundred at themoviedb.org.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 AM

September 26, 2023

L'immensita

Emanuele Crialese - 2022
Music Box Films BD Region A

The title literally translates as "the immensity". That is easy enough to figure out. Inspired by the director's own life, especially his relationship with his mother, the immensity is the difficult work of living one's own life. Penelope Cruz plays the mother, Clara, an upper middle class housewife who finds ways of making life with her three children fun, and whose generosity of spirit allows room for her children to express themselves freely. The infrequently seen father, Felice, is a traditionalist, clamping down where he can on the idiosyncrasies of the family. The eldest child, in the early years of adolescence, lives as much of his life as a boy, although within the family he is still address with his female birth name. The film takes place in Rome in the early 1970s, roughly a decade after the economic boom years, which still left parts of the population untouched and in generational poverty.

The son is the proxy for the filmmaker who identified himself as a transgender last year. A side note about the name of the character - birth name is Adriana or Adri, but he names himself Andrea. Due to Andrea, a common first name for Italian men, being occasionally misgendered by those who only associate the name with women, the subtitles have the son's name rendered as Andrew. I choose to refer to the character as Andrea.

At a time when there was less understanding or language for gender dysphoria, Andrea is allowed to present himself as a boy in his appearance, save for one unhappy moment when he is forced to wear a dress for a family portrait. A glimpse indicates he is already wearing some kind of chest binder. Andrea is attracted to Sara, a girl of similar age, about 13, but is in a brief panic when it appears that Sara is about to initiate some kind of sexual relationship. Sara lives with the kind of community of working poor that were romanticized by Vittorio De Sica in the 1950s, living in shacks in field separated from Andrea's apartment by thick field of reeds. Clara forbids Andrea from going across the field, revealing a sense of class prejudice. A final shot of the shantytown cleared for a new apartment building is a reminder of the past being erased for what is suppose to be a promising future.

What Crialese means by immensity is also indicated in an interview - "To look within is to try to change individually, instead of wanting to change others. Breaking free from the addiction of wanting to dominate the other, resisting the compulsion of having, of appearing and perhaps trying to focus a little more on being. Abandoning classifications of gender, race and sexual orientation, because they do not define us, they actually limit us and create divisive barriers; we are what we are in perpetual change. Human nature is inherently unpredictable and immense."

Crialese likes to work with non-professional actors. Andrea is played by Luana Giuliani, chosen by Crialese who was scouting girls who played traditionally male sports. Giuliani races motorcycles in real life, making her life somewhat similar to that of the biker girls in the recent French film, Rodeo. Giuliani holds her own sharing the screen with the established powerhouse Penelope Cruz. Uncertain if she is a human or an alien from another planet, the shot that introduces Andrea almost convinces the viewer that she does have the ability to fly.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:21 AM

September 12, 2023

Early Short Films of the French New Wave

Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Alain Resnais, etc. - 1956-1968
Icarus Films Home Video BD Region A Two-disc set

To describe these nineteen short films as being part of the Nouvelle Vague is a bit misleading. What unifies this group of films is that they were all produced by Pierre Braunberger, who also produced several features by several of the directors. In the accompanying booklet, Braunberger is quoted as saying that he financed the short films to test the young directors prior to backing such films as Shoot the Piano Player and My Life to Live.

Along with the filmmakers who have been associated with either Cahier du Cinema or the Left Bank group, there are several directors either peripherally associated with the Nouvelle Vague because they were making films at the same time, as well as one film by a total outlier, the African-American Melvin Van Peebles. The other outsider is Jeanne Barbillon, though her short film stars Bernadette Lafont, providing a link to the other filmmakers. What little I could find out a Barbillon indicates that she directed on television film, but primarily worked as as Assistant Director for French television. It should be noted that the two films by Alain Resnais, "All the World's Memory" and "The Song of the Styrene" are also part of the previously released set of five shorts by Resnais.

What is frustrating, at least for me, was while the booklet provides an overview of Pierre Braunberger, some of the non-narrative films could have used some additional information for context. Agnes Varda's "O Saisons, O Chateaux" appears to be a combination travelogue and fashion shoot. With "In Memory of Rock" by Francois Reichenbach, born in 1921, and "The Fifteen Year Old Widows" by Jean Rouch, born in 1917, these two documentarians seem bewildered by youth and youth culture of the early 1960s.

Jacques Rivette's "Fool's Mate" (1958) might be considered the first all-star Nouvelle Vague film, both in front and behind the camera. The screenplay was co-written with Claude Chabrol and cinematographer Charles Bitsch, with Jean-Marie Straub serving as Assistant Director. One of the lead actors is Jean-Claude Brialy, who also appears in some of the other shorts in the collection, and would star in several features. Godard, Truffaut and Chabrol are briefly seen wandering in and out of frame in a party scene. The only mystery for me is why the delightful Virginie Vitry has such a short career that ended in 1960. The title comes from the relationship between a husband and wife presented as a chess game.

I would not have imagined a collaboration between Maurice Pialat and Claude Berri with what would seem to be opposing sensibilities, but "Janine" has Pialat working from Berri's screenplay. The story of two men unknowingly spending part of a late night talking about the same woman, ends on a note of wry humor. There is also fun with Godard's, "All the Boys are Called Patrick", with a screenplay by Eric Rohmer, with Jean-Claude Brialy in the title role. Godard's short is almost a mirror image of "Janine", though both films share an ending with the women getting the upper hand. There is about six hours of viewing altogether with the two discs - best to be seen a couple of films at a time rather than binging.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:11 AM

August 29, 2023

The Spanish Dancer

Herbert Brenon - 1923
Milestone BD Regions ABC

My first time watching The Spanish Dancer and I am thinking this is another fanciful silent film about an exotic time and place, and yes, Pola Negri is attractive, but this looks like just another period piece taking place in early 17th Century Spain. And then the action moves from the countryside to Madrid, with a huge citywide celebration. The set itself is huge, with a colossal cathedral in the back, with rows of multistory buildings. And literally hundreds of extras either in period dress or costumes, clogging the streets, many doing their own dances if not watching Negri perform in the middle of the square. There is also the constant shower of confetti in every shot. One guy is wrestling an actual bear. Another guy is wearing a skeleton costume. I had to wonder how Herbert Brenon and cinematographer James Wong Howe coordinated everything. I was awestruck by the spectacle.

The Spanish Dancer begins with a prologue stating that the film takes place three hundred years before the film was made, and indeed, 1623 was the year when King Philip IV of Spain (Wallace Beery) posed for a painting by Diego Velazquez. That event is reenacted in the film. Negri plays Maritana, a gypsy fortune teller also famed for her dancing. Through a series of circumstances, Maritana encounters Don Caesar, a recently disgraced nobleman, and later rescues the King Philip's son from a runaway horse. Maritana is invited by the Queen to perform for the court during the celebration. In Madrid, Maritana is pursued by Don Salluste (Adolphe Menjou), and has her honor defended by Don Caesar. Goaded into having a public sword fight by Salluste, Caesar is arrested for breaking the law. Add to that palace intrigue between the king and queen.

Fortunately, not all of this is done as a serious enterprise. Much of the credit should probably go to Antonio Moreno as Don Caesar. He brings out the sense of humor of a man who does not take himself too seriously. In a latter scene, Caesar arranges to die by firing squad rather than hanging, but not before having a celebratory dinner in which he gets his executioners drunk. There is even one visual gag with Negri wearing a formal dress for the first time, one with a very wide hoop underneath as was the style, requiring her to walk sideways through a door.

Although Pola Negri and Herbert Brenon reportedly did not get along, Negri's performance shares some similarities with other Brenon actresses. Especially in the introductory scenes of her skipping through the countryside, Negri seems to anticipate Betty Bronson in Peter Pan (1924) and Clara Bow in Dancing Mothers (1926).

The commentary track is unusual as it has been split between film historian Scott Eyeman and dance historian Naima Prevots. While the history of choreographer Ernest Belcher is of interest, both specifically to The Spanish Dancer and as part of early Hollywood, there is a conflict in listening to Prevot discuss Belcher's work on the silent Phantom of the Opera while watching Brenon's film. I suspect Scott Eyeman could have easily filled the full running time himself, but packs a lot of information within the hour that he has with history of the making of The Spanish Dancer. There is also an interview with composer Bill Ware, best known as a jazz vibraphonist. Ware's score straddles traditional movie music with jazz and avant-garde improvisation, performed by a small band.

The blu-ray itself is sourced from a 2012 restoration by the Dutch Eye Filmmuseum from four different surviving prints. Based on the film script, the restored version is 95% complete. Some portions still are damaged, but still watchable. A very brief extra shows excerpts to compare the surviving prints with the restored version.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:29 AM

August 25, 2023

Strangers in the House

Les Inconnus dans la maison
Henri Decoin - 1942
KL Sudio Classics BD Region A

It has been four years since Henri Decoin's Razzia sur la Chnouf was made available on home video in the U.S. With this new release only the second from a lengthy filmography, Decoin remains very much a subject for further research as Andrew Sarris might have put it. Even though Decoin is not named among his French director peers as being part of "cinema de papa", Strangers in the House comes close to being part of the so-called tradition of quality. The film is a combination murder mystery/courthouse drama from a novel by Georges Simenon. The screenplay was by Henri-Georges Clouzot, still relatively early in his career. Even though the film was produced during the Nazi occupation of France, there appears to be what might be read as subversive moments in what otherwise appears to be an apolitical thriller interjected with some comic moments.

The film begins with off-screen narrator, Pierre Fresnay, and an overly poetic description of a small town during one very rainy night. The former lawyer, Loursat, and his daughter, are eating dinner. The narrator points out that the dour looking Loursat has let his legal practice slide along with care for his large house, ever since his wife left him eighteen years earlier. It is not stated, but implied that the wife left soon after the daughter, Nicole, was born. Loursat has settled into a life of indifference, remaining in the house, chain smoking and drinking whole bottles of wine. An unknown single cracking sound causes Loursat and Nicole to explore the dilapidated upper floor of the house where the body of a dead man is found. The biggest mystery is who killed the local gangster known as Big Louis. The suspects are a group of young men in their late teens, a quartet that also counts Nicole as part of their gang. The title refers not only to the various people, known and unknown, that made their way into the Loursat house, but also the strained relationship between Loursat and Nicole.

What unfolds is a series of connections between cousins and various in-laws that ties everyone in the trial that makes up the final third of the film. The gang members petty criminality is more of an act of rebellion against filial piety. Loursat is sufficiently roused from his state of constant inebriation to act as the defense lawyer for the young man railroaded into being convicted for the murder of Big Louis. Loursat's socially conscious speech to the jury seems shoehorned in as a way to justify the film's existence, but is only a slight detour to the resolution of the mystery and Loursat's return to his dissolute self.

Strangers in the House stars Raimu, the French actor best known for his role as Cesar in the 1930s film version of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles" trilogy. Howard Berger and Nathaniel Thompson provide a commentary track that discusses French films during the occupation and courtroom dramas. The blu-ray was sourced from Gaumont's 2K restoration made in 2018.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:16 AM

August 22, 2023

The Day and the Hour

Le jour et l'heure
Rene Clement - 1963
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The Day and the Hour combines two recurring themes for Rene Clement, the French resistance of World War II, and relationships of characters who may hiding their true agendas. The film was made at a time when wartime thrillers were still very much part of the cinematic mainstream. With dialogue in both French and English, plus some German, produced by MGM, this was the kind of international film made to appeal to an audience beyond the art house. The Oscar winning French actress, Simone Signoret, alternated between French and English language productions. Stuart Whitman, mostly known for starring in action films, was at his career peak. Having received an Oscar nomination as a reformed pedophile in The Mark (1961), Whitman probably saw working with Rene Clement as another chance to expand artistically. Reggie Nalder, with his skull-like face, shows up in a mostly dialogue free performance as a Gestapo agent. The elements are all here, yet it does not always gel.

Taking place primarily in Paris, Whitman plays an officer whose plane has been shot down. On the run with two other Allied soldiers, he is trusting of a network of resistance members and sympathizers. Due to circumstances, he is reluctantly taken in by Signoret, staying in her house for a couple of days until he can make a trip to the southern countryside and eventually Spain. In the meantime, Reggie Nalder auspiciously appears, casting his eyes on everyone. For a guy being pursued by Nazis, Whitman is hardly discrete, speaking English aloud in public and even going on a bender one night. The day soon comes when he is to take a train from Paris. Signoret, feeling protective, but also concerned about her own safety, goes along on the journey.

The best moments are saved for the train. Sardines have more standing room than these train passengers. Whitman has to push his way through to reach Signoret at the other end of one of the cars. Nalder squeezes through in pursuit of the two. Clement and cinematographer Henri Decae manage to film a series of traveling shots, the camera moving backwards as the characters face the screen. The passengers are all seen tightly within the Scope screen. The sense of claustrophobia, the lack of empty space, is almost overwhelming. And knowing how bulky those cameras were makes the scene a technical marvel. That scene is representative of how critic Dudley Andrew has assessed Clement's work: ". . . Clement's experiments are always limited. Technical problems continue to interest him, but he has never relinquished his belief that a film must be well-crafted in the traditional sense of that term. This is what must always distinguish him from the New Wave filmmakers with whom he otherwise has something in common."

There are no sparks between Signoret and Whitman. Even as she settled into middle age, Signoret was still able to charm Oskar Werner and the audience in Ship of Fools (1965). The closest Whitman came to being a romantic lead was with Maria Schell in The Mark, which having been filmed independently in Ireland feature a code busting scene of the two sharing a bed. In The Day and the Hour, declarations of love fall flat.

If The Day and the Hour does not rank among Rene Clement's better films, the train sequence assures that it is not a total misfire. Of interest also are brief appearances by Michel Piccoli and Marcel Bozzuffi in small roles. Future directors C;laude Pinoteau and Costa-Gavras served as Assistant Directors. Costa-Gavras would soon make his own thriller set on a train, The Sleeping Car Murders. While the music score is mostly traditional, it was composed by jazz musician Claude Bolling.

Samm Deighan's commentary track mostly places The Day and the Hour within the context of World War II films, touching on the history of the French resistance. The blu-ray is sourced from a 2020 4K restoration commissioned by the French studio Gaumont.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:02 AM

July 25, 2023

Revoir Paris

Alice Winocour - 2022
Music Box Film DVD

Hands are a key part in several films by Alice Winocour. The title character in Augustine is a young epileptic woman with a clawed left hand. After she takes a serious tumble, Augustine realizes her hand is no longer paralyzed and in addition to moving her fingers, she is apparently cured of her epilepsy. She is last seen running away from the medical institution which was as enlightened as might be expected in 19th Century France, that both improved her condition but also kept her imprisoned as a subject for experimental treatment. In Disorder, the right fist of the veteran soldier, used with powerful force to fatally punch a would-be kidnapper in the face, also forces the soldier to distance himself from the woman he has been hired to protect.

In Revoir Paris, Mia searches for the unknown man who held her hand in the darkness, among the people hoping to survive a terrorist attack at a restaurant. When Mia makes love with Tommy, another survivor of the attack, Winocour films close-ups of the hands of her actors caressing each other, exploring their respective wounds.

The French title translates as "Paris Memories" which not only sounds sappy but is misleading. Winocour's film was inspired by Bataclan shooting, one of several coordinated terrorist attacks that took place in Paris in 2015. Winocour's brother was a survivor of the theater massacre that left 90 people dead. Most of the film is about Mia's recovering of her memories of what happened that night. While not always signified as such, several of the fragmented memories are from Mia's point of view. The terrorists are only visible as partial black shapes. There are brief bursts of light illuminating the bodies on the restaurant floor. At one point, Winocour breaks to have the Senegalese cook, the man Mia is looking for, tell his story. The fragmented memories has its literal iteration in the form of a postcard, a small detail in one of Monet's Water Lillies paintings, the link a young woman has with her parents who were among the restaurant victims.

While the film does not discuss the identity or motivation of the terrorists, it is not entirely apolitical. By breaking the narrative to show the cook's point of view, Winocour touches upon how the Parisian restaurant industry depends of immigrant labor, some of which is extralegal. Mia connects with other survivors of the attack both as a means of remembering that which has been forgotten or blocked out, but also to verify her own memories. The psychological wounds such that even after several months, Mia finds it diffucult to resume her former life. Mia moves to a friend's apartment located across the street from the Place de la Republique. Winocour recreates the gathering of people who have annually gathered to memorialize the Bataclan shooting since 2015.

The DVD comes with interviews with Winocour and stars Virginie Efira and Benoit Magimel, plus a post screening discussion from the Cannes Film Festival of 2022.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:44 AM

July 21, 2023

A Dandy in Aspic

Anthony Mann - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Regions ABC

The basic narrative of A Dandy in Aspic is played out in the opening credits. A faceless, featureless marionette is manipulated by very visible strings. The hands of the puppeteer appear from the top of the frame. The more the marionette moves, the more it gets tangled up in its strings until it can not move anymore.

Adapted from Derek Marlowe's novel, this is a low key genre film released at the time when spy thrillers were still popular. There are no big action set pieces or fantastic technology. Even the sex is muted. Even though the film was made during the era known as The Cold War, with British spies versus Russian spies, the heart of the story is a double agent manipulated into chasing himself. While identified mostly as the British agent Eberlin, he is the targeted Russian Krasnevin. The aspic here is West Berlin, and Eberlin's attempts to return to Russia.

The film is now mostly remembered as the last film by director Anthony Mann. As Mann, only 61 years old, died while on location in West Berlin, much of the film was directed by star Laurence Harvey. This is one film that would have greatly benefitted from a commentary track by someone well versed in the films by Anthony Mann. The brief supplement from film critic Richard Combs is helpful in identifying those parts of the film that show Mann's hand. Several of the exterior shots have Harvey seen behind bars or grating, as if already caught in a trap. There are interior shots with a character in close-up on one side of the screen while two other characters are seen in full shot on the other side. Combs uses a couple of shots from El Cid, erroneously titled as shots from Fall of the Roman Empire, to make his point. There are very few alternating close-ups in the scenes of dialogue. Most of the film is composed of two-shots and group shots, as if to say that while Harvey's character is in opposition to virtually everyone else, he can not separate himself from the world without destroying himself. There are also a number of zoom ins, visually underling, that is not visually characteristic of Mann's work.

Derek Marlowe thought Laurence Harvey was miscast as Eberlin. There is a sense of detachment in Harvey's performance that makes sense for a man disconnected from his true identity. There may be something too personal for the Lithuanian born Zvi Mosheh Skikne who became an iconic British movie star. Tom Courtenay appears as Harvey's supervisor and nemesis. The film marks the first of three films released in 1968 in which Mia Farrow received star billing, a young woman who seems to coincidentally appear in Harvey's life. If you look close enough during a scene in Farrow's apartment, you can spot husband Frank Sinatra's album by a turntable. The most delightful performance is Lionel Stander as a top Soviet agent, doling out Cuban cigars and made-up Russian aphorisms.

A Dandy in Aspic also goes against the grain of the time by not showing a "Swinging London" where the first half of the film takes place. Visually, the film partially recalls Mann's film noir roots, of questionable men doing questionable deeds under the cover of darkness.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 AM

July 11, 2023

The End of the World

La Fin du Monde
Abel Gance - 1931
Kino Classics BD Region A

Abel Gance's reputation as a filmmaker is primarily based on one film, his 1927 Napoleon. It seems less than coincidental that this epic would appear in that brief period just before sound was introduced, when silent films hit their artistic peak. End of the World was Gance's follow-up to Napoleon. As such, it is a record of a filmmaker undone by artistic ambition and the havoc caused with the demand of using new technology.

Even the people involved with the restoration of The End of the World are not shy about discussing the film's various problems. What was originally a three hour work was cut down by almost half. I am not sure if a longer running time would have made the narrative more logical, but there is some choppiness that makes the identification of some of the characters and their relationship to each other unclear. Basically, an actor, Jean, is love with Genevieve. Being financial impoverished, marriage is out of the question. Jean's brother, Martial, is a scientist who retreats from society to his observatory. For some reason, Martial is the only person who notices that a comet is on a direct course to hit earth. Jean, first introduced as Jesus in a production of the Passion Play, entreats Martial to encourage the world's citizens to be part of a Universal Republic prior to being carted off to an asylum. Meanwhile, a wealthy investor, Schomburg, has his eyes on Genevieve. The rest of the world comes to realize that Martial was correct about the comet which among other things creates panic in the financial markets. As if there were not other things more important, Martial and his financial partner, Werster, are to be arrested for manipulating the stock market. Gance spends so much time on questions of the human condition that the spectacle of the earth's destruction is almost like an afterthought.

The film does begin with one great visual gag. The first scene appears to be a recreation of Jesus crucified, surrounded by his followers and Roman soldiers. Several shots later, it is revealed that what we have been watching is a stage production. Abel Gance did not play the part of an actor playing Jesus, but probably would claim he was portraying Jesus. As noted in the accompanying documentary, Gance thought himself a peer with Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. Unlike Griffith, Gance managed to maintain a career well into the 1960s, though without the prestige and artistic control he had in the silent era. The End of the World carries with it both the strengths and weaknesses of Gance's silent era filmmaking, the use of flash editing and subliminal cuts versus the decidedly melodramatic acting.

I am not sure if the sound system was chosen by Gance or was imposed by the Gaumont studio as it bears the studio name. What is certain is that of the early rival sound systems prior to its standardization, the sound system used also undermined the production. This Danish sound system recorded sound on a separate roll of film that had to be run at 32 frames per second, when it worked at all. Unlike even many other films of the era, there is substantial use of non-diegetic music.

Those with a more casual interest in film may be befuddled by The End of the World. The more serious film scholar will find plenty to unpack here. The blu-ray is sourced from a 2021 2K restoration. While discussing Gance in relationship primarily with his more successful J'Accuse (1938), film historian Stephen Harvey neatly summed up Gance and his films: "Perhaps in quest of parallels to his own frustrated ambitions, Mr. Gance's sympathies were more engaged by films concerning heroic male visionaries, besieged by the small-mindedness of the world surrounding them."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 AM

June 27, 2023

Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Pierre Foldes - 2022
Zeitgeist Films R1 DVD

While some of Pierre Foldes' artistic choices may be questioned, animation may be the best way to render Haruki Murakami on film. Not all of Murakami's work, but in several of his novels and stories the main character goes on a journey that is dreamlike. Literal images would do a disservice to the source material. The opening shots here are of a man falling down some kind of deep, black hole into a dark, underground pathway. Several of Murakami's stories resemble Alice in Wonderland, but with a contemporary Japanese man falling down the rabbit hole.

Foldes' film takes a couple of Murakami's short stories and elements from others into crafting a feature length film. The film takes place mostly in Tokyo following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Reports of the damage and other after-effects are in the background as televised reports. The two main narrative threads in the film are from the collection, After the Quake, inspired by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. While Murakami has written several pieces in response to both natural and man-made disasters in Japan, I am not clear as to why Foldes chose to update the film's story. Only a few fragments from the title short story, about a man and his young cousin, are part of the film. The film primarily is based on "UFO in Kushiro" and "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo". The first story is mostly about the disintegration of a couple's marriage following the earthquake. The second has a middle-aged banker who is enlisted by a six-foot frog to save Tokyo from a worm that would cause an earthquake.

While I have read several of Murakami's novels, I have not read any of the source short stories used for Foldes film. It is not a stretch to see the stories as placing their various senses of displacement, both pychological and geographic against the very real displacement of the thousands of victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Where animation succeeds in a visual representation of Murakami's writing is the the more dreamlike imagery. The close-up of an ear morphs into the outline of a nude woman. Landscapes, cityscapes and rooms are temporary spaces of shape and color. Where a giant, talking frog is imagined, passengers on a commuter train are rendered as ghostly apparitions. It is the smaller moments that work best for me. I also question the narrative structure of the film for trying to integrate the two main short stories rather than presenting them as separate pieces. What is faithful to the source is there is always a search for a definitive truth or answer, but for Murakami, some things remain unknowable.

As mentioned previously, though updated, Foldes film takes place in Japan with Japanese characters. The DVD comes with two language options - the original French as well as English. There are also three very short extras with Foldes discussing how the film was made, with shots of some of the preliminary sketches and artwork, plus shots of the live action filming used for reference footage.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:56 AM

June 20, 2023

Will Penny

Tom Gries - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Even though Charlton Heston was major star during the 1960s, there was no guarantee that his name was enough to bring in the audience. Following the success of El Cid were notably a number of high profile films that did not turn a profit such as The Agony and Ecstasy or were outright flops like The War Lord. After initially getting a perfunctory release from Paramount, enough critics took notice of what appeared on the surface to be a medium budget western of no importance.

Even among westerns made at that time, Will Penny is an outlier. More of a character study than an action film, unlike the Italian westerns that were only recently discovered by American viewers, but also unlike the more traditional westerns perhaps best represented by John Wayne and director Andrew McLaglen. And who was this Tom Gries who seemed to come out of nowhere to write and direct this film?

Although there is the persistent myth from some that Will Penny was the feature debut of Tom Gries, there was a decade and a half of work on his resume. The couple of feature films were low budget genre pieces that showed up as the bottom half of B-movie double features. There was also the steady work of television westerns and dramas. In 1960, Gries wrote and directed an episode titled Line Camp for a western series, The Westerner. Created and produced by Sam Peckinpah, the short-live series starred Brian Keith as an itinerant cowboy. In this episode, Keith literally stumbles across a dead cowboy on a trail, leading to a series of misunderstandings when he comes to the cowboy's base camp. Gries took several pieces from that episode a reworked them as parts of Will Penny, recasting Slim Pickens in a similar role, and also having Lucien Ballard serve again as cinematographer. It is also easy to imagine Brian Keith in the title role as the aging cowboy.

What attracted Heston to the role was Tom Gries demand for authenticity. The cowboys here all look appropriately grubby and unshaven. Heston has a thick mustache for the first half of the film. The film begins at the end of a cattle drive, with Will Penny left to seek employment rumored to be available at another ranch for the winter. On his way with two other cowboys, he is ambushed by the self-appointed Preacher Quint and his two sons. They are described as "rawhiders", an archaic term for itinerants who usually dealt in the trade and sales of hides. Quint is played menacingly to the hilt by bug-eyed Donald Pleasance, with Bruce Dern type cast at the time as one of Quint's psychopathic sons. Penny and company stop at a trail store where they come upon Catherine Allen and her son, taking a meal break on their way to Oregon. While there is that demand for authenticity in how everyone dresses and the weapons used, it stops with Joan Hackett. Even though Ms. Hackett fits Hollywood's idea of a plain woman, she somehow got just enough mascara and lipstick to see her though months away from anything resembling civilization.

Heston has gone on record to declare Will Penny the favorite film of his career. While he is still a man of action, Heston also displays vulnerability, and acknowledgment of his weaknesses. At age 44, the star was playing a character a few years older than his actual age, still with an athletic body, but also the face of a man who has experienced life. From giving trust to a writer-director on his first studio film, Heston worked with Tom Gries again, though to lesser artistic success, on Number One, too visibly old to portray an aged pro football quarterback, and the more interesting The Hawaiians as the self-contradicting 19th Century plantation owner. Tom Gries was able to move on to a career split between theatrical films and several high-profile television movies, best remembered for two of the better Charles Bronson vehicles - Breakout and Breakheart Pass.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by western specialists C. Courtney Joyner and Henry Parke with director Michael Preece. Preece served as a script supervisor on Will Penny as well as several other films directed by Tom Gries. What is probably of the most interest is the discussion of the shooting of the film on location. Two extras ported over from the 2002 DVD release feature Charlton Heston and actor Jon Gries relaying their memories of making the film. Jon is the the son of Tom Gries, making his acting debut at age 10 as Joan Hackett's son, billed as Jon Francis. The blu-ray was sourced from a 4K scan of the original 35mm negative.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:09 AM

June 13, 2023

Ernst Lubitsch: Two films from 1919

The Oyster Princess / Die Austernprinzessin

Meyer from Berlin / Meyer aus Berlin
Kino Classics BD Region A

The one time I had previously seen The Oyster Princess was in Berlin, November 2006. This was at the Arsenal, a truly underground theater beneath the Berlin FilmMuseum. As the film was presented with German intertitles, my ability to follow the story was limited to mostly observing the images. My ability to read German is still confined to a few familiar words.

This new blu-ray disc has two films directed by Ernst Lubitsch released in 1919. The Oyster Princess is the main attraction here, sourced from a 2012 digital restoration. The commentary track by film historian Joseph McBride helps in putting the film into context both of when the film was made and as part of Lubitsch's universe. The American Oyster King and his daughter, representative of a nouveau rich riche lifestyle, are no more realistic than the unnamed European city with its dissolute, down at the heels, aristocrats.

As in other Lubitsch films, everything is based on a misunderstanding. Prince Nucki sends his servant, Josef, to check out Ossi, the temperamental "princess", after receiving a note from a matchmaker. Ossi, in her haste to please her father, mistakes Josef for the Prince and impulsively marries him. The marriage celebration consists of Josef gorging himself on the celebratory feast, Ossi leading guests and staff in a frenetic fox trot, while Prince Nucki dines alone in his shabby apartment with a single herring before a night of drinking with his friends. The comedy is more broad than in Lubitsch's American films, even the pre-Codes.

Translation from one language to another always has a host of problems being sometimes more than finding the correct equivalent words. In the case of The Oyster Princess, an obvious bit of wordplay did get lost in translation. Attempting to consummate the marriage with Ossi, Josef tells her, in German, "Geh sag doch Schnucki zu mir". This is translated as, "Go on and call me your sweetie". I do not think the verbal gag in this case would have been lost in a more literal rendering.

Meyer from Berlin was Lubitsch's second to last appearance as an actor. A comic star at the time, Lubitsch plays the part of man who convinces his wife that he needs to go on vacation for his health. Dressed in lederhosen, wearing a cap with a yard long feather, the would-be Lothario goes to the a resort in the Bavarian Alps where he courts a woman who uses Meyer as a shield to put off her other suitors. Again, Joseph McBride provides the commentary track. While he repeats some points stated in The Oyster Princess, what is of most interest here is the discussion of Lubitsch's use of Jewish humor and his own Jewish identity. The character of Solly Meyer is also part of the tradition of clowns imagining themselves to be sophisticated lovers. The source print is a tinted Dutch version from the Eye FilmMuseum.

With some recent debate over how much a director's name means to the general public, the opening credits for The Oyster Princess provide a striking example. There is a series of filmed close-ups of each of the stars, most of them smiling towards the camera. But the very first of these portraits is of the man who is otherwise behind the camera, Ernst Lubitsch. What chutzpah!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:55 AM

May 26, 2023

There's No Tomorrow

Sans lendemain
Max Ophuls - 1939
Kino Classics BD Region A

This may be my own idiosyncratic reading of the end of There's No Tomorrow, but it seems to anticipate the closing montage of Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Eclisse. Evelyn, a Parisian showgirl, is distressed following the departure of her young son who has gone to Canada with her former lover. Henri, the comic at the cabaret where they work, takes Evelyn out for drinks at a bistro. While Henri is making a phone call, Evelyn leaves. Ophuls repeats three similar shots, the abandoned table in the bistro, a telephone left off the hook, and an empty street. I am unaware if Antonioni had ever seen Ophuls film, and taken the same visual idea, but extended and abstract, for his own way of saying there was no tomorrow for Alain Delon and Monica Vitti.

Ophuls' film was made during his French period, from 1935 through 1940. There are some of the same elements of other films, although Evelyn's professional life places her in margins of Lola Montes or Gaby, the movie star of La signora di tutti. Evelyn's closest contemporary equivalent would be one of the women who work in a "gentleman's club", providing companionship long enough to last several bottles of champagne. Evelyn accidentally is reunited with Georges, a doctor she had last seen ten previously when she lived in Montreal. The attempt to hide her currently reality from Georges, presented as just a rung above prostitution, beginning with renting a second, expensive apartment, begins a cycle of events that get further out of control. Caught could well be the title of several Ophuls films, with several of his female protagonists in above their heads following a lie.

There's No Tomorrow has a different visual style. There are some signature traveling shots that Ophuls is known for. But with cinematographer Eugen Schufttan, Ophuls begins his films with a sequence, the interior of the nightclub, La Sirene, with shots of the dancers on stage, and off-stage in their dressing room following a sequence of shots of patrons dancing to the house band. That sequence is the most stylized part of the film. While the job of the sirens at La Sirene is to catch customers, the sequence of dressing room shots is viewed through a net, with the showgirls equally trapped. This is followed by shots of the club's comic filmed with part of a superimposed net on the right side of the screen. Caught indeed. It may be just as well that There's No Tomorrow was never imported to the United States at the time of release as it would have been partially shredded because of nudity and narrative elements that were more in common with pre-Code Hollywood films.

Film scholar Adrian Martin provides the commentary track which primarily discusses how There's No Tomorrow fits in thematically with Ophuls other films. One of the interesting points is the casting of Edwige Feuillere, comparing her to Lola Montes star Martine Carol, another actress not taken seriously until working with Ophuls. Martin also discusses that while Stanley Kubrick has noted how his visual style has been influenced by Max Ophuls, any similarities may be overstated. The blu-ray has been sourced from a restored print and appears virtually flawless.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:14 AM

May 22, 2023

Fist of the Condor

Ernesto Diaz Espinoza - 2022
Well Go USA BD Region A

I am going to be honest and admit that I am not the audience for whom Fist of the Condor was made. This is a niche film for a niche audience. What is of interest to me is that this is an unexpected hybrid, a Chilean martial arts movie, in Spanish with English subtitles. The set-up is that the Incas of the 16th Century had a special martial arts manual passed down through generations from one master to another. Only one copy remains. A reclusive master is reputed to have that one copy. If the story seems in any way reminiscent of other films, it was deliberately designed as homage to the Chinese language martial arts films. Rather than being overly generic, Fist of the Condor may well have been a better film if it had leaned more deeply into its Incan roots, whether real or imagined.

Marko Zaror plays the martial arts master who fights to retain his reputation. Were it not for the scenes with him traveling on his motorcycle, the film appears to be taking place in a hard to determine time period. Zaror also plays the part of his twin brother. The story really is not that important except as a framework to allow Zaror to show off his skills. The aphorisms the characters spout off at each other are neither profound nor original unless one has never seen a kung-fu movie or any any film that includes fake Eastern philosophy in its dialogue. On the other hand, if you want to see why Matko Zaror is a cult action hero, Fist of the Condor explains everything.

With his clean-shaven head here, it would come to no surprise that Zaror once was a stunt double for Dwayne Johnson. Unlike the former wrestler, Zaror displays amazing physical dexterity, especially in running like an animal, stretching out on both hands and feet, and the quick pummeling of his hands when boxing. There is a bit too much reliance on rendering some of the flying fists and high kicks in slow motion. I was previously unfamiliar with Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, who as writer, director and producer has established a career as a genre specialist with several films starring Zaror, with several other cast members who have been part of his previous films. While most serious film scholarship on South American cinema is centered on those films that are on the film festival or art house circuit, Fist of the Condor should be appreciated as a small glimpse into the frequently ignored popular cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

April 25, 2023

The New Godfathers

I contrabbandieri di Santa Lucia
Alfonso Brescia - 1979
Raro Video

The English language title is misleading here, hopping on the trend of the time to evoke an enormously popular film released seven years earlier. Yes, there are some crime family bosses, but they are not the main focus of this film. The original title translates as "The Smugglers of Santa Lucia" which is not quite as attention grabbing.

There are a couple of what I would call the obligatory requirements of the Italian crime film. A car is wired to explode when the ignition is turned on. If you have seen more than one such film, you can anticipate when it happens. There is also the inclusion of a Hollywood star, either someone who is a supporting actor stateside or someone getting by with name recognition. Edmund Purdom, whose career as a romantic lead in the mid-1950s flickered briefly, showing up for a couple of scenes as a commissioner of an unnamed agency. As revealed by film historian Mike Malloy in his supplement documentary, the two big car chases, also tropes of the Italian crime film, were recycled from other films. At least now I know why in the second chase there are mismatched shots as gangsters pursue each other out of a real New York City onto a highway where there is no other traffic.

Malloy also puts The New Godfathers into the context of other films of the time. Made with lower budgets, these films took place in Naples, had greater time spent on melodramatic situations, and were subject to more limited distribution even within Italy. Gianni Garko plays the customs official who tries to make a deal with a Neapolitan businessman portrayed by Antonio Sabato, to look out for a ship carrying heroin. In exchange, Garko will allow the smuggling of cigarettes, a trade financed by Sabato, to have a temporary reprieve from law enforcement. Where the film is most interesting is in its presentation of the lower level criminals, especially a family of street level husband and wife hustlers who get by selling smuggled cigarettes. Director Brescia also tries to tie his story with documentary footage making connections between the countries involved in the illegal trade.

In addition to Mike Malloy's short documentary covering the making of the film, the new blu-ray also includes the U.S. release version of The New Godfathers. Essentially it is the same film, dubbed in English. The difference of approximately half a minute is the loss of a little joke. In the original Italian version, we see the director appearing as a befuddled man walking up and staring at a large poster for one of his earlier films, scratching his head and asking, "Who's Alfonso Brescia?".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 AM

April 18, 2023

Martin Roumagnac

Georges Lacombe - 1946
Icarus Films Home Video DVD All Region

There is a scene in Martin Roumagnac in which the contractor from a French provincial town goes to a late night dinner in Paris with the more worldly widow for whom he is building a small house. Taking place in a restaurant evoking Romanov era Russia, the patrons are entertained by a string ensemble in which showmanship may be more important than the music. The contractor dithers at his plate, uncertain of the correct fork to use with his meal. Part of the string ensemble surrounds the couple, making them a very captive audience. The contractor tells one of the violinists that the music is dripping on his coffee. There is some humor in the scene, but not enough. I am reminded of a somewhat similar scene in Billy Wilder's Love in the Afternoon. And I wish that Billy Wilder was the director here because he would have milked this scene for all of its potential humor.

The main reason for viewing Martin Roumagnac is for the pairing of two iconic stars, Marlene Dietrich and Jean Gabin. Originally, they were to make a film under the direction of Marcel Carne. That fell through as Dietrich did not like the screenplay. That Gabin and Dietrich did make a film with the lesser known Georges Lacombe makes sense as he was part of the wave of French realist filmmakers best personified by Carne and Rene Clement. Lacombe started as an assistant to Rene Clair. Martin Roumagnac received U.S. distribution under the title The Room Upstairs. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's dismissed the film as, "a dull stretch of old-fashioned drama". While the film did nothing to make Lacombe stand out from his peers, neither did it hobble his career as a dependable director. For Dietrich, the film is a small blip, a false start on a post-war career in which she segued from film star to nightclub performer. As Jean Gabin's first French film post-war film, this was the beginning of what has been described as a career slump that ended with the release of Touchez pas au Grisbi eight years later.

I have to agree with Bosley Crowther here in that the story is familiar. Gabin, in the title role as the well meaning contractor who gets in over his head upon meeting the widow Blanche Ferrand after she sits next to him by chance at a boxing match. The town is small enough that everyone seems to know everyone else. Having upset the senses of propriety, Roumagnac loses potential jobs and risks losing his company due to his attentions lavished on Blanche. There are the romantic rivals as well as the questions regarding Blanche's own feelings about the relationship.

Georges Lacombe may not be the visual stylist on the level of Marcel Carne, but he seems to find multiple ways of filming Marlene Dietrich's legs, starting with that first shot of her descending a staircase. If that is not enough, Dietrich is briefly seen in lingerie and stockings, immediately immediately arousing Gabin and presumably members of the film audience. Gabin was 42 at the time the film was made while Dietrich would have officially been 45. To the film's credit, the film presents romantic love between a middle-aged couple who also happened to have been briefly a couple off-screen. Getting hot and heavy in the barn's haystacks is not just for the youngsters.

The DVD was sourced from a 4K restoration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:52 AM

April 11, 2023

Arsene Lupin Collection

The Adventures of Arsene Lupin/Les Adventures d'Arsene Lupin
Jacques Becker - 1957

Signed, Arsene Lupin/Signe Arsene Lupin
Yves Robert - 1959

Arsene Lupin vs. Arsene Lupin/Arsene Lupin contre Arsene Lupin
Edouard Molinaro - 1962
Kino Classics BD Region A Two-disc set

Created in 1905 by author Maurice Leblanc, the gentleman thief and master of disguise Arsene Lupin has had an enduring cinematic legacy since the silent era. French by birth, the novels have inspired films from several countries including the U.S. and Japan, and multiple actors in the title role. The collection from Kino Classics represents the three films produced by the French studio Gaumont, with two actors as Lupin, and three directors making there own variations inspired by the novels.

The Adventures of Arsene Lupin was the first French film version in twenty years. While Jacques Becker is mostly known for his art house classics Casque d'Or and Touchez pas au Grisbi, what is overlooked is that he needed to make some more commercially viable films for career survival. Robert Lamoureax, who bears some resemblance to Golden Age Hollywood star Warren William, appears as Lupin. Taking place in 1912, he waltzes into high society, capturing the eye of Liselot (Lilo) Pulver, and waltzing out with two small, but extremely valuable paintings. As is his tradition, Lupin leaves a calling card helpfully informing his hosts that one of their prized paintings is actually a fake. Lupin is later challenged by Kaiser Wilhelm II to discover the hiding place of a valuable jewel.

The film was shot in lush Technicolor, very nicely rendered in this blu-ray. Becker delights in showing the mechanics of how the various thefts were accomplished. The story takes place in a Paris that seems to exist out of time, clinging onto what is left of the late 19th Century. It is the women who can identify Lupin past his fake beards and costume changes, yet they prefer to think they are the one keeping a secret. Even if The Adventures of Arsene Lupin is a lesser entry in Jacques Becker's filmography, it still welcome as providing additional representation of his work in his final decade.

While the Lupin films all have streaks of humor, the tone gets progressively lighter in the films that follow. Signed, Arsene Lupin is an early film by Yves Robert, best known for his comedies like The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe and his later Marcel Pagnol duology. Lupin is introduced as a World War I veteran recovering in a hospital from a leg wound. Robert Lamoureaux repeats his role as Lupin, with Robert appearing as La Ballu, a thief who enlists Lupin to join him in the theft of a painting. The painting is part of a triptych that leads to hidden treasure. Lupin is doggedly followed by the young reporter known as Veritas, who manages to never be believed even when he can identify Lupin. Shot in black and white, Signed, Arsene Lupin has a couple of moments that suggest some cost cutting measures even with the extensive location hopping between France and Italy. Lupin's sleight of hand is less important than resolving the mystery of the paintings.

The Japanese animated character Lupin III has a life of its own, exceeding the popularity of the original character. Arsene Lupin vs. Arsene Lupin might be the closest to Lupin II, if not by name. Jean-Claude Brialy and Jean-Pierre Cassel play the two sons of the deceased Lupin. Originally unaware of each other's existence, the two join forces to protect the family of exiled aristocrats. Edouard Molinaro employs some of the visual style used in his earlier films noir. A briefly seen poster for the silent serial, Le Tresor de Keriolet (1920) helps place the time setting with Molinaro referring to silent era filmmaking with the use of intertitles, cranked up chases, and a few funny sound effects. 20 year old Francoise Dorleac is seen too briefly as Cassel's reporter girlfriend. For Molinaro, what is of interest is how the brothers try to outwit each other as well as everyone else with their different disguises. The blu-ray was sourced from a very well preserved print, in wide screen black and white.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:07 AM

April 04, 2023

The Wildcat

Die Bergkatze
Ernst Lubitsch - 1921
Kino Classics BD Region A

The film is subtitled A Grotesque in Four Acts, but as Anthony Slide explains in his commentary track, the German meaning is not the same as in the English language usage. Some of the comic and visual elements are uncharacteristic for a Lubitsch film. Some of the sight gags would seem more a part of slapstick comedies. The interior set of a large castle fortress has rooms dominated by curlicue room dividers and furniture. Most conspicuous is the use of masking for many of the shots with framed within circles, lip shapes, diagonal shafts, and what anticipates the letterbox frame. The Wildcat was not only a box office failure in its native Germany, but unlike other Lubitsch films at the time, failed to get a U.S. release.

The basic setting resembles a fictional 19th Century German mountain village, except for the incongruous appearance of one chauffeur driven cabriolet, with a high ranking soldier falling in love with the daughter of a bandit chief. German militarism gets poked with the fort commander's mustache that resembles the propellor of a toy airplane. Morning starts with soldiers who would rather stay in bed than respond to that morning's bugle. Lieutenant Alexis is being foisted on the commander. Alexis' reputation as a ladies man is illustrated first by the hundreds of women who gather around his car, weeping at his leaving. This is followed by fifty or so little girls acknowledging Alexis' prodigious paternity. When we are introduced to Rischka, the daughter of the bandit chief, she wields a whip. Lubitsch admirer and collaborator, Billy Wilder, may have thought he was getting away with something with his Great S and M Amusement Corporation in Ace in the Hole, but what Lubitsch did thirty years earlier would probably make even the pre-Code Hollywood censors blush. A suicide gag anticipates To Be or Not To Be by about twenty years.

I admit to not having seen any of the other films star Pola Negri made with Ernst Lubitsch. The only other film I have seen is one I barely remember, Hi Diddle Diddle (1943), one of the couple of times Ms. Negri took a break from retirement after a return to Germany in the mid 1930s. As Rischka, Negri is raccoon eyes and rat's nest hair, essentially a force of nature. It is mostly a physical performance of rolling down snowy hills, sliding around a highly waxed floor, leading the bandits in dance, and intimidating the men in her presence. When Rischka encounters her romantic rival for Alexis, she simultaneously consoles the woman while stealing her pearl necklace. Once a thief, etc. Alexis is played by Paul Heidemann, a popular actor of the time, but arguably miscast as a great lover, his thining hair making him look even older than his 36 years.

Film historian Anthony Slide does what he can with a film that has little documentation. Even he is uncertain as to what motivated Lubitsch to use the masking, with some of the shapes repeated within the sets. Slide does explain how the masking was an in-camera effect done by cinematographer Theodor Sparkuhl, so that those shots were specifically designed to be filmed within the variously shaped frames. In spite of the limited information available, Slide is still able to be informative about the film, cast and crew. The blu-ray was sourced from a 2K digital restoration that in turn was from a 2000 restored print.

The blu-ray also includes the featurette, When I was Dead, made in 1916, with Lubitsch as writer, director and star. The 37 minute long film begins with the three main actors being introduced as if on stage. Lubitsch's first appearance is self-deprecating. It also suggests that while totally leaving acting to concentrate only on directing was a few years in the future, Lubitsch was already in the process of making his name a recognizable brand. Lubitsch plays the part of a husband kicked out of the house by his mother-in-law for staying out late playing chess. He writes a fake suicide note to his wife and then returns home disguised as a servant. Film historian Joseph McBride provides a commentary track here, with more of an examination of Lubitsch career as a stage and screen actor. An extra bonus is that the film is tinted, restored in 1995, with the digital restoration done in 2012.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

March 28, 2023

Code of the Assassins

Qing mian Xiuluo
Daniel Lee - 2022
WellGo USA Entertainment

My interest in seeing Code of the Assassin was based on seeing how some current factors have influenced the wuxia film. At my age, I am not part of the demographic that this film was made for, primarily teens and young adults. Nor was this film made to be given any true critical examination. There may have been some smuggling of a serious theme, but it could also be that I might be reading too much into Lee's film.

The plot, such as it is, is almost generic. Taking place in the fantasy past, there are rival kingdoms and shaky alliances. The film follows Qi, a young made raised in the Ghost Valley to be a masked assassin. He is seeking revenge on the unknown people who murdered his parents and other family members, and to reclaim a small, golden block on which a guide to hidden treasure has been inscribed. The Ghost Valley assassins all wear golden masks, and some have special weapons. Qi has a special replacement mechanical arm. Making things more convoluted is having some of these masked assassins recruited to fight each other. Qi meets a pretty female assassin and a plot twist most can guess at an hour before its finally explained by the film's characters.

There is very little depth to the characters. What the filmmakers are more interested in is the spectacle of battles between armies, explosions, and some man-to-man fighting. The film takes place in a CGI heavy universe. Code of the Assassins was made for the viewer whose visual diet consists of comic book inspired films and video games. Even some of the music score sounds inspired by video game music with its blend of classical themes, synth, and the thumpety-thump bass guitar. There is also some unnecessary speeding up and slow motion employed. That the narrative elements do not entirely cohere is besides the point. The various Batman films seem to have also influenced the film taking place in dark places, as if darkness signifies some sort of gravitas. The closing scene suggests the launching a superhero franchise for the local audience, a Chinese dark knight.

Being a filmmaker in China has never been easy. Daniel Lee identifies himself as a Hong Konger, but that means that if he wants to make the big budget films that require funding from mainland China, he would either have to make a "patriotic" film or something apolitical. And here is where i think Lee may have possibly included something that could be read as a hint. Qi asks the main villain to identify his weapon. The reply is that the "plot" is his weapon, changing or creating some kind of narrative that will affect others. One does not necessarily have to look at China to understand how historical or current events get subject to revision. Again this is a subjective reading on my part, presented almost in passing.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:25 AM

March 27, 2023

Border River

George Sherman - 1954
KL Studio Classics

The Rio Grande seems almost incidental to Border River. Most of the film takes place in a nearby town, a part of Mexico independent of the government, run by a self-appointed general. Taking place in 1865, this free zone is made up in part by communities of Union and Confederate soldiers who may no longer be part of the military, but still carry over their respective rivalries. Clete Mattson is a Confederate major chased into the free zone by Union troops, with a plan to sell two million dollars worth of Union gold to the Mexican general in exchange for ammunitions for the Confederate army.

Aside from making a deal with General Calleja, Mattson has his eye on Calleja's, um, business partner, Carmelita. This is a western designed to play as part of a double feature package, but with pockets of unexpected humor in the screenplay, and a few touches of visual style from director Sherman. An example of the occasional snark is after several spies are captured, Calleja assures Mattson, "We will give these men a fair trial, then we will shoot them in the morning." Everything is kept within the tidy running time of 80 minutes. One scene involving Mattson and his horse seems like a digression but is revealed later to be an important plot point. The climatic fight scene, if not inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog, bears a striking similarity. I also liked that the writers Louis Stevens and William Sackheim had historical points that were not anachronisms with their references to the earlier version of the Denver Mint. Border River was made at a time when studios were grounding out modestly budgeted westerns on a regular basis as dependable money makers, with only a handful of critics who may have noticed the films that exhibited even a shred artistic ambition.

Joel McCrea, at this point exclusively making westerns, stars as Mattson. Yvonne De Carlo is the woman caught between McCrea and Pedro Armendariz as the general. De Carlo is often dressed to distract from the men, especially in a bright red dress. While the story is about the theft of gold, the real theft is that done by Alfonso Bedoya as Callejo's Captain Vargas. Even if one does not recognize the name, the face should be familiar. Bedoya is best remembered for telling Humphrey Bogart (paraphrasing), "We don't need no stinkin' badges". Bedoya does not disappoint here either. Say what you will about a performance that is arguably exaggerated and cartoonish - it is also the most entertaining part of the film.

Western genre specialist Toby Roan provides an enthusiastic commentary track, digging deeply into various aspects of the production. In addition to the better known cast members, Roan points out various supporting and stunt players, anecdotes about filming on location in Utah, and an extensive dive into the filmography of director George Sherman. Roan lightly touches on the historical setting of Border River as well with a brief history of the free zone. The source print appears to be a well preserved Technicolor print that is especially complimentary for Yvonne De Carlo's array of bright monochrome dresses and close-ups that could serve as commercials for her red lipstick.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

March 24, 2023

Lucky Jordan

Frank Tuttle - 1942
KL Studio Classics

Lucky Jordan was the second of three films Alan Ladd made with director Frank Tuttle. Coming after his breakout role in This Gun for Hire, it was also Ladd’s first with star billing. Ladd's final collaboration with Tuttle, Hell on Frisco Bay from 1955 provides a kind of bookend marking the end of a commercial plateau in the actor’s career. Tuttle has generally been considered a competent, if uneven, journeyman director. His most stylish thriller, Gunman in the Streets made in France in 1950 while under investigation by the House of Un-American Activities, stars Simone Signoret and Dane Clark, and is worth a look for being made without totally adhering to the Hollywood production code.

We never know if Lucky Jordan actually has a conventional first name because everyone calls him Lucky. The film itself defies easy categorization with its blend of gangster drama, spy thriller and wartime comedy, in addition to tonal shifts. Jordan is the top gangster of a gambling operation in a large, unnamed city. His second-in-command, Slim, tries and fails to bump him off, coveting the big chair in the well-appointed office that serves as a legitimate front. Jordan finds out that he has been drafted and can not get out of it. Through a series of circumstances that only happen in the movies, Jordan manages to go AWOL, kidnap Jill, a pretty canteen worker, and get hold of a briefcase with military information that he is willing to sell to the highest bidder.

There is some resemblance to Sam Fuller’s Pickup of South Street, made almost a decade later. In Fuller’s film, the career criminal is asked to act upon a sense of patriotism in making sure that the unintentionally stolen microfilm does not get turned over to "enemy agents". While out on the lam, Jill explains to Jordan why she volunteered to work at an army base and why she is anti-Nazi. Jordan’s own shift may have more to do with the Nazi spies being a totally untrustworthy bunch. Here is where some extra context is needed as the film was produced when U.S. involvement in the war was only a few months old. There was still a significant number of Americans who were either isolationists or simply did not favor what was considered a foreign war with Germany. (Anti-Japanese sentiment would be a different matter.) Setting aside the leftist politics of Tuttle, the U.S. government has actively encouraged Hollywood to make films that would serve as propaganda to influence popular opinion. Lucky Jordan does the right thing, if not necessarily for the right reason.

The politics are lightly served. What makes Lucky Jordan enjoyable include Sheldon Leonard as Slip, the gangster who can never outwit Jordan, playing on his typecasting as the heavy, Helen Walker in her film debut as Jill, the actress’ last name more notable with two scenes involving her legs, and Alan Ladd’s smart-aleck remarks throughout much of the film. The high point is Jordan’s relationship with the elderly Annie (Mabel Paige), a grifter begging for quarters to spend on alcohol. Paid to pose as Jordan’s needy mother at the draft board hearing, the two develop an ad hoc mother and son relationship both comic and sentimental.

Samm Deighan provided the commentary track. In addition to discussing the main cast and crew, Deighan places Lucky Jordan as part of the films portraying espionage in the early years of World War II as well as general societal shifts during that time. In Deighan’s talking about Frank Tuttle’s career and his eventual choice to provide names to HUAC, there is the confusion, also perpetuated by others, in mixing the blacklisting of Hollywood communists or sympathizers with the completely separate activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:24 PM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2022

Two Films by Jacques Doniol-Valcroze

The Immoral Moment / La Denonciation
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze - 1962

A Game for Six Lovers / L'eau a la bouche
Jacques Doniol-Valcroze - 1960
Icarus Films Home Video DVD All Regions

It has been a short while since it was announced that Chantal Akerman's film, Jeanne Dielman had topped the recently released Sight and Sound critics poll. I would not mention that film except that it turns out that Jacques Doniol-Valcroze had a small role as the Second Caller.

Having two new 2K restorations of features written and directed by Doniol-Valcroze is a reminder of the work to be done to have a deeper and truer understanding both of French cinema and the Nouvelle Vague. While Andre Bazin is the name that always appears, it was Doniol-Valcroze who was a co-founder of Cahiers du cinema. His first feature, A Game for Six Lovers was released in 1960, but as a filmmaker, Doniol-Valcroze never became as internationally celebrated as the younger film critics who also made their feature debuts at that time. I could find no indication that A Game for Six Lovers even had a stateside release, while The Immoral Moment had a belated U.S. release by a very small distributor in 1967.

The Immoral Moment is closer to the work of Marguerite Duras and Alain Resnais as a film about memory. Michel steps into a nightclub that is still dark, yet to be opened. There is a dead man on the floor. A couple of people step in from a lit hallway on one end, with another man entering from the opposite direction. Michel is knocked unconscious. The cops and the actual murderer and associates know that Michel did not kill the man, yet Michel receives threatening letters in spite of the fact he cannot identification of the killer. Michel tries to remember the moments before he was struck in the head. He also ties his cooperation with the police, or collaboration as he puts it, with a wartime incident when he provided information to the Nazis under threat of continued torture.

Doniol-Valcroze cuts between present day Paris and Michel's memory of being a prisoner, ending with his mistakenly acclaimed as a hero of the French Resistance. Michel returns to the nightclub which features women in various states of undress, imagining his wife as one of the performers. The film was shot in the CinemaScope ratio with Doniol-Valcroze frequently placing his actors on either side of the screen, including traveling shots following the actor. While stars Maurice Ronet and Francoise Brion may be familiar to some, the most recognizable actor here is a younger Michael Lonsdale, the future James Bond villain, Hugo Drax, of Moonraker.

A Game for Six Lovers has a few bits of business to distinguish itself from some of the bedroom farces of the time. Two estranged cousins, Fifene and Jean-Paul, are invited to a country estate for the reading of a will and a possible inheritance. Jean-Paul is delayed, and Robert, Fifene's lover, shows up pretending to be the male cousin. Their hostess, Milena, and her lawyer, Miguel, are sometimes lovers. The estate's majordomo, Cesar, pursues the new maid, Prudence. This is the kind of film that was popular in the early 1960s in the art theater circuit because it was considered racier than anything from Hollywood, although it would be rated PG-13 now.

The film begins with the title song from Serge Gainsbourg who also wrote the music, sort of jazzy soft rock. Top billed Bernadette Lafont, as the new maid, suggests sauciness even when motionless in close-up. In one scene, she is chased by the insistent majordomo, ripping off her clothing, leaving Lafont, seen from a distance, in bra and panties. The Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart provides moments of partial nudity in bed as well as a nude swim. This is not a film for those who get worked up about the male gaze. The French title translates literally as "water of the mouth", and more loosely as "mouth watering".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:11 AM

December 06, 2022

Missing

Sagasu
Shinzo Katayama - 2021
Dark Star Pictures

What is noted about director Shinzo Katayama is that he served as an Assistant Director to Bong Joon-ho on Mother and Bong's segment in the omnibus Tokyo!. What brings Bong to mind in Missing is actor Jiro Sato as Harada, the miserable sanitation worker whose disappearance initiates the story. Sata bears some resemblance to Parasite's Song Kang-ho physically, but lacking Song's sometimes unfounded optimism. The sad sack Harada is a grubby, part-time sanitation worker who is introduced as needing the care of his middle school daughter, Kaede. Harada's sudden absence is taken seriously only by Kaede who is certain that her father is in search of a serial killer in order to claim the reward. Katayama reverses the more common narrative of father or father-figure as the searcher with the daughter or young girl as the searched. As the film progresses, it becomes a darker exploration of human nature.

Katayama's Japan only looks attractive from a distance. Most of the film takes place in what appear to be the grungiest sections of Osaka. There are hardly any streets, but mostly a claustrophobic maze of alley ways, pathways clogged with bags of garbage and abandoned junk. In a later scene following the serial killer, Yamauchi, he is shown a pictorial view of the small island by an orange farmer. Down from the peak, is a rough road with worn down people and houses. Yamauchi also has a scene with a woman on a beach. Their relationship is unclear. The beach is otherwise dull and devoid of any other people. Where Harada works is too organized to be described as a garbage dump, but it is an industrial site filled with things that have no more use. From the opening scene, most relationships are depicted as transactional, from spare change to millions of yen, even in literal matters of life and death.

The opening scene is composed of a series of traveling shots following Kaede running through the streets of Osaka, with the occasional shot of composed of multiple surveillance cameras on one screen. Following on this is a later scene where Kaede spots Yamauchi, with the camera following her as she pursues the suspected serial killer on foot and bicycle. There is some graphic horror but most of the scenes depicting murder are more luridly suggestive. The narrative is awkward, depending on two extended flashbacks to explain the relationship between characters from the points of view of the three main characters. The final scene is of Harada and Kaede playing ping pong. The camera zooms out from the table to show the two on each side of the screen while they come to a mutual understanding following a resolution of all that has previously transpired. There is a second game where Harada and Kaede are going through the motions of playing ping pong while the camera zooms towards the middle of the table. This last scene could well be a nod towards Antonioni's Blow Up with its missing murder victim and a tennis game with a ball heard but not seen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

November 29, 2022

Knife in the Head

Messer im Kopf
Reinhard Hauff - 1978
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

What I first found striking about Knife in the Head is that it is the first film I have seen that presented West Germany as a police state. The images of a police raid on what appear to be student activists, random checkpoints on the road, and surveillance cameras are all depicted as part of life in Munich, 1978. The implication is that for some citizens, there is only marginal difference on which part of Germany is home.

Bullet in the Head might be a more accurate title as the titular knife is one that is imagined. A scientist, known by everyone by his family name of Hoffman, goes to meet his wife, Ann. With a group of people at what is later identified as a youth center, Ann is being arrested. Hoffman runs into the small building. Hoffman is seen in a freeze frame with the sound of a gunshot. The actual event is the subject of conflicting descriptions. How Hoffman gets shot in the head is unclear. What is known is that he has brain damage causing him memory loss and lack of motor skills. Hoffman rebels against his sense of being an infant in the body of a adult male, and being the subject of gawking by some of the other patients due to newspaper reports depicting Hoffman as a political terrorist.

Even if the political aspects of Knife in the Head have lost their topicality, the film is still worth seeing due to the performance of Bruno Ganz as Hoffman. The depiction of physical and mental impairment and gradual, if partial, repair has been noted for its accuracy. In this regard, this is not a feel-good story about one man's victory overcoming adversity. Reinhard and screenwriter Peter Schneider are able to find humor in Hoffman's relearning simple words that offer brief breaks from the drama. Simultaneous to Hoffman's physical and mental recovery are his dealing with Ann's relationship with another man, and a dogged detective's insistence that Hoffman is faking his maladies and is guilty of stabbing a policeman in the raid.

While not as well known as his peer, Volker Schlondorff, Reinhold Hauff has a tangential connection with the New German Cinema. In addition to founding the production company Bioskop with Schlondorff, there is the casting of Bruno Ganz with Angela Winkler as Ann. Ganz is probably best known for Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire and his performance as Hitler in Downfall, while Angela Winkler had the title role in The Lost Honor of Katherine Blum in 1975, and was more recently more widely seen in recent version of Suspiria. The sparingly used music for the film was composed by Krautrock keyboardist Irmin Schmidt from the band Can. The blu-ray was sourced from a 2019 4K restoration. The two supplements are a 2007 interview with Reinhard Hauff where he discusses his working methods and work with his cinematographer and editor, and a 2008 interview with producer Eberhard Junkersdorf.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

November 22, 2022

French Noir Collection

Speaking of Murder / La Rouge set Mis
Gilles Grangier - 1957

Back to the Wall / Le Dos au Our
Edourard Molinaro - 1958

Witness in the City / Un Temoin dans la Ville
Edouard Molinaro - 1959
KL Studio Classics BD Region A Two-disc set

If there was ever a home video release that should have come with commentary tracks, or at least a booklet, this three film collection would have benefited from some extra care. Ideally, French film noir expert Ginette Vincendeau would be the person for such a task. Anyone else would be forced to rely on Professor Vincendeau's writings as well as their own personal investigations into both the history of the genre and of lesser known French films and filmmakers. Especially for the U.S. based film cinephile, there is a limited understanding of French cinema based on those films that were imported for the art theater circuit as well as the vaulting of the filmmakers associated with the Nouvelle Vague at the expense of almost everyone else. Vincendeau would remind us that aside from being a French term that first became popular in in describing certain Hollywood films, film noir has its roots with several French films from the 1930s that explored people who lived in the margins of society.

The two directors here, Gilles Grangier and Edouard Molinaro, are not part of Francois Truffaut's despised "Cinema de Papa". Neither are they transitional figures between generations like Jean-Pierre Melville and Jacques Becker. Instead, they are craftsmen who essentially made French films primarily for a French audience. Grangier is in need of further research as a director with a record of commercially successful films locally, unknown abroad. Described by Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian, Grangier ". . . was a working-class film-maker who came up from the streets of Paris, and started in the movies as a stuntman, grip, prop boy, any job he could get." Bradshaw's article was written in conjunction with a retrospective at Lyon, France in 2021. The two films from Molinaro are both early works when the director specialized in crime films for his first five years. The films are both interesting to watch within the context of a career with Molinaro making an international reputation with his comedies, especially, La Cage aux Folles.

Jean Gabin carries his own freighted history in his roles as a crime boss since the mid-1950s. In Speaking of Murder, Gabin is Louis, the owner of a garage who augments his income with a trio carrying out the occasional robbery. His younger brother is out on parole, with the police leaning on him to help bust Louis. Family honor trumps honor among thieves. Grangier saves the visual panache for the climax with Gabin pursued on a staircase. The title translates as "the red light is on", the signal for when a heist is to take place. Among the better known supporting cast members are Lino Ventura as Gabin's volatile partner in crime, Marcel Bozzuffi as the younger brother and Annie Giradot as Bozzuffi's less than faithful girlfriend. Jacques Deray, best known for directing several films starring Alain Delon, served as an Assistant Director.

Back to the Wall is the outstanding film in this collection. An industrialist discovers his wife has a lover and creates a blackmail plot against the two. The plot gets disrupted by an unforeseen event. What was Molinaro's debut feature after a decade of short films comes closest to the classic concept of film noir. The music by Richard Cornu seems to have taken its cues from the scores Max Steiner wrote for Warner Brothers melodramas in the 1940s. The influence of Orson Welles is apparent from the many shots making use of depth of field, deep shadows, extreme angles and emphasis on scale with someone or some object in the foreground with a character seen at a distance. The opening scene is almost dialogue free while Gerard Oury is seen methodically cleaning up an apartment, removing and disposing of a corpse. Jeanne Moreau stars as Oury's wife in a year that included Elevator to the Gallows and The Lovers, cementing her place as one of France's top actresses. Claude Sautet, who would make several notable crime films, served as the Assistant Director.

Witness in the City was Molinaro's second film. Not as stylized, the story zig-zags from following a man murder a woman on a train to his being released from criminal prosecution. The narrative shifts to being about the husband of the murdered woman. Lino Ventura, in an early starring role as the wronged husband, takes his revenge. Seen by chance by a taxi driver, Ventura is certain of being identified. The film is based on a novel by the team of Boileau and Narcejac, source authors for Vertigo and Les Diaboliques. There is nothing otherworldly here though there is some suggestion of horror with the opening scene murder and the hanging of the wife's lover. Molinaro also employs a jazz score. What is also notable is the elaborate car chase scene that included a reported 400 Parisian cab drivers that concludes in an actual zoo. What the film has in common with other works by Boileau and Narcejac is the fatalism. The image of Ventura behind bars edited with the shots of the caged birds might strike some as too obvious. Sandra Milo plays a cab company dispatcher, while Francoise Brion briefly is seen as Ventura's wife. Gerard Oury also had a hand in the screenplay.

Reviewing the filmographies of the directors, writers and several of the actors, there are a variety of connections to be found mostly in French crime films. The most obvious connections are with Jean Gabin who reestablished his stardom as an aging gangster for most of career from the mid-1950s. Lino Ventura would switch more frequently between cop and criminal and would co-star with Gabin. For myself, my appreciation of French crime films became deeper following the viewing of several films and having more of a sense of the history that these actors brought with them.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:24 AM

November 16, 2022

Lost Illusions

Illusions perdues
Xavier Giannoli - 2021
Music Box Films BD Region A

There is a close-up of a man eating a pastry at an artistic salon. The scene takes place in a provincial French village during the 1820s. The French Revolution is well over and royalty is reasserting its place in all aspects of life. There are similar shots where the consumption of food takes place where a privileged audience is also consuming art. While there is no exact correlation, Lost Illusions shows both some of the roots of what has become part of mass culture and the similarity to some of the hucksterism that currently exists.

The film is based on the first two volumes of a trilogy by Balzac. I have not read the novels, but from what I have gleaned from other sources, Xavier Giannoli trimmed much of the source material concentrate on the rise and fall of the aspiring young writer who goes to Paris to seek his fortune. There is some off-screen narration by the man who would act as his nemesis and friend. What is helpful is that this narration helps place the story into its historical context, although some general knowledge of French history is useful.

Lucien Chardon works at a printshop in a small country village. As a poet, he has the patronage of Madame de Bargeton. Lucien wants to be recognized under his mother's royalty connected family name as well as making a name for himself as a writer. Both he and his patroness run off to Paris where their relationship is undone by the unstated rules of Parisian society. At a time when upward mobility was rare, Lucien learns quickly how to sell his skills as a writer for a small, politically liberal, newspaper. Lucien dives into an environment where class, money, and social and family connections mean everything.

Capitalism and consumerism run amok. Reviews of novels or plays are based on who pays the writer the most to express a bias one way or the other. An small army of paid audience members will applaud or boo on opening night. Everything has a price depending on the highest bidder. Nathan, the narrator points out how advertising was created to encourage people to buy things they do not need. For Lucien, he gets the invitations and the social standing he believes are rightly his, while maintaining a facade of being wealthier than he is, and being unaware of the unstated rules. While Lost Illusions takes place in early 19th Century France, Lucien's story arc has some resemblance to that of Sidney Falco, the columnist played by Tony Curtis in Sweet Smell of Success.

The best known cast members here are Canadian filmmaker Xavier Dolan, Gerard Depardieu and Cecile de France. The blu-ray comes with brief interviews with four of the cast members and a short montage of the film's locations. Lost Illusions won seven Cesar awards, the French equivalent to the Oscars, including Best Film last February.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

November 01, 2022

Le Soldatesse

Valerio Zurlini - 1965
Raro Video Regions ABC

The original Italian title translates as "The Female Soldiers". Zurlini's film also has the English language title of The Camp Followers. There are cultural aspects that make either title loosely accurate, but require understanding that this is a story taking place during World War II from the point of view of an Italian soldier, originating as a novel by an Italian author.

A young lieutenant, Martino, is stationed in Greece, 1942. Greece has surrendered to Italy and Germany. Martino takes the assignment of taking a dozen Greek prostitutes by truck to several Italian outposts in rural cities, where two or three volunteer to work in army run brothels. The women are pragmatic in that they are getting shelter and decent meals rather than the uncertainty of life in bombed out cities. What may be incomprehensible to some contemporary viewers is that the women here do not present themselves as victims or think of themselves as such, but as women who have made certain choices in life and are not shamed by their choice of profession. While the film begins and ends with scenes of war, most of narrative is the road trip, showing the evolving relationships of Martino and his truck driver Sergeant, Castagnoli, with the women he is escorting.

The cast is made up of mid-level European stars as befitting an international co-production. The best known of these is Anna Karina as the cheeriest of the women, with a sly sense of humor. Tomas Milian appears as Martino, opening and closing the film with off-screen narration. Unlike the volatile characters in the crime films and westerns, Milian here is mostly quiet and introspective, questioning his role and the loss of humanity in wartime. The solid and square jawed Mario Adorf plays Castagnoli. Marie Laforet and Lea Massari are two other familiar names from the 1960s.

Fim festival director Marco Muller provides a video introduction to Le Soldatesse. Like several other film scholars, Muller mentions how Zurlini is relatively unknown to contemporary viewers. Of his eight narrative features, only a handful are available in English language subtitled versions in home video formats. As a filmmaker, Zurlini began as a documentarian. His own war experience would be in his late teens, reportedly with the resistance. Le Soldatesse contains elements that are found in other Zurlini films usually with a young protagonist, taking place in or near a war zone, where ideals are questioned but death is certain. Also as in some other films, the location is barren, more often than not inhospitable. Death does not have to be literal. Martino defines himself by what he describes as his mission. Zurlini might roughly be described as an existentialist, with his characters grasping at abstract ideals in spite of the uncertainties of life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 AM

October 25, 2022

The Great Kidnapping

La polizia sta a guardare
Roberto Infascelli - 1973
Raro BD Regions ABC

If someone was completely unfamiliar with the Italian crime film genre known as poliziottesco, they could do worse than have The Great Kidnapping as an introduction. This particular stream of films reflected a period in Italy of political instability coupled with various crimes, some of which were carried out by political extremists on both ends of the spectrum. The main tropes of the genre are present with a determined police commissioner making an investigation that requires a few extra-legal steps and ruffling the bureaucracy. Also, there is at least one Hollywood star, usually an older actor, prominently billed regardless of the size of his role. At least car chase takes place within city limits.

The Italian title translates as "the police are watching" which is more accurate for this film. There are multiple kidnappings of the college age sons of wealthy businessmen. Enrico Maria Salerno plays the police commissioner investigating the kidnappings. He is convinced that the best was to stop the kidnappings is to not pay the ransom. Lee J. Cobb is the previous commissioner who tries to advise Salerno. Jean Sorel, usually seen in more action oriented roles, plays the prosecutor who seems to always get in the way due to the contradictory protocols of Italian law. Salerno sets out to prove that the kidnappings are related and are part of a greater scheme on behalf of an unidentified political group.

Unlike similarly themed films by Umberto Lenzi or Fernando Di Leo, The Great Kidnapping is relatively light in graphic violence. The knifing of a police informer is mostly obscured by the backs of the two killers with only the face of the victim visible. More surprising rather than shocking is the sight of Lee J. Cobb without a hairpiece, making him less immediately recognizable. While second billed with a pivotal role, Cobb does not have a lot of screen time. The film comes only with the Italian language track, with the absence of Cobb's familiar growl jarringly replaced with another actor's voice. The only supplement included is of "Tough Guy Film Expert" Mike Malloy discussing Lee J. Cobb's career with emphasis on his couple of Italian films. While the connections with other actors who would later appear in Italian crime films is of some interest, Malloy makes the mistake of conflating the House of Un-American Activities with Joseph McCarthy, who had nothing to do with the Hollywood blacklist.

The Great Kidnapping was one of only two films directed by Roberto Infascelli. Most of Infascelli's credits are as a producer with his best known films being the westerns starring Tony Anthony as "The Stranger". One other well known cast member is former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi, appearing as the blackmailed step-mother of one of the kidnapping victims. The urgent theme music composed by Stelvio Cipriani sounded very familiar to me. As noted by someone in IMDb, Cipriani's score was recycled for What Have They Done to Your Daughters? the following year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 AM

October 18, 2022

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema X

Flesh and Fury
Joseph Pevney - 1952

The Square Jungle
Jerry Hopper - 1955

World in My Corner
Jesse Hobbs - 1956
KL Studio Classics BD Region A three-disc set

This new Film Noir set is made up of three boxing movies. None are going to be considered on the same level as Rocky, Raging Bull, or older classics like Golden Boy or Champion, nor is that the aspiration of the filmmakers. What these films represent is a sub-genre of sports movies with the protagonist fighting in and out of the ring, learning a life lesson in less than an hour and a half running time. Tony Curtis stars in two of the films with Audie Murphy taking a break from playing a cowboy or soldier for the third entry. All three films have the same template of boxing as a means of achieving upward mobility for young men with otherwise limited futures.

Curtis plays a deaf-mute boxer in Flesh and Fury, winning his bouts in part because he is not distracted by the noise of the crowd. He attracts the attention of Jan Sterling who sees that Curtis gets the management he needs to become a welterweight champion while she gets to live the lifestyle she feels she deserves. Mona Freeman plays the journalist who shows Curtis that he can live beyond his self-imposed limits as a deaf-mute. Will Curtis choose good girl Freeman over the conniving Sterling? Will Curtis win his championship fight?

What the film does well is play with sound and its absence to provide a sense of Curtis' auditory experiences. Not simply silence, but also when he has hearing restored in one ear only to find the chatter at a cocktail party both physically painful and oppressive. The fight scenes are filmed competently. The scenes of training are sufficient reminders of Tony Curtis' athleticism in the early part of his career. The highpoint of film historian Daniel Kremer's commentary track is his examination of the career of blacklisted screenwriter Bernard Gordon. Also of interest is Kremer's finding parallels to Darius Marder's Sound of Metal.

In The Square Jungle, Tony Curtis is three years older, ten pounds heavier, and moves from grocery store clerk to Middleweight champion. A more star heavy film with Jim Backus as Curtis' alcoholic father, Ernest Borgnine as the bibliophile ex-con trainer, a young David Janssen who just seems to show up with no identifiable purpose, Carmen McRae glimpsed as a nightclub singer, Pat Crowley as the good girl, and Leigh Snowden as the not-so-good girl. I had hoped for a better film as it was produced by Albert Zugsmith and written by George Zuckerman, producer and writer respectively of Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind and Tarnished Angels. Director Jerry Hopper is a journeyman doing competent work. What is memorable is this may be the only non-religious film that has quotes from the Talmud.

Audie Murphy is the poor and hungry pugilist in World in My Corner. Trying to keep to the straight and narrow, Murphy finds his only path to the championship is through the mob. Murphy also wants to make enough money to marry Barbara Rush, appearing here as the daughter of manipulative millionaire Jeff Morrow. Also in the cast is actor/dancer Tommy Rall in a straight dramatic role as Murphy's best friend from their slum neighborhood. Professional boxer Chico Vejar plays a mobbed up boxer and Murphy's main opponent in the ring. In the opening scene with Vejar checking on Murphy's boxing ability, he has the best line in the film cracking that he has seen better fights a hockey game.

Was World in My Corner one of the boxing films Martin Scorsese studied prior to filming Raging Bull? There is sometimes a documentary feel in the way the boxing matches are filmed here. Whether it is the camera or the choice of lens, the shots of the fighter are closer, tighter and more immediate than they are in the two other films in this collection. Hibbs opens the film aggressively with a close-up of Audie Murphy as if boxing the viewer.

Film historian Eddy Von Mueller provided the commentary tracks for the two latter films. The commentary for World in My Corner is of greater interest in reviewing how boxing was a regular part of early television broadcasting. Also of interest is a look at the careers of some of the professional boxers who play Murphy's opponents. All three films are from 2K restorations, with World in My Corner looking especially sharp with its crisp black and white cinematography.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:13 AM

October 11, 2022

Murder at the Vanities

Mitchell Leisen - 1934
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Arguably, the biggest star in Murder at the Vanities is Travis Banton. No, he is never seen. But his costumes pushed the envelope for what was allowed in a pre-Code film. Breasts appear barely covered. There are suggestions of on-screen nudity. Earl Carroll was most famous for his variety shows presented in New York City between the 1920s and 30s. His best known competitor was Florenz Ziegfeld. But Carroll was known for his more scantily clad chorus girls, and the film would seem to be a close to the live show as might have been allowed, and certainly more than one would see had the film been produced a year later.

The murder is almost besides the point. Stage manager Jack Oakie and police detective Victor McLaglen exchange fast-talking insults while trying to figure out who is killing the unknown woman found bleeding in the catwalk and one of the featured performers, all during the course of the on-stage show. There is a sub-plot that never really gets resolved involving the star tenor and a secret relationship. As long has the film needed something resembling a story, I would have wished there was more Oakie and McLaglen and less of romantic duo Carl Brisson and Kitty Carlisle.

Coincidentally, both Brisson and Carlisle left Hollywood in 1935 in favor of acting on stage. The two are first introduced singing "Cocktails for Two", with Brisson giving that chestnut a more emphatic treatment in a solo performance. Carlisle would play a somewhat similar role as part of a forgettable romantic couple with tenor Allan Jones in A Night at the Opera. More memorable for Carlisle is a song titled "Sweet Marijuana", which in spite of the male chorus wearing oversized sombreros in front a a giant cactus is exactly what you probably think that song is about.

I do not think there would be a problem with taking a familiar Franz Liszt melody and having Duke Ellington jazz it up. Giving it the title "The Rape of the Rhapsody" may cause some eyeball rolling. Classical musicians in what appears to be early 19th Century costumes are chased off stage by the music of Ellington's band. Black chorus dancers take to the stage and although the camera pans across a line of the chorus girls, they are never filmed with the same prominence as the white chorus girls. Another reminder of the casual racism of the time is when one of the chorus girls compares the number of blues singers on Broadway with the amount of "brunettes in Africa".

Director Leisen even gets in the act, a cameo as an orchestra conductor. Unlike the Warner Brothers musicals, the stage space filmed here does resemble a real stage, if oversized. Unlike the Busby Berkeley fantasies with their elaborate combination of choreography and cinematography, Leisen settles for a few canted angles for a stylistic flourish.

Aside from Jack Oakie and Victor McLaglen, most of the credited cast members are better known as supporting players, including future television producer Gail Patrick, depression era starlet Toby Wing, and the future Ming the Merciless, Charles Middleton. It is the uncredited chorus members that would become stars in the next decade if IMDb can be relied on - Lucille Ball, Alan Ladd, Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe are listed. Jazz and blues singer Ernestine Anderson is listed as one of chorus girls.

Providing enthusiastic commentary is film historian Anthony Slide who makes no secret about his admiration for Toby Wing. What is probably the most interesting part of the history of the making of Murder at the Vanities is how Paramount Pictures made it a point to ignore to the production code and the administrators, at least until the code was more firmly enforced. Also of interest is pointing out that the jazz reworking of Liszt as played by Ellington and company was the work of Arthur Johnston. With Sam Coslow, Johnston wrote the songs in the film, and Carl Brisson was the singer who introduced "Cocktails for Two". And if after almost ninety years, "Cocktails for Two" comes across as quaint, there is something to be admired about having the literacy to rhyme chansonette with serviette.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:45 AM

October 04, 2022

Sex and Lucia

Lucia y el sexo
Julio Medem - 2001
Music Box Films BD Region A

I am certain that I saw Sex and Lucia at the time of its U.S. release, almost twenty years ago. At the same time, it turned out that while watching the new blu-ray, I remembered nothing of the film at all, no scenes, not even vague images. I have also seen several other films by Julio Medem, his Red Squirrel was reportedly admired by Stanley Kubrick. While the some of the narrative and stylistic aspects may be idiosyncratic for each film, there is a continual interest in the volatility of intimate relationships.

The film defies an easy synopsis. There are several strands of stories intertwined, all connected, bouncing between a past and a present. The characters are all connected in some way with a novelist, Lorenzo, struggling to write his second novel. Some concentration is required to keep sense of the events and the various relationships. Medem drops a few hints along the way that suggest that what we see may be the enactment of Lorenzo's novel while it is being written rather than events in his life. What might be considered self-referential is the off-screen narration in praise of incomplete story telling. Ambiguity is the point here.

The film is less about Lucia, who is not part of some of the narrative threads, while sex is what ties and unties the various couplings. It seems not coincidental that part of the film takes place on an island where at one end of the beach there is the unsubtle symbolism with a partially hidden hole and an out of service lighthouse. Most of the sex is between Lucia and Lorenzo, actors Paz Vega and Tristan Ulluo, with some assistance of body doubles. This is the complete version of Medem's film, shorn of two minutes at the time of its initial U.S. release. I would not be able to say for certain what has been restored, but my guess would be mostly the male frontal nudity.

The blu-ray comes with a video supplement by critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, who presents the argument that the depiction of sex is gender neutral, neither the frequently criticized "male gaze", nor what could be described as privileging a female view. That one of the characters is a retired porn actress is referred to primarily in a positive light. The film begins with an anonymous coupling on the island, in the water and under the stars. For Medem, sex is part of the natural order of life. The blu-ray also includes two older supplements, a "Making of . . . " and brief interviews with the main cast and crew members. While these supplements will not answer the ambiguous aspects of Sex and Lucia, they are helpful in explaining Medem's process as a filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:44 AM

September 20, 2022

The Turning Point

William Holden and Eugene White on location in Los Angeles.

William Dieterle - 1952
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The Turning Point is an example of how a director can take otherwise routine material and distinguish it by some artistic choices. Inspired by the televised U.S. Senate inquiries into organized crime, Dieterle's film presents a university law professor assigned to bust crime in an unidentified Midwestern city. The professor, John Conway is assisted by society dame and girlfriend, Amanda Waycross, and by his cynical journalist friend, Jerry McKibbon. The story was by Horace McCoy, famed for writing The Shoot Horses, Don't They?, so there is some fatalism at work here.

Visually, there are two major influences at work. The first I would attribute to Orson Welles. Much of the film is made up of conversations filmed at two-shots, often with the characters moving and the camera moving with them. There are a few long traveling shots, moving down corridors or between rooms. In one shot near the end, Edmond O'Brien as John leaves Alexis Smith (Amanda) to check on William Holden (Jerry), whose body is in another room. The camera follows O'Brien as he walks to the medical room in the basement of an arena, meeting Smith as she exits the room. The camera stops outside the door with O'Brien seen in shadow through the opaque glass of the medical room, camera moving again following O'Brien as he rejoins Smith with the two walking away from the camera down a hallway. There are also a large number of depth of field shots keeping two characters within the frame. The second visual influence would be neorealism which was incorporated more frequently in crime movies. Although O'Brien mentions that that he is fighting crime in a Midwestern city, several scenes were shot in what is recognizably Los Angeles. The biggest giveaway is one scene with Holden and Smith on the Bunker Hill Angel's Flight railway. Aside from filming on the streets of Los Angeles, the film is given the appearance of a documentary with the lack of a music soundtrack. Aside from music accompanying the opening and closing credits, the only other music, briefly used, is diegetic.

More interesting than the topline stars are the various peripheral characters including Jerry's streetwise snitch (Eugene Smith), also the smalltime hood who finds himself over his head (Anthony Barr, resembling a nervous weasel), a Detroit hitman played by Neville Brand, and Carolyn Jones in her film debut as the flashy ex-girlfriend of a gangster. Ed Begley plays the town's crime boss, confident of his ability to cover up his illegal activities until O'Brien gets too close. Most of these actors are uncredited, but they bring dashes of color against the blandness of the roles handed to the stars. Holden and O'Brien have been known for distinguished work in other films, notably reuniting in The Wild Bunch, but their characters here are only of interest as working on behalf of the narrative.

Film noir historian Alan K. Rode provides a deep dive into the production of The Turning Point beginning with the history of a screenplay that went through several hands. While the location shooting of Angel's Flight is recognizable for many viewers, Rode is able to point out the Los Angeles locations, including scenes filmed in Paramount's offices. That there were some cost-cutting measures, I am reminded of Frank Capra's time at Paramount in his autobiography where there was reportedly an edict limiting budgets to a two million dollar ceiling. Rode is also helpful in naming several of the uncredited supporting players. In all, this is a commentary track that goes well beyond repeating information that can be found in Wikipedia. The blu-ray is sourced from a 4K restoration. The status of The Turning Point as a film noir classic may be subject to debate, but there is no debating Rode's well prepared and thoughtful commentary.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

September 13, 2022

Death Game

Peter Traynor - 1977
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC two-disc set

As a young man in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Peter Traynor would watch European art films in Boston theaters. Following a failed attempt to break into the film business in Los Angeles, Traynor bluffed his way into selling insurance in San Francisco, managing to set historical sales records. In his early Thirties, Traynor finally found his way becoming a producer, financing several low budget films, usually with a group of small investors. This was a time when tax shelter laws were favorable for even the most humble of independent producers. The tax shelter laws were in place between 1971 and 1976, made to encourage domestic film production, and were partially responsible for allowing the emergence of the first generation of film school graduates making their feature debuts.

Traynor grew up admiring Bicycle Thieves, but as a producer, formed a partnership with Mark Lester which resulted in Steel Arena and Truck Stop Women. Both films were low budget productions designed for play at drive-ins, urban grind houses, and as product filler in neighborhood theaters. And whether intended or not, once Traynor got his chance to direct a film, the result was tension between past artistic aspirations and the then current need for commercial viability. Death Game is not the horror film embraced by the arthouse crowd that was Roman Polanski's Repulsion. At the same time, it is too tasteful most of the time to really be considered an exploitation film. The subject of mixed reviews at the time of release, what ever is written about Death Game, including this piece, will say as much about the writer as about the film.

An upper middle class man, George, is alone for the weekend while his wife is away due to a family emergency. Two young women show up at night at the front door, apparently lost looking for a friend's house in the neighborhood. The two women, or maybe girls is the correct term, make a phone call to be picked up by a friend who never shows up. The girls, who identify themselves as Jackson and Donna, are able to wear down George's protests of being married, because what guy will refuse the invitations of two cute blondes, naked in a hot tub? Jackson and Donna refuse to leave, threatening blackmail with the claim that they are both under 18 years old and rape charges would only be the beginning of a nightmare for George. The next two days are of Jackson and Donna destroying the house and George's sense of self.

The film makes easy points presenting Jackson and Donna as victims of emotional and sexual abuse by men in power, fathers unreliable in their absence, and a society that in general devalues women. This premise is undermined by punishing George for the actions of others, by conflating him with all men when he is introduced as a genuinely nice guy. In the opening scene, George amiably is beaten by his wife in a friendly game of croquet. A telephone call indicates delight in talking to his son. George is a straight white guy, the proxy for the intended audience, but he not markedly misogynistic. Donna may possibly have attraction to George as a father figure.

On the other hand, Jackson and Donna reveal their strongest relationship is with each other. What is arguably the most exploitive scene is the menage-a-trois in the hot tub, because what is hotter than two attractive and naked blondes is two attractive and naked blondes making out with each other. The dynamics of the relationship are made more clear as the film progresses, fully spelled out and underlined by the end with Jackson in a tuxedo and Donna in a gown.

Cinematographer David Worth was able to make Death Game look more polished than one would ever expect for a film made with a final cost of $200,000 after post-production is included. Even though the film barely received a theatrical release, it was helpful in reviving Sondra Locke's then flagging acting career. This was also the first substantial role for Colleen Camp, an actress with great comic chops who should have gone beyond scene stealing supporting roles. Seymour Cassel's performance is harder to judge as his voice was dubbed by David Worth following a dispute with the director.

The blu-ray comes with many extras, most notably two commentary tracks by Colleen Camp with Eli Roth, and producer Larry Spiegel and cinematographer/editor David Worth. There are also interviews with Traynor and screenwriter Michael Ronald Ross, and a telephone interview with Sondra Locke. The interviews are of interest in discussing the convoluted history of Death Game from script to screen as well as conflicting thoughts on Peter Traynor's talents as a film director. And if that was not enough, there is the bonus feature of the soft-core erotic, Little Miss Innocence which took the elements of the basic story when Death Game was still an unproduced screenplay that had changed several hands.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:49 AM

September 06, 2022

So Proudly We Hail!

Veronica Lake, Mark Sandrich, Paulette Goddard and Claudette Colbert

Mark Sandrich - 1943
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One of the most interesting bits of information I found on director Mark Sandrich was in Ben Sidran's book about Jews and American popular music, There was a Fire. Sidran notes that Sandrich was the creator of the playback system which totally changed the way musical numbers in films were produced. Prior to that time, filming was done completely live with an orchestra off stage while the camera was focused on keeping the singers and dancers within the frame. Sidran does not provide any attribution though an internet search indicates that dance critic Arlene Croce was his probable source. How accurate is this anecdote? I can only guess that Croce got her information as part of her research on her book on the films starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Mark Sandrich directed five of the ten Astaire/Rogers films, plus Holiday Inn, yet has so little written about him. it is as if his being the director of these film was incidental.

After more than a decade of musicals and comedies, So Proudly We Hail! revealed a more serious side to Sandrich. While there was the dramatic Katherine Hepburn vehicle, A Woman Rebels, Sandrich minimizes the jingoism that is suggested by the title. With the exception of a couple of dramatic turns, the first hour mostly plays like a romantic comedy. The screenplay was by Allan Scott, a frequent Sandrich collaborator which explains why some of the humor is not dissimilar to some of the lines heard the Astaire/Rogers films. The film begins in December, 1941, prior to Pearl Harbor. A group of military nurses are on their way to Honolulu via a ship that is redirected to the Philippines. So Proudly We Hail was released in June, 1943, just over a year after the Battle of Bataan and the subsequent Bataan Death March took place. Between production code restrictions of the depiction of on screen violence, and military restrictions aiming to simultaneously present a reasonably accurate presentation of a major U.S. military setback while bolstering support for the war for the stateside audience, the film is probably best appreciated within the context of when it was produced.

The nurses are introduced as an ethnic cross section with characters named Sadie Schwarz, Elsie Bollenbacher and Toni Cacolli as part of the team. Claudette Colbert is their supervisor, Janet Davidson, mostly known as Davy. We are Paulette Goddard as Joan O'Doul and eventually Veronica Lake as Olivia D'Arcy. All the nurses have the rank of lieutenant. What ever idealism they have about nursing is challenged by too many wounded soldiers, and not enough sleep or medicine. The romances between Colbert and George Reeves, and Goddard and Sonny Tufts seem no less absurd that their overall situation of being virtually abandoned by the Douglas MacArthur and subject to the whims of the Japanese military. Between the narrative setup and the studio demands that allow the actors to grow stubbles while the lead actresses manage to have enough lipstick even when there is a shortage of morphone and quinine, do not expect an entirely realistic film.

What is also noticeable about Mark Sandrich is that he has a visual signature. There is a preference for traveling shots, shots that inform the viewer of the the location of a scene as well as the people within the scene. While Sandrich was required to showcase his stars, including building up Goddard's role at her request, the narrative and visual emphasis is on the group within the scene. This is made clear in the opening scene of the nurses being introduced after being rescued from Corregidor. There is no sense of hierarchy, and they express concern for the nurses who have not yet made it to safety. The title is fitting for an emphasis on the nurses as a team of equals. The "We" is inclusive of the nurses, the military, and by extension, the audience.

Film historian Julie Kirgo, formerly an integral part of the defunct Twilight Time label, provides the commentary track. Both informal and informative, Kirgo reviews the making of the film, providing the expected overview on the careers of the the three stars, but also digging into the collaboration between Sandrich and screenwriter Allan Scott, linking it their previous efforts. Time is also spent on the Oscar nominated cinematography of Charles Lang, Jr. and his dramatic use of lighting. Kirgo also points out the gender reversals in the two romantic sub-plots. A potential romance between a nurse played by Barbara Britton and a Filipino doctor played by Ted Hecht elided the Production Code. The one point I would find disputable is a reference in the film to what is now known as "The Rape of Nanjing". There is enough documentary evidence that to claim uncertainty about what happened to the Chinese female victims seems irresponsible. Otherwise, Julie Kirgo's film scholarship and passion are much appreciated. And on a personal note, I would love to see KL Studio Classics re-issue Red Line 7000 with Ms. Kirgo taking a more in-depth look at her father, the film's writer, George Kirgo.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:41 AM

August 30, 2022

Symphony for a Massacre

Symphonie pour un Massacre
Jacques Deray - 1963
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

The basic set-up of Symphony for a Massacre is very familiar after more than sixty years of similar crime films. A group of five gangsters, all with legitimate business, pool their money to purchase a large amount of drugs for eventual sale. One of the five betrays the others by stealing the loot, and then tries to cover up his actions by murdering his partners. It is no surprise that everything ends badly for everyone involved.

Most of the film takes place in Paris. The youngest of the gangsters is forty years old. As one who has kept up where I can with French crime films, it struck me how the genre has shifted with the criminals often part of France's growing ethnic minorities, and the locations moved to the outer suburbs of islands of dingy, ill-repaired apartment towers. Some of violence that may have been shocking in 1963 will seem muted for contemporary viewers.

The lurid title, created shortly before the film's release, belies a relatively low-key tale. What we see is as methodical as the executions of the various crimes. The third film by Jacques Deray was also the first to gain enough attention to set a career primarily with crime thrillers. Deray's commercial peak was shortly before and after the 1970s, especially as Alain Delon's go-to guy with nine collaborations. The screenplay, adapted freely from a novel, was done by Deray with Claude Sautet and Jose Giovanni. In addition to writing the dialogue, Giovanni, a name associated with many classic French crime films, appears as the film as one of the gang members. Over the next two decades, Deray made films where the pace was quicker and the violence more explicit, but Symphony establishes his much of his style and themes.

While several cast members such as Charles Vanel and Michelle Mercier are familiar to cineastes, Symphony has been noted as being the film that boosted Jean Rochefort to being a major presence in French cinema. Rochefort's hang dog face is missing his usual mustache here. One person writing about the film thought that Rochefort was miscast because he does not look enough like someone who with evil intentions. That may well be why Deray had cast Rochefort, because of his ordinary looks which serve as a distraction from what may be going on in his mind. Rochefort's seemingly unlikely role as a hardened criminal here is in retrospect complimentary to his role almost forty years later as the retired teacher who dreams of changing places with a bank robber in Man on a Train.

In his New York Times review, A. H. Weiler connects Symphony with Rififi. Jules Dassin's film set a new standard for heist films, both in France and internationally. The word rififi is French slang for a violent show of force. Weiler was probably unaware that Deray's previous film was Rififi in Tokyo, like Dassin's film, based on a novel by Auguste Le Breton. Dassin was famous for his extended, wordless enactment of the burglary of a safe. Deray likewise as dialogue free scene with Rochefort committing his planned crime while on the night train from Paris to Lyon.

The blu-ray is sourced from the 2016 2K restoration. The supplement is composed of alternating interviews with French film journalists Francois Guerif and Jean Philippe Guerand, primarily covering the importance of Symphony for Deray and Rochefort, the artistic influence of Jose Giovanni, and the initial critical and commercial reception of the film in France.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:10 AM

August 23, 2022

When Tomorrow Comes

John M. Stahl - 1939
KL Studio Classic BD Region A

To advertise their mini-retrospective of films by John Stahl, the New York City theater, the Metrograph, featured an excerpt from When Tomorrow Comes. Irene Dunne plays a waitress at a union meeting of other waitress, encouraging them to strike for better wages, well aware of the potential hardship it may cause to her co-workers. In her essay on Stahl's silent films, Imogen Sara Smith mentions, "a commitment to exploring women’s experience". If the scene mentioned is representative of a filmmaker primarily known for his films where his female characters have agency, the film itself defies the easy classifications of Stahl's best known films, Imitation of Life and Leave Her to Heaven.

The basic story is of a waitress who meets a French concert pianist at her restaurant, and their intense, but platonic love affair over a three day period. The film begins on a comic note with Irene Dunne's waitress helping out her flustered friend and co-worker with Charles Boyer's requests first for bouillabaisse (not on the menu), followed by apple pie with cheese - please hold the apple pie. Did Carole Eastman see When Tomorrow Comes prior to writing that scene of Jack Nicholson and the whole wheat toast in Five Easy Pieces? Dunne biographer Wes Gehring also saw a possible connection, especially as both Nicholson and Boyer playing concert pianists. Dunne and Boyer meet again at the union meeting where Dunne initially assumes Boyer is an out of work itinerant musician. A date for sailing in Long Island is extended when shelter from an oncoming storm is Boyer's mansion. Freshening up in a bedroom, Dunne notices a photograph of a woman, presumably Boyer's wife. It is as this point that there is a major tonal shift in the film. The storm turns out to be a hurricane. The two attempt to drive back to the city, the road blocked by a fallen tree. Dunne and Boyer go to a nearby church where they sleep in the organ loft, unaware that the church is flooded beneath them. Finally back in New York City, Dunne meets Boyer's wife, a woman psychologically traumatized by the death of her newborn child. Dunne knows Boyer will not leave his wife, but chooses not to be his mistress.

The screenplay very loosely is based on an unpublished short story by James M. Cain, "A Modern Cinderella". Cain's short story eventually evolved into the novel, The Root of His Evil. What is kept of Cain in the film was some of the waitress' back story and her working as a union organizer. Cain was upset that the church scene was apparently taken from his novel, Serenade, without his permission. Cain sued Stahl, screenwriter Dwight Taylor and Universal Pictures, unsuccessfully.

Stahl throws in some humor where it is unexpected. While Boyer and Dunne are trying to say goodbye in front of Dunne's apartment, they are interrupted by a neighbor rolling a garbage can, a first floor neighbor peering out on the window sill, and a woman in need of directions to the subway. And where did that man with the two sheep come from in the scene with survivors of the Long Island hurricane which somehow never touched Manhattan?

There are also a couple of sub-plots that are dispensed with quickly. The waitresses' strike is over in a day. The romantic overtures of a union organizer in love with Dunne is ignored once Dunne goes to Long Island. The other bit of sleight-of-hand is how Boyer's wife gets out of a locked room to confront Dunne.

Stahl makes interesting use of dolly shots. The film opens with a full shot of the interior of a restaurant, facing the main entrance. Charles Boyer enters in the general direction towards the camera. From behind, Irene Dunne crosses the pathway, carrying a tray, walking to the viewer's left. The camera follows Dunne towards the kitchen. Within the single traveling shot, Dunne and Boyer are briefly united. With his dolly shots, Stahl simultaneously provides enough information of where a scene is set while simultaneously isolating in full or in part his lovers. Stahl primarily films the couple in two-shots during most of their conversations. Only a few times does Stahl employ the shot-counter shot, alternating close-ups of his stars.

The blu-ray is sourced from a 2K restoration. The commentary track by film historian Lee Gambin and costume historian Elissa Rose provides some general information on the stars, the director, and the making of the film with an emphasis on how When Tomorrow Comes fits in with what were designated as women's films of the time as well as the political climate of the late 1930s.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:32 AM

August 16, 2022

The Burned Barns

Les Granges brûlées
Jean Chapot - 1973
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

The Burned Barns is one of those French films that never got a stateside release in spite of having two of France's biggest stars. Not directed by anyone even tangentially connected with the Nouvelle Vague, nor fitting in with more easily exportable broad comedies or policiers, it is easy to see why this film has been relatively unknown until its recent 4K restoration.

The film takes place in a small town near the eastern border of France, near Switzerland. The men operating an early morning snowplow discover a woman's murdered body on the road near an abandoned car. A young judge, Larcher, on his first case, is assigned to go to the village to investigate. The available clues point to one of the sons of a farming family that lives the closest to the scene of the crime. Larcher has to work with, and around, Rose, the matriarch of the family.

Larcher takes a longer than usual time in his investigation in his search for the identity of the murderer and any conclusive pieces of evidence. The town is the kind of tight knit community where everyone knows everyone else. The film shifts into being how the presence of the outsider, Larcher, disrupts both Rose's family as well as this remote village where everyone is described as honest and hard-working. This is more of a deliberately paced character study than a standard mystery. The whodunit aspect is resolved, although there is no sense of catharsis for the viewer. The French title both refers to the brown farmhouses of the area where the film takes place and also is slang for people who are metaphorically burned.

Jean Chapot is better known for working in television films. The Burned Barns was his second and last theatrical film. The supplement with this blu-ray, from 2004, is the recounting of a troubled production. As told by Chapot's production assistants, the director felt intimidated by his two stars as well as by the logistics of making a film on a larger scale than his previous work. While it is is not detailed how much of the film was actually directed by Alain Delon, it is established that Chapot did temporarily abandon the film, only to return to the set when Delon left to work on another production. Judging from his career and credits, Chapot was stronger as a writer than director, and may have been more comfortable with the lesser demands of directing television movies.

Of interest is that the cast includes Miou-Miou in one of her early roles, Signoret's daughter, Catherine Allegret, as Rose's daughter, and Renato Salvatori, an Italian actor whose face is familiar if you have seen enough French or Italian films from the '60s and '70s. The Burned Barns also features the first film score by Jean-Michel Jarre composed expressly for the film, mostly synth music, with abstract vocals in the opening and closing credits.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:25 AM

August 02, 2022

Little Man, What Now?

Frank Borzage - 1934
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Little Man, What Now? was based on a German novel published in 1932, a topical best seller both in Germany and internationally. The basic story is about a young man attempting to establish stability for himself and his wife in the increasingly unstable post World War I Germany with its high unemployment, inflated cost of living and polarized politics. The German film version released in 1933 is reportedly significantly changed from the novel with the Nazification of the film industry. Frank Borzage's version is closer to the novel although the political aspects are deliberately vague. Although there are protests by the marginalized poor, there is no labeling. We only see the gatherings broken up by the police from a distance. Borzage would be politically clearer in later films, Three Comrades and The Mortal Storm, here the emphasis is on love as overcoming all obstacles.

While the title character is meant to evoke a random person often affected by things beyond his control, Hans, as personified by second-tier lead Douglass Montgomery, is not always sympathetic. He is first seen showing lack of empathy. Walking by one of the scenes of protest, Hans and a well-to-do older man agree that it is best to be happy in one's place. Hans soon learns that his assumed place is tenuous , based on various circumstances determined by others. Hans nickname for his wife is Lammchen, German for "Little Lamb". More often than not, it is Hans who the sheep, led by his wife.

Margaret Sullavan is unmistakably the star of Little Man, What Now? and Frank Borzage makes sure the audience knows it. She first appears, back against the corner of a building, facing the camera with her megawatt smile. It is Lammchen who constantly believes in Hans even when the viewer might remain dubious. She is the one who determines to see her pregnancy through, even with Hans' meager salary, and she is also the one who finds an affordable attic apartment when facing homelessness in Berlin. As pointed out by Allen Arkush and Daniel Kremer in their commentary track, Sullavan is lit and positioned in her favor, often at the expense of Montgomery.

There are also two comic sequences here worth mentioning. One scene introduces the clingy, whiny daughter of Hans' first employer, a grain merchant. His marriage a secret, Hans is one of three employees the merchant hopes will marry his daughter and take over the business. Breakfast is a scene of domestic turmoil as father grills daughter about her matrimonial prospects and bratty teenage brother finds everything amusing. A later scene is of Montgomery and Sullavan together in bed, trying to sleep in their apartment bedroom while a party is taking place. A drunk Alan Hale stumbles in on the couple, trying to engage the couple in conversation before falling asleep on the floor. With the exception of His Butler's Sister, Borzage's abilities with comedy were underused but do provide some bright spots is what is presented as a serious minded drama.

Little Man, What Now? is recognizably a pre-Code film, and according to Arkush and Kremer, the last film before the Code was strictly enforced. The couple is introduced with the confirmation of pregnancy without marriage. I can not even think of any other Hollywood film where there is a sign indicating that the doctor being visited is a gynecologist. There is the previously mentioned scene of Sullavan and Montgomery together in bed, under the sheets. Something of a stretch in plausibility is that Hans and Lammchen are unaware that Hans' stepmother operates an exclusive bordello. A scene that might have been cut and/or re-shot later is of a picnic, with the camera moving from a record player to Margaret Sullavan with her dress hiked high enough to display her shapely legs. Would code enforcer Joseph Breen allowed for the shot with a brief flash of Sullavan's panties?

Kremer and Arkush's commentary begins with Arkush reading from Martin Scorsese's notes on Borzage. Also referred to is Andrew Sarris' brief analysis of Borzage from The American Cinema which is where much of the scholarly interest in Frank Borzage began. While there is discussion on Borzage as a romantic director with an emphasis on female characters, overlooked is that Borzage did occasionally worked in other genres where he was still able to integrate to greater or less degree his theme of the spiritual and emotional ties between people. Flight Command, released almost a full year before Pearl Harbor, both anticipated a need for military preparedness and was essentially a story about male camaraderie. Where the commentary excels is in examining Borzage's visual style and repetition of certain motifs, such as having his lovers on the top of a building. There is also a review of Margaret Sullavan's difficult life and inconsistent career after 1943. Little Man, What Now? is notable as Sullivan's second film after appearing on stage, and the first of four classics under the direction of Borzage.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:53 AM

July 26, 2022

Time Out of Mind

Robert Siodmak - 1947
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

If Time Out of Mind had not been directed by Robert Siodmak, would it still be a film of interest? Maybe for those who love melodramas or stories that take place in the late 19th Century. It is not as if this was a bad film, but there is only a hint of the visual style that has made Siodmak a film noir favorite. As for suspense, there is a little bit in the last reel when the estranged former wife makes plans, never clearly detailed, to sabotage a concert.

The story is about the misfortune of the Fortune family. Christopher Fortune III comes from a line of merchant sea captains, a prominent Maine family. His aspirations for composing music are put aside after being forced by his father to go to sea as a crew member to learn first hand how to handle a ship. After coming home with an apparent brain concussion, Chris' sister, Clarissa, and a family servant, Kate, conspire to have Chris sneak off to Paris to study music composition. Chris and Clarissa return home three years later, with Chris now married to Boston society daughter Dora. Chris has become an alcoholic, with self-doubts about his musical abilities. Kate, always in love with Chris, hopes to get him to still realize his dreams.

There is one interesting shot, the first time Chris is seen playing piano for Kate. The camera is tilted upwards towards the two, who are both straight parallel to the horizontal lines of the frame. But the barred windows in the background are slightly tilted, a less than obvious "dutch" or canted angle. More conspicuous are several point of view shots going in and out of focus, representing Chris' psychological haze.

The film was intended to inaugurate the Hollywood career of British actress Phyllis Calvert. Siodmak and Calvert had expressed interest in working together, which finally happened after a couple of false starts. As it turned out, neither was happy with the other. Calvert's Hollywood career was over within four years. She is seen to better advantage in the British films for Gainsborough, a studio specializing in period films and melodramas, in such films as The Man in Grey and Madonna of the Seven Moons. Calvert appears here as Kate. The film also marks the last of four films Ella Raines made with Siodmak, appearing here as Clarrisa. I do not know what kept him out of serving, but Robert Hutton's stardom primarily lasted through World War II and a few years later, eventually turning to lead roles in smaller films and supporting roles in a few bigger films. It is not that Hutton is miscast as Christopher Fortune, just not particularly memorable.

The commentary track is by film historian Lee Gambin with costume historian Elissa Rose. Gambin primarily covers how the film fits in with filmography of Robert Siodmak, as well as some notes on Phyllis Calvert. Rose covers the costuming by Travis Banton as well as an overview on his career. Rose also talks about some of the musical influences in the score credited to both Miklos Rozsa and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, name checking among others, Charles Ives.

A deeper look at the music, both as part of the narrative, and why the score is credited to two men, would be of interest. Prior to his first American concert, Chris describes his music as imitating Claude Debussy. Although Debussy was not internationally known until at least a decade after Time Out of Mind takes place, it is not a stretch to assume that Chris was aware of him during his time in Paris if one more closely identifies when the film takes place. On the evening of the first concert, an inebriated Chris doodles on a bar's piano, playing "Daisy Bell (A Bicycle Built for Two)". That song was published in 1892. Chris incorporates the then popular song as an improvisation in his concert, which probably inspired the Charles Ives reference as Ives would use short stanzas from well known songs into his own compositions. As for the film score, while Rozsa's name is familiar, Castelnuovo-Tedesco rarely was credited for his own work. Not only did Castelnuovo-Tedesco only receive few credits, but much of his music was frequently recycled as stock music from other films. IMDb also noted that Castelnuovo-Tedesco may have been a ghost writer for other film score composers. As for Chris' concerto, it is a reworking from an earlier Rozsa score for Julien Duvivier's Lydia (1941).

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:22 AM

July 20, 2022

Film Noir - The Dark Side of Cinema VIII

Street of Chance
Jack Hively - 1942

Enter Arsene Lupin
Ford Beebe - 1944

Temptation
Irving Pichel - 1946
KL Studio Classics BD Region A three-disc set

Anybody who has looked at any of the previous Film Noir sets should know by now that not all of the films included may pass the purity test. Of the three film here, only Street of Chance can really be considered film noir, while Temptation has some noir elements. Enter Arsene Lupin is in no way film noir, but it is also the most entertaining of the three here. The directors can be best described as journeymen, with Irving Pichel occasionally having been assigned a few minor A films. The casts here are a mostly assemblage of lower tier leads and some beloved character actors. Perhaps not so coincidentally, all three films have actors whose careers were disrupted by the Hollywood blacklist that began in the late 1940s.

Street of Chance begins in a fictionalized New York City where no one is given notice that there is work being done on the exterior of an otherwise vacant apartment building. Burgess Meredith gets knocked on the head by a very large piece of debris and wakes up with amnesia. Not only is he not sure who he is, but he has no idea why why the intimidating Sheldon Leonard is chasing after him. Even worse is when he finds out he is involved with a murder though he is certain he never killed anyone. The story is from Cornell Woolrich, whose characters usually stumble into situations they can not always get out of. Jack Hively has brief career as a director of modestly budgeted theatrical films before doing some second unit work and assignments on various television series. Stylization comes in the form of several overhead crane shots. Jerome Cowan is on hand to provide some villainy as the heir to a family fortune.

Jason Ney's commentary track includes discussion on the use of amnesia as a film noir plot device, and how the film differs from the novel by Woolrich. Also of interest is the history of how the film was distributed, as a second feature in urban areas, but as a stand alone feature in rural areas where many of the theaters were independently owned and operated and play dates were often two or three days.

Enter Arsene Lupin is hardly film noir but it is a lot of fun. So many versions of the gentleman thief. The most recent version is a French mini-series with the charismatic Omar Sy. In this film, the title role is taken by Charles Korvin, a Hungarian actor who appears to have been Universal's answer to Paul Henreid, the romantic European lover. Ella Raines is the Greek heiress with the emerald coveted by both Lupin and her bankrupt relatives. And my expectations were low coming in on this one because all I knew of director Ford Beebe was his work on a couple of "Flash Gordon" serials. The screenplay was by Bertram Milhauser who wrote several of the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes films, with cinematography by Hal Mohr. So we have solid craftsmanship and some witty banter, aided in no small way by J. Carrol Naish as the flustered French cop chasing Lupin, Gale Sondergaard as Raines' aunt, and George Dolenz (father of a Monkee) as Lupin's partner in crime.

Historian Anthony Slide is engaging in covering the literary and cinematic history of Lupin. An amusing part of his commentary track is pointing out the non-English locations and bad accents of some of the supporting cast. Enter Arsene Lupin reportedly was only seen as a second feature at the time of its release, which got dismissive reviews. Slide briefly digresses into his research on the correct pronunciation of Ford Beebe's last name. Conspicuously, there is no clear identification about when the film takes place, although World War II is neither seen nor heard.

Temptation was the fourth film version of a 1909 novel about romantic intrigue in Egypt in 1900. Unlike the other two films in this collection, it was an A film, albeit produced with a smaller budget by the independent studio, International, just prior to their merger with Universal. This version has noir elements that were not part of the earlier films. Merle Oberon plays a widow of a certain age who decides Egyptologist George Brent will be able to support her in the style to which she is accustomed. While Brent is off on an archaeological expedition, Oberon, bored in her palatial Cairo villa, begins an affair with Egyptian playboy Charles Korvin. There is a plot to murder Brent, and concerns of a curse when a pharaoh's tomb is uncovered. Along for the ride is Paul Lukas as Brent's best friend, a doctor named Meyer Isaacson who makes a joke about his ancestors having built the pyramids, part of the Hollywood tradition of being Jewish without actually stating you are Jewish. Oberon's husband, Lucien Ballard, was the cinematographer, notable as he created special lighting for Oberon to disguise some post-accident facial flaws.

Kelly Robinson's commentary track reviews the history of the source novel as well as the four film versions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

July 18, 2022

The Silver Screen - Color Me Lavender

Mark Rappaport - 1997
Kino Classics All Regions DVD

There are probably better analogies, but this new DVD with one feature-length work plus three shorter films as a bonus is kind of like having a good, but not totally satisfying dinner at a restaurant where the desserts are all bette than the main course. Color Me Lavender might be viewed as complimentary to Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet. Rappaport has more on his mind than how gay men are represented on film, with many of his questions valid on how film should be "read". By this I mean historical and cultural contexts at the time of creation, how certain tropes were understood by audiences of the past, as well as what may or may not have been intended by filmmakers of the time. What makes Rappaport's inquiries into cinema history interesting are the various connections he makes, some of them unexpected.

Rappaport limits his survey to films from the Thirties, Forties and Fifties with a slight nudge into the early Sixties, and primarily Hollywood with a brief jaunt into France and Italy. Dan Butler provides the narration and appears on screen walking in on freeze frames of several of the films. Some of material is familiar - the homoeroticism of the onscreen relationship of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the now beaten to death Randolph Scott/Cary Grant stories, how the film Crossfire, praised for addressing anti-Semitism, was based on a novel where the victim was a gay soldier. More amusingly, and possibly to the chagrin of fans and scholars of Westerns, is the presentation of cowboy hero and his older sidekick as coded, with the dynamics of the relationship based on who makes the coffee. I am almost surprised that Rappaport made no jokes about Walter Brennan having two modes of acting - with or without teeth. That very brief foray into the Sixties is in the opening, with Jose Ferrer getting to first base with the shirtless Peter O'Toole in Lawrence of Arabia, a film that could have easily been advertised as starring "an all male cast" and really not be wrong.

Curiously, the only gay filmmakers discussed are Jean Cocteau and Luchino Visconti, and their male muses. For Cocteau, this means how Jean Marais is lit and framed in loving close-ups. For Visconti, it is how Massimo Girotti was filmed in Ossessione. Aside from Alain Delon's photogenic qualities in Rocco and His Brothers, Rappaport looks at the relationship between Rocco and Simone, how the brothers are also linked by the woman they are both in love with as well as the boxing manager they both work for.

The bonus films, three video essays, are tangentially connected to the main feature. The Vanity Tables of Douglas Sirk is about literal and symbolic uses of reflections within the narrative in Sirk's films. Additionally the choice of shots and how multiple characters may appear in the mirror demonstrates Sirk's ability to create several focal points within the camera frame. The Double Life of Paul Henreid is about actor turned director's career trajectory, from top or second lead as a Warner Brothers contract star, to his turn in lower budget fare in independent or foreign films following the blacklisting era. Rappaport connects three film Henreid produced, directed and/or starred in Hallow Triumph, Stolen Face and Dead Ringer with plots involving twin identities. Dead Ringer. Martin und Hans is presentation of clips from films featuring Martin Kosleck and Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, gay German refugees and longtime partners, who had varying degrees of success as supporting players in Hollywood. Rappaport's screenplay is comprised of first person offscreen narration from actors portraying the two men. The lesser known von Twardowski's biggest role was as a gay prisoners in the German silent, Sex in Chains by William Dieterle. The better known Martin Kosleck made a career of playing Nazi officers. At one point, Kosleck suggests to Rappaport that a video essay be made of Kosleck's five times portraying Joseph Goebbels, to which I say, "Yes, please".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:29 AM

June 21, 2022

Charlotte

Eric Warin & Tahir Rana - 2021
Good Deed Entertainment BD Region A

Charlotte Salomon (1917 - 1943) was a German-Jewish artist whose collection of 769 autobiographical paintings are grouped under the title Live? Or Theater. The paintings were gouache on paper, with people reminiscent in the style of Marc Chagall. Some of the paintings are combined with autobiographic text. Most of the artwork was done between 1941 and 1943, when Salomon was permitted a visa to stay with her grandparents in Nice, France. Salomon died in Auschwitz in 1943.

This is the second film about Charlotte Salomon, but the first to get wide distribution. There is a 1981 Dutch-German film that includes Derek Jacobi in the cast. This time, Charlotte Salomon's story has been recreated as an animated film with Keira Knightley's participation as the main selling point. What is troubling is that while the life of the artist is worth telling, I am not convinced that an animated film, or at least this animated film, is the best way of recounting her art and life. There is also the question of use of well known actors providing voices for animated films. Does the use of Knightley, Jim Broadbent, Brenda Blethyn, etc. provide greater gravity for the film or bring about more attention, unlike an adult skewing animated film like Flee? Does it matter that the only Jewish actor of the well known names, Sophie Okonedo, provides the voice for voice for a non-Jewish character?

Even with a Wikipedia biography, it is obvious that some of the harsher aspects of Salomon's life have been smoothed out or completely ignored. I can accept that there will be some fictionalization and encapsulation of events. One might even argue that we do not need to see how vicious Nazis were toward Jews in public because it is common knowledge. That depression and suicide seemed to be family traits is only superficially addressed. And while Salomon's murder of her grandfather is depicted, the motivation is elided, with those only knowing the history from this film to assume Salomon was unhappy taking care of a demanding old man, rather than a family member whom it is suggested had sexual interest in his granddaughter. Animated films have explored various subject matter such as war, racism and sexuality, in some cases made primarily for an adult audience. It would seem that Charlotte Salomon's story was softened, with the filmmakers aiming to make the film marginally family friendly.

The blu-ray comes with several short supplements. One features the directors explaining the process in which they made the film. The producer, Knightley and several voice cast members briefly share what they hope is their sense of inspiration. This is a film made with the best of intentions and that may be why Charlotte is not quite the film it could, or definitely should be. Ultimately, its characters are as flat and two-dimensional as they are rendered here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:25 AM

June 14, 2022

Last Passenger

Omid Nooshin - 2013
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

I like movies that take place on trains. This runs the gamut from The Lady Vanishes to Runaway Train to films that tangentially involve trains like Fritz Lang's Human Desire. The restriction of interior space combined with the restriction of movement by the train, usually but not always, moving forward on its tracks towards an already defined destination. There are also the literal tracking shots, often overhead shots, of the tracks. Thinking of the combination of the tracks and the trains can be appreciated as metaphorical story-telling or for its own visceral appeal.

Taking place during the winter holiday season, Dr. Lewis Shaler and seven year old son, Max, are on a commuter train traveling from London to their southeastern town. What seems like a routine journey becomes increasingly dramatic when, with only a handful of passengers left, the train moves rapidly forward, skipping the scheduled stops. The identity and motives of the rogue train operator remain unknown. Shaler, with the help of a couple of other passengers, attempts to stop the train before its seemingly inevitable crash.

Omid Nooshin's only feature was reportedly produced with an austere budget of 2.5 million dollars. What makes this worth noting is that the film looks it costs more. The running time is 96 minutes. Just those two elements should be a reminder that you do not need inflated budgets and running times to make a reasonably entertaining film - and Last Passenger is more than reasonably entertaining. Most of the action takes place on the train with a small cast. There are a few brief exterior shots. The exteriors, when viewed from inside the train are too blurry to be more than abstract shapes and shadows. Nooshin does make use of a judicious combination of CGI and practical effects, but they pass by so quickly that the viewer does not have the time to fully register what is being seen in the most dramatic moments other than bursts of sparks and flames. Some of the imagery is closer to a vague memory rather than a detailed evocation.

There is very little information on Omid Nooshin. He had one produced screenplay in 2016 as well as a couple of short films, and died in 2018 at the age of 43. Last Passenger was nominated for the British Independent Film Awards in the directorial debut category. The blu-ray comes with a suite of supplements that cover some of the technical aspects of the film including how a special rig was created to film within the confines of an actual train car. One of the other aspects I liked was that even though most of the film was shot inside train cars inside a studio, the train cars were constantly shifting just enough from side to side for a sense of verisimilitude.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:06 AM

June 07, 2022

The Paramount Fu Manchu Double Feature

The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu
Rowland V. Lee - 1929

The Return of Dr. Fu Manchu
Rowland V. Lee - 1930
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Normally, I would pass on a film that starred a caucasian actor in yellow face. What caught my eye was that Jean Arthur was in the cast of these two films. This was about five years before Jean Arthur became a major star associated with films by John Ford, Howard Hawks, and especially George Stevens and Frank Capra. What really surprised me was that real stardom was attained when Arthur was 35 years old. Maybe it is age or maybe it is make-up, but the actress does not look fully formed in the earlier films. As for her acting, this was when filmmakers were still figuring out how to use sound technology and the studios were plucking stars from the Broadway stage. Arthur and her romantic partner, Neil Hamilton, get melodramatic, more so in the first film than the sequel.

My previous encounters with Fu Manchu were in a couple of the 1960s films starring Christopher Lee. The two Paramount films give the title character some nuance. The opening scene shows Dr. Fu as having dedicated himself to revenge following the accidental death of his wife and son during the Boxer Rebellion around 1900. Without going to deeply into the context, the nationalistic young men of China who fought against the influence of western culture practiced martial arts which was referred to by westerners as Chinese boxing. That they were responsible for the death of Christian missionaries was part of the reason why several western countries sent armed forces to China. Dr. Fu's victims are the western military officers. He has trained his ward, Lia, to be a trained assassin under hypnosis. The two are in London in pursuit of General Petrie and Petrie's son, Jack.

Taken on their own terms, both films are entertaining. Rowland Lee and his writers seem to acknowledge the pulp origins with some dialogue that borders on self-parody in the first film. The sequel shows how much the technology had improved over the year with the varied placement of the actors and shots that show greater depth of field. Visually, my favorite scene involves Lia locked in a cell with cross hatched bars on the ceiling. There are some nice alternating shots with the camera looking down at Jean Arthur or tilted up at Warner Oland, making use of light and shadow. In both films, Lee has scenes that take place in momentary darkness that would certainly have had a visceral effect on movie theater audiences at the time of release.

Much of Tim Lucas' commentary is devoted to author Sax Rohmer and how the films differ from Rohmer's novels. In addition to discussing the cast and crew, Lucas includes some notes on some of the otherwise uncredited contributions, as well as reviews of the films from 1929 and '30. Both films are sourced from new 2K masters. Both films are in their original aspect ratio of 1.20:1. The first film does show some signs of wear while the second appears to be in perfect condition. Some of the orientalism is certain to raise a few eyebrows, especially for those more familiar with Asian culture. As for a cast of white actors plus the black Noble Johnson in yellow face, I find that less offensive as a film of its time. On the other hand, when Peter Ustinov played Charlie Chan fifty years later, one would have assumed Hollywood would have known better.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

May 24, 2022

One-Armed Boxer

Dú bì quánwáng / The Chinese Professionals
Wang Yu - 1972
Arrow Video BD Region A

The new blu-ray edition of One-Armed Boxer comes with two different Mandarin soundtracks plus an English language soundtrack. Perhaps I should see the film again with the English track. The film was written, produced and directed by its star, known also as Jimmy Wang Yu. And while it may not have been intended as such, the film is what people with casual or no familiarity with Chinese martial arts films would imagine is similar to the most generic productions. This is not the only film where various forms of fighting are showcased, but the connective tissue of a plot virtually evaporates before the film's end. One could argue that that narrative concerns were besides the point, that Wang understood that his audience was their to see their hero in action, so the film is essentially a string of martial arts set pieces.

Taking place during an unspecified past era, the film starts of with Wang coming to the defense of a man bullied by the leader of the Hook Gang. The argument in the tea house escalates to a rumble between members of two martial arts schools. A face off between two rival martial arts masters and their best students leads to a rematch with the Hook Gang, who use hooks for fighting, come back with several foreign fighters. Among these villains is a karate master from Okinawa who inexplicably has vampire fangs. The karate master fights Wang and with one hand chop cleanly amputates Wang's right arm. Dragging himself away from the action, Wang is rescued by a herbalist and his beautiful daughter. The rehabilitation process includes Wang sticking his remaining good hand into a fire to destroy his nerves, followed by pounding his hand with large and heavy brick. With his powerful left hand, Wang goes in pursuit of the remaining Hook Gang members and the foreign fighters.

Frank Djeng provides an enthusiastic commentary track. Djeng reviews the historical context in which the film takes place, as well as why Hong Kong star Wang would make Mandarin language films in Taiwan. Booklet notes by Simon Abrams provide helpful information regarding Wang's work as a martial arts star and how Wang led the genre-shift from sword fighting wuxia to hand-to-hand combat.

The main video supplement is from French film documentarian Fred Ambroisine, and interview with Wang Yu from November 2001. Wang talks about his childhood as well as his entry as a contract player for Shaw Brothers Studios. He also explains his choice to follow producer Raymond Chow to the newly formed Golden Harvest Studios. A split screen is employed with Wang on the right side of the screen, and excerpts from films on the left. There is also over half an hour's worth of trailers from several of the films starring Wang, the highlight, at least for me, being the trailer for The Man from Hong Kong. This blu-ray release is also timely as it out just a little more than a month after the death of Wang Yu this past April.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

May 17, 2022

Flower Drum Song

Henry Koster - 1961
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

For those unfamiliar, Flower Drum Song was the penultimate musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein, first staged in 1958. The story was adapted from the novel by C.Y. Lee. Stage producer Joseph Fields had a hand in crafting the play for Broadway, making it lighter than the novel, further emphasizing the comic aspects with the film's screenplay. The basic story is of an illegal Chinese immigrant, a young woman who expects to be the picture-bride of the very Americanized nightclub owner. He in turn is in love with his star performer who has begun setting her sights on a young college student, son of a wealth Chinatown patriarch. The film is essentially a comedy about cultural differences and degrees of assimilation, and radical for its time with an all Asian and Asian-American cast. Some of the points I bring up have been mentioned by others. What is offered here is hardly the last word on a film that has undergone multiple readings.

Although it would be easy to do, I will not bother enumerating most of the problems I have with Flower Drum Song. Several of those issues are addressed in the supplemental interviews. Those supplements are from the Universal Home Video DVD issued in 2006. The film itself is from a new 2K master which looks great. There are two audio options of 2.0 stereo and 5.1 surround sound. What has stayed in my mind are some of the cultural shifts that have taken place since the time of the film's release. The watercolor paintings by Dong Kingman, seen in the opening credits depicting a ship traveling from Hong Kong to San Francisco, look spectacular.

Nancy Kwan was only 22 years old when she starred as Linda Low, the featured performer in the Celestial Gardens nightclub located in San Francisco's Chinatown. Kwan was not a singer, as was dubbed by B. J. (Betty Jane) Baker. Kwan was a trained dancer, and her energy is obvious from the first time she appears, but especially in the elaborate "Grant Avenue" number. In a more perfect world, Nancy Kwan would have made a film with Elvis that could have been up there with Viva Las Vegas. Kwan's also too brief duet with teenage Patrick Adiarte, "You be the rock, I'll be the roll", hints at what could have been. While Kwan had a relatively solid career, there was little that made use of her dramatic or dancing talents. Five years later, Kwan's co-star, James Shigeta would play Elvis' best friend in Paradise Hawaiian Style.

Patrick Adiarte was seventeen at the time of filming and one of the cast members from the original 1958 Broadway production. In one of the supplements, it is mentioned that his role as the thoroughly Americanized son of a Chinese patriarch was explanded to take advantage of his dancing abilities. Reiko Sato's dancing is showcased in a ballet as part of the song, "Love Look Away". Sato appeared in one more movie, while Adiarte had a short career in supporting roles in film and television.

In one of the supplements, playwright David Henry Kwang talks about how the original play and film both present a tourist's eye view of Chinese-Americans. Kwan attempted to correct some of the aspects of the original play with his revised version of the play that was staged in 2002. One of the steps Kwang took was to bring the play more in keeping with the more serious source novel by C. Y. Lee. The 1957 novel itself was unusual as a best seller about Chinese-Americans written by a Chinese immigrant. While issues of representation and cultural appropriation have not disappeared, in the seventeen years since the interviews were done for the Flower Drum Song, Asian-Americans have been more visible in telling there own stories including those where race is not a factor. While there has been progress, it is primarily in the realm of the independent films. A small news article from 2021 mentions a possible revised film version of Flower Drum Song although the disappointing box office of the new version of West Side Story and In the Height has probably put those plans on hold.

What makes Flower Drum Song still worth watching are the musical numbers. It might be worth noting that the Broadway version appeared a year after West Side Story. Both share the theme of cultural tensions of being the other in the United States. The big difference is that the Chinese-Americans in Flower Drum Song exist in an insular society with limited and cordial interaction with white society, while the Puerto Ricans of West Side Story are reminded by white society and each other of their outsider status. While the song, "America", in West Side Story points to the cultural tensions, "Chop Suey", in Flower Drum Song is a celebration of cultural assimilation, albeit one with some very dated references. Choreographer Hermes Pan uses "Chop Suey" as a starting off point for an extended dance scene that segues from cha-cha to square dance to rock.

The most famous song, "I Enjoy Being a Girl", is staged in a way to take advantage of the wide screen format. Nancy Kwan sings to herself with the reflection from three mirrors. The reflections turn into three differently dressed versions of Ms. Kwan, a celebration of being a fashionista. The dances are all filmed primarily with full shots with the occasional medium shot. The staging of the musical numbers for the camera is similar to the collaborations Fred Astaire did with Hermes Pan that it could well be that Pan had more to do with the direction in those scenes than credited director Henry Koster.

The commentary track with Nancy Kwan and film historian Nick Redman primarily splits between Kwan discussing the making of the film and her own life. There should be note on the blu-ray package to note that the commentary was part of the 2006 DVD. Kwan mentions how James Shigeta and co-star Miyoshi Umeki had known each other as popular singers in Japan prior to their acting careers in Hollywood films. Also pointed out is the appearance of Henry Koster's wife in a mock old movie seen on television. With the discussion of what David Henry Kwang did and did not do with revision of Flower Drum Song, I have to wonder what the late Nick Redman would have made of Tony Kushner's revisions to West Side Story for a contemporary audience.

Of the six Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals to go from Broadway to film, Flower Drum Song is the only one that was not produced by 20th-Century Fox. One of the possible reasons is that Fox had already had their remake of Rodger and Hammerstein's State Fair in development at the same time. In any event, Flower Drum Song was the 11th or 12th most popular film of 1961, based on pre-computer box office tallies. Setting aside aspects of the screenplay that were reflected dated stereotypes at the time of release, the musical numbers remain entertaining and inventive.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:11 AM

May 10, 2022

Mamba

Production still with (from left) Albert Rogell, Ralph Forbes, Eleanor Boardman and Jean Hersholt.

Albert Rogell - 1930
Kino Classics BD Regions ABC

Kino opens their blu-ray version of Mamba with a disclaimer noting the racist nature of the film. This probably unnecessary for those most interested in seeing the film as they presumably have a longer view of film history, and history in general. At the same time, the supplements center around the discovery and restoration of what was the most complete print of a "lost" film. After my first pass at viewing Mamba, I wonder if contemporary audiences might have been better served with a commentary track or an essay by someone like Donald Bogle or Jacqueline Stewart to help place the film in perspective with the changes that have taken place in the past ninety-two years since the initial release. There is a bit to unpack here with the unquestioning white supremacy and colonialism of the time.

The story by itself is mind-boggling. The bulk of the film takes place in a German colony in East Africa in 1913. Jean Hersholt plays the part of the area's biggest landowner, boasting of a plantation with 2000 workers. Overweight and slovenly, he literally tries to push his weight around, bossing the German and British soldiers who are there to keep the natives in line. Hersholt more or less buys the aristocratic daughter played by Eleanor Boardman to be his wife. The two get married, but Boardman refuses to consummate the relationship. On board the ship from Germany to Africa, Boardman meets Ralph Forbes, appearing as an officer in charge of the German colony. World War I causes the Germans and British to fight each other, with the natives taking advantage with tribes joining up to rebel against the Germans. The British troops save the overwhelmed Germans because nothing could be worse than Africans in control of their own land.

Those last couple of reels are unintentionally humorous as they play like the like the most cliched Western with African "savages" instead of Native Americans, and a British cavalry complete with bugle charge coming to the rescue. It is also not enough to note that Mamba is a pre-Code film. In the opening few minutes it is suggested that Hersholt not only fathered a child with a native woman, but also has a black mistress. The theme of adultery is also significant here. The restored version is from an Australian print missing three minutes that were censored locally. Dialogue was preserved from a complete set of soundtrack discs. What apparently crossed the red-line for Australian censors was Hersholt's pawing of the uncooperative Boardman on their honeymoon voyage.

Kino Classics has emphasized the historical nature of Mamba. The film is noted as being the first drama to be filmed in the two-strip technicolor process. At a time when before there was an industry standard for sound film, the movie was projected with separate synchronized RCA discs. The film was produced by Tiffany, a poverty row studio that at that time was helmed by director John Stahl. Tiffany Pictures basically put all their eggs in one basket with a budget of $500,000. The film was a hit, but not enough of one to keep the studio from going under a couple years later. The opening shot is riposte to the myth of early talkies being static, with the camera traveling for about two and a half minutes through the port of the German colony. The supplements cover the recovery of the only known print in Australia, the subsequent restoration of Mamba as well as a brief history of Tiffany Pictures.

In spite of directing over one-hundred films, with a career that began as a teenager, there is very little written about Albert Rogell. What can be gleaned from his filmography and the available films is of a journeyman director of B films who continually went from assignment to assignment without distinguishing himself. John Stahl left Tiffany for Universal around the time of the release of Mamba, directing the first versions of Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession, among his handful of highly regarded films.

The commentary track is by Ozploitation filmmaker Brian Trenchard-Smith. The more interesting points concern how the film was probably perceived by viewers at the time of release versus reading the film from a contemporary perspective. Even discussing Mamba as a product of its time, one can argue about the presentation of the Africans as savages in need of civilization while at the same time providing temporary employment for a large number of black actors and extras while the United States was feeling the effects of the Great Depression. My only dispute with Trenchard-Smith is in his characterization of the three top billed actors, all very recognizable names at the time of production. Still, Trenchard-Smith should get kudos for his research and insights.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:08 AM

May 06, 2022

Julietta

Marc Allegret - 1953
Icarus Home Video Region 1 DVD

Julietta is the second of two films by Marc Allegret that has just been released as a DVD from a restored print. Perhaps because the stakes were not as high as filming a literary classic, I found this a better film than Allegret's version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. What is surprising is not just how funny this earlier film is, but that it works so well with the literary pedigree and two stars associated with more serious work. Again, Allegret adapted a novel, in this case by Louise de Vilmorin. The author's most famous novel was the basis for Max Ophul's Earrings of Madame de . . .. The screenplay was by Francoise Giroud, whose started as a script-girl on Alleget's Fanny in 1932, later becoming a journalist as well as briefly France's Minister of Culture. Jean Marais is better known for his more somber roles in films by Jean Cocteau, while Jeanne Moreau's only comparable excursion into comedy would come after stardom was established with Viva Maria!.

If Assistant Director Roger Vadim had his way, Julietta would have been the first time Brigiitte Bardot and Moreau would have been in the same film, though not sharing screen time. Dany Robin, who was a popular star at the time has the title role during a year that Bardot had only begun getting credited supporting parts. Julietta is a young woman, 18 years old, engaged to a wealthy older man, and having second thoughts about her engagement. On the train to Paris with her mother and older sister, she notices a cigarette case left behind by a passenger at a stop in Poitiers. The passenger is a well known local lawyer, Andre. Julietta catches Andre but loses her train. Talking Andre into letting her spend the night at his house, Julietta connives to extend her stay as a way of avoid the impending nuptials. Confusion reigns when Andre's fiancee, Rosie, comes to visit.

There are echoes of the classic screwball comedy at work here with Marais frenetically trying to hide the presence of Robin from Moreau, with physical bits such as completely spilling a tray filled with food and drink. Moreau is the hysteria prone fiancee shrieking at the sight of a spider, unexplained noises, a blown fuse while she is taking a bath, and mistaking Marais for a ghostly apparition when he is seen covered in one of the several bedsheets he is carrying. Moreau's performance is the most interesting to watch because it is both atypical, but also because Moreau's face is so smooth and unlined, as if she has yet to become the fully formed actress who would become more formidable a few years later. Dany Robin is attractive but so easily upstaged by Moreau and Marais. Robin's best moment is in the film's opening scene with her pirouetting on the beach towards the camera. A year after Lady Chatterley's Lover, Brigitte Bardot was now a top billed star in France with four of six films released that year, one directed by Marc Allegret.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:29 AM

May 03, 2022

Lady Chatterley's Lover

L'Amant de lady Chatterley
Marc Allegret - 1955
Icarus Home Video Region 1 DVD

Contemporary viewers of Lady Chatterley's Lover may be wondering what the fuss was about, at least in the United States where it was temporarily banned for allegedly "promoting adultery". The U.S. release occurred in 1959, almost simultaneously with the publication of D. H. Lawrence's novel, itself the subject of banning internationally. At the same time, Marc Allegret is still a relatively unknown director in spite of his prolific filmography for a couple of reasons. The stateside distribution of foreign films has always been inconsistent during Allegret's career with feature films spanning from 1931 through 1970. Allegret's films never were part of the revival arthouse circuit possibly due to the influence of Francois Truffaut and his dismissal of the "cinema de papa". While Children of Paradise and double features of Diabolique and Wages of Fear were easy to see theatrically in the 1970s, films by the peers of Carne and Clouzot remained unknown.

In the case of Lady Chatterley's Lover, I think I can see what Truffaut was criticizing. I can not claim to be knowledgable about Lawrence, and while I did read the novel, that was about thirty-five years ago. But for a film based on a novel that is about emotional and physical love, it is a very stately affair. There is more life in Jack Cardiff's 1960 film of Sons and Lovers. By 1969, the demise of the old production code meant that Ken Russell could more more direct in filming Women in Love. Between the limits of film censorship in 1955 and Allegret's discretion, the only scene depicting sex between Lady Chatterley and Mellors, the gamekeeper, begins with a two-shot of the couple embracing on blanket in a shack, their faces and shoulders visible, followed by a shot of a very tall tree, chopped down in the woods, falling, the symbolism impossible to miss, followed by another of Lady Chatterley and Mellors in the same embrace but with suggested nudity. While D. H. Lawrence used some very clear language regarding sex, most of the reference to sex as filmed by Marc Allegret is mostly avoided, with Danielle Darrieux's erotic potential covered up with large towels and blankets.

Allegret also updates the film to its then contemporary setting, so that references to the past war would be World War II. There is some streamlining of the novel so that most of the film takes place within the confines of the Chatterley estate with even the outdoor scenes feeling claustrophobic. This was one of the last staring roles for Danielle Darrieux before continuing her career in mostly supporting roles through 2010. The British actor Leo Genn appears as Lord Chatterley. Mellors is played by the Italian actor Erno Crisa, whose filmography indicates a career mostly in smaller supporting roles. There is very little written about Marc Allegret in English. The summary of several of his earlier films suggests that there is more of interest in several of earlier films. Allegret also has a reputation for launching the careers of several French stars including Simone Simon and Brigitte Bardot. While this new restoration of Lady Chatterley's Lover> may not improve Allegret's standing in terms of film scholarship, it remains of historical interest, as well as providing a showcase for the talents of its iconic star.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:56 AM

April 26, 2022

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema VI

Singapore
John Brahm - 1947

Johnny Stool Pigeon
William Castle - 1949

The Raging Tide
George Sherman - 1951
KL Studio Classics BD Region A Three-disc set

The three films are from the studio known at the time as Universal-International. That they are classified as film noir is indicative of how elastic that term has become. There is little of the stylization that is found in the canonical films. Not every film can or has to be a Touch of Evil or Kiss Me Deadly, so as long as there are no unrealistic expectations, there is no reason why one can not enjoy these films as they are.

If you have seen Casablanca, then you have already seen Singapore. I exaggerate, but not by much. The comparisons are part of several reviews of John Brahms's film. The story was by screenwriter Seton I. Miller, whose name might be remembered from several classic Warner Brothers movies from the 1930s and 40s. The main supporting cast includes Roland Culver, Richard Haydn, Thomas Gomez and George Lloyd taking parts that in a Warners' film would have Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre respectively. The leads are played by Fred MacMurray, then at the top of his career as a movie star, and Ava Gardner, newly minted as a star following The Killers from the year before.

MacMurray plays a pearl smuggler returning to Singapore following the end of World War II. He hopes to resume his business and recover a cache of pearls left in a hotel that survived the war. Gardner is the fiancee MacMurray thought had been killed during a Japanese attack, only she got amnesia and is now married to plantation owner Roland Culver. The film was made when Asia was referred to as the Orient. While Singapore is not exactly a Casablanca clone, there is that ending at the airport.

John Brahm is best remembered for such films as Hangover Square and his version of The Lodger. He also directed some of the best episodes of the early 1960s television anthology series, Thriller, with "A Wig for Miss Devore" unnerving me at age 10. There are several nice shots of MacMurray and Gardner mostly in the shadows, their profiles partially illuminated.

Even William Castle was dismissive of Johnny Stool Pigeon, called it "pedestrian". It is actually better than Castle recalls, especially the dialogue free opening scene at a San Francisco pier. Federal agent Howard Duff convinces convict Dan Duryea to help him bust a narcotics ring rather than enjoy the comforts of a long stay at Alcatraz. Shelley Winters, a mobster's girlfriend, tags along, although it is never certain whose side she's on. The three end up at an Arizona dude ranch run by the overly ingratiating John McIntire. When Strangers Marry from 1944 is proof that William Castle could make a stylish film within the restrictions of a Monogram budget. Johnny Stool Pigeon does benefit from some on location photography, plus a fourth billed Tony Curtis as a hired gun. Still credited as Anthony Curtis, this is a silent performance with the actor basically glaring at everyone else. I imagine that early in his career, the suits may not have been sure how to work with or around Curtis' Bronx accent, but they knew he had screen presence.

Many years ago I saw part of a movie on television in which Shelley Winters was being interrogated by a cop in her bedroom. She is asked what she does for a living and responds that she sells hats. As she puts it, and I am paraphrasing here, men give her hats and she sells them back. I never knew the title of that film until I saw The Raging Tide. The cop is played by Stephen McNally, and he is in pursuit of Winter's boyfriend, Richard Conte. On the run in San Francisco, Conte hides out in a fishing boat operated by Charles Bickford with Alex Nicol as his son. Conte discovers he likes the honest work of a fisherman over his previous life of crime although it does not stop him from temporarily recruiting Nicol to do collect money on his behalf. The story is ultimately a parable of redemption following the small fishing boat surviving an ocean storm. Of note is that the screenplay was by Ernest K. Gann from his novel. Gann is most famous for aviation novels that have been filmed including The High and the Mighty and Fate is the Hunter.

Director George Sherman is better known for his many low budget westerns, though he did work on a handful of films in other genres. His career was somewhat circular beginning with several film starring John Wayne at Republic Pictures prior to Stagecoach, with Sherman ending his career directing Wayne in what would be his most commercially successful film, Big Jake.

All three films come with commentary tracks. Lee Gambin and Kat Ellinger offer a casual chat covering the stars and director of Singapore, additionally discussing the film's historical context. Jason Ney's commentary for Johnny Stool Pigeon is a well prepared presentation on the film's location shooting, some biographical information, and placing the film within the context of film noir at the time of production. A highlight is the inclusion of an "interview" with Dan Duryea that was distributed to several radio stations in 1949, with Ney reading the scripted questions. David Del Valle and Miles Hunter share friendly banter on The Raging Tide, primarily covering the primary cast, with a few words on Ernest Gann and cinematographer Russell Metty. Curiously, while they discuss the similarities and differences of film noir with the western, no mention is made of George Sherman's career as mostly a niche director.

All three films have been sourced from 2K restorations and look quite good when the action takes place in the shadows.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

April 22, 2022

The Indian Tomb

Das indische Grabmal
Joe May - 1921
Kino Classics BD Region A

I was not prepared for how different the first film version of The Indian Tomb is from Fritz Lang's version. Lang co-wrote the screenplay with then wife and collaborator Thea von Harbou for the 1921 film. Lang's 1959 version bears little resemblance other than having European characters in a fantasy India, and a few shared plot points. Both films have a woman dancing in front of a snake, but it May's film the scene is brief ending with a quick, but fatal snakebite. Lang's film is remembered mostly for its much longer scene with Debra Paget doing the hoochie coochie in front of a very large and very fake cobra. It may also be worth noting that Lang's film was actually the third version, with the second version released in 1938.

So we have British architect Herbert Rowland invited to India by a maharajah, Ayan III. The invitation comes via a yogi, Ramigani, who materializes in Rowland's house. Ramigani is a tall, imposing man, who seems to also be omniscient, outsmarting everyone by disconnecting telephones, stealing letters and causing the wheels of cars to fall off with his powerful mental telepathy. Rowland is convinced to go to India without letting anyone else know. His fiancee, Irene, is concerned enough to uncover enough clues to lead her in pursuit of Rowland in India. It turns out that Ayan might be rich and powerful, with a castle protected by a lake with hungry crocodiles, but he is also very unhappy with his wife, Princess Savitri. The princess has revealed her affection for the adventurer Mac Allen by giving him one very big ring, a gift from Ayan. Rowland questions Ayan's desire to build a tomb for Savitri in advance, causing both he and Irene to remain as house guests with restrictions at the maharajah's castle.

I will refer to The Indian Tomb as one film even though, like the remakes, it was released as two separate features. The film is probably best appreciated on its own terms. As mentioned, this is a fantasy India where part of the plot hinges on half-baked understandings of Hinduism, Buddhism and Yoga. One room that is apparently devoted to religious devotion has what looks like a very large menorah. Much of the German cast is in brown face. Olaf Fonns was 39 years old when he appeared as Herbert Rowland but already looked like somebody's grandfather. Joe May's wife, Mia, was already quite matronly at age 37. For a fiancee who steals her mother's pearls and hires a plane to fly from England to India, Joe May might have been better off casting his 18 year old daughter, the actress Eva, rather than Mama Mia. Bernhard Goetzke, the mysterious yogi, makes enough of an impression that it is no surprise that Fritz Lang cast him in three of his films. Not quite as tall, but almost as lean, is Conrad Veidt as Ayan. The name is from Sanskrit translated as "gift from God". Is it coincidental that it is one letter away from Aryan? The Indian Tomb was made at a time when India was part of German popular culture. Ayan may be the villain, if not as thoroughly villainous as Ramigani, but he is not entirely unsympathetic either.

The sets are impressive in their sheer scale of size. It is like Joe May saw Intolerance and said to himself, "I can do that!". The actors are dwarfed by several of the sets. Unless one is totally jaded from exposure to CGI, there is delight in seeing what were the state of the art special effects of a century ago, mostly seen in the first half of the film.

The blu-ray was sourced from a 2K digital restoration from 2016 which in turn was from a 1994 version assemble primarily from surviving French and Czech prints. The film is also tinted as it was at the time of release. A supplement written and narrated by Scottish film scholars David Cairns and Fiona Watson offers there assessment, plus that of other film scholars, on The Indian Tomb.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:33 AM

April 19, 2022

Rogue Cops and Racketeers: Two Crime Thrillers by Enzo G. Castellari

The Big Racket / Il Grande Racket (1976)

The Heroin Busters / La Via della Droga (1977)
Arrow Video BD Region A Two-disc set

This two disc set is composed of Castellari's last two films, part of the Italian genre known as poliziotteschi, but also star Fabio Testi. The genre is generally distinguished by being about cops who often use extra-legal means of foiling criminals. The most cited inspirations are two American films, Dirty Harry, in which the law is upheld by going outside legal constraints, and The French Connection for the visceral pleasure of car chases, especially in urban areas.

There are the obvious linkages of the two films not only with the same star, key crew members, supporting actors, with the second billing of a recognizable English language actor. Beyond that, Castellari's protagonists do not have a private life. They are only seen as working professionals. The criminals that are being pursued are mostly the street level soldiers working on behalf of an organization that itself may be the subsidiary of a respectable front. Even if one is able to identify the higher echelon crime bosses, their death only means a temporary disruption rather than an end to their activity.

In The Big Racket, Testi plays a cop trying to bust a small gang operating a protection racket in Rome, turning vigilante when his methods cause him to be ousted from the police force. In The Heroin Busters, Testi goes undercover to infiltrate a gang of international drug traffickers. The basic stories are topical ripped from the headlines plots. As commercial projects made within modest budgets and genre expectations, what is of interest are the ways Castellari finds ways to make his films stylistically of interest.

The most famous scene in The Big Racket also involves a questionable set-up. Testi follows the gang of youngish hoods to a field that is the rendezvous point with a well dressed gangster, Rudy, clearly higher in the chain of command. Test is noticed, and his car is pushed sideway down the edge of a hill with Testi still inside. Testi is filmed in slow motion close up with the car rolling down sideways, shards of glass flying in the air. Castellari gives away how the shot was done in his supplementary interview. It is an amazing visual moment considering the limited means at his disposal and with a star who was willing to put himself in physical danger. Prior to that scene, Rudy is introduced in a montage of six close-ups done from different angles, with Castellari repeating that moment with Testi seen in four quick consecutive close-ups from different angles, done just before one of the bigger action set pieces.

What is striking about The Heroin Busters is the location work. In an early chase scene, Testi runs by a Roman street with what can only be described as artwork, too good to be dismissed as graffiti, on the wall of an apartment building. Several of the locations are empty. One chase scene was filmed in a subway station that had not yet been opened, with neon colored rings in the tunnel. Another scene was filmed in what appears to be the basic structure of an apartment building that was either in the early stages of construction or possibly abandoned. The final chase is with two small airplanes flying over a highway that had not officially opened. Castellari makes use of framing devices within the camera frame, most notably when Testi looks through a small pipe to scope out a criminal.

Second billed Vincent Gardenia has a small role as an old time petty thief who assists Testi in identifying the organization behind the protection racket in The Big Racket. David Hemmings has a much larger role as an Interpol agent in The Heroin Busters, although it is a shock to see his gray hair and puffy face just eleven years after his star making turn in Blow-Up. Both actors dub their own voices in the English language versions of their respective films. I had to look up Marcella Michelangeli on IMDb to realize I had seen her before in Padre Padrone and Beware of a Holy Whore. Most of her work was in genre films. In The Big Racket, Michelangeli plays the baddest of bad girls, defiant when the guys in the gang wimp out.

As is usual for Arrow, there is an abundance of extras. The enclosed, illustrated booklet has essays by Italian film historian Roberto Curti and British film historian Barry Forshaw. The two casual commentary tracks by Adrian Smith and David Flint are more geared to genre enthusiasts. There are also interviews with Castellari, Testi, supporting actor Massimo Vanni, and editor Gianfranco Amicucci. The Heroin Busters also features an interview with Nicola Longo, the former undercover policeman whose experiences provided some inspiration for the film.

Two small quibbles about The Big Racket - The actress Anna Bellini is referred to by her past married name of Anna Zinnemann. She had already divorced Tim Zinnemann, son of High Noon director Fred Zinnemann, for several years. Whomever did the subtitles misspelled the family name as "Zinnermann", making me wonder how no one noticed this error. Also, editor Amicucci's interview is titled "King of Moviola". For those unfamiliar with how films were edited in the pre-digital era, the Moviola was a machine that ran film through a vertical system, operated by a foot pedal. For whatever reason, Hollywood did not adopt using the flatbed system until the 1970s, even though this was how films were edited in Europe since the mid 1930s. We see a shot of a flatbed editing suite which makes me wonder if moviola was used as a generic term for editing machines. By the way, during my brief time making films, I have used both systems.

Both films have Italian and English language tracks, plus English subtitles. As was usual at the time, both films were shot to be post-dubbed and even in the Italian versions, the voices of some of the local cast are not necessarily their own.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 AM

April 05, 2022

Jigsaw

Val Guest - 1962
Cohen Film Collection BD Region A

It is on the commentary track with the BFI blu-ray of Expresso Bongo that Val Guest is asked about his favorites among his films. In that 2005 discussion, Jigsaw is at the top of the list. The choice is curious considering Guest's filmography. The film comes right after The Day the Earth Caught Fire, probably Guest's most serious film and the only one to get a BAFTA nomination, for the screenplay cowritten with Wolf Mankowitz. Two years earlier, Mankowitz received a solo nomination for what is probably Guest's best known film, the still influential Expresso Bongo (see Last Night in Soho and Absolute Beginners). At the time of its release, Jigsaw was lauded for being one of the best British police procedural films.

The source novel, Sleep Long, My Love is first of a series of novels of detective Fred Fellows, written by American author Hillary Waugh. The inspiration was an actual murder investigation that took place in Connecticut. Guest moved the film to Brighton and the surrounding area, a significant break from the London based genre films. The scene of the crime is an older house, one of the few in a rural area that is mostly a low rent trailer park. One first shot inside is of a table with both playing cards and tarot cards. A woman in her 30s has woken up and decides to wake the man sleeping with her. All that is seen of the man are partial images from the back. The woman tries to convince the man to make their relationship permanent and informs him that she is pregnant. We never see the face of the man, nor does he speak. The last image of the woman is of her mouth muffled by the man's hands, cut directly to a shot of a train with a shriek of a whistle.

The investigation is handled by Detective Jim Wilks with his uncle, the retirement age Fred Fellows. The jigsaw is the case where there seem to be no clues to the identities of the murderer or his victim. Where there seem to be clues lead initially to misdirection. The title could possibly refer to the state of the victim, with the implication that she was dismembered before her body was hidden in a trunk. We never see the victim, only the faces of the detectives when the body is discovered. Coming as it did after Psycho and Peeping Tom, Jigsaw may have been intended as being tasteful at a time when depictions of murder were becoming more graphic, but seems timid in retrospect.

The film came out during what may be considered Val Guest's peak creative period. Starting out with comedies and generally lighter fare, Guest's best films are the more serious works. Most of his films bear his name as writer or cowriter, taking as much of a direct hand in shaping films that were often assignments in a variety of genres. As in many of Guest's films, there is a role for his wife and muse, Yolande Donlan. Here, Ms. Donlan plays a would-be victim of the murderer who helps provide a break in the investigation. Guest's career went into a steep decline following the release of the 1967 version of Casino Royale with Guest directing the scenes with Woody Allen and given the job of making a cohesive film from the work of four other directors. The blu-ray of Jigsaw has no extras other than trailers. The film has been noted for providing a semi-documentary look at Brighton in the early 1960s. Val Guest's career may have uneven in quality, but is worth investigating as a writer/director who was more than a journeyman but not quite an auteur.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

April 01, 2022

Man's Favorite Sport?

Howard Hawks - 1964
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Although I consider myself an auteurist in my approach to writing about films, I do not tether myself to some of the orthodoxies as established by Andrew Sarris. As heretical as it may be to some, especially after revisiting some of his films, I do no hold Howard Hawks in a great esteem as others. Hawks especially seems to have run out of inspiration after Harari when he was essentially trying to capture past success. Several others have already written about how Man's Favorite Sport? was built on the bones of Bringing Up Baby. The follow-up, Red Line 7000 recalls The Crowd Roars. After two lukewarm commercial and critical films, Hawks was reduced to remaking Rio Bravo two more times. The commercial success was due to star John Wayne. Unlike the period westerns, when Hawks made films taking place in the early 1960s, the sense that he is straining to be contemporary.

Younger viewers may be surprised to know that there was a time when Abercrombie and Fitch sold sporting goods, and was the store of choice for well-heeled sportsmen including Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. In Hawks' film, Roger Willoughby is the top salesman of the San Francisco store, specializing in fishing gear. His instructional book is revered by other sportsmen. It is after the public relations representative for a lodge, Abigail Page, signs Willoughby to a fishing tournament, that it is revealed that he has never actually fished but has based his career on listening to customers, passing on their best information. The film follows familiar Hawksian tropes with the combative relationship between Roger and Abigail, scenes of humiliation, followed by a resolution where all pretenses are finally set aside.

Hawks wanted to make Man's Favorite Sport? with Cary Grant. And the screenplay was written with Grant in mind, initially opposite Katherine Hepburn. All through my watching the blu-ray, I was trying to imagine how the lines spoken by Rock Hudson would have sounded had they been delivered by Grant. And Hudson tries really, really hard, but as the constantly exasperated Roger Willoughby, he lacks the lightness Grant conveys even in the most frustrating circumstances. Paula Prentiss follows the template of Hawksian women, modeled after Hawks ex-wife, "Slim" Keith. Prentiss matches Hudson for participating in the physical comedy.

The opening credits seems to promise a different kind of film. The title song concludes that man's favorite sport is the pursuit of women. What we see are a collection of various young, conventionally attractive women engaged in a variety of sports. The photos were by Don Ornitz, originally for Life magazine. In this film, female athletes like Althea Gibson and Wilma Rudolph do not exist, nor anyone like them. There is also the myth of the Hawksian woman as the equal to the male characters, yet fishing here is presented as an entirely male enterprise. An opportunity for more comedy seems squandered by not having Prentiss demonstrating skills with the rod and reel.

The commentary track by film historian Michael Schlesinger also includes comments by Prentiss and her husband, actor/director Richard Benjamin. Schlesinger makes no secret of his love for this film. Do I have a blind spot concerning Man's Favorite Sport?. In any event, I am not one to begrudge those who have admired this film, but only to say that I do not share their enthusiasm. Schlesinger does point out how Hawks directed Hudson to mimic certain mannerisms of Cary Grant. Also he points out the several character actors who have previously worked with Hawks. One of the uncredited cast members, briefly seen as a secretary, is Margaret Sheridan, best known as the lone girl with the Arctic team in the original The Thing. The blu-ray is sourced from a very good print that does justice to the use of color, especially noticeable in a scene in a piano museum with colored glass windows. While a revisit of the film and the commentary track may not change the critical opinion of some viewers, Hawkian completists should be pleased. And, OK, I admit it - I did laugh at the scene of the bear riding the little trail bike.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

March 29, 2022

Shakedown

Joe Pevney - 1950
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One of the couple of virtues to Joseph Pevney's debut feature is that it cuts to the chase immediately. No padding with introductory exposition. Howard Duff is chased by three thugs in a railroad yard. Duff hides his camera near the underside of a train and then continues to run. The thugs catch up with him. Duff has tossed his camera case into the bay which the thugs do not realize is empty. After being punched several times, Duff is left sprawled on the rail tracks with barely enough strength to drag himself away from an oncoming train.

Shakedown has a running time of eighty minutes, and a cast of Universal contract players and stars who found more work in television. The film was probably made primarily to serve as a second feature in urban theaters or as something for smaller theaters to run at a time when a movie might be given an engagement of two or three days. The cast is made up of recognizable names with actors who's careers either saw a descent in the case of Brian Donlevy, or who had plateaued to a certain level, which had happened wth Duff, Lawrence Tierney and Bruce Bennett. Actress Peggy Dow retired from acting within a couple of years while Anne Vernon returned to a long, rewarding career primarily in her native France. Universal cut some financial corners by recycling excerpts from the scores of previous releases. There is also a blink or you will miss it appearance by an uncredited Rock Hudson. Peggy Dow noted in an interview that she also had to supply her own wardrobe. The studio did have enough confidence in Pevney to allow for some location shooting in San Francisco that is thankfully devoid of tourist eye establishing shots save for a brief pan of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Duff, as Jack Early, recovers his camera and uses in an incriminating photograph as his calling card to get on the staff of a newspaper. He convinces photo editor Ellen Bennett and editor David Glover to allow him to work provisionally when Early manages to take a photo of a man who drove his car off a pier. Early wants to be a professional photographer in the worst way possible. After talking a camera shy reputed gangster into posing for him, Early starts scheming ways to use his photos to blackmail the gangster and his rival. In addition to his desire for money and celebrity, Early sees himself as a lady's man, forcing his attentions on Ellen and Nita, the wife of the gangster with the respectable front. Without belaboring the point, Early has a sharp sense of perspective behind the camera, but not in terms of looking at himself.

Jason Ney's commentary track compares Jack Early to the legendary Arthur "Weegee" Fellig, using quotes from Fellig's autobiography. The big difference is that Fellig may have used devious methods at time to get his shots, but he also had a sense of ethics that Early lacks. Also in connecting Shakedown to the film noir canon, Ney points out that co-screenwriter wrote the original story for Detour as well as having a hand in The Narrow Margin. Ney also relays how Joseph Pevney was able to move from being one of Universal's contract supporting players to being given the chance to direct, with a modestly budgeted film that represented a small gamble on the part of the studio. Pevney's direction might be best described as functional. For those who grew up watching movies, sometimes indiscriminately, on late night broadcast television, Shakedown is the kind of film that might appear after midnight, with commercial interruptions, still fitting perfectly into a ninety minute slot.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

March 24, 2022

Farewell

Abschied
Robert Siodmak - 1930
Kino Classics BD Region A

The full title is the unwieldy Abschied - Ernstes und Heiteres aus einer Familienpension. The Google translation is "Farewell - serious and cheerful from a family pension", the pension in this case being a boarding house where the film takes place.

Farewell has forced me to consider that Robert Siodmak still is, as Andrew Sarris might put it, a subject for further research. Most discussion about the director is centered on a dozen American films made between 1944 (Phantom Lady) and 1950 (Deported). That's twelve films in a filmography that lists sixty-two directorial credits per IMDb. Until recently, the only available pre-Hollywood film available was People on Sunday, a collaborative effort. Siodmak's last theatrical film to get significant distribution, Custer of the West was a job for hire, but might also need reconsideration in light of Siodmak's two films prior being adaptations of novels by Karl May, the popular author of an imagined American west beloved by Germans.

If for no other reason, Farewell is of interest as Siodmak's first solo work as a director. The screenplay is an early credit for Emeric Pressburger several years before his more famous collaborations with Michael Powell. The other screen writer, Irma von Cube, worked primarily with Anatole Litvak in his German period. This was the third film for cinematographer Eugen Shufftan who later was rewarded with an Oscar for his work on The Hustler. It should be of little surprise that all four left Germany between 1933 and 1936.

Unlike People on Sunday, Farewell takes place entirely indoors, in the hallway of a boarding house, and in a couple of the boarders' rooms. Peter and Hella are a couple who, if not formally engaged, seem to have an understanding. Their relationship is strained by the news that Peter has been offered a good paying job that requires his leaving Berlin, as well as his suspicions about Hella's fidelity. While Peter and Hella's relationship provides the main drama, the film is more of an ensemble piece with various residents popping in and out of doors. One of the various strands involves the perpetually broke "Baron" played by character actor Vladimir Sokoloff, scheming even for pennies. Also there is composer Erwin Bootz, as a version of himself, noodling on the piano, providing a soundtrack that appears to be diegetic throughout the film.

The German film industry had been working on sound with films and had their own successful system in place by 1929. Siodmak plays with offscreen shouting, the roar of a vacuum cleaner, and the aforementioned piano music. As Anthony Slide points out in his commentary track, naturalism has replaced expressionism, and Siodmak employs a different type of visual stylization. Some of the shots are arranged to force the viewer to observe more than one focal point going from front to back. This is first noticeable in the shot of the hallway with boarders looking out of their respective doors. Later, in a medium shot of a group of boarders, the face of the landlady breaks into the frame from the right as a close-up. That the shooting schedule was reportedly just twelve days and was under the direction of a relative novice suggests that the production company UFA may have viewed Farewell as a low risk test of their new technology.

The blu-ray was sourced from the 2014 digital restoration. Included is the second, tacked on ending, added a year after the initial release, which was done without the consent of the director.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:55 AM

March 21, 2022

To Sleep so as to Dream

Yumemiru yōni nemuritai
Kaizo Hayashi - 1986
Arrow Video BD Region A

In the interest of transparency, I should mention that I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the restoration of this film. That said, that is the extent of any financial connection I have which was totally independent of Arrow Video.

If Kaizo Hayashi has any kind of name recognition, it would be for his mid 1990s trilogy of detective Maiku Hama. Beyond the phonetic play on Mike Hammer, are the stories of a young admirer of the classic hard-boiled crime dramas, with a home and office tucked near the projection booth of a rundown movie palace in Tokyo. One of the films in the trilogy is titled Stairway to the Distant Past. Hayashi loves old movies, especially old Japanese movies, and his debut feature is his love letter.

The film is immediately retro by not only taking place in the early 1930s, but by being a silent film, made to look like the films of that era. Unlike the United States and western Europe, silent films were still the standard up until about 1934, with the last films produced as late as 1938. The film within the film, featuring a ninja action hero known as the Black Mask, looks like something pulled from the vaults of a film archive. The title of that film is The Eternal Mystery. An elderly woman, Madame Cherryblossom, hires young detective Uotsuka to find her missing daughter, Bellflower. To get into greater detail is almost impossible as the film drifts seamlessly between the search for the daughter and various digressions, detours and fantasies.

The film takes place where time and place are not fully tethered to reality. Uotsuka and his assistant, Kobashi, travel in a tiny car from a later era, and listen to recording from the kidnappers on a small reel-to-reel deck. One could say that the film takes place in an imagined Tokyo that finally ends with the destruction of conventional notions of time and place all merging together.

Hayashi even has a very real connection to Japan's silent era with Fujiko Fukamizu as Madame Cherryblossom. At age 16, Ms. Fukumizu was a silent film star beginning in 1932. She retired from acting in 1941. Hayashi was able to get her back on screen forty-five years later. Initially, Hayashi wanted to cast another retired screen icon, Setsuko Hara.

Having two commentary tracks helps place To Sleep so as to Dream within the context of Hayashi's career, the film's place in both Japanese film history and the references to the silent era, and making some kind of sense of the more fantastic elements of the narrative. The first commentary is by Hayashi with his star, Shiro Sana. Part of it is a casual recollection of how the two men both had early careers in experimental theater before Hayashi was able to raise money and attract talent to make his low budget debut feature. The film was shot in 16mm. Having an experienced cinematographer, it is amazing to know that most of the film was composed of single takes with very little excised for the final cut. Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, specialists in Japanese film history, discuss Hayashi's career and point out how the film within the film, The Eternal Mystery, resembles something shot by the action film pioneer, Daisuke Ito. Also included is a booklet with the director's statement and an essay by film historian Aaron Gerow.

Most delightful of all is the inclusion of an interview with benshi Midori Sawato. Essentially part of the presentation of silent films in Japan and celebrities in their own right, Sawato has been active since 1973. Her teacher, Shunsui Matsuda, who appears as a benshi in To Sleep so as to Dream was instrumental in salvaging many silent era films that were discarded. An additional supplement features Sawato performing as a benshi on a scene from The Eternal Mystery.

The blu-ray is sourced from the 2K restoration which positively glows.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

March 15, 2022

Alain Resnais: Five Short Films

Alain Resnais

Le Chant du Styrene - 1957
Paul Gauguin - 1949
Guernica - 1949
Toute la Memoire du Monde - 1956
Van Gogh - 1948
Icarus Films BD Region A

What links these five shorts is that they were also produced by Pierre Braunberger. It was Braunberger who encouraged the novice filmmaker, then in his early 20s to consider becoming a director, handing several commissioned projects. As a producer, Braunberger's name should be familiar as the person who helped launch the "Nouvelle Vague", financing early short films by Truffaut and Godard. The booklet that comes with the blu-ray features an interview with Braunberger's daughter, Laurence.

Those familiar with Resnais' features from his first decade and half would find it fitting that one of the films here is titled (in English) as All the World's Memories. Unlike the real or imagined memories of the dramatic features, this is a documentary about the National Library of France. Even so, Resnais begins with a visual memory of Citizen Kane before getting down to business. The short opens with a microphone dangling from a boom, dipping down from the top of the frame, similar to the opening shot of the Citizen Kane trailer. This is followed by a series of traveling overhead shots of piles of manuscripts, books crowded on shelves, and an uncountable number of boxes, reminders of the camera taking inventory in Kane's Xanadu. Resnais' playfulness with his subject matter has him remind the viewer that the library not only collects every literary book published in France, but comic books as well with a glance at favorites, "Mandrake the Magician" and "Dick Tracy".

The shorts on impressionist painters Paul Gaugin and Vincent Van Gogh are both biographical portraits using only their respective artwork. Seen almost back to back, what struck me is how the two friends and rivals seemed to influence each others work in the way some of the faces were painted. Van Gogh also won the Academy Award for Best Short Subject in 1950.

The direction of Guernica is co-credited to Robert Hessens, also credited for his writing contributions on Van Gogh. The actual painting is never seen in full, but is presented in fragments, along with other paintings and sculptures by Picasso, while actress Maria Casares reads a poem by Paul Eluard, "The Victory of Guernica".

For those unfamiliar with French, the Le Chant du Styrene is a pun on the word styrene, in English, siren. Having read a couple of his novels, I am assuming this little joke was by the film's writer, Raymond Queueau, most famous for his novel, Zazie. What is suppose to be an industrial documentary on the history of plastic begins with various molded colored utensils springing to life. These look like images from a science-fiction movie, something finally realized with Je t'aime, je t'aime almost a decade later.

Of additional interest here are some of the collaborators to these shorts in addition to Casares and Queneau. Composers include Darius Milhaud, Georges Delarue and Maurice Jarre. Cinematographers include Sacha Vierny and Ghislain Cloquet. Le Chant du Styrene was Resnais' last short before making his feature debut with Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Even though that film coincidentally was released at about the same time as the Nouvelle Vague films first appeared, Resnais was a decade older with over twenty short films completed by that time. The restoration and availability of these five early works is certainly welcomed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:00 AM

March 09, 2022

The Devil Strikes at Night

Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam
Robert Siodmak - 1957
Kino Classics BD Region A

The Devil Strikes at Night has several of the narrative elements plus some of the expressionistic cinematography familiar to those familiar with Siodmak's Hollywood films clustered as film noir. An innocent man is framed for murder, the real murderer is lurking in the shadows prior to his one filmed act, and finally, there are acts of erasure of identities. The main story is based on the real life case of an accused serial killer that took place in Germany, in 1944. What is of interest is that what begins as the story of a murder investigation evolves into how the German state chose to manipulate the criminal justice system in the name of the Reich.

An injured former officer, Axel Kersten, has become a top police inspector. By chance, he sees the poster which suggest that there may a connection between a recent case involving strangulation with an older, unsolved murder using a similar method. The recent victims boyfriend, Willi, an older man serving in the SS is accused of the murder simply be being in the victim's room when her body was dragged back. Kersten goes to Hamburg to investigate the recent crime which leads him to Bruno. One of the few young men still a civilian, Bruno possesses extraordinary strength but is also classified as mentally unfit. Even the evidence of Bruno's guilt is not enough to prove Willi's innocence as any public knowledge would suggest possible faults within the legal system. That Willi is guilty of minor crimes involving contraband food is sufficient reason for punishment.

There is one scene that I found curious. Bruno delivers two sack of potatoes to an apartment. It is revealed that the woman living in the apartment is not the owner but a guest. After some casual conversation with Bruno, along with a meal, she drops hints about her identity, stating her husband died in Auschwitz. The name means nothing to Bruno. Hoping that as a delivery helper, Bruno might smuggle her out of Hamburg, she clearly identifies herself as Jewish. It did strike me as odd that someone would place herself in potential jeopardy with a stranger one just met. Even odder is that the Jewish Siodmak, who had to use certain false information to get himself out of Nazi Germany, would have such a scene.

The only depiction of murder does recall Siodmak's films noir, particularly The Spiral Staircase. The murderer in the shadows, the actual act offscreen, and then a deep focus shot of a baby carriage rolling down a dark hallway away from the camera. Going back to Siodmak's beginnings with People of Sunday are a series primarily of remarkable panning shots, taken from a distance, of Mario Adorf as Bruno, running through a forest in a reenactment of one of his crimes.

The commentary by Film Noir scholar Imogen Sara Smith primarily concentrates on fitting this film with Siodmak's other work as well as film noir in general. Among the points of interest are that while such films as the previously mentioned The Spiral Staircase were enthusiastically received in France, German film critics were hostile to the films finally released in post-war Germany. Also discussed is Siodmak's frustration in trying to make more personal films after leaving Hollywood.

Mario Adorf, still active at age 91, is probably the most recognizable cast member here. The other actor who made a name for himself outside Germany, Peter Carsten, tall and blond, has been frequently typecast as a Nazi office in several war films. The Devil Strikes at Night also was a nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 1958, and was the winner of the German Film Awards. The blu-ray was sourced from a 2014 digital restoration from a full 104 minute print.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:45 AM

February 15, 2022

Legendary Weapons of China

Shi ba ban wu yi / Sap bat bun mo ngai
Lau Kar-leung - 1982
88 Films BD Regions A/B

First, an editorial decision - while the film is credited to director's Mandarin name of Liu Chia-liang, I will be referring to him with the better known Cantonese name. Also, the actors will be referred to by the names more familiar to western viewers.

David West, author of a book on martial arts films, offers the best key in understanding Legendary Weapons in his brief video supplement. The film was produced at a time just before Shaw Brothers Studios was not only rampling down production of martial arts films but also tapering off theatrical film production in general. Lau Kar-leung made a film that could be read simultaneously as a historical commentary on how martial arts and nationalism were no match for European guns during the Boxer Rebellion, and also a deconstruction and satire of a genre that Lau played a major role in creating.

The rambling plot is about a trio of martial arts disciples who seek out a kung fu master accused of being a traitor for disbanding his group of spiritual boxers. There is no straight line, but rather a series of diversions and detours leading up the final showdown of brother against brother. Parts of the film serve as showcases for the talents of Gordon Liu, Kara Wai, Hsiao Ho and especially Alexander Fu Sheng. Lau stars as the reclusive martial arts master with his real life brother, Lau Kar-wing, as brother and nemesis. Alexander Fu Sheng gets to play against his more typical screen heroism as a street performer and conman who gets into a sword fight that included him spilling his obviously fake intestines, stopping to stuff them back in his stomach before resuming his battle.

Lau opens the film with his stars and stunt crew performing on an empty black stage. The demonstrations of various weapons and the fight choreography are filmed with shots held long enough to see various complex movements all done without the benefit of editing. As in the fight scenes within the main narrative, the shots here are primarily full or medium shots, somewhat analogous to how Fred Astaire would have his dance scenes filmed. Compare this to traditional Hollywood films where sword fighting was often broken down to three strokes per shot, or the more contemporary films with action filmed and edited in a series of very brief shots. Lau was 47 years old when he directed and starred in this film, with his brother ten years younger. The final fight scene with the two using the various legendary weapons is impressive not because of the weaponry but the sheer physicality of the two brothers.

Aside from David West's supplement, this new blu-ray comes with three commentary tracks, plus two additional videos by French videographer/interviewer Frederic Ambroisine. I listened to two of the commentaries. The first, from Mike Leeder and Arne Venema is a casual conversation that covers the careers of the director, and some members of the cast and crew. One of the more interesting points brought up was that the Shaw Brothers films of the time were all post-dubbed into both Mandarin and Cantonese versions, and that even the Hong Kong based actors did not always use their own voices in the films. The blu-ray comes with English and Cantonese language tracks. Leeder and Venema mention their disbelief that Kara Wai would pass as a young man as she does in most of the film. My own view is that Wai's role is part of a tradition that includes the various versions of Mulan and Chinese opera stories like The Love Eterne with women disguised as men, where what the audience sees is secondary to the viewpoint of the characters. Frank Djeng does double duty with two commentaries. One is with martial artist and actor Michael Worth. I listened to the second with Djeng providing more cultural context to the story as well as the history of the Shaw Brothers.

Fred Ambroisine's 2004 interview with Associate Producer Titus Ho is enlightening regarding the production methods at the Shaw Brothers Studios during their peak. While Mona Fong was the one getting the main credit, there would be six producers who would be directly responsible for a slate of about forty films per year. Also shooting schedules could run as long as three or four months. Also from 2004 is Ambroisine's interview with Gordon Liu. Usually an intimidating presence on screen. Liu, speaking about his career comes across as warm, even cuddly. A personal admission here - I do not know if it made the final cut, but I have corresponded with Ambroisine since meeting him at the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy in 2014, and participated in a video greeting to Liu.

The blu-ray is sources from a high definition remaster from the original 35mm negative, with new English subtitles. The first pressing also include booklet notes by Andrew Graves plus a full-sized poster.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:46 AM

February 08, 2022

The Final Option

Who Dares Wins
Ian Sharp - 1982
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

First, I will say that I think the original British title is so much better than the generic title provided for the U.S. release.

My interest in checking out this Reagan era artifact is that I had read that star Lewis Collins was once considered for the role of James Bond. Reportedly, Collins was rejected for being "too aggressive". He might have made an interesting choice. In The Final Conflict he seems capable for the action scenes but most of the comes across as glum, cold and smug. Collins is the hero, going undercover to infiltrate a group of political terrorists that have used the cover of a respected anti-war group for their own hidden agenda.

Judy Davis provides the screen charisma here, somewhat improbably cast as an American activist with a lion's mane of a hair-do, and the conviction that diplomacy works better from the barrel of a gun. Davis' plan is to hold a group of diplomats hostage to force the British military into nuking a submarine base in Scotland. By having the bombing televised, people would understand better the destructive capabilities of a single nuclear bomb - or so the theory goes. The Final Option takes place in a parallel universe where documentary footage of Hiroshima and testing at the Alamogordo Bombing Range does not exist.

Richard Widmark is on hand in the latter part of the film as the U.S. State Department chief, one of the hostages, who attempts to point out the errors of her logic to Ms. Davis. There is also Ingrid Pitt as a particularly merciless terrorist who makes a point of making life miserable for anyone within shooting range. And while some of the political biases of the film are obvious, especially forty years after the initial release the politics are almost besides the point. To watch The Final Option now might be considered analogous to watching a Cold War film from the early 1950s informed by the paranoia of Commie subversives where the intrigue and adventure are still entertaining while the topical events that inspired the film are no longer relevant.

The blu-ray includes a commentary track by producer Euan Lloyd and director Ian Sharp from 2002. Rosalind Lloyd, daughter of the producer, who has a supporting role, also makes a brief contribution. The commentary track and the supplementary documentary, from 2004, on Euan Lloyd's career are good examples of the producer as auteur. Aside from originating the theme for The Final Option, the film is a reflection of his admittedly center-right politics. Lloyd culled director Sharp and star Lewis Collins from the British television series, The Professionals. According to Lloyd, MGM lost interest in supporting the film when it became known that Ronald Reagan spoke highly of it following a requested preview. There may be some truth to that although at the time of release, MGM was in a precarious state with a revolving door of financiers and executives in charge, and huge losses from most of the few films in release. As for Lloyd's politics, he had had no problem working for the blacklisted Carl Foreman in the early 1960s. There is also the production of A Poppy is also a Flower on behalf of the Untied Nations. The Wild Geese was the subject of contention having been filmed in apartheid South Africa, though with a racially mixed cast. Lloyd did make certain to have the film premiere in Soweto where it proved to be popular. In the supplemental documentary, Last of the Gentlemen Producers, star Roger Moore and singer Joan Armatrading share their experiences and thoughts on The Wild Geese. Something not explained is why Lloyd retired at age 62 following production of The Wild Geese II. It may have been that the challenges of being an independent producer had outweighed the rewards. The documentary on Euan Lloyd's life showed that there was almost as much drama in producing a film as would be seen on screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:14 AM

February 01, 2022

The Antichrist

L'anticristo / The Tempter
Alberto De Martino - 1974
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

As a general rule, I usually do not watch horror films involving exorcism. The one big exception is The Exorcist. Not being Catholic, or Christian for that matter, the theological aspects can be interesting on an intellectual level. Otherwise, I do not feel compelled to watch a young woman going through various physical contortions until the priest with arcane knowledge and rituals shows up.

The Antichrist might be described as the story of the power iconography. The film starts off, documentary style, with pilgrims praying to a shrine of the Virgin Mary. The shrine is protected by a cage. Just outside are a small group of people with various mental or physical maladies, hoping for the miracle cure, by prayer or touching the statue. Crosses, whether in the form of a personal crucifix, statuary, or the kind smudged on the forehead, all appear here. Even church bells take on added significance.

More of interest to me is the iconography of the cast. A number of 1970s Italian genre films would have a cast mixed with European actors who sometimes had more artistically ambitious work in their careers, along with older Hollywood stars who kept their careers going by going abroad. The film stars Carla Gravina as a woman who suffers from paralysis in her legs due to a childhood trauma, and then through hypnosis discovers she was a witch in a previous life. And honestly, my only motivation for seeing The Antichrist was for Ms. Gravina. It was seeing two films within a short time of each other, Claude Lelouch's And Now My Love and Duccio Tessari's Tony Arzenta, released in the U.S. as No Way Out, where Gravina caught my attention. In the first film, she plays the girlfriend of Marthe Keller, in the second, the girlfriend of Alain Delon. Red hair and a face full of freckles, of course I had a crush on her. Gravina's stardom may have been limited primarily to Italian films, but she has a handful of acting prizes, including Cannes, along the way.

Supporting Gravina are Mel Ferrer as her father, and Arthur Kennedy as her uncle who also happens to be a ranking priest in the Vatican hierarchy. Both actors at this time were frequently seen in Italian genre films, usually as authority figures. Younger viewers might be unaware of a time twenty years ago when Ferrer was a romantic lead while Kennedy was a much respected actor on his way to five Oscar nominations. It was about twenty years earlier that Alida Valli made Senso with Luchino Visconti. What also probably attracted filmmakers to casting Ms. Valli was her history of starring in films by Alfred Hitchcock and Sir Carol Reed, even if she no longer resembled the woman once compared to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. As the priest doing the exorcism, Orson Welles associate George Coulouris takes on that task.

For the horror film fan, there is ritual sex with a demon, flying furniture, exploding lamps, the voice of the devil, spitting of green liquid, and the usual bag special effects moments. In the supplement ported over from Blue Underground, shot in 2002, De Martino cheerfully admits there would be no Antichrist without The Exorcist. Fortunately, there is enough difference to keep the film from looking like a lazy imitation. Something I did not expect was a level of elegance in the sets and cinematography. Also included in the brief supplement is an interview with Ennio Morricone, who shared composing credits with Bruno Nicolai. Morricone reveals himself as the author of the atonal violin score heard at various dramatic points.

The commentary track is casually conversational, between two Australian film critics, Lee Gambin and Sally Christie, who have both specialized in genre films. Their discussion ranges from Catholic ritual to some of the other work of the primary cast and crew. Another supplement in the opening credit for the film when it was released as The Tempter. I do want to advise anyone unfamiliar with The Antichrist as I was that while the blu-ray offers both Italian and English language soundtrack options, the first nine and a half minutes are in Italian with no subtitles. That particular sequence is the documentary style opening prior to Gravina and Ferrer isolated from the frenzy of the crowd.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:01 AM

January 18, 2022

Sleep

Schlaf
Michael Venus - 2020
Arrow Video BD Regions A/B

Sleep is a psychological horror film that ends with more questions than answers. The film begins with a flight attendant, Marlene, having recurring nightmares that take place in a hotel, with the death of three men. Marlene's daughter, Mona, wants her mother to get a psychological evaluation. Without explanation, Marlene shows up at the hotel of her nightmares, a large resort in a remote village. Marlene has a breakdown and is placed in a nearby hospital. Mona, using clues from a collection of notebooks with various drawings, goes to the Sunny Hill hotel in the village of Stainbach in search of answers. The nightmares of the mother become those of the daughter.

I am not sure if there is really such a thing as "dream logic". What bits I can recall from my own dream are a series of non sequiturs that are unified only as being evens from my point of view. Time and space are flexible with events that may or may not be simultaneous, and may or may not be imagined. Marlene's connection to the hotel may be part of suppressed or forgotten memories. In Sleep, those dreams and memories can be carried across generations. As the film progresses, various distinctions collapse so that the viewer is required to sort out the veracity of the images.

The title could well refer to sleep as a metaphor. The town of Steinbach is nondescript and presented as virtually depopulated. The forty year old hotel was built on the assumption that as part of Germany's economic success, the hotel would be a seasonal attraction for hunters. The town itself lacks any reason to be a destination, with the occasional car passing straight through on the main road. The financial failure of the hotel is just one reason why the three businessmen committed suicide inside the hotel. The current owner, Otto, thinks of himself as a pragmatist, but has convinced himself of bringing the hotel back to a glory it never experienced. Otto, as well as a group of the older townspeople, also have the shared dream of making Stainbach a home for neo-Nazis, although not named as such. From the aerial view, Stainbach and its people seem untouched by the physical damage of World War II. Although filmmaker Michael Venus does not mention it, and the connection may well be unintended, I was reminded of the novel by Hermann Broch, The Sleepwalkers. Broch's novel takes place in a fictionalized Germany between 1885 and World War I during various cultural and political shifts within the country. In discussing the novel, Stephen Spender notes that Broch's " . . . characters are sleepwalkers because their own lives are shaped by the forces of the nightmare reality in which they live."

The screenplay by Venus and Thomas Friedrich subverts conventions with the men proving to be ineffective whether as businessmen or as a potential hero. The casting is somewhat unusual with Sandra Huller, best known as the put upon daughter in Toni Erdmann as Marlene, mostly seen barely conscious in a hospital bed. Most of the film is carried by Gro Swantje Kohlhof, whose much shorter height and youthful appearance made me think she was still well into her teens and not mid-Twenties. Although there are clues regarding the time when certain events take place, they require paying attention to some small details.

As usual with Arrow, there is generosity with the supplements. Horror specialist Kim Newman and writer Sean Hogan have a casual commentary track primarily discussing the connection of Sleep with Grimm's fairy tales, Stanley Kubrick's film of The Shining and the work of David Lynch. The booklet notes by Allison Peirse explore the film through a Freudian perspective. The estimable Alexandra Heller-Nicholas provides a visual essay. Quite fun is the online discussion of the film and the filmmaking process by Michael Venus and the very animated Gro Swantje Kohlhof. The one criticism I have is that Sleep may have benefitted from a supplement by someone who could more deeply explain aspects of German culture and history that are touched on in the film. Very much a plus, and something I would hope other home video labels adopt, is having English subtitles for EVERYTHING. Between my own hearing problems, ambient noise, and technical problems that are not always resolved by turning up the volume, I really appreciate that all the supplements came with subtitles which should be of benefit to many viewers. Thank you, Arrow Video!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:33 AM

January 11, 2022

China

John Farrow - 1943
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

While China was in progress, it struck me that World War II era films about the U.S. support for China have to the best of my knowledge never received the kind of treatment given to films that positioned Russia in friendly terms. Farrow's film takes place in 1941 just prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The Chinese guerrilla war against Japan is compared by Loretta Young to the American Revolution. The one real life name mentioned is Chiang Kai-shek, who was a unifying force the the country at least through the end of World War II. China is almost as much a work of propaganda when Hollywood was employed to help mold public sentiment regarding U.S. involvement in World War II as it is an adventure film.

Alan Ladd plays oilman David Jones, working in China, but also selling oil to the Japanese. This was still when the U.S. was officially neutral with war going on in Asia and Europe. Jones' outfit may have been the inspiration for another cinematic Jones with the fedora and brown leather jacket. Driving to Shanghai with William Bendix, Ladd gets shanghaied into driving Loretta Young and her group of young female students to safer ground.

Seen almost eighty years later, the cultural stereotyping is more glaring. On the plus side, there are no actors in yellow face. As Japanese-Americans were in interment camps at the time, both Chinese and Japanese characters are portrayed primarily by Chinese-American actors. One notable exception, the Korean-American Philip Ahn. Most of the Chinese characters are not reduced to speaking Pidgin English making the film somewhat progressive for its time. Definitely of its time is one of the Japanese soldiers seen in close-up, glasses and buck teeth. The names and places in Frank Butler's screenplay may sound Chinese to an audience that thinks Chop Suey is authentic cuisine. Glaring is a scene taking place in what is identified as a temple, presumably Buddhist, where Ms. Young recites "The Lord's Prayer" to a dying student. As if inspired by Charlie Chan, three of characters are known as First Brother, Second Brother and Third Brother, with Ladd dubbed as Fourth Brother by the film's end.

China may not have have the status of Farrow's films noir, especially The Big Clock and Alias Nick Beal. Where it especially shines in the opening scene with two complex traveling shots following William Bendix as he walks and runs through a city during an aerial attack. Amid shootings and explosions are large groups of extras sometimes crossing each other from both sides of the frame. The camera weaves in, out and around the remains of buildings while keeping Bendix mostly in medium or full shot. While Farrow's critical reputation has only seen an upswing recently, soft-core maestro Radley Metzger praised the camerawork in China in a 1973 Film Comment interview.

Eddy Von Mueller provided the commentary track. While the source print is not noted as a being restored, it did appear to be of good quality with no scratches or any other obvious flaws.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:52 AM

January 04, 2022

Shake Hands with the Devil

Michael Anderson - 1959
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Even with a casual review of his filmography, it may be a surprise for some that at least one film critic thought Michael Anderson to be comparable to David Lean and Carol Reed following the release of his debut feature, Waterfront (1950). This was after Anderson had shared directing duties with Peter Ustinov on two earlier films. What I have been able to glean from the few films I have seen from Anderson's first decade is that these were the films where he put more effort into stylized visuals, but his greatest strength was allowing his actors room to create their own characters. Although he did a few more British productions sporadically from the 1960s onward, Shake Hand with the Devil might be viewed as a transitional work bridging Anderson's identity between films primarily produced for British viewers and his better known career as a Hollywood journeyman.

The film takes place in Ireland near the end of the Irish War of Independence in 1921. In our current time of sifting through "culture" and alll that entails, some may find Anderson's film to be a minefield. A story about Irish politics produced (indirectly) by Marlon Brando, with a British director working from a screenplay written by two Hollywood veterans, Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts, from the 1933 novel by the Irish Rearden Connor. Some purists may balk at the casting of Michael Redgrave, Sybil Thorndike, Glynis Johns and James Cagney instead of Irish actors in their respective roles. There is Don Murray, perfectly cast as the American medical student of Irish descent who finds himself caught in the turmoil. And while this might not have the classic status of John Ford's The Informer, Anderson's film does have the advantage of on location shooting in Ireland.

Don Murray, as an American World War I veteran, just wants to honor his parents by getting medical degree in Ireland. As sympathetic as he is to the cause of Irish independence, he has no interest in being involved with the Irish Republican Army. Almost shot by Black and Tans during a guerrilla skirmish, Murray discovers that his teacher, James Cagney is secretly a top I.R.A. leader. Initially planning to escape back to the U.S., Murray decides to join Cagney's I.R.A. squad, understanding that once he commits, he cannot choose to resign. The title may have its visual correlation when Murray shakes hands with Cagney. What I have read about Connor's novel suggests that the title is metaphorical, and that the Devil is the medical professor's misogyny, inflexible moral code that he also imposes on others, resulting in a lack of humanity.

Even though he is second billed, this is really Don Murray's film. There is a short, eight minute, interview with Murray that is part of this new blu-ray release. At age 92, Murray looks back at working with Anderson and several of the actors. One of names lower on the roster was Richard Harris, working on his second film. Murray's own best work was during his first decade, probably the least showy of method actors, with a career shifting between westerns and more socially conscious fare. I would not be able to say how authentic James Cagney's Irish accent is, but it did not strike me as calling attention to itself in the way associated with Irish characters in Hollywood movies. Glynis Johns charms as a pragmatic barmaid, while the regal Dana Wynter appears as daughter of a British diplomat, kidnapped by the I.R.A.

For a younger audience for whom the actors may be unknown, there is still the cinematography to be admired. Anderson gets visually stronger as the film progresses, working with favorite cinematographer Erwin Hillier. Hillier has been noted for his black and white cinematography, especially with several films by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. The blu-ray is sourced from a 2K restoration rendering very crisp deep focus images. Although Shake Hands with the Devil was reportedly a commercial success in Britain, the modestly budgeted film appears to have been given a half hearted release by United Artists in the U.S. The New York Times review by Howard Thompson noted the film opened as part of a double feature package in neighborhood theaters in the New York City area. Thompson own assessment begins, "One of the fastest, toughest and most picturesque dramas about the Irish Revolution . . . "

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:49 PM

December 13, 2021

Film Noir: The Dark Side of Cinema V

Because of You
Joseph Pevney - 1952

Outside the Law
Jack Arnold - 1956

The Midnight Story
Joseph Pevney - 1957
KL Studio Classics BD Region A Three-disc set

Arguably, to call any of these films classics might be pushing things a bit. Describing them as film noir may also be up for debate among genre purists. These are the kind of films that would show up on late night broadcast television fifty years ago. At the time they were made, they were the bread and butter of Universal-International, modestly budgeted films made by in-house filmmakers and actors. Whatever one might think of the artistry, the professionalism of all involved can not be disputed.

Because of You begins with the camera focused on a pair of women's feet, following up on the seams of her stockings, the shot continuing until to settles on back of the very blonde women. It turns out to be Loretta Young in the clutches of Alex Nicol. In that opening scene, Young is a peroxide blonde, speaking in the kind of breathy voice one might associate with Marilyn Monroe. That scene also takes place in 1942, with Nicol and Young about to get married when the cops show up. It turns out that Nicol is a crook and Young is caught holding the proverbial bag.

That opening scene is really about a noir as things get in this film. Young gets rehabilitated in the poky, eventually working as a nurse in a military hospital, peroxide hair and flashy clothing gone Jeff Chandler is one of the patients there, suffering from what is described as melancholy, or what is currently referred to as Post-traumatic stress disorder. Young avoids revealing her criminal past in order to not trigger Chandler, but even after the two get married discovers that she can not entirely escape her past. The two have a daughter who also goes through trauma although it is not named as such. Because of You was Loretta Young's penultimate theatrical film. Based on that first scene, I wish she had taken more blonde "bad girl" roles.

Samm Deighan makes the unexpected connection between the romantic comedies with married couples having contentious divorces followed by realizing they can not live without each other in the last reel. Loretta Young's own life and tensions between her public image and troubled private life are posed against her character in Because of You.

Universal-International seems to have been the home for cinematic ex-cons to expiate their criminal pasts. Taking place in 1946, soldier and parolee Ray Danton is assigned to help solve the connection between the death of fellow a fellow ex-con and a counterfeiting ring. Danton is under the supervision of his estranged father, a federal agent. Danton falls for young widow Leigh Snowden, and crosses bad guy Grant Williams. Jack Arnold keeps everything to a brisk 81 minutes in an assignment that fells between the more memorable Tarantula and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Danny Arnold (no relation to Jack) wrote a screenplay where two big clues are presented early on. Danton's character proves a little slow in figuring out what is virtually telegraphed to the viewers. For myself, the fun is seeing the aforementioned stars in their few lead roles as well as a supporting cast that includes familiar faces like Raymond Bailey, Mel Welles, and Jack Kruschen as agent "Phil Schwartz".

And it is the cast the delights Richard Harland Smith in his commentary track. Smith identifies the actor playing the janitor among the players who may just have seconds of screen time. More attention is given to the once promising career of Grant Williams. I share Smith's enthusiasm for Danton's most famous role, as Roaring Twenties gangster "Legs" Diamond. Additionally noted are the double features that packaged Outside the Law, as well as its critical reception at the time of release.

Just as in Because of You, The Midnight Story begins with promise before director Joseph Pevney drops the ball. A priest is walking alone in a studio set identified as the North Beach section of San Francisco. His murder is depicted with an extreme close-up of the priest's eyes, followed by the murder seen as a shadow against the side of a building. Following the opening credits, the camera moves from a full shot to a close-up of the priest's hand clutching his rosary. Tony Curtis is a traffic cop who quits the force to go undercover to discover who murdered the beloved priest. At the funeral, Curtis eyes a very anguished Gilbert Roland as the possible perp. A close-up of Roland's hand gripping a very similar rosary is an echo of the similar shot of the priest's hand.

There is some location shooting in San Francisco, but the effect is jarring when paired with studio sets used for several street scenes. The casting is questionable when 51 year old Gilbert Roland's mother is played by 49 year old Italian actress Argentina Brunetti. Roland also has a teenage brother in the film. Another Italian actress, Marisa Pavan, plays Roland's Italian cousins. The Midnight Story also marked the last time Tony Curtis appeared as a Universal contract player with Sweet Smell of Success released just a month later.

The high point of Professor Jason Ney's commentary track is providing information on the various locations in San Francisco where The Midnight Story was filmed. Also, lots of information on the life and career of Marisa Pavan. The overly familiar Tony Curtis and Gilbert Roland are discussed more fleetingly. Based on the half dozen films seen, I do not share Ney's enthusiasm for director Joseph Pevney. Ney does acknowledge that Pevney gave the studio suits what they wanted with little argument in his position as an in-house director. As a teacher at Colorado Christian University, Professor Ney also provides additional insights into the theological concerns of The Midnight Story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:39 AM

December 07, 2021

Broken Lullaby

Ernst Lubitsch - 1932
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Tucked in between two musicals starring Maurice Chevalier, Broken Lulluby is now more easily available to assess as part of Ernst Lubitsch's filmography. Some of the previous available writing emphasizes this as the lone dramatic film from a director known best for his comedies. How much as been deviated from the source play, The Man I Killed by Maurice Rostand, I do not know, but there are two scenes that anticipate the kind of humor that Lubitsch is remembered for.

The opening scene taking place during a parade celebrating the first anniversary of the end of World War I demonstrates that Lubitsch could take the gloves off and force his audience to face some uncomfortable truths. A shot of the parade is taken from ground level, framed from below the knees of a soldier with one leg missing. While we hear the the cheers from the celebrants on the street, Lubitsch does an overhead traveling shot of wounded soldiers in a hospital. The first four minutes are part of the reminder that war is not always over for those who have been affected by it, directly or indirectly.

French veteran Paul Renard feels overwhelming guilt over killing a German soldier in the trenches. At a church, a priest attempts to console Paul by letting him know he was doing his duty as a soldier. Instead of expiating his remorse, Paul is more frustrated, responding, "Is this the only answer I can get in the House of God?". Paul decides he can only resolve his feelings by going to the German village of the soldier, Walter, that he killed. Leaving flowers at Walter's grave, Paul follows up by visiting the home of Walter's parents. A series of misunderstandings follow which eventually result in Paul, the enemy Frenchman, taken in by Walter's family.

Broken Lullaby is less of an anomaly in Lubitsch's filmography when it is understood that the director's films are about misunderstandings and misidentifications. Consider The Shop Around the Corner where the bickering co-workers are unknown to each other as romantic pen pals. Here, Paul presents himself as a friend of Walter's, two violin students who knew each other in pre-war Paris. Also to be considered is that Maurice Rostand was the son of the author of Cyrano de Bergerac, Edmond Rostand, also a story of false identities.

The best known cast member is Lionel Barrymore as Walter's father. Phillips Holmes as Paul, and Nancy Carroll as Paul's fiancee, Elsa, were two actors with brief film careers, both at their peak of popularity at the time the film was made. Holmes and Carroll both had tendencies to be overly dramatic which may have contributed to their falling out of favor with audiences in the mid-1930s. The screenplay was by two Lubitsch collaborators, Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda, which also explains the continuity in the humorous scenes with other Lubitsch films.

Lubitsch historian Joseph McBride places Broken Lullaby within both the context of when the film was produced and also as part of Lubitsch's career. Also discussed is the director's collaborations with Samson Raphaelson. While there is some time spent also covering the difference between Broken Lullaby and Francois Ozon's remake, Frantz, there is nothing to be said about the source play. Even internet research regarding Maurice Rostand reveals very little about the playwright and nothing about his play. I would hope that the availability of this previously underseen film will inspire further research.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:48 AM

November 30, 2021

Giallo Essentials - Red Edition

The Possessed / La donna del lago
Luigi Bazzoni & Franco Rossellini - 1965

The Fifth Cord / Giornata nera per l'ariete
Luigi Bazzoni - 1971

The Pyjama Girl Case / La ragazza dal pigiama giallo
Flavio Mogherini - 1978
Arrow Video BD three-disc set Region A

To title this three disc set as essential may be a bit of hyperbole. What we have does chart some of the ways the genre developed over the years. Also the three films in question have in various degrees attracted more critical attention than at the time of their respective releases. I should also note that the three films were previously issued by Arrow and do not have the booklets that accompanied the original separate releases of each film.

The Possessed might be more accurately described as proto-giallo. The violence is suggested by very quick shots of knives and dead bodies. I tend to agree with film historian Richard Dyer that The Possessed is closer in style to the European art films of the mid-1960s than to a more typical murder mystery, which in turn may explain why the film was a commercial failure in spite of the well known cast. A novelist returns to a hotel in a small, unnamed town in winter in hopes of reuniting with a maid who worked there. It is revealed that the maid was murdered under mysterious circumstances. The hotel is on the verge of closure, run by a family that is on the brink of disintegration.

The film itself was something of a family affair with director Luigi Bazzoni's feature debut, with brother Camillo as camera operator. Franco Rossellini, also credited for direction, was the son of the film's composer, Renzo Rossellini. Here is where the family connection gets truly strange, Pia Lindstrom, the daughter of Ingrid Bergman, has a small role. Franco and Renzo were the nephew and younger brother of famed director Roberto Rossellini. Ingrid Bergman abandoned Hollywood to live with and eventually marry Roberto, causing bad feelings between daughter and mother. That in a very brief acting career of three films, Pia Lindstrom would work with members of the Rossellini family might be the film's biggest mystery.

While in his commentary track, Tim Lucas identifies Bazzoni as "the primary director", the proof is in viewing Bazzoni's other films. There are lone figures dwarfed in an empty landscape, the sound of wind in several of the exterior shots, the use of point of view shots, and the protagonist trying to navigate his or her way in a situation that is not fully understood. Lucas explains why he considers The Possessed to be giallo, even though the tropes are not lurid as they would be with other directors. Also covered in the commentary are the film's literary and real life sources, as well as notes on the cast and crew.

In The Fifth Cord, several people who have connections with alcoholic reporter Franco Nero are murdered in mysterious circumstances. The victims are also interconnected in other ways as well. The film is more clearly within the conventional definition of giallo. The cops think Nero is the killer, but solving the mystery almost seems besides the point.

The nudity and violence is still relatively restrained although it does reflect the recent freedom following the end of the old Hollywood production code. Seen back to back with The Possessed, one gets a clearer sense of Bazzoni's visual style and themes, also part of his third giallo, Footprints on the Moon. Several times, characters are visible as silhouettes, at one point literally behind a screen, but usually as black figures on the run. Bazzoni also likes to use lateral tracking shots, most notably in a shot of the mid-century office buildings in Rome. Nero's reporter seems out of place even though he lives in Rome. He is virtually not welcomed wherever he is. The alienated protagonist is also part of The Possessed and Footprints. Voyeurism is also part of Bazzoni's films, with shots of eyes peering through cracked spaces, the act of photography, or simply looking at someone through a window. Nero's character has the Germanic surname of Bild which translates as image. The name of Bild is fitting for someone who is not certain who he is looking for or why the victims are connected.

Travis Crawford points out the use of reflected images and windows in his commentary track. One bit of information of interest is that Bazzoni and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro were cousins. The presentation comes off a bit disorganized. While it makes sense to review the career of star Franco Nero, the rest of the supporting cast gets ignored with the exception of Edmund Purdom. And with the research involved in the cast and crew members, Crawford incorrectly identifies the two movies Pam Tiffin made with James Darren in the mid-1960s as being from A.I.P. (This is where I admit that I have seen For Those Who Think Young twice theatrically, and can tell you the theaters and the co-features.)

The Pyjama Girl Case was made during the waning of giallo as a popular genre. What is of interest is that the film was partially shot on location in and around Sydney, Australia with a story inspired by a true crime history. The real crime took place in Australia in 1934 with the victim still not conclusively identified. Other documented events such as the public exhibition of the body for identification purposes have been included and updated in this contemporary fictionalization. Unlike many of the Australian films produced during this time, Flavio Mogherini presents a country populated by immigrants and outsiders. Ray Milland's retired police inspector is Canadian. An Italian and a German man both compete for the affections of a Dutch woman. Among the people the inspector encounters as part of his investigation are a midget, members of Sydney's Asian community, and a reclusive voyeur living off the grid. The film also is something of documentary of Sydney at the time of production with several shots filmed in or near the famous opera house as well as the Chinatown area.

Pyjama Girl is comprised of two seemingly parallel narrative strands, the investigation of the murder of an unidentifiable young woman, and the story of a waitress wavering between several lovers. The horror is in the victim's face burned beyond recognition. The inspector takes on an unofficial role, a break from retirement, and also a way to prove that some old fashioned pounding of the pavements is more effective than psychological profiling to resolve the mystery.

Definitely the way to watch Pyjama Girl is with the English language track as Ray Milland and Mel Ferrer, one of the waitress' lovers, dub their own voices. Even at age 70, one could see glimpses of the actor who was Paramount's top male actor thirty years earlier. Certainly starring in several film noir classics including Ministry of Fear and The Big Clock makes Milland's appearance here fitting.

I enjoyed Troy Howarth conversationally presented commentary track. Howarth discusses how the film goes against the usual giallo tropes as well as covering information on the prime cast and crew members. What I also liked was that the commentary was addressed in such a way that Howarth assumes the viewer is already familiar with gialli, generally dispensing with explanations and history of the genre or rattling off a bunch of titles. He also points out to the fallibility of IMDb, in this case misnaming several of the characters, as well as not identifying some of the actors listed with their respective roles.

As usual with Arrow, there are loads of supplements on each disc. The interviews cover in part the three films, but as one with interest in film history, what I found more interesting is learning more about the process of making Italian co-productions in the 1970s. One takeaway - it seemed like almost everyone interviewed had worked at least once with Pier Paolo Pasolini. Each disc could have easily received a longer, more detailed review.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:17 AM

November 23, 2021

Roy Rogers Double Feature

Under Western Stars
Joseph Kane - 1938

Macintosh and T.J.
Marvin J. Chomsky - 1975
Verdugo Entertainment BD Region A Two-disc set

Verdugo Entertainment has brough together the first film to star Roy Rogers as well as his last. While I acknowledge there is a nostalgia factor that may be at work here, the phenomena of Roy Rogers may be lost on younger viewers. My own discovery took place in the early 1960s when the television series went into syndication and was part of my regular Saturday morning viewing. It never occurred to me that this half-hour series was a peculiar mix of cowboys in rodeo wear, armed with six-shooters, with some of the classic western conflicts of cattle rustling, land rights and such, yet taking place in contemporary times with a comic sidekick driving an undependable jeep. The television series came out between 1951 and 1956. The episodes were essential similar to the movies Rogers starred in, minus the songs.

Which brings up the question, how do you explain the popularity of singing cowboys to a generation that has trouble dealing with the concept of the musical? The sub-genre began with real cowboy songs in 1925 on the radio evolving into newly created songs with big band arrangements. Silent western star Ken Maynard recorded a couple of songs in the late 1920s, and sang a couple songs in one of his early talkies, inspiring other "Poverty Row" studios to initiate their own series with their own stars. Many of these films are easily available on streaming channels. The films mostly played in rural areas, coming to an end when television broadcasting became more widely available.

Roy Rogers was born Leonard Slye, eventually becoming a singer of western songs which in turn led to his getting into the movies. I am not sure if it is accurate to say that Rogers played himself as much as he played a character also named Roy Rogers. Aside from being his first starring role, Under Western Stars offers the opportunity to see the 27 year old Rogers use his past talents that helped him get a foothold as an entertainer, calling a square dance and yodeling. The film is also unusual in that it incorporates a topical theme of dustbowl conditions in the Depression era. Rogers becomes a congressman to help resolve problem stemming from a dam preventing access to water. The song titled "Dust", sung to an audience of Washington D.C. elite, was nominated for an Oscar. This is not The Grapes of Wrath nor does it try to be, but even outside the context of the film's usage, the documentary footage of real dust bowl conditions is still powerful.

Under Western Stars was directed by Joseph Kane, a house director at Republic Pictures whose career spanned several serials, the hour-long features with Rogers, Gene Autry and early John Wayne, eventually making modestly budgeted westerns, adventure films and crime dramas from 1945 through the demise of Republic Pictures. Frequent collaborator, Jack Marta, served as cinematographer. Later in his career, Marta was cinematographer for the neophyte Steven Spielberg on Duel.

Macintosh and T.J, trades the ubiquitous location of so many B-Westerns, California's Alabama Hills for the actual roads and a working ranch in Guthrie, Texas. Rogers plays Macintosh, an itinerant cowboy driving a too old puck-up truck, looking for temporary ranch work. Along the way, he picks up the 14 year old T.J., who is living on his own, keeping the boy from shoplifting an apple. The pair finds work at the very real 6666 Ranch, with Macintosh showing he can still break the wildest of horses, while T.J. does more mundane chores like barn cleaning. The film was rated PG, touching on a variety of things that the classic Roy Rogers movies would never touch including marital infidelity and spousal abuse. In his last film appearance, Rogers seemed to want to be seen as still relevant at a time when Clint Eastwood was nudging the genre away from older conventions. That age was taking its toll on Rogers is most obvious when the film cuts between medium shots from the waist up with long shots of the stunt double doing the actual, and impressive, riding on the bucking horse.

One of the film's unexpected admirers was film critic Rex Reed, with the description of a "heartwarming, lyrical toast to the New West". What has received consensus is the use of songs written by Waylon Jennings, performed by Jennings and Willie Nelson. The cast includes Luke Askew and Billy 'Green' Bush, two actors who appeared in several westerns in the 1970s. The highly respected Joan Hackett plays the wife of Bush, while Andrew Robinson, Clint Eastwood's nemesis in Dirty Harry is a sleazy ranch hand. Director Marvin Chomsky has an odd filmography, winning Emmy awards for Holocaust, Inside the Third Reich and Attica. Chomsky's few theatrical features are mostly forgettable, with Evel Knievel attaining cult status due to the screenplay by John Milius. In retrospect Macintosh and T.J. succeeds in spite of itself, the various individual elements overcoming a storyline that does not always make sense.

The blu-ray also includes the documentary, Exploring the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, CA., about that familiar location for so many westerns.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:25 AM

November 22, 2021

White as Snow

Blanche comme neige
Anne Fontaine - 2019
Cohen Media Group BD Region A

Snow White continues to be retold and reinvented. Anne Fontaine has made a contemporary version which plays with the familiar parts of the story. Instead of a castle, the film begins at a luxury hotel in Geneva. The princess, Claire, is an heiress, her deceased father was the owner of the hotel. The stepmother, Maud, is now in charge of the hotel. The stepmother only gradually reveals her wickedness, initially jealous due to the loss of attention with her lover gazing longingly at Claire. No dwarves, but seven different men are part of the life of Claire following her rescue in the woods from a would-be kidnapper.

Francophiles will recognize the obvious designations of the names. Claire sounds like clair, the French word for clear. Maud is a shortening of maudit - damned or condemned. Fontaine's Snow White is hardly virginal having discovered what she calls "desire", having sex with several men who are attracted to her appearance of innocence. Claire is played by Lou de Laage, not exceptionally pretty but she has beautiful full lips. As Maud, Isabelle Huppert takes on the appearance of a live action cartoon. Her deep red lipstick stands out against her own pale face. Red leather gloves, a red clothing are part of her wardrobe. In a later scene, Claire is also wearing a red dress at a dance which concludes with her partnering with Maud, a duel of love and hate. That Claire could well become like Maud is suggested several times.

Most of the film takes place around La Salette in the French Alps. The town is known for its Catholic shrine which also is integrated into the story. There is a certain leisurely pace with the camera exploring the woods, the mountains, and the twisting roads. Fontaine even incorporates a bit of Hitchcock when Maud, in her open top sports car, drives with a nauseous Claire along a part of the highway that is inches away from a straight drop on the passenger side, a scene similar to Suspicion with Joan Fontaine as the unlucky passenger and Cary Grant behind the wheel. There is also some comedy as Maud frustratingly finds herself unable to get away with murder.

A good amount of Yves Angelo's cinematography evokes Rembrandt in the lighting of Lou de Laage in the interior scenes, notably in the earlier scenes. The overall visual look of the film is soft, slightly hazy. My own interpretation is that Anne Fontaine tried to find a visual correlation that would make her story simultaneously contemporary and also dreamlike. There has been dispute regarding whether this version of Snow White is indeed feminist, if Claire is truly liberated. Some of these arguments may well be cultural especially with French films more frank in their presentation of sex. This is ultimately a Snow White for an era where women are not necessarily looking for a prince, or anyone else, to come to their rescue.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:22 AM

November 19, 2021

The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch

Hebi musume to hakuhatsuma
Noriaki Yuasa - 1968
Arrow Video BD Region A

In a quote found in IMDb, Noriaki Yuasa relates how he found it traumatic as a twelve year old boy that one of his teachers switched from being nationalistic to an ardent communist. Yuasa's most famous film series, Gamera, was aimed for children with a hero, even if he was a giant flying turtle, that was consistent and trustworthy.

For ten-year old Sayuri, none of the adults that are part of her new family are particularly trustworthy. Some of the story elements probably were never meant to be looked at too closely. Believing herself to be an orphan, Sayuri is reunited with the couple who claim to be her biological parents. That same day, the scientist father is called to Africa to investigate a rare, venomous snake. The mother has suffered from memory loss and initial calls Sayuri by a different name. The housekeeper sets strict limits when Sayuri starts exploring her new home. And who is spying on Sayuri from the hole in the ceiling?

The voyeurism may bring to mind the work of Edogawa Rampo, but there is no weird sex here. There are snakes, giant spiders, a mysterious sister who was snake bitten, disembodied laughter, and unexplained events. The story was adapted from the manga by Kazuo Umezo. Both the manga and the film are in black and white. It does seem unusual that in a genre film that was part of a horror double feature presumably designed primarily for a teen and young adult audience would have a pre-teen girl as the protagonist. This is a horror film from the point of view of a young girl, and for Yuasa, the fantasy elements emphasize the disorientation of a home that turns out to be neither stable nor fully welcoming.

David Kalat, a specialist in Japanese horror films, goes more deeply into how childhood trauma played a part in Yuasa's films. There is the usual coverage of the main cast members as well as some of the production crew. Kalat also places The Snake Girl . . . in the contexts of Japanese folklore as well as genre filmmaking. The most intriguing part of Kalat's commentary track is in questioning how much of what is shown in the film can be taken at face value or may be the exaggerated imaginings of Sayuri. The blu-ray also includes a supplement with manga specialist Zack Davisson that provides some history into Japanese folklore, especially stories of snakes that transform into women, and the origins of manga horror prior to the introduction of comic books in Japan. Writer Rafael Coronelli provides an essay that also discusses the folklore roots of the manga and film. The blu-ray includes a dedication to composer Shunsuke Kikuchi who died this past April. Kikuchi's score for this film features the theremin, helping create the appropriately creepy atmosphere.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:26 AM

November 16, 2021

Deported

Robert Siodmak - 1950
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Deported falls outside of Robert Siodmak's series of classic films noir, and really can not be defined as such. The director's hand is still evident in a couple of scenes. Robert Buckner, producer and screenwriter, was a credited writer on several Warner Brothers classics from the Thirties and Forties, and imagining Deported as a Warner Brothers vehicle with their contract players is no stretch. The film was almost entirely filmed on location in Italy with only stars Marta Toren, Jeff Chandler and Richard Rober as the only Hollywood cast members.

The story may or may not have been inspired by one of several stories of Italian born gangsters deported from the United States. Vic Smith, born Vittorio Sparducci, is forced to return to his birthplace, the fictional Marbella in Tuscany for his first month of probation. First, on his way to catch a train, a "meet cute" encounter at a Neopolitan cab with a young woman turns out to be a ploy to have Vic meet with his former partner in crime. There is a dispute regarding $100,000 that the pair stole. Vic took the five year rap and claims the full loot, currently hidden in New York City. Proving he does not have the money with him, Vic goes on to Marbella. Welcomed by his uncle, he is taken in by his relatives where he spots the richest woman in town, a countess. Vic has his eye on the countess and also a way of retrieving his money using her humanitarian organization.

While not as flashy as the scene with Elisha Cook, Jr.'s mad drumming in Phantom Lady, there is a nice moment with Toren dancing with several men at the town's celebration. The camera tilts up at each pairing with Toren, moving with them in medium close-up, the lightbulbs of the tent seen above them. Rather than using hard cuts with the change of dance partners, Siodmak uses dissolves between each shot without cutting the waltz played in the background. Siodmak's film noir experience is most visible in the final sequence taking place in a warehouse, dim lights and shadows, as Chandler fights off a gang of black market truck drivers and has a final encounter with his ex-partner.

Marta Toren, top billed, was a Swedish actress whose brief Hollywood stardom lasted from 1948 through 1952. This was at a time when the studios were still looking for the next Ingrid Bergman or other European actress thought to supply some kind of exoticism that the home grown girls lacked. Like her peers and those before her, Toren would play a woman from any number of European countries. Toren had stage training in Sweden and returned to the stage, along with making films primarily in Italy through 1957. She dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1957 at age 31. Jeff Chandler's career was just on the ascent at the time he made Deported. Chandler's previous performance, Oscar nominated for Broken Arrow, elevated the actor from supporting roles to Universal's top contracted star for much of the Fifties. Premature death also affected Jeff Chandler in 1961, while Richard Rober died following a car accident in 1952 that eerily was similar to a similar scene in Siodmak's File on Thelma Jordan.

Eddy Von Mueller provides the commentary track. Aside from the usual overviews of the main cast and crew, Von Mueller helps put Deported into both the political context of the time, as well as how it reflects the post-War changes in Hollywood filmmaking.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:02 AM

November 02, 2021

Night has a Thousand Eyes

John Farrow - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One might consider Night has a Thousand Eyes to almost be the anti-Nightmare Alley. John Farrow's film was released just a year later. Both films center on "mentalists", men with supposed psychic abilities performing stage acts. Unlike Stanton Carlisle in Nightmare Alley, John Triton refuses to profit from his "gift" but also attempts to run away from his self-discovery of what appears to be real psychic powers. It is not only that he has unexplained visions, but he has convinced himself that he may also be the cause for the events that he has predicted. The film was adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich, author of so many stories of characters invariably in fated situations. That Woolrich named his psychic Triton may refer to the Greek god's role as a messenger.

The film is partially in flashback. The vision that frightens Triton the most is of the untimely death of the woman he was planning to marry, Jenny. Jenny also served as his partner in his stage act, with Whitney Courtland as his road manager. After running away from Jenny and Courtland, twenty years later Triton approaches Jean, their daughter, with visions of her death. Jean's fiance, Elliott has his doubts about Triton which are further boosted by explanations for the alleged coincidences.

There is a new documentary about John Farrow subtitled Hollywood's Man in the Shadows. That description of Farrow is also applicable to some of his films. Night begins very much in the shadows of darkness with John Lund searching for Gail Russell outside a small railroad station. Edward G. Robinson, as Triton, is a reclusive character who chooses the anonymity of living in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. I am not sure that categorizing Night as film noir is accurate as it does not have the genre's narrative conventions, nor is it overly stylized after the opening scene. What probably interested Farrow in making the film was the tension between presumed free will and destiny, and the belief in something that defied easy explanation.

In retrospect, Night is something of a warm-up for some of the philosophy and visual style that would be more fully realized the following year with Alias Nick Beal. Lund pursuing Russell, both barely visible due to steam from passing trains in the opening scene anticipates Ray Milland drifting in and out of the fog in Alias Nick Beal. Farrow also is more comfortable with the more mystical aspects of the latter film, discarding the need for "logical" explanations.

Film historian Imogen Sara Smith provided the commentary track. As usual, when it comes to talking about movies in general or a specific film, Smith is one of the few people I always find worth a listen. There is the usual overview of the cast and crew, but Smith also provides her thoughts on why John Farrow may be need a more complete critical assessment, pointing out aspects of his visual style. Perhaps had Night had a longer running time than 81 minutes, Smith could have gone more deeply into the collaboration of Farrow with screenwriter Jonathan Latimer. There is no information regarding the source print for the blu-ray but the reproduction of the black and white cinematography by John Seitz is excellent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:52 AM

November 01, 2021

Filibus: The Mysterious Air Pirate

Mario Roncoroni - 1915
The Milestone Cinematheque BD Region A

Is it possible that a century or so from now, audiences will take a look at the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies, and giggle at what seemed so technologically advanced at the time? The thought crossed my mind while watching Filibus, a reminder of that old joke that the future is not what it use to be. Filibus is just one of the identities of a Baroness who stages heists for the thrill of daring the authorities to catch her, dropping from the sky in her personal dirigible. She tries to implicate the detective who pursues her as the real Filibus, creating a glove with his fingerprints, and inserting a miniature camera inside the eye of a statue of a cat. Part of what has made Filibus of interest to contemporary cinephiles is that while the title character is a woman, she presents herself in men's clothing and is assumed to be a man by the police.

The sexual ambiguity continues with the Baroness also taking on the identity of a mustached Count, courting the daughter of the detective. Filibus belongs with the various screen characters of the era, Fantomas, Judex, even Irma Vep. They may possibly be criminals, and they have their own moral codes, but there is pleasure in watching them outwit their adversaries. Filibus appears to have been intended as the first in a series, but the production company, Corona Films, went out of business soon after Italy entered World War I. The Italian film critics of the time dismissed Filibus for its story as well as the special effects. It has only been more recently that the film has been reevaluated and appreciated for depicting an independent woman as an action hero at a time when Italian women mostly lived severely restricted lives. The more fantastic elements, clunky by contemporary standards, add to the charm.

The blu-ray is sourced from a 2K scan of the restored negative by Milestone in conjunction with EYE Film Institute of Amsterdam. There is some mottling, scratches, and other signs of aging. The print was monochrome tinted. The repeated adjective by contemporary critics of the film is "fun". And to be clear, this is not the condescending sense of amusement but enjoyment at seeing a world that was still straddling the 19th Century in some ways while imagining some of the technology of the 20th Century. Very little is known about director Roncoroni other than that he continued is career in the 1920s in Spain. The cast was made of actors who were relatively unknown at the time, and in some cases only recently identified. While Corona Films was based in Turin, Filibus was shot in Genoa. Filibus, along with the terrific extras, has Dutch intertitles with English captions, as these films were originally part of the collection of Dutch film distributor Jean Desmet. All of the films have scores by pianist Donald Sosin, with Filibus also offering a score performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. My choice is the third option of Sosin's piano with occasional vocals by Joanna Seaton. Seaton sets the mood with her lyrics and operatic voice singing, "Filly-boos!"

The extras include a recreation of how Filibus was originally presented to Dutch audiences with a newsreel that primarily features World War I soldiers in ceremonial events, a beautiful hand tinted travelogue on Rapallo, Italy, and a short French comedy, Onesime et la toilette de Mademoiselle Badinois by Jean Durand (1912). Durand's career only lasted through the silent era. The star is Sarah Duhamel, a gifted physical actor who could perform pratfalls with the best of Hollywood's silent comedy stars. Another French short, Live and Science (1912) may not have intentionally been a comedy, but it presciently depicts a Zoom call gone wrong. A short about Jean Desmet and his life as a film distributor and archivist rounds out the short supplements.

And if that was not enough, there is a second feature from Corona Films. Signori Giurati, a 1916 melodrama directed by Giuseppe Giusti. Filibus star Valeria Creti has a supporting role, while screenwriter Fabienne Fabreges stars as villainess Lina Santiago. The story concerns Santiago teaming up with a doctor to open a secret club, "The House of Forgetfulness", essentially a high class opium den where wealthy men get drugged, fall asleep at the premises, and get their pockets picked. Giusti adds a nice use of split screen with the doctor on the right side of the frame confessing his misdeeds while flashbacks are on the screen's left side. The blu-ray may well be one of the best releases of the year, but it also is a reminder than occasionally cinema history can be fun.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:06 AM

October 29, 2021

New York Ninja

John Liu - 1984/Kurtis Spieler - 2021
Vinegar Syndrome Pictures BD Region A

A film like New York Ninja was probably never intended to undergo anything resembling serious film criticism in its originally intended form. The history of the film and its presentation does bring up some serious questions, even when the film itself is risible.

Taiwanese martial arts star John Liu had an acting career that began in 1977. He wrote and directed his first film in 1981. From what I gathered from IMDb, all of his films featured international settings. New York Ninja was Liu's fourth film as writer/director. At some point, the film production was abandoned. Liu's career both in front of and behind the camera seems to have evaporated. The footage to New York Ninja was found, with no available soundtrack or script. Kurtis Spieler edited the film first, then created a screenplay, followed by dubbing by some well known genre character actors. The question then is how much of this film what John Liu intended, followed by wondering if Spieler could have or should have done something different with the recovered footage?

The enterprise reminds me of two other films. For those with long memories, there is What's Up, Tiger Lily?, in which Woody Allen and his friends dub in their voices in a re-edited version taken from two Japanese spy films. This was done purely for laughs, although some of what was funny in 1966 has frankly aged badly. And Vinegar Syndrome, if any film is truly in need of rescue, it would be the original International Secret Police film by Senkichi Taniguchi and the source of Allen's spoof. I have to wonder if Spieler should have leaned a bit more into the silliness of the action with a more comic screenplay. The other film I am reminded of is Shark Tale due to Vinegar Syndrome selling New York Ninja based on the voice talent. Somebody at Dreamworks knew that kids in the lower rungs of elementary school would be clamoring for an animated spoof of The Godfather featuring the voices of Robert De Niro, Renee Zellweger and family favorite, Martin Scorsese. For New York Ninja, Vinegar Syndrome enlisted Don "The Dragon" Wilson, Cynthia Rothrock, Leon Isaac Kennedy, and Michael Berryman, among others to voice the characters as the stars of this film.

Liu plays a television sound technician turned avenger when a gang murders his pregnant wife on the streets of New York City. Liu seems to have been inspired in part by Walter Hill's The Warriors only with street hoods wearing masks, along with William Lustig's Vigilante and its presentation of lawless New York Streets. Liu dresses all in white, appearing at just the right alley or tree, performing acrobatics and even roller skating, taking down various criminals. Most of these criminals are small fry working for a guy with deformed hands that are radioactive. The street gang is not very bright because no one thinks to steal the camera from the two news reporters that follows them, even after the pair has been caught and cornered. Just on a visual level, Liu has actors entering the screen from the side of the frame, with death scenes that are protracted, and fights scenes that are unconvincing. Liu's facial expression of determination might be confused with painful constipation. Most laughable is the obvious waving of the rubber knife while stuck in a victim's stomach.

The voice work makes the acting, or more accurately over-acting, appear to be high school level. And this gets tricky to evaluate fairly because I have no idea what skills the original cast had, or if Spieler intended for the voice work to be part of an elaborate joke. My own impression is that even if Liu had been able to complete New York Ninja, it would still not have been even a "so bad it's good" movie. To put it in perspective, it lacks even the professionalism of Sho Kosugi's Cannon films, or the sense of its own absurdity as in a Troma production. On the other hand, I will not begrudge the audience that has its own reasons for enjoying New York Ninja. For this film, perhaps it is best not to ask too many questions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:20 AM

October 05, 2021

The Last Sunset

Robert Aldrich - 1961
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Seeing The Last Sunset within days of Vera Cruz, I was reminded that the films share similarities beyond director Aldrich, cinematographer Ernest Laszlo and the brief presence of villainous Jack Elam. Both films take place in Mexico not long after the Civil War, with men still wearing the remains of their respective uniforms. Some of the locations in The Last Sunset, with stone buildings in ruins, resemble those in Vera Cruz. It is not hard to imagine Burt Lancaster or Gary Cooper from the older film crossing paths with Kirk Douglas or Rock Hudson. Douglas' outfit of black hat, shirt and pants may well have been taken from Lancaster. As his own producer, Douglas was canny enough to also give himself second billing to Hudson, not only the biggest star at Universal at the time, but also the top male star at the time the film was released.

For the first several minutes, Aldrich is able to present a grubby, unshaven Hudson in pursuit of Douglas across an unwelcoming landscape of rocks and desert. Grittiness gives way to glamour at the first shot of Dorothy Malone, lounging against the porch of the glorified shack she calls home. It's hard to detect that Malone's frontier wife has had a hardscrabble existence with her carefully windswept hair, eye shadow and lipstick. As Malone's daughter, Carol Lynley could pass easily for any teenage American girl of that era in her blue jeans. Filmed before Lynley's starring role in Return to Peyton Place, but released approximately a month later, Lynley had rounder cheeks making her look slightly younger than her actual age. Hudson is clean shaven after that introductory scene, as is Douglas. Only Joseph Cotton, as Malone's alcoholic husband, joins the other men in supporting roles, the cowboys, war veterans and wanderers with only a passing connection to the frills of civilization like a bath, a shave and a change of clothes.

The Last Sunset is mostly remembered now for the final gunfight between Hudson and Douglas, and its influence on Sergio Leone. And it is a bravura piece of filmmaking. The majority of the film is not as visually dynamic as Vera Cruz. I suspect that contractually, Aldrich had to shoot a specific number of close-ups of his two leading stars. Where one sees Aldrich's hand is when he is able to film his actors together within the frame. The first scene of Malone alone with Douglas provides the back story of their relationship. The camera moves within lengthy two-shots, as Malone and Douglas simultaneous move around each other as in a dance. Because they are visually contained together within the frame, but we also see how they react to each other, Aldrich shows the combustibility of their relationship. I am not familiar with the source novel, but narrative is crammed with revelations of family relationships suggesting an attempt at something like Greek tragedy with an ending that may be too Freudian for its own good. The screenplay was by Dalton Trumbo, the second of three written for Douglas in between Spartacus and Lonely are the Brave.

I had never gotten around to reading Alain Silver and James Ursini's study, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, but it is quoted quite heavily in Nick Pinkerton's commentary track. I bring this up as the book delves more deeply into Aldrich's visual style and use of unifying characters within the camera frame. Along with the usual overviews of the main stars and some of the supporting actors, Pinkerton reads from news items posted at the time of production. Pinkerton also quotes from Bosley Crowther's New York Times review, equally dismissive here as he was towards Vera Cruz six years earlier. Ultimately, Pinkerton positions The Last Sunset as a transitional film, both in the way Aldrich would choose to shoot films where he would favor using two cameras simultaneously, and as a work representing some of the shifts in the American western.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:46 AM

September 28, 2021

Vera Cruz

Robert Aldrich - 1954
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I wrote about Vera Cruz a little over four years ago. While there will be some repeating of some of my thoughts on the film, there will also be notes on what this new blu-ray version offers.

Much of the contemporary appreciation for Vera Cruz rests on the film's reputation as an influence on Sergio Leone's westerns. The assessment short changes the film as one of the templates for some of Leone's peers. Aside from Burt Lancaster's stylish anti-hero, there is the setting in Mexico during a time of political upheaval, a German military advisor to the main villain, and critiques of colonialism and/or capitalism. All or some of these elements are found in films by Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Sollima, and Carlo Lizzani, among others. Leone was the one who fulfilled his ambition by working with Aldrich on Sodom and Gomorrah, only to find himself disillusioned by his former filmmaking idol.

It is worth noting that the influence of Vera Cruz took place almost a decade later with films primarily shot in Spain, often starring expatriate actors. Aldrich's film marks itself as being a transitional western with the casting of Gary Cooper against Burt Lancaster, not simply stars of different eras and different acting styles, but also with screen personas representing contrasting moral codes. As Henry King discovered when he directed the silent The Winning of Barbara Worth, Gary Cooper underplayed his acting, the camera conveying inner thought and stoicism. Against Cooper's stillness is Lancaster's live wire, emotions on the surface. Much of his performance not only in his physicality, but his smile with those 500 gleaming teeth, two rows rightly called choppers, ready to bite down like a hungry wolf.

Visually, the film very much belongs to Aldrich. High angle, low angle and overhead shots. With Vera Cruz, Aldrich had the budget, time and full confidence to make a film his way with cinematographer Ernest Laszlo, even while forced to compromise on the characterizations at the request of his two stars. Much of the time, the two stars as well as Denise Darcel and Sarita Montiel are filmed in two-shots allowing for immediate comparison of facial expressions. The way the main characters are filmed unites them visually within the same space even when their individual motivations are in conflict. Contemporary filmmakers could also learn from Aldrich on how to film an action packed story with a couple of sub-plots within a running time slight more that ninety minutes.

Filmmaker and historian Alex Cox provides the commentary track. Always well researched, much of the information may be familiar based on previous examinations of the careers of Robert Aldrich and Sergio Leone. The one revelation is that Cary Grant was offered the role taken by Gary Cooper. Cox also points out the various Mexican locations where the film was shot. While Cox does point out the better known henchmen of Lancaster's gang - Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and the former Charles Buchinsky, he gives short shrift to Archie Savage. The former dancer associated with Katherine Dunham plays a former Union soldier, still wearing his blue uniform jacket. As Ballard, Savage was, to the best of my knowledge, one of the first black actors to have an active role in a Hollywood western, that is not a western made for black audiences, nor as a comic role. Savage's dancing skills are on display in two scenes, but he is also filmed as a man of action, facing the rest of the gang in defense of Sarita Montiel. There is no information regarding the source for the new blu-ray, but the visual flaws from the MGM blu-ray have been corrected. It is amazing to know that the film was critically lambasted at the time of release, mostly having to do with Lancaster's anti-hero showing no redeeming qualities. Bosley Crowthers in the New York Times opined, "Vera Cruz, to put it bluntly, is pretty atrocious film, loaded with meaningless violence and standard horse opera clichés." Aldrich's film has aged quite nicely as the inspiration for several films that followed, not only in the use of some of the previously mentioned tropes, but also the film's streak of dark humor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

September 21, 2021

13 Washington Square

Melville W. Brown - 1928
Kino Classics BD Region A

Curiosity got the better of me. I had never come across the name of director Melville Brown. I had seen Jean Hersholt in a few movies, but was more familiar with him through the honorary award names after him. Prior to watching 13 Washington Square, I viewed the handful of films directed by Melville Brown that are currently available on streaming platforms. It is safe to say that unlike some relatively unknown filmmakers from the silent or early sound era, film history will not require any revision with this restoration.

13 Washington Square can be enjoyed for its own modest merits. It is an entertaining film as long as one disregards its several implausible plot points. The story takes place in New York City at a time when being a member of "High Society" was newsworthy. As remote as it is for contemporary film viewers, films from the silent era through the 30s, trickling out after World War II, had stories about a more class conscious America. Here, the wealthy Mrs. De Peyster wants to stop her son, Jack, from marrying Mary, the daughter of a grocer. Aside from her personal sense of humiliation, the public news would cause her loss of her social status. Through a series of mix-ups, Mrs. De Peyster meets Deacon Pycroft, a gentleman burglar who has plans to steal her paintings by Peter Paul Rubens.

Confusion reigns with Mrs. De Peyster, her ditzy maid Matilda, Pyecroft, Jack and his fiancé, bumping into each other in the dark De Peyster mansion. As Matilda, shows her skills at physical comedy, bug eyed, knocking over kitchen supplies. There are chuckles with Matilda and Mary accidentally covered by large white cloths, ghosts as animated white sheets being corny but still amusing. It is possible that Matilda's propensity for malapropisms would have been funnier in a sound film that as titles.

Based on those early talkies that I have seen, Melville Brown never changed his style of filmmaking. Most of his shots are static full or medium of the actors. Where there is a stylistic flourish is that he will have the camera track out of a close-up to a more revealing shot of a character or a setting. In this film, Brown has a close-up of a newspaper article mentioning Mrs. De Peyster's planned trip to Europe. The camera pulls away to show that it is Jean Hersholt as Pyecroft reading the article. There is very little written about Melville Brown although a look at his filmography suggests a downward trajectory from Universal in the silent era, to programmers for RKO, ending up primarily at Monogram. The available films also suggest that Brown was typecast as a director primarily of romantic comedies.

The commentary track is by Nora Fiore, who also writes about film online as Nitrate Diva. She goes into how the film diverges from the novel and play that provided the source material. Also helpful is the information on stars Hersholt, Alice Joyce, ZaSu Pitts and the other supporting players. Fiore was also able to dig up a bit more information on Melville Brown and his career. Having also seen the available sound films, while Behind Office Doors(1931) is of interest, I prefer the funnier Lovin' the Ladies, especially for the use of blackout lighting and sound in the opening scene. The warm music track was composed by Tom Howe. The blu-ray is sourced from a 4K restoration made from two 16mm prints tinted in sepia tone.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 AM

September 14, 2021

Macho Callahan

Bernard L. Kowalski - 1970
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I am not sure who should take the credit, the director, or the cinematographer, Gerry Fisher. Whatever faults it has, Macho Callahan is, if nothing else, Bernard Kowalski's visually strongest film. There is care placed in framing the actors, whether in tight close-ups or in group shots. While I do not care much for the zoom in shots, there are the sweeping crane shots and upward tilts of the camera. Less care seems to be placed in crafting a coherent narrative where motivation is questionable at best and absent at worst.

The film takes place in 1864. The opening screen is at a Confederate prison camp, a partially destroyed stone fortress. The Confederate soldiers are grubby, battle fatigued and bored. We see a couple soldiers cooking offal from the entrails of a horse. The Union soldiers that are not locked in cells too small for confinement also bind their time in this open air prison. Kowalski cuts to a close-up of one large and greasy rat. There appears to have been good attention to period detail to make the scene look as authentic as possible. Macho Callahan is released from his confinement, punished for trying to escape, only to successfully engineer a new escape, eventually making his way to New Mexico. With Callahan out of prison, the film tentatively takes on the trappings of the revisionist Westerns that appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Callahan takes revenge on the man who tricked him into enlisting in the Union army. He also shoots a man over a dispute regarding a bottle of champagne. There is a price on Callahan's head which nonetheless does not keep him out of Texas, a Confederate state at the time. It is never explained how Callahan got to be named Macho. Callahan's amorality is such that when he becomes a more sympathetic character, it is incongruous with the first half of the film. That the film has three editors listed in the credits also suggests that there was a bit of post-production tinkering prior the final release version.

David Janssen appears to have fully committed himself to being cast against type as an anti-hero. Never once seen clean-shaven, his beard his flecked with white hairs. As Callahan, Janssen looks like a man who has lived a hard life. What is shocking is to realize that Janssen was not even 40 at the time he made the film. Jean Seberg appears as a widow initially seeking revenge following the death of her husband by Callahan. As it turned out, Macho Callahan was Seberg's last Hollywood production after being victimized by disinformation from the FBI for her political activity. Also in the cast, albeit sometimes too briefly, are Lee J. Cobb, Bo Hopkins, David Carradine and Diane Ladd. Pedro Armendariz, Jr. has an unusually large supporting role as Callahan's partner-in-crime, the most sympathetic character in the film.

Alex Cox uses the term neo-Western to describe Macho Callahan in his commentary track. These would be the Westerns produced by Hollywood that upended many of the traditional tropes in a period bookended by two films by Sam Peckinpah, The Wild Bunch and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Cox points out the Mexican locations as well as the overviews on the careers of the primary cast and crew. The lapses in the narrative are criticized as well, with what appears to be the choice of the writers to place convenience over logic. Even with its faults, Macho Callahan is one of the more interesting examples from a time when experimentation in form and content briefly brought new life to a fading genre.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:08 AM

September 07, 2021

Blue Panther

Marie-Chantal contre Dr. Kha
Claude Chabrol - 1965
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Blue Panther appeared in the middle period from 1964 through 1968 when Claude Chabrol was primarily making deliberately commercial films primarily for a French audience. With the exception of the English language The Champagne Murders, these films did not get released in the U.S. I do not think that Blue Panther would have been exportable in any event. The title character was inspired by Jacques Chazot's books, published in the 1950s. The literary Marie-Chantal is described as a snob who is also naive. From what little has been made available in English, she would seem somewhat similar to the kind of ditzy heiresses that appeared in 1930s screwball comedies, the daughters of the very wealthy totally lost outside their cocoon of extreme privilege. Chabrol's Marie-Chantal only shares the name and the penchant for dressing fashionably.

Anyone unfamiliar with Claude Chabrol's films should definitely not start here. Even those who have followed Chabrol's career from his roots as a member of France's Nouvelle Vague through his last years of well-crafted mysteries may be baffled. Blue Panther has been described as a spy spoof. In terms of genre filmmaking, perhaps for Chabrol and his co-writers, that was besides the point. The film is more lightly amusing than funny, nor strong on visceral action. The visual stylization is mostly seen in the use of mirrors and in the depiction of murder. Things and people are never what they initially appear to be. There are exploding cigarettes, a dart gun disguised as a ski pole, the globe-hopping from Switzerland to Morocco, and the fight among spies to get hold of the blue panther, a small ornamental brooch of a blue panther's head with two rubies as eyes. Chabrol essentially undermines audience expectations of the film either as genre exercise or as satire. The original French title contains a linguistic play on Dr. No with "kha" being a loosely used Thai word signifying agreement.

There is some pleasure in the film's casting for those who have had more than casual interest in French films from the 1960s extending beyond the Nouvelle Vague canon. Marie Laforet, as Marie-Chantal is probably still best known for her debut performance in Purple Noon. More familiar are the men in supporting roles - Serge Reggiani, Roger Hanin and Chabrol favorite, Charles Denner. Chabrol appears briefly as a bartender in what first appears to be an awkwardly filmed scene involving an intrusively placed plant. Brightening the proceeding is the the future Stephane Audran as a Russian spy whose scenes with Laforet are the most entertaining. As the chief villain, Akim Tamiroff seemed more menacing as Uncle Joe Grandi in Touch of Evil than here as the duplicitous Dr. Kha. The inclusion of Tamiroff may well have appealed to Chabrol simply because of the actor's several collaborations with Orson Welles.

The commentary track is by the trio of Howard Berger, Steve Mitchell and Nathaniel Thompson. What is helpful is in their pointing out how much of the verbal humor - puns, double and triple entendres, and other wordplay - is lost in the straightforward English subtitles. The film is also placed within the context of Chabrol's career at the time, as well as spy films of the time, when the genre was at its most popular. Discussion of how the conventions of the the spy film were played, as well as how the films were received by different audiences, goes into a too long detour about Joseph Losey and Modesty Blaise. The blu-ray is sourced from a 4K restoration that looks perfect.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:39 AM

August 31, 2021

Delon and Deray - Two Films

The Gang / Le Gang
Jacques Deray - 1977

Three Men to Kill / Trois hommes à abattre
Jacques Deray - 1980
Cohen Film Collection BD Region A

Iconic French film star Alain Delon made nine films under the direction of Jacques Deray. With the exception of their first collaboration, La Piscine (1969), the films were all produced by Alain Delon. The most famous of these films is probably Borsalino, with an even bigger French star, Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon and Deray also made Flic Story with the formidable Jean-Louis Trintignant. Aside from those two films, Delon was supported by a cast of actors generally unknown outside France. Like the two films on this blu-ray, the films had limited distribution primarily in Europe as well as Japan, where Delon was extremely popular.

The Gang is about a group of criminals who made headlines in France around 1945. The film is loosely based on actual events. The source book was by Roger Borniche, a police inspector turned crime novelist. This film followed Borniche's autobiographical Flic Story which had Delon starring as Borniche, in pursuit of a vicious criminal played by Trintignant. In The Gang, Delon is Robert, the leader of the group of five men. Jean-Claude Carriere co-wrote the screenplay, and is hand is apparent in some of the dialogue. Part of the film is from the point of view of Marinette, a coat check girl who impulsively becomes Robert's girlfriend. The film hints at the wartime lives of three of the gang members with one a member of the Resistance, one who was a collaborator, and one who was a German prisoner.

This is one easy going gangster film. There is less interest in the crimes than in the camaraderie of the gang. From what I gleaned from the dialogue, the police were in a state of disorganization in the months that Paris was liberated from the Nazis. This allowed Robert and the gang to pull several robberies in a day. Part of the relaxed attitude of the film is conveyed by the tinkly piano score by Carlo Rustichelli. There is attention to period detail with the cars and clothing, but Delon's curly mop is distracting and anachronistic.

Far better is Three Men to Kill, one of Delon's most popular films. The source novel, available in English as Three to Kill is by Jean-Patrick Manchette. Delon had a credited hand in the screenplay. While I have not read the novel, I have read other works by Manchette, whose protagonists are usually loners with a jaundice view of the world. As portrayed in the film, Michel, a professional gambler, appears a bit more polished than Manchette's characters. What Delon and Deray bring over is a more graphic violence in keeping with Manchette's world.

Acting as a good samaritan, Michel takes a man injured in a one-car accident from a country road to a nearby hospital. What follows is the death of three associates of a top industrialist, with Michel over his head in a series of cascading events with an elusive connections. The film includes a car chase staged by Remy Julienne that includes crashes, turned over cars climaxing in a gas station on fire. The sense of mystery is maintained through the end. Even compared to Delon's films made with Jean-Pierre Melville, this is darker and more deeply pessimistic.

Both films were sourced from restored prints, in French with English subtitles. The only extras are trailers for the respective films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:34 AM

July 27, 2021

Two Films by Veit Harlan

Immensee (1943)

The Great Sacrifice/Opfergang (1944)
Kino Classics BD Region A

Even if the opportunity came about, I do not think I could bring myself to watch Jud Suss. I have seen excerpts. With this newly available blu-ray, the curious can have a glimpse at Harlan's work beyond the one film that made, and unmade, his reputation. Not that these two films are apolitical. One does not have to dig deep for the nationalism and other examples of cultural blinders that are considered assets here. Veit Harlan was Germany's top film director during World War II not only due to his willingness to make Jud Suss, but because also because virtually everyone else of equal or greater talent had emigrated to Hollywood. Whatever Germanic virtues are being extolled in Harlan's melodramas is undermined by the blandness of the films and their leading characters in Immensee and the delirious melodrama of The Great Sacrifice.

Both films star Harlan's wife, the Swedish born Kristina Soderbaum. The actress reportedly epitomized Aryan beauty with her wholesome appearance. In Immensee, Soderbaum plays the part of a small town girl, Elisabeth, caught between an up and coming composer-conductor, Reinhardt, and a wealthy young suitor, Erich. After pledging fidelity to each other, Reinhardt leaves town for a three year scholarship. A surprise visit by Elisabeth reveals that even neoclassical composers have their share of groupies when a woman is discovered in Reinhardt's bed. Elisabeth goes back home to marry Erich. Reinhardt graduates and goes off to Rome. While one might be sympathetic to Reinhardt's protests that the opera singer he is having an affair with has rewritten his lyrics, Italian actress Germana Paolieri proves to be the more charismatic actress in her small role. Reinhardt also shows his provincialism by preferring German food over Italian cuisine. Elisabeth is the ideal German woman, proud of being "rooted" in her small town, faithful to her husband even as a widow. Reinhardt is allowed to be a cad because he believes in Bach and Beethoven. The film tries to play it both ways with Elisabeth comparing Reinhardt's nomadic existence to that of "gypsies", and then claiming she's only quoting her mother. I do not know how innocent that line was for its intended audience at the time, although history has made it a chilling remark.

Political considerations are dispensed with early in The Great Sacrifice. Nautical explorer Albrecht tells of his successful travels, port by port, from Hamburg to Japan, noting that he has overcome a euphemistic "disruption". Albrecht is played by Carl Raddatz, Reinhardt from Immensee, this time as the one caught in a triangle between two women. Albrecht gets engaged, and marries Octavia, a high class woman from a family that enjoys discussing the Dionysian poetry of Nietzsche on a Sunday morning. The family is so intellectual and reserved that Albrecht has to literally drag Octavia into participating in a very Dionysian celebration. Albrecht gets distracted by Als, a mysterious neighbor who introduces herself by swimming nude by Albrecht's row boat. As beautiful as Octavia is, Als impresses Albrecht by being an accomplished equestrian and archer, as well as combining the two as an Aryan version of the mythological Diana, shooting arrows while riding her horse, straight into the targets. Kristina Soderbaum appears as the fatalistic Als, who has romantic notions about death. Irene von Meyendorff, another favorite actress of the time who also bears some resemblance to Carole Lombard, plays Octavia.

The Great Sacrifice does not have the reputation, either good or bad, as Immensee, but it is the better film. The scene of the annual celebration, with its elaborate set featuring a giant slide, and what may be a hundred or so partying extras in costume is eye catching. Filming in color, even in the subdued Agfacolor process, pays off here. There is also Als dreams or hallucinations about Albrecht while deathly ill. This is one of those films where being over the top is an asset, albeit perhaps not intentionally. The film reportedly had a limited release due the availability of color film stock. Well before The Great Sacrifice ended, I wondered if R. W. Fassbinder had seen it, and if so, thought about making his own version. The one person who notably has seen and admired The Great Sacrifice is philosopher Slavoj Zizek who wrote about the film in his essay, "Hallucination as Ideology in Cinema".

Both films have commentary tracks. German film critic Olaf Moller discusses how the combination of star Soderbaum and director Harlan was commercially beneficial for both. Cultural context is provided in how Germans viewed and mythologized "the North", which in part explains why German films of the time featured characters as well as stars from Scandinavian countries. On a more personal level, Moller points to one of the scenes shot on location where his grandmother may have been an extra. The Australian tag team of Alexandra Heller-NIcholas and Josh Nelson cover The Great Sacrifice. Using a variety of scholarly sources, Harlan's career is discussed. While most serious cineastes will identify connections in the use of melodrama between Harlan, Fassbinder and Douglas Sirk, it suggests that more research, as well as availability, might be needed before making conclusions about German melodrama during the Nazi era. Heller-Nicholas also mentions Stanley Kubrick's fascination with Harlan, and Harlan's possible influence on Kubrick's films. (Kubrick's wife was the niece of Veit Harlan.) Both films were sourced from 4K scans from Murnau Foundation. There was some damage in a brief transitional scene in The Great Sacrifice. As it stands, the historical importance of this blu-ray release can not be underestimated.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:23 AM

July 20, 2021

Thunderbolt

Josef von Sternberg - 1929
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The best sequence in Thunderbolt has little to do with the basic narrative, but is revealing of what was allowed in the pre-Code sound era. The gangster known as Thunderbolt has taken his girlfriend, Ritzie, to a nightclub called The Black Cat. This is no Cotton Club, but apparently a black staffed nightclub with black entertainers but a racially mix clientele. We first see a small troupe of dancers performing on stage. Von Sternberg cuts back to Thunderbolt and Ritzie arguing. A singer is heard off camera. Thunderbolt and Ritzie leave their table to converse in a back room. A cut is made to a shot of the the singer, the uncredited Theresa Harris performing "Daddy, Won't You Please Come Home". Before going into the room, Thinderbolt takes a moment to slightly leer at Harris. Putting this in the context of the time, it was unusual for a Hollywood production to not only suggest that a black woman might be sexually attractive, but that she would be attractive to a white man.

It could well be that some of the cliches of the gangster film originated with Thunderbolt and the screenplay by Jules and Charles Furthman, with dialogue by Herman J. Mankiewicz. George Bancroft plays the title role. Jules Furthman previously wrote The Docks of New York, while Charles wrote the story for Underworld, both also starring Bancroft directed by von Sternberg. While the silent films are gripping, Thunderbolt gets clunky. This is not simply due to being an early sound film, where the delivery of the dialogue is stilted, but the plot of Ritzie trying to escape the life of being associated with a gangster by leaving Thunderbolt for the upright Bob. As Ritzie, Fay Wray was a few years from her brief career peak, while Richard Arlen as Bob never got much traction in the move to talkies. The film was also a career peak for George Bancroft who was considered Oscar worthy for his performance.

Sternberg's hand is in place visually. There are heightened shadows in several shots and the patterns made by prison bars, the bars of a bank teller's window, and apartment stair railings. In one shot taking place at the Black Cat club, two men are at a table conversing, the face of one of the men obscured by the frame of a stage riser. There are several shots taking place in the prison's death row where characters are separated by the prison bars, and the face is not fully visible. The opening shot is most clearly from the original silent version of the film, with the camera at street level following a black cat as it passes along the feet of several couples necking on park benches. The film takes a strange turn with the other animal character, a stray dog which follows Thunderbolt around, giving away his location to the police, and then following him to prison.

Nick Pinkerton's commentary includes the history of the making of the film, its reception at the time, and von Sternberg's use of sound. This is the first time that Thunderbolt has been released in a home video version. Sadly, there is no silent version to make a comparison, with only Pinkerton relaying that a viewer of the time who saw both attested to Bancroft having a more "powerful" performance in the silent film. The shots with the traveling camera were done with sound added later, providing an idea of the activity off-screen. The film had been allowed to lapse into obscurity. David Bordwell has written about having a 16mm print, and the film receiving a rare screening on TCM. There is no information about the source print but there is marked wear in one scene involving Bob and his mother. Pinkerton mentions Robert Warshow's essay, "The Gangster as Tragic Hero", citing George Bancroft as setting the stage for Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, among others. Thunderbolt can be seen as a transitional work made during the shift in filmmaking technology, but also as the final work by someone who had a hand in inventing the American gangster film, only to leave it for more exotic places a short time later.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:01 AM

July 13, 2021

The Whirlpool of Fate

La Fille de l'eau
Jean Renoir - 1925
Kino Classics BD Region A

This is not simply a matter of a digital upgrade. The Whirlpool of Fate was previously part of the DVD set of films by Jean Renoir that was issued in 2007. This new edition is from a 4K scan of a more complete version of the film, twelve minutes longer with a running time of 83 minutes. The original French title translates as "The Girl of the Water" which I prefer, as The Whirlpool of Fate leans towards the melodramatic. What is of interest is that in what was his first solo directorial effort, there is the use of technique that one usually does not associate wth Renoir's later films.

The film was intended as a star vehicle for Renoir's wife, Catherine Hessling. Gudule is a young woman who lives on a barge with her father and uncle. It's not specified when the film takes place. The inclusion of an older, unreliable car of the type built around 1910 suggests that the film takes place in a provincial part of France barely touched by the 20th Century. The uncle, Jeff, is introduced as "a brute" who abuses Gudule following the accidental feather of her father. Running away and fending for herself near a small town, she is falsely accused of setting fire to a farmer's haystack. Even when Gudule finds sanctuary working for the small town's prominent family, Uncle Jeff reappears to threaten her happiness. The film was shot on the country property of Paul Cezanne in Marlotte.

An early shot used as part of the introduction of Jeff appears to be simple but is masterful in terms of maintaining the same essential composition within the frame. The barge is filmed almost in full, floating to the right of the frame. Jeff is walking towards the left of the frame, in the opposite direction of the barge. For what seems like like to a minute, Jeff is in virtually the same position within the frame while he is walking, giving the illusion that he is not moving forward while the barge continues its movement. This particular shot is a small hint of Renoir's intentions to experiment with the possibilities of cinema.

When Gudule is caught and accused of setting fire, Renoir does quick cross-cutting among the faces of the accusers. There is also another moment of similar cross-cutting, with some very brief shots. There is also the dream sequence, filmed in a studio with a built in cylinder allowing for characters to defy gravity. Hessling is able to float up and down from a tree, while other ghostly characters run sideways along a wall. Even when Renoir made his own version of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", he did not rely on special effects as he had done so here.

Nick Pinkerton's commentary track is sourced from Jean Renoir's autobiography as well as the writings mainly of Raymond Durgnat and Andre Bazin. Discussed is the use of water in Renoir's films, mainly as locations and also referred to directly (The River and indirectly Boudu Saved from Drowning in the titles. Where available, some information is provided about the actors, several of whom were friends or residents of Marlotte. More information is available on actor and screen writer Pierre Lestringuez, who appears here as Jeff. Pinkerton also explains how the special effects sequence was created, pointing out that the superimpositions were all done in camera, prior to the time when such work was created in a photo lab. Additionally, the blu-ray includes a new score by Antonia Coppola for solo piano.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

July 06, 2021

Alias Nick Beal

John Farrow - 1949
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

A very curious moment occurs near the beginning of Alias Nick Beal. The district attorney, a pastor, the D.A.'s wife and a teen boy are meeting in the glass walled office of a recreation center for teenage boys. A much younger boy appears with a message for the district attorney. The boy disappears as suddenly as he appears, having neither entered or exited through the only visible door. Throughout the film, Nick Beal shows himself to be able to appear and disappear at will. There are no special effects involved, but simply placement of the character within the view of the camera. What makes the scene with the messenger boy unusual is that his appearance and disappearence are not remarked upon as they are with Nick Beal. This may be either a narrative sleight of hand, or it could be an expression of how children are invisible to adults unless they make themselves noticed. This is in keeping with the youth center which serves as a gathering place for boys considered potential juvenile delinquents.

Alias Nick Beal is not a film noir in the traditional sense, though it does share some of the elements. There is the protagonist, Joseph Foster, the district attorney who finds himself shedding his idealism in exchange for the political clout of being a governor. Donna Allen, who first appears as a hard-drinking floozie is transformed into a high society dame after meeting Nick Beal. Her restrained relationship with Foster keeps her from being the true femme fatale. While the identity of Beal is mildly ambiguous, Farrow and screenwriter Jonathan Latimer avoid any direct explanation. Only at the end is there a great suggestion of the supernatural.

A film noir visual trope used several times involves exterior scenes in the fog. Beal is introduced as an emerging silhouette, black in a cloud of grey. Several scenes take place in a bar that seems perpetually enveloped in fog. The remoteness of the bar, more of a dead end dive, is suggested by its name, China Coast. The place appears to be the hangout for down on their heels sailors or those disconnected from the mainstream society of the unnamed town where the film takes place. The interior of the bar is crooked, emphasizing a lack of balance. A sense of disconnection is also suggested in the interior of Donna Allen's ritzy apartment. Conspicuously visible is a surrealistic mural, resembling something by Dali, feature a detached leg with a hand in place of feet. There is a sense of isolation with Foster and Allen seen alone in very large rooms. Farrow also plays with that sense of space in two two-shots with Beal setting terms with Foster and Allen respectively, by placing Beal in the foreground with the significantly smaller Foster and Allen visible in the back of the room.

Thomas Mitchell was an old looking 57 year old playing a man who is stated to be 48. As Foster, he still suggests the vigor of a younger man, but one who has just enough self-awareness that his attraction to Donna Allen is foolish. Dressed to the nines, Audrey Totter looks out of place. One of the great perpetual bad girls, Totter's introduction with her shabbily dressed, grabbing drinks in a bar and picking fights with other ladies of the night offers a bit of boisterous humor. As Nicholas Beal, mysterious businessman, Ray Milland is mostly dead pan, his biggest smile near the end when Beal believes he totally has Foster in his pocket. Beal not only knows his power but also knows that like some gangsters, he does not have to shout or be physically imposing in order to get his way.

Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation provides the commentary track. Part of the discussion is how Alias Nick Beal was a more personal project for John Farrow, given Farrow's practice as a devout Catholic as well as his writings of Catholic history. Farrow reportedly chose to film this adaptation of a story by Mindret Lord over the more prestigious assignment as Alan Ladd's first choice to direct The Great Gatsby. Part of the commentary covers the frequent collaborations between Farrow and Latimer, but only briefly suggests the irreverent sense of humor often found in those films. Their most famous film together is the initial collaboration, The Big Clock, also starring Milland. I would also recommend Plunder of the Sun with Glenn Ford as the wise-cracking adventurer anticipating Indian Jones by almost thirty years. Muller claims to be retired from doing home video commentaries, but I hope takes on another assignment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:59 AM

June 29, 2021

Major Dundee

Sam Peckinpah - 1965
Arrow Video BD Region A two-disc set

A critical and commercial failure at the time of release, Sam Peckinpah's third film gets a showering of love in this new boxed set. Included are both the original theatrical version, the extended version first released in 2005, hours worth of supplements, three (!) commentary tracks, a booklet with essays by several respected critics, and if that was not enough, a poster with Arrow's commissioned artwork. The supplements more fully explain the history of the making and unmaking of the film. Even Peckinpah's own estimation of Major Dundee as a would-be masterpiece is questioned by some of his champions.

A personal memory here - my first encounter with Major Dundee was a giant poster on the side of a building in the Chicago suburb of Evanston. I was thirteen and intrigued by the idea of a Civil War era western. Charlton Heston was a top star at the time, although the only film I had seen him in was El Cid. As it turned out, the Chicago run came and went, but Major Dundee never came to a theater near me. It was about five years later that I first saw the film on a small television, pan and scanned, black and white, tuned in just in time to see soldiers ambushed by some Apaches.

At the time of release, Major Dundee was viewed primarily as a big budget western with a handful of stars - the established Heston, plus the rising Richard Harris, James Coburn and Jim Hutton. In the intervening years, interest in the film is based on its part in the evolution of Peckinpah, the inclusion of several actors who over the years would be considered part of the director's stock company, and the film's representation of a genre shift that would become more obvious in the coming years with westerns that were more violent and less romantic.

For the benefit of anyone not familiar with the film, the basic story is of a Union army major in pursuit of an Apache chief who has massacred a group of civilians and kidnapped three young boys. The film takes place in the southwest, between 1864 and 1865. The understaffed Dundee enlists a goup of Confederate prisoners with the promise of possible pardons to join him. Also included are a motley group of civilians and six black soldiers. While pledging to follow Dundee into battle, the prisoners loyalty is to the Confederacy. For Dundee, these men are traitors to the United States. The film is bookended with off-screen narration by bugler Tim Ryan, whose diary provided part of the narrative thread. Something that struck me this time that I had overlooked previously was that the date the film ends is April 19th, 1865. While chasing Apaches in Mexico, Dundee and his surviving soldiers are unaware that they are crossing into a Texas that is no longer a Confederate state, or that the Civil War is over and that President Lincoln had recently been assassinated. Possibly this was not intentional, but while there is narrative closure, history suggests a more open ending.

In terms of any critical assessment of Major Dundee, anything I could say would essentially be redundant, repeating what others have said, and said much better than me. This box set is for the dedicated cinephile and the serious Sam Peckinpah fan. For the more casual viewer or those still unfamiliar with the filmmaker, I suggest seeing the 2005 restored version. Where the booklet notes and commentary tracks are in relative agreement is that the film is a well realized first half with a more problematic second half. Some of the history of the making of the film is comprised of differing information. What is consistent is that the film originated as a treatment by Harry Julian Fink that was bought by producer Jerry Bresler. Following the success of Diamond Head, Bresler was looking for another project to star Charlton Heston. Bresler originally had hoped to sign John Ford to direct. Ford was unavailable, shooting Cheyenne Autumn at the time. Bresler turned to Sam Peckinpah, based on the critical acclaim given to Ride the High Country. On his first major production, Peckinpah re-wrote the script with Oscar Saul, reshaping an incomplete treatment and shooting script into his own incomplete script. "Creative differences" hardly describes the what Bresler, Heston and Peckinpah had each envisioned. Due to contractual reasons, Peckinpah and company went to Mexico with the incomplete script. Due to changes at Columbia Pictures, the budget was cut from four and a half million dollars to three million dollars, and the shooting schedule cut by two weeks. Peckinpah went ahead to make the film he originally signed up to make, getting fired at the completion of shooting when it became impossible to film several scenes. Peckinpah was able to whittle the footage down to a version running about 160 minutes that he was happy with. Bresler cut the film down to 136 minutes - the so-called "extended version". Columbia boss Mike Frankovich approved the original theatrical release that ran slightly over two hours. Details such as how Senta Berger was cast in the shoehorned romantic scenes or how much of the film's shortcoming were the responsibility of Jerry Bresler remain subjects of dispute. An interesting footnote glossed over is that Peckinpah had completed a script for the film, The Glory Guys a fictionalized version of Custer and Little Big Horn. Directorial duties were given to Peckinpah's associate from "The Rifleman" television series, Arnold Laven. Three members of the Major Dundee cast - Berger, Slim Pickens and Michael Anderson, Jr. were once again filming Durango, Mexico.

There is information to be gleaned from each of the commentary tracks. The first is ported over from the Twilight Time release with label founder Nick Redman and three authors of books on Peckinpah - David Waddle, Garner Simmons and Paul Seydor. Glenn Erickson does double duty with a solo commentary as well as a lively exchange with Alan Rode. Everyone is well prepared here. Jeremy Carr, Farran Smith Nehne and Roderick Heath provide their insights, with Ms. Smith challenging the prevailing opinion of the film as "Moby Dick on horseback". Neil Snowdon, a producer at Arrow Films, also provides an essay, and a reminder that Arrow is a company run by cinephiles. Mike Siegel has two compilations of interviews, one with members of the cast and crew of Major Dundee, and one of more general memories with actors who have worked with Peckinpah over the course of his career.

My favorite supplement is the video essay by David Cairns discussing the difference between the film Peckinpah envisioned and the theatrical release version. Cairns casts producer Bresler, who had previously produced the two theatrical Gidget sequels, as being incompatible with Peckinpah. I would contend that to be partially true as some of the deleted footage was antithetical to Bresler's taste. Also this was a time prior to the ratings systems when all films needed to be approved for a general audience. Bresler had a history of producing several films that were film noir or noirish, but the film he had in mind was a more traditional western. Where Cairn's commentary is of most interest is in discussing how Peckinpah had hoped to employ slow motion in the death scenes. Part of why The Wild Bunch succeeded where Major Dundee failed is the combination of a rating system that allowed Peckinpah to depict graphic violence and a Hollywood more open to a wider variety of editing techniques. Cairns also rightly calls out the original music score where Daniele Amfitheatrof was hired to imitate Max Steiner with inappropriately jaunty music, and Mitch Miller and his hearty male chorus sang the "Major Dundee March". This was a time when major movies were virtually required to have a title song that received heavy radio play. Whatever complaints one might have regarding the score by Christopher Caliando, it still is an improvement over the original music score. And as one who has seen all three theatrical Gidget films directed by Paul Wendkos, they have their own silly charm.

The 136 minute version of Major Dundee was made from a 4K scan. The 1965 theatrical release is from a 2K scan. Regardless of what one may think of Major Dundee and its status in the Peckinpah filmography, the packaging is impressive and could well win awards as one of the outstanding home video releases of this year. What we have ultimately is a film that reflects the artistic conflict at the time of production, between a producer whose template was the westerns of the past working with a filmmaker who was searching for new possibilities for the genre.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:29 AM

June 08, 2021

Cartouche

Philippe de Broca - 1962
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I had seen Cartouche twice previously, but also decided to revisit some other films by de Broca made around the same time. A small sequence that particularly struck me is when Cartouche, dodging the law in Paris, joins the army. The film takes place during the early 18th Century period in France known as the Regence. Cartouche and his two friends are caught in a battle, hiding from the the slaughter, and being declared heroes after staggering back to the fort. The reward for the men's supposed gallantry is to be on the front line of the next battle. The battle scene and the treatment of the soldiers portray the absurdity of war, and anticipate de Broca's best known film, King of Hearts.

Cartouche was inspired by the real life highwayman, Louis Dominique Garthausen, also known as Cartouche. As played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, Cartouche is introduced as a very talented pickpocket. The various criminals of Paris are under the control of Malichot, who takes most of the loot for himself. Returning from the army, after stealing the army cashbox, Cartouche takes on Malichot. The underworld gang is transformed into an army that shares the ill-gotten gains, but also has a code of honor of only stealing from the rich. In the course of his adventures, Cartouche rescues Venus, a young woman arrested for the theft of a silk kerchief.

One of de Broca's other themes, also in other films, is the question of spiritual loss with material gain. Cartouche has wealth and the adoration of Venus. In spite of declaring himself married to Venus, Cartouche is seen flirting with another woman. His seduction of an aristocrat's wife almost brings about his end. For some of the men in de Broca's films, it takes the loss of everything to recognize the value of what they have.

Cartouche was the first of five films de Broca made with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Each film was a comic adventure pairing the star with a top actress. This may well be the best of the five in part because of it being a period film, unlike the other four which were in contemporary settings, with certain aspects aging badly. Cartouche set the pace for Belmondo not only doing very physically demanding slapstick comedy, but also horse riding, sword fighting, shooting and assorted fisticuffs. Claudia Cardinale has the star-making role as Venus, whose biggest weapon may be her broad smile flashing both rows of teeth. While Cardinale is mainly associated with Italian films, French is her first language, so I am assuming that is her voice on the soundtrack.

The blu-ray comes with a documentary on de Broca that alternates between wife Alexandra de Broca and French journalist Thomas Morales. Mme. de Broca discusses how Cartouche came about when plans to film a new version of The Three Musketeers were cancelled, and how the film was a leap for the the still relatively new director. Morales makes the point of positioning de Broca as a link between the Nouvelle Vague and the more classic style of filmmaking. I do think his dismissal of Claudia Cardinale as a serious actress is nonsensical in light of her work with Fellini, Visconti, among others. One of the more interesting points in Simon Abrams' commentary is how the reception for Cartouche in the U.S. was muted by its belated release following The Man from Rio (1964) by one month, with critics expecting another totally comic film.

Georges Delerue's music for Cartouche quite appropriately evokes music of the era, Handel comes to mind. There is one scene when Cartouche is waiting for an expected liaison with the aristocrat's wife, the woman he flirts with at the beginning of the film. The music struck me as an initial attempt at what would be more fully developed as the romantic theme for Godard's Contempt.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:51 AM

June 03, 2021

The Woman One Longs For

Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt / Three Loves
Kurt Bernhardt - 1929
Kino Classics BD Region A

The emphasis on the blu-ray release of The Woman One Longs For is that it is a German silent film starring Marlene Dietrich made prior to her "discovery" by Josef von Sternberg. Dietrich does play the titular character, though her actual billing is below that of top-billed Fritz Kortner. Dietrich is not exactly a femme fatale here, although knowing her proves to be the undoing of two men in this story. While Dietrich has yet to be molded into the glamorous icon as established in the von Sternberg films, it is the artistry of the filmmaking that caught me off guard.

The source novel is from Max Brod, a name more familiar as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka. The son of an industrialist, Henri, goes on a honeymoon trip by train with his wife, Angela. Henry spots Stascha looking out through the frosted window of the train he and his wife are about to board. Stascha is accompanied by an older man, heavy, with a monocle. Later on the train, Stascha implores Henri to help her as she says she is traveling with the man against her will. Henri ditches his wife to follow Stascha and the man identified as Mr. Karoff to the Grand Hotel. Bernhardt and screenwriter Ladislaus Vajda had sense enough not to pad out the film which runs at a tidy 77 minutes.

I admittedly have only seen a handful of films directed by the future Curtis Bernhardt, as he was renamed moving from Germany to Hollywood. My own initial impression of Bernhardt was that of a second-stringer, the guy Jack Warner tapped for the "women's pictures" when Michael Curtiz and Anatole Litvak were to busy, or the project was less than prestigious. There is precious little written about Bernhardt that makes it easy to dismiss him as primarily a journeyman director. It was actually an online piece on Conrad Veidt by Fiona Watson that suggested Bernhardt has another filmmaker in need of further research. Watson has written about The Man who was Murdered, and Bernhardt's use of tracking shots and dissolves. Further searching took me to a Bright Lights essay by Marc Svetov grouping Bernhardt with Robert Siodmak and Max Ophuls work in the early 1930s in Germany and France. It would appear that Curtis Bernhardt's pre-Hollywood work needs to be better known.

There is a traveling shot near the beginning, inside a cafe, that traverses the length of the cafe and back. Within the sequences that take place on the train are a couple of shots going either forward or back through the corridor of a train car. The scene taking place in the hotel on New Year's Eve begins with the close-up of a giant clock, that backing decoration for the house band, with an extended tracking shot away from the clock to reveal the celebrants in the ballroom. Bernhardt may have also been under the influence of Eisenstein with the use of quick cutting montage. A series of shots establishing a steel factory could well have been taken from Soviet propaganda, with the parts of the plant seen as a series of almost abstract images. The fist fight between Henry and Karoff is a succession of quick close- ups - a slap to the jaw, a monocle dropping to the floor, fists against chests, fists against jaws, and some tentative grappling. Dietrich is first introduced visually in the frame of the train window within the camera frame.

In her commentary track, Gaylyn Studlar points out that Marlene Dietrich was not quite a star at the time of production. She was chosen over studio objections by Bernhardt following a series of supporting roles in films made earlier in the decade. Stardom was still not quite in the grasp of the 28 year old actress, even with prominent roles here and under the direction of Maurice Tourneur. Studlar goes deepest in discussing the career of Fritz Kortner, as well as touching on the careers of Bernhardt in Hollywood, and cinematographer Curt Courant. The blu-ray also includes a score by jazz/classical musician Pascal Schumacher showing the influence of the composers of the 1920s. The blu-ray is sourced from a print restored in 2012 by the F. W. Murnau Foundation. I usually refrain from hyperbole, but The Woman One Longs For could well be one of the best classic releases of this year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:12 AM

June 01, 2021

The Green Man

Robert Day - 1956
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Often critical and commercial successes at the time of release, I sometimes take a look at British comedies from the 1950s up to the period before A Hard Day's Night and "Swinging London", and wonder what the fuss was about. What seemed funny at the time of production might evoke a small chuckle but most likely falls flat. The exception would be those comedies from the production/writing team of Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat. As a team, they may be best known for the series of St. Trinian's films, about anarchic school girls running amuck, with Alastair Sim as both the headmistress and her twin brother in the first of those films. Sim would star in several films from Launder and Gilliat. The Green Man had directorial duties handed over to Robert Day and an uncredited Basil Dearden, but still has more in common with the other films of the production team.

Sim appears here as a paid assassin, Hawkins, known for his bomb making skills. His plot to murder the statesman, Sir Gregory, is interrupted initially by the secretary who suspects that her would-be fiance may be up to no good. This is followed by an ernest door-to-door salesman. William Blake (yes, really) who shows up at the wrong house, getting that home's owner, Ann, involved. What follow is a comedy of errors that involves Hawkins trying to hide his activities, and his inept assistant trying to hide a dead body. There is frenetic activity with several people running between the two houses and up and down staircases, followed by a clue that leads Blake and Ann to an out of the way seaside inn called The Green Man.

What I think makes the difference is that Launder and Gilliat do not simply put their characters into funny situations, but there is a sympathy for their respective foibles. Even in an extreme case like Hawkins, Launder and Gilliat delight in characters that upend the social order. Hawkins makes a point of only assassinating the bullies on the world stage, dictators and self-serving captains of industry. Even the minor characters are affectionately presented, including a chamber trio of middle-aged women who energetically attack Brahms' "Hungarian Dance", and Sir Gregory's secretary, nervous about what's suppose to be a secret rendezvous with her boss. Although prominently billed, Terry-Thomas appears when the action shifts to the Green Man. T-T has been having an affair with the hotel desk clerk. And while it really has nothing to do with the main narrative, it is that inimitable enunciation and cheerful shamelessness, prime T-T, that adds to the humor. Even British life gets a couple poking with jokes at the expense of the BBC and what passes for British cuisine.

David Del Valle's commentary primarily stresses the career of Alastair Sims and Sims' work with Launder and Gilliat. There is also a brief overview of British cinema in the 1950s, especially the comedies of the time. Del Valle also explains the somewhat convoluted history of how Robert Day, previously a cinematographer, made his directorial debut under the supervision of Basil Dearden. While Day had a prolific career in film and television, very little has been of critical note. Basil Dearden has had the more noteworthy filmography, but his own comedies are more low-key. In a roundabout way, The Green Man is revisited in Dearden's penultimate The Assassination Bureau.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:06 AM

May 25, 2021

Night of the Following Day

Hubert Cornfield - 1969
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There is a key scene in Night of the Following Day that remarkably goes against most conventional idea of how such a scene should be filmed. Marlon Brando, one of the quartet of kidnappers, sees the plans falling apart when his girlfriend, played by Rita Moreno, fails to pick him and Moreno's brother (Jess Hahn) at a small airport. Brando is telling Hahn that he wants out of the operation. Most of the time, the camera is focused on Brando. There are some reaction shots of Hahn in close-up, but most of the time time his back is to the camera. The scene appears to have been largely improvised. Brando is wearing a tight, black t-shirt and is becoming increasingly unhinged at the likeliness of the getting caught. Brando works himself into a frenzy that it is almost a surprise that he does not break and yell, "Hey, Stellaaaah!". As it turned out, this is the one scene that Hubert Cornfield did not direct, turning the reigns temporarily over to Richard Boone at Brando's request.

The film is full of relatively long takes. The opening shot is a close-up of Pamela Franklin's face while she is sleeping on a plane. Another shot is from the back of a Rolls-Royce while it is driving through the rain. There is a thematic logic to the use of these observational shots. Parts of the narrative depend on characters misunderstanding of what they see. Even the main location, a rented house by the beach in what is clearly off season, is indication that the kidnappers have hit a physical dead end, anticipating that they will probably not escape from their crime or from each other.

The film was adapted from the crime novel, The Snatchers, by Lionel White. As related by Cornfield, Stanley Kubrick had considered making the film, but chose Clean Break, the basis for his film, The Killing, instead. The main concern, Hollywood's taboo regarding depictions of kidnappings, especially of a child, kept The Snatchers from being fimed in the Fifties. Cornfield also changed the kidnapping victim's age, making her a 17 year old young woman, There are similarities with both stories centered on a group of small timers, working with a more professional criminal in charge, in over their heads in an attempt to do the proverbial "last job" with the big payout. Leer, the hired professional who takes over the kidnapping, as played by Richard Boone, starts off as paternal towards the unnamed kidnapped girl before becoming more menacing, revealing his own agenda. Cornfield remains a relatively obscure filmmaker with most of his work not easily available. The majority of his films have been crime thrillers. Aside from Night of the Following Day, Cornfield's best known film may be the Stanley Kramer produced Pressure Point, about the confrontation between a black psychiatrist and a white Nazi, released in 1962. Like Night, the characters are never formally named in the credits. It is only through conversation that Brando's character is also known as Bud, Moreno is Vi, and Jess Hahn is Wally. The film indirectly is self-referential in that Wally was the chief organizer of the kidnapping, only to see himself lose control, just as Hubert Cornfield almost lost control of his film.

The blu-ray comes with two commentary tracks. Hubert Cornfield required a voice box for his track recorded in 2005 for the DVD release, just a year before he died. He tells of being charmed by Brando when they meet, only to have a volatile relationship during the actual filming. Cornfield discusses how he had to work around Brando in order to get what the director wanted as well as specifically pointing out the scene where he acquiesced to the demands of his star. Praise is given to the rest of the cast, especially Moreno. Night was Moreno's first film since the low budget Cry of Battle, a 1963 World War II film. Cornfield also reveals problems with cinematographer Willy Kurant that occurred on locations both in Paris and at the Normandy beach. Tim Lucas provides a new commentary track that covers the careers of the cast and crew, touching on the autobiographies by Brando and Moreno. Add to that are reviews of the film from the time of release as well as news items from the time of production. Lucas also points out the differences between the film and White's novel. Even though her role as the kidnapped victim is virtually a MacGuffin in the way that Night plays out, Lucas pays tribute to Pamela Franklin and her brief career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

May 10, 2021

Lights of Old Broadway

Monta Bell - 1925
Kino Classics BD Region A

Even with the acclaim brought to Amanda Seyfried for her performance in Mark, I am not aware of any rise in interest in the real life or films of Marion Davies. My own initial attitude was colored by assumptions formed from Citizen Kane. This changed when I had the opportunity to see Show People and Going Hollywood at the Museum of Modern Art in the mid 1970s. At this time, only a handful of films are available to stream, with a few available on disc.

Lights of Old Broadway is more representative of the kind of films preferred by William Randolph Hearst, rather than those films that showcased Ms. Davies' talent for comedy. During her silent period, Davies showed herself adept at take pratfalls with the best of the silent clowns, something "Fatty" Arbuckle understood when directing Davies in The Red Mill. One of the funnier bits in Show People is Davies mimicking the facial expressions of Gloria Swanson. Davies benefitted from the addition of sound as a boisterous girl who was one of the guys. A top star for over a decade, in Blondie of the Follies, Davies both paid tribute to her own beginnings as a chorus girl and impersonates Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel under the direction of Edmund Goulding, whose previous film was . . . Grand Hotel. Based on what I have been able to see, the more typical vehicles for Davies emphasized sentimentality and triumph over adversity. Lights of Old Broadway does allow for Davies to show off her talent for knockabout comedy in a couple of early scenes including getting butted by a goat.

The bulk of the film takes place in 1880, prior to the first use of electric street lights in New York City. Lights of Old Broadway begins with an interesting premise of twin baby girls separated and adopted by two different parents, the wealthy De Rhondes and the Irish immigrant O'Tandys. For some reason or maybe no reason, nobody bothers to tell Anne De Rhonde or Fely O'Tandy that they were orphaned twins. Banker Lambert De Rhonde is trying to evict Shamus O'Tandy from his shack on 5th Avenue and 69th Street, a stretch of Manhattan that resembles part of California. Meanwhile, Lambert's son, Dirk, goes to the theater where performer Fely catches his eye. The story proceeds not only with the expected class conflicts, but also ethnic prejudice towards Irish immigrants. At one point, Anne and Fely finally meet, and while they express a sense of unexplained connection with each other, everyone else is oblivious to their physical resemblance, save for different colored hair. Added to this story are a couple of brief appearances by actors playing a very young Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Edison for no discernible reason.

The blu-ray benefits greatly from the commentary track by film historian Anthony Slide. The blu-ray is sourced from the Library of Congress print with a new score composed by Robert Israel. Slide is objective enough to acknowledge the weaknesses of the narrative aspects of Lights of New York, placing the film's importance more as part of Marion Davies' overall career. Very useful for contemporary viewers is pointing the historical context of several of the characters, as well as some history of Irish immigrants in the 19th Century. There are also the brief overviews of several of the cast members and crew. Monta Bell is known, if at all, mostly in being briefly mentioned by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema as potentially being misgendered. Bell's career as a director is notable for directing Torrent, Greta Garbo's first Hollywood film. Slide suggests that Bell's greatest contribution would he his time as an executive for Paramount during the early sound era with films produced from the Astoria studio in New York.

Lights of New York has scenes that are tinted monochrome, but also use two other coloring processes. A scene at stage show used two-strip Technicolor, that is red and green. When 14th Street is illuminated by electric lights, the Handschiegl process, a more elaborate hand coloring, is used. Slide identifies and explains the use of color.

What Slide does not confirm is what I thought I saw right at the one hour mark of the blu-ray. Davies has offered a hat pin as the needed piece of wire needed for an electronic generator. Alone in the room, curiosity takes over and she touches the generator, resulting in an electric shock. This may be one of those moments when silence is golden, or maybe I should question my skills at lip reading, but I am positive that this is the one moment preserved on film where Marion Davies drops the F-bomb.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

May 04, 2021

The Hot Spot

Dennis Hopper - 1990
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There was a time in the early to mid 1960s that Dennis Hopper developed himself as a serious photographer. His eye for composition is strongly evident in The Hot Spot throughout that film. Added to that is the use of colored gels and filters, the work of cinematographer Ueli Steiger. The opening shots of of the Texas landscape, brush and desert, filmed with a red filter, could well be Mars until we see a black 1957 Studebaker rolling down the highway. When not using colored filters, the daytime shots have the richness of color found in a vintage Kodachrome. The nighttime shots often use red or blue filtered lighting. Significantly at the end, when the three main characters no longer have secrets from each other that the light appears natural.

Many of the shots involve people seen behind windows or bars, as well as reflections of windows. The car lot where much of the film takes place has two small offices that have floor to ceiling glass. Hopper places his characters so that they are unified within the space of the camera frame, but separated by glass or metal barriers. Hopper could well have been influenced by Nicholas Ray's Rebel without a Cause, in particular the shot in which the characters of Jim, Judy and Plato are seen through windows of three different offices, all within the CinemaScope frame. The restriction of space is echoed by having several key scenes taking place within walking distance of the car lot. (While Hopper is not in the scene described in Rebel, his relationship with Ray extended long after the 19 year old actor's film debut.)

The film is based on the 1960 pulp novel by Charles Williams, Hell Hath No Fury. Williams wrote the screenplay with Nona Tyson in 1961 with the intention of having Robert Mitchum in the starring role. The film was made fifteen years after Williams' death. The novel is out of print in English, but a good vintage copy of the original paperback costs about $1000. That original title gives some vague idea of the story. Harry Madox shows up in a small Texas town, the kind where the main business area is a single street that spans a few blocks. Catching a failed sale at a used car lot, Madox steps in and makes the sale before the customer walks away. Hired on the spot, Madox has his eye on Gloria, the car lot's bookkeeper. Not too long after, Dolly, the wife of the car lot owner, George Harshaw, has her eye on Madox. What follows includes robbery, adultery, blackmail and murder.

Even though the film takes place at the then present time of 1990, the character of Dolly is a throwback to vintage film noir. Virginia Madsen's Dolly is a combination of curly blonde hair, form fitting outfits, and stretched out legs. In the supplementary interview, Madsen mentions that she wore an ankle bracelet as homage to Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. While the only information about Dolly's past is that she was from another small town, that her bedroom resembles a well-appointed bordello might be all we need to know. Madsen as Dolly is first seen driving into the frame, not quite a close-up, red lips and red dress, and a classic pink Cadillac with fins - sex on wheels.

Madsen, with Don Johnson as Madox and a toothy young Jennifer Connelly as Gloria, make for a very photogenic trio. Even more so now, The Hot Spot seems like an outlier as a mainstream Hollywood film in its depiction of sex. There are a few moments when body doubles are used, but otherwise there is the kind of nudity that was more common during the first decade when the old production code went down. Hopper employees at least a couple of visual signifiers as in the use of a gun in Dolly's hand, a a shot of a knife in an open watermelon. One could almost call this film, "Last Tango in Texas".

The Harshaw home is filled with stuffed animals, hunted by George. In the film, the roles of hunter and prey shift, almost everyone is a predator. There is also a marlin on display in George's office. Along with the fin tailed cars of Dolly and Madox, the fishing symbolism is hard to miss.

Not as pretty as the stars, but still fun to watch are the assorted character actors in the supporting cast. Charles Martin Smith is the other used car salesman, not quite big enough for his ever present cowboy hat. Jack Nance is the guileless bank manager who inadvertently helps set up a future robbery. William Sadler's good old boy persona is his disguise as a blackmailer, living in a remote shack. In the blu-ray's other supplement, Sadler tells of how the shack was an existing abandoned home that was changed slightly for the film.

Bryan Reesman's commentary is generally informative, but could benefit from not being so rushed. What is best was the comparison between the novel and the film, as well as how Hopper got hold of the script by Williams and Tyson, rather than shooting an updated script as originally planned. Hopper did some uncredited tinkering that mark some updating, such as scenes in a strip club, as well as the aforementioned scenes that could not have been filmed in 1961. While Don Johnson does not have the same kind of screen presence as Robert Mitchum, as a film noir character he might be more aptly comparable to Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley, whose handsome exterior hides his amorality.

The tag line for The Hot Spot claims, "Film noir like you've never seen." Back in 1962, you could see Robert Mitchum beat up Polly Bergen, but not go down on her, even implied. It is an interesting reference in that the term film noir had traveled from something known primarily to cinephiles and scholars to being part of the more general lexicon. But The Hot Spot as noir or neo-noir strikes me as an updated version of the kind of films historian Sara Imogen Smith analyzes in her book, Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City. And the town where The Hot Spot takes place is strangely depopulated throughout most of the film. And while Ms. Smith was not specifically referring to Hopper's film, what she has written could well apply to how it ends -
Noir consistently undermines the American love affair with the road and the belief that travel equals freedom - that you can always get a new start in a different place. In noir, no place is pure, and there's no refuge to be found in unspoiled wilderness or small-town innocence. The notion that you can never get away from yourself runs through many of these films, so the final location I discuss is the mind.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

April 27, 2021

Switchblade Sisters

Jack Hill - 1975
Arrow Films BD Region A

While it may be true that certain parts of Switchblade Sisters were inspired by actual events and people researched by Jack Hill, the film is at heart closer to something like High School Confidential. And I love High School Confidential. But what we have is a film mostly populated by actors who are mostly well into their twenties, in a story that takes place in what I can only describe as a backlot Los Angeles marked up by an army of graffiti taggers. The mix of topicality does not make the film any more realistic. Any serious messages get lost the exaggerated, fanciful imagination of Hill.

The new girl at school, Maggie, is challenged by girl gang member, Patch, at the local burger stand. Patch is with the other members of the Dagger Debs, and gets her nickname from wearing an eyepatch. The gang leader, Lace, is the girlfriend of Dominic, "president" of the Silver Daggers. Maggie and Patch get into a fight, interrupted by the cops who take the girls to a reformatory. Maggie may the new girl on the block, but she is hardly naive to the ways of the street. Lace decides to give Maggie a chance to be part of the Dagger Debs, setting off a chain of events involving gang rivalries, jealousy and betrayal.

It should be no surprise that Robbie Lee, the young actress who played Lace, went on to primarily work as a voice artist. Snaggletoothed slightly keeps Lee from being conventionally attractive, but it is her voice that manages to be simultaneously annoying and endearing. Jack Hill described Lee's voice as reminding him of James Cagney, but that is not quite accurate. I think it is more like the voice of a child trying to sound tough, but it is still to high to be taken seriously. There may be better analogies, but Lee sounds more like a very young Mickey Rooney. Similar to some of the classic film gangsters, underneath Lace's tough exterior is a sentimental side that contributes to her undoing.

While it is not stated in any of the interviews with Hill or anyone associated with the production, I wonder if there was a time when Switchblade Sisters was intended to be a blaxploitation film. Previously, Hill had made his reputation with several films that made a star out of Pam Grier. There are scenes where making the film about black gangs might have made more sense. Some of the topicality of the time may be lost with a contemporary audience when the remaining Debs, now called the Jezebels, join forces with a cadre of black female revolutionaries who quote from Mao's Little Red Book. Back in 1975, most of the intended audience would know a reference to Angela (Davis) would not need to state her last name. As bad then as it is now, though, would to have a female character named "Muff", especially when played by Marlene Clark, an actress who deserved much better roles following Ganja and Hess.

In one of the supplementary interviews, Jack Hill states that he intended the film to be rated PG. Hill said that the R rating was due to the discussion of drug use, although I suspect that what also factored in the rating has been the tendency of a more punitive stance towards independent films. In an unsourced quote in IMDb, Hill also describes Switchblade Sisters as a fantasy. Both of these bring up the question as to whom was the intended audience. Hill's films, with the possible exception of Spider Baby, could all be described as exploitation films and were sold as such. Considering what was popular in 1975, the year of Jaws, it is hard to imagine that even under the best circumstances that Switchblade Sisters would have been embraced by a teen audience. The fantasy aspect might be best judged by Hill's choice to shoot several scenes on the backlots of MGM. Hill found this to be both more cost and time efficient than shooting (literally and figuratively) on location. But the virtually depopulated studio streets also add to a sense of unreality.

That embrace of commercial viability has proven elusive although the film has an afterlife with some critics and cult audiences. My own first viewing was in 1995 via Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures. The Arrow release is a reflection of the contemporary female fandom that has emerged following that re-release. The enclosed booklet includes an interview with Hill by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and an essay discussing the controversial rape scene. Heather Drain provides a more general overview of the film's narrative. The commentary track by Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan provides more of a feminist perspective with Deighan providing a connection with several of the bad girl films from the 1950s. Fans of Jack Hill may also enjoy the collection of trailers from his other films included here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:56 AM

April 20, 2021

The Invisible Man Appears

The Invisible Man Appears / Tomei ningen arawaru
Nobuo Adachi - 1949

The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly / Tomei ningen to hae otoko
Mitsuo Murayama - 1957
Arrow Video BD Region A

What I found most interesting about these two films is how they reflected changes in Japan after World War II by what was said, or not stated. The character of the Invisible Man is mostly inspired by the James Whale classic, especially the in The Invisible Man Appears where the title character is dressed with the bandaged head, trench coat and fedora. Both films are dependent on the same special effects of objects floating in the air, and actors pretending to hold invisible objects on occasion and put themselves through various contortions while pretending to be assaulted by the unseen nemesis. Also, the more critical viewers of both films will be challenged to make sense of the stories.

Admittedly, the title The Invisible Man Appears is self-contradictory. A professor who looks a bit like Albert Einstein is supervising two protoges working on rival formulas to achieve invisibility. The two younger men are also rivals for the professor's daughter. The professor decides to show off his own formula, a liquid thus far tested on animals, to a businessman friend. The professor declines to sell the formula as there is no way to undo the invisibility. That does not stop the businessman who sets in motion a plot involving kidnapping and the theft of a valuable diamond necklace.

The Invisible Man Appears was filmed partially in Kobe as well as Daiei's Kyoto studio. The area appears to have been untouched during World War II. The professor notes that he had been working on his own invisibility formula for ten years, suggesting that he was left on his own during the war. A subplot has one of the young men with a sister who is a member of a variety troupe in Kobe. The film veers off to a series of excerpts from a stage show which is mostly made with a mix of more culturally traditional entertainment plus some western style music and dress. The professor's daughter is played by Chizuru Kitagawa, whose appeal was more Japanese specific.

What has made The Invisible Man Appears of most interest is that the special effects were the work of Eiji Tsuburaya, most famous for his special effects for Toho Studios' science-fiction films. At the time the film was made, Tsuburaya was temporarily blacklisted by American authorities for his too realistic recreation of the bombing of Pearl Harbor for a film released one year after the event. Takiko Mizunoe, the stage performing sister here, is better known if not by name, then by her work as Japan's first female producer, instrumental in creating Nikkatsu Studios' "borderless cinema". It may be less than coincidental that Mizunoe's career ended at about the same time following the release of Seijun Suzuki's Branded to Kill. There is virtually no substantive information on writer/director Nobuo Adachi beyond this filmography. There is an amusing scene with an invisible cat, heard but not seen, padding across a piano keyboard and generally knocking over anything perceived to be in the way. Adachi also repeats a superimposed close-up of a pair of eyes over a shot of the diamond necklace.

A bit more scientific mumbo jumbo informs The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly. Actually there is more than one invisible man, plus one woman, who subject themselves to a special ray of light that renders them temporarily invisible. There is also more than one human fly, a villain who has some kind of formula that causes him to shrink to the size of a housefly and flit around unnoticed, going back to full-size at will. Plot holes are blithely ignored in favor of the spectacle of partially and completely invisible people, and a human fly who somehow manages to carry a full-sized knife as a backstabbing villain, and his employer, a businessman seeking revenge by blowing up parts of Tokyo.

The film takes place in Tokyo experiences its post-war resurgence. The war is directly referred to as the chief villain is seeking revenge on some fellow soldiers who left him alone to take the punishment for a wartime crime. One of the scientists view of nuclear weapons is that they were the unintended results of scientific research, a curiously apolitical stance. There are also breaks in the narrative taking place in a nightclub. The featured showgirl, Mieko, played by Ikuko Mori, wears outfits on stage that are more revealing, especially of her midriff and legs. Her stage performance is western in style and music. The other actresses indicate the changes in Japanese film towards women who more closely fit the western standards of beauty.

Aside from this film, the most well-known work in Mitsuo Murayama's filmography is Kenji Mizoguchi's Yang Kwei Fei, on which he served as an assistant director. Setting aside the risible narrative, Murayama proves to be a capable stylist here in his visual choices. An early scene where we just follow the legs of a couple might have been influenced by George Stevens. A couple of chases in empty streets accompanied by the sound of footsteps may have been lifted from Carol Reed. The film also benefits from a more solid budget. Like several other Japanese directors, Murayama worked in Hong Kong for the Shaw Brothers in the 1970s.

In addition to the two films, the blu-ray also has an overview by Kim Newman on the history of Invisible Man films. Included is an excerpt from the earliest known film to have been inspired by H. G. Wells' character, made in 1903. The accompanying booklet has essays by Keith Allison, Hayley Scanlon and Tom Vincent, helping put the films in their contexts regarding the title character and Japanese film culture of the time the films were produced. Both films were sources from surviving 16mm prints, with The Invisible Man vs. The Human Fly noticeably better preserved.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:39 AM

April 13, 2021

Dynasty

Qian dao wan li zhu
Mei-Chung Chang - 1977
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I was curious about Dynasty based on having a bit more knowledge about Chinese language cinema than at the time of the film's initial release. Also, I have had a continual interest in 3D films, either those of a certain vintage, or by certain filmmakers. What I was not aware of until I did my research prior to viewing Dynasty was the involvement of Michael Findlay. And yes, indeed, this was the same Michael Findlay most infamously known for the rough sex films made primarily with his wife, Roberta. Those of more delicate dispositions may not want to know some of the seamier aspects of Findlay's life by those who knew him, but it seemed like his invention of of a single camera 3D attachment might have changed his life instead of indirectly being the cause of his death. Then again, 3D films seemed to trend in and out of popularity at the time. While King Hu's A Touch of Zen played recently at the New York Film Festival, Chinese language martial arts films were generally considered a step down from porn in the mid-1970s, dismissed, if reviewed at all, as "chopsocky".

Findlay served as a technical adviser on three films, all Hong Kong-Taiwanese coproductions. A second film directed by Chang, Revenge of the Shogun Women is reportedly even more extreme in its depiction of violence. The third film, Magnificent Bodyguards (1978), directed by Wei Lo, features an early starring role for Jackie Chan. The title translates from Mandarin to "Chase after a thousand knives". Basically, the evil eunuch, Lord Chao, is plotting to rule China. It is up to a young man, Tan, to stop Lord Chao. There follows various battles, ambushes and assorted mayhem. Heads and hands are lopped off. Spears, knives, bricks and arrow fly towards the camera. Not being aware of the quality of the competition, I can only report that Chang's film was regarded well enough in Taiwan to be nominated as Best Film for the Golden Horse awards, the Taiwanese equivalent to the Oscars. Ying Bai won as Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Chao. The film, as presented here, is only in an English dubbed version, which makes judging the quality of the performances difficult. Whatever qualities Dynasty has might be more credited to stunt coordinator Ying Chieh-Han and the production's uncredited editors for cleverly piecing together the extended action scenes.

The blu-ray has offered two ways of watching Dynasty. There is the polarized version for those with the television and the glasses. For myself, I watched the anaglyph version with an enclosed cardboard set of glasses. The viewing experience may be different depending on how one watches the film as well as the variables pertaining to the viewer's vision. My own take is that the 3D worked best in shots involving depth and distance. Objects coming towards the camera tended to vibrate and appear less solid. The intended effect is lost when that sword pointing at you seems very flimsy. Some leeway may be needed here as there were reportedly some technical imperfections at the time of production, and the 3D Archives was tasked with restoring a film that was probably not well preserved since its run through various drive-ins and grind houses.

The blu-ray comes with an assortment of extras. The most useful in relation to Dynasty is an explanation of how Michael Findlay created his Supertouch 3D system and its subsequent history. Also a couple of shorts on how 3D was used as a sales device, as well as 3D cameras for consumers. The animated music video, "Go Away I Like You Too Much" is cute and funny. The one misfire is the inclusion of a 1953 3D comic book, The House of Terror. Two full pages are on the screen, but the panels are still too small and wordy. Reproduction of individual panels or two at a time would have worked better in this case.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:12 AM

April 06, 2021

Western Classics II

The Redhead from Wyoming
Lee Sholem - 1953

Pillars of the Sky
George Marshall - 1957

Gun for a Coward
Abner Biberman - 1958
KL Studio Classics BD Region A Three-disc set

Doing some research prior to watching the films in this set, I was reminded of how different film exhibition was at the time these films made their respective theatrical runs. Westerns kept within a certain budget were almost guaranteed to make a profit, and were produced as way of keeping the studios financially afloat. Unless they were prestige productions, these films were usually seen in urban areas in second-tier theaters as part of a double feature, and as single features for a run of two days in the small town and rural theaters. There were the series of westerns starring James Stewart, directed by Anthony Mann, and the unexpected career resurgence of Randolph Scott beginning with his first collaboration with director Budd Boetticher. But more frequently, the films featured aging stars who had commercially peaked a decade or more earlier. To call the films in this collection "classics" might be a stretch, but they are representative of the Universal-International released of their time.

Star Maureen O'Hara described The Redhead from Wyoming as "another western stinkeroo for Universal". It is mildly entertaining, and can charitably be considered the high point in the career of Lee "Roll-em" Sholem. The prolific director was known for keeping within tight budgets and schedules, which kept him in good stead churning out TV westerns on the Warner Brothers lot in the Fifties. O'Hara plays the part of a saloon owner caught up in the conflict between a local cattle baron and the newer settlers, and a triangle between a politically ambitious former lover and the town's sheriff. Fans of television westerns can catch future stars Dennis Weaver and Jack Kelly in supporting roles. The best part of this film would be the costumes for the dance hall gals from costume designer Edward Stevenson. Technicolor is used to, pardon the cliche, eye popping effect here. Samm Deighan provides a well-prepared commentary track, mostly discussing O'Hara, the historical inspirations for the film, and aspects of the cultural context, gold polish on a cinematic brass ring.

George Marshall might be best remembered for directing three types of films - westerns, comedies, and comic westerns. Most serious critics consider Destry Rides Again, the comic western with James Stewart and Marlene Dietrich to be his best film. I much prefer Red Garters starring Rosemary Clooney, Gene Barry and Jack Carson. Much of that film takes place on a sparse, abstract set, kind of like Lars von Triers' Dogville, but more fun. Not as much fun is Pillars of the Sky.

Again there are two triangles. Taking place in 1868, Jeff Chandler is a sergeant who overseas an Indian reservation in Oregon, then still a territory. His job is to keep the peace between several tribes and enforce a treaty with the federal government. Due to a loophole soldiers come to build a bridge and create a trail through the tribal land. Added to this, Dorothy Malone, long in love with Chandler, but married to army captain Keith Andes, shows up. Along for the ride are a perpetually inebriated Lee Marvin, television's go to guy for playing Native Americans - Frank de Kova, and if you look close enough, Martin Milner. More significantly in the supporting cast is Olive Carey, who starred with husband Harry Carey in the wester, Love's Lariat, co-directed by George Marshall in 1916.

What makes this film very problematic for contemporary viewers is that the "good" Indians have been converted to Christianity by missionary/medical doctor Ward Bond. Several of the Native Americans have taken biblical names. The message of the film is that white people and Native Americans should and can live together, but only if the Native Americans negate their traditional beliefs. On the plus side, George Marshall fills the CinemaScope frame nicely with on location filming in Oregon. Western genre expert Toby Roan's commentary track includes pointing out many of the cast members and crew with overviews of their careers, a look at some of the production methods of the time at Universal-International, and a plethora of information not found in Wikipedia or IMDb.

There is not much subtlety with the hell raising youngest brother nicknamed Hade, while the meeker middle brother is named Bless. A bit of suspension of disbelief might be required to have the oldest rancher brother played by Fred MacMurray. If with this questionable casting, Gun for a Coward is the strongest of the three films in this set. With Jeffrey Hunter as Bless, Dean Stockwell as Hade, plus Chill Wills and Janice Rule, MacMurray has strong support. The film might be read as a parable about toxic masculinity. It should be a surprise to no one that Hunter redeems himself in the end, but not in the way that the title might suggest.

This is the only film currently available by actor turned director Abner Biberman. Not to be confused with the blacklisted Herbert Biberman, Abner Biberman does have an interesting, if small, filmography that includes a couple of thrillers from 1956 that respectively star Merle Oberon and Sylvia Sidney. Biberman makes use of the wide CinemaScope frame not only in his placement of people across the screen but also in composing shots that use as much of the depth within the frame. Unlike many wide screen films that emphasized lateral compositions, Biberman sometimes employs multiple planes in some of his group shots forcing greater active viewing. One standout scene is of Hunter and Stockwell making a late night visit to a virtually empty bar, the only business open in a what appears to be a late night. The pair are soon to be surrounded by a gang of bad hombres. In a film where much of the action can be anticipated in advance, this is the one scene with some genuine tension. Lee Gambin's commentary track places the film within the context of both the western genre and films made roughly within the same time that explored expressions of masculinity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:45 AM

April 02, 2021

The Man in Search of his Murderer

Der Mann, der seinen Morder sucht / Jim, der Mann mit der Narbe
Robert Siodmak - 1931
Kino Classics BD Region A

First, an explanation is needed regarding the two German titles. While the blu-ray is released with the English language translation of the original title, the actual film we see has the second title, translated as "Jim, the Man with the Scar", hereafter referred to as Jim. The original version, now considered lost, had a running time of 96 minutes. The blu-ray is the abridged version with a running time of 53 minutes. There is no online material discussing what is in the missing footage, nor is any information provided in the commentary track. Even with the excised footage, the narrative is still fairly cohesive.

While Robert Siodmak is known almost exclusively for his noir made during the 1940s, he has had a couple of comedies even after this film. And yet, I was overwhelmed by the how much of the film seemed connected to Billy Wilder, one of the film's three credited screenwriters. The basic plot is of a bumbling man, Hans Herfort, who can not bring himself to commit suicide by shooting himself in the head. A burglar breaks into Hans' apartment. Hans negotiates with the burglar to murder Hans for an agreed upon price by Noon the next day. The burglar bungles the job of assassin which is handed over to the titular Jim. In the meantime, Hans finds himself in love with Kitty, a young woman he meets in an overcrowded cabaret. Now in love, Hans attempts to cancel the contract on his life. The film is a black comedy that the creative team enjoyed making. Among the identifiable influences are the social satire of Brecht, the romantic misunderstandings of Lubitsch, and the boisterous mayhem of Buster Keaton and peers. Man/Jim was also a commercial failure, not connecting with the audience of the time.

With that opening scene, with Heinz Ruhmann as Hans, I thought immediately of how Wilder had used suicide as a source of humor in his films. That the initial set-up recalls Wilder's last film, Buddy, Buddy made me wonder if that film's original source author, Francis Veber, had at least seen the remake of Man that came out in 1952. That remake was written and directed by Ernst Neubach, author of the play that was the source for Siodmak's film. As for what changes were made and any specific contributions made by the writers, that is unknown. In an interview, Curt Siodmak only briefly mentions that he was working on the yet completed screenplay when producer Erich Pommer put the film in production. Having worked with him previously, Robert Siodmak brought in Wilder who was transitioning from working as a journalist. The third screen writer, Ludwig Hirschfeld, was primarily known for writing several travel books, stage plays and novellas. One play, Geschaft mit Amerika ("Doing Business in America") was filmed in four different language versions between 1932 and 1933. A play co-written by Hirschfeld was the source for a low budget American comedy, The Mad Martindales, released in 1942, the year Hirschfeld died in Auschwitz. It is sobering to note that the least known of the the creative team was the one who stayed in Germany while the others achieved varying degrees of success in Hollywood.

Visually, one can recognize Robert Siodmak's use of high and low angle shots. There is also the expressive use of lighting, especially in night time street scenes. The cabaret scene in particular is notbable in that we see the various dancing couple in the foreground moving in an out of the frame, while behind them, sitting at a table is the first view of Kitty with a would-be lover she is trying to shake off. The music score was by Friedrich Hollaender, known later as Frederick Hollander, with supervision by Franz Waxman. Hollander also has a small role in the film. The two composers would work again with Billy Wilder.

The commentary track by historian Josh Nelson primarily discusses the film as early work by Robert Siodmak. Stars Heinz Ruhmann and Dutch actress Lien Deyers have brief overviews of their respective careers. While the commentary is a well prepared presentation, I still wish I knew more about the film we can not see. As it is, the surviving Jim is a 2013 restoration from the F. W. Murnau Foundation which has done outstanding work with early German films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:17 AM

March 30, 2021

Stiletto

Bernard L. Kowalski - 1969
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

This is essentially a pulp movie from a pulp novel. I do not think anyone ever has read a novel by Harold Robbins or seen a film adaptation from his novels expecting anything more than escapist entertainment. If a Robbins novel is something to be read while lounging by the beach on a summer day, Stiletto, the movie, might ideally be seen at home while sipping martinis.

For me, the real star of Stiletto is composer Sid Ramin. His score, a mix of lounge music, Herb Alpert style trumpet and a smattering of imitation Jimmy Smith doodling on the Hammond organ heard during the opening credit sequence informs the rest of the film. Ramin is most famous for his hit instrumental, "Music to Watch Girls By", back in 1967. No, I will not apologize for the attitudes of a past era. Sure, there are many "what were they thinking?" moments, but the film has be enjoyed on its own terms.

Cesare Cardinali is a mafia hit man from Italy who uses a stiletto knife to murder his victims. His front is his New York City import auto store plus racing customized cars. Cardinali also maintains relationships simultaneously with two women. Cardinali's victims are all mobsters under federal investigation. Wanting to retire from "the society" as it is euphemistically called here proves impossible.

Alex Cord never quite achieved the stardom some expected in the late Sixties, but he is well cast here. Born Alexander Viespi, Jr., Cord is able to slip in and out of speaking Italian in a few scenes. Patrick O'Neal appears as the federal prosecutor who has his eye on Cardinali as well as Cardinali's boss, played by Joseph Wiseman. Barbara McNair and Britt Ekland share Cord's affections. The still relatively unknown Roy Scheider appears as a mob attorney. Also making uncredited appearances are Olympia Dukakis, Charles Durning and M. Emmet Walsh. There is also some celebrity spotting when Cardinali shows up at a movie premiere, integrating footage of Cord with that of Peter O'Toole, Henry Fonda and William Buckley (!), presumably for The Lion in Winter, like Stiletto an Avco Embassy production.

A flashback scene at the beginning that is meant to establish Cardinali's character is a bit unclear. Processed using a sepia tone, the lack of a period appropriate haircut for Cardinali and his victim, a similarly aged man he has cuckolded, makes a time period difficult to ascertain. Also, making the scene dialogue free does not help. There are several moments of ill-advised artistic touches which might be attributed to editor Frank Mazzola, who has previously edited the montage-filled Performance ( filmed in 1968 but shelved until 1970), a frequent collaborator of director Donald Cammell.

The commentary track is from historian David Del Valle and director David DeCoteau. This is mostly casual banter between two friends that touches upon the life and career of Harold Robbins, as well as the careers of the main actors. The two note that due to the pandemic, access to research material has been limited. Still, much like Stiletto, the commentary track is reasonably entertaining.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

March 23, 2021

The Projectionist

Abel Ferrara - 2019
Kino Lorber BD Region A

I am not sure why Abel Ferrara chose to title his film The Projectionist. His subject, Nicolas Nicolaou is not noted as having served in that capacity. In a career spanning roughly forty-five years, Nicolaou, in immigrant from Cyprus, has risen from teenage usher, to management, eventually owning a small chain of theaters, and owning real estate in New York City. Ferrara's film ends with a high note, showing Nicolaou's high tech operation, allowing him to remotely run his New York City theaters from his luxurious home in Cypress. It almost goes without saying that this documentary of a man who totally loves film and the film-going experience needs a postscript, if not a full sequel.

I do not know the status of all of Nicoloau's theaters, but the one featured prominently, located in Brooklyn, is closed due to Covid-19. As the expression goes, it is not just business, but personal. There is a new story to be told about how Nicoloau navigates his way through forced closures, retrofitting theaters air conditioning, seating restrictions, even thinner profit margins, and uncertain availability of films with some given quick availablilty on streaming platforms.

Where the film held the most interest for me was Nicoloau and Ferrara taking a tour around Manhattan where the theaters use to stand, intercut with old documentary footage and photographs from the 1970s. I visited many of the theaters seen or mentioned from my time living in New York City between 1969 and 1977. This was when most theaters were single screen, with a handful of exceptions. As a film student, I could easily watch nothing but vintage classics in 35mm prints at several theaters dedicated to cinema's past. I understood Nicoloau and Ferrara's nostalgia for the corner of 59th Street and Third Avenue where on one block stood the Coronet and the smaller Baronet theaters, and nearby, Cinema I and Cinema II. These were theaters that showed films like Five Easy Pieces, Taxi Driver and other films from the "new" Hollywood as well as the so-called "art" films from Europe.

It is also fun to hear the stories of Nicoloau's former employers, how he got his first theater, and tales of a long gone New York City. Part of Nicoloau's chain, both as an employee and eventual theater owner, were several porno theaters, both straight and gay. Nicoloau has a live and let live attitude towards both what was happening on screen as well among the audiences.

More time is spent in an actual projection booth in Matt Barry's short, Cinevangelist: A Life in Revival Film. This bonus extra is a recording of George Figgs, telling about how movies took over his life as a young boy in Baltimore, some of the history of the exhibition of art and revival films, and his own operation of a small revival theater, The Orpheum. A second short could probably be made simply of Figgs recounting his association with Baltimore legend John Waters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:50 AM

March 09, 2021

The Don is Dead

Richard Fleischer - 1973
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Time may be an advantage to more clearly assessing The Don is Dead. At the time of release, the film was one of many mafia themed stories that followed after the massive success of Francis Ford Coppola's film of The Godfather. It is certainly no coincidence that the top billed star, Anthony Quinn was one of the several names considered for the role of Vito Corleone. Fleischer's film is neither epic in scope or ambition. The literary source is the 1972 novel by the prolific genre author, Marvin Albert, written under the pseudonym of Nick Quarry. Albert also gets the main credit for the screenplay with assistance from Christopher Trumbo and Michael Butler. Stripped of the criminal aspects, the two main narratives are from classic archtypes.

The film begins with Frank, the son of one of the crime chiefs, finding out his father has just died. The father was one of three men in control of organized crime in an unnamed city. At a national meeting of the various heads of the families, a two way split is agreed upon between Angelo DiMorra and the consigliere representing the imprisoned Jimmy Bernardo, with Frank named as Angelo's son. The consigliere, Luigi Orlando has his own ambitions to take over all the operations with the assistance of Bernardo's wife. Setting up Angelo with a young would-be singer, Ruby, who was in a relationship with Frank, Orlando initiates a rivalry between "father" and "son" that escalates to a multi-sided gang war.

The Don is Dead was produced by Hal Wallis, his penultimate production. While there was probably the desire to cash in on the then current popularity of movies about organized crime, in the case of Wallis, the theme of generational conflicts can be seen in such films as The Roaring Twenties and I Walk Alone. With Robert Forster and Frederic Forrest taking over from Anthony Quinn, there are the faint echoes of Humphrey Bogart pushing aside James Cagney, and Kirk Douglas edging out Burt Lancaster in the older films. As for Richard Fleischer, this is another work for hire during his most productive period. Several Fleischer films, primarily his crime stories, feature women with flexible senses of loyalty towards the men in their lives. That said, Fleischer has had a tendency to be attracted to violent subjects and the brutality here is not that big a leap from his film noir work that first attracted attention. Unlike his Armored Car Robbery (1950) which pushed the envelope regarding on-screen violence, Fleischer is relatively restrained in the depicting of the various shooting, bombings and beatings, neither indulging in graphic close-ups nor letting the camera linger longer than necessary. If not especially visually stylish, Fleischer's hand is in his use of upward tilting shots of his actors in some scenes.

What adds to the fun is spotting there various actors in supporting roles including Victor Argo, Sid Haig, Abe Vigoda and Vic Tayback. Most of the film was shot on studio sets, most glaringly with a medieval castle wall standing in for a prison exterior. Robert Forster's wardrobe is a reminder of some the more dubious men's fashions of the early Seventies. There is also one unfortunate young actress whose dress seems inspired by a pre-coronation Disney princess.

I have to admit frustration with the commentary track by Sergio Mims, considering his credentials as a film critic and programmer. With several critics and historians who have set the bar in their presentations, for me, Mims' commentary is not as well organized as it could be, nor as informative as it should be. Setting aside a few gaffes, my biggest complaint is that Mims' arguments for Richard Fleischer's status as an auteur is weak. Simply repeating that Fleischer was always professional regardless of working in different genres is not enough. And in the case of someone who primarily worked as a director for hire, not every film may share similarities in theme or style, but if one looks close enough, patterns emerge. While there is no extensive study on the films directed by Richard Fleischer, there is writing that can serve as a springboard. A reminder that over fifty years ago, Andrew Sarris wrote, "Responsible critics have advanced Fleischer as a candidate for (Raoul) Walsh's laurels in the adventure category." That was written prior to Fleischer's most productive period. Fleischer's work has been reassessed since his death in 2006. At the time of a 2008 retrospective of Fleischer's films, Dave Kehr wrote in the New York Times that the director was " . . . less interested in the aberrations of a single personality than in the unhealthy interactions of an entire society." While that line was in reference to Violent Saturday, it could well apply to several other films. Kehr goes on to mention another critical evaluation - "For the French critic Jacques Lourcelles, one of Fleischer's most articulate admirers, the recurring theme of his work is society slipping into decadence." While writing about Barabbas for Film Comment, Nick Pinkerton points to another recurring theme, " . . . the struggle for self-determination." in The Don is Dead, this is personified by Robert Forster's presumptive heir and Frederick Forrest's independent operator who initially is looking to go straight. That Forrest's fate may be sealed is suggested by the final two shots, a dissolve from a close-up of Anthony Quinn to that of Forrest, the newly appointed successor to the throne.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:24 AM

March 04, 2021

Yiddish

Nurith Aviv - 2020
Icarus Films Home Video R1 DVD

As the expression goes for personal relationships, "it's complicated". Yiddish is a documentary about the language, about several poets in the periods between the world wars who wrote in Yiddish, and the several scholars who recite the poems.

My own limited knowledge comes from having maternal grandparents who spoke Yiddish to each other, and my picking up a few words from them. There was also reading Leo Rosten's hilarious book, The Joys of Yiddish with its vernacular usage for English language readers. And of course, the writings by Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Aviv's documentary follows a formula of establishing a city - Berlin, Paris, Warsaw, among others. We see someone entering their office from the street. The camera then settles on that person telling a bit about themselves and their relationship to Yiddish. The scholars are generally on the young side, mostly having come to Yiddish through language or literary studies. Aviv then films each person on one half of the frame while the other half has the English translation of the poem being recited.

We briefly see portraits of the various poets cited: Anna Margolin, Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Devorah Vogel, and others. Some of these poets were part of the Jewish community in New York City. What I would have liked to have seen, where available, would have been more archival photos of the poets and where they lived at the time.

What is of interest, and this is something I. B. Singer discusses, is that status of Yiddish. For some Jews, Yiddish was considered a déclassé language, a poor relation to Hebrew and German. The scholars who appear here mostly come from families where Yiddish was only spoken by older generations, and where use of Yiddish carried negative connotations. Aviv gives more time to her scholars first person narratives, while the poets get short shrift. Where Yiddish is of interest seems more academic than cinematic.

The DVD comes with a short, Egg Cream. Made by Nora Miller in part with older video footage by father Peter Miller, this is simultaneously the history of the fountain drink as well as the search for the perfect egg cream. For those unfamiliar with this particular beverage, it was an inexpensive warm weather concoction with neither egg nor cream, but a frothy mix of chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer water. The drink has been associated with the time when drug stores had soda fountains, with a Jewish immigrant clientele. I admit to never having had an egg cream. There was a bit of nostalgia for me in briefly seeing a shot of Gem Spa, another victim of Covid-19 and rising rents in New York City, conveniently just around the corner from my Lower East Side apartment many years ago.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:22 AM

February 09, 2021

So Evil, My Love

Lewis Allen - 1946
KL Studio Classics

One of the problems with Andrew Sarris' book The American Cinema is that for unknown reasons several film directors do not rate any paragraph or even a sentence. One might mistakenly believe it is because the director in question may have any films worth seeing. While I have no explanations for their omission, Mark Sandrich and John Farrow are, if not necessarily auteurs, more than capable craftsmen. Lewis is listed in Sarris' Directorial Chronology, but only for the year 1944, with his debut The Uninvited and Our Hearts were Young and Gay. Prior to seeing, So Evil, My Love, I dived as deeply as I could into the filmography of Lewis Allen. Only about half a dozen of Allen's films are currently available either on home video or streaming. Based on those few films seen, Lewis Allen should be, as Sarris would put it, a subject for further research.

Not that this is found in all of Allen's works, but there is a streak of darkness that is noticeable in several films. This is more obvious in the low budget thrillers of the early Fifties - Appointment with Danger, A Bullet for Joey, Illegal and Suddenly. Each of these films is populated by a sociopath in an unforgiving world. It does not take too long to recognize the characters as such. In So Evil, My Love, Lewis takes his time, like peeling the skin off of an onion, to reveal the depths of Ray Milland's character, Mark Bellis. Taking place near the end of the 19th Century, Bellis is introduced as a malaria stricken passenger on a boat bound from Jamaica to England. He is cured by Olivia Harwood, a missionary's widow. There are indications that Bellis is on the lam for some unnamed crime(s). Ingratiating himself, Bellis becomes Olivia's boarder, then lover. A failed artist turned art thief, Bellis convinces Olivia to participate in a blackmail scheme. Olivia sets aside her scruples in the name of love. Bellis pours on the charm, but the camera shows Milland's smile to be more of a devllish grin. Within the constraints of the production code, Olivia's actions take an exceedingly dark turn.

The blu-ray contains a commentary track by Imogen Sara Smith. There are only a handful of film scholars consistent in being totally prepared in their presentations and fully informative, and Ms. Smith is one of the best. Much of her commentary is devoted to the historical background of the story, and putting the film into the context of both the genre of gaslight noir and the years, mostly the 1940s, when these films were made. What is referred to here are those films, most notably Gaslight (1940 and the more famous 1944 remake), Hangover Square, and this film, all usually taking place around the late Victorian era in England. Where I would disagree with Ms. Smith is that there is a consistency in the dramatic films directed by Lewis Allen. While the director may have related much of his work as assignments, it seems more than coincidental that when his most transgressive characters die in several films, the world is revealed as cruel in death to those inhumane in life.

This production marked Allen's return to England, where he was born and began his stage career. The cast is all British with Ann Todd as Olivia Harwood and Geraldine Fitzgerald as the friend duped into being a victim of the blackmail scheme. Milland is so ingrained as a Hollywood star that it is easy to forget he was actually Welsh born. Ann Todd's relatively brief stardom is curious as her career peaked when she was hitting 40, with Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947) and her three films with then-husband David Lean. One of the more recognizable cast members is Leo G. Carroll, with a bushy mustache, as a private detective with the goods on Bellis and Olivia. So Evil, My Love was a box office disappointment at the time of release. New York Times critic, Bosley Crowthers, complained about the film's "tempting but trivial details". Critical reception towards the film has risen more recently. After seeing several of his films, a general reappraisal of Lewis Allen would also seem in order.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

February 02, 2021

The Hills Run Red

Un Fiume di dollari
Carlo Lizzani - 1966
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The original Italian title translates as "A River of Dollars". At a time when Sergio Leone's first two collaborations with Clint Eastwood were successful in Europe, but as yet to get released in the U.S., producer Dino De Laurentiis tried to mimic the formula with both a similar title and the casting of an expatriate American actor as a star. Even though Carlo Lizzani had previously made his one other western, Requiescant under his name, this time some of the conventions of giving American sounding names too place with Lizzani credited as Lee W. Beaver, screenwriter Piero Regnoli as Dean Craig, and composter Ennio Morricone as Leo Nichols. The Hills Run Red was released in Italy in September 1966, but not screened in the U.S. until November 1967 when the popularity of Leone's films ushered in a flood of Italian westerns.

There is a double-cross involving a missing cache of $600,000 dollars transported by two rebel soldiers during the Civil War. One of the men is caught by Union soldiers and imprisoned for five years. Discovering his wife has died and his young son is missing, he seeks revenge on his former partner. Unexpected help comes in the form of an old codger with his own hidden agenda. Unlike Requiescant, or many of Lizzani's other films for that matter, there is no obvious political reading here. The closest Hills comes to thematically resembling Lizzani's work is in the corrupting influence of money, especially of conspicuous wealth.

Both of Lizzani's westerns do take on the basic narrative that appeared in several Hollywood westerns of the Fifties of the outsider who takes on the capitalist who owns a small town. Several Italian filmmakers were politically engaged as a result the schisms in Italian life during World War II as well as entering the film industry during the era of Neorealism. It may be more than coincidental that both of Lizzani's westerns take place in the American Southwest within a few years following the Civil War.

There are a couple of visual moments worthy attention. When the putative hero, Jerry Brewster, returns to his home, it is revealed to be a long abandoned cabin. The dusty interior is entirely gray. While he reads a letter from his late wife, the voiceover shifts to the voice of the wife, while the camera moves left, revealing an empty cradle, an open birdcage and a dust covered portrait. The voiceover shifts back to Brewster as he steps back into the camera frame. Later, during an outdoor square dance, Brewster causes a herd of horse to stampede out of a corral. Lizzani films several of the characters caught in the confusion in close-ups of their faces, while the horses running in front of them are large blurs. There are extensive close-ups throughout the film, the most given to almost operatic Henry Silva.

Reportedly a chance meeting with De Laurentiis propelled Thomas Hunter from a small supporting role in Blake Edwards' What Did You do in the War, Daddy? to top billing in what was only his second feature appearance. Perpetually unshaven, quick on the draw, Hunter is histrionic where Clint Eastwood would keep his emotions in check. Henry Silva's villainous henchman is sometimes a bit more broad than necessary but for the most part works within this film. Perpetual onscreen slimeball, Dan Duryea, is a good guy here, not immediately recognizable with a mustache, still using his established relaxed demeanor though not for ill-purposes. The blu-ray only has the English language track with the American stars dubbing their own voices.

There is a bit of unintended connectivity following the production of this film. As mentioned in Mike Peros' biography of Dan Duryea, The Hills Run Red was planned with Burt Reynolds in the lead role. Reynold's replacement, Thomas Hunter, also appeared in an episode of Reynold's short lived detective television series, Hawk, also in 1966.

Alex Cox provided the commentary track. Cox also wrote about The Hills Run Red in his his book on Italian westerns. He points out how the basic story resembles that of Marlon Brando's One-Eyed Jacks. Unlike the bulk of Italian westerns which were filmed in Spain as international coproductions, The Hills Run Red was entirely filmed near Rome at De Laurentiis' studio and western set known as Dinocitta. Cox offers brief information on the main cast and crew members. The source print appears quite good, with some of the abrupt fade-outs being part of the original film with its relatively short running time just under ninety minutes. Another reminder that not every Italian western worth seeing was directed by someone named Sergio.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:38 AM

January 21, 2021

Six in Paris

Paris vu par . . .
Douchet, Rouch, Pollet, Rohmer, Godard, Chabrol - 1965
Icarus Films Home Video DVD Region 1

This newly issued DVD is sourced from the 2K restoration. I do not have any information regarding the restoration, but the film, comprised of six shorts, were originally filmed in 16mm and blown up to 35mm for the theatrical release. Following the production of two short films written and directed by Eric Rohmer, producer Barbet Schroeder enlisted Rohmer and five other filmmakers to each make a short film that was loosely centered on a different section of the city. The original French title, which translates as "Paris seen by . . ." may be more indicative of how each short film is different from each other, not only in the choice of locations but in the kind of stories told. Each of the shorts is about fifteen minutes long, mostly using relatively unknown actors. The two big exceptions are Jean-Luc Godard's film which features Joanna Shimkus, just a couple years before her brief stardom in the late Sixties through 1972, and Claude Chabrol's film starring himself and then wife Stephane Audran. Those who have followed French cinema of the Nouvelle Vague will recognize several of the behind the camera credits.

What unifies the films appears to be a kind of ambivalence about Paris. This would be the feeling where "in spite of" is sometimes the same as "because of". Perhaps this is because this is the work of people who have lived in Paris for years and are not providing the tourist's "City of Lights" romantic Paris. Instead, there is an almost constant sense of claustrophobia, tiny apartments, crowded streets, a lack of privacy. Even the middle class apartment with separate rooms in Chabrol's film seems cramped with its very narrow staircase. In Rohmer's film, his protagonist can not avoid bumping into people or being bumped into while on the sidewalk or riding the metro. While some of the Paris of fifty-five years ago is still here, the films are more revealing of the filmmakers rather than the city.

The two least known filmmakers here, Jean Douchet and Jean-Daniel Pollet, both have had careers making documentaries and short films. Douchet's story is of an American student who discovers following a one night stand that her lover is not who he appears to be. Pollet has a gently comic story of a very shy, sexually inexperienced young man spending a chaste evening with an older prostitute. The documentarian, Jean Rouch, has the most serious work here, of a young married woman who walks out on her husband following a quarrel at breakfast. A chance meeting with the driver of a car that has almost hit evolves into an extended conversation about love and the choices one makes. The Rouch film is visually the most interesting, using many long takes, and with the hand-held camera following actress Nadine Ballot as she leaves her apartment, goes down an elevator and into the street on her way to work.

Eric Rohmer had yet to establish his reputation as a filmmaker at the time he made what was his third short. His haberdasher is the perpetual victim of unintended slights and small accidents that comprise a career in customer service and life in a big city. Godard's story of a young woman who thinks she sent wrong letter to the wrong lover and then tries to fix the error is slight, but it is thematically consistent with some of Godard's features with characters who end up outguessing and ultimately undermining themselves. Claude Chabrol's entry is unsurprisingly the most polished of the six. A boy gets ear plugs to block out the voices of his parents' arguments. Chabrol plays with sound with part of the film silent as the boy is in his study, cutting to the verbal jousting of the parents. The noise blocking turns out to have unintended consequences.

Especially as this is in no way the classic, romantic presentation of Paris, the more casual film viewer may wonder what the fuss is all about. The more serious cinephile will take pleasure in the renewed availability of Six in Paris, particularly in what have become early works by three filmmakers who continued working into our current century.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

January 05, 2021

Rough Night in Jericho

Arnold Laven - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Like The Rare Breed, which I reviewed back in March, Rough Night in Jericho is a medium budget western from Universal. Mostly traditional in its narrative and visual style, the level of violence is indicative of the studio's response to the changes affecting the genre. Otherwise, as a studio product, the western town is dust free, the saloon is overpopulated with extras, and most of the characters are well dressed with the men generally clean shaven. There is a certainty that the bad guys will come to their deserved end. For myself, the predictability is part of the charm.

Also part of the charm is seeing Dean Martin as the villain. As Alex Flood, he is the former sheriff who brought law and order to the town of Jericho, only to find it more profitable to buy fifty-one percent of every business. The one business he has yet to take over is the single coach stage line owned by the youngish widow, Molly Lang. The coach is damaged on its way to Jericho, with Lang's partner Hickman, a former lawman, and his former deputy turned investor, Dolan, debating whether to fight Flood or take the easy way and sell out. Again in keeping with some of the genre changes of the times, Dolan, as played by George Peppard is not quite an anti-hero, but has his moments of pure self-interest. Jean Simmons is put in awkward position where her character of Molly Lang wants to be taken more seriously but is limited in her actions by the men, perhaps an acknowledgment of a mostly socially conservative audience.

Martin's role as Flood might also be seen as continuation of his on screen persona at its most negative. Consider how in the films made with Jerry Lewis, the Martin character often takes advantage of Lewis only to redeem himself and reaffirm the partnership at the conclusion. In Rough Night in Jericho, it is Martin speaking softly, letting others do most of his dirty work, showing no remorse for any misdeeds. Most of the physical threat is carried by an unshaven Slim Pickens, introduced wielding a bullwhip used to disarm Jean Simmons and later disable George Peppard.

Director Arnold Laven is probably best known for being part of the team that created and produced the television series, The Rifleman. This is the one western of the four features directed in the 1960s which was a work for hire. A craftsman rather than a stylist or auteur, Laven's films are all with some interest, with high points being Slaughter on 10th Avenue and Anna Lucas. There is also a certain amount of visual economy in knowing how to frame his shots, either by moving the camera to indicate his characters within a given space, or even composing a shot of two or three characters within a static frame conversing with each other. The final chase between Dolan and Flood makes use of lateral traveling shots plus just enough long shots to indicate the distance between the two men and expanse of the country. Compare to the recently released News of the World in which Paul Greengrass visually underlines much of his narrative with an overabundance of aerial shots of the countryside and multiple tracking and dolly shots that misapply the tools at his disposal.

The one weak spot is the music score by Don Costa. Mostly known for his arrangements for Paul Anka, Frank Sinatra and other popular singers of the late 1950s and 60s, most of the music here is undistinguished. Costa lapses in the worst of Max Steiner by accompanying a scene of Simmons and Peppard getting drunk with the sound of sad trombones. There is also a syrupy song at the end, "Hold Me, Now and Forever" performed by a choral group, The Kids Next Door. Further research indicated that Costa along with producer Martin Rackin also composed another song for the film, "The Devil Rides in Jericho" that appeared on the B-side of the 45 rpm single. If that record did get any airplay, it was not on any radio station I listened to.

Samm Deighan provides the commentary track, discussing the careers of screenwriters Sidney Boehm and Marvin Albert, who also wrote the source novel. Cinematographer Russell Metty and editor Ted Kent also get mentioned. Most of the discussion is devoted to the three stars. What I would add here is that the film does have some "stunt casting" with two of the better known Hollywood correspondents of the time, Army Archerd and Vernon Scott appearing as part of the casino crew, as well as Arnold Laven's wife in a small role. The couple of contemporary reviews I read offered back-handed praise for the film living up to its advertisement as a traditional western. At the time of release, Hollywood and most American film critics were unprepared for the surprising popularity of an Italian western, A Fistful of Dollars, which seemed to ignore the established genre rules. For the most part, Rough Night in Jericho is that film, almost thoroughly predictable. At the same time, there are hints, for those who want to take a closer look, with small tweaks to a genre that was undergoing major changes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:27 AM

December 15, 2020

Puzzle of a Downfall Child

Jerry Schatzberg - 1970
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Especially for those who were not around at the time, Puzzle of a Downfall Child is a perfect example of the "New Hollywood" film. Shortly after the unexpectedly massive success of Easy Rider, Universal, usually the most conservative of the major studios, scrambled to sign up a number of younger or more independent filmmakers, including Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Monte Hellman and Milos Forman. The filmmakers general were given free reign on modest budgets. What connected these films was a kind of eclecticism the borrowed from the French Nouvelle Vague, experimental films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger, among others, and cinema verite. The films, some of which have attained cult or classic status over the years, never brought in the audience that the studio suits were banking on. Universal was financially saved with the release of the squarest film of 1970, Airport.

The film is not really a puzzle, but it is extremely fragmented. Bookended as a photographer recording the memories of a former top model in her Long Island beachside home, the film not only weaves out between past and present, but also with images that may be disconnected with the model's narration of of her life at a given moment. The photographer, Aaron, and the model, Lou Andreas, were loosely inspired by the real life friendship of Schatzberg with 1950s model Anne St. Marie. Lou Andreas is the self-chosen professional name, possibly inspired by Lou Andreas-Salome and her sense of independence. A couple of Vogue magazine covers indicate Lou's appearances in 1954 and 1955, while a scene taking place in a bar that includes a televised boxing match seems to be from the early Sixties. Belying the appearance of a free-wheeling approach to time and reality, Schatzberg, in his feature directorial debut, wrote the screenplay with Carole Eastman, credit with her pseudonym of Adrien Joyce. Again, circling back to the "New Hollywood", Eastman was the screenwriter of the moment with the critical and commercial success of Five East Pieces that same year.

The film is also a showcase for Faye Dunaway as Lou. Some strands of autobiography are here as Schatzberg and Dunaway had a very public relationship a few years earlier. At age 28, Dunaway still looked passable as the younger, naive Lou navigating her way through her first professional shoot where she is upstaged by a falcon. Where Schatzberg misjudged was having Dunaway also appear as the fifteen year old Lou in flashbacks. Serving as a verbal counterpoint to the seeming freeform structure of the film is how Dunaway speaks her lines with measured, deliberate cadences during the interview. It is as if Lou, following a life that spirals into a descent of near self-destruction, has control of her life by parsing a few words that slowly emerge as a completed sentence. Even at that, with the film told from her point of view, Lou is the unreliable narrator.

Character actor Barry Primus was officially introduced here in the role of Aaron. Roy Scheider, just a year away from his star making turn in The French Connection appears as Mark, Lou's jilted fiance. Viveca Lindfors plays an older fashion photographer who may have been partially inspired by Inge Morath. While Schatzberg had his own ideas of how his film should look, he collaborated with cinematographer Adam Holender on three more New York City based films. Following this first film, Schatzberg subsequent work has been more conventional in story telling. His best decade critically was the Seventies with Panic in Needle Park and Scarecrow, both with Al Pacino, with The Seduction of Joe Tynan closing that decade with one of his few commercial successes.

The commentary track by Daniel Kramer and Bill Ackerman primarily covers the pre-production history of the film and the collaboration of Schatzberg with Holender and editor Evan Lottman. Puzzle was Lottman's second credit as editor, working again with Schatzberg up through Honeysuckle Rose, and impressing uncredited producer Paul Newman enough to be tasked with editing Newman's film of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. There is also discussion of Faye Dunaway's film career and how Puzzle anticipates her own being aged out of starring roles. A brief interview with Schatzberg, done remotely by video, has its high point in featuring several of the fashion photos Schatzberg had shot between 1957 and 1960. A brief "Trailers from Hell" segment with screenwriter Larry Karasweski is also included. There is also the studio imposed opening credit sequence which attempts to make Lou appear as a victim rather than allowing the viewers to draw their own conclusions. The blu-ray comes almost to the day that Puzzle was originally given its theatrical release fifty years ago. I had initially seen the film theatrically when it was already six years old and was curious as to if it was as good as I had remembered. Puzzle was a critical and financial failure at the time of release in the U.S., finding its audience in France as well as a handful of cinephiles here. Hopefully, this new blu-ray will help broaden the film's critical reputation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:19 AM

December 08, 2020

The Return of the Musketeers

Richard Lester - 1989
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There are two set pieces in The Return of the Musketeers that are as good as anything from Richard Lester's previous films. The opening scene takes place at an inn. Roy Kinnear, as a down on his luck Planchet, is inching on top of a beam, with a fork attached to a sword, hoping to swipe food from the diners below him. His bungled attempts and pratfalls result in a food fight among the inn's patrons. Later, three of the reunited musketeers plus Raoul, son of Athos, get into a sword fight that involves trap doors, a disappearing staircase and a variety of mechanical booby traps, suggesting a Buster Keaton room in mid-17th Century France.

I am not sure how well this film would work for those who have not seen Lester's Three Musketeers (1974) and Four Musketeers (1975). Based on Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years On, the film brings back most of the original stars plus George MacDonald Fraser writing the screenplay. One change from the novel was that of villainess Milady de Winter's son instead be a sword wielding daughter. In this case there was canny casting of a still youthful Kim Cattrall as the offspring of Faye Dunaway from the earlier films. Even Charlton Heston has a cameo appearance of sorts with a glance at the portrait of him as Cardinal Richilieu. Even with limited commercial prospects, there is enough here to suggest that Return had the potential to be better had it not been for the tragic death of Roy Kinnear in mid-production.

Like the best of Lester's comic films, there is the humorous asides uttered by characters in the margins in addition to the sight gags. One other inspired moment involves the musketeers taking over a hot air balloon manned by Cyrano de Bergerac, unceremoniously dumping him into a stream while flying to a castle. That the main narrative involves intrigue within the monarchy, with a sub-plot involving Oliver Cromwell is mostly besides the point. While it is nice to see Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain and Michael York reunited onscreen, they are almost completely upstaged by the eyepatch wearing Christopher Lee, Philippe Noiret and especially the arch Geraldine Chaplin. As in the earlier Musketeer films, Lester takes the realities of life in 17th Century France and explores the comic possibilities. The combination of inventive staging of sword fights and verbal jousting are what is of interest and amusement.

I would agree with a couple key points in film critic Peter Tonguette's commentary track. First, the years passed since the production of the film have lessened what ever pall was cast by Roy Kinnear's untimely death. Second, The Return of the Musketeers should probably be considered Richard Lester's last film. Lester documented Paul McCartney in concert in Get Back (1991) but seems even by his own estimation to have gone through the motions of being the director of record. Even in comparison to for-hire works like Mouse on the Moon or Finders Keepers, Get Back seems more like an afterthought to a filmography. Lester's career is discussed in conjunction with several of his onscreen and production collaborators. There are production secrets revealed other than a somewhat detailed history of how the film was produced with truncated budget and Universal's shelving of the planned U.S. theatrical release following two disappointing previews. I was glad to see The Return of the Musketeers better than its reputation had suggested. Lester completists should be happy with this release which nicely includes the original montage of Universal logos commemorating the studio's 75th anniversary.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

November 10, 2020

Dragnet

Jack Webb - 1954
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Jack Webb's TV series has been a part of my life since its first version in the 1950s. I was a bit too young to follow what all of the details when I watched the occasional episode during the final year or so, around 1959. The introductory four notes at the beginning of the show and Webb's deadpan request of "Just the facts" were well ingrained as part of the general popular culture of the time. Even as a would be high school aged hippie in the late 1960s, I watched Jack Webb's police Sergeant, Joe Friday, back in prime time television, but something of a man out of his time with the current zeitgeist. My affection for Dragnet also included catching the 1987 film with Dan Ackroyd as the nephew, also named Joe Friday.

The series began on the radio, and the original TV series is almost filmed radio. Primarily dialogue based with Friday and his partner, Frank Smith, driving around Los Angeles, interviewing witnesses and possible suspects. Purportedly based on true life crimes, each episode ends with the perpetrator caught, and the sentence announced at the end. There is not much of interest visually, mostly close-ups and medium shots of people talking. The emphasis is on the procedures and ordinary legwork of solving a crime. The film takes an entirely different tack, with Friday and Smith having to find the material evidence needed for proof of the crime.

Much of the movie version is like a big screen version of what was seen at home. But Webb, as director, also takes Dragnet where he would not have been able to for home consumption. The film opens with the shooting in a field of one small time hood by another. The killer has a saw-off shotgun. The victim, an uncredited Dub Taylor, is in the foreground, while the killer can be seen several yards back. Taylor's back is to the camera. When he is first shot, he twists towards the camera in close-up revealing a bloody face. Given when the film was made, this is an extremely violent moment. Later, Friday and Smith get into a fist fight with some gamblers with everyone getting bloody and bruised. That fist fight also has plenty of Point-of-View shots with the viewer being the recipient of several of Friday's punches to the face. The dialogue also goes beyond what would be allowed on television with Friday responding to a hoodlum's crack about his mother, with Friday responding that unlike the hood, his mother "doesn't bark". Unlike the television show, Webb here has a few opportunities to create shots with one character in the foreground with another further back, as well as using a few overhead traveling crane shots. What bits of cinematic style exist here would be explored more thoroughly the following year with Webb's best film, Pete Kelly's Blues.

Webb was unusually generous for a producer-director-star. Both Dragnet and Pete Kelly's Blues have credits with a card following Webb's name as "in the Screen Play by Richard L. Breen". These were the only two films that Breen wrote for Webb, and the only two films that Webb provided the unusual credit for writing. While the visual aspects of Webb's films are inconsistent, there are thematic consistencies. Webb's films are about generally homosocial groups, be it the police force in Dragnet, the 1920s Kansas City jazz band of Pete Kelly's Blues, the marines in The D.I. or the newsmen in -30-. Even the women, Ann Robinson as a police woman here, are essentially one of the guys. The lives of these characters are within their chosen professional activities.

Film historian Toby Roan provides the commentary track for the Blu-ray. Identification and some details are provided on the supporting cast that includes Richard Boone, and uncredited Dennis Weaver, and an assortment of character actors with careers often weaving between radio, television and movies. Roan's commentary track can be heard on the wide screen version of the film (1.75:1). Dragnet is also available in the Academy format of 1.37:1. What I am assuming is that the film was intended to be exhibited in the standard 35mm format, but Warner Brothers wanted to hop onto some kind of wide screen format following the introduction of CinemaScope the previous year. Dragnet was one of several films that were re-formatted for wide screen during this transitional period. While there is no significant loss of visual information, my own preference is for the Academy ratio. Dragnet can also be enjoyed for some of the on location filming around the streets of Los Angeles. Even while very much a product of its time, Jack Webb's creation not only thrived through the changes in mass media and popular culture, but has remained defiantly iconic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

November 03, 2020

Two Mules for Sister Sara

Don Siegel - 1970
KL Studio Classics BD Region A Two-disc set

It is probably common knowledge by cinephiles that Two Mules for Sister Sara originated as a screenplay by filmmaker Budd Boetticher. Written in the mid-1960s, Boetticher sold the screenplay in order to continue working on his passion project, the documentary on bullfighter Carlos Arruza. The screenplay was bought by producer Martin Rackin. According to Boetticher, he had made a disparaging remark about some jokes Rackin had written when both were working at Universal in the early 1950s. Although Boetticher wrote the screenplay with the intention of directing the film, he knew that Rackin would not hire him.

Boetticher had intended to make the film with Robert Mitchum and either Jeanne Moreau, Sylvia Pinal or Deborah Kerr in the title role. The film that was made, with a total re-writing of the screenplay by the formerly blacklisted Albert Maltz can be seen in retrospect as a kind of transitional film bridging the gap between the more traditional kind of film made by Boetticher with the changes to the western brought about by the advent of the Italian films and revisionist westerns, and the onscreen persona of Clint Eastwood. Even Burt Kennedy, who wrote most of the screenplays for the Randolph Scott westerns that Boetticher is most famous for, responded to the challenge first with his adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times (1967). It is most likely that had Boetticher made the film he imagined, it would have been likely regarded as remote from the tastes of the audience at that time.

The influence of Sergio Leone is most obvious in Clint Eastwood's appearance - the unshaven face, the cheroot between his clenched teeth, and a rust colored vest that vaguely resembles the poncho. Add to that the score by Ennio Morricone that features a piccolo and jew's harp. Eastwood's character has a name, or at least a surname, of Hogan. A scene with the blowing up of a bridge with a moving train and an elaborate batter sequence further the connection, primarily with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

The shots during the title sequence show Hogan in the distance riding with an accompanying pack horse at sunrise. This series of shots begin with an animal with the camera moving across the area within the shot to reveal something more about the environment before stopping to show Hogan's progress as he travels. The animals include a mountain lion, a snake and a rabbit. Although not as emphasized as the film progresses, as indicated by the title, part of the film is about the relationship of Hogan with the nun Sister Sara, and animals. The film takes place in Mexico during the time of the attempted French conquest, concurrent to the American Civil War. After Hogan saves Sara from a gang of would be rapists in the desert, he argues against burying the men, saying the would act as food for the vultures. The rattle of a snake is used as a decoy to mislead a group of French soldiers who are seeing Sara for her support of the Juaristas. Sara travels first on a mule, and later on a burro. The second mule in the title could well be Hogan, whom Sara addresses at one point as "Mr. Mule".

While Clint Eastwood plays a variation of the kind of character he established primarily with the Sergio Leone films, Shirley MacLaine, in the title role is the one who evolves during the course of the film. First seen almost naked when threatened by the trio of would-be rapists, her character reveals more of her self over time. First is the discovery that she and Hogan have a mutual agenda regarding aiding the Juaristas, followed by the increasing revelations that this is one very unorthodox nun. There is a narrative symmetry with having Sara again without any clothes near the end of the film when her true self is revealed.

The blu-ray comes with both the complete 113 minute "international" version and the 104 minute cut that played theatrically in the U.S. Alex Cox's commentary track is most interesting in discussing the Mexican locations for Sister Sara as well as briefly reviewing several other westerns filmed in Mexico in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Cox also covers the career of Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Eastwood liked Figueroa's work enough to have him hired as cinematographer for another Eastwood film released just weeks later in June 1970, Kelly's Heroes. There is also an eight minute short, an interview, "At Home with Clint Eastwood".

Two Mules for Sister Sara was meant to be seen theatrically, but home viewers should see this film on as big a screen as possible. Siegel employs several long shot where characters are barely perceptible in the distance. There is the recurring visual motif emphasizing spatial dynamics, of people almost overwhelmed by their environment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:46 AM

October 06, 2020

Outside the Law

Tod Browning - 1920
Kino Classics BD Region A

Outside the Law marked the second time Lon Chaney worked with Tod Browning. While Chaney's name is the one still recognizable for contemporary viewers, he is not the star here. It was Priscilla Dean who initially had here name dominating the posters at the time of the initial release. When the film was re-released about five years later, Chaney had become the main attraction. Here he has a supporting role, actually two, a demonstration primarily of his ability with make-up.

Taking place in San Francisco, a prominent former gangster, Madden, is mentored in Confucian studies as a way of going straight. He is accompanied by his daughter, Molly. The hoodlum, "Black Mike" Sylva has a plan to pin a cop killing on Madden and convince Molly to go back to the criminal life. Along with Molly's boyfriend, "Dapper Bill", they steal the jewels from a society woman. Molly and Bill first plan to double-cross Mike for the jewels but eventually have a change of heart and plan to go straight. Mike has his own plans.

Chaney appears through most of the film as "Black Mike". He was 37 at the time but looks much older here. There is no special make-up or physical defects. Chaney also takes on the role of Ah Wing, a student of the Confucian teacher. It's really more of a caricature with what I have to reluctantly describe as "chink eyes". As film historian Anthony Slide points out in his commentary track, it is a small role that Chaney did not have to play. According to IMDb, it was actually some of the footage of Chaney as Ah Wing that was trimmed prior to the re-release. Slide provides no additional information but it could well be that Chaney took on this second role simply to display his talent for disguise.

Why Browning's films remain of interest is because of his interest in outsiders, people living in the margins be they circus performers or criminals. Adding color here is a character named "Humpy", with the uncredited four foot, two inch, John George. Also uncredited are three young Chinese-American actresses, sisters, with Anna May Wong just a few years from her own stardom. While most of the film was shot on a studio set Chinatown in addition to the interiors, there is some footage taken in San Francisco. While one can charitably discount some aspects of Outside the Law as being part of the time when the film was produced, the sub-plot involving a little boy who makes friends with "Dapper Bill" and Molly is overly sentimental. When Molly sees the shadow of a kite's crossbar which resembles a basic crucifix, Browning overly underlines that image with multiple shots.

Anthony Slide points out that the final confrontation between "Black Mike" and his gang against "Dapper Bill and Molly was considered one of the most violent set pieces of its time. According to IMDb, it took two weeks to film. Chaney appears in both of his roles although his character are placed in different spaces. "Dapper Bill" looks the worse for wear with torn clothing and a bloodied face.

The blu-ray was sourced from a 4K restoration of the re-release print although there is visible deterioration in some scenes. Slide mentions that the original version was tinted. The blu-ray also includes the alternate ending which deletes that final fight. There is also comparison footage with the 16mm version of the film. While Slide speaks glowingly of Priscilla Dean, I don't share his enthusiasm. She strikes me as being dowdy in comparison to the three year younger Gloria Swanson, Cecil B. DeMille's star at that time. Dean, like her co-star and husband at the time, Wheeler Oakman, both professionally saw their fortunes fade when Hollywood transitioned to sound. Oakman was able to continue with bit parts through 1948. Dean was in a handful of poverty row talkies before retiring from acting at 36.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

September 15, 2020

Disputed Passage

Frank Borzage - 1939
KL Studios Classics BD Region A

Disputed Passage was the second of three films based on novels by Lloyd C. Douglas that were filmed by Frank Borzage. Previously, there was Green Light (1937) with Errol Flynn as a doctor facing a spiritual crisis. The Big Fisherman (1959), a big budget religious epic about Jesus' disciple Peter. The theologian turned novelist is probably best remembered for the cinematic adaptations of Magnificent Obsession and The Robe. Disputed Passage shares with Green Light and Magnificent Obsession narratives where the medical intertwines with the spiritual. The title is from a Walt Whitman poem regarding one's path in life.

In terms of Borzage's output, this film is something of a lesser effort, falling in between the more prestigious and better regarded The Shining Hour and Strange Cargo, both starring Joan Crawford. Which is not to say this is a bad or uninteresting film. Contemporary interest would be based on interest in the overall careers of Borzage and star Dorothy Lamour. The film also begins with an appearance by author Douglas giving written approval of this screen adaptation.

Young Dr. Beaven (bland leading man John Howard) has decided to follow his medical school mentor, Dr. Forster (Akim Tamiroff), in approaching medicine from a purely scientific standpoint. It's mentioned sarcastically by Forster that Beaven's undergraduate studies were religious in nature. Beaven's dedication to his medical practice and aloof attitude are challenged when he meets Audrey Hilton. Beaven performs minor surgery and the two fall in love, until Forster gets in the way.

And this would be relatively simple except that for the contemporary viewer, attitudes and representation of race make this film much for complicated. Hilton is a white woman who was raised by a Chinese family in China and thinks of herself as culturally Chinese. Keep in mind that at the time the film was made, interracial love was not allowed to be depicted in Hollywood films. Lamour is not exactly in "yellow face" but her costumes, hair style and make-up signify an exotic other. While it is to the film's credit that the Chinese characters and Lamour speak Chinese to each other, according to IMDb, there is no consistency with the dialogue switching between Cantonese and Mandarin. The film was made at a time when the audience was expected to have some awareness of Japan's attempts to colonize China, yet due to U.S. neutrality at the time of production, the scenes in China only refer to "the enemy". Some might have a problem with a scene in which Keye Luke plays a young medical student who presents himself with an Anglo-Saxon name, but my own experience includes personally knowing several Japanese immigrants who have done the same thing to ingratiate themselves as Americans. It is also of interest to compare Disputed Passage with the more clearly depicted relationship between an American pilot and a Chinese woman, portrayed by a Chinese actress, in China Doll (1958).

Borzage's hand is most evident in the final third of the film. Beaven travels to China in search of Ms. Hilton who has chosen to take a more active role in conflict against Japan. China is first introduced with stock footage which looks to me like it came from the same reel that was used in an earlier Paramount set in China production, The General Died at Dawn. Beaven travels by horseback to a small village. A lateral tracking shot depicts sick, hungry and dead Chinese along the pathway, illuminated in the darkness with expressionistic lighting. The scene with Forster operating on the injured Beaven uses a series of shots with canted angles. Near the end of the film, Dorothy Lamour is framed in an extreme close-up with her face partially in shadow except for her eyes.

Nick Pinkerton's commentary does provide some key information regarding the making of Disputed Passage. He presents the quite plausible theory that Lloyd Douglas, fully expecting that his novel would be sold to Hollywood like his past novels, had deliberately created the character of Audrey Hilton as the white woman with the Chinese identity in order to get around the still active Hays Code regarding interracial relationships. Pinkerton also notes that the leading Chinese-American actress of the time, Anna May Wong, served as an uncredited dialogue coach for the scenes in which Lamour speaks Mandarin. Aside providing brief biographies on several of the cast and crew members, Pinkerton's commentary is most valuable in discussing the historical context in which Disputed Passage was made. For the more serious cinephile, Pinkerton also generously quotes from an earlier piece written by film scholar Fred Camper.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:19 AM

September 01, 2020

Black Gravel

Schwarzer Kies
Helmut Kautner -1961
Kino Classics BD Region A

The most incendiary moment in Black Gravel is also an illustration of how the depiction of an anti-social act can sometimes be misread as an endorsement. A bit of background is required - the film takes place in a very small West German village, with a population of about three hundred people. A U.S. Air Force base is under construction nearby. One of several bars opened to serve the American servicemen is a converted barn. The barn's former owner, an old farmer who probably served in the first World War has a love of marching songs which are part of the offerings on the bar's jukebox. The farmer's attitudes towards the popular dance music is to make the derogatory comment of "Negro music". It is only casually indicated that the bar is now owned by a Jewish proprietor named Loeb. At one point, Loeb asks the farmer to stop with his repeated playing of a marching song, pulling the plug from the jukebox. The farmer calls Loeb a "dirty Jew". The next shot is of Loeb's arm seen through the jukebox glass of his concentration camp tattoo. The farmer reacts in a way that to me indicates a sense of horror and shame. A member of a West German Jewish committee sued writer-director Kautner and the production company for what he interpreted as the film's anti-Semitism rather than as a presentation of one character's verbal assault. The original release version of Black Gravel was cut. This new blu-ray has both that version plus the complete version restored in 2016.

Kautner's film was one of the few to look the impact of American military bases in Germany. Relationships are mostly transactional, with several of the men working on the construction site augmenting their salaries in the black market. The younger, attractive women work in the bars or as prostitutes. The young wife of one of the supervising American military officers, a middle aged man, has chosen security in an uncertain time. By chance, she is reunited with the man she really loves, currently transporting the precious gravel to the construction site, but also rerouting his loads illicitly. The sound of jets overhead are a constant reminder of the American presence in the area.

Programmer and critic Olaf Moller provided the commentary track, which offers a wealth of information about Kautner, as well as putting the film into the contexts of both the filmmaker's work and the events of the time. For those unfamiliar with Moller's writings, he is both erudite and at times extremely funny. His own theory regarding the charges of anti-Semitism is that there may have been more extreme sensitivity as the film was released at the same time as the Adolf Eichmann trial was taking place. Also, with greater tensions between East and West Germany, this was the year the Berlin wall was built. An example of Moller's humor is in his discussion of German beer halls. Kautner remains relatively unknown in the U.S. even though his Captain from Kopenick was a foreign film nominee for the 1956 Oscars. Even two English language films made for Universal, The Restless Years and A Stranger in my Arms are currently unavailable.

While the other German films about the impact of U.S. military bases are unavailable, it may be worth noting a handful of other films. Just one year earlier saw the release of the Elvis Presley vehicle, G.I. Blues, something of a fictionalized version of Presley's own time as a peacetime draftee in West Germany, with the base and soldiers as benign entities. The German-American Town without Pity (1961) was more serious, about four soldiers on trial for the rape of a German girl, while glossing over the cultural impact of the American military in Germany. It is the films of Japan that one can more frequently see action that takes place near military bases. Masaki Kobayashi's Black River (1957) may be the one Japanese film most similar to Kautner's in both subject matter and treatment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:23 AM

August 18, 2020

Backlash

John Sturges - 1956
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There is a shot of Donna Reed that almost promises a different movie. Reed is wearing a small black cowboy hat, cocked to the side, wearing jeans. The camera is tilted up so that Reed is seen against a blue sky. And for a few moments there is hope that Donna Reed could have been an action hero, at least once, prior to her career defining role as a beloved television mom.

Backlash has a bit of everything in a western - an outlaw gang working on behalf of a wealthy man who owns the small town, rampaging Native Americans, a search for missing gold, and a son looking to avenge the death of his father. If that is not enough, there is also a gunfighter by the name of Johnny Cool. The original story was by Frank Gruber, known as "king of the pulps", while the screenplay was by Borden Chase. Chase is best known for his work for Anthony Mann starring James Stewart. While there is a psychological twist here, it's not given the same kind of weight as one might find in the Mann/Stewart films. John Sturges is more interested in the single-minded completion of a mission, whether chosen or assigned, much like his best known films, be they westerns or war-time action.

There is pleasure in watching the supporting cast of actors, some of whom may be more familiar by face rather than by name. Somewhat jarring is Edward Platt, usually seen as the wise counsel in contemporary dramas, as a no-nonsense sheriff. Those who only know Harry Morgan from his long running role as Sherman Potter in the television series, M*A*S*H, might not recognize him as the perpetually unshaven self-proclaimed fast gun. John McIntire, also more frequently a sympathetic character, is on hand as the villain who has no problem selling out his family for easy money. As for the top billed stars, even winning an Oscar did not do much for Donna Reed. As the mystery woman whose interests may coincide with those of Richard Widmark, I don't think the film would have been much different had the role been handed to a Universal contract player like Mara Corday or Faith Domergue. Richard Widmark does not appear to have been challenged by this role. There is his patented giggle at those who might oppose him, but whatever obsession he has about his search does not have the monomania James Stewart excelled during this time.

Samm Deighan's commentary track is well researched and presented. One of the key points she brings up is that the film was developed by Richard Widmark as a way of controlling his onscreen image. Much of the discussion is how Backlash is connected to film noir, and how director John Sturges made several noir films prior to primarily specializing in westerns during the mid-1950s. Also of interest is how the production code severely hampered the production, eliminating or softening the sex, violence and moral ambiguity of what was intended to be an "adult western". The production was shot on location in Arizona, in Technicolor rather than the more subdued Eastman color, rendered quite nicely from what appears to have been a pristine print.

I am left with wondering why the film was titled Backlash. The source novel title, Fort Starvation certainly would have kept the potential audience away. The tagline for the American poster proclaims, "Suspense that cuts like a whip". Donna Reed is seen with a small horse whip in the opening scenes but she never uses it. Could there have been a scene with that whip that was dropped due the the production code? An interesting speculation especially as there is the suggestion that Reed's character hints at the more fully realized whip-wielding Barbara Stanwyck in Sam Fuller's' Forty Guns released just one year later.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

August 04, 2020

The Tony Curtis Collection

The Perfect Fulough
Blake Edwards - 1958

The Great Imposter
Robert Mulligan - 1960

40 Pounds of Trouble
Norman Jewison - 1962
KL Studio Classics BD Three-disc set

Usually, when I've covered blu-ray release sets, it's centered on a genre or filmmaker. What made me interested in this three disc set of films starring Tony Curtis is that the three films in question were all early works by directors who would become major hitmakers within a few years, all with films that became iconic. In terms of the star's career, all three films were made during the time Curtis was under contract to Universal for a second seven year period, but with the option to make films with other studios. It's generally the films Curtis made outside of Universal that have sustained the most interest over the past decades. But there is the simultaneous interest of seeing both how Curtis, especially after his Oscar nominated performance in The Defiant Ones, exercised power in working with directors who were also given the chance to establish their own respective styles that would be more apparent in future work.

The Perfect Furlough was one of four movies starring Curtis in 1958, a year that included Delmer Daves' Kings Go Forth, his only Oscar nominated performance in The Defiant Ones and a second film with then-wife Janet Leigh, The Vikings. Ms. Leigh also appeared in one movie without Curtis that year, a potboiler Universal hacked up and tossed in a ditch, Touch of Evil. Younger readers may not be aware that Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh were the power movie star couple of the 1950s, making five films together as well as being major stars individually. The premise of Stanley Shapiro's script is that Curtis plays a womanizing soldier, one of 104 assigned to a remote base in the Arctic. After seven months of a year long assignment, the soldiers are finding their isolation difficult. Leigh plays the Army psychologist who comes up with the idea that the soldiers will find vicarious release through one soldier who is allowed a three week furlough. Egged by Curtis, the soldiers all describe their perfect furlough as spending three weeks in Paris with an Argentine bombshell actress, played here by an actual Argentine bombshell, Linda Crystal. Curtis finagles his way to winning a lottery, with the rest of the film taking place in a studio lot Paris. Much suspension of disbelief is needed not only for the plot, but the plot twists that take place.

What is of interest are the sight gags that would be re-worked later, primarily in the Pink Panther series. King Donovan appears as the hapless officer who breaks a pointer and walks into closed doors. One still funny bit involves a strategically placed bottle of champagne. Both Leigh and Crystal tumble into giant vats of wine. Edwards' visual style involves very little cross cutting between characters, keeping even his stars in two-shots and group shots within the CinemaScope frame. The film was the second of four films Curtis and Edwards made, followed the next year with Edwards' first major hit, Operation Petticoat, also at Universal.

The commentary track is most conversational between historians David Del Valle and C. Courtney Joyner that goes off in several tangents, although honestly, how could it not? The discussion covers the production of the film and its place in the careers of the primary talent, as well as placing it in the context of the era of production. While the commentary succeeds in being entertaining and mostly informative, I was astonished that of the several supporting players mentioned, nothing was said about Marcel Dalio, appearing here as the winemaker passing his wisdom of love to Curtis. To their credit, Del Valle and Joyner are honest about the film's weaknesses and those aspects that reflect the sexual attitudes of the time, as well as being observant about how the film works in anticipating some of the future films by Blake Edwards.

The Great Imposter was the second of two films Curtis made with Robert Mulligan, following The Rat Race, also from 1960. It was Mulligan's third feature and like The Rat Race essentially a commissioned work, though Mulligan had a major hand in casting of the supporting roles. This is a highly fictionalized story of a high school dropout, Fernando Demara, Jr., who through a reading of people and a photographic memory managed to take on a variety of identities and occupations, most infamously as a Canadian naval surgeon who completed nineteen successful surgeries on board a ship in battle off the South Korean coast. Demara was a celebrity at the time the film was made, profiled in Life magazine, and the subject of a best selling biography published in 1959. The film is lighter in tone than the biography, tailored more to Curtis' onscreen persona. The real Demara was also physically heavyset, unlike Curtis' lithe go-getter. Universal at this time was the most conservative of the big studios, but with Curtis demanding roles with greater dramatic range, there was some drama mixed in with the whimsy.

Although the film was well received at the time, I don't think it has aged as well. The Rat Race, dominated as it is by Garson Kanin's screenplay based on his ten year old play benefits from some on location shooting with Curtis and co-star Debbie Reynolds on the streets of New York City. Even though Mulligan was respected enough by his peers to get nominated for a Directors Guild Award, The Great Imposter lacks the vitality and sense of place of the earlier film. Where it works best as a warm-up for Mulligan's best films is an early scene of Demara's depression era childhood. In two years, Mulligan would make To Kill a Mockingbird. There are also The Other and Man in the Moon, among the better films. Kat Ellinger's commentary reviews how Mulligan was part of the generation of film directors who were trained in television dramas, often shown live at that time, who made their feature debuts in the late 1950s and early 60s. The Great Imposter was also noted for having several major names in supporting roles, notably Karl Malden as a friendly priest who provides some dramatic continuity. Others may delight in seeing the relatively unknown Frank Gorshin as a scheming convict whose constant villainous laugh anticipates his role as The Joker in the Batman TV series.

By the time one gets to 40 Pounds of Trouble, there is a noticeable inverse relationship between the quality of the films and the trajectory of the respective director's careers. Norman Jewison was hand-picked by Curtis following a television career of specials devoted primarily to musical performers, most notably Judy Garland. In the New York Times, Bosley Crowther's summed up his opinion, "The trouble with 40 Pounds of Trouble is that it is just too hackneyed and dull." Time has not helped Jewison's feature debut, which hardly suggests that the director would be the recipient of three Oscar nominations for Best Director including Best Picture winner, In the Heat of the Night.

The film is an uncredited remake, the second, of the Shirley Temple film, Little Miss Marker, about a five year old girl left behind by her gambler father, who has temporarily left in order to pay off a debt. The source is a story by writer Damon Runyon, famed for his tales of gamblers, gangsters and show business types and assorted riff-raff in 1930s New York City. Runyon should be happy that his name is not on the credits for this film, an updated version that takes place mostly in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, with a frenetic chase taking place in Disneyland. There was a fourth version made, also with Curtis, this time supporting his former acting school colleague Walter Matthau.

While Crowthers rightly complained about the weak screenplay, he was oblivious to Jewison's hand in the visuals. In retrospect, it would seem like Jewison was hoping to use as many ideas about making the film as cinematic as possible, starting with an elaborate long take of Curtis walking through the poker tables and one-armed bandits of the casino he manages, weaving in and out of people and multiple conversations. It's an overhead traveling crane shot that may not rival the opening of Touch of Evil, but it is quite striking, as well as evident of the kind of trust Curtis placed in his novice director. The montage of gamblers, including a few direct overhead shots looks straight ahead to The Cincinnati Kid, while the use of split screen in a three way conversation is future practice for The Thomas Crown Affair. Much of the film is devoted to pop culture references very current in 1962, though gags involving John and Robert Kennedy are now painful rather than funny.

The conversational commentary track, again with Ellinger teamed with podcaster Mike McPadden, points out how 40 Pounds of Trouble is of interest as a document of its time. Jewison shot on location in a Disneyland that substantially no longer exists, with many of the rides aged out. Add to that other filmmakers at that time may well have settled for second unit shots, with the actors filmed in front of a blue screen. Ellinger and McPadden also note Jewison's place in the changes in the way Hollywood films were produced. 40 Pounds was enough of a hit that Jewison became a house director at Universal for his next three films, two which were major hits starring Doris Day. As soon as he was tapped to direct The Cincinnati Kid, Jewison was able to make the transition while the old studio system was collapsing, with greater choice in projects, shooting on location, with a freer hand in onscreen and production talent.

Circling back to the star, Ellinger and McPadden discuss Curtis's career and his frustration at not being taken seriously as an actor. It should be noted that 40 Pounds followed The Outsider, a downbeat biographical drama. The story of Ira Hayes, the Native American soldier who helped raise the flag at Iwo Jima, the film was Universal's one attempt with Curtis in a straight drama, and a box office failure. Curtis probably felt he had to go back to formula to maintain his stardom. By the time his contract with Universal had ended, Curtis had one major hit, again with Blake Edwards and The Great Race, followed by diminishing returns through the rest of the 1960s. Even starring in The Boston Strangler was enough to break the typecasting.

The greatest appeal of this three disc set will be for the Tony Curtis fan who will enjoy his presence for its own sake. For serious cinephile, the interest will be in the early development of the three directors, as well as an incidental tracing of the shifts in Hollywood filmmaking and the visible ending of the studio system at the most conservative of Hollywood studios.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:29 AM

July 28, 2020

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands

Norman Foster - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Actor turned director Norman Foster honed his directorial skills churning out the yellow face adventures of Mr. Moto and Charlie Chan. The films were produced with modest budgets and short shooting schedules. Foster found his way into Orson Welles' circle and he was entrusted with filming part of the never completed It's All True, the project pushed on Welles in the name of pan-American friendship in 1942, taking Welles away from R.K.O. and The Magnificent Ambersons. Welles also entrusted Foster with directing Journey into Fear, a film much more entertaining than some have claimed, and similar to the 1951 version of The Thing, a film subject to debate regarding how much of the directorial credit is to be taken at face value.

It would appear that everything of value that Norman Foster took from his past work was used in Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. A brisk eighty minutes long, there's no dawdling around to establish place or characters. Burt Lancaster, unshaven, disheveled, world weary and volatile, is sufficiently annoyed at the barkeep in a London bar at closing time to sock him in the jaw. Unfortunately, the barkeep is knocked dead. Accidental death or not, seedy Robert Newton has witnessed the incident and calls for the neighborhood toughs to get a hold of Lancaster. On the lam, outwitting the police in part by using his acrobatic skills, Lancaster hides in the apartment of Joan Fontaine.

That chase in the beginning shows the influence of Welles. It is a series of traveling shots, including several crane shots looking down at the street. Foster emphasizes the space between Lancaster and those who pursue him. There's depth of focus. Just that part of the film, from its introduction of Lancaster to the point where he makes a truce with Fontaine as her unexpected and unwanted guest, with its use of fog and shadows, can serve as a text for explaining the look of film noir. Robert Newton reappears, like the proverbial bad penny, to blackmail Lancaster and later, Fontaine. Any border between horror and film noir is erased in the facial expressions and use of lighting on Newton's face in close-up as he threatens Fontaine.

It's not all darkness. After a bit of cajoling, Lancaster talks Fontaine into a walk through a zoo. At one point they are in front of a cage with a chimpanzee. The chimpanzee makes a face which Lancaster imitates. I am unaware of any previous comparisons, but I was reminded of a line written as I recall written by Pauline Kael, reviewing a much later Lancaster film, the western Valdez is Coming. One of those weird bits of flotsam that stays in the memory, with Kael describing Lancaster as simian in that film.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands was Lancaster's debut as his own producer. From the perspective of his his career, his choices for roles for himself and choices off collaborators has a strange consistency. As in this film, Lancaster more often than not plays flawed characters, sometimes deeply unlikable men such as in Sweet Smell of Success as the gossip columnist. At the same time, within the same film if possible, Lancaster loved to show off his body, up through his nude scene after hitting fifty in The Swimmer. There is a beefcake moment in Kiss . . . where Lancaster, jailed following another near murderous outburst, is stripped of his shirt, and strapped and restrained to be whipped in prison. Lancaster would seem to have no problem taking second billing to the more veteran Joan Fontaine here, or later two actors he admired, Gary Cooper and Clark Gable. When it came to directors, the relationships with those hired by Lancaster would occasionally be more problematic with firings of several respected filmmakers, often replaced by the more cooperative John Frankenheimer or Sydney Pollack. All the more baffling is that for his telling directors what to do (Franenheimer once told of being lifted around by Lancaster with instructions on camera placement), Lancaster never took to direction after a couple attempts about fifteen years apart.

Norman Foster could well be another director worthy of further research. His career is even more idiosyncratic than that of another former Welles associate, Richard Wilson. At the very least, Foster has directed two noted entries in film noir - Kiss . . and Woman On the Run (1950), and the amiable western, Rachel and the Stranger starring sister-in-law Loretta Young. Foster would appear to be going back to his directorial roots in shooting multiple television episodes for Walt Disney's adventured of Zorro, and most famously, Davy Crockett, mini-series before that term was invented, that eventually were re-edited for theatrical release. Of possible interest would be the handful of films Foster made in Mexico for the local audience, three with Ricardo Montalban. Of further interest is that the source novel is by the British novelist Gerald Butler, who also provided the source novel for On Dangerous Ground, and that this story about a man on the run had its screenplay handled by three blacklisted and temporarily exiled writers - Ben Maddow, Walter Bernstein and Leonardo Bercovici. Bernstein and Maddow would work again with Lancaster on two later films produced by the star, The Train and The Unforgiven respectively.

Film historian Jeremy Arnold offers a generally informative, well prepared and cleanly recorded commentary track. What I found most useful was the explanation of how mobile sets were used to make the Universal studio London look bigger than it was, and for use in those overhead traveling crane shots that open the film. Arnold also discusses the film's Orson Welles connection lightly with Norman Foster, but in greater detail regarding cinematographer Russell Metty, with a mention that Gregg Toland was initially set to do the filming. There is also the pointing out of several of the lesser know supporting players as well as notes on how Joan Fontaine and Robert Newton were cast. This is one of the better commentary tracks for a film that is best known for its wonderfully lurid title.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:45 AM

July 21, 2020

Michael Winner and Oliver Reed: Two Films

The System/The Girl-Getters
Michael Winner - 1964

Hannibal Brooks
Michael Winner - 1969
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Michael Winner directed six films with Oliver Reed. Of those six, the four released between 1964 and 1969 are the ones of most interest. The last two films have Reed reduced to supporting roles. Both the director and the actor benefited from this collaboration as it brought greater critical and commercial attention to each.

For Reed, The System is a transitional film with a role that has echoes of previous work. He appears here as Tinker, a photographer at a British beach resort town, who uses his photography to meet young women on holiday and arrange for some of them to hook up with his friends who also have summer jobs. As his nickname suggests, Tinker has created the mechanics for a system for he and his pals to have summertime romances. As in Beat Girl and The Party's Over, Reed plays the rebel leader, either by design or default, yet simultaneously seems removed from the group, carrying with him a sense of emotional distance. In her interview on the blu-ray, actress Jane Merrow discusses this sense of reserve of Reed suggesting that in this film there were similarities between the actor and his role.

The System did well enough for Winner to make two more even more commercially successful films with Reed, The Jokers, co-starring Michael Crawford, and I'll Never Forget What'sisname with Orson Welles, also reputed to be the first mainstream English language film to drop the F-bomb. The fourth film, Hannibal Brooks was less successful commercially and critically. Both Winner and Reed bounced back, Reed first with Ken Russell's Women in Love, and Winner remaking himself as primarily an action director who in a couple years would have a lucrative, and sometimes ludicrous, collaboration with Charles Bronson.

I had seen The System under its US release title, The Girl-Getters, in 1966. While the film did get rave reviews, the initial first run release was limited. It was not unusual for art and independent films at that time to skip Denver at that time. I saw The Girl-Getters as a supporting feature for Roger Corman's The Wild Angels. At that time, it was not unusual for some first run films to play as part of double features in Denver's downtown theaters. I was fourteen that summer, and unaware that Winner's film was already two years old, but I liked what I saw.

As a teenager, I was so caught up with the bad boy behavior of Tinker and his posse that I missed the point of story. While the lads are calming to be rebelling against conformity and middle class values, it's essentially summertime fun before returning to their families or school for the rest of the year. Tinker pursues a model, Nicola, and finds himself thinking of a more domestic life only to discover that Nicola has chosen a life more itinerant than his own.

Winner smartly cast the film with relatively unknown actors who were age appropriate, notably including David Hemmings. Reed was twenty-five when the film was made, but his stocky build, plus his already prodigious drinking, made him look a bit older. The film was shot during the summer of 1963, with The Beatles topping the charts in England. Too late to hire them as the rock band that briefly appears in the film, Winner did get the second most popular Liverpool band, The Searchers, to record the title song. Much of the credit for the look of the film goes to cinematographer Nicolas Roeg, just a couple films away from working with Richard Lester and John Schlesinger. Australian film historian Stephen Vagg provided the commentary track which quotes from Michael Winner and Oliver Reed's respective autobiographies, as well as anecdotes from surviving cast members.

In discussing the casting of The System, Stephen Vagg reviews Michael Winner's ability to spot future talent. As it turned out, Winner, like several other people, was overly optimistic about stardom for Michael J. Pollard. This is a World War II film, still a viable commercial genre at the time of production. Second billed, after Oliver Reed, in Hannibal Brooks, Pollard basically has a glorified supporting role as an American P.O.W. captured by the Germans, always on the lookout for a way to escape. Reed plays Lance Corporal Brooks, who is given the job of looking after an elephant, Lucy, at the Munich zoo. After a bombing in Munich substantially destroys the zoo, Brooks is assigned, along with two German soldiers, to escort Lucy to a zoo in Innsbruck, Austria, by train. Denied use of the train by a top office, Brooks is forced to walk Lucy to Innsbruck. Plans change, with Brooks attempting to get himself and Lucy over the Alps and into neutral Switzerland.

The story, created with Winner, was inspired by Tom Wright's own wartime experience caring for elephants as a P.O.W. What gets in the way is that the concept is too whimsical for a serious film that takes time for Brooks to lament about the loss of life that takes place in wartime. Reed and the elephant, Aida, do most of the literal and emotional heavy lifting here. Pollard's casting seems more of a distraction, neither sufficiently comic nor convincingly serious as needed. Based on the reviews at the time of release, there was consensus that in spite of the weaknesses, there was just enough in Hannibal Brooks to make consider it likable. Minus the elephant, Hannibal Brooks has most of the expected cliches to be found in a film about an Allied soldier escaping from Nazis. I did like the dreamy score by Francis Lai. The film is also notable as the first of Michael Winner's collaborations with cinematographer Robert Paynter, who had previously worked exclusively with documentaries.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

July 07, 2020

Neurosis

Revenge in the House of Usher
A.M. Franck (jesus Franco and Olivier Mathot) - 1983-88
Redemption Films BD Region A

The history of the making of Neurosis is almost as tortured as any of the characters to be found in the films of Jesus (Jess) Franco. The original film was badly received at a Spanish film festival in 1983. Franco followed up with an even less successful recut in 1985. Finally, actor/director Olivier Mathot revised the story once again with about fifteen minutes of new footage. Except for one glaring non sequitur, a scene involving a supporting character, this final version is surprisingly cohesive in both its narrative and visual elements.

The original film was very loosely inspired by Poe, bizarrely credited here as Edgard Allen Poe, with an umlaut over the letter e. The film was shot in and around a large castle in Andalusia, Spain, tan and arid. While the castle interior is dark, often barely illuminated, the exteriors are oppressively bright. Eric Usher is an aging doctor, exiled due to his unorthodox research and methods, visited by his former student, Alan Harker. Most viewers will recognize some of the the literary liberties taken by Franco in his names for his characters. Usher is trying to revive the life of his daughter, Melissa, with transfusions of blood from unwilling young women kidnapped by his servants Mathieu and the one-eyed Morpho. As Harker discovers, Usher appears to be suffering from a mental breakdown, battling the ghosts from his past. An for inexplicable reasons, whomever was responsible for the English dub of this film had Harker's name pronounced as Hacker.

For some, the highpoint may be the inclusion of footage from Franco's first horror film, The Awful Dr. Orloff, repurposed here as a flashback. The more generous viewer will overlook that the facially deformed assistant, Morpho, in Neurosis played by Olivier Mathot does not quite look like the Morpho of the 1962 film. Those who have even casually followed the career of Jesus Franco will revisit Howard Vernon in his first of many collaborations with the director. As usual with Franco, there is his other familiar collaborators, muse Lina Romay, Antonio Mayans, and composer Daniel White who appears as Dr. Seward. Franco also served as his own editor and cinematographer on the original production making this one of his more personal projects. It should be noted that Olivier Mathot has also appeared as an actor in other Franco films, making his participation more fitting.

Neurosis is more likely to be appreciated by those familiar with Jesus Franco. Tim Lucas provides the commentary track here, providing information on the production history including comparisons where possible between the three different versions. As might be expected, Lucas seems to leave no stone unturned, discussing various literary and cinematic connections, primarily concerning Franco, but also regarding the participation of Francoise Blanchard in Mathot's footage. There are two language options, with the film post-dubbed in English and French. What makes this of some interest are some differences in the word choices indicated in the subtitles as well as two different folk verses used in the same scene.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

June 30, 2020

Laurel & Hardy: The Definitive Restorations

Sons of the Desert (William A. Seiter - 1933)

Way Out West (James W. Horne - 1937)
plus nineteen shorts
MVD Visual / Kit Parker Films BD Regions ABC four-disc set

First, an admission. I have not seen everything in the four disc set. Part of it is because I like posting my thoughts on new home video releases on the street date, or as close to it as possible. And also, there is just so much stuff here to be seen, with an official running time of 485 minutes. While there may be some who will want to screen their own personal marathon, I prefer smaller increments. Two features, nineteen shorts (plus alternate versions of "Brats" and "Berth Marks"), plus commentary tracks, photo galleries and trailers, there is quite a lot to unpack. There is material to be gleaned by the more serious film scholar, but the main audience for this collection will more likely be the legions of fans.

For myself, this is the first time watching any Laurel and Hardy films since 2006. I was at the San Francisco Silent Festival where three shorts directed by Leo McCarey were shown to an audience of both adults and appreciative children. I am also part of that generation who grew up watching "the boys" on network television over fifty years ago. What struck me in watching this collection, which is mostly in chronological order of production, are those aspects that changed as well as what remained consistent.

The short, "Their First Mistake" (George Marshall - 1932) with an uncredited screenplay by Stan Laurel, could well be a key film. Hardy's onscreen wife complains about his spending more time with Laurel than with her. Hardy is later served divorce papers, as is Laurel for "alienation of affection". What can be found in film after film is the story of two men who prefer each others company to the almost virtual exclusion of anyone else. "Their First Mistake" continues with Hardy having adopted a child, suddenly in the situation of being a single parent, with a very funny look at gender roles. More extreme is "Twice Two" (James Parrott - 1933) with Stan and Ollie each having sisters played by the pair in drag, with Stan's sister married to Ollie and Ollie's sister married to Stan. Even if certain things might be unsaid, I do not think the filmmakers, least of all Stan Laurel, was unaware of the implications of the team's onscreen appearances.

Laurel and Hardy as a comedy team almost eclipses their earlier work. Oliver Hardy started appearing in films in 1915, and even tried his hand at directing several films before concentrating on acting. Stan Laurel was part of Fred Karno's team of British music hall performers who came to Hollywood in 1920. Along with Laurel was fellow comic performer Charlie Chaplin. The success of the "Little Tramp" was such that Laurel appeared as an imitator in several films, while Hardy was in supporting roles in films starring another Chaplin imitator, Billy West. Hardy had some comic leads, while Laurel eventually became a star in his own right, as well as a writer-director. What also makes Laurel and Hardy unique is that they were well into their thirties at the time they officially became the comic team, each with more than a decade of experience both in front and behind the camera. On screen, the two were equals as physically comic performers. Stan Laurel was the more active of the two regarding the production of the films, even listed as the producer of the feature Way Out West.

When one looks at the credits of the actors and production team, there is some criss-crossing of friends and relatives within the Hal Roach studio. Writer-director James Parrott had a brother, Charles, better known as Charley Chase, whose manic appearance is one of the highlights of Sons of the Desert. James W. Horne, director of Way Out West, was also the uncle of George Stevens, Stan Laurel's chosen cinematographer on "Battle of the Century" (1927) and "Brats" (1930). Leo McCarey's younger brother, Raymond, directed "Scram!" (1933). For all of information provided by L & H scholar Randy Skretvedt on the making of Sons of the Desert, there is no explanation as to how what is arguably the best of the feature films, was directed by William Seiter, who along with cinematographer Kenneth Peach was from outside of the Hal Roach studio.

More scholarly is Richard Bann's commentary for "The Battle of the Century". What we have is reconstruction with previously lost footage, some stills with explanatory titles, and a scan of a 16mm print. The film is most noted for the climatic pie fight which reportedly used 3000 real pies. Of interest is the brief sight of an almost svelte Eugene Pallette as an insurance salesman. Bann discusses the history of the making of the film its history as a lost film.

My only conclusion is that I do prefer the pre-code films, the gags are both more savage and more funny. Laurel and Hardy exist in a world of domineering wives, belligerent authority figures and mechanical failure. And if the former Stanley Arthur Jefferson remains the more beloved, there may be little that makes me laugh as consistently as watching Oliver Norvell Hardy getting beaned on the head.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

June 16, 2020

Isadora

Karel Reisz - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

With four different versions, there is a question regarding some of the ellipses that take place in Isadora. The original release version was 177 minutes long, seen in December 1968 for an Oscar qualifying run. The film was subsequently shortened following negative reviews from the Los Angeles critics. The British release was 138 minutes, while the U.S. version was even shorter at 131 minutes. There is a "director's cut" that was supervised by Reisz, available only on VHS at 154 minutes. For reasons unknown, possibly due to quality of the source print, the blu-ray is essentially the British release version with a brief pre-credit scene added. That scene is of Isadora Duncan as a child making a vow of how she plans to live her life. Biographical films should always be approached cautiously, even more so films that have their own troubled histories.

Isadora was never meant to be in the mold of the traditional biographical film. It's more of a dream of the past. The structure is that of Duncan during her last days at a hotel in Nice, France, 1927, remembering her past. Reisz cuts between 1927 and various points in Duncan's life from briefly performing in a musical hall to Sousa's "Washington Post", jumping forward to one of her Greek inspired performances for a salon in Europe. In the scenes that take place in 1927, Duncan becomes infatuated with a mysterious man who drives a blood red Bugatti. When not narrating her memoirs to her frustrated biographer, she whiles away time with the reading of Tarot cards, with the death card pointedly removed from the deck. Those looking for fidelity to facts would have to look elsewhere, even while the film credits Duncan's autobiography and Sewell Stokes' biography as basis for the screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, Clive Exton and Margaret Drabble.

At one point we see Duncan imagining herself running and dancing through Greek ruins. There is also a shot of Duncan dancing on an empty, gray wooden floor which is finally revealed to be the stage on which she is performing. Credit does go to Vanessa Redgrave, who not only mimics Duncan's mannerisms, but is the one doing the dancing. Unlike some films from the time before computer magic, there is no cheating with cutting between close-ups of the star and long shots of a professional dancer identically dressed viewed from a distance. Here the dances are all Redgrave, with her final dance performance in the film seen full body. Reportedly, Redgrave trained for six months before filming. Redgrave did get Oscar nomination for her performance, and won the Best Actress award at Cannes in 1969.

The blu-ray features a commentary track by filmmaker/historian Daniel Kremer and director Allan Arkush. This is one of the better commentary tracks primarily because of the discussion of Reisz's use of the zoom lens, hand-held camera work, and editing. There is some discussion on Reisz writing about film editing, his history with the Free Cinema movement, and the impact his debut feature, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning had on British cinema. One digression has Kremer and Arkush discussing how film editing changed with new technology. In this pre-digital era, the change was from gluing together strips of 35mm film to the use of clear tape for splicing, which in turn allowed filmmakers to easily make the deliberately more fragmented films with jump cuts and flash frames. Elsewhere Kremer and Arkush point out the use of color in Isadora, and how the film fits in with Reisz's other work as well as some of the films made at the time of release. While most of the commentary is devoted to Reisz, Kremer and Arkush also make room to discuss Vanessa Redgrave, co-star Jason Robards, cinematographer Larry Pizer, editor Tom Priestley, and score composer Maurice Jarre. My only quibble would be that that the enthusiasm of Kremer and Arkush is such that they occasionally interrupt each other in mid-thought. Otherwise, a commentary track that may seem academic in description is a lively and knowledgeable exchange.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:24 AM

June 09, 2020

Viktor und Viktoria

Reinhold Shunzel - 1933
Kino Classics BD Region A

Of the various versions that were taken from the same basic premise, I went about things in backward order. First seen was Blake Edwards' Victor/Victoria at the time of release in 1982. Then a few years ago, when Netflix had a wider selection of older films available for streaming, I saw the British First a Girl (1935). It should be noted that at the time of production, Reinhold Shunzel's film was also filmed in a French language version, also featuring Anton Walbrook, at that time still known as Adolf Wohlbruck. There is also a 1957 West German remake, and an Argentinian version from 1975 that originally was set to star an actual cross-dressing star. What is also interesting is that while the 1935 and 1982 films acknowledge being based on Shunzel's film, aside from the main characters being a woman gaining show business fame impersonating a man impersonating a woman, the details of the respective narratives are different.

Contemporary viewers looking for gender-bending comedy might be happier with Edwards' film, where what was barely hinted at in the first film gets boisterously pushed front and center. There's a more gentle comedy at play here when Shunzel films the look of London's high society men infatuated with the performer, "Mr. Viktoria", assumed to be a woman on stage, until the climax with "his" wig removed. This is followed by a scene at a restaurant where several older, wealthy women hope to gain the attention of who they assume is the boyish young man. The British 1935 version has a marginally more suggestive moment of sexual confusion, although of films made during this era, neither compares to various cross-gender antics of George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935).

Remove the female as female impersonator plot, and Viktor und Viktoria remains a remarkably funny comedy. There is Renate Muller taking pratfalls in her stage debut as Mr. Viktoria. Her partner in this deception, the failed actor and original Mr. Viktoria, played by Hermann Thimig, is first seen hamming it up in an audition with virtually every Shakespearean monologue he can remember, stumbling over furniture, almost literally bringing the house down. One of the best gags is at the beginning of the film - the camera pans past a group of various actors waiting to audition, we hear the voice of a female singing an aria from an opera, the voice seems to be coming from one of the women standing along the wall, only for the camera to continue past her, and the mouth open wide with song actually was an undisguised yawn of boredom.

The film has plenty of traveling shots as well as inventive uses of sound. Shunzel also knows when to keep the camera stationary, as in a delightful shot of Muller, dressed as a male, seen in long shot trying to discretely watch Anton Walbrook walk away from her down a hotel corridor, darting away when Walbrook looks back. Renate Muller's big dance number shows the obvious influence of Busby Berkeley, with its chorus girls filmed from above, albeit with fewer dancers. Shunzel seems to have had the full artillery of technical resources at the legendary UFA studio to make a film as accomplished as anything from Hollywood in 1933.

The blu-ray is sourced from a 2013 German restoration that shows some wear, but nothing substantial. The commentary track by scholar Gaylyn Studlar points to the connections the director and stars had with Ernst Lubitsch, Max Reinhardt and Gerd Oswald, both professionally and with transgressive narratives. The stories of the several of the cast and crew are equally compelling. By 1937, when the Nazis totally took over the German film industry, Renate Muller, was no longer a top star due to her relationship with a Jewish man, death officially by suicide. Anton Walbrook, gay and Jewish, emigrated to England, with a continued successful career. Being gay and Jewish did not stop Reinhold Shunzel from being offered the title of Honorary Aryan due to his popularity as both an actor and director. Shunzel had greater confidence in the dictatorship of Louis B. Mayer and directed three films for MGM in the late Thirties, with the rest of his American career as an actor. Hermann Thimig managed to get through World War II and post-war Germany relatively untouched, continuing to act continuously in films through 1967. What makes this even more impressive is that his sister, Helene, had left Germany with husband Max Reinhardt, indicative of stardom that could even dazzle Adolf Hitler.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 AM

May 01, 2020

This Transient Life

Mujo
Akio Jissoji - 1970
Arrow Film BD Region B

About two years ago I was so sick that I went to the hospital. This turned out to be a far wiser course of action than anticipated as x-rays indicated that I had cancer in my left kidney. This was in addition to the chronic kidney disease that was already being treated. One of my doctors told me that I maybe had two years to live. Since I understood in a more concrete way how limited my lifespan was, and still is, I made the decision to stop my impulse purchases of newly available movies and try to watch the many I had collected over a ten year period. I also decided that my final purchase would be Arrow's set of Akio Jissoji's "Buddhist Trilogy".

Being a Buddhist for most of my life, I've had an interest in films with Buddhist content as well as films made by those filmmakers who have identified as Buddhists. And ending my collecting with a film called This Transient Life seemed fitting for me. A reminder that there are multiple sects of Buddhism, and we don't all practice Zen or are guided by the Dalai Lama. And not every film about Buddhism is made by an actual practicing Buddhist. All I could find about Jissoji is that he grew up as part of a Buddhist family. Still, there were things to be gleaned from This Transient Life that I understood within my own studies.

Masao, a young man with no interest in inheriting his father's business, desires to be a sculptor of Buddhist statues. At the same time, he has an incestuous relationship with slightly older sister, an open sexual relationship with the wife of his artistic mentor, and is constantly at odds with a Buddhist priest regarding his understanding of Buddhism. From my own perspective as one who practices a form of Nichiren Buddhism, Masao personifies what is called the poison drum relationship - essentially that one who hears about Buddhism and rejects it still has established a relationship with Buddhism and will will eventually attain enlightenment. This may appear contradictory as Masao's actions are admirable, yet he is sincere about his statue making, offering one such statue to the priest's temple.

Masao's rationale for rejecting Buddhist teaching is arguably a misunderstanding of the use of negation, probably from the Sutra of Immeasurable Meanings that includes the lines, "neither existing nor not existing, neither self nor other, neither square nor round...". Masao interprets this as a nihilistic view of the world. Instead, it may be best understood as an indirect way of saying that the essence of Buddhism is beyond human comprehension and limitations.

There is no Buddhist visual style here, certainly not like what Paul Schrader has written about regarding the films of Yasujiro Ozu and the view from the tatami mat. Jissoji's camera is usually mobile, moving forwards and back, side to side, sometimes searching in the fields or slinking around the corner in the house. There is the repetition of two similar shots of the priest, and a repeating of a series of shots. Perhaps not intentional but the editing structure at these moments reminds me of the recitation of a sutra, with the repeating of a specific phrase or passage. There is also the sound of bells, often what sounds like a door bells, but to me a possible non-diegetic reference to the use of bells as part of the formal Buddhist practice.

David Desser's commentary during specific scenes helps put things in context both in general terms of Buddhism as well as Japanese culture, and Japanese film culture of the time. He also discusses Jissoji's use of camera movement, as well as pointing out the geography of parts of Japan where the This Transient Life was filmed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM

April 28, 2020

The General Died at Dawn

Lewis Milestone - 1936
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

In The General Died at Dawn, Gary Cooper plays an American gunrunner in China known only by his last name, O'Hara. The character was inspired by the real life British born Morris Abraham Cohen, known primarily for his association with Sun Yet-sen and also having been appointed as a major-general in the Chinese National Revolutionary Army. Cohen was 49 at the time of the film's release. I would assume that for Paramount, the idea of a Jewish action hero would be a hard sell for the American public, but I'd like to imagine an alternate version with Paul Muni in the lead.

I also have to wonder if the film, with its setting in war-torn China, was previously considered for Josef von Sternberg. The setting is exotic, if not as baroque as in a von Sternberg film. The production was the year after von Sternberg left Paramount. There is also the connection of Gary Cooper as the star, appearing six years earlier in von Sternberg's Morocco.

The General Died at Dawn is still of interest primarily in terms of some of the visual innovations. A shot of a white door knob dissolves into a shot of a white pool ball. There is use of the split screen with two characters in conversation while each corner of the screen peels back to reveal additional action of other characters. Even the opening credit sequence is imaginative with the credits over the sails of Chinese boats floating across the screen. Meanwhile, the film's corniest line from playwright Clifford Odets, with Gary Cooper informing Madeleine Carroll that they could have made beautiful music together, was first uttered here.

So we have Gary Cooper and his pet monkey trying to smuggle a big belt full of money to a group of rebels fighting the warlord General Yang. The money is to be used to purchase guns. Coop has to not only outwit Yang, the general of the film's title, but also assorted low-lifes including a hoarse voiced William Frawley. Madeleine Carroll is caught between her love for Coop and her loyalty towards her father, a relationship that appears emotionally incestuous.

Contemporary viewers might be put off by having several members of the cast in yellow face, notably Akim Tamiroff as General Yang. While that aspect can be charitably considered as a product of its time, the film is otherwise well cast with Asian, if not specifically Chinese, actors as Chinese characters. Also, none of the Chinese characters speaks pidgin English, and the couple of racist characters have what's coming to them.

Lewis Milestone doesn't have a reputation as a visual stylist, and perhaps credit should go to cinematographer Victor Milner, who received an Oscar nomination for his work. The shot that first introduces the viewer to Madeleine Carroll is of her legs, and a cigarette in hand. There is also Carroll and Cooper's first onscreen meeting, with Cooper seen as the reflection on a full length mirror in a train's compartment. There is also one unusually graphic depiction of murder that I would not have expected in a film made at that time. As is to be expected from Kino Lorber's releases from the Universal vault, this is a nicely rendered blu-ray from new 4K master.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track alternating between film historian Lee Gambin and actress Rutanya Alda. Gambin discusses the visual innovations introduced by Milestone, and how The General Died at Dawn fits in with other films starring Gary Cooper. Alda talks about the first time she saw Gary Cooper on screen and a bit about his personal life. The commentary track seems more aimed towards the casual film fan. While Gambin also discusses how the politics of Milestone and Odets found expression in the film, viewers wanting a deeper dive will have to look elsewhere.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:48 AM

April 20, 2020

Why Don't You Just Die?

Papa, sdokhni
Kirill Sokolov - 2019
Arrow Films

The one thing that is best remembered about Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain is the fight to the death between Paul Newman and Wolfgang Kieling. The audience is reminded that not only is it not only not easy to kill somebody, but that the human body as well as the urge to live can be surprisingly resilient. Russian filmmaker Kiril Sokolov has taken that one scene, indirectly, and made an entire feature where all the main characters at least temporarily survive body blows, maiming, knife wounds and shotgun blasts. Black comedy does not come much darker than this.

A young man with a Batman hoodie, Matwei, shows up at an apartment holding a hammer. The hammer is hidden behind his back when the apartment door is open. An older man, large, and with a completely shaved head, answers. He is Andrei, father of Olya, the young woman Matwei says he is to meet at the apartment. The two eye each other suspiciously. Andrei reveals himself to be a detective as well as a highly concerned parent. And why does Matwei have a hammer with him? Is it really for a friend?

Most of the action takes place in Andrei's apartment, primarily in the living room which turns into the main battlefield. There are flashbacks revealing more about Andrei, Olya and Matwei. This is a story about double crosses and toxic family relationships. Even when the characters try to do the right thing, someone get killed by accident. The Russian title translates as "Daddy, die", but the English title makes more sense when you have four characters literally fighting for their personal survival.

This blood drenched film is hardly subtle, although I would recommend that viewers pay some attention to details in the background in addition to the activity in front of the camera. Sokolov's influences are easy to detect in some cases with his music queues - part of the score sounds like a variation of the Shostakovich waltz used in Eyes Wide Shut, while another scene echoes the music associated with Italian Westerns. Some of the crashing and bashing is rendered in slow motion. There are also little digressions, as when the viewer is shown how handcuffs can or can not be unlocked with a bobby pin. While several reviews of the film from its festival run cite the influence of Quentin Tarantino due to the depiction of violence, I would say Why Don't You Just Die? has more in common with the Coen brothers' Blood Simple in the basic setup as well as their other films with their darkly comic, and often accidental, deaths and injuries.

It should be noted that Why Don't You Just Die? was to get a theatrical release until current events made that impossible. Instead, the film is getting a VOD release today, but will also have a blu-ray release tomorrow. I've only been able to see the film and can not comment on the blu-ray, but my past experience is that for those interested in a deeper dive, Arrow's commentary tracks and extras are usually excellent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:39 AM

April 16, 2020

The Golem: How He Came into the World

Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam
Paul Wegener - 1920
Kino Classics BD Region A

A century after its initial release, what does one make of The Golem. One could read the final scene as a variation of a cliche, where the big lug literally falls for a little blonde girl. Although in this case, the big lug is an artificially created guy made from clay whose mindless destruction is ended by a child who innocently plucks the source of the monster's power. The rabbi who created the golem did so as an act of protecting the Jews in the medieval ghetto of Prague from oppression done in the name of Christianity. As the "death" of the golem is not witnessed by any of the ghetto residents, it is attributed as an act of God. How ironic that the creature, created initially as the protector of Jews ends up threatening their destruction, only to have the ghetto saved by a tiny shiksa. A subplot involves the Rabbi's daughter infatuated with the squire from the royal court, with the squire coming to a bad end at the hands of the golem. If there's a lesson to be learned here, it's that interfaith relationships can be fatal.

This is, at least for now, the most definitive release of Paul Wegener's film. It was stitched together primarily from two film sources, with tinting based on an Italian release version. The blu-ray is also derived from a 4K digital restoration, with only one shot that showed serious decomposition that I noticed. Kino has also provided a choice of three music tracks, all on the avant-garde side. My choice of soundtrack was perhaps the most experimental by Lukasz Poleszak. Not just music, but synthesized sounds and voices weaving in and out in this track. In any case, all three music tracks provide a radical departure from the traditional solo piano or small group that usually accompanies a silent film. If that's not enough, there is also the U.S. release version with its own soundtrack, and a comparison of the newly restored version of The Golem with an earlier restoration that also has commentary by Tim Lucas.

Lucas' commentary track on the seventy-five minute version, the most complete version at this time, traverses various threads in the history of the film. Included is discussion on Wegener's 1915 film and the actor/director's subsequent career, as well as a history of the story that was the inspiration for Wegener. It may be unavoidable that some of the information in the commentary will be familiar to both fans and serious scholars of horror movies and/or popular culture, such as how the folk tale was inspiration for Frankenstein both in literature and film, the latter with the connection of having cinematographer Karl Freund taking his expertise to Universal when he moved to Hollywood. The more detailed examinations of Wegener's career on film and stage are in German - and certainly of interest due to Wegener being a non-Jew with an interest in Jewish subject matter, who maintained a public career in Germany during World War II, returning to the stage in 1945 with a staging of the play Nathan the Wise in the title role.

The blu-ray should be of interest even to those familiar with the story as the images have much detail that has been unclear in the previous film and home video versions. Even if several narrative tropes are overly familiar, this is the film where they originated. Certainly, the sight of Wegener as the golem, bulked up and with a thick pageboy haircut will more likely amuse than terrify. Viewers jaded with CGI special effects may roll their eyes at some of the scenes here, but there is delight in seeing those dancing airborne flames while the rabbi makes his incantation to bring the golem to life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:05 AM

March 27, 2020

Return from the Ashes

J. Lee Thompson - 1965
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Hubert Monteilhet's source novel has been adapted three times by three very different filmmakers. The essential story is of a French woman, Elisabeth Wolf Pilgrin, a doctor, who literally returns from the ashes, that is to say a concentration camp, following World War II. She chooses not to reunite with her husband Stanislaus Pilgrin immediately, but chooses to undergo some cosmetic surgery to repair her facial scars to make her look as she did earlier. Meeting seemingly by chance, Stanislaus does not recognize Elisabeth as herself but as an unknown woman with an almost uncanny resemblance. A scheme is initiated so that Stanislaus will be able to legally get a hold on the wealth Elisabeth has inherited as a post-holocaust survivor. Elisabeth, still pretending to be someone else, is directed by Stanislaus to impersonate his wife.

It's probably no surprise that Henri-Georges Clouzot had first expressed interest in making a film version. Thematically it fits in his previous films with duplicitous characters, plus the novel discusses the concept of Jewish identity, something touched on by Clouzot in Manon. Claire Garrara has an essay of interest regarding the uncomfortable relationship of Jews in France during and after World War II. Clouzot, in his period of extreme artistic crisis sold the film rights to the Mirisch Brothers, with British filmmaker J. Lee Thompson making the first film version. A second version, for French television, was made by Josee Dayan in 1982. No version seems to be available, though what is intriguing is that as a French Jewish female filmmaker, Dayan is culturally closest to the characters of Elizabeth Wolf. Christian Petzhold's Phoenix is the loosest of adaptations, making his characters Germans in post-war Berlin. A more detailed look at the three adaptations can be found here.

Even with those three film versions, Monteilhet's novel is out of print, at least in an English language version. I did get ahold of a British paperback edition that was a tie-in to the 1965 release of Thompson's film. Julius J. Epstein has a screenplay that has simplified much of the novel, reducing the doppelgänger plot that is something of an inverse version of Vertigo, as well has the relationship between Elisabeth, called Michelle in the film, and Stanislaus being one of gamesmanship between the two. In the film, it is only Stanislaus, the professional chess player, who appears to be doing most of the manipulation.
One of the philosophical debates between Michelle and Stanislaus is from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. And it Epstein who wrote the film adaptation for Richard Brooks. One thing the film got right was casting Ingrid Thulin as Michelle. Originally cast Gina Lollabrigida may have been a bigger name, but physically inappropriate. Thulin looks more like the character as described by Monteilhet, and is especially convincing when she is first seen visibly aged from her experiences in Dachau. Thulin and Maximillian Schell were both the right age for their respective characters.

J. Lee Thompson has done good work in suspense previously, notably Tiger Bay and Cape Fear. It isn't until the last big scene here that there is any real sense of tension. I didn't mind Thompson throwing in a few Dutch angles, but the script spoils the fun by adding an unnecessary expository scene. The film eschews the ambiguity of the novel for a clear, moral ending. Even taken on its own terms, Return from Ashes comes across as an impersonal, compromised film with insights no deeper than glances at the concentration camp tattoo on Ingrid Thulin's arm.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:54 AM

March 17, 2020

The Passion of Darkly Noon

Philip Ridley - 1995
Arrow Video BD Region A

From the moment Brendan Fraser is seen lying on the back of a pickup truck, is arms extended outwards, the religious symbolism in The Passion of Darkly Noon is hardly subtle. Fraser's character is named Darkly Noon, the first name picked at random out of the Bible by his extremely fundamentalist parents. His name connotes his own contradictory self, both the innocent alone and lost in a world he doesn't understand and as a vengeful spirit ready to condemn others. Having escaped from a small community of like-minded Christians that was destroyed by an unidentified, but more powerful group, Darkly finds both physical healing and an internal schism at the remote home of the mute carpenter Clay and his wife Callie.

Even though Ridley makes the film more location specific with the quick glimpse of a North Carolina license plate, this film, as Ridley's earlier Reflecting Skin takes place in an imagined America. And as in Ridley's most recent narrative film, Heartless, the stories are about lonely boys who misread and misjudge the world around them with their idiosyncratic filters. Darkly only understands the world within the confines of his former community and his parents. Callie awakens previously dormant sexual feelings that can only be addressed through self-mortification. While his hosts are generous and flexible in their personal beliefs as well as treatment of Darkly, the guest turns more rigid. To be best appreciated, Ridley's films need to be met on their own terms.

Darkly Noon never received a theatrical release in the U.S., going straight to VHS in 1997. I'm not sure if I understand why as it's no more or less extreme than other films that found their way in the arthouse circuit of the time. Ridley managed to make an independent film with a low budget that featured Brendan Fraser, getting top billing in mainstream films, and Ashley Judd, a rising star following Ruby in Paradise. Viggo Mortensen, as Clay, was on the verge of getting more attention. The usual genial Frasier shows his acting chops here as Ridley takes advantage of his childlike look of wonderment, but also pulls out a more fearsome persona. There may be debate about Ashley Judd's Callie wearing the shortest of skirts and dresses, and wether the male gaze strictly is that of Darkly or shared with the filmmakers. Judd is admittedly quite attractive with her normally dark hair dyed blonde. I've always liked her even in films unworthy of her ability, a classic face that reminds me somewhat of Myrna Loy. It is quite possible that Darkly Noon was considered to unusual for mainstream distribution, while conventional wisdom would hold that the art and indie crowd would not consider a film with the star of Airheads and The Scout.

Philip Ridley's commentary track is quite helpful in explaining how there was a deliberate attempt to make the film visual unrealistic with the use of yellow and blue. The opening sequence is overly bright, with an exposure adjustment at the end culminating with a shot of Callie standing in the rain. A giant shoe floats aimlessly in a lake, used later for the striking image of a Viking style funeral as it is lit on fire. Ridley discusses his art school background regarding some of his visual choices, as well as how the film thematically follows up on Reflecting Skin.

Among the supplements are an investigation into the themes of Ridley by James Flowers, interviews with with cinematographer John de Borman, and editor Les Healey. An interview with composer Nic Bicat covers the three films done with Ridley as well as their collaboration on other projects. An older interview including Viggo Mortensen has been ported over from the British DVD of Reflecting Skin. I was only able to review the blu-ray, but those who purchase the first pressing will also have included a booklet on Ridley and his film written by the usually capable Alexandra Heller-Nicholas.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:48 AM

March 13, 2020

The Rare Breed

Belgian poster

Andrew McLaglen - 1966
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The Rare Breed could almost serve as a proxy for Andrew McLaglen's life. The plot revolves around the attempt to introduce the British Hereford cattle to the United States, cross-breeding with the American long-horn. It is so easy to forget that with the many westerns he's directed, that Andrew McLaglen was born in England and raised in the United States. The Rare Breed was second of four films McLaglen made with James Stewart and certainly the lightest of their collaborations.

Much of the film depends on the screen personas of the three leads - Stewart, Maureen O'Hara and Brian Keith. They each bring a certain amount history from previous roles either with each or their connection, along with that of McLaglen, with John Ford. The cast also includes Ford stock company actors Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr. in supporting roles. The cast does not quite transcend the episodic nature of the script written by Ric Hardman, whose credits are primarily from 1960s television series. As such, the film is packed with a barroom brawl, a stampede, a fistfight between Stewart and Keith, and a couple of romantic entanglements, plus a running gag with the Hereford bull only responding to the whistling of "God Save the Queen".

O'Hara, and Juliet Mills as her daughter, bringing the British bull to America, are almost caricatures of 19th Century Englishwomen adrift in the wild west of 1884. Brian Keith, as a Scottish cattle baron, is even more exaggerated, introduced with a mop of flaming red hair and a lengthy beard, speaking with a noticeable burr. It's up to Stewart to provide the gravitas, again playing a man obsessed, in this case with the idea that the crossbreeding will succeed in spite of the nay-sayers, going as far as seeking out the bull in a snow storm to check on its survival, putting his own life in jeopardy. Admittedly, this is not quite like the revenge seeking Stewart of the Anthony Mann westerns, or the search for Kim Novak's doppelgänger. The film was the last credited to actor turned producer William Alland, whose credits include several inspired B pictures and modestly budgeted films as a house producer at Universal. It seems possible that The Rare Breed may have been intended as programmer at a time when the traditional western was fading away, only to have benefitted from casting of iconic stars and genre director on the rise.

Andrew McLaglen has positioned himself as the last of the traditionalists, rising from working as an uncredited 2nd Assistant Director on John Ford's The Quiet Man, to Assistant Director on several films with William Wellman. It was John Wayne who had McLaglen direct a couple low budget films for the star's Batjac Productions. Following several years primarily directing the television series Gunsmoke and Have Gun will Travel, McLaglen's career got a boost when he served as director on McLintock!, essentially a western remake of The Quiet Man with Wayne reunited with O'Hara, with an overload of broad humor primarily at the expense of Ms. O'Hara. McLaglen's cinematographer, both on The Rare Breed and his other early features was William Clothier, who had also worked on several of John Ford's last films. Clothier also was cinematographer on Sam Peckinpah's debut feature, The Deadly Companions, starring O'Hara and Brian Keith. The Rare Breed appeared at about the same time as McLaglen's Batjac peer, Burt Kennedy, was making westerns that tweaked the genre.

As if there wasn't enough previous history among the actors, Maureen O'Hara had previously acted with Juliet Mills in a TV version of Mrs. Miniver. Not only did O'Hara play the part of Mills' mother in The Rare Breed, but she was the onscreen mother of Juliet's sister, Hayley Mills (as twins) in The Parent Trap, with the onscreen father played by Brian Keith.

Simon Abrams discusses some, though not all, of these various relationships in his commentary track. Maureen O'Hara's autobiography and Gary Fishgall's biography of Stewart are primary sources, along with some reviews and news articles from the time of production. Abrams is particularly helpful in pointing out a sequence that was primarily the work of stunt coordinator, and future director, Hal Needham. The information that the budget was two and half million dollars would place the film at the low end of what was considered a mid-budget film at the time of production, Universal still being the most tight-fisted major studio. There is also information on the real history of introducing Hereford cattle to America, as well as the ways The Rare Breed ignores geography both in the narrative and filming locations. The Rare Breed may be of greatest interest to genre historians as an unintended representative of a genre that seemed to be coming to end, only to be revitalized by crossbreeding done by unknown filmmakers with unpronounceable names in a west created in film studios in Italy and Spain.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:04 AM

February 25, 2020

Manon

Henri-Georges Clouzot - 1949
Arrow Academy BD Region A

Like the characters in his films, as well as in the life of Henri-Georges Clouzot, it would seem impossible not to make a deal with a devil. Working as a script writer in Germany in the 1930s, Clouzot was fired for being friendly with a couple of Jewish producers. He had seen enough in Germany to be concerned about Hitler and the institutionalized anti-Semitism taking place. Finally making his directorial debut in France during World War II, his first two films were produced by a German company. Even though the films were not propaganda, it was enough to mark Clouzot as a Nazi collaborator. I do not think that Manon can be entirely understood or appreciated without knowledge of Clouzot's own history.

The story is loosely adapted from the 18th Century novel by Prevost. The bulk of the narrative takes place during the final months of World War II through the first year or so after the liberation of Paris. Robert is a resistance fighter in a provincial French village charged with holding Manon prisoner. Manon is accused of being a collaborator due to her working in her mother's bar that had been popular with German soldiers. Manon convinces Robert of her innocence, and the two run off in the confusion of an air raid. Making their way to a now free Paris, their idealized love is challenged by Manon's desire for material comfort, Robert's disinheritance, and a volatile relationship best described as l'amour fou. The pair attempt to escape Paris by stowing away on a boat carrying Jewish refugees to Palestine. As might be expected from a film by Clouzot, nothing ends well.

While Clouzot has put something of himself in the predicament of Manon, someone who may have unfairly been tagged a guilty by association, there seems to be little critical analysis regarding the Clouzot's choice of having Manon and Robert specifically make their escape on a freighter with stateless Jews. While not clearly stated, the scenes on the ship taking place in Marseilles and the Palestinian coast indicated this is a human smuggling operation. The ship's captain is sympathetic stating that the refugees are not to blame for their situation. It is also worth pointing out that composer Paul Misraki incorporates the song "Hatikvah" (The Hope) into his score, the song that became the Israeli national anthem. Also noteworthy is that Clouzot cast the refugees with a Yiddish theater group who primarily speak Yiddish throughout the film. The final sequence with Robert and Manon with the refugees in Palestine is in need of deeper exploration both regarding Clouzot's life, as well as its political context, past and present.

There are several good visual moments. A brief montage of three statues of saints in a bomb out church bear witness to Manon and Robert's declaration of love. Manon regards her reflection in a small pool of water. There are overhead traveling shots following Manon in the overcrowded train going to Marseilles, Manon facing the camera as she pushes her way forward. In one train car she is briefly shoved against a large man who complains that she is taking up too much room. There's also something to be said about the audacity with which Clouzot has his Robert (Michel Auclair) drag Manon (Cecile Aubry) through the desert like an oversized sack of potatoes.

The blu-ray comes with two supplements. A 1970 documentary, "Bibliotheque de poche: H. G. Clouzot" is primarily about Clouzot and literature. There is also an overview on the making of Manon by British film critic Geoff Andrews. While Andrews' discussion is primarily about Clouzot's early films as a director, he stresses the point that Clouzot has been somewhat inaccurately described by some as genre filmmaker, primarily based on his two international and critical successes, The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:08 AM

February 11, 2020

The Trouble with You

En Liberte
Pierre Salvadori - 2018
Kino Lorber R1 DVD

The trouble with The Trouble with You is that it tries too hard to be funny. The film begins with a police bust. The apartment door bursts open with a big explosion, and the lead cop finds a few seconds between shooting the felons to take a selfie with his phone. Beaten, bruised and knifed, this unstoppable cop is able to leap from the window of the tall apartment building straight into a convertible directly below him. It's then revealed that what we've seen is a version of the cop's adventures as told by his wife to their wide-eyed young son.

The cop, Santi, has been dead for two years, and his wife Yvonne, a police lieutenant, discovers by chance that the man whom everyone thinks of as heroic has actually been on the take. A jewelry store hold-up from 2009 was not only an inside job, but the person convicted was an innocent employee, Antoine. Yvonne decides to make it her mission to rehabilitate Antoine who has just been released from prison. The problem is that Antoine has decided to embark on a life of petty crimes and anti-social behavior.

Filmed around Marseilles, the story takes place in provincial town that's quirky enough to include a well-furnished S & M brothel, and a mild-mannered murderer who totes around the remains of his mother. Santi's police force partner, Louis, is so infatuated with Yvonne that he's oblivious in the presence of the felon he's suppose to be hunting. There are several moments of violence that are brutal enough to undercut writer-director Salvadori's overall comic tone.

Best known as the muse in Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Adele Haenel starred in this earlier film. While mostly known for dramatic roles, Haenel previously showed off her comic chops in Love at First Fight as a young woman showing off her survivalists skills against a would-be boyfriend. Haenel is especially sweet in the scenes with her onscreen son, as well as expressing her dismay at discovering the truth about her husband. Audrey Tautou, a previous collaborator with Salvadori, appears in a supporting role as Antoine's very patient girl friend.

Much like the those moments of tonally ill-fitting violence, The Trouble with You is a bit heavy-handed with some of the gags when whether in scenes of action or comedy a lighter touch would do.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

January 14, 2020

The Good Fairy

William Wyler - 1935
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Call me a sap, but I love that Universal Pictures opening logo with the airplane flying around the world. Some eighty-four years later, that image will probably strike contemporary viewers as quaint. That buzzing propellor plane might also provide some preparation for the imagined past world of The Good Fairy.

The story takes place in what was suppose to be contemporary Budapest, Hungary, yet connections to the real city are arbitrary. Signs may be in Hungarian or English, and the name of our heroine, Luisa Ginglebusher is more East Los Angles than Eastern European. Of an unstated age, and totally naive to the ways of the world, Luisa is plucked from an orphanage to work as an usherette at Budapest's largest movie theater. A digression here - there was a time when movie theaters, the single screen palaces of the past, employed people to guide them to their seats, carrying a flashlight so that patrons wouldn't stumble on each other in the dark. At this particular theater, the usherettes dress like brass band majorettes with shiny uniforms including tall military caps, capes and an wand shaped like an arrow that illuminates the direction. This is a world where would-be Lotharios hang out near the theater's back exit hoping to score a date with one of the available girls after work.

Luisa's promise upon exiting the orphanage is to do one good deed a day on behalf of someone, to act as their "good fairy". What Luisa's not prepared for is men who may possibly have less than honorable intentions, and her fib of telling these men that she's married has unintended consequences.

The film is very loosely based on a play by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnar. Preston Sturges' hand in the screenplay is more easily evident with the premise of a naive person putting themselves in a situation over their head, the nonsensical sounding names, and bits of slapstick tossed in. William Wyler's stylistic touches, which would be developed for fully in later films can be spotted in the used of several traveling shots and some limited use of deep focus. Between Sturges writing and re-writing the script in part due to constant battles with the Hays Office, and Wyler's almost constant battles with star Margaret Sullavan, The Good Fairy went five weeks past its allotted seven week shooting schedule, as well as over budget. Wyler and Sturges got kicked out of Universal, falling upwards with Wyler primarily making the first of his canonized films for Samuel Goldwyn, while Sturges wound up at Paramount, fulfilling his wish to direct his own screenplays five years later.

I have no idea if Wyler mentioned the idea of filming Dodsworth to Sturges, but that film in the theater where Luisa works is almost a parody. A woman, begging to return to her husband, is constantly refused with the single word, "no". Comically melodramatic, the scene almost anticipates Walter Huston telling Ruth Chatterton that he has had enough with her infidelities. I could well be missing some kind of vernacular expression, but the Hungarian title translates as "The Moon - Fools and Prologues".

Not as well remembered as several of her peers, the film was primarily made as a showcase for Margaret Sullavan. In a film career that last for ten years, Sullavan was a major star who may be remembered best for the trio of films she made with director Frank Borzage. One of the extras on the blu-ray is a trailer for The Good Fairy which indicates Sullavan's star status in the mid 1930s.

Full disclosure - I have had intermittent correspondence with film critic Simon Abrams, who provided the commentary track here. This is an exceedingly well researched commentary that has a couple of slight rough patches, but otherwise is very informative. Sources quoted include biographies of Wyler, Sturges, Sullavan and co-star Herbert Marshall, Molnar's play, and reviews of the film from the time of release. Abrams also finds time to discuss the film and staged remakes, as well as the complex relationships of Sullavan and her various lovers and husbands, including her volatile marriage to Wyler while The Good Fairy was in production.

While not as good as watching a mint 35mm nitrate print on the big screen, the film is beautifully rendered here. There is some hint of how visually magical The Good Fairy was in the final shot, an extreme close-up of the face of the the bride, a crowned and radiant Margaret Sullavan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

January 07, 2020

The Specialists

Le Specialiste / Gli specialisti / Drop Them or I'll Shoot
Sergio Corbucci - 1969
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Unlike some of the better known Italian westerns by Sergio Corbucci that featured marquee names that would still be meaningful for American viewers, The Specialists was topped by Johnny Hallyday. A major star in Europe known as the "French Elvis", Hallyday was virtually unknown in the U.S. except for a few Francophiles. As best as i can tell, The Specialists was never released theatrically in the U.S., and may well have never been intended for a wider international release. The two language tracks available are Italian and French. Perhaps this is a result of the use of the Italian track, but the acting seems much broader, more exaggerated, especially in the comic moments. Even more conspicuous is the use of nudity, a very infrequent element in any westerns even after the establishment of a more sexually liberated cinema in the late 1960s. Even in comparison to his other serious westerns, The Specialists may well be Corbucci's most nihilistic film.

The blond hair, unshaven face, and occasional cigar may remind some of Clint Eastwood's character in Sergio Leone's films. Hallyday's anti-social, anti-hero, gunslinger is named Hud, the same name as that of Martin Ritt's contemporary western with Paul Newman. Corbucci's Hud goes to the small town of Blackstone, Nevada seeking revenge for his brother, lynched after being accused of stealing money he was transporting on behalf of the town's bank. Hud is introduced saving a group of stagecoach passengers from being killed by El Diablo's bandit gang, recognizable by their comically oversized sombreros. The sheriff of Blackstone, the beefy Gastone Morschin in a more sympathetic role, tries to maintain law and order by disarming anyone who comes to town. If the basic premise seems familiar, Corbucci adds various unexpected twists.

In the same year that she played the title role in Eric Rohmer's My Night at Maud's, Francoise Fabian portrayed Blackstone's banker, Virginia Pollicut. In one of the few comic digressions, Fabian invites Moschin into her bedroom for some conversation, casually asking him to stay while she takes a bath. What follows includes playful banter, strategic dropping of a bar of soap, and a completely uninhibited actress.

Without giving too much away, consider this quote from Sergio Corbucci about The Specialists: "The idea was to show that I was against the hippies. Listen, at this time the Manson business hadn't happened. . . . I am against drugs and hippies. I wanted to denounce them in The Specialists. I'm really violently against their attitude, and I hate Easy Rider."

Did Quentin Tarantino read Alex Cox's book on Italian westerns, 10,000 Ways to Die, the source of this quote? Perhaps Tarantino had seen the subtitle free Italian DVD. Remember that when Tarantino's Rick Dalton goes to Italy in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he stars in a fictional western, Nebraska Jim by the very real Corbucci.

How this connects is that there is a small group of hippie type characters that appear in the opening of The Specialists, tossed in a pool of mud and shit by El Diablo's gang. They later show up in Blackstone, primarily as a source of annoyance for Hud. Where Corbucci's film roughly parallels Tarantino's is when these seemingly playful clowns show their own taste for power and desire to humiliate, and possibly execute, the town's citizens near the end of the story. If Corbucci is to be believed that his film was made before the Manson family made headlines, with the film released in November 1969, he apparently had an uncanny premonition that is jarring to say the least.

The Specialists is also unusual with the location filming in the French Alps. These are green fields surrounded by mountains. There is also a sequence with Hallyday and Moschin riding together in a narrow gulch between the sides of two mountains, emphasizing the shared spaces that bring them together, that are seemingly inescapable. The production design makes use of the wide screen and horizontal planes. Use of framing within the frame can be seen in a shot introducing the quartet of photo-hippies, huddled together between the front and back legs of a horse, and later, in a shot of townspeople observing a gunfight from behind the horizontal window of a saloon.

Alex Cox provides a conversational style to his commentary track. His feelings towards the The Specialists seems to have mellowed since the time he wrote about the film in his book, 10,000 Ways to Die. One interesting bit of information is how The Specialists originated as what was to be a collaboration between Corbucci and Lee Van Cleef. While there is no explanation as why there was an apparent falling out, Corbucci was later approached by a French producer looking for a vehicle for Johnny Hallyday. Cox points out what he considers some of the films weaknesses, but also makes clear that the blu-ray is the complete version with a moment of reckoning of the townspeople that has been cut from released versions.

If some of the digressions and use of nudity make this unusual for westerns in general, there are still enough elements to signify The Specialists as very much a Corbucci film. While the politics are played down in comparison to a film like The Mercenary, the bandit "El Diablo" believes he is speaking on behalf of the Mexican population that has been displaced by American westward migration. Hud is another one of Corbucci's anti-heroes who experiences a form of resurrection prior to a final judgment. The use of the graveyard is a favored location in several film. This blu-ray release is very welcomed - and if not quite as good as acknowledged genre masterpieces such as Django, still a reminder that serious consideration should be given to more than one maker of Italian westerns named Sergio.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:52 PM

January 03, 2020

Cobra Woman

Robert Siodmak - 1944
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Cobra Woman has packed in its seventy-one minute running time an exotic beauty and her evil twin sister, an open shirted hero with his short "native" sidekick who brings along his chimpanzee sidekick, dancing maidens, shenanigans in a forbidden queendom, a live volcano, and Lon Chaney, Jr. as a blind and mute wandering musician. No time is spent attempting to make any of this meaningful, other than creating a Technicolor fantasy beautifully rendered in this new blu-ray release.

The only way to enjoy Cobra Woman is on its own terms. The film was produced at a time when Hollywood studios would regularly churn out stories that took place in a highly fictionalized and exotic location, somewhere in the Middle East or an island in the South Pacific. Cobra Woman follows the established template of the hero, a wandering sailor and adventurer, and white savior, who falls in love with a young woman who is of the island but is played by an attractive caucasian or Latina actress. In this instance, the native clothing and religious practice, which involves the worship of an actual cobra, are a grab bag from the imagination of the screenwriters. From a contemporary perspective, much of Cobra Woman might be dismissed as insensitive or ignorant. To some extent, one of the credited screenwriters, Richard Brooks, might be said to have made amends with his own socially conscious films when he ascended to the director's chair.

The short running time might also be attributed to the casting, as the three leading actors were all taking roles familiar to audiences of the time. Maria Montez' reputation primarily rests on her appearances for Universal as a royal ruler or a servant, in any case a forbidden love interest. After several false starts and name changes, Jon Hall's career took off with The Hurricane in 1937, with several South Seas adventure films to follow. The Indian born Sabu was also similarly well established with audiences, a star in his own right.

Maria Montez might not have been much of an actress when expressing herself verbally, but her legs and hips do most of the work. As the evil queen Naja, she first appears wearing a gray and silver lame bathing suit with matching cape, leading a parade of attendants, the whitest brunette chorus girls available on the Universal lot. Montez is the only one with her legs exposed, so there is no way one can not pay attention to anyone else. This queen of the conveniently named Cobra Island later sways her hips in some kind of of ritualistic dance in front of the ceremonial cobra, a combination of a close-up of a real snake and an obvious fake. Don't assume that anyone making Cobra Woman was unaware of any sexual innuendos here. While Montez is wearing a form fitting dress in this scene, it still anticipates the scantily clad snake dance performed by Debra Paget in Fritz Lang's The Indian Tomb filmed fifteen years later. (Coincidentally, Siodmak directed Paget's film debut, Cry of the City.)

While released after Phantom Lady, Cobra Woman was Siodmak's second film as a contract director at Universal. The two other films starring Montez, Hall and Sabu were directed by the more established Arthur Lubin. That Siodmak got the assignment may well be due to Lubin's commitment to the Claude Rains remake of Phantom of the Opera, and, I am guessing here, that while making films in France, Siodmak had previously directed Montez' husband, Jean-Pierre Aumont in Le Chemin de Rio. In any case, Siodmak was in no position to argue, and in interviews would discuss how he would try to improve upon the scripts he was given.

Phillipa Berry's commentary track points out several of the locations where Cobra Woman was filmed, plus provide brief summaries of the careers of the stars. It should be noted that every reliable source states that Siodmak was probably not born in Memphis, Tennessee. Berry does make some connections with Siodmak's later noir films, particularly The Dark Mirror with Olivia De Havilland as rival twin sisters. There is also discussion of Cobra Woman as a camp classic, especially as the inspiration for Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures starring drag artist Mario Montez.

To reduce Cobra Woman to the status of camp classic is a mistake. Siodmak described the film as "silly". The melodramatic intrigue, the pidgin English, and the elaborate costumes are all easy targets of parody. But there is also the sheer craftsmanship and dramatic use of color and shadows, a very effective scene of Hall and Sabu climbing the steep side of a mountain cliff, and the kind of straight-faced performances that would allow less sophisticated audiences to enjoy the film at face value. Sometimes, just being a physical presence is all that is really needed. Prior to making the kind of films that his reputation is based on, Robert Siodmak understood what was required when he was assigned to film "the Queen of Technicolor".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

December 17, 2019

A Sunday in the Country

Un dimanche a la campagne
Bertrand Tavernier - 1984
Kino Classics BD Region A

The best reason for getting the new blu-ray of Bertrand Tavernier's award winning film is that in addition to the film, there is Tavernier's feature length commentary track. Not only does Tavernier explain how he made the film, but also clears up some previous critical misunderstandings. Tavernier also gives credit to his collaborators, especially former wife and co-writer Colo Tavernier, cinematographer Bruno de Keyzer and source author Pierre Bost.

The film covers one Sunday from morning to evening at the country home of aging artist identified only formally as Monsieur Ladmiral. Taking place in 1912, the home is far enough away from Paris that the visit by Ladmiral's son and family are a special occasion. Disrupting the events is the unexpected visit by Ladmiral's daughter, as free spirited as her brother is formal. The daughter, Irene, appears as a manic force of nature privately masking a more melancholy existence. There is no high drama, but a series of small incidences, of a family that is more often than not disconnected from each other even when sharing the same space.

Taking place shortly before World War I, the story is indirectly about the end of an era. As an artist, Ladmiral has achieved a certain amount of commercial success with his still life paintings. He is also aware that his work will never be as creative or as significant as that of Cezanne or Van Gogh. It is also a matter of time before photography makes his work virtually irrelevant.

Tavernier discusses how the color scheme of the film was influenced by the photography of Louis Lumiere's autochrome process which was introduced in 1907. Amazingly, this was Bruno de Keyzer's first work as cinematographer on a feature film following two shorts. In addition to the continual use of depth-of-field, most of the shots are extended takes with the camera almost constantly in motion, sometimes in a complicated dance with the actors. There are times where in viewing the film one takes notice of small actions in the background in addition to what is seen in the foreground. The camera darts around, presenting a sense of space that is both unified by the lack of cutting, yet also selective in what is seen within the shot at any moment. Also adding to the sense of period is the use of music by Gabriel Faure, some of which was played during the course of the production to allow the camera to move to the rhythm of the music.

Ladmiral is portrayed by the then 73 year old Louis Ducreux, primarily known for his theater work. As Irene, Sabine Azema won several awards. Thirty-five years later, Tavernier's film is virtually the antithesis of much of contemporary cinema with its subtlety and deliberate ellipsis. And hopefully, Kino might be able to bring a blu-ray version of my own favorite of Tavernier's film, the medieval set Beatrice.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:39 AM

December 10, 2019

Long Day's Journey into Night

Diqiu zuihou de yewan
Bi Gan - 2018
Kino Lorber BD Region A two-disc set

I might have more questions than answers on this film. Like the title, taken from the play by Eugene O'Neill
but having nothing to do with that work. Bi's film could well have been titled Journey to the End of the Night or In Search of Lost Time, not relating directly to the literary sources, but titles that would have worked just as well.

More problematic is the now legendary second half of the film which was made to be seen in 3D. If the viewer is unable to see Chinese filmmaker Bi Gan's film as he intended, is that still a valid viewing experience? And is it the responsibility of the distributor to have the film screened in 3D unless there is no other available option? I skipped seeing Journey theatrically in Denver because the theatrical run was in 2D, and in a theater that is uncomfortable in its seating. I was a bit baffled as the Godard film, Goodbye to Language was shown at a Denver area art and indie theater equipped for 3D. I can only take the word of one critic who stated that even in 2D, seeing Journey theatrically was "immersive". The blu-ray release has both a 2D version and a 3D version, although the 3D version requires a 3D capable blu-ray player. I tried to rent such a player only to come to a dead end. Further making things a little less clear is learning that the 3D sequence was filmed in 2D. The only way Bi was able to make the film he visualized was in post-production. I may be pedantic here, but the effect is somewhat analogous to being expected to accept watching a widescreen movie in the pan-and-scan version.

The story, as such, is about Luo returning home to Kaili, following the death of his father. Inheriting an old van, Luo goes on a road trip, an attempt to piece together various memories from the past. The first seventy minutes are in fractured chronological order, darting between past and present. Luo is an unreliable narrator, so what is seen may be as much of a dream as the the dream sequence. There are several shots through dirty or broken windows, space obscured by plastic sheets, people divided by various partitions. One shot is of the back window of of a car going through a car wash. One can discern some kind of movement within the back seat, but not clearly enough to say what is going on with the briefly seen arms in motion - is it a couple making love, or a murder in progress? There is an emphasis on dark passageways and blocked and confined spaces.

As for the last hour, even in 2D, it is spectacular to think that this was actually filmed in real time with no breaks, no editing tricks. The camera follows Luo traveling down on a gondola to a hidden room, out again, wandering into the wreck of a neighborhood where local performers are singing for promised prizes, into and out of a makeshift pool hall and dressing room. The camera moves in close for an intimate view and later flies above the stage and the audience. The only thing random in the take that was chosen was a horse that was temporarily out of control. The blu-ray comes with both written interviews with Bi Gan and a video interview, plus a "Making of" short that is really a two minute montage, none of which completely explains how the sequence was done.

The best reason to have the blu-ray may be that the narrative makes more sense with multiple viewings. Bi's debut feature, Kaili Blues, about a visitor who seems to be wandering around town, in pursuit and in hiding, could be seen in retrospect as a warm-up for his second film. Lines that might seem simply conversational forecast connections to scenes that appear later. While the references to several Asian celebrities may be obscure for some, there is one moment that is clearly Bi's nod at A Clockwork Orange. Bi Gan is hardly the first to observe the idea of movies as dreams, and early on, Luo makes a comparison between films and memories. Broken clocks make appearances. For Bi, time never really stops, but can be malleable.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:42 AM

November 26, 2019

Olivia

Jacqueline Audry - 1951
Icarus Home Video BD Region A

I have not read the source novel written by Dorothy Bussy, published in 1949. But what I have read of Bussy is of interest. Bussy's only novel was inspired by her own time as an English girl at a French boarding school founded by Marie Souvestre and her partner, Caroline Dussaut, in Fontainebleau, France. Among the daughters of the socially prominent, Eleanor Roosevelt was also a student. Bussy's novel was initially published anonymously by Leonard and Virginia Woolf. The novel takes place around 1882-1883, when Bussy was seventeen, and the school closed.

Jacqueline Audry reportedly toned down the lesbian elements in the novel. Not that they are entirely absent, the most explicit moment is of a virtually vampiric kiss on the shoulder by the headmistress with one of her students. To view the film based on what was not shown or strictly through contemporary eyes would be a mistake. The original French trailer, with accompanying song, puts Audry's film in the context of the time it was made, as the story of an adolescent young woman whose feelings of romance are directed towards the teacher that she admires, whom she actively seeks for approval.

Olivia comes from England to the countryside outside of Paris and the boarding school run by Miss Julie and Miss Cara. It's immediately noted by one of the students that the two women have their devotees. While nothing is spelled out, there is the suggested relationship between Julie and Cara, as well as Cara and another teacher. Meanwhile, Olivia's infatuation with Miss Julie becomes increasingly overt. Unlike films with a similar setting, notably Madchen in Uniform or The Children's Hour, there is no punishment meted out for any suggestion of lesbian attraction.

Jacqueline Audry would need to have more films restored and available for better assessment. I would recommend the brief interview with actor and gay activist Jean Danet, from 1957, included in the blu-ray. Audry would appear to have been in a double bind - restricted to making film adaptations of novels by women, several of which were commercially successful at the time of release, yet somewhat arbitrarily lumped with the directors of the "tradition of quality" by the Cahiers du Cinema critics who later became the filmmakers of the Nouvelle Vague. Audry's last directorial credit was in 1967. Olivia was released in the U.S. in 1954 under the title, The Pit of Loneliness.

Audry began her career as an assistant to several notable filmmakers, primarily G. W. Pabst and Max Ophuls. Her visual style seems most influenced by Ophuls in the use of traveling shots. Several times the camera takes in a full view of the characters and their surroundings. A shot introducing the school and the students follows a trio of girls, holding hands while running down a staircase. A shot of a Christmas Eve party shows the girls pairing up, with the girls in male costumes waltzing with girls in female costumes, while Miss Julie and Miss Cara briefly dance together. The film ends as it began, with Olivia in a carriage with the school cook, Victoire. There is the suggestion of the school being isolated psychologically as well as geographically from the rest of the world.

The earlier U.S. release had a running time of 88 minutes. The restored Olivia is 96 minutes long. Based on the New Times review, Audry's film adaptations from novels by Colette, Gigi and Minne, had U.S. releases. The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's wrote a generally favorable review, although some of his choice of words may cause eye rolling among contemporary readers: "Although it skirts along the edges of an area of unnatural love confined within the delicate environment of a fashionable French finishing school, there is nothing indecorous or offensive in the picture as it is played."

Let me also direct you to the review by the Self-Styled Siren, written when the restored Olivia had its theatrical release.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

November 19, 2019

Christmas in July

Preston Sturges - 1940
KL Studio Classics

I will attest to the truth of that prize winning slogan, "If you can't sleep at night, it's not the coffee. It's the bunk". There has been more than one occasion when I've gotten up in the morning, sipped two mugs full of Italian Roast, only to nap for as much as an hour afterwards.

Sometimes I feel like we need Preston Sturges more than ever. What makes Christmas in July continually endearing and enduring is the sense of optimism. The film takes place in a world of second chances and well-intended foolishness. That Paramount studio version of New York City's Lower East Side is relatively multi-culti for a film of its time. This is still Depression era America, where Hitler and Mussolini are punchlines, one could do one-stop shopping in a department store for diamond rings and children's toys, and businessmen may not be generous financially, but may be so in spirit. Above all else, it's so nice to revisit a comedy that is actually funny.

At age 35, Dick Powell was a bit mature to be playing the "young man with ideas". He brings with him some of the earnestness, ready to please attitude from his Warner Brothers films. Powell's unruly hair in his first scenes provides a compliment to his boyish spirit and certainty that his pun based advertising slogans are his key to a brighter future. As the dedicated girlfriend, contract player Ellen Drew takes the first couple of pratfalls and gives an excuse to display one of her legs. Now as then, most of the laughs involve the supporting players, especially Raymond Walburn as the clueless tycoon, constantly exasperated by William Demarest, the belligerent company employee who holds a coffee company in limbo in the deciding vote in a contest determining the winning slogan.

I don't think I can offer any insights into Christmas in July that haven't already been explored by others. But what is nice about the blu-ray is watching it with the English SDH subtitles. Sturges' films have been lauded for their wit, for Sturges' way with English as a spoken language. Sometimes remarks go by so fast that it's nice to verify what characters are saying. In addition to the puns, there is the use of homonyms, and some dated and not so dated vernacular expressions. I don't recall anyone still using the expression, "bread and butter", at the time I first saw Christmas in July on television one night in early Seventies. I am a bit more confident about a scene where a condescending salesman, alerted to Powell's newly acquired wealth, suddenly slides into slang, telling a coworker to "get a groove on". The other advantage to multiple viewing is to catch little gags, such as the window of a Jewish delicatessen named after the Sturges stock company actor who plays the character, Mr. Zimmerman.

Same Deighan's commentary consists in part of quoting other film historians on Sturges and this film. Aside from mentioning that the story is a reworking of an unproduced play by Sturges, "A Cup of Coffee", and the proposed casting of a different actor in Powell's role, there is very little about the production. The short running time of 67 minutes means the film never wears out its welcome, but it is quite short for an "A" movie. Christmas in July opened at the Rivoli in New York City, one of the city's great picture palaces. (Cleopatra played there in 1963.) While it's more fashionable now to feel snarky about New York Times film critic Bosley Crowthers, his take on Christmas in July - "the perfect restorative, in fact, for battered humors and jangled nerves" remains true.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:02 AM

October 22, 2019

Man of a Thousand Faces

Joseph Pevney - 1957
Arrow Films BD Region A

I first was aware of Lon Chaney several years before I saw any of his films. I was ten or eleven years old when I discovered a magazine, "Famous Monsters of Filmland" in the early 1960s. There was always something about Lon Chaney in what seemed like every issue, usually stills from his films, made in that long ago silent film era. My memory may be off, but it seems like the first time I actually saw a film starring Lon Chaney, and not some brief excerpt, was sometime in the later half of the 60s, when The Hunchback of Notre Dame appeared on the educational TV channel. Not too long after that, I saw the biographical film starring James Cagney as Chaney, on late night broadcast TV.

Disregarding the fictionalization of events, revisiting the film was a pleasant surprise. Pevney may at best be regarded by film critics as a journeyman, but seeing Man of a Thousand Faces in its intended CinemaScope presentation displays interesting, if not consistent, use of the wide screen. There are several shots of two characters where Pevney will have one actor in the foreground with the other actor on the opposite half of the screen seen further back. Most of the time, the actors are filmed in medium or full shots. The one tight close-up is that of Dorothy Malone as Chaney's first wife, Cleva, crying about the possibility that her yet to be born child may be speech and hearing impaired. There is also the use of shadows. A stage act with Chaney as a comic tramp shows him dancing with a giant shadow in the background, a shadow that sometimes has its own dance moves until it is unceremoniously yanked off stage. But there are also several moments that visually recall film noir. In one shot of Lon and Cleva Chaney in their home, the shadow of intricate lattice woodwork makes it appear that Dorothy Malone has been caught in a web.

Taking the narrative on its own terms, two of the major dramatic moments are tied to family secrets withheld by Chaney. There is also the instant karma where Chaney has decided to leave Cleva after discovering her infidelity. Cleva walks in to see Lon showing friendly, though not sexual, affection towards Hazel, the chorus girl who later becomes his second wife. Soon after, Lon knocks down a tall man who is threatening Hazel. That particular scene packs a punch, as the man who grew up sensitive to his parents teased by other for being differently abled, finds himself on the wrong side.

At age 57, James Cagney was ten years older than Lon Chaney at the time of the actor's death. In spite of being too old to be convincing as a younger man, Cagney's casting plays on some similarities of both man. Cagney also began his career on stage as a dancer and comic. While Cagney's comic timing found its way on film, his skill on his feet were never properly exploited with the obvious exception being Yankee Doodle Dandy and a remarkable moment of the still fresh actor skipping across a dance floor in Other Men's Women from 1930. There is a joy in watching Cagney showing off his hoofing abilities several times as the comic tramp, letting the audience know that he's not diminished by age.

For the facts about Lon Chaney's life, as well as notes about the production of Man of a Thousand Faces, there is the commentary by Tim Lucas. This is a deep dive into the ways in which the film takes artistic license with the facts, with various anecdotes along the way, such as how a young business executive, Robert J. Evans, was cast due to his resemblance to studio executive Irving Thalberg, with life following art almost a decade later when the former actor was in charge of production at Paramount. A more factual film might have been even more dramatic as indicated by such incidents as the premature birth of son Creighton Chaney. Lucas also points out how the film came just prior to Universal selling its older horror films to television to renewed popularity, as well as producing several horror tinged science fiction films.

Film historian discusses Lon Chaney's career in a short supplement. He makes an interesting point about the perception of time regarding film history. While Man of a Thousand Faces was released about thirty years after the end of the silent era, the films and actors of that time were perceived of as older than the way many of us think of actors and films from the 1980s or 90s. Taken on its own terms, Man of a Thousand Faces is fairly solid entertainment. Better are the still available films starring Lon Chaney.

Of additional note is that the SDH captions are useful in providing captions for the sign language used in the scenes with Lon Chaney's parents.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:53 AM

October 15, 2019

Phobia

John Huston - 1980
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I'll let the reader decide if this just coincidence, so bear with me here: Phobia star Paul Michael Glaser was known for the television series, Starsky and Hutch, as Detective David Starksy. Goofing off of the similar sounding name, Saturday Night Live had a spoof, "Sartresky and Hutch", with French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre as the crime buster. Sartre was hired by John Huston to write a screenplay that eventually was not used, when Huston was planning to make his film about psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. The actor who portrayed Starsky is seen here as a psychiatrist who uses questionable methods to cure his patients.

Phobia has the dubious distinction of being considered the worst film in John Huston's lengthy filmography. The film's greatest interest is the idiosyncratic ways in which it fits in thematically with Huston's other work. That Huston signed on to direct Phobia was possibly due to grabbing a fully financed studio film after the uncertainties in getting Wise Blood produced. In addition, Huston had explored psychoanalysis both in his documentary, Let There be Light as well as Freud. There are also Huston's films which can generally be grouped together as "thrillers", with The List of Adrian Messenger being somewhat similar with the killer murdering a specific group of victims who knew each other.

Just as Sigmund Freud doggedly tries to discover the roots of Cecily's hysteria, alarming his peers with what are seen as unorthodox methods, Dr. Peter Ross tries to cure the phobias of his five patients, all convicted criminals. The five patients and their respective phobias are introduced, each up against a pair of large screens with filmed images of their fears. A man with a fear of heights is shown footage of a young child who appears ready to fall from a very high apartment building balcony, is part of the treatment. There are a series of deaths that directly or indirectly are connected to each patient's phobia. Looking for the killer is Lieutenant Barnes, a cop who suspects everybody. There is a scene of Barnes interrogating a patient that is so sadistic that it made me think of an amplified version of Humphrey Bogart slapping Elisha Cook, Jr., Hollywood's least threatening hit man, in The Maltese Falcon.

One of the other mysteries of Phobia is in regards to the the multiple credited and uncredited writers of the screenplay. The original version was written by Gary Sherman in 1971, prior to his directorial debut, Raw Meat. The two originators of Alien, Ronald Shusett and Dan O'Bannon also had a hand as did Jimmy Sangster, screenplay writer of several classic Hammer horror films. The commentary track by film historians Paul Corupe and Jason Pichonsky suggests that Phobia was intended to be more of a horror film. There are quotes from John Huston that he was making a murder mystery, and that his frequent collaborator, Gladys Hill, also contributed re-writes. The murder set pieces are pointedly never graphic, although they could have been with a different filmmaker. Taken as part of Huston's filmography, the psychological aspects of Phobia play as a distorted revisiting of Freud through the wrong end of a telescope, where symbolic guilt and criminality are manifested literally. One mystery not explained is director Jonathan Kaplan's credit as Associate Producer. Phobia was produced at a time when Kaplan had a short detour making a couple films for broadcast television after the box office failure of Over the Edge. One correction that should be made regarding the commentary track is that Phobia did play in the U.S., but only very briefly, with teaser ads on television.

While several of John Huston's films have gained stature over the years after being dismissed at the time of release, Phobia is never going to be one of those films. To its credit, this is a made in Canada film that doesn't disguise that it was made in Canada - a Yonge Street sign is a reminder of the Toronto location. Aside from some truly terrible hair styles, such as Paul Michael Glaser's full blown Jewfro, the only nod to being culturally relevant is to have a rebellious young man wear a Sex Pistols button. As these things go, it's far less anachronistic than Billy Wilder's Buddy, Buddy from 1981 with the hippie couple and a baby named Elvis, Jr. On the plus side, one of the better set-pieces involves a victim trapped in an elevator. One of my favorite actresses, Alexandra Stewart, is only onscreen briefly in a vivid performance as the patient with Agoraphobia.

Two additional blu-ray supplement are interviews with actresses Susan Hogan and Lisa Langois. Hogan talks about her surprise at being cast as the girlfriend of Dr. Ross, and getting star billing, her career primarily having been in Canadian television. Langlois has a very brief nude scene in Phobia, a point of contention between her and Huston at the time of filming that eventually changed the rules requiring actors to be made aware of scenes requiring nudity prior to filming. The interview is no "metoo" statement as Langlois discusses this with warmth and humor regarding Huston, with Langlois asking Huston if Katherine Hepburn would be willing to do a nude scene. The director's reply, "She would for me."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:32 AM

October 08, 2019

Our Hospitality

Buster Keaton and Jack Blystone - 1923
Kino Classics BD Region A

Of the feature films made by great silent film comedians, Our Hospitality may be one of the gentlest films ever made. One solid belly laugh is when Keaton finds out that the mansion he imagines he's to inherit is in reality a ramshackle cabin so rotten that the front door falls off. There is a cut to the shot of the imagined mansion blown to bits, reality dynamiting the dream. The story is inspired by the long-running feud of Hatfields and McCoys, here renamed the Canfields and McKays. The film primarily takes place in 1831, with Keaton and his writing team poking fun at family honor, and also the technology of the time.

What is also unusual is the prologue, taking place in 1810. The scene provides the back story for Keaton's role as Willie McKay, first introduced as a baby played by Keaton's own one year old son. Taking place during a dark, rainy night, an attempted truce between the two families fails as we see two flashes of gun shots, Willie's father and his rival, Canfield, simultaneously shooting each other to death. The entire sequence is filmed as a straight drama, not dissimilar to something from D. W. Griffith. Death is never too far away in Our Hospitality, both in the narrative with Willie pursued by the Canfield heirs, and some of Keaton's own stunts.

One of the benefits of having a home video version of Our Hospitality is to study how Keaton is able to build upon his visual gags. An example is when Willie decides to go fishing by a stream, unaware that behind him, a dam has been demolished. Willie puts up an umbrella, assuming the water coming down is rain. A full blown waterfall drenches Willie, his umbrella offering no cover. At the same time the waterfall acts as a curtain, hiding Willie from the two Canfield brothers who are in pursuit.

The booklet, by Keaton historian Joseph Vance, and the commentary track by film historians Farran Smith Nehme and Imogen Sara Smith, all provide information on the making of the film as well as discussion of several of the cast and crew members. Keaton has never clarified how the directorial duties were performed, only being on record as praising Jack Blystone. My own familiarity with Blystone is limited to his last two films, Laurel and Hardy vehicles, Swiss Miss and Block-Heads, and a James Cagney programmer, Great Guy. It could well be that Blystone was on hand as "insurance" for his experience, with a career directing comic shorts beginning in 1914, segueing into feature films in 1923 with A Friendly Husband starring Lupino Lane.

The blu-ray also includes a short comedy Keaton made in France, Duel to the Death that recycles a couple of the gags from Our Hospitality. That film was directed by Pierre Blondy, one of three shorts he directed. There is a discrepancy regarding the release date, but the film is more of historical interest with a visibly aged Keaton. Blondy's career is better remembered for his serving as an assistant to Marcel Carne and Jean-Pierre Melville.

Another short, The Iron Mule (1925) is mentioned in the commentary track. The short, as included here, is missing credits other than that of star Al St. John. Keaton allowed the train he had built for Our Hospitality to be used again, a favor to director Fatty Arbuckle, working at this time under the pseudonym of William Goodrich. There is one interesting sight gag of the train using logs to float across a river. Other than St. John, I have no idea who the other actors are, but in a one reel short that is heavy on pratfalls, there are a couple of gifted players who play an older married couple, continually stumbling over each other as they chase after the runaway train. According to the questionably reliable IMDb, Keaton was on hand as one of the marauding indians Native Americans, though it is hard to determine as most of the film was filmed using long shots.

A short documentary is devoted to how Robert Israel developed his score for Our Hospitality, paying attention to music and folk songs that were known in 1831 America. The film itself is a 2K restoration originally made for Serge Bromberg's Lobster Films. There is a history also of the restoration process which shows great care in the presentation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:14 AM

October 01, 2019

The Spoilers

Ray Enright - 1942
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

This version of The Spoilers is fourth of five film versions, and the best known. Rex Beach's novel was published in 1906, when the Klondike Gold Rush was still fairly recent history. The first film version was made in 1914. Beach himself was a failed prospector who found in gold mine in writing adventure stories that took place in Alaska. His popularity as a writer approximately a century ago might be said to be similar to that of Stephen King today. Beach's last novel, A World in his Arms was nicely filmed by Raoul Walsh. The Spoilers was inspired by true events involving a scheme by a politician and a judge to defraud a group of miners.

Ray Enright was one of the journeymen directors over at Warner Brothers in the 1930s who kept the assembly line going. As such, his version of The Spoiler is strongest with the smart-alec repartee between some of the characters. Marlene Dietrich stars as Cherry, the owner of the bigger bar in Nome. We have a quick shot of one of the world famous legs, and generous opportunities for double-entendre dialogue with Randolph Scott, John Wayne and also Marietta Canty, who appears as Cherry's maid. Scott appears as McNamara, the Gold Commissioner who comes to Nome to supervise legal claims. Wayne is the prospector, Roy Glennister, owner of Nome's biggest mine. There are fights over gold mines, and the inevitable fight over Cherry.

Some of the more dated aspects of The Spoilers may make contemporary viewers wince. There is some obvious action that's been sped up. Some of the scenes with Ms. Canty are problematic, although not with malicious intent given the context of when the film was produced. Without providing spoilers myself, I laughed at one scene between Ms. Canty and John Wayne that may raise a few eyebrows. There is also a throwaway gag done at the expense of one of the film's producers.

The literary heritage of The Spoilers also extends to a cameo appearance by that other Gold Rush chronicler, the poet Robert W. Service. The cast also includes several silent stars including Gibson Gowland, and in larger supporting roles, Richard Barthelmess and Harry Carey. William Farnum, who starred as Roy Glennister in the 1914 film, is seen here as Wheaton, a lawyer who aids Glennister. The Spoilers was also the second of two films starring Dietrich, Scott and Wayne. Dietrich's role could also be seen as non-singing reprisal of her comeback appearance in Destry Rides Again.

Film historian and westerns specialist Toby Roan provides the commentary track for the blu-ray. Most helpful is pointing out many of the film's lesser known supporting cast members as well as their career highlights. Roan discusses the history of the making of this version of The Spoilers, identifying location work, giving credit where it may otherwise be overlooked. Of particular interest is the breakdown of how the extended fist fight between Scott and Wayne was filmed by the uncredited action director, B. Reeves Eason, whose speciality was filming action sequences with multiple cameras. The other extras are a several trailers from other Kino Lorber releases with the three stars, notably with a German trailer for The Blue Angel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:15 AM

September 24, 2019

The White Reindeer

Valkoinen peura
Erik Blomberg - 1952
Eureka! BD Region B/Region 2 DVD two-disc set

I don't recall exactly how I first became aware of The White Reindeer. What I do remember is that someone had mentioned that Christa Fuller, filmmaker Samuel Fuller's wife, thought it one of the most frightening films she had ever seen. Blomberg's film, the first from Finland to play at Cannes, also had a limited U.S. release as well as winning a Golden Globe for Best Foreign film. For those weaned on more graphic horror, The White Reindeer may come across as quaint. In terms of genre, contemporary viewers may find it of interest as a predecessor to those films inspired by folk beliefs such as The Wicker Man and Midsommar. The White Reindeer exists in a pre-modern world, where pagan beliefs are not easily dismissed as superstition.

Blomberg began his filmmaking career as a documentarian, and the film begins almost as a documentary or travelogue about reindeer herders in Lapland. But first is a song from a female vocalist about a girl who unknowingly is a witch at birth. The mother is seen running from a pack of wolves, into a shed. The first scenes take place in the snow covered country, where a few scattered trees encased in ice and snow appear as ghostly sentries. Most of the film takes place outside, to the point where the valley becomes a character, determining the lives of the characters. Blomberg makes a point of using several shots at various points at several distances, minimizing the size of the people in their environment. The first shots of the herding community are silent with a mix of styles that suggest older films made decades earlier. That the herders all are wearing Lapp specific clothing, and seen living in a way that seems to have not changed for at least a century makes it difficult to identify when the film takes place. Between aspects of the filmmaking style and the presentation of the characters, The White Reindeer appears out of time. It is only with the later appearance of a characters identified as being from "the South", with his contemporary clothing and his rifle, that we see a brief intrusion of the modern world.

That non-specific time period is established when the Lapp villagers are seen in a celebration, with a race of sleds pulled by reindeers. A young woman, Pirita, wins the race as well as the heart of herder Aslak. The two get married, but domestic life is disappointing between Aslak's long absences in the reindeer roundups and an apparent lack of interest in intimacy. Pirita is given a gift of a baby white reindeer that is the recipient of her affections while Aslak is away. After praying to the stone god, a large rock pillar adorned with antlers, Pirita visits a shaman who creates a love potion. If Pirita had only intended for this potion to strengthen her relationship with Aslak, it's unclear as the shaman states that Pirita will attract all of the herders. For the potion to take effect, Pirita is to sacrifice the first living thing she sees.

The White Reindeer will probably remind many of Jacques Tourneur's Cat People (1942). Both films present unrepressed female sexuality linked with turning into an animal, as well as the presence of a family curse. In both films, the female protagonist is unable to free herself from her situation, although Pirita appears to have greater control over her impulses. There are no special effects as might have been used by filmmakers at the time. While this may be frustrating to the more literal minded viewers, Blomberg creates his effects through editing. While not as ambiguous as the horror films produced by Val Lewton in the 1940s, Blomberg creates the horror in part by what the viewers think they are seeing.

Erk Blomberg served as cinematographer and editor in addition to directing. The script was co-written with his wife, Mirjami Kuosmanen, who also appears as Pirita. The blu-ray was created from a recent 4K restoration by the National Audiovisual Institute of Finland.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:18 AM

September 17, 2019

Who Saw Her Die?

Chi l'ha vista morire?
Aldo Lado - 1972
Arrow Video BD Region A

While the casting of the two actors as an estranged married couple was not originally what was intended, George Lazenby and Anita Strindberg visually compliment each other. They play the parents of the titular "her". Both are quite thin, gaunt, their faces almost skeletal. This kind of visual unity is also part of two moments when these parents try to process their grief at the loss of their daughter. Lado has a tight close up of Strindberg's face, a tear falling from her left eye and a small wet streak below her right eye. The camera moves left to Lazenby's face, facing away from Strindberg, with the camera moving to the right of the screen, again on Strindberg. In a moment of reconciliation through their mourning, Strindberg and Lazenby wear knit shirts that are the same shade of gray, although of different textures.

Who Saw Her Die? takes place in Venice just before winter. Sunlight only appears in the early scenes of Franco (Lazenby) with his young daughter, Roberta. In the last scene with Roberta, she is in the middle of a circle surrounded by equally young children, in a variation of "Ring Around the Rosie". The children are in a shady part of a small square. The exterior shots from that point on become increasingly darker, with overcast skies and extreme fog during the day, as well as several scenes taking place in the darkness of night. Several of the pathways available to the characters offer restricted availability of movement. There is a constant sense of claustrophobia.

There are the usual giallo tropes - a murder mystery with psycho-sexual links to the killer's past, red herrings and deliberate misdirection. There are also the murder set pieces required of the genre. Ennio Morricone provided the score which primarily consists of a children's choir singing a variation of the title.

It is somewhat difficult to judge George Lazenby's performance as he was dubbed not only in Italian, but also in the English language version as well, by American actor Mark Forest. But what appears to be genuine is his relationship with Nicoletta Elmi as Roberta. The two seem to take pleasure in each other, such as when they are skipping together on the street, or playing "telephone" with a couple of small shells. It could also be that without the immense outside pressures, Lazenby was able to be more relaxed than was in his debut as the one-time James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Aldo Lado's familiarity with Venice gave him the ability to film most of the film in the less familiar parts of the city, where working class families lived, as well as the more industrial areas. Not seen in the usual tourist's eye view are shots of the merchants setting up their stands for the outdoor market near the Grand Canal. Just about a year prior to making Her Saw Her Die?, Lado wrote the story and served as Assistant Director on a film showing a more glamorous Venice, The Designated Victim.

As is usual with Arrow, the blu-ray comes with generous extras. Film historian Troy Howarth discusses the film at hand as well as Aldo Lado's career, but also spends time placing Who Saw Her Die? within the context of both genre filmmaking in Italy, but also the Italian film industry of the early 1970s. Interviews with Aldo Lado and screenwriter Franceso Barilli, both shot last June, provide sometimes contradictory, but always interesting information on the production of the film, as well as thoughts on their own careers. A now mature Nicoletta Elmi shares her memories of acting in several films, where unlike the good natured Roberta, she played more malevolent youngsters, notably in Dario Argento's Deep Red. Giallo specialist Michael Mackenzie also provides more details, including a side by side shot comparison with Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now which was release more than a year later, but shares some uncanny similarities. I also advise checking out the extras for the discussion of the final line in the film following the revealing of the killer's identity, which inadvertently creates the film's biggest plot hole. The transfer is from from a 2K restoration which is just about perfect.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:32 AM

September 10, 2019

I Mobster

Roger Corman - 1958
Sony Wonder Region 1 DVD

Even if this film is one of Roger Corman's lesser loved efforts, it deserves a bit better than a crude pan and scan transfer of the CinemaScope original. Aside from being Corman's first wide screen film, this was the first Corman directed film to be distributed by a major studio, 20th Century-Fox. It's not classic Corman by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a very watchable mix of older talent with a couple of stars whose own career peaks were firmly in the Fifties.

The main narrative is a flashback. Joe Sante, called before a Senate committee investigating racketeering, thinks back on his life of crime. Starting as a school age collector for a local bookie, Joe climbs his way up the ladder, not quite the top, but very close. The story uses some of the familiar template of the criminal son of immigrants, with the distant relationship with the father, and the always emotionally supportive mother. There is also the neighborhood good girl, Teresa, who keeps her distance, at least until her love for Joe makes her a willing accomplice in his organization.

And there is a good reason why the story elements would seem so familiar. The screenplay is by Steve Fisher, one of his last for a theatrical film. Fisher's credits include a couple of movies starring Humphrey Bogart, as well as the twice filmed novel, I Wake Up Screaming. At any rate, I'm not going to begrudge dialogue such as Steve Cochran murmuring to Lita Milan, "You dumb broad. You beautiful dumb broad." There is also a James Cagney connection with producer Edward Alperson taking it on the financial chin for the flop, The Great Guy, while one of Steve Cochran's early roles was with Cagney in White Heat. If I Mobster has nothing on the classic Warner Brothers gangster movies, keep in mind that Warner Brothers had pretty much let the genre die out after the explosive conclusion of White Heat.

I have to wonder what was going on in Steve Cochran's mind going from Michelangelo Antonioni to Roger Corman. In his journal, Antonioni complained about Cochran over-analyzing his part in Il Grido rather than taking specific directions from Antonioni. From what I know of Corman, Cochran probably had a free hand in shaping his performance. And while the forty year old actor looks too old as the younger Joe Sante, he looks just right as the custom suited crime boss. Joe talks about using his brains, but it's more about brute strength and animal cunning, which Cochran conveys convincingly. Lita Milan is one of those actresses who came and went briefly, typecast as the all purpose exotic beauty. Spicing things up in single scenes are Fifties B-movies bad girl Yvette Vickers, and Lili St. Cyr performing a strip tease filmed and edited for family viewing.

I don't know if I will ever see all of Roger Corman's films from the Fifties, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying. I let a friend catch the impossible to see Rock All Night playing with Carnival Rock in my place, when a Corman retrospective was held in New York City's Kips Bay Theater in March, 1971. There are a handful of films that I have yet to see in any format that also includes Sorority Girl, and Machine-Gun Kelly, the first starring role for Charles Bronson. Even if this very imperfect version of I Mobster is as good as it gets for my attempt at being a Coman completist, I enjoyed this lesser known diversion.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM

August 13, 2019

Razzia sur la Chnouf

Henri Decoin - 1955
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The title translates as "Raid on the Dope". It's the second of two films starring Jean Gabin using French slang in the title, the other being Touchez pas au grisbi ("Don't touch the loot'). Also on hand is Lino Ventura, who would be seen again with Gabin in other crime films. More importantly for Gabin, this is one of the films that helped return the actor to commercial viability mostly in roles as a top gangster or maverick cop.

Gabin appears as Henri, a former associate of an Italian named gangster, returning from the U.S. to France in order to re-organize the languishing heroin trade. He first meets up with his French boss, Liski, who provides the names on the various employees. Henri's job is not only to make sure sales quotas are met but also employ two thugs who act as enforcers for those proving less than reliable. Henri's cover is a fashionable piano bar. Of interest to cineastes is that Liski is played by Marcel Dalio, Gabin's co-star in Jean Renoir's Rules of the Game, from seventeen years earlier.

According to director and film historian Bertrand Tavernier, Henri Decoin was unfairly dismissed with other French directors of his generation primarily due to the inconsistency of his work, some of which was clearly simply for hire. Tavernier also points out how Decoin was able to take what he learned directly from Hollywood directors onto his own work. This is most obvious in some of the more violent scenes, such as the use of a shot that is almost subliminal when the thugs' victim is beat up. The image of a getaway car's windshield cracked by a bullet anticipates as similar image in Bonnie and Clyde. A shot that first appears to be tilted is revealed to be of a mirror when the camera pulls back. Tavernier compares Decoin to Raoul Walsh in how he films action, not an inapt comparison.

What really struck me was Decoin's depiction of drug addiction and a multicultural Paris, unusual for a French film made in 1955, and unthinkable for Hollywood at that time. Lea, a drug dealer looking older than her years, snorts heroin off her hand in a well-lit bar. A group of men presumably from North Africa gather in their own little bar, smoking marijuana. Lea, who's attempts to bed Henri are rebuffed, seeks solace with a shirtless African, seen performing a solo dance, the camera framing the movement of his hips. One of the other dealers is Chinese, with his own opium den. There is also some dialogue indicating that one of the drug dealers is in a relationship with his male companion. Another unusual feature is the jazzy film score by Marc Lanjean, with arrangements by twenty-three year old Michel Legrand - his first film credit.

In his commentary track, Nick Pinkerton gives Decoin short shrift, relying primarily on an overview of Decoin's career from the French film criticism magazine Positif. In terms of evaluating Decoin, at this time Razzia is the only film available for accessible viewing for English language viewers. One of the problems with discussing some older French films and filmmakers is that the dismissals made by the Cahiers du Cinema critics have been taken at face value, with a handful of those directors only more recently getting fairer reassessments. Where the commentary is more helpful is pointing out some of the actors, especially the less familiar supporting players. Pinkerton also discusses the connection between some of the French films of the 1930s with those of the 1950s, especially in connection with the novels by Georges Simenon. In the case of Razzia, the author of the source novel, Auguste Le Breton also appears as a small time hood named Auguste Le Breton. There is also a connection to The French Connection with a brief appearance by Marcel Bozzuffi. The print source appears to have been in pristine condition with beautifully rendered images. Most of the film takes place at night with a sky that is pitch black. This is French film noir at its blackest.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:56 AM

August 06, 2019

The Girl in the Fog

La ragazza nella nebbia
Donato Carrisi - 2017
Icarus Films Home Video R1 DVD

The Italian mystery writer, Donato Carrisi, has made his filmmaking debut, adapting one of his own novels into film. Carrisi's efforts were considered good enough that he was awarded the 2017 David di Donatello award, Italy's version of the Oscars, for Best New Director. I've not read the source novel so I am unable to comment on any changes. Carrisi does demonstrate visual flair, with the only weak spot being the final would-be twist at the end which should only surprise viewers not paying attention to several verbal and visual clues.

The story takes place in a small village in the Italian Alps where the residents all seem to know each other, and what tourist industry existed has virtually evaporated. A high school age girl, Anna Lou, has disappeared just prior to Christmas. Celebrity detective Vogel has taken on the case, bringing with him a small army of journalists and investigators. Vogel has become something of a reality television star. He is dogged by possibly misidentifying a serial bomber who was eventually found innocent. Vogel is intent on solving the mystery of Anna Lou, even at the cost of his reputation.

The first image is of Anna's house in the fog. The haze, the flatness, and limited nighttime colors initial make the image look like an illustration. Some of the other exterior shots give the impression of cardboard houses on an artificial studio set. The fog even carries over to the interior sets. There are also images within the shots, often of televisions set to the news, but also computer screens, and a VHS tape. These images within the image bring up the questions regarding the trustworthiness of what is supposedly documented. Carrisi also divides some of the sequences with overhead shots of a model version of the village, akin to something created from a fairy tale wooden toy shop. The village is pointedly remote, with the residents deliberately keeping themselves at a distance from aspects associated with life in the major cities. There are moments when Vogel appears to be visiting an alien landscape.

Carrisi uses a good number of overhead shots, as well as slow dolly shots, with the camera moving in or away from his characters. Most of the narrative is a series of flashbacks of Vogel's initial investigation from his point of view, as well as a sub-plot of Vogel's suspect. The actual mystery, or perhaps I should say mysteries, are subordinate to the themes of how public images are manipulated, and how an anonymous crowd response to those images.

Toni Servillo stars here as Vogel. Best known for his award winning performance in The Great Beauty, Servillo brings from that film the continued sense of someone world weary, who has seen and done everything, for whom nothing is new. Jean Reno appears as a psychiatrist with whom Vogel discusses the case, as part of an unofficial return to the scene of the crime. A virtually unrecognizable Greta Scacchi has a small role as a journalist whose decades long investigation suggest new clues.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:43 AM

July 23, 2019

Luminous Motion

production still by Nan Goldin

Bette Gordon - 1998
Kino Lorber BD Region A

It takes a few seconds to make sense of one of the images. A close-up of a map, but the various connecting roads are a thick red, almost a network of veins. This image that suggests human geography is echoed later when we see the young boy, Phillip, sleeping with an open anatomy book partially exposed under his pillow. Throughout Luminous Motion is the repetition of patterns and colors, as well as the doubling of the three family members with what might be described as their distorted twins.

There is deliberate ambiguity beginning with the first person narration. We see Phillip as a small, ten year old boy. The language of the narration appears to be that of an adult looking at the past, with certain choices in the vocabulary that would seem appropriate for an adult, yet the voice we hear is that of the child. That narrative voice is one of several devices Bette Gordon uses to disorient the viewer.

Phillip lives an itinerant life with his mother who supports the two of them with what Tennessee Williams referred to as the kindness of strangers. The two seem to be running away from Phillip's father, with no particular destination. Phillip is introduced reading a children's science book, and while quite bright and perhaps too sophisticated for his own good, eventually reveals an inability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. No matter where Philip and his mother go, his father seems to know how and when to call Phillip. And while Phillip has this unwavering belief in constantly being on the move, his mother makes a couple of attempts at something resembling domesticity.

Luminous Motion is one of three films that Gordon did not write, but that share in varying degrees similar thematic concerns. The other two films would be Handsome Harry (2009) and The Drowning (2016). While not exact, what these films have in common are traumatic incidents that took place in the past, failed father-son relationships, and males establishing their territory in the form of relationships with other males and women. Phillip has an outsized image of himself as the only one capable of taking care of his mother, even going as far a getting a fake driver's license, totally unaware that his small height and youth make him look silly. Phillip's attempts at control only cause more havoc. Phillip sees two men in his mother's life, his father and a hardware store owner, Pedro, both as temporary father figures and as rivals. The actions Phillip takes to re-establish his position as the primary male in his mother's life may or may not have happened, even Phillip is not certain.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Gordon and her cinematographer, Teodoro Maniaci. Aside from discussing how certain shots were accomplished, the commentary may prove educational for novices in low-budget independent filmmaking. Supplements also include illustrated pages from the script, some story boards, and production stills by Nan Goldin. In addition to young Eric Lloyd meeting the challenge of a convincing performance as Phillip, Luminous Motion is one of the few films since David Cronenberg's Crash that made use of Deborah Kara Unger's talents. Wearing a cheap looking fake leopard skin coat and haphazardly dyed and combed blonde hair, thirteen year old Paz de la Huerta uncannily seems to have set the template for her future film roles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:07 AM

July 19, 2019

Death Takes a Holiday

Mitchell Leisen - 1934
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I have a vague memory that takes place in the early Sixties. Reading the listings of movies shown on television, I came across the title, Death Takes a Holiday. I'm a bit puzzled by what this means. My mother gave be a brief explanation. The movie was shown at a time when I wasn't able to watch it. And somehow this film that has piqued my curiosity never seems to have reappeared either on television or at any of the many venues in New York City showing older films in the early Seventies. I can't really explain why I didn't bother getting getting the DVD when it was a bonus included with Martin Brest's remake, Meet Joe Black, a film I actually liked quite a bit. (Disclosure - I was acquainted with Martin Brest at NYU and made a student movie with him.)

Mitchell Leisen's second directorial effort is now a standalone blu-ray. In reviewing Leisen's filmography, the suits at Paramount were quite patient with Leisen as his early films generally got good reviews, but were financially uneven. Leisen would hit his stride about two years and several films later once he teams up with charismatic actors like Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Ray Milland, Don Ameche and his most frequent star, Fred MacMurray, combined at best with screenplays by Preston Sturges or the team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. Death Takes a Holiday originally was a an Italian play, later performed in an English language version on Broadway. Leisen's graceful traveling camera cannot totally transcend the portentous dialogue.

Most of the film takes place in a large villa, in the Paramount studio version of Italy, marginally less elaborate than the exotic locations of fellow studio directors Josef von Sternberg and Ernst Lubitsch. Death is first seen as a blobby shadow following several aristocratic celebrants speeding on a mountain pass in their elongated roadsters. Making an appearance late at night, Death shows up again at the villa in the form of a tall man draped in black cloth, partially transparent. He reveals to the villa's owner, Duke Lambert, his identity, plus his request to appear in human form as a guest for three days. Death wants to know why he is feared. Suspension of disbelief is required here. Not because I have a problem with Death appearing in the form of Fredric March, Brad Pitt, or the chess playing Bengt Ekerot, but because I figure that Death has been around long enough to have a clue or two about human behavior. Death reappears as the Duke's friend, Prince Sirki, complete with monocle and an East European accent, to learn about life from the leisure class, where men wear tuxedos and the women wear tiaras.

During the three days, people miraculously survive ship sinkings, school burnings, getting trampled by horses, and other disasters. Death questions the futility of existence, which is pretty easy to do when your with people who do nothing but race boats, play ping pong, or visit exclusive casinos. Death is attracted to Grazia, first scene praying at a church, meeting her would-be fiance, Corrado, son of the duke.

Fredric March plays Death as an alien being whose speaking and mannerisms become less stilted and more fluid over the course of the three days. Evelyn Venable, was Paramount's ingenue at the time, seen here as Grazia. Venable has a passing resemblance to Olivia De Havilland, but she lacked that sparkle needed for more more than brief stardom, and I got the sense, especially in Venable's close-ups that Mitchell Leisen was looking for De Havilland, but may not have known it at the time.

There is one nice shot of March and Venable sitting together by a fountain pool, seen upside down in reflection. The camera tilts up to the two sitting together, Death has only an hour left as a guest in the villa and wants to spend that last hour with Grazia. Death Takes a Holiday was produced before the Production Code took effect, but what happens in that last hour is never shown, nor stated.

Where the code was challenged all involve actress Gail Patrick, uttering an inaudible "damn", trying to seduce Prince Sirki by informing him of her flexibility regarding the need to get married, and sharing a bed with another female guest.

Leisen got start working for Cecil B. DeMille, and the interior of the villa looks like a DeMille set moved indoors, with huge classical statues in the hallways and oversized Renaissance paintings on the walls. There is a traveling shot, with the camera moving backwards as the guests enter the villa, walking through that very long entry way.

Kat Ellinger's commentary offers some information on the production of Death Takes a Holiday, but I was hoping for something on how much of the screenplay was the work of the two credited writers, Maxwell Anderson and Gladys Lehman. I'm guessing that most of the declamatory scenes were by Anderson. Ellinger takes time to discuss the theatrical origins of Death Takes a Holiday, as well as reviewing the careers of several of the stars and production team.

There may be a little bit of irony that when I finally get to see Death Takes a Holiday, it's a time when I've been dealing with my own mortality. No fear of dying, but if Death comes to meet me in human form, I'm hoping she resembles Tiffany Haddish.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM

July 16, 2019

Hold Back the Dawn

Mitchell Leisen - 1941
Arrow Films BD Region A

The past - did novelist Anna Seghers see Hold Back the Dawn sometime prior to writing Transit? Was she familiar with Ketti Frings' screen treatment? Both Seghers' novel and Leisen's film are about refugees, told in the first person. The narrator is of questionable background, telling his story to a vaguely known acquaintance. Both narrators are waiting for the documents that will allow them to travel, and both use fraudulent means, involving a woman, to accomplish their goal. Both men stay at a crowded, run-down hotel with other refugees. The routine is overwhelmingly tedious. In both the novel and the film, a refugee frustrated by bureaucracy hangs himself. Hold Back the Dawn takes place in a small border town in Mexico, directly across from the United States. Hitler was considered Europe's problem, and the U.S. government maintained a strict limit on immigration. Transit takes place in Marseilles in 1942, at a time when refugees were hobbled by time-limited travel visas, and the hope of going to Mexico or Brazil, should a ship be available. Both Dawn co-writer Billy Wilder and Anna Seghers, as well as Frings' husband, spent time in Mexico before getting approval to live in the United States. Anna Segher's 1939 novel, The Seventh Cross was made into a movie by MGM that came out in the same year that Transit was published in English. The director of that film was Fred Zinnemann. Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann were among the aspiring filmmakers who made the German People on Sunday in 1930.

The present - I don't think anyone can watch Hold Back the Dawn without thinking about current events. Even Olivia de Havilland's character isn't immune from xenophobia. Yesterday's "scum" become today's invaders. Unfortunately, no one at Homeland Security seems have that right combination of strictness and understanding as Walter Abel. It's also unavoidable to look wistfully at a film that takes place in a world where marriages of convenience aren't investigated too closely, immigrants wait patiently for legal approval, and the two times rules are circumvented are both gently comic moments.

First and foremost, Hold Back the Dawn is a Hollywood movie. It was produced at Paramount, a studio founded by Adolph Zukor. As an orphaned eighteen year old Hungarian Jew, Zukor probably showed little obvious promise of becoming a self-made millionaire even before getting into the motion picture business. Charles Boyer plays a Romanian gigolo, officially a dancer, told that due to quota restrictions, he can expect to be allowed to leave the Mexican border town for the U.S. in at least five years. His "dance partner", played by Paulette Goddard meets up by chance at the border town's Climax Bar. Boyer learns he can expedite things by getting married to a U.S. citizen, and once he receives citizenship papers he can file for divorce. Boyer encounters schoolteacher Olivia De Havilland shepherding a group of school boys for a brief visit across the border. Temporarily stranded due to a car accident, Boyer acts as a rescuer for De Havilland and her charges, sweet talking her into marriage.

The film both plays up to, and against Hollywood conventions and the on-screen personas of Boyer and De Havilland. In her booklet notes, Farran Smith Nehme describes Boyer as having a "chocolate-ganache voice". Boyer's performance as he woos De Havilland borders on self-parody, but perhaps that's partially the result of seeing too many Pepe Le Pew cartoons. It is after the two are married that Boyer fights his own impulses and screen image to make sure the marriage is unconsummated. De Havilland, Warner Brothers' resident "good girl", is first seen bouncing in anticipation in a hotel room with a wedding cake, and sheds her clothes to take a dip at a deserted beach. Boyer is the worldly conman from Romania by way of Paris, while De Havilland is proudly from small town Azusa, California. This is a film that requires surrendering to an on-screen romance of this mismatched couple.

I like, but do not love, Hold Back the Dawn. My own estimation of Mitchell Leisen is still that his best work was done between 1937 and 1941, with screenplays by Preston Sturges and the team of Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder. My own favorites are Arise, My Love, written by Brackett and Wilder, and Remember the Night, written by Sturges (and why is this film not shown on Christmas?). The two moments I will savor in Hold Back the Dawn include the previously mentioned scene of De Havilland anticipating giving up her virginity to Charles Boyer, and Walter Abel's U.S. customs agent discovering the birth of an anchor baby in his office. Farran Smith Nehme's booklet notes discuss the making of the film and the rift between Wilder and Leisen over changes in the screenplay. IMDb lists Richard Maibaum as having made uncredited contributions to the screenplay, yet neither Nehme, nor Adrian Martin in his commentary track made note of this, making that credit questionable, although Maibaum did write several credited screenplays for Leisen. Martin's commentary track, aided by an additional interview with BFI programmer Geoff Andrew, argue for Leisen's auteur status, remarking on the recurring themes in his films as well as his visual choices. Martin also refers to the Senses of Cinema survey of Mitchell Leisen by David Melville, also worth reading. This month is seeing a Leisen revival with new blu-ray discs of Easy Living and Death Takes a Holiday on the way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:46 AM

July 12, 2019

The Tough Ones

Roma a mano armato / Rome Armed to the Teeth
Umberto Lenzi - 1976
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC two-disc and one CD set

There's a scene in Raoul Walsh's White Heat, where the manic gangster, Cody Jarrett, has escaped from the penitentiary with a con, Parker, who had attempted to kill him, hiding him in the trunk of the getaway car. Jarrett is a sociopath, but because he's played by James Cagney, he's the kind of gangster that the audience roots for in spite of themselves. The morning after the escape, Parker is still enclosed in the car trunk. From inside the trunk, Parker tells Jarrett that it is getting stuffy inside the trunk. Jarrett shoots several bullets into the trunk, in his words, to provide ventilation for his victim. While most contemporary viewers will probably chuckle at the black humor of this scene, in its time it was considered horrifying. I thought of White Heat and Umberto Lenzi's documented admiration for Raoul Walsh while watching The Tough Ones.

In The Tough Ones, Tomas Milian plays the part of Moretto, a hunchback who has thus far hidden his criminal activity. Moretto goes to a pawnbroker, with the premise of pawning some jewelry, and offers the pawnbroker to touch his hump for good luck, as according to the superstition. The pawnbroker declines the offer. Moretto turns around with a machine gun, shooting the pawnbroker, with the comment that not touching his hump brings bad luck. It's the combination of violence and cruel sarcasm that makes the character of Moretto appear inspired by Walsh's Cody Jarrett. Lenzi also adds a propensity for Roman rhyming street slang for Morretto. Moretto's gang of bank robbers are an especially nervous bunch, equally as ready to fire their machine guns at random targets.

Whatever filament of a plot there is concerns a Roman cop, Tanzi, searching for a criminal on the run. Tanzi is portrayed by Maurizio Merli, and is typical of many of his other film appearances, is that rogue detective who disregards bureaucracy, slaps around bad guys and asks questions later, and can be counted on for a high speed car chase. To his credit, Merli also does his own stunts including the driving. Tanzi encounters a virtual catalogue of the kind of crime that took place during the time The Tough Ones was made including the previously mentioned bank robbery, kidnapping, rape, purse snatching and illegal drugs. In his commentary track, Mike Malloy states how several set pieces in The Tough Ones are to found in other Eurocrime movies. Lenzi's film helped set the template for similar films featuring the names of cities in their titles, the various narrative elements as well as star Maurizio Merli's on-screen persona.

Of the many extras, one I found of interest was an older supplement by Michele De Angelis of the late, lamented DVD label, NoShame. A personal note here - NoShame was the first company to send me screeners when I first launched this website. De Angelis positions The Tough Ones within a history of Italian narrative films that documented the social changes in Italy following World War II. That Eurocrime thrillers would have a connection to neorealism is less of a stretch when one considers the influence these films had on Hollywood film noir. De Angelis goes on to discuss the influence of films such as The French Connection and Dirty Harry on the Eurocrime genre.

The Calum Waddell produced documentary about Umberto Lenzi's career is frustrating as there is nothing about his life prior to his career as a director, and does not bother mentioning films made prior to the thrillers with Carroll Baker. While Lenzi's giallo and crime films are his best known, I encourage those unfamiliar with the early works to check out Lenzi's official debut feature, Queen of the Seas, a costume adventure film about the female pirate Mary Read, and Lenzi's version of Gunga Din, Three Sergeants of Bengal. Hollywood veteran Arthur Kennedy appears in The Tough Ones as Tanzi's supervisor. If someone wasn't familiar with Kennedy, they would think the only film of note he appeared in was Lawrence of Arabla. Aside from multiple Oscar nominations, Kennedy had roles in a handful of film noir classics, notably Too Late for Tears. It may possibly be coincidence that Kennedy had also appeared in one film each by Raoul Walsh and another director Lenzi admired, Samuel Fuller.

It's the first supplement on the second disc, titled "Umberto", that I would consider required viewing. Umberto Lenzi talks about his life and career for almost an hour. In addition to Walsh and Fuller, Lenzi also names Otto Preminger and Robert Siodmak as part of the four most influential directors. Three of the four have directed key films in the history of film noir, with Fuller making a contribution as a screenwriter. The Fuller connection is more obvious in Lenzi's use of social commentary and also with the war films that Lenzi describes as being his most personal work. Several other film noir filmmakers are also cited, including Edward Dmytryk and that director's masterpiece, Christ in Concrete. There are also some brief clips from Lenzi's first film, made in Greece, Mia Italida stin Ellada. Lenzi is forgiven exaggerating is memory of working as an assistant on Raw Wind in Eden. The only person whose career really suffered from that film's failure was star Esther Williams. Lenzi offers a first-hand account of film production practices in Italy when genre films were imported around the world.

Additional information of genre production practices, as well as more specific information on the making of The Tough Ones is in the interview with screenwriter Dardano Sachetti. Supporting player Corrado Solari offers several humorous anecdotes. The still beautiful Maria Rosaria Omaggio talks about making her film debut under Lenzi's direction. There is also an hour and a half interview with Tomas Milian which includes discussing his time with the Actors Studio. In all, be prepared to set aside several hours on the supplements. And if an interview with composer Franco Micalizzi isn't enough, there is also the enclosed CD with the soundtrack.

As for information regarding the making of The Tough Ones, Lenzi recounts how he filmed the car chases on the street, in real traffic. The additional secret sauce is that Lenzi would have the camera run at 22 frames per second, heightening the sense of speed when projected at the normal 24 fps. A conversation with composer Franco Micalizzi offers more information on their several collaborations. Film historian Roberto Curti's booklet notes provide context regarding the real life inspirations for several scenes, as well as some background on the production of the film. Umberto Lenzi had an interest in history, as well as film history. It would seem in light of much of the material included with The Tough Ones that Lenzi understood that as a genre filmmaker, much like those directors he admired, that his work would receive greater appreciation by future film fans and scholars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:02 AM

July 02, 2019

Transit

Christian Petzold - 2018
Music Box Films

Would I have thought differently about Transit had I not read Anna Segher's novel beforehand? The novel was published in 1944, taking place in Marseilles between late 1940 and early 1941 before the complete Nazi takeover, when refugees with the right papers and money could leave France for the U.S., Mexico or other South American countries. Seghers was also a refugee, taking inspiration from her own time in Marseilles. The narrative is primarily done in the first person by a young man, an escapee from a concentration camp, who has been given the suitcase and letters of an author who is revealed later to be dead. The unnamed narrator takes over the identity of the author in order to leave Marseilles, trying to work his way with the various bureaucracies to make his arrangements. A mysterious woman turns out to be the author's wife. The characters are ill-fated, whether by their own choices or circumstances beyond their control.

Petzold has transposed the story to the present era. The timeline has been collapsed, sub-plots jettisoned along with several characters. While loosely adapting Carnival of Souls for Yella, and The Postman Always Rings Twice for Jerichow worked, the time and place did not have to be specific. In Petzold's Transit, while we see the occasional roundup of "undesirables", there is no sense of a palpable threat by the group given the vague identity of fascists. Segher's novel also takes place over a period of several months with a stress on the boredom of waiting for papers to get approved, for trying to stay warm in what seems like a never ending winter, where the pizza that comprises the main diet is purchased as rationed bread. Petzold's changes include a young boy, half German/half North African, and his deaf-mute mother, also illegal aliens, as an attempt to make the updated version more timely. At the same time, Petzold has deracinated Segher's version which significantly included several Jewish characters. Ending the film with Talking Head's song, "Road to Nowhere" struck me as irresponsibly flippant.

While taking place in a contemporary Marseilles, some obvious indicators or timeliness are absent, such as cell phones and computers. I understand Petzold making a connection with the various refugee crises taking place in Europe. With the rise of nationalism that has taken place, Petzold virtually anticipated what has happened recently in Italy with the recently installed right-wing government punishing those who assist the would-be migrants from North Africa. Those aspects from Seghers novel that make it universal, still read and discussed, may not be lost, yet feel diminished in the film. The darkness and desperation of Segher's novel has been replaced by sunshine and casual inconvenience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

June 25, 2019

The Wild Heart

Gone to Earth
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 1950

The Wild Heart
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 1952
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

"He (David O. Selznick) never had the guts to direct a picture himself. He shunned the responsibility. He preferred to spend hours and days of his life dictating memos telling other people how to direct films. This made him a rather pathetic figure." - Michael Powell

Two perfect shots: First, Jennifer Jones as Hazel Woodus is introduced in a long shot, seen from a distance walking up a hill. The wind in blowing from the right of the screen. There are a row of trees all tilted leftwards that frame Hazel on the right side. Hazel walks leftward and then right, facing the wind. The shot establishes Hazel's character as being both part of the natural world but also fighting against it. As played by Jones, Hazel is connected to Pearl Chavez and Ruby Gentry, the woman as the perpetual outsider due to societal roles and her own rebellious nature.

The second perfect shot is a tilt-down at two pairs of feet. The recently married Hazel agrees to a rendezvous with Reddin, a local squire who previous tried to seduce Hazel, and has since pursued her, disregarding her status as the wife of a minister. The marriage has yet to be consummated. The two meet in the vicinity of the same area of the opening shot. Hazel is barefoot. Reddin is wearing brown boots. Hazel is carrying a handful of flowers. We see the two meet within the shot of the two pairs of feet coming closer. Hazel is standing on her toes. The flowers fall down onto the ground as the shot continues. We then see one of Reddin's boots trample the flowers as he picks up Hazel. The shot refers back to an earlier scene, with Hazel unaware of the connotations of the expression "pick up". Within that single shot is all we need to know about Hazel's infidelity.

For those who are not aware of the film's history, The Wild Heart is the re-edited version of Gone to Earth, supervised by Jones' husband, producer David O. Selznick. Kino Lorber has chosen to make The Wild Heart the main feature of the new blu-ray, with Gone to Earth listed as a bonus. Most cinephiles would probably have it the other way around. In any case, viewers can finally see both films and compare for themselves. This long awaited release may well be one of the more important blu-ray releases of the year.

That first shot of Hazel, a small figure among tall trees, was not part of The Wild Heart. David O. Selznick was reduced to co-production status in 1949 following Portrait of Jennie and a loss of $12,000,000. to his studio. Selznick recognized the directorial talent of the time with films by Carol Reed, Powell and Pressberger, and Vittorio De Sica. At the same time, Selznick was unable to leave the films alone, making his own versions for U.S distribution. Minor tinkering with The Third Man was followed by heavy editing and re-shoots on Powell and Pressburger's film. De Sica's Terminal Station was significantly abridged, re-edited, and given the lurid title of Indiscretion of an American Wife. I would guess that not a day went by when David O. Selznick would not remind someone within earshot that he had produced Gone with the Wind, at the time the biggest box office success ever. In terms of his relationship with filmmakers on his European co-productions, Selznick was the Harvey Weinstein of his day.

The basic story, adapted from a 1917 novel, takes place in Shropshire, a county in northern England that borders Wales, in 1897. Hazel Woodus lives in a remote part of the countryside with her father, a craftsman who makes coffins. Hazel's closest relationship is with her pet fox called Foxy. She also relies on a book of spells left by her mother, described as a gypsy, for her decision making. Hazel is emblematic of the tensions of British history, between its past as a Roman colony and identity more tightly defined as Christian. This is made more clear with the relationships with the hedonistic Jack Reddin and the chaste Edward Marston, complicated by Hazel's own mixed feelings about both men. Just as the pet fox can not be completely domesticated, neither can Hazel.

Even at age thirty, when Gone to Earth was produced, Jennifer Jones still looked youthful enough for her role as Hazel. She was able to speak with the appropriate accent to the approval of Michael Powell. The blu-ray is for me a quite beautiful rendering of the original Technicolor film.

There are also commentary tracks for each version that are largely complimentary with minimal duplication of information. Samm Deighan makes the connection of Gone to Earth with the earlier Powell and Pressburger film, A Canterbury Tale, as well as the novel's position as part of a history of gothic novels. On The Wild Heart, Troy Howarth provides more history on the cast and crew, as well as some discussion on David O. Selznick's revision of Gone to Earth which began as soon as he saw the first rough cut prior to the 1950 release.

What would have been more helpful, but would require deeper research, is details on who actually worked on the footage commissioned by Selznick. The film begins with a voice over spoken by Joseph Cotton, prose about Roman Britain and pagan beliefs. There are several scenes that are not in Gone to Earth, as well as more close-ups of Jones, and insert shots. One example is of Hazel standing over a sundial at Reddin's estate. In Gone To Earth, Hazel is seen in a long shot. Selznick has a cut so that the audience reads an adage on the sundial. There is some information to be gleaned from a website devoted to the films by Powell and Pressburger. While it has been acknowledged that Rouben Mamoulian directed the scenes per Selznick, based on the history of Selznick's other productions, there may have been other hands involved. Did Ben Hecht write the Selznick prologue, and who wrote those revised scenes? Troy Howarth tries to give a good defense of The Wild Heart. My own sense is that David O. Selznick was uncomfortable with letting the images speak for themselves, remaking the film to conform to his own idea of a star vehicle for wife Jennifer Jones, with underlining to eliminate any possible ambiguity. Selznick's odd grandiosity is also displayed by cutting the actual movie down to about 82 minutes, and then bookending the film with two minutes of music, an overture and exit music, on each end for a "Roadshow version".

For some film viewers, simply having Gone to Earth and The Wild Heart together may be more than enough. I would be surprise if this KL Studio Classics release was not among the nominations of significant home videos by Il Cinema Ritrovato.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:36 AM

June 21, 2019

Midnight Lace

David Miller - 1960
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Would Midnight Lace have been a substantially better film had Ross Hunter's usual go-to director, Douglas Sirk, hadn't retired the year before? We can only guess based on such prior works as the wonderfully nutty Lured with the eclectic cast of Lucille Ball, Charles Laughton and Boris Karloff, and the more obvious wife-in-peril Sleep My Love. David Miller probably got the gig on the strength of Sudden Fear with Joan Crawford threatened by two-timing Jack Palance. Midnight Lace isn't exactly suspenseful, but it is entertaining.

Doris Day plays Kit Preston, heiress and newly-wed to British businessman Brian Preston (Rex Harrison). Brian is so busy with work that the two have yet to go on an actual honeymoon. The film opens with Kit walking home across a park in London fog so thick it's called a "pea souper". A strange voice from an unseen source tells Kit that she will be murdered. Kit runs home in a panic. Later, she begins getting telephone calls from the same unknown person. Brian tries to convince Kit that it is a prank. There are a series of "red herrings" to keep the audience guessing as to who wants Kit dead, including the constantly sponging son of the housekeeper, a gaunt man dressed in black, and the foreman of the construction site next door. For me, the biggest mystery is why Midnight Lace received an Oscar nomination for the costumes - the only thing uglier than Doris Day's fur-collared coats is one of the hats worn by Myrna Loy.

Russell Metty may have been a house cinematographer at Universal, but he may well be the one to credit for the use of color and shadows. In addition to his work with Sirk, Metty also had Orson Welles' Touch of Evil to his credits. There is one scene with tension between Kit and Brian in their bedroom. During the day, the bedroom is an extremely light shade of pink. In this scene, when Kit is certain that her stalker is standing in view of the bedroom window, the colors of the bedroom are stronger shades of pink, purple, blue and red. The choice of colors is suggestive of a proto-giallo, and not entirely unrelated to a film like The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Sergio Martino's delirious version of the gaslit wife. There is also the scene with Kit trapped in her apartment building's narrow elevator, in fear of a man seen only as a black silhouette. Somebody like Dario Argento would have stretched the scene further, and milked it for greater terror. I was struck use of red lighting on the interior walls when the true identities of several characters are revealed.

Without giving too much away, the final scene could have been David Miller's Vertigo. Doris Day clings on to a steel column in the building next door, still an empty skeleton. There are no photographic effects, nor any sense of the kind of danger Hitchcock could convey. Again there is the sense that more could have been done, restrained by Ross Hunter's desire not to make his audience too uncomfortable.

On the debit side, the film takes place in a tourist's idea of London. Either the screenplay should have had a slight revision, or the film should have been recast as John Gavin, at age 29, was clearly too young to play the part of the building foreman, a man who tells Kit about his traumatic experience in World War II. A night out at the ballet means an excerpt from Swan Lake, billed with Giselle and Petrushka, middle-brow and middle-class idea of culture.

As it turns out, Kat Ellinger also makes the connection between Midnight Lace and giallo in her commentary track. Ellinger draws the line with connections to Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace to the films made about a decade later by Argento, Martino and others. Ellinger discusses also how producer Ross Hunter packaged the film primarily for a female audience, as well as employ stars from an earlier era in supporting roles, as Myrna Loy and Roddy McDowell appear here. Connections of various cast members to the films by Alfred Hitchcock are mentioned, notably Day in The Man Who Knew Too Much, but also supporting cast members Gavin, John Williams and Anthony Dawson. Unless I missed it, Ellinger does not mention Herbert Marshall as having appeared in two Hitchcock films. Being from London, Ellinger is able to point out how the rear screen appearance of a bridge makes it appear longer than it really is. It may be redundant to mention that the first giallo is considered to be Mario Bava's The Woman Who Knew Too Much.

As for the title, our heroine buys what is probably best described as loungewear, black pants with a lacy black top. Hardly the diaphanous nightie that the title Midnight Lace might suggest, but would anyone expect that from Doris Day? In keeping with the title's undelivered suggestions of eroticism, the best way to enjoy Midnight Lace is to enjoy what the film is, not for all the things it isn't.

Kino Classics has also taken the unusual step of offering a choice of aspect ratios when viewing Midnight Lace. While most cinephiles will probably choose the original 2:1 version, there is also the option of 1.78 for those who insist that the entirety of their wide-screen television frame be filled.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

June 19, 2019

The Running Man

Romanian poster

Carol Reed - 1963
Arrow Academy BD Region A

I only have very general information, but what ever it was that happened on the set of the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty severely rattled original director Carol Reed. As it was, that film turned out to be the last by Reed's replacement, Lewis Milestone. Most of the time, or at least at a time when the stakes weren't quite as high, directors usually bounced back, even when fired from high profile productions. George Cukor's career hardly suffered from losing Gone with the Wind. Carol Reed thought he could make his return on a mid-budget production, something like the thrillers that brought him his greatest acclaim.

As the booklet notes also remind us, The Running Man is one of five films with "man" in the title. And there are some thematic similarities to Reed's earlier films. Freelance transport pilot Rex Black has lost his plane and cargo in an accident. He considers himself cheated out of his insurance when it is discovered that he missed his most recent payment. With his wife, Stella, he fakes his own death. Stella successfully collects on the life insurance policy. An insurance investigator, Stephen Maddox, comes to Stella's apartment to ask a few questions. He concludes his visit by encouraging Stella to go on holiday following her mourning. Rex, in disguise, and Stella go to Malaga, Spain. Stephen appears in Malaga, but it is never clear whether this is coincidence, or an attempt to verify fraud.

The booklet notes and the supplemental interviews with several surviving crew members all stress that Reed was indecisive during the production of The Running Man. Reed's uncertainty brought about an end to his collaborations with cinematographer Robert Krasker and editor Bert Bates. Adding to Reed's own second guessing himself were impositions by Columbia Pictures - the opening credits designed by Maurice Binder, with a separate title score by Ron Grainer, attempted to open the The Running Man more in the style made popular by the James Bond films. And while no names have been mentioned, it has been suggested the Laurence Harvey was not Reed's first choice as Rex Black. Adding to the confusion was the status of Lee Remick, briefly leaving the Spanish set to replace Marilyn Monroe on the ill-fated Something's Got to Give. Given all the problems, it's a wonder that The Running Man turned out as well as it did.

Robert Krasker was nominated for a BAFTA award for his cinematography. The Running Man is less visually stylized than Odd Man Out or The Third Man, Krasker's most famous work with Reed. Maybe it's the nature of the format, but Krasker's black and white films almost always are more interesting to watch than the films he did in color. There was one very simple shot that I liked, that also owes to the production and costume design. As Rex, Laurence Harvey is wearing a wine red shirt and matching pants. Alan Bates as Stephen is wearing a white shirt and a very light blue suit. Also monochrome Is Lee Remick in a pink sheath dress. Rex and Stephen are conversing at a fountain outside the hotel where all three are staying. Stella has walked back to her room. This is a full shot that probably played better on a movie screen, with the two men seen sitting across from each other with hotel entrance behind them. One has to take the shot in its entirety to notice the small pink figure, Stella, observing the conversation from her window up above the men.

The film ends with a car chase through a mountain road. Reed's most famous films are about men trying to escape, often pursued, closing with death or failure. There is no defense for Rex's dubious scheme to scam the insurance company. His fate appears pre-ordained, a small scale reversal of the adage that events repeat themselves, first as tragedy, and again as farce.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Peter William Evans, author of a book on Carol Reed. Evans primarily discusses the thematic connections of The Running Man with Reed's earlier films, as well as the use of color as signifiers in the clothing of the characters. Also covered are the ways Reed and screenplay writer John Mortimer diverged from the source novel by Shelley Smith, The Ballad of the Running Man. Somewhat of a stretch is comparing the triangle of Rex and Stella Black and Stephen Maddox with that of Harry Lime, Anna and Holly Martins in The Third Man. Evans concedes that The Running Man is a minor film. Even though Reed would realize critical and commercial success just a few years later with Oliver!, it is The Running Man that can be said to be his last truly personal film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

June 11, 2019

My Nights with Susan, Sandra, Olga & Julie

Mijn Nachten met Susan, Olga, Albert, Julie, Piet & Sandra
Pim de la Parra - 1975
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC/DVD All Regions two-disc set

I still remember my visit to Amsterdam, about fourteen years ago. At the store called Boudisque, I asked if they had any DVDs of films by Pim de la Parra. I don't know for sure if the clerk even knew who Pim de la Parra was. Such was the fate of pioneering Dutch filmmakers Pim de la Parra and his production partner Wim Verstappen. It's only been in the past couple of years that the Netherlands' Eye Institute as rescued the films of "Pim and Wim", and with those films, a bit of film history that was virtually forgotten. Cult Epics has in turn made several of the films available on home video.

The title is a bit misleading as it suggests some kind of hedonistic romp. The character with the title in the first person is Anton, a young man who arrives at a converted farm house to meet up with Barbara, a woman never seen in the film. The farm house and a nearby shack are the home for Susan, Sandra, Olga, Julie, and as listed in the Dutch title, Piet and Albert. The farmhouse is an informal commune for these six dropouts. Anton's presence has disrupted the relative equilibrium of the group, although the first scene reveals Sandra and Olga to be anarchic forces. The French title of the film is Les Furies which more specifically would seem to refer to Sandra and Olga as vengeful female spirits, although no motivation for their actions is provided.

Like his debut feature, Obsessions, de la Parra again visits the themes of sex, murder and voyeurism. There is nudity and soft-core sex, as was par for European films during the mid-1970s. Pim and Wim produced films that straddled the line between serious commercial filmmaking and outright exploitation, constantly pushing the envelope of what Dutch censors would allow. This is a much more polished work than de la Parra's previous films, aided by use of a widescreen format. The six commune dwellers have chosen to isolate themselves from society at large, with Albert choosing to enclose himself in a room illuminated by a hanging red light bulb, while Piet lives in the nearby shack, physically expressive but orally mute. Julie is mostly seen sleeping. With police investigating a possible murder in the vicinity of the farmhouse, the choices are to break the cycle of self-enforced separation from others, or to totally succumb to madness.

The blu-ray comes with several supplements. In his video introduction, Pim de la Parra tells of how Rutger Hauer, not yet an international star, turned down the role of Anton. Three early short films are also included, with the two about the perpetually clumsy Joop showcasing the goofy humor of Pim and Wim. The supplement with stills and posters provided the information on the French title for My Nights . . .. The film is notable also has containing the final film work by composer Elisabeth Lutyens, whose atonal film scores had previously been part of several horror films produced by Amicus and Hammer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

June 04, 2019

Devil's Kiss

La perversa caricia de Satan
Jordi Gigo - 1976
Redemption BD Region A

Devil's Kiss has just about everything needed for an exploitation horror movie - gratuitous sex, unmotivated violence, and a story that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And yet I got the feeling that for whatever reasons, writer-director Jordi Gigo was holding back on the sex and gore when he really should have been fearlessly tasteless. This was a French/Spanish co-production made for Eurocine, a French company that specialized in low budget fare that played in the grind houses of Europe.

While the better known Eurocine productions were directed by Jesus Franco, with Jean Rollin also on hand for a couple of films, one of the other frequent filmmakers was Pierre Chevalier. I have to admit I have seen only a handful of films compared to historian Tim Lucas, who contributed some notes on the back of the blu-ray cover. But I have seen Chevalier's Orloff and the Invisible Man which is deliriously unhinged. More laughable than horrifying, the film also presents an argument that some actresses should not be seen in the nude, even if it is a requirement. Not only were these movies made to be screened in theaters where paying close attention to the story was besides the point, the films sometimes would have pornographic inserts based on when and where said film was shown.

There is very little information on Jordi Gigo. In writing about an earlier DVD release of Devil's Kiss, critic Aled Jones commented, "Not wanting to belittle Jordi Gigo and his directing chops but he does come across as a third assistant on a Jess Franco shoot in terms of talent which is hardly a recommendation." IMDb indicated that Gigo had a hand in writing Exorcismo with star Paul Naschy in 1975. Following Devil's Kiss, Gigo made a soft-core film, Porno Girl, before slipping into obscurity. Devil's Kiss definitely has a cult following, but it is primarily based on enthusiasm for the genre both dismissed and loved as "Eurotrash".

A spiritualist, Claire Grandier, blames the Duke of Haussemont for the suicide of her husband. She accepts the invitation to one of the Duke's parties as part of her scheme for revenge. With Grandier is the scientist, Romain Gruber, who specializes in mental telepathy. The guests at the party are part of what use to be known as "the jet set". Grandier holds a seance where the lights suddenly go out, but that's far less horrifying than the fashion show beforehand featuring garishly ugly bell bottom jumpsuits. The two become houseguests of the Duke. The reanimation of a bald, facially scarred corpse is only the beginning of their havoc.

Jordi Gigo appears to have taken various elements from horror movies almost at random, to form an incoherent mix. I bet you didn't know that zombies could be stopped by the sight of a crucifix? The blu-ray comes with both the English and French language dubbed tracks, but neither makes a difference in any added nuances. The expository dialogue is dull enough to make one long for the inane prose of Ed Wood, Jr. The cast is made up of primarily secondary Eurocine contract players Silvia Solar, Olivier Mathot and Evelyne Scott. Were it available online, I would love to read what horror film historian Stephen Thrower has written that might cast a brighter light on Devil's Kiss. As it is, the critical consensus is that this is cinema audit, loved by the most dedicated genre aficionados. You can't totally hate a film with the line, "No one will notice an additional grave in a cemetery."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:20 AM

May 28, 2019

The Nun

Suzanne Simonin, la Religieuse de Denis Diderot
Jacques Rivette - 1965
Kino Classics BD Region A

I'm not sure if I'm able to really write about The Nun in any meaningful way. While I have seen a good number of films by Jacques Rivette, I feel inarticulate. The blu-ray comes with an essay by Dennis Lim and a commentary track by Nick Pinkerton, and both can discuss the film in ways that will make what ever I have to say look like a junior high school essay next to doctoral dissertations.

Adapted from the 18th Century novel by Denis Diderot, The Nun is a fictional story inspired by a couple of real life nuns. Suzanne Simonin, a young woman about sixteen years old, is forced by her parents to become a nun for economic reasons. Although she does not feel she has "the calling", Suzanne attempts to go through the motions, cast aside by her parents who view her as a burden. The physical abuse experienced at one convent is replaced by the emotional abuse in a second convent. Suzanne, who admits to knowing nothing about the outside world, is the victim of more abuse outside the convent.

While much of the discussion regarding The Nun has been about its presentation of aspects of the Catholic Church, the film is also about the circumscribed roles of women. Suzanne is denied the opportunity to marry or stay at home, and her place as a nun is to be permanent, unlike some girls around her age. Outside of the church, Suzanne does menial labor, is reduced to begging on the street, and finally is groomed to be a high-class prostitute. Unlike Candide, Suzanne's innocence about the world destroys her. Just as in marriage at that time, being a bride of Christ involves a dowry. Suzanne's tragedy is not only about her inability to find her place in the world, but her destiny tied to her monetary value.

Most of the film takes place inside the two convents. The walls of the first convent are a dark blue-gray, the second convent is a lighter shade. The nuns' habits are also dark blue and gray. The Nun has been noted as being Rivette's most formal film, several critics have used the word "austere". The screenplay originated from a play by Jean Grault, staged by Rivette, also with Anna Karina in the title role, in 1963. Most of the film is composed as a series of traveling shots of the actors and their immediate environment. One of the other visual motifs repeated is the use of bars whether to separate the nuns from visitors, or as part of the confessional. That there is an unforced parallel between convents and prisons is part of the greater theme of the characters being imprisoned by roles chosen if not imposed on them. There is also the indirect hint of future Riviette films centered on women who have taken to road trips or fantasy escapes.

The blu-ray also contains a short documentary featuring Anna Karina and the lawyer for producer Georges De Beauregard discussing the production, and the temporary ban that prevented the release of The Nun. The blu-ray was taken from the recent 4K restoration, itself made from the film's original negative.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 AM

May 21, 2019

Robbery

Peter Yates - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago when I wrote about The Man who Haunted Himself, I've been watching the old British television series, "The Saint". One of the first episodes where a car chase through London was prominently featured was directed by Peter Yates. I don't know how directorial assignments were allocated but Yates did seem to get at least one more opportunity to film a car chase as part of the the seven episodes he helmed. While the information available does not go into further detail, articles about Yates also mention that he spent some time in the 1960s as a manager for race car champion Stirling Moss, as well as being a race car driver as well.

While the car chase at the beginning of Robbery deserves acclaim, the opening set-up is notable as well. The term "Hitchcockian" has been bandied about pretty much casually, and usually by people who act as if Hitchcock's career more or less began and ended with Psycho. The scene is a good illustration of Hitchcock's explanation of the difference between suspense and surprise. An apparently wealthy man and his chauffeur leave the car parked on the street. Another man is able to get into the car long enough to plant some kind of device with timer. We don't know what kind of device this is exactly. But we follow the car with device and the men who are following that car. Yates cuts between the followers, the followed, and the timer, and wristwatches. The suspense comes from both not knowing when the device will go off, and what kind of damage will occur.

Those first eleven minutes also alternate with overhead crane shots indicating the position of cars and their respective locations, and cramped interior shots within the respective cars while they are traveling. The fabled car chase lasts about six minutes, with the focus shifting to the pursuit by police cars of a trio of criminals. Most of the shots are briefer in length, with a notable exception being a shot taken from inside the criminal gangs car, driving past a policeman, and getting the windshield window smashed in the process. It is only near the end of the chase, when a group of school children are nearly hit, that the images become a visual jumble, a quick montage of confusion. With a bigger budget, Yates was able to build on this for Bullitt made the following year, which in turn inspired William Friedkin's The French Connection.

The robbery of the title was inspired by "The Great Train Robbery" that took place in Britain in 1963. The characters are fictional. The staging of the robbery was taken from official records. Approximately 2.6 million British pounds in cash, was taken, roughly 7 million U.S. dollars at that time. Most of the film is about the cops and criminals. The only characters who are given a domestic life are the gang leader, Paul Clifton, and a former banker enlisted in the heist, Robinson. Clifton gives advance notice to his wife that he may not return home after the robbery. Robinson's insistence on contacting his wife is his undoing.

Stanley Baker, at the time a major British star notable for his tough guy roles, plays Clifton. At the time Clifton states that he refuses to be imprisoned again, Clifton appeared for me as an extension of the character Baker played in The Criminal (1960), albeit one who is a bit more polished. Even though Baker was also the producer, his performance here is almost as part of an ensemble. This is especially marked in a scene where the leading gang members meet during a soccer game. They are filmed primarily as a group conversing with each other during the game, with Baker in the back, given minimal visual emphasis. Of the cast, the only others with name recognition are character actor Frank Finlay as Robinson, and Barry Foster, better known for his turn in Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy.

Nick Pinkerton's commentary track provides details on the cars used in the film's opening, the various locations, and discussions on Yates, Baker and other cast member, as well as cinematographer Douglas Slocombe, editor Reginald Beck, and film score composer Johnny Keating. While I do agree with the assessment of Peter Yates as being inconsistent, especially in the latter part of his career, I think there is more to appreciate than Robbery, Bullitt and The Friends of Eddie Coyle. While Breaking Away was their only critical and commercial success of three films, Yates' collaboration with playwright Steve Tesich is worthy of more serious exploration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:32 AM

May 07, 2019

The Grand Duel

Il Grande Duello / The Big Showdown
Giancarlo Santi - 1972
Arrow Video BD Region A

The booklet that accompanies Arrow's new blu-ray of The Grand Duel includes excerpts of reviews from the Italian press at the time of the film's initial release. What was essentially written off as a derivative imitation of Sergio Leone was included as part of a retrospective of Italian westerns at the Venice Film Festival in 2007. The influence of Leone is hard to miss, especially the series of close-ups of the eyes of Lee Van Cleef and his adversaries in the final shootout. And if the main narrative is not original, that's true of many many films, perhaps more so in genre films such as westerns and horror films, but also someone like the contemporary Hong Sangsoo, whose films frequently follow a similar template.

The Grand Duel was produced at the time when the commercial viability of the Italian western had plateaued. That the film was modestly profitable was primarily due to international pre-sales on the strength of Van Cleef's name. Santi's film did not get a stateside release until 1974. The visual influence of Leone was not simple imitation as Santi had previously worked as an assistant director to the master on The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time . . . in the West. Leone thought enough of Santi to originally appoint him as director of Duck, You Sucker! until Rod Steiger insisted on only making the film with Leone as director. The screenplay is by the prolific Ernest Gastaldi, who also wrote the Leone produced comic western, My Name is Nobody, one of the last commercially successful films of the genre.

The main narrative threads are familiar. Sons avenging the deaths of their respective fathers, an innocent man on the run following being framed for murder, a town held in the grips of corrupt businessmen, and a lawman working outside the law. As is pointed out by film historian Stephen Prince in his commentary track, that the story hinges on the memory of a murder connects Santi's film also to Leone's, but also to John Ford's The Man who Shot Liberty Valance in that the viewer sees two different versions of the same incident. I would also add to that a connection to the gialli written by Gastaldi, where there are false or imagined memories. It is not made clear by any of the supplements as to who decided that the flashback sequences should be in black and white, but the fog created by the steam of a waiting train, and the unknown killer seen as an inky black silhouette, both visually seem closer to a horror movie than a western.

There is one remarkable moment when the escaped convict, Vermeer, is suppose to be ambushed by bounty hunters. Van Cleef's character of Clayton takes a stroll around the one-horse town, leaving casual visual hints for Vermeer revealing where the bounty hunters are hidden. This is followed by a series of gunshots and acrobatic leaps on the part of Vermeer, precisely timed and edited by Roberto Perpignani. It's only a handful of shots that lasts a few seconds of screen time. Perpignani's reputation at the time mainly rested on his work with Bernardo Bertolucci, but his work on The Grand Duel should be studied for how to logically edit action sequences.

Stephen Prince is a still active professor at Virginia Tech and his commentary track reflects that, not only discussing the making of The Grand Duel, and that film's relationship to Italian westerns and westerns in general, but also going into film theory, primarily with the visual elements of lighting and framing. I was reminded of my days as a formal Cinema Studies student in a good way. There may be an intellectual heft that usually is absent from most commentary tracks, but I'll take this over the improvised slop that accompanies some home video releases.

The other supplements include an interview with Giancarlo Santi, interviews with Alberto Dentice - the former actor who played Vermeer credited as Peter O'Brien, one of the producers, an uncredited production assistant, a short film with supporting actor Marc Mazza, and a tribute as well to Mazza. Also, Austin Fisher, who has written extensively on Italian westerns, offers his thoughts on The Grand Duel. And if that wasn't enough, there is also a comparison of scenes that are slightly different in the German version of the film. The film, as usual for its time, was completely dubbed after production, but that is definitely Lee Van Cleef in the English language version. I do recommend seeing the Italian version at least for the visually interesting titles that float horizontally from right to left across the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:32 AM

May 01, 2019

The Man who Haunted Himself

Basil Dearden - 1970
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I'm so old, I remember when Roger Moore was a contract player at Warner Brothers, first as the British cousin Beau Maverick in the television series, Maverick. Moore made more of an impression on me later, when his series, The Saint aired in the mid-Sixties, although I was an inconsistent viewer at the time. More recently, I've been watching The Saint in chronological order. Maybe it's television comfort food, but I enjoy the fourth wall introductions as well as seeing guest stars like the still relatively unknown Julie Christie and Samantha Eggar.

The Man who Haunted Himself was made during the time between the series end of The Saint and Moore's taking on the role of James Bond in Live and Let Die. Moore has described his role as his favorite. Moore plays a businessman, Pelham, who survives an accident when he loses control of his car, and for a few moments is clinically dead on the operating table. Pelham comes across people who claim to have seen him him at places and times he does not recall. The conservative and meticulous Pelham has a double who is a bon vivant, not only disrupting Pelham's life, but eventually taking over. While the film is based on a novel, The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham, the essential plot device has its roots in earlier literary works as Poe's "William Wilson" and Dostoevsky's The Double. Basil Dearden's film is primarily of interest due to Moore's performance which might be described as the "anti-Saint".

Unlike the better known roles, Moore as Pelham has a mustache, wears a dark business suit with a derby, a stiff collar, and class tie. Moore's British accent is more noticeable, with a slight change of timbre when he appears as the double. Moore also has a range of facial expressions with the uncertainty of the disoriented Pelham, and devilish glee as the double. James Bond and Simon Templar never were seen sweating as Pelham does knowing his life is out of control.

The blu-ray comes with two supplements ported over from an earlier DVD release from 2006. The first is a commentary track by Moore with Bryan Forbes. Forbes was very briefly in charge of production for EMI Films between 1970 and 1971, and did some polishing on the screenplay. The other supplement has directors Joe Dante and Stuart Gordon discussing the film. And I would advise anyone watching that part to take it with a grain of salt, or better yet, a full shaker. The source novel by Anthony Armstrong was previously filmed as an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1955. Someone decided that Basil Dearden's film could only be discussed as some kind of Hitchcockian exercise, with Dearden only referred to once by Dante and not even by name.

Basil Dearden might not be as well known or respected on the same level as Alfred Hitchcock, but he should have been given a bit more consideration. Not known for his visual style, Dearden has earned critical respect for several of his films, especially those from the late 1950s through early 1960s that dealt with social issues. The Man who Haunted Himself fits in thematically with Dearden's previous films regarding dual identity, though this time as a psychological thriller. In some ways I find it similar to one of Dearden's best films, The Captive Heart (1946). In the earlier film, which takes place in Germany in World War II, an escaped Czech officer takes on the identity of a dead British officer. Captured, and taken to a P.O.W. camp, the officer has to continue pretending he is the British officer, going so far as to exchange letters with the dead officer's wife, she not knowing her husband is dead, and he not knowing that the two were estranged. The pretend husband shows more affection in the letters and as such becomes the ideal husband. When the Czech officer reveals himself to the widow after the war, after her initial shock, the husband by correspondence becomes the husband in real life. Other Dearden films notable for exploring identity include Sapphire, a police investigation of the death of a bi-racial woman, Victim, about a closeted gay lawyer, and the wonderfully titled The Mind Benders, about a scientist suspected of being a double agent. At least Moore and Forbes know to give credit where credit is due, to Dearden and his producing and writing partner, Michael Relph.

Some of the commentary track is devoted to the making of The Man who Haunted Himself. Moore also talks a bit about working with Dearden on the television series, The Persuaders, as well as his role as James Bond. One bit of coincidence has Pelham mentioning James Bond and "Her Majesty's Secret Service". Forbes talks about his attempt to produce modestly budgeted films for EMI, only to be frustrated by bad distribution and battles with the corporate board. Among the more acclaimed films that Forbes was able to produce was Joseph Losey's The Go-Between. Among the unrealized productions would have included a return to British film by Michael Powell. The Man who Haunted Himself was a box office failure in Britain, with a perfunctory release by a small independent company in the U.S. Dearden worked with Moore in 1971 on three episodes of The Persuaders. In a cruelly ironic twist in 1971, Dearden himself died in an automobile accident at nearly the same location where he had staged Moore's car going out of control.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

April 23, 2019

Shooting Stars

Anthony Asquith and A.V. Bramble - 1928
Kino Classics BD Region A

Maybe it was impact of The Jazz Singer the year before, but 1928 saw the release of some films that looked at what would be the last year of silent films in Hollywood and Britain. Hollywood had King Vidor's Show People and Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command. From Britain, we have the fully restored Shooting Stars, about a love triangle in a fictional studio, that also provided a "behind the scenes" look at how films were produced.

As was pointed out by Pamela Hutchinson in her review for The Guardian, the fictional Zenith studio is seen producing a western and a Mack Sennett style slapstick comedy. Neither genres were made by the real British studios of the time. The western, titled Prairie Love features Zenith's biggest star, Mae Fether, resembling Mary Pickford with her long, blonde tresses. Julian Gordon, in cowboy gear, is reminiscent of Tom Mix, a point brought home when it is revealed that the unseen horse he is seen riding is actually a large wooded hobby horse with the name Tony scratched on its side. Mae and Julian are married, but Mae is in love with Andy Wilkes, a goofy, Chaplinesque would-be lover on screen, and a sophisticated man in private.

The credits for Shooting Stars are a bit confusing and required a little bit of research. The original credits list the film as "by Anthony Asquith", but list A.V. Bramble as the director. Bramble was an actor turned director, whose first directorial credit was in 1917. He directed his last film in 1933, and returned to stage work, save for a supporting role in Carol Reed's Outcasts of the Island. Most of Bramble's work has been lost, but it could be that he could well have been a significant pioneer of the silent era. Essentially, Bramble was the on set supervisor, insurance for having the actual direction done by the novice Asquith. According to historian Peter Cowie, Asquith was also was the film's editor.

Asquith's best known silent film is A Cottage on Dartmoor, considered by some critics to be one of the best British silent films. Asquith, a cinephile before that term was invented, was noted for his use of Russian inspired montage in his silent films. There is some of early experimentation here, with a bicycle stunt gone wrong, Asquith cutting between shots of the stuntman rolling downhill, and brief, handheld shots of the rider and the other cast and crew members on the beach. Also reworked in A Cottage on Dartmoor are a couple of scenes with the use of mirrors, and also a scene of characters watching a movie in a theater.

What I had not expected from any films I've seen by Asquith was the use of extended takes emphasizing the unity of a given space. There is an overhead shot of Mae in the studio walking from her mock western set up a flight of stairs, to an open second floor where Andy Wilkes is filming his comedy. The camera follows Mae from a distance tilting up as she ascends the stairs, followed by laterally traveling the length of the second floor. The final shot is static, save for Mae walking away from the camera, diminishing in size as the studio is an overwhelmingly large and dark cavern. That final shot is a masterpiece in the use of depth of field.

The blu-ray is the restored version from the British Film Institute. Included is the BFI commissioned music track by John Altman. The publicity materials that serve as an extra on the blu-ray indicated that Annette Benson was the star, with her name in larger type than that of Brian Aherne and Donald Calthrop. The brevity of Benson's stardom is inadvertently anticipated, as her career ended shortly after the silent era ended. Donald Calthrop was almost as unlucky as Andy Wilkes when a dressing room accident almost ended his career. The name might not be remembered, but Calthrop appeared in five films by Alfred Hitchcock. Second billed Brian Aherne made two films with Anthony Asquith, and shortly afterwards made his way to Hollywood and a lengthy career on stage and screen. Aherne may not have ruled as studio set like Julian Gordon, actor turned director at the end of Shooting Stars, but as King Arthur, Aherne did get two opportunities to be the king of England.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:04 AM

April 15, 2019

Fantomas: Three Film Collection

Fantomas
Andre Hunebelle - 1964

Fantomas Unleashed / Fantomas se dechaine
Andre Hunebelle - 1965

Fantomas vs. Scotland Yard / Fantomas contre Scotland-Yard
Andre Hunebelle - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD two-disc set Region A

I can't quite explain it, but for myself, these three films from the 1960s feel more dated than the classic French 1913 serial by Louis Feuillade. The original character was introduced by writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre in 1911 in a total of forty-three volumes. A criminal genius, Fantomas was the master of disguise, and had outlandish means at his disposal of committing his crimes. His goal was world domination. Fantomas battles the police inspector Juve and journalist Fandor. The three films here comprise the most recent theatrical version inspired by the books and silent serial. What is of interest to me is the way the films were made as a French response to the popularity of the James Bond films, and the ways the three entries differ from each other.

The three films are generally much lighter than the serial, with more comic moments. For all of his supposed villainy, this Fantomas most revels in acts of anarchy and thumbing his nose at the rich and powerful. He is introduced in the guise of a British lord shopping for jewelry at Van Cleef and Arpels in Paris, buying various diamond necklaces with the casualness of someone picking up groceries at 7-11. The purchase turns out to be theft as the check is written with disappearing ink. A group gathered in front of a store watch the wall full of televisions, all with Commissioner Juve declaring his intention to arrest Fantomas. Someone, Fantomas or one his his henchmen, tosses some dynamite through the shop window. I would think that for the average Parisian, Fantomas might be more of an annoyance than a threat.

In addition to all three films directed by Andre Hunebelle, there is Jean Marais in the double role of Fantomas and Fandor, Mylene Demongeot supplying the eye candy as Helene, news photographer and perpetual fiancee of Fandor's, and comic Louis de Funes as Juve. Marais, who was well into his forties when he became an action star in French movies, was 51 at the time of the first film. De Funes, who actually was a year younger, but looked older, was an established supporting actor at the time of production, becoming a major star with the release of one of his other films prior to the second Fantomas film. Between the physical demands of the roles played by Marais, and de Funes ascending stardom, the three films show a distinct shift in emphasis between the two actors, as well as a diminishing presence of Demongeot.

There are various set pieces that stand out, especially considering that the films were made without the use of CGI. Especially noteworthy is that Jean Marais did much of his own stunt work, especially in the first film. At one point, Marais is walking across the top of a very high crane, and climbs up the ladder from a helicopter, whisking him away from de Funes. The shot was done in a long single take which shows a bit of bravery or foolishness or both on the part of Marais. There must of been some well hidden safety devices used as one of Thailand's top action stars died doing a similar stunt because he was unable to hang on to the airborne ladder.

There is also a chase through a narrow winding road, with Marais and Demongeot going downhill fast in a car lacking brakes or a working transmission. As soon as I saw the car rolling sideways on two wheels, I assumed this was the work of stunt driver Remy Julienne. As it turns out, this is where Julienne's film career began.

The first film's comic highlight has de Funes plugging his ears, blocking out all noise for a night's restful sleep. He is woken by his none-too-bright assistant played by Jacques Dynam, who is seen from de Funes' point of view, miming getting an emergency call about Fantomas' most recent crime. The sound in the film is restored when de Funes removes his ear plugs. The second film features an amusing animated credit sequence which essentially covers the key moments of the first film. There is confusion taking place in Rome, with Fandor and Fantomas both disguises as a scientist, with the real scientist unexpectedly showing up. At a costume party, de Funes dresses up as a pirate with an eyepatch that won't stay down and peg leg that may well have inspired Quentin Tarantino. The third film mostly showcases the perpetually exasperated de Funes and clueless sidekick Dynam in a supposed haunted Scottish castle. Fantomas threatens to kill everyone on earth and move to another planet, but settles for scamming a dozen of the world's wealthiest people for a few million dollars.

The first disc is the first Fantomas film, with a commentary track by Tim Lucas. The history of the character is discussed along with notes on the film, the stars, locations, some of the crew members, and a couple of points on the two sequels. As usual, Lucas is able to add to previously known information regarding the films and filmmakers. This is especially helpful as only the first film received a limited release in the United States, while this is the first legitimate stateside release of the sequels. Lucas is right about cautioning viewers not to take anything that happens in these films seriously. The films also provide a reminder that while French cinema of the 1960s is often thought of in terms of the Nouvelle Vague and Left Bank filmmakers, the Fantomas series represent the kind of films that most French viewers were watching.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:09 AM

April 11, 2019

Phantom Lady

Robert Siodmak - 1944
Arrow Films BD Region A

Phantom Lady is about a married guy who walks out on his wife and into a bar. He meets a woman with an unusual looking feathered hat. The woman, for her own reasons, is also unhappy. She agrees to go with the man to a Broadway show that night on the the condition that the two remain anonymous. Following the show, the man leaves the woman at the bar where they met. When he goes home, the man is met by detectives in his apartment. The man's wife is dead, strangled with one of the man's ties. The evidence is that the man murdered his wife, and all the potential witnesses claim that the woman with the hat never existed.

For me, the real Phantom Lady was the producer of the film, Joan Harrison. Some of my thoughts are speculation on my part due to lack of immediate documentation on how much of a hand Harrison had in the making of the film aside from the good sense to hire Robert Siodmak, setting the course for him to follow up Son of Dracula with a modestly budgeted film that led to more prestigious productions. The blu-ray release is my first time seeing Phantom Lady since it was broadcast about twenty years ago on the American Movie Classics cable channel. Bob Dorian, the host, had discussed how Joan Harrison had been able to go from being an assistant to Alfred Hitchcock to being a producer on her own. There are a couple of reasons why I think Harrison had a more active hand in the production here. For Hitchcock, Harrison had worked, sometimes without credit, on the screenplays. Amazingly, she was nominated twice for the 1941 Oscar for her hand in Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca. Harrison could well have had input in the screenplay for Phantom Lady. Also, the source novel is by Cornell Woolrich under the pseudonym of William Irish. Part of Harrison's work for Hitchcock involved reading novels and providing synopses for potential films. One episode from the television series, "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" is from a Woolrich short story, as was the Hitchcock film, Rear Window.

Not having read Woolrich's novel, I have no idea how close the characters are as realized in the film. What struck me, and I may be on my own on this, is that Harrison split the character of Guy Curzon from Hitchcock's Young and Innocent into a manic drummer and the murderous artist with the twitch in his eyes. Cliff, the drummer, who performs with the Broadway show orchestra, seems as easily distracted as Curzon, albeit due to his paying more attention to the women in the audience than to the conductor. As his identity is more likely to be revealed, the killer in Phantom Lady more frequently covers his eyes, literal and metaphorical light become brighter.

Phantom Lady is rightly celebrated for a brief scene of a jazz band playing in some barely lit hidey hole. Zoot suited Elisha Cook, Jr. asks Ella Raines if she jives. Raines, uncomfortably dressed as slatternly as possible declares herself a "hep kitten". This is followed by the scene of Cook sitting in with a group of jazz musicians, filmed primarily in tight closeups of the musicians, extreme angles and a sense of claustrophobia. Cook's drumming, dubbed by Dave Coleman, is furious, a storm of percussion. The scene may well be Robert Siodmak at his most expressionistic.

One of my favorite moments is a shot of fall guy Alan Curtis grilled by detective Regis Toomey, underneath a large full-sized portrait of Curtis' dead wife. Curtis' wealth and taste are as meaningless as his alibi. Underneath some flashes of mock sympathy, Toomey's look is of someone who has no problem telling Curtis he's guilty of murder. Being a film of its time, the detectives all but call Curtis a cuck.

The blu-ray comes with the radio version of Phantom Lady with Curtis and Raines. There is also an older documentary, Dark and Deadly: Fifty Years of Film Noir that appears to have been made for television. Clips from older films, notably Murder, My Sweet and several neo-noirs such as The Last Seduction and One False Move are featured with comments by Robert Wise, Edward Dmytryk, B. Ruby Rich, Dennis Hopper and John Alton. I would have preferred more Wise, Dmytryk and Alton for a better sense of making the films at the time before they were identified as film noir.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:24 AM

April 09, 2019

The Iguana with a Tongue on Fire

L'iguana dalla lingua di fuoco
Riccardo Freda - 1971
Arrow Films BD Region A

This may well be the first time where some of the people commissioned by Arrow Films are virtually reduced to back-handed compliments. To put it another way, The Iguana with a Tongue on Fire a film will be appreciated primarily by genre enthusiasts, Freda completists and a few film scholars. The more casual viewer may be left wondering what the fuss is about with this relatively obscure work, from an Italian filmmaker best known for a handful of horror films.

The film could well be retitled, "Fish market full of red herrings". The camera zooms in on a pair of sunglasses worn by several characters, as well as a straight razor that shows up unexpectedly, accompanied by a metallic sounding musical queue. And yet, neither of these supposed clues lead to the identity of the killer. The title refers to a police inspector's convoluted description of the killer as an animal that can camouflage himself in his surroundings, seemingly harmless, but with a "tongue of fire", although that would more accurately refer to a chameleon. Riccardo Freda co-wrote and co-edited the film, and disappointed with the results, credited himself with the pseudonym of Willy Pareto. Beyond his wishing that Roger Moore had starred as a rogue detective, I have no idea what Freda was hoping to achieve. What we have is a maddening mix of craftsmanship and slapdash.

Did Freda, with writer Sandro Continenzo, simply make things up as they went along? We know that the alleged literary source, a novel called A Room without a Door, does not exist. The basic story about a serial killer who tosses acid in women's faces before slashing their throats, did not have to take place in Dublin. It could well be that the entire production was just a pretext for Freda to indulge in some international travel. The problem with Iguana is that there are just so many moments that even for a genre film do not make sense. A schoolboy opens the trunk of a car, revealing the maimed corpse of a woman. His response is to look blankly at the body, and then glance a crow flying near the roof of his house. A doctor offers help when a second victim is found murdered in a nightclub. The nightclub proprietor tells the doctor his help is not needed, only to immediately invite the doctor to investigate. A woman is lying in a bathtub with her throat cut, but no one is in a rush to get her out of the tub or call a doctor. That the film can be accused of casual misogyny, racism and homophobia is the least of this film's problems. The unnecessary reference to Swastika Laundry seems especially thoughtless.

Freda seems to care more about what he's doing with the brief scenes featuring Valentina Cortese. Expressively using her eyes and hands, Cortese is able to tell us all that's needed about her character, the lonely wife of ambassador Anton Diffring. Freda frames the shots to Cortese's advantage, the best of which is a two-shot of Cortese with Diffring seen as the reflection on a mirror, with the camera moving away from Cortese to a close-up of Diffring. There are lyrical shots along a rocky coast, with Luigi Pistelli, the rogue detective, and Dagmar Lassander, the ambassador's daughter. Pistelli has his hands around Lassander's throat as if to choke her, right before kissing her, somewhat suggestive of Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Hitchcock's Suspicion. A later moment of Lassander holding on to the edge of a drawbridge recalls James Stewart in Vertigo. Freda also included several Irish actors in the cast, notably the frog-like Arthur O'Sullivan as the police inspector, Niall Toibin as a creepy doctor, and Ruth Durley as Pistelli's mother, hard of hearing, with failing eyesight, who turns out to be a better detective than her son.

Of the blu-ray extras, the commentary track by Adrian Smith and David Flint, described by Arrow as "giallo connoisseurs" is essentially amusing banter between friends. More informative is the discussion of the film by the estimable film scholar Richard Dyer. One little bit of information that Dyer brings is that it is singer/composer Nora Orlandi who provides the vocal work during the opening credits. Musicologist Lovely Jon goes into detail regarding the career of composer Stelvio Cipriani, whose score for this film provides much of the heavy lifting. Film editor Bruno Micheli discusses his career, mentioning that there were versions of Iguana that included pornographic inserts. Dagmar Lassander talks about her career with several minutes devoted to the production of Iguana. The source 35mm negative appears to have been preserved in perfect condition.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM

March 19, 2019

The Tarnished Angels

Douglas Sirk - 1957
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

At first glance, it might seem that the combination of producer Albert Zugsmith and director Douglas Sirk would be wholly incompatible. As one of Universal-International's house producers in the mid-Fifties, Zugsmith shepherded films with such lurid titles as Female on the Beach, The Tattered Dress and The Girl in the Kremlin. Sirk was known for the glossy melodramas produced by Ross Hunter, frequently starring Rock Hudson. With their two collaborations, Written on the Wind being the first, Sirk gave Zugsmith class, and an Oscar winning performance from Dorothy Malone. Zugsmith gave Sirk the support and freedom to make more adult films within the confines of the still extant production code.

Watching Dorothy Malone in The Tarnished Angels, and the combination of Zugsmith and Sirk, I thought about the scene at the Cinecitta screening room in Godard's Contempt and the film within the film. Fritz Lang is making a serious film about Greco-Roman gods. As far as the producer, played by Jack Palance, is concerned, Lang is making an arty film with scantily clad women. Malone was aware of how she was being used by both Sirk and Zugsmith. As LaVerne Schumann, Malone plays a woman who allows herself to be exploited by her husband, a former World War I ace pilot, now part of a traveling Depression era airshow. The first time we see Malone, the wind from an airplane propellor pushes the thin fabric of her white dress against the contours of her body. The outline of her panties are visible at one point. Later, Malone performs a stunt jumping from a plane, again wearing that thin, white dress. Malone's dress flutters up, while she is parachuting down, much to the delight of the male spectators at the air show, and presumably the male viewers of the film. Whether this is a critique or celebration of the male gaze may be up to debate.

The film was one of Douglas Sirk's most personal films. Having accrued enough success as a contract director at Universal-International, Sirk was able to adapt William Faulkner's novel, Pylon. The story is about a group of itinerant "barnstormers", pilots who performed races and stunts around the United States. A reporter sees a story about these people he describes as gypsies and becomes involved with them. Faulkner's original novel took place in a fictional city, with LaVerne in an active relationship with her husband and another stunt performer, with the paternity of LaVerne's son in question. The film takes place in New Orleans rather than "New Valois", and one character eliminated, and a careful use of dialogue required. Like other filmed adaptations of Faulkner that appeared in the mid-Fifties, there was a bit of work done to make the film pass the production code. In spite of the changes, this was the one filmed version of a Faulkner novel that the author liked best of those made during his lifetime.

While Malone always looks great, though LaVerne is a masochist, thanklessly in love with a man she idolized as young farm girl. The men in The Tarnished Angels are all seriously flawed, and this may explain in part why the film was not successful commercially in spite of the cast. Rock Hudson, as the reporter, is constantly disheveled, uncombed, occasionally drunk and unshaved. Hudson wanted to play against type, much to the horror of the studio suits. As was confirmed with Seconds, Rock Hudson was only popular with audiences when he played Rock Hudson, not a guy who finds that good intentions are not enough. Robert Stack's Roger Schumann is emotionally remote, addicted to the thrill of flying. Previously known for playing likable if not trustworthy sidekicks, Jack Carson as Jiggs portrays a mechanic who lives in the shadow of Roger, wishing for some reflected glory.

Of course the CinemaScope frame was invented to film Dorothy Malone lounging lengthwise on a couch. What many contemporary filmmakers can learn from Sirk is the idea of spatial unity. Almost every shot is of two or more of the characters sharing the space within the frame, the camera frequently gliding around often in a partial circle. When the character is isolated visually, it is there as a kind of punctuation to a scene, or is dictated by the narrative. The most significant example is when Sirk cuts between shots of Schumann losing control of his plane during a race, and his son, on an airplane kiddie ride, trapped and helpless, watching his father's plane on fire, both father and son seen behind their respective cages.

I have yet to hear a disappointing commentary track from historian Imogen Sara Smith. Aside from adding to the already available information about Sirk, Zugsmith and the cast, Smith also allows for spaces within the commentary to allow the viewer to hear the dialogue of a couple of choice scenes. Now that Kino Lorber has added films from Universal to their catalogue, I would hope that more films from Sirk and Zugsmith will be available. On my wish list is the Zugsmith produced waterfront drama, Slaughter on Tenth Avenue.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:11 AM

March 05, 2019

Monsieur & Madame Adelman

Nicolas Bedos - 2017
Icarus Home Video Region 1 DVD

In one of the scenes taking place in the early years of their relationship, Victor and Sarah Adelman go to the movies. A very quick glance on the theater marquee indicates that they are seeing "a film by Woody Allen". No title is seen, but that isn't necessary. But there are a variety of connections to be made here, some similarities as well as differences. There is more here than the critical regard by the French for Allen's films.

Like many of Allen's films, Monsieur & Madame Adelman centers on a relationship between and a woman, as well as sense of identity in terms of being Jewish and as part of the general culture of the time. Unlike Allen's films, being Jewish is not something played down or the subject of stereotypical humor. There's also the occasional literary name-dropping in an Allen film, but it's featherweight compared to the discussions between the characters here. In a Hollywood film, even an independent production, if the character in question is suppose to be a writer, all that's expected is to have a scene with someone hunched over a keyboard tapping away. Some viewers may well be unprepared for a film where literature takes on some of the kind of importance some have for professional sports, whether it's debating who is worthy of the Prix Goncourt, or hoping one's daughter becomes the next Francoise Sagan.

The couple in question are a graduate student of literature and a struggling would-be author who meet in a dive one night in 1971. Sarah is attracted to Victor. She's a bit gawky, he's very drunk. Their one-night stand ends with Victor passing out in bed, while Sarah takes a red marker to Victor's recently rejected manuscript. They meet again by chance a few years later, the real beginning of their relationship. Victor meets Sarah's parents over dinner. Spotting a novel by Philip Roth, Victor is introduced to modern Jewish literature by Sarah's father, whose library includes Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow. A different kind of literature is introduced to Victor which in turn inspires his writing. The Christian Victor decides he is actually Jewish and takes on his then fiancee's family name.

Bedos and Doria Tillier wrote the screenplay as well as taking the title roles. In keeping with the literary aspects of the story, the film plays with the concept of the unreliable narrator. Most of the film is of the couple from 1971 through Victor's death in 2016, as told by Sarah to a young man, a would-be biographer looking for a different angle on the life of Victor. The narrative is bookended by scenes of Victor's funeral. Some of the comedy comes from the discrepancy between what Sarah describes and what we see on the screen. As a counterpoint to the ups and downs of the marriage, we see glimpses of television news indicating the various changes in the French government. There are also questions of Victor's career as a best-selling author, with novels that are thinly disguised biography and autobiography.

Monsieur & Madame Adelman was Nicolas Bedos' feature directorial debut, following several years of writing and acting. The film was a nominee for Best First Feature for the 2018 Cesar Awards, the French equivalent to the Oscars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM

February 26, 2019

Desert Fury

Lewis Allen - 1947
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

From the New York Times, September 25, 1947 - " . . . Desert Fury is such an incredibly bad picture in all respects save one, and that is photographically." I usually don't gush over the digital conversion of older films, but Desert Fury had me with the first close-up of Lizabeth Scott and her liquid red lips in glorious, old-fashioned Technicolor. Setting aside the story and any other concerns, one glimpse of those lips is enough justification for why blu-ray was invented. The source print was in pristine condition, and the digital rendition appears to be faithful to how the film was seen theatrically by viewers seventy years ago.

It's not just Scott's lips. There's an exterior shot of a mansion, far enough to see the entire building, where the sense of detail is such that individual leaves could be counted. Also the strands of Lizabeth Scott's hair, the sharpness of the combed part on John Hodiak, and the barely perceptible beads of sweat on Wendell Corey's forehead. The interior of the mansion is a blue-gray shade, making it easy to draw attention to anything worn by Scott or Mary Astor. In one nighttime scene, Scott blends in with her dark bedroom, except for this pink hairpin that is impossible to ignore. The combination of these visual bits of business help make the story one that can be disregarded.

The source novel is titled, Desert Town. Location shooting in Arizona was used for the fictional town of Chuckawalla, Nevada. Two gangsters, Eddie Bendix and Johnny Ryan are driving into this small town for vaguely hinted at reasons. Stopping in front of the narrow bridge, which figures more prominently in the story, they temporarily block Paula Haller. Paula just dropped out of college, and wants to work for her mother, Fritzi, who runs the popular Purple Sage casino. Deputy sheriff Tom Hanson is in love with Paula, and knows a thing or two about Eddie Bendix. Almost everybody seems to be running away from their respective pasts. There are no ellipsis, but the in almost every scene that would normally explain motivations and relationship, there are interruptions with incomplete or unstated thought.

In the commentary track, Imogen Sara Smith discusses why Desert Fury can be considered film noir. The New York Times review categorized the film as a modern western. Some might even consider the film as strictly melodrama. There is none of the visual stylization usually associated with film noir. The exception to that would be in a rather unusually composed shot. Lizabeth Scott is having a conversation with Wendell Corey, while Corey is doing some minor car repair. Following a conventional full shot of the two actors in the frame, Lewis Allen cuts to an upward angled two-shot with the faces of Scott on the left, and Corey on the right, filling the frame. In a later scene, John Hodiak and Corey have a shoot-out inside a cafe. There is a shot of Hodiak facing the camera, gun in hand. The lights behind Hodiak go dark, but there is no explanation as to the change of lighting, suggesting this was simply for dramatic effect.

Desert Fury has developed a reputation over the decades for what has been read as gay subtext. My own feeling is some critics are putting a bit more into the film than was probably intended, or that any suggestions of sexuality are deliberately ambiguous. The quotation from the dialogue in the Film Comment article, also reproduced in Wikipedia, has been edited in such a way that what is deleted in Eddie Bendix explaining that he was lock out of his previous home, and Johnny Ryan brought him to his rooming house that had available vacancies. That little bit removed from the script tempers the establishment of the partnership of Eddie and Johnny. More to the point is simply the unnatural possessiveness that Fritzi feels about Paula, and that Johnny expresses about Eddie. The characters is Desert Fury fail out controlling the lives of others because they are are unable to control their own, most literally in the film's climax. The sometimes unexpressed sexual aspect of possessiveness is central to screenwriter Robert Rossen's last film, Lilith (1964), made when the Production Code was on its last legs. But as long as some observers are going to argue about innuendos within Desert Fury, an overlooked signifier would be the suits Eddie and Johnny wear in the film's opening. Johnny is wearing a single-breasted jacket, while Eddie's is double-breasted - read into that what you will.

My other problem with Desert Fury is that Lizabeth Scott looks too old to convincingly play a nineteen year old young woman. She was 26 at the time, with 41 year old Mary Astor appearing a shade young to be her mother. Otherwise, this is the one time Scott is not the femme fatale. With his pencil thin mustache, John Hodiak reminds me of one of Tex Avery's cartoon wolves, ready to howl at the sight of the next rotoscoped babe. Burt Lancaster, still relatively new to film, is best when he bares his famous choppers before giving Hodiak a much deserved beating. Taken on its own terms, Desert Fury is quite fun to watch, even if one can't understand how Scott and Lancaster can romantically view a small town dominated by two giant smokestacks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:48 AM

February 19, 2019

So Dark the Night

Joseph H. Lewis - 1946
Arrow Academy BD Region A

For the benefit of those who may be less familiar with the filmmaker, Joseph H. Lewis was nicknamed "Wagon wheel Joe" for his composition of shots through wagon wheels in his westerns. While there are some wagon wheels as props in So Dark the Night, Lewis finds other ways of inserting frames within the camera frame. There are shots through fences, tree branches, a fireplace, a clothes line, and lots of windows. The final minutes of the film might even be read as a visual pun, Lewis' joke on his own visual style, on shots and frames.

A famous Parisian detective, Cassin, takes his first vacation in eleven years. He goes to a small, provincial village where he attracts the attention of the hotel proprietor's daughter, Nanette. Not everyone is pleased, especially the farmer who has claimed engagement to the woman since childhood. There is also the significant difference in age. The detective's vacation is interrupted when the woman and the farmer are found murdered.

So Dark the Night must have been experienced as "So Strange the Movie" by an audience that had no idea what to expect. The very chipper Inspector Cassin is walking down a very sunny Paris street, exchanging pleasantries with a shoeshine boy and a girl selling flowers. The scene is introduced with tracking shots of Cassin's legs. The lightness of tone continues with Cassin's visit to the police station prior to leaving Paris, and Nanette admiring the chauffeured limousine that brings Cassin to the hotel. At this point, Lewis gives a brief stylistic shout-out to Sergei Eisenstein with a montage of close-ups of parts of the limo. Lewis returns to lateral tracking shots plus dolly shots with the camera moving in on a character for emphasis. But the film that began cheerfully becomes an increasingly creepy murder mystery.

So obscure the cast! If the names of most of the actors in So Dark the Night are unknown, you aren't alone. Steven Geray usually belongs in the category of "that guy, who was in that movie". As Cassin, this was Geray's only starring role, scrunched in between brief appearances in Gilda, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and To Catch a Thief among the more famous titles, as well as a slew of television episodes through the Fifties and Sixties. If Geray did get a screen credit, it was usually at the lower end of the credit roll. Michiline Cheirel, Nanette, had brief supporting roles in Carnival in Flanders and Hold Back the Dawn. Coincidentally, both actors were in William Castle's The Crime Doctor's Gamble a year later. Much of the casting seems to have been a roundup of European emigres on the Columbia Pictures lot, so the accented English might not be French, but it is honest. The cult performance artist, Brother Theodore, billed here with his real name of Theodore Gottlieb, shows up as the town's hunchback. There is no particular reason for the character to be a hunchback, as if he strayed off the set of another movie.

In case it matters to anyone, I've corresponded with three of the four people involved with the supplements. The only person who remains innocent is Imogen Sara Smith who provides an overview on Lewis' career at Columbia Pictures. I'm more familiar with Smith's commentary tracks on several films, with Desert Fury on deck for next week. As usual, she's very informative about Lewis and the production of So Dark the Night. The other Smith, whom I've exchanged notes with from the days when this blog began percolating, Farran Smith Nehme shares the commentary track with Glenn Kenny. Kenny goes over Lewis' early career in poverty row westerns and the critical reevaluation of Lewis' career, while Nehme is extremely helpful in identifying several of the cast members. While their commentary is casual, it is also well-prepared. The booklet notes by David Cairns offer an entertaining examination of Lewis' visual style here. The blu-ray is from a 2K restoration and looks dazzling enough to easily belie the modest budget, probably no more than the $175,000 the previous year's My Name is Julia Ross.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:38 AM

February 12, 2019

Blue Movie

Wim Verstappen - 1971
Cult Epics two-disc all region DVD/BD set

There is this shot repeated in Blue Movie that neatly sums up viewing the film almost fifty years after its production. The cinematography is by Jan de Bont, early in his career. The camera is completely overhead, looking straight down, on two couples having sex. They are seen on a green surface, within a circular frame. The effect is as if viewing some form of life under a microscope. Voyeurism is a theme that pops up in the films by Dutch filmmakers Wim Verstappen and Pim de la Parra, that of both their films characters, and by implication, the audience.

Known collectively as Pim and Wim, the two set out to prove that Dutch filmmakers could succeed in the international market back in the late Sixties. Blue Movie was one of the films Verstappen co-wrote as well as directed, a 16mm production designed to compete with soft core films of the time. What temporarily got in the way of the film's initial release was that the Netherlands had an older rating system that had not caught up with the more liberalized standards and self-imposed adult only ratings in the U.S. and some other western countries. Blue Movie changed how films were rated in the Netherlands. That it made over a million dollars helped pave the way for other erotically charged Dutch films, especially those by newcomer Paul Verhoeven.

Those who saw Blue Movie weren't there for the nonsensical story. Michael, just out on parole, moves into an apartment in a huge, anonymous building. Michael's crime was having sex with an underage girl. Lonely, Michael gets to know some of his female neighbors by "borrowing" a cup of sugar (a plot device that was creaky even then). Michael becomes very popular with several of the women in the building, but finds himself falling in love with a young single mother. His parole officer, whose attention to Michael borders on the homoerotic, shows up at inopportune times. Initially not putting any effort in gainful employment, Michael becomes an entrepreneur of sex shows and films.

Whether one finds the antics in Blue Movie erotic is up to the eye of the individual viewer. Most of the scenes of sex are played for fun. For myself, I think I have seen more than enough of star Hugo Metsers nude. It may be to the film's credit that the actresses have an everyday kind of attractiveness, neither glamorized or artificially enhanced.

Putting Blue Movie into historical context are the generous supplements. The first is an interview with Wim Verstappen prior to the film's release in 1971. Producer Pim de la Parra speaks about making Blue Movie as part of the introduction to the series of Dutch films shown at the Cinematheque Francaise in 2018. An interview with Hugo Metsers, Jr. includes an anecdote of the son discovering Blue Movie by accident when he was ten years old. There is also a brief documentary on the Eye Film Institute, responsible for the restoration of several vintage Dutch films. The three supplements from 2018 were produced by Cult Epic's Nico B, who has made several of these almost forgotten Dutch films available for a wider audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:04 AM

January 24, 2019

Forbidden Photos of a Lady above Suspicion

Le foto proibite di una signora per bene
Luciano Ercoli - 1970
Arrow Video BD Region A

I don't know if Luciano Ercoli had ever seen Sam Fuller's China Gate. Fuller's film is in part notable for introducing the character played by Angie Dickinson with her legs stretching across the CinemaScope screen. Ercoli does something similar with Dagmar Lassander, the titular lady, with three shots of her legs dominating the wide screen. The playfulness of some of the visual choices is echoed in the opening credits music by Ennio Morricone - unusually peppy and poppy, almost like an instrumental from Burt Bacharach.

I viewed the film in the Italian dubbed version with English subtitles, so the names of the characters are as they appear in that version. With Lassander as Minou first seen taking a bath, she is introduced with a first-person voiceover, making the vow that as of that morning she will no longer self-medicate with pills and alcohol. Barely out of the tub and those vows are forgotten. Taking a walk at night wearing the mini-est of mini-dresses, Minou is followed by a motorcyclist. Threatened with the cyclist's stick with a retractable blade, Minou is told that her husband is a murderer. Threatened with blackmail, and trying to protect her industrialist husband, Minou finds herself stalked by a man she is unable to prove exists.

Ercoli is more interested teasing the audience, which may disappoint those looking for giallo that is more violent or erotic. While the audience knows that Minou is not imagining her encounters with her blackmailer, it's not clear until the end if her husband, Pier, had indeed committed a murder that passed for death by natural causes. There is also a scene when Minou's best friend, Dominque, is on the phone. Dominque is in bed with a lover, the camera pans slightly to the right stopping short of revealing the lover's identity. While not explored within the story, there is visual twinning of the main characters, with Minou and Dominque (Nieves Navarro billed as Susan Scott) both similarly fashionably dressed, with similar shades of red hair with the occasional donning of wigs. Also the three main male actors are somewhat alike physically. Ercoli keeps the mystery going with lights suddenly going out, and characters moving in spaces with oversized shadows. Also notable is the recurring use of red throughout the set design.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Kat Ellinger that is best at discussing how many giallo films are linked, as this one, with a screenplay by the prolific Ernest Gastaldi. There are interviews with Navarro and Ercoli from 2012 that are edited with an interview with Gastaldi. Say what you may about plot holes or other bits of illogic in his screenplays, but for me it's always a treat listening to Gastaldi humorously discuss the life of Italian genre filmmakers from the 1970s. Another extra reviews the music by Ennio Morricone and his main collaborators. A question and answer session from 2016 with Dagmar Lassander is an overview of her still active career. There is also a booklet with notes by critic Michael Mackenzie which helps place Ercoli's film within the history of giallo.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:25 PM

January 15, 2019

Citizen Kane

Orson Welles - 1941
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Is the cinema more important than life? - Francois Truffaut

Admittedly, I don't know the context of this quote. Would Truffaut have had an answer had he known that he would die at a relatively young age? Would he have traded making movies if it meant living longer? My own feelings about film, writing about those that have been sent to me to review or may have piqued my interest, even the act of watching another movie, have become more ambivalent since I was made aware of my own mortality.

I've have stomach trouble before, including a major operation back in 1975. But last May I was sick enough that it seemed that I had no choice but to check in at a nearby hospital. Had I not been hospitalized, I might have never known that there was a mass discovered in my left kidney. As it was, I had already by diagnosed with only partial function. A couple of doctors, independently of each other came to the same conclusion that I had cancer. My choice was to keep both kidneys and my partial kidney function, or remove the kidney, go on dialysis, and have even less kidney function, though theoretically extending my life. One of my doctors is blonde, attractive, and sometimes has a noticeable Oklahoma twang. She looks a bit like a backup dancer in a "Beach Party" movie from the mid-Sixties. Being told you have about two years to live doesn't sound so horrible when you get the news from a doctor who looks like she could have been a high school cheerleader.

So what does any of this have to do with Citizen Kane? It's the image of the sled that stuck in my mind. It's the idea that people have possessions that are meaningful to them, but without that same kind of importance to others. For the workmen in Xanadu, the sled was just junk to be disposed of, tossed into the fire. For Charles Kane, it's a reminder of the day his life changed when he was eight years old. For myself, it meant giving away some of my possessions, mostly books and movies, to friends who would appreciate them, rather than having them get tossed out of ignorance of any value, or put in an estate sale. If I remember correctly, Welles described the revealing of "Rosebud" as "dime store Freud". And it simultaneously does and does not answer questions. But having spent most of my life in Colorado, I did feel motivated to seen Citizen Kane, paying more attention to the scene of Charlie Kane's childhood.

First, there is no Little Salem, Colorado. Second, the mining towns are all along the Rocky Mountains, and there is no mining town that would have been three miles from the any part of the Colorado state line, as indicated in one brief shot. Nothing is stated regarding the kind of mineral or minerals were in the mine owned by Charlie Kane's mother, what was thought to have been a worthless deed left as boarding house payment, though it could have been most likely silver. Colorado was still not a state in 1871, and Denver was still considered a frontier town, so sending Charlie to Chicago for his education is not implausible. As for catching the train to go "back East", in reality it would be a treacherous trip by stagecoach in the snow to travel to Denver, which had only completed a rail connection to Kansas City the year before. What is undeniable is that Charlie Kane doesn't want to leave his parents, appearing to love both his strong-willed mother and powerless father equally. That Charlie's sled has great personal significance is shown when he gets a new sled from Mr. Thatcher on Christmas, and immediately tosses it aside.

The last time we see the parents, they are to receive $50,000.00 per year from Mr. Thatcher. Aside from a mention by Charles Kane that his mother had died, there is no indication of what they had done with their newly acquired money, or if there was any kind of family reunion. There is what might be regarded as an indirect closure as Buddy Swan, the child actor who portrayed Charlie Kane, died in Colorado Springs.

I am planning to make this the last full year I write about films. What this means is hopefully rambling about more films of personal interest, as well as being a bit more discriminating about the films I watch. I've seen eighty-eight of ninety Oscar Best Pictures. If a film is considered part of "the canon", I've probably seen it at least once. That includes every theatrical film directed officially and unofficially by Orson Welles. I just need to get around to watching that DVD of The Green Room, the only feature I haven't seen by Francois Truffaut.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:40 AM

January 08, 2019

Let the Corpses Tan

Laissez bronzer les cadavres
Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani - 2017
Kino Lorber BD Region A

One of the details I had forgotten about Let the Corpses Tan is that the robbers are wearing Frankenstein masks during the heist. More precisely, masks modeled after Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. One might even describe the films of Cattet and Forzani as being similar to the Frankenstein monster as they are created from the eclectic parts of other movies as their sources of inspiration. As the Australian pair of film critic Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and historian John Edmond explain in the commentary track, what Cattet and Forzani do is not the same as the kind of cinematic quotations from Quentin Tarantino or Jean-Luc Godard. And the filmmakers themselves also allow for the viewer to create their own reading of their films, equally as valid as whatever Cattet and Forzani may have intended.

Unlike the previous two films, Let the Corpses Tan also has a literary source, the novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette and Jean-Pierre Bastid. While not (yet) translated to English, John Edmond has read the novel and makes some reference to it in both its use in the construction of the film's narrative, and how the filmmakers created visual equivalents to literary passages. For myself, prior to seeing Let the Corpses Tan theatrically last Fall, I read one of the few novels by Manchette in English, Fatale. The short novel is about a female assassin who decides to take some time off in a small, provincial French town. After getting to know who the most influential townspeople are, she sets off previously suppressed rivalries. The basic set-up appears to be inspired by the novel, Red Harvest, and its better known film offspring, Yojimbo and A Fistful of Dollars. So Cattet and Forzani, who make films inspired by genre filmmaking and the expectations that it brings have made a film from a writer who also plays with genre and its expectations.

The film opens with film shots matching gun shots through a painting. Heller-Nicholas mentions the stated influence of sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, who created assemblages that were marked by gunshots. Saint Phalle's influence can also be seen in the use of the film's setting, a remote, crumbling monastery and cottage with bizarre assemblages inside and outside. The use of primary colors, first seen in the painting in the opening shots, and then used to create monochromatic images of the characters would echo the colors Saint Phalle uses in her work. Saint Phalle created a series of abstract sculptures called "Nanas", shaped like big, curvy women. Actress Elina Lowensohn plays the artist whose home is site of most of the film's action. But Lowensohn is also arguably presented as the film's Nana, allowed to be seen nude, proudly showing off a mature and fleshy body. Each photographic shot is framed and lit with such care that a casual observer would note the influence of abstract expressionism and action painting.

The visual aspects of Let the Corpses Tan are such that narrative concerns almost seem besides the point. The basic story of the robbery of some gold bars, the attempt to outwit the cops on the trail, and the robbers betrayal of each other, is familiar territory. Things get more complicated when unplanned for guests show up a the artist's home. Cattet and Forzani play with the narrative structure by showing what occurred during a specific time period from the viewpoint of different characters. Unlike the first two films that took place in urban settings, sunbaked Corsica, a bright combination of brown and yellow, dominates the daytime exteriors.

Some of the discussion of Let the Corpses Tan referring to Italian westerns for some context shortchanges the other films and filmmakers whose influence is worth noting. The opening with the extreme close-ups of eyes and lips will indeed make most viewers think of Sergio Leone, as would virtually any musical queue from Ennio Morricone, whether from a Leone film or not. Cattet and Forzani have mentioned Andrea Bianchi's Cry of a Prostitute as inspiring the move to a sunny, rural location. The repeated use of shooting someone by placing the barrel of the pistol in the mouth echoes Lucio Fulci's Contraband, although in one scene, instead of blood spurting out of the back of the victim's head, we see a spray of gold. Certainly, an advantage to having the new blu-ray is the ability to enjoy the film for its visual pleasures by removing the English language subtitles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

January 01, 2019

El Paso

Lewis R. Foster - 1949
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Especially knowing that writer-director Lewis Foster won the Academy Award his part in writing Mr. Smith goes to Washington, I wish that a little more care had been put in the writing of El Paso. Taking place immediately after the Civil War, the basic plot is of a Confederate veteran who shows up in town for business with an old family friend from Charleston, South Carolina. The town is run by a corrupt strong man with the sheriff and deputies doing his bidding. Operations are from the back of the bar. Former soldiers are losing their homes in the name of unpaid taxes that built up during the war years. The lawyer realizes that his skills as a lawyer are needed, but he also learns how to best be effective with a gun.

Had more attention been paid to history, El Paso might have been more interesting. Most of the film takes place at the western set of the Iverson Ranch, making the cinematic El Paso look like a generic western town. The real El Paso was a bit more developed during the Civil War era, and an active center of activity on behalf of the Confederate army. Most Texans supported the secession from the United States. The basic plot premise is also faulty as there is no explanation as to what the bad guys were doing during the war years. Essentially, a vaguely historical set-up is ignored once John Payne and the rest of the cast steps off the stagecoach in that town that looks like it is part of almost any random Western.

Foster is stronger visually, with a penchant for tracking shots within the length of the bar where several scenes take place, as well as following along on the street where the final gun battle takes place. There is also some nice second unit work with stunt doubles seen from the distance, camera aiming up with the riders against some very imposing rocks or sky. Best is the final gun battle, filmed during a wind storm, with the dust and sand creating a very hazy effect, blurring the details in shades of brown, and providing an abstract quality to that scene.

The film was produced by William Pine and Willam Thomas, who previously provided low or modestly budgeted action movies for Paramount. This was the team's first million dollar production, though several cost cutting measures are apparent. The film played at New York City's Paramount Theater, and received quite a harsh review from the New York Time's Bosley Crowther: "It is billed as a top-flight production-by William C. Thomas and William H. Pine. Well, the boys may now be billed as Williams and they may have hit the Paramount, but El Paso is still Pine and Thomas in the same old low-budget groove. Indeed, if our memory serves us, it isn't even them at their best, but is rather a third or fourth rate rehash of a standard Western plot. And Mr. Payne's performance as a young lawyer who finally puts to rout a gang of frontier villains is way below their grade."

El Paso will probably be of most interest for those devoted to older Hollywood Westerns. The film was shot in an inexpensive color process called Cinecolor, a two-color process favored by some of the poverty row studios. Maybe I needed to do some fine-tuning on the color, but reds appeared as Halloween orange. It's fairly easy to why Cinecolor was a short-lived process.

Gail Russell is on hand as the obligatory love interest. Considering that she seems to have less screen time than bad guys Sterling Hayden and Dick Foran, I had to wonder if the role was taken simply as part of Russell's contractual obligations with Paramount, or if her alcoholism had in any way affected her performance. Gabby Hayes provides what passes for comedy as "Pesky", the worst entrepreneur in the West, who begins with a suit and top hat, and ends wearing nothing but a blanket. Film historian Toby Roan's commentary track for the blu-ray covers the history of Pine-Thomas productions, the production of El Paso, and brief biographies several cast members. The film will probably be most appreciated by hardcore Western aficionados. For others, El Paso serves as an example of genre filmmaking at a time when the studio system was coming apart, and two former studio publicists proved prescient in the ways that film production would eventually evolve.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

December 26, 2018

Female on the Beach

Joseph Pevney - 1955
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

First, this film should not be confused with the similarly titled Woman on the Beach by Jean Renoir or Hong Sang-soo.

My own interest in seeing this film was sparked by this examination of Douglas Sirk's career at Universal-International, as it was known at the time time of production. Joseph Pevney is one of the contract directors discussed in some detail, and Female on the Beach has several elements that mark it as the identifiable product of its studio, most obviously in terms of genre, melodrama, with an older female star with one of the studio's top male stars. Additionally, the film was produced by Albert Zugsmith, his first at U-I, with a three year run that included Douglas Sirk's two best films, Written on the Wind and Tarnished Angels, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and ending with Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

The lurid aspects are consistent with Zugsmith's other productions. The film might be described as a battle between Joan Crawford's legs, always her best feature, seen in short shorts, versus Jeff Chandler's bare chest. Being a studio film made when the production code was still very much in effect requires paying attention to some of the euphemisms as well as what is suggested, but never stated outright. There is also the matter of accepting that 49 year old Crawford's character was what she calls a former "specialty dancer". Jeff Chandler's prematurely gray hair does him no favors in the part of the gigolo next door. Most of the film takes place at Crawford's beach house, itself a example of mid-century architecture, with the appropriate accessories.

The film begins with a middle-aged woman shouting for someone named "Drummy", drunk, seen staggering to the beach side balcony, only to break the wooden railing and fall to her death. Was it suicide or murder? The film's theatrical origins a visible with the assortment of characters that walk in and out of the house, including a manipulative real estate agent played by Jan Sterling, a cop (Charles Drake) who appears out of the shadows, and the older couple next door, the Sorensons, (Cecil Kellaway and Natalie Schafer), who are revealed to be less lovable than at first appearance. Drummy is the nickname for Drummond Hall, the man with a history of seducing older, wealthy women. And Hall is not only in business for himself, but is expected to financially assist his, er, patrons.

Joseph Pevney was no visual stylist, but he does make the most of the frequently arch dialogue. One nicely done moment is a shot of Joan Crawford taking a phone call from Chandler. She does not want to seem desperate for him, and has held out on contacting him after their last fight. Pevney holds the camera at a medium shot from the waist up, as we see Crawford pick up the phone, and watch her face soften from anger to a look of schoolgirl glee as she makes a date with Chandler. While the trading of insults is entertaining, there is oddness in the formality where Crawford's character is mostly addressed as Mrs. Markham, while Sterling is Mrs. Rawlinson. Some contemporary viewers may have trouble with films of this era, where there was sometimes little distinction between romance and rape. Even when the dialogue skirts around the subject of sexual companionship for money, there's nothing subtle when the Sorensons introduce their new, um, protege, named Roddy. An early scene, with Chandler as a passenger in Sterling's speedboat, anticipates a similar scene with Rock Hudson as the passenger while Dorothy Malone recklessly drives her sports car in Written on the Wind, produced by Albert Zugsmith the following year

The blu-ray source appears to have been a pristine print. This is especially noticeable with the solid, pitch black sky in several nighttime scenes. There are two commentary tracks as well. Kat Ellinger discusses some of the production, how Crawford chose Chandler over Tony Curtis to be her leading man, and the marketing of the film. There are a couple small historical errors, but the one most glaring is in disregarding that Jeff Chandler's stardom was well established following his Oscar nominated performance in Broken Arrow in 1950. What has worked against Chandler in retrospect is that most of his films are either forgotten or simply forgettable. The second commentary, by historian David Del Valle with director David DeCoteau, is aimed more for the Joan Crawford fan, with some discussion of the production of Female on the Beach, but mostly anecdotes about Crawford, Chandler and other cast members. David and David also bluntly explain plot points that are slyly hinted at in the screenplay. There is no mistaking Female on the Beach for an overlooked classic. It's enough that it is a consistently entertaining, and well made, potboiler.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:36 AM

December 11, 2018

Spartacus

Stanley Kubrick - 1960
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

Now at age 102, the star is truly a living legend.

There's a scene in the television series, The Sopranos, where Tony and his pals are watching Spartacus on TV. As played by the wonderful Joe Pantolioni, Ralph Cifaretto leaves the room, muttering something along the lines of, "Whoever heard of a gladiator with a flat top?".

I was nine years old, and saw Spartacus when it was still a newish movie. Even then I thought that Kirk Douglas had a strange haircut for a guy who existed in ancient Roman times. I was also disappointed that nobody in the commentary track even bothered to talk about the damn haircut, the most blazing anachronism in the film.

A lot of stuff that went over my head over fifty years ago was understood better, and more deeply, when I saw the restored version on the largest movie screen in Denver. Some of it has to do with maturity. Some of it has to do with my time spent in film studies. And yes, I like this film enough not only to own it on DVD, but to get the version where various people involved in the making of the film chime in on the history of the production, as well as the history of the restoration.

The commentary is extraordinary with its conflicting stories and opinions. Howard Fast, author of the novel, has no problem criticizing the acting of Kirk Douglas, but grudgingly admits that if it hadn't been for the producer/star, the film would never have been made. That the making of the film took its toll on Douglas is clear from a look at his filmography - nothing made after Spartacus was on such a large scale or as physically demanding.

What struck me seeing Spartacus again is how much Douglas is actually not in the film. In his commentary, Douglas speaks highly of the acting of Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov and Charles Laughton, going as far as to watch them film a scene that he's not in, simply for the pleasure of viewing them perform. That one of the top Hollywood stars at the time, and one who also functioned as as very hands on producer, allowed the other actors to shine as they do in this film is evidence of a generosity of spirit in what could have easily been more of a one man show.

In his New York Times review, Bosley Crowther's wrote about Spartacus that "it is pitched about to the level of a lusty schoolboy's taste." Maybe that explains why I was the almost perfect audience for this film when it was first released. And while my filmgoing in those years was still teetering between juvenilia and more adult stuff, I did make a point of seeing The List of Adrian Messenger and Seven Days in May when they came out. With the exception of Tony Curtis and Jean Simmons, most of the other actors meant nothing to me at the time, but paid some attention to Kirk Douglas. My attempt to see Lonely are the Brave was stymied by the absence of my parents, and a babysitter who refused to let me leave the house. By the time adolescence really kicked in, I had temporarily stopped paying attention to the "old" stars of Hollywood, mostly replaced by a new crew from England. That Spartacus is a film from my youth that I still feel affection for indicates how my own love of film has evolved to embrace oysters and snails, among other cinematic feasts.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:01 AM

December 04, 2018

La Prisonniere

Henri-Georges Clouzot - 1968
Siren Export DVD

Is Henri-Georges Clouzot due for more reevaluation from English language cinephiles? There are certainly some ripples in that direction with the recent home video release of six features on which he served as one of the writers, a set that includes his short film directorial debut from 1931. Add to that the upcoming home video release of La Verite from Criterion, as well as new blu-ray releases from the British Studio Canal. There is also Serge Bromberg's Inferno, made up of excerpts from the 1964 film that was abandoned by by Clouzot, for me the most fascinating study of a film never to be completed since the 1965 BBC documentary, The Epic that Never Was, about Josef von Sternberg's trouble plagued attempt to film I, Claudius in 1937.

Josee (pronounced like Josie) is a young film editor at a TV station who is working on a documentary about women who have been in relationships with men that teeter in a gray area between abuse and consent. She lives with Gilbert, who creates abstract sculptures made up of boxes. Stan runs an art gallery that shows Gilbert's work. Stan privately is a photographer, close-ups of single words by famed artists and authors, as well as erotic images of submissive women. Josee accidentally sees one of Stan's erotic photos and is initially repelled, later to become one of Stan's models and briefly his lover.

As in his previous films, Clouzot examines marital fidelity as well as the nature of truth, especially the truth of what is being observed. As far as Stan is concerned, everyone is a voyeur. The main characters here are all involved in manipulating images, whether it is the creation or selling of art, editing film, or as a model being paid to be a visual object. The English language title given to this film is Woman in Chains, though most of the chains here are psychological. The original French title, which literally means "The Female Prisoner" is more accurate, though the prison that Jose is in at the film's conclusion is both cruel and heartbreaking.

Setting aside the narrative, Clouzot continues what was begun with Inferno with a continued interest in abstract and "experimental" filmmaking as it was expressed in the mid to late 1960s. Gilbert plays with his own sense of monovision, alternating with one eye open while the other is closed. Clouzot shows a series of point-of-view shots with the same exit sign seen at slightly different angles. Gilbert also plays with waving his fingers in front of his eyes, again with the view seeing the action, followed by more point-of-view shots. While Josee and Gilbert ride a train, Clouzot has a montage of train tracks and electric lines. The final montage is a succession of extremely short shots, some subliminal, of Josee reflecting on past events. At one point, Josee and Gilbert are seen behind the patterned glass of a bathroom, reduced to small squares of light and color. A sex scene is filmed as a series of extreme close-ups of eyes, lips, and legs.

There is also the recurring motif of color. I wonder if the writer Charles Willeford was at all familiar with La Prisonniere. He wrote a book about chicanery in the art world, The Burnt Orange Heresy, about a legendary painting that may, or may not, exist. That novel came out in 1971, two years after the U.S. release of Clouzot's film. What links the two for me is that the color, which I will identify for lack of a better term as "burnt orange" shows up in almost every shot. It's first significantly noticeable as the color of cloth covering the windows of Stan's apartment and then Gilbert's little Citroen. Later we see the color as part of a character's clothing, as part of some of the artwork, and even incorporated as part of the exterior settings. In addition to the color, the art that visually informs the film is that which uses circles, squares and grids, recalling among others, Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella. That this film is set among art and artists is also fitting for the man who made The Mystery of Picasso,

Clouzot may have also made the character of Stan somewhat autobiographical. Some actors have refused to work with Clouzot due to the demands he makes of his actors, as documented in Inferno, both psychological as well as physical. When Stan appears to be in love with Jose, he is seen briefly with pipe in his mouth, as was Clouzot. That Stan sees himself as being misunderstood by both Gilbert and Jose also could be applied to Clouzot. With the exception of Francois Truffaut, Clouzot was rejected by the Nouvelle Vague, but neither were his films part of the "cinema of quality". Clouzot would famously be misunderstood with his political allegory made in Vichy France in 1943, Le Corbeau, making a popular film that simultaneously angered both the left and right wing pundits. As for what turned out to be his last film, Clouzot had stated" ""I know that La Prisonniere will hit, shock. horrify some spectators. We will cry provocation, scandal. However, believe me, perversion exists, and to describe it in its oppressive and tragic aspect, I had to go as far as possible, without fear of traumatizing the public."

This post is part of the "Late Show" blogathon hosted by David Cairns and Shadowplay.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

November 30, 2018

Mamie Van Doren Film Noir Collection

The Girl in Black Stockings
Howard W. Koch - 1957

Guns, Girls and Gangsters
Edward L. Cahn - 1958

Vice Raid
Edward L. Cahn - 1959
KL Studio Classics BD Region A two-disc set

Mamie Van Doren? Yeah, sure. Film noir? Depends on if one is a genre purist. To put it bluntly, these three films were originally made to provide product in lower tier movie theaters as either the bottom half of a double feature featuring a more prestigious film, or as part of a double feature package for a less than discriminating audience. None of these films are examples of what Manny Farber described as "termite art". There is none of the identifiable stylization of directors Farber had praised like Allan Dwan, Budd Boetticher or Samuel Fuller, all of whom were making films at that same time, with films that continue to be of interest to the serious cinephile. Not every film has to have high aspirations, and these three productions were produced to serve as brief cinematic divertissement and hopefully make a modest profit.

There is the cult fandom for Mamie Van Doren, the platinum blonde bombshell from an era of blonde bombshells. Known for her ample curves, large breasts, and form fitting outfits, Van Doren was a big star in small movies, with a career that peaked in the late 1950s. The blu-ray comes with a brief interview in which Van Doren looks back at the films in this set as well as a few others with a sense of humor. For some viewers who would have been too young to have seen any of the films at the time of release, these would be the kind of titles one might have come across on late night broadcast television sometime well after Midnight during the Sixties or Seventies. Younger viewers might simply take a look out of curiosity, when sex in mainstream cinema was all about mild innuendos, euphemisms, and the imagination of the audience. Two of the three films are examples of how filmmakers were arguably hindered by the restrictions of the Production Code.

Not only do we barely see the title character, The Girl in Black Stockings, but Mamie is hardly to be seen as well. A serial killer is on the loose in a Nevada resort. The girl of the title is the first victim of the killer, with just her legs visible to the viewer. The resort is run by a misogynistic cripple, unable to use his arms, the psychosomatic result of being ditched by a former girlfriend. He lives with his sister who takes care of his needs. The owner is played by Ron Randell who has incongruously chosen to perform his role with his mouth tightly clenched, doing a bad impersonation of Humphrey Bogart. Frequent film noir bad girl Marie Windsor is the sister. Lex Barker, the putative star, is the owner's lawyer, while milquetoast Anne Bancroft is his girlfriend as well as resort receptionist. Mamie plays the girlfriend of an older actor. This is the kind of story that would have benefitted from more graphic visuals to successfully convey the sense of horror. Of some interest are early screen performances by Stuart Whitman and Dan Blocker. Howard Koch could be intermittently entertaining as a director, but his real career highlights would come later as a producer briefly for Frank Sinatra, and later with a tenure at Paramount during the late Sixties and early Seventies.

Guns, Girls and Gangsters - well, the title pretty much says it all. Professional sleaze Gerald Mohr has a plan to rob an armored car outside of Las Vegas on New Year's Day. He enlists lounge singer Mamie, the wife of Mohr's San Quentin cellmate. The cellmate, the eternally evil Lee Van Cleef, escapes from the pen, getting in the way of Mohr's plans. Off-screen narration sternly advises the viewer regarding the veracity of the story and reminding all that crime does not pay. The highlights here would be Mamie's two musical numbers.

Mamie gets together a second time with director Edward Cahn in Vice Raid. And the more obvious lurid elements are hinted in the story of a modeling agency serving as a front for a prostitution ring. One could see more skin in the pages of a Sear's catalogue with their models in underwear, than in the "girlie" magazines seen here. Mamie wears a one piece white bathing suit for a photo session with undercover cop Richard Coogan. Brad Dexter plays the syndicate chief who hires Mamie to frame Coogan. There is one funny line, with Mamie describing the apartment she's set up in as "early Skid Row". Cinematography was by Stanley Cortez, most famous for his work with Orson Welles and The Magnificent Ambersons. That there is little visually creative here may be attributed to Edward Cahn's lean and mean filmmaking. Mamie did like the way Cortez lit her blonde hair which is why Cortez worked with Mamie two more times while the actress' career was in its steep decline. I also liked the performance of supporting player Joseph Sullivan, seen here as a cop on the take, caught between the pragmatic choice of illegally augmenting his salary, and trying to live up to his ideals.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:29 AM

November 27, 2018

The Grissom Gang

Robert Aldrich - 1971
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

For myself, one of the best ways to judge the ability of a film director is in the visual choice or choices made in filming a conversation between two people. It almost seems like a lost art with too many contemporary filmmakers seemingly unable to trust their material, their actors, or the audience. The Grissom Gang may be one of Robert Aldrich's lesser films, but there is one scene that he gets absolutely right.

The kidnapped Barbara Blandish (Kim Darby) is alone with gang member Slim Grissom (Scott Wilson). The simple-minded Slim, infatuated with Barbara, has appointed himself to be her protector from the rest of the gang. Barbara is unaware that the ransom has been paid and that she is to be murdered to keep her from identifying her kidnappers. Aldrich films a conversation as a two-shot, that is, two people within the same frame. Wilson standing on the left side of the frame behind Darby who is in the foreground of the shot, filling the right half. The viewer can see Slim's face screw up with frustration over the plans of the rest of the gang, as well as Barbara's refusal to respond positively to his awkward courtship. In the foreground, the viewer sees Barbara's face contorting in horror at the news that she is not to be released, and that the million dollar ransom demanded has been paid. Because of the staging of the two actors, Slim does not see Barbara's face and is consequently unaware of her reaction.

Based on James Hadley Chase's novel, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, the 1939 novel was reworked to take place in Kansas City, 1931. Following the unexpected popularity of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (1967), there were a handful of depression era gangster films that appeared in the late Sixties and early Seventies. Aldrich's film was unsuccessful critically and commercially. Thematically, it fits in with several other Aldrich films about a small group of people who are bound together in a situation that inevitably leads to the death of all or most of the members. In such films as The Dirty Dozen or Too Late the Hero, it is soldiers on a "suicide mission", while individual suicide, literal or symbolic, can be found in films as varied as The Big Knife, The Killing of Sister George and Hustle. A trio of small time hoods read about Barbara Blandish appearing at a soiree where she will be wearing a diamond necklace. A bungled attempt at stealing the jewels turns into the murder of Barbara's boyfriend, and the kidnapping of Barbara. A chance encounter with Eddie, higher up among Kansas City gangsters, leads to the Grissoms kidnapping Barbara. The gang is led by "Ma" Grissom, an intimidating, snarling older woman. Critics of the time who complained that the characters were overly melodramatic probably had not read Chase's novel.

What I also like about The Grissom Gang was some of the casting, especially the supporting actors. As the would-be jewel thieves, Matt Clark and Michael Baseleon immediately have the look of desperation on their faces. As "Ma" Grissom, the British stage actress, Irene Dailey, was unafraid to look much older than her actual age of 50, with wisps of a light mustache under her nose. The one member of Aldrich's "stock" company to appear here is Wesley Addy as the patrician father of Barbara, a man so cold that it's easy to see why Barbara might prefer the company of her psychotic protector, Slim. Most of the characters are glazed with sweat, the action taking place in July according to Chase's novel. In the scene with Slim and Barbara that I noted, Slim is wearing a dress shirt with brown rings under his arms from his perspiration. Give Aldrich credit for his attention to the kind of details that many filmmakers would ignore.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Howard Berger and Nathaniel Thompson, two film historians familiar on other KL Studio Classics releases, joined here by Steven Mitchell. Especially for those not as familiar with the filmmaker, they provide an overview of Robert Aldrich and his recurring motifs. There is also a short interview with Scott Wilson discussing his time filming The Grissom Gang, his frustration with how the theatrical release was handled, and his regret at not having had the opportunity to work with Aldrich again.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:45 AM

November 23, 2018

Clouzot: The Early Works

Magda Schneider in Tell Me Tonight

Dragnet Night / Un soir de rafle
Carmine Gallone - 1931

I'll Be Alone After Midnight / Je serai seule apres minuit
Jacques de Barracelli - 1931

The Unknown Singer / Le chanteur inconnu
Viktor Tourjansky - 1931

The Terror of Batignolles / La terreur des Batignolles
Henri-Georges Clouzot - 1931

My Cousin from Warsaw / Ma cousine de Varsovie
Carmine Gallone - 1931

Tell Me Tonight / La chanson d'une nuit
Anatole Litvak - 1932

Dream Castle / Chateau de Reve
Geza von Bolvary - 1933
Kino Classics BD Region A two-disc set

As much as I like this new collection of vintage French films, I wish there was a better title. As indicated here with the list of films and directors, there is only one film directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, his directorial debut with a fifteen minute short. Film historian Peter Tonguette's accompanying booklet is titled "The Apprenticeship of Henri-Georges Clouzot" - perhaps too unwieldy for a blu-ray title, but more accurate. The six features are all linked by having Clouzot's hand in the screenplays. While none of the films are as dark or dramatic as the films Clouzot is best known for, there are repetitions of thematic concerns that would appear later.

The Terror of Batignolles is of the greatest interest here as the first film directed by Clouzot. The comic story is of a very nervous and incompetent burglar. Clouzot opens with a series of close-ups, of hands, feet, and shadows. The burglar temporarily scares himself when he sees his reflection in a full-length mirror. His attempted at theft are temporarily interrupted by the shadow of a passing policeman, kittens, and the chime of a clock. His certainty that the home owners are away for the week is also challenged.

Aside from his skill at setting up scenes of suspense, The Terror of Batignolles also plays with the theme of identity. In several of Clouzot's films, characters are not always who they claim to be, or appear to be. In the case of this first film, the self-proclaimed Terror only scares himself. But in looking at the six features, there are recurring themes of identity, with characters often misidentified by choice or circumstance. Also, marital infidelity, another frequent aspect to Clouzot's own films is a central part of several of the films he has written for others. In retrospect, these two main themes come together in Clouzot's most famous film, Les Diaboliques where appearances deceive.

Alexandre Mathillon, Lucien Muratore and Simone Simon in The Unknown Singer

Setting aside Clouzot's hand in the respective screenplays, the six features are also of interest as example of French cinema in the early 1930s. Five of the films were produced by Adolphe Osso, former chief of Paramount Pictures' French office, which also accounts for some similarities with lead actors who sing, playing opposite young starlets. While most of the directors here were journeymen, with the notable exception being Anatole Litvak, these were contemporaries of Jean Renoir and Jean Vigo, providing a wider view of what comprised French popular cinema. The one other filmmaker I was previously familiar with is Viktor Tourjansky, who's Herod the Great was seen theatrically many years ago. Tourjansky began his career in pre-Revolutionary Russia, ending almost forty years later with Italian costume dramas.

The Hollywood pre-Code films also have nothing on what is seen here. Dragnet Night's unmarried couple are seen conversing in the same bed. The premise of I'll Be Alone After Midnight has a married woman seen reading a book, A Treatise on Adultery, and setting up a liaison by attaching her engraved card on several helium filled balloons, an invitation to a cross-section of Parisian men. My Cousin from Warsaw has an older man, oblivious to the relationship between his wife and her lover, writing a opera that essentially parallels the activity in the country chateau.

Dragnet Night is notable for its use of sound and camerawork. Albert Prejean, a sailor on leave, is taking a walk through the studio set Parisian street. The camera follows him while he walks among the other pedestrians, the music from different night spots drifting in and out on the soundtrack. In The Unknown Singer, Tourjansky plays with diegetic sound as the titular singer's rival alternates between a radio broadcast and a recording of the same song, with clear differences in the audio quality. Later, the rival is driven mad by the voice of the singer, the song providing commentary to the narrative. The Unknown Singer visually is delicately lit in several scenes.

Tell Me Tonight is the most consistently entertaining film here. Unsurprisingly, Anatole Litvak had also directed an English language version at about the same time. A tenor on the lam from a demanding touring schedule meets an ingratiating conman. The two become traveling companions, and gladly take advantage when one is confused with the other. There is also brief confusion when the tenor meets the mayor's daughter, first seen in mechanic overalls. One, shall we say cheeky, visual gag has the conman striking a match against a nude statue. There is also the variation of Cyrano with Pierre Brasseur lip synching to Magda Schneider, while underneath the balcony, Jan Kiupura provides the real singing. It would be inevitable that Litvak soon afterwards became a house director at Warner Brothers. Litvak also plays with editing with the kind of bursts of barely seen frames strung together, a technique that that would be more in vogue thirty years later.

For certain Francophiles and those who love older films is the pleasure of seeing several actresses in the early stages of their careers. Dragnet Night features Annabella as a music hall singer initially misidentified by Albert Prejean as a lady of the night. A very babyfaced Simone Simon is the spunky investigative reporter in The Unknown Singer. Danielle Darrieux is the romantic interest, the daughter of a local baron, in Dream Castle. As previously noted, Austrian actress Magda Schneider stars in the French version of Tell Me Tonight. Thirty-two years later, Magda Schneider's daughter, Romy, would star in writer-director Henri-Georges Clouzot's ill-fated Inferno.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

November 13, 2018

The Owl's Legacy

L'heritage de la chouette
Chris Marker - 1989
Icarus Films All Regions DVD two-disc set

Jean-Michel Frodon's booklet notes begin with a quote from the French poet, Henri Michaux: "The Sorbonne should be razed and Chris Marker put in its place." This is the collection of a thirteen episode series made for French television. The overall effect for me is akin to taking a mandatory college course, feeling a bit intimidated by the anticipated intellectual discourse, with the relief that even though moments are dry, Marker brings back the student with often unexpected humor. The one bit of information that is missing in Frodon's notes is in how the episodes were broadcast, whether it was one episode each week, or some other formal arrangement. I bring this point up because due to the release date of this collection, I watched the entire series within two days, one disc each day, with breaks about halfway per disc. There is just so much information to absorb here that watching all the episodes, about half hour each, can be overwhelming.

For someone educated in the U.S. public school system, I was somewhat prepared. My parents encouraged me to read about Greco-Roman mythology when I was younger. In my senior year of high school, my English teacher decided his students needed to know something about Greek theater. This was a very general overview that lasted maybe four weeks, with the class reading Aristophanes' Lysistrata.

Each episode is loosely centered on a Greek word or concept - "Mathematics or The Empire Counts Back" or "Amnesia or History on the March", among the titles. Each episode goes off on its own tangents. Marker cuts between various, informally held symposiums, individual interviews, and excerpts from documentaries and narrative films to make various points. At one point in discussion of Greek theater, Marker cuts to a montage of marquees in London's West End advertising various musical productions. There are also the bitingly humorous comments, written by Marker, read by Bob Peck in the English language version that I viewed. The most familiar names here are Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopooulos and director Elia Kazan. My own favorite of the various philosophers and artists was Cornelius Castoriadis for making the most convincing arguments about how ancient Greek culture should be understood in its original context and within a contemporary framework.

Unexpected was the look, in a couple of episodes, of the connection of Greek and Japanese culture. This is explored both in a discussion of shared mythologies, and also excerpts of a Japanese production of Medea staged in an ancient amphitheater for a Greek audience that included actress Melina Mercouri. Examining the roots of the word "democracy" includes an explanation of what that meant in the city-state at that time, as well as its relationship to contemporary ideas of democracy. That Castoriadis cites democracy as constantly in conflict with oligarchy provides a very timely spin. Angelopoulos talks about how Greeks give their children names associated with classical Greece as a way of connecting to the past. Too bad that Chris Marker, who both likes to have some fun at his own expense, but is also evasive about his own identity, doesn't share that part of his true given name is Hippolyte.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

October 23, 2018

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

Marlina si Pembunuh dalam Empat Babak
Mouly Surya - 2017
Icarus Films All Regions DVD

Quite coincidentally and very independently of each other, we have two rape revenge films by female filmmakers that have found inspiration in the geography of European based westerns shot in Almeria, Spain. Coralie Fargeat's aptly titled Revenge was filmed in a remote part of Morocco, arid, surrounded by mountains. Marlina was filmed on the Indonesian island of Sumba, in a lightly populated area of brush and hills. The exteriors for both films are a similar sun baked yellow-brown. There is also the soundtrack for Marlina, not obviously derivative, but something that would not be out of place in any number of Italian westerns, especially with the part of the score featuring a trumpet and flute.

Marlina is Indonesia's entry for the Foreign Language film Oscar. For some, that might be enough reason to take a look. Asian films, especially from countries with less international presence, usually don't make the short list, much less the final five in competition. More importantly might be the timeliness of Marlina in the discussion of male entitlement and female agency. The basic story was inspired by a true incident in Sumba.

Marlina, a widow, is at home with the body of her recently deceased husband. She lives in a small, wooden house, with an equally small farm. An older man, Markus, arrives, insisting on being treated like a respected guest, announcing that a group of men will be joining him, expecting to be fed by Marlina, as well as have sex with her and rob her of her livestock. The uninvited men are poisoned by Marlina's chicken soup. Markus gets decapitated by Marlina while raping her. Not quite Sam Peckinpah, but Marlina travels to the nearest police station carrying the head of Markus, while one of the gang members is in pursuit of Marlina and the missing head.

In Marlina, women find ways of helping each other, primarily Novi, a neighbor and traveling companion on the bus to town. Aside from the Markus' gang, the police prove useless, lacking even a car to investigate the carnage at Marlina's house. The husband of the very pregnant Novi is more ready to believe hearsay about his wife to the point of beating her on the road, rather than help when she is about to give birth.

Surya has stated that she the rural area of Sumba inspired her to shape her narrative to resemble a western. In an interview, " . . . people will call it feminist western. It's western and anti-western at the same time, so it's something familiar but it's not. The Western genre itself is very masculine and misogynist. So Marlina is trying to reverse the convention."

The DVD comes with an interview with Mouly Surya discussing the origins of the film as well as thoughts on the #metoo movement as it applies to Indonesian women. There is a brief interview with cinematographer Yunas Pasalong that covers the choice to use a static camera, as well as the use of light. A longer interview is with the crew members who created the sound effects and music for the film.

Marlina is currently available on iTunes, with the DVD available on November 6.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:25 AM

October 18, 2018

You Never Know Women

William Wellman - 1926
Kino Classics BD Region A

One of those bits of coincidence that makes film history fun - one of the two leading men in You Never Know Women is Lowell Sherman. Six years later, Sherman starred in What Price Hollywood?, the film generally acknowledged to be unofficially remade in 1937 by William Wellman as A Star is Born.

You Never Know Women is one of those films that is appreciated best when viewed as part of the era when it was produced as well as how it fits as part of of Wellman's career. The story takes place when wealthy guys rode around in chauffeured limousines, wearing top hats and sporting canes. A woman, Vera, is walking near a construction site when she is about to be beaned by an errant beam. An observant member of the construction crew rescues Vera in the nick of time, only to be shoved aside by Eugene, who tells the worker he knows how to handle the now unconscious Vera. Waking up in Eugene's arms, Vera mistakenly thanks Eugene for getting her out of harm's way, but is independent enough to turn down his offer of a ride. In his limo, Eugene follows Vera long enough to discover that she works in a theater.

What is billed as a dance company is actually a circus act starring Vera and her performing partner, Ivan. The performers are introduced in a lateral traveling shot of each performer removing a mask, only to reveal clown make-up underneath. The performances include some very frenetic leaping, twirling and contortions. Eugene joins the audience, audibly commenting on the ridiculousness of Ivan's knife throwing act, with Vera on the receiving end of those flying blades. Eugene tries to convince Vera that his wealth and class will rescue her from the itinerant life of show biz, much to the distress of Ivan, whose feelings towards Vera have not be expressed to her.

Here's where William Wellman, Jr.'s commentary proves invaluable. With much of his silent work lost, what is known about William Wellman's early filmmaking career is anecdotal. After making several westerns, and reportedly manhandling William Fox, Wellman's career showed scant promise. Paramount's B. P. Schulberg assigned You Never Know Women to Wellman after seeing the 1925 Columbia production, When Husbands Flirt, written by Dorothy Arzner. It was the critical and commercial success of You Never Know Women that allowed Wellman to direct Wings.

The blu-ray is taken from the 4K restoration of the film, including tinted scenes. Wellman, Jr. quotes from several reviews from 1926 with several writers noting the influence of German films on the visual style. What is particularly noticeable are several point of view shots, especially two with the moving camera - one from the point of view of a clown on top of some tall, inflatable contraption wobbling on the stage, and the second, with Vera flying above the audience as a human butterfly. There is also a very nice visual moment where we see two men entering the theater at night, seen only as shadows against a wall.

Donald Sosin's music track works quite well here, with the occasional balalaika for that Russian flavoring, and clarinet solos that are almost synchronized to accompany the playing by the clown, Toberchik, portrayed by El Brendel. The blu-ray also includes a booklet with an essay by Gina Telaroli. If the last name seems familiar, star Florence Vidor was the ex-wife of director King Vidor. Judging from the posters for the film, she was a big star in the latter part of the silent era, her career ending soon after the sound era began.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

October 02, 2018

The Spiral Staircase

Robert Siodmak - 1946
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

It might be pushing it to describe The Spiral Staircase as photo-giallo. The first view we have of the serial killer is from behind, on a dark rainy night. He is wearing a long, dark coat and a hat with the brim down to cover as much of his face as possible. We also see his black gloves. Not too different in appearance from the killer in Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. The point of view shot is a favorite trope in giallo, and here we have the distorted view of the victims, all young women, seen misshapen prior to their deaths. There is also the trope of a psychological motivation, a product of the writer's imagination, in this case a misdirected hatred of imperfection. The source novel by Ethel Lina White, Some Must Watch anticipates the suggestions of voyeurism in the titles of several gialli. Just before we share the killer's point of view, there are extreme close-ups of one of the eyes of the killer, followed by a reflection in that eye.

That eye actually belongs to Robert Siodmak and its appearance in this context indirectly anticipates giallo maestro Dario Argento's gloved hands dispatching various victims. Candle lit basements are almost always creepy, as are open windows on the proverbial dark and stormy night. The story of a mute servant girl and an unknown serial killer in a small New England town, trapped in a mansion with the possibility of the killer somewhere near, still holds up after seventy years. I had seen The Spiral Staircase once before, about forty years ago in a 16mm print. There was so much I had forgotten, but where the blu-ray really shines is in revealing the detailed set, the interior of the mansion where most of the film takes place.

The opening shot of the film is deliberately misleading. A tracking shot of a small New England town, the film takes place around 1915 or so. There is a makeshift movie theater inside a hotel, with the hand-cranked projector, and a pianist near the screen, audience in rapt attention. There are a couple of telephones, all requiring hand cranking and the services of an unseen operator to connect calls. Once inside the Warren family mansion, where most of the film takes place, a typewriter is briefly seen. Yet everyone travels by horse drawn buggy, and illumination is by gaslight or candles. If there weren't those few intrusions of the 20th Century, it would be easy to assume that The Spiral Staircase takes place about twenty-five years earlier. The first murder takes place in the hotel room above the movie theater. And perhaps I am taking a leap in making a connection here, but the time that the film takes place was also when the concept of eugenics was popularized and given academic validation.

Siodmak and gifted RKO cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca provide several memorable shots. Dorothy McGuire walking along an iron fence, twig in hand, hitting the bars to accompany her steps. The camera weaving in and out of rooms of the mansion, each holding its own secrets amidst intricate patterns on the walls and furnishings.

None of this would matter if Dorothy McGuire wasn't able to carry most of the film with the expressive use of her eyes and lips. The real movie is in ignoring the narrative elements and just watching McGuire's facial expressions as she gets emotionally involved viewing the silent film, or is actively listening to the nattering of the too friendly doctor played by Kent Smith. Competing with McGuire is Ethel Barrymore as the bedridden family matriarch, her performance pared down to her eyes and commanding voice.

This blu-ray comes with a generally well prepared commentary track by film historian Imogen Sara Smith. Right off the bat, she clarifies that the silent film within the film, erroneously titled, The Kiss, is excerpts from D. W. Griffith's The Sands of Dee (1912). An overview of the main cast, Siodmak, and screenwriter Mel Dinelli. The one error is in stating that McGuire won the Oscar for Gentleman's Agreement - she lost to Loretta Young. Ethel Barrymore, however, was an Oscar nominee for her performance as Mrs. Warren.

The blu-ray also comes with the radio version of The Spiral Staircase. Radio play versions of popular movies were common, especially in the 1940s. However, here, Dorothy McGuire providing the spoken interior thoughts to her characters is no substitute for a performance that depends on what is not being said.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

September 25, 2018

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade: The Complete Films

Joaquim Pedro de Andrade - 1959-1981
Kino Classics BD Region A Three disc set

I may have bitten off more than I can chew here. This set contains six features and eight shorts which I saw over the course of three days. I know that there are a bunch of cultural references that I missed, and that may also be missed by those not familiar not only with Andrade, or Cinema Novo - the Brazilian "New Wave" of the Sixties and early Seventies, but the history of Brazil from its days as a Portuguese colony to its more recent history at the time the films were made. None of this should dissuade anyone from taking a look at these films but instead serve as a reminder of how those of us in North America are generally better informed about Europe than the continent south of us.

By the time Cinema Novo had made its way to art theater and film festival showings in the U.S., it was in a state of decline in Brazil. This was a time when some cineastes were looking for the various waves of young filmmakers around the world, with several of the films picked up by New Yorker Films or Grove Press Films. Unlike the French New Wave, where we had some idea of what the rebellion was all about, Cinema Novo was both a rebellion in terms of filmmaking and of taking a political stance. I don't think too many of us were aware of Brazilian film history, and only had the vaguest ideas regarding culture and history. I would think that for many of us, the only Brazilian film we were aware of prior to Cinema Novo was Black Orpheus - the Greek legend transposed to Rio during the Carnival, by French filmmaker Marcel Camus.

It is the short films that offer the most accessible viewing. Tropical Lane especially will come as a surprise. Sex is frequently a part of Andrade's work, and this film, about a young man and his erotic encounters with watermelons was made forty years before the pineapples of Girls Trip and the peaches of Call Me by Your Name. Animal lovers may be upset by Cat Skin, about a young boy from Rio's favelas who steals a cat for the purpose of selling it, cat skins being used to make tambourines. Cinema Novo, made for German television, provides a brief history of the loose group of filmmakers who in turn were inspired by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, who amazingly died at the age of 89 last April, outliving many of the filmmakers he inspired. Andrade even shows one of the filmmakers getting a loan from a bank to finance his film. There is also a scene of an editing crew gathered around the flatbed Moviola, the film editing machine that they all share, a gift through UNESCO. Brasilia: Contradictions of a New City is fascinating in its history of a city completely built from the ground up, with idealized intentions, but without fully anticipating certain consequences. As the capital of Brazil, many of the top political leaders still preferred to live in Rio or Sao Paulo. Housing was made up of blocks of huge, six story apartments. Even with housing available for lower income families, there was still the spontaneous creation of shacks in distant outskirts, either for those who worked in Brasilia but could not afford to live there, or for the many who came for the limited jobs in construction. As noted in the final credits regarding the restoration of this film, the producers may have been expecting a different film than the one made by Andrade.

Among the features, Garrincha: Joy of the People is a documentary about the popular soccer star with unusually twisted legs. Nicknamed after a bird, Manual Francisco dos Santos is seen feted by fans and the political elite. The film is also about the Brazilian love of soccer. Conjugal Warfare jumps between three narratives - an elderly couple, finding reasons to be unhappy with each other, a married man seeking happiness with an unusual variety of prostitutes, and a sleazy lawyers whose sexual advances a rebuffed by several women, who then finds himself on the receiving end of a male admirer.

The Conspirators takes place in 18th Century Brazil, with several men discussing possible rebellion against Portugal. The incident was known as the Minas Gerais Conspiracy, taking place in 1789. One of the leaders, Tiradentes, was executed, while the others were exiled. One of the sources of inspiration was the then recent American Revolution. After Brazil was became a republic in 1889, Tiradentes was declared by martyr, and ironically also made a patron of the Military Police, a point made at the conclusion, featuring a parade. It should be noted that The Conspirators was made during the time of military rule in Brazil.

The original poster for Macunaíma is the inspiration for the cover of this blu-ray set. This film and Andrade's final feature, The Brazilwood Man are both freewheeling allegories about Brazil, its government, culture, race, and sexual relations. Andrade also uses distancing devices adding to the artificial qualities of many of the scenes. As such, I feel in discussing these films that they are better served surveys on Andrade by Olaf Moller and Ela Bittencourt.

All films end with credits regarding to 2K restoration required for each of the films. An essay by Fabio Andrade is also enclosed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

September 20, 2018

The Farmer's Daughter

H. C. Potter - 1947
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The Farmer's Daughter is one of those films that straddles that sometimes thin fence that separates the classic from a film that is simply old. Certainly, the title has lost its meaning, originating from a series of jokes from the period, usually regarding a naive country girl taken advantage of by a salesman from the city. And there is some reference to that in the initial set-up that takes Loretta Young's Katie from the mid-western family farm to Capital City. For myself, until I saw the blu-ray, the film was only known as the basis for the television series from the early Sixties, with an actress of Swedish origin, Inger Stevens, as the Swedish-American title character.

With her resolution to be totally self-reliant, Katie hitches her way Capital City virtually broke, still hoping to attend nursing school. A one day temp job as a fill-in maid becomes an offer of full time employment based on her talent for making coffee served to a group of politicians. The widow of a famous senator, Mrs. Morley, is the unnamed political party's kingmaker. Her son, Glenn, is a congressman. While this is the Morley home, it is Clancy, the majordomo, who is in charge of operations within the household. Katie's blunt political opinions raise some eyebrows, but she endears herself to the Morley's, at least until her public questioning of a congressional candidate gets her recruited to run as the opposition.

Politically, The Farmer's Daughter has its heart in the right place. In one of her campaign speeches, Katie talks about representing all citizens regardless of race and religion. The bad guys, led by the unctuous Anders Finley, are revealed to be members of an unnamed white nationalist group. When Finley reveals his true agenda to Mrs. Morley, Clancy bodily tosses him out of the mansion, throwing Finley's hat with message, "Take your hood with you." And while some of politics can still be considered timely, what feels missing is some of the satiric bite of a filmmaker like Frank Capra or Preston Sturges.

Loretta Young won an Oscar for the title role. I can only assume that this was more for career recognition, and that her character was more likable than the competition made up of flawed characters portrayed by Rosalind Russell, Joan Crawford, Susan Hayward and Dorothy McGuire. Maybe the slight Swedish accent helped. It is worth noting that Ingrid Bergman turned down the role, not wanting to be typecast based on her accent. Both actresses were about ten years too old for the role. If Loretta Young was going to get an Oscar nomination for that year, her role as the wife caught between earthbound husband David Niven, and heavenly Cary Grant, in The Bishop's Wife is of greater interest.

The commentary track by film historian Lee Gambin mostly concentrates on the career of Ms. Young, and how The Farmer's Daughter fits in with the history of female led films of the Forties. Ethel Barrymore and Charles Bickford, Mrs. Morley and Clancy respectively, are given short shrift here even though they provide the true heart of the film with their slyly knowing performances. Joseph Cotton is barely acknowledged as well, although this is in-between some more memorable films as part of David O. Selznick's stock company.

Of some historical interest are several of the supporting actors. As Katie's brothers, James Arness, Lex Barker and Keith Andes would achieve varying degrees of future fame. The Swedish born silent film star, Anna Q. Nilsson is seen briefly as Katie's mother. Virginia, the conniving journalist with an eye for Glenn, and the stink eye for Katie, is played by Rose Hobart, the actress immortalized in the experimental short by artist Joseph Cornell.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:11 AM

September 18, 2018

Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji

Chiyari Fuji
Tomu Uchida - 1955
Arrow Academy BD Region A

You know something's up when you're about to watch a Japanese period film, and the opening music track hints at less serious activities. Divorced from any images, the occasional jazzy stylings of Taiichiro Kosugi's score suggests an urban melodrama, or possible comedy, set in the 1940s. As it is, most of the expected tropes of the period samurai film are undermined or ignored here. Even the English language title is misleading.

The samurai isn't even the main character. We first see a group of travelers on foot, walking on a ridge dotted with bare trees, with Mount Fuji in the background. They are on their way to Edo, bound together simply sharing the same route and staying in the same inns. The samurai is with two servants, one whose job is specifically as his spear carrier. The samurai, Sakawa, is noted by his two servants, Genta and Gonpachi, to be avoiding sake during this trip, and also having a reputation as a mean drunk. Getting in the way of his duties, Gonpachi is followed by a very young orphan, Jiro, whose stated ambition to go to Edo to be a spear carrier.

The sometimes idealized view of Japan in the Shogunate era is examined for the illogic of the rules that governed social roles at the time. The travelers are temporarily unable to continue walking when a group of nobles block the road in order to have an outdoor tea ceremony. Several samurai take Sakawa to task for treating Genta as an equal, drinking sake with him in public. Sakawa's small sip of sake become full blown inebriation, angrily pulling rank on Genta. Mount Fuji, the tradition symbol of Japan, is seen as becoming obscured by clouds, just as the idealized notion of the country is lost amid increasingly absurd rules.

Tomu Uchida was a peer of such filmmakers as Ozu and Mizoguchi, with his first directorial credit in 1922. Unlike most Japanese filmmakers, he never aligned himself for any significant period with any of the studios, and left Japan to make films in Manchuria during World War II. Manchuria during this time was a Japanese colony. There appears to be disagreement regarding Uchida's activities after the war, as he did not return to Japan until 1954. Bloody Spear at Mount Fuji was Uchida's first film after fifteen years. Yasujiro Ozu, Daisuke Ito, and Hiroshi Shimizu are credited here as advisors to the production. Uchida also had the benefit of having Chiezo Kataoka, a major star of period films, appear as Gonpachi. Two of Kataoka's children are in the cast with his son as Jiro, and daughter as Okin, a very young singer and dancer, daughter to the woman, an itinerant shamisen player. I have to wonder if anyone involved in the writing of the screenplay had seen George Steven's Shane. The final scene, with Gonpachi walking alone into the sunset, refusing to let young Jiro tag along, recalls Brandon DeWilde calling after reluctant hero Alan Ladd.

Arrow was able to port over supplements from the French label, Wild Side. Included here are an interview with Uchida's son Yasuka, and a very informative interview with former publicist Kazunori Kishida which provides more details on the history of Toei Studios. French critic Fabrice Arduini also provides an overview of Uchida's career with excerpts from some of his other films. The consistently reliable Jasper Sharp also provides a commentary track made for this new release. The supplements should be of interest and value to those with a general interest in Japanese cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

September 11, 2018

The Guardians

Les gardiennes
Xavier Beauvois - 2017
Music Box Films

The opening of The Guardians is a traveling shot surveying a group of dead soldiers, all wearing gas masks. Most of the film takes place during World War One, beginning in 1916 when it is clear after two years that the war will not be as short as anticipated, ending two years later with France now settled back into civilian existence. Except for a soldier's nightmare of being in battle, the war is unseen, taking place well beyond the small rural village. The impact is visible with a population made up of women, young children and old men.

Hortense, the matriarch of a farm, hires a young woman, Francine, to help out, initially as seasonal help. Francine is kept on full-time. The sturdy redhead attracts the attention of Hortense's son, Georges, who is temporarily on leave. The two become lovers. Francine is later seen by Hortense and Georges fending off the advances of an American soldier stationed in town. Even though Hortense is aware of Francine's innocence, she is dismissed due to Hortense's concerns about the reputation of the family.

All of which brings up the question regarding who are the guardians and what or who is being protected. Even the idea of the soldiers being the guardians of France is questioned. An early scene is of school children reciting an anti-German poem with reference to "the Krauts". Hortense's other soldier son, Clovis, has a more human view of the Germans. Georges has a nightmare of fighting of the enemy single-handedly only to unmask a soldier and see himself. Hortense sees her role as defending her family, while Francine declares that her yet to be born son will act as her protector. Tradition is forced to give way to modernization as machinery is used to replace the manual harvesting of the wheat fields.

Nathalie Baye is virtually unrecognizable as Hortense, looking much older than her actual age. Francine is played by Iris Bry, spotted by a casting director on the street with no reported acting experience at age 22. A new French female star? I'm not making any predictions, while one critic has compared Bry to Isabelle Huppert, probably more for the similar hair color.

One of my favorite moments is when Georges and Francine meet for a discreet render-vous in the woods, stopping at an area with what appears to have been the remnant of a neolithic monument. Beauvois films the hands of Francine and Georges feeling the surface of one of the large standing stones. The two hands are next to each other, finally locked together. The scene is one of the few with Michel Legrand's sparsely heard music on the soundtrack. The music is wistfully romantic, and as such recalls the kind of moments associated with the earlier films of Francois Truffaut and Jacques Demy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:58 AM

September 04, 2018

Goldstone

Ivan Sen - 2016
Lightyear Entertainment

Goldstone could easily be described as a contemporary Chinatown, set in Australia's outback. What begins as the story of a detective looking for a missing woman, constantly reminded that he is an unwanted outsider, is also the story of exploitation - land deals, shady financial schemes, displacement of the local population, and environmental ruin. Keep in mind that this comparison is restricted to the main narrative elements. In no way does Ivan Sen try to mimic the look of other films except for a shoot out near the end.

The film is the second to center on freelance detective Jay Swan, seen previously in Mystery Road (2013). Swan is racially mixed, Aborigine father, white mother, so is viewed with suspicion by both the indigenous population and the white authority figures and settlers. The themes of race and cultural as well as physical displacement are personal for Sen, whose own background is mixed. Sen announces his themes as the film opens with a montage of vintage photos of white settlers in shacks, Aborigines in western clothing, and Chinese workers. Sen suggests here that the history of Australia has always been been an untidy intertwining of the native people, settlers and immigrant labor that is still in progress.

It might be an exaggeration to call Goldstone a mining town. Scattered at random along a two-lane highway are various pre-fab buildings, a police station, a bar, and a motel that is comprised of small trailers. A large portion of land is block off as the property of the mining company. The mayor, a middle-aged woman, and the mine's supervisor, plot to expand mining operations into land belonging to the indigenous community, attempting to bribe their leaders. The mining operation also involved with human trafficking, bringing in Chinese women who have been forced in prostitution, primarily on behalf of the miners. The environmental impact is suggested by a shot of several dead fish at the edge of a lake.

While integrated as part of his story telling, Sen uses many panning shots of the sunbaked area, hard, dusty land and mountains. Sen also likes to use extreme overhead shots with the camera looking down on his characters, a sort of god's eye view of the action. The only location that easily can be described as beautiful is a stream hidden between a narrow mountain pathway, with indigenous artwork along the wall. It is suggested that this stream is only known by a few, and the artwork has mystical meaning.

While it isn't necessary to see Mystery Road to enjoy Goldstone, it does help as there are some references to the earlier film. Aaron Pedersen returns as Swan, this time significantly worse for wear. One of Hong Kong's first female action stars, Cheng Pei-pei, plays the madam in control of the prostitutes. David Gulpilil is virtually typecast here as the Aborigine leader who refuses to be corrupted by the mining company. Jacki Weaver has also been making a career as a villain, here offering homemade cakes and a toothy smile while using her position to intimidate others. Sen not only wrote and directed his film, but also served as cinematographer, editor and music composer. Goldstone and Ivan Sen were nominated for several Australian Academy Awards, losing to the juggernaut that was Hacksaw Ridge.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:15 AM

August 28, 2018

A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die

Un minuto per pregare, un istante per morire
Franco Giraldi - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

While I am an admitted auteurist in my approach to writing about film, I also recognize that the director is not always the dominant personality in the making of the film. Prior to seeing A Minute to Pray . . . , I was able to see two earlier westerns by Franco Giraldi out of the four directorial credits. His first, Sugar Colt is lightly serious, with several comic moments. Seven Guns for the MacGregors, about a Scottish clan out west is quite playful, as is presumably its sequel. The tone of A Minute to Pray is more serious than those earlier films. In this case, the film's author, literarily and thematically, is producer and co-writer Albert Band.

The story centers on an outlaw, Clay McCord, known for his way with a pistol. McCord is also suffering from uncontrollable pain and spasms in his right arm. His biggest fear is of dying in the streets from epilepsy like his father. We have shots of extreme close-ups of McCord's eyes dissolving into shots of McCord as a boy, helpless as his father is lying in a muddy street of some frontier town. In frustration, the teenage McCord picks up a nearby gun and shoots the townspeople laughing at him and his father. As an adult, the right arm becomes virtually paralyzed in moments of stress.

With his physical limitations, McCord contemplates accepting amnesty in a small New Mexico town, offered by the marshal on orders from the governor. Getting in the way are bounty hunters hoping to cash in on the reward for McCord, and McCord's decision to temporarily hide out in an isolated town taken over by a bandit gang.

Albert Band wrote the screenplay with his usual writing partner, Louis Garfinkle, and their Italian writing collaborator, Ugo Liberatore. Without giving to much away, there is some similarity to be found with Band and Garfinkle's first wok together, the psychological horror film, I Bury the Living. In the earlier film, the head of a large cemetery believes he has caused the death of several people due to his placing black pins on the map of burial spaces, teetering on madness as the film progresses. What seems uncanny is given a more mundane explanation. In A Minute to Pray . . ., the reveal near the end provides a simple explanation freeing McCord of his psychological torture.

Sergio Corbucci was originally scheduled to direct. There is none of the stylish cinematography found in the Corbucci-Band The Hellbenders, especially with that film's cemetery scene. There is one shot of McCord seen in the distance with a trio of outlaws sitting by a fire in the foreground. The camera pulls back to reveal that there are several more men than the initially seen three. Otherwise, as film historian Alex Cox notes in his commentary, visually A Minute to Pray . . . could almost pass for a Hollywood western.

It is also worth noting that while the financing came from Hollywood, hoping to cash in on the recent popularity of Italian westerns in the the United States, Albert Band should be credited for development of the genre. After a handful of low budget independent films in Hollywood, Band and Garfinkle set up shop in Italy. Their first western, like most of these films, an Italian-Spanish co-production, was Gunfight at Red Sands (1963). The star was American expatriate Richard Harrison, remembered as the guy who suggested that Sergio Leone offer a starring part to a TV actor when everyone else had turned him down. The music was the first western with music by Ennio Morricone.

With Hollywood money and a bigger budget than often found on these films, Band was able to now cast bigger names. The late Sixties was the time when the usually morose Alex Cord was accorded big screen stardom. His Long Island accent almost makes me wish he was dubbed along with the Spanish and Italian actors. Faring better in supporting roles are veterans Arthur Kennedy as the marshal, and Robert Ryan as the two-fisted governor. Ryan appears to be having fun with his role, a glint in his eye and the hint of a smile as he takes on all challengers. One of the highlights is seeing these two in action during the big gunfight near the end. The film score was by Carlo Rustichelli, with music that veers from hints of foreboding similar to his music for Mario Bava's horror films, to romantic Spanish guitar themes, to the full orchestra swelling to melodies that might remind one of Mahler or Wagner. Hollywood influence definitely had a hand in how the film was presented in the United States.

The original Italian release of A Minute to Pray . . . is reported at 118 minutes. What is available here is the U.S. release version, short by about twenty minutes. Most of what has been cut was a subplot regarding the outlaw town where McCord is in hiding. What Kino Lorber has made available is the original ending of the film, which looks like it was recorded off of a Japanese television broadcast. That original ending is nihilistic, but also a more fitting conclusion.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

August 14, 2018

Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami

Sophie Fiennes - 2017
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Bloodlight is a word attributed to the Jamaican musician/production team of Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare referring to the red light indicating that the recording session is in progress. Bami is a kind of grain used for meals that has a particular kind of versatility in the ways it can be prepared and served. The title is an indication of the structure of Sophie Fiennes documentary that switches between primarily between specially staged performances in Dublin, Ireland, and Jones visiting her family and recording in Jamaica.

Fiennes first gets the viewers' attention with footage of Jones performing "Slave to the Rhythm". Jones is wearing a stylized skull mask and a loose blue blouse of sorts that extends to a billowing cape, over her form fitting corset. This is cut to alternate with footage of Jones performing the song, with a cat-like mask and corset, while spinning a hula hoop at the same time. With her thin, imposing frame and energetic stage act, Jones looks no different that she did at the time that her celebrity made its initial impact in the early Eighties. I wouldn't be surprised if someone like Beyonce was taking notes as Grace Jones hardly looks like someone who just turned 70.

As someone who was only marginally familiar with Jones' music, what is most striking is learning about the autobiographical elements of some of her songs. The family gatherings are in part discussions of the family history, of the prominence of the Jones family in Spanish Town on her father's side, and the notoriety of the Williams family, with Jones' mother considered by her paternal grandfather to be unworthy of Jones' father. There is also much discussion of the impact that Jones' maternal grandfather, known as "Mas P" had on the family.

The structure of the film is not linear. Fiennes cuts from one location to another without titles indicating time or place. As Fiennes explains, primarily in the second of two commentary tracks, the film takes place in a continuous present tense. The viewer fills in some of the details through observation and listening. The shape of the film is in some ways similar to Fiennes' earlier Over your Cities Grass will Grow, about environmental artist Anselm Kiefer which similarly observes Kiefer at work, alternating with footage of his buildings and tunnels, letting the work speak for itself. It was Fiennes documentary on Jones brother, Noel Jones, and his church, Hoover Street Revival (2002) that brought Grace Jones in contact with Sophie Fiennes. That Jones was asked previously to be the subject of a documentary, but would only do so on her terms, was the impetus for this collaboration.

One of the clearest examples of Jones demanding to be taken seriously and perform on her own terms is in a sequence in Paris. She rehearses her disco version of Edith Piaf's "La Vie in Rose" while surrounded by young female dancers, all dressed in white baby doll lingerie. To describe the staging of the musical number as "tacky" would be too kind. Fiennes manages to find in the audience two young girls, clearly bored with the expression of students waiting for a lecture to be over, surrounded by an enthusiastic audience moving in rhythm to the song. Afterwards, Jones expresses her frustration that someone thought that the use of the dancers was an appropriate idea.

Of the two commentary tracks, the first, with Jones, Fiennes and moderator Judith Casselberry, primarily is of interest in amplifying some of Jones' family history. For myself, the second track with Fiennes discussing her working methods with critic Ian Smith was of greater interest. There is also the appearance of Jones and Fiennes at the Film Society of Lincoln Center from last April, with the star even more uninhibited and bawdy than the woman we see on the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:35 AM

August 08, 2018

Street Mobster

Gendai Yakuza: Hitokiri Yota
Kinji Fukasaku - 1972
Arrow Video BD Region A

The title roughly translates as "Modern Yakuza: Murderous Hoodlum". The title character as played by Bunta Sugawara, is undoubtedly a hoodlum, but arguably is not yakuza, at least not in the classic sense. His character, Okita Isamu, and by extension, Fukasaku, expresses disdain for the ritualized aspects of yakuza life. Unlike the more classic films, no one extends an empty palm as a form of greeting. The viewer sees bandaged hands, but the only moment of cutting a pinkie finger as a sign of contrition is Isamu's impromptu and ultimately futile gesture. There is no honor among thieves here.

The basic narrative outline is familiar, following a gangster's rise and fall. Announcing itself as being a fictionalized account of true events was part of a new trend at the time for yakuza films. Fukasaku, who rewrote the screenplay to help set it apart from similar films, mixes hand-held documentary style filmmaking with dutch angles, freeze frames, and a few highly stylized visual moments. The "true story" aspect is anchored with Isamu's off-screen narration, introducing himself as having been born on August 15, 1945, the same day that Japan officially surrendered on World War II.

Isamu is shown having a difficult childhood, in extreme poverty, with an uncaring mother who primarily earned money as a prostitute in the margins of Tokyo. This is followed by leading a street gang, and imprisonment for killing the member of an established yakuza gang. Isamu could belong to one of the gangs that use legitimate business fronts, with members dressed in uniform black business suits. What keeps him as a perpetual outsider is his attraction to getting into fights with other gang members, especially those he perceives of as arrogant.

The yakuza films in general are about masculine societies. Isamu steps into contemporary Tokyo of 1972 after several years in prison, noting the influence of "hippie culture" with men with long hair looking similar to girls. One might argue that the yakuza films, and the existence of the yakuza, are a reflection of crisis of masculinity following Japan's defeat, a sense of humiliation that was previously unknown to the country. Isamu chooses to live in a way that he is always physically asserting himself, and his sense of being a man. His one relationship with a woman is with a prostitute that he raped and sold to a brothel prior to his imprisonment. His sense of entitlement to be with other women conflicts with his pained sense of loyalty to her. Isamu's uncompromising sense of self ultimately leads to his inevitable violent death.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Tom Mes, helping to position Street Mobster within the careers of Kinji Fukusaku and Bunta Sugawara. Mes also talks about actor Noboru Ando's early life in crime, with his acting career taking place following six years in prison. Close-ups of Ando show a knife scar on his left cheek. Mes also discusses how Street Mobster marked a change in yakuza films from the "romantic chivalry" series that frequently starred Ken Takakura, the type that Paul Schrader cited when introducing the genre to U.S. cinephiles. There is also a booklet with notes by Jasper Sharp that is of interest for going into more detail on Sugawara's life and early acting career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:02 PM

August 02, 2018

The Great Game

Le Grand Jeu
Nicolas Pariser. - 2015
Icarus Films / Distrib Films

Everything about The Great Game is muted. Not only the blues and oranges that dominate the images, but also the unheard bits of dialogue, and the action. A politician is murdered, hit by a car. What we see is a partial view of the politician walking out of the frame, followed by the car. But the viewer only hears the thud of the car, followed by the sight of loose newspaper pages fluttering in the aftermath.

The central character, Pierre Blum, is a failed novelist, described as distant, remote in his relationships. Whether the film is intended to reflect Blum's view of the world as seen by others, I can not say. There are some intriguing ideas here, although I suspect Pariser's debut film may be too cerebral even for those who have immersed themselves the films of Eric Rohmer, or more recently, Eugene Green.

Blum has been enlisted by power broker to anonymously write a book designed to provoke political discourse in France, as well as affect the career of a political rival. The publication turns out to not only be provocative, but life threatening for Blum, his patron, and various people in Blum's life. Maybe its very well hidden from the public, but it was hard for me to imagine similar kind of machinations among such firebrands as Ann Coulter and Dinesh D'Souza.

This is one of the films I wish I could have liked better, primarily because of the cast. Those who follow French cinema would be more than familiar with Melvil Poupard, here as Blum, and Andre Dussollier as Paskin, the power broker. Clemente Poesy appears as the possible romantic interest for Blum who finds herself emotionally and politically compromised. Nicolas Pariser won the Louis Delluc Prize for Best First Film in 2015. After festival screenings, this film is now getting a U.S. release on home video formats.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:11 AM

July 31, 2018

Lou Andreas-Salome: The Audacity to be Free

Cordula Kablitz-Post - 2016
Cinema Libre Studio R1 DVD

This is an intimate biography of a woman perhaps more famous now for her various liaisons than for her novels or philosophical works. The film jumps between two threads, of Andreas-Salome narrating her memoirs to the man who would eventually save her surviving writings, and the years between childhood in St. Petersburg, Russia, and her first meetings with Sigmund Freud. What would be the film's present tense is in the immediate aftermath of Hitler's book burning and ban on art and literature deemed decadent, as well as the practice of psychoanalysis in 1933. The past is primarily the last quarter of the 19th Century, with the restrictive Russian childhood giving way to a more free form existence primarily in Germany, as Andreas-Salome has varying relationships with Rainer Maria Rilke and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as less famous men.

I am unable to vouch for the historical veracity of the film, but counting on absolute accuracy in any biographical film is a foolish endeavor. What is probably of greater interest is of how Andreas-Salome lived her life as much on her own terms as possible. This meant her choice of being in committed, though platonic relationships with some men, while sexually involved with others. The film shows how Andreas-Salome navigated through the various social and familial expectations that were placed on her, as well as how her writings inspired both men and women regarding a woman's role in society.

Kablitz-Post does make the interesting choice of establishing several of the film's settings by inserting her characters in period postcards. Less successful for me is the literal representation of God as seen in a childhood memory, with fluffy white hair and long beard. Perhaps it can be argued that this is how a child might imagine God, yet it strikes me as problematic considering that Andreas-Salome spent her life questioning various aspects of Christianity, even as a child. There is also a scene where the very earnest Rilke, now a successful poet, tries to woo his muse by telling her that he can not sleep, breathe or basically exist without her as a permanent part of his life. I was ready for Rilke to burst into song with the old Barry Manilow hit, "Can't Smile without You".

The home video version comes with an interview with Kablitz-Post. This is her first narrative film following several documentaries, primarily for German television. I'm intrigued that one of Kablitz-Post's previous films is about the iconic German New Wave star, Nina Hagen, although others, I am certain, would be eager to see the documentary on actor Helmut Berger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:09 AM

July 17, 2018

I Walk Alone

Byron Haskin - 1947
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The movie that I like to retitle, "When Burt met Kirk". This marked the first pairing of the two actors, the fourth film for both. The difference is that Burt Lancaster had already achieved star billing in his second role, while Kirk Douglas was still considered a supporting player. In his commentary track, Troy Howarth mentions the friendship between the two actors, but the nature of their personal relationship is open to some debate as discussed in Kate Buford's biography.

Burt Lancaster, seemingly ready to burst out of his suit, plays the ex-con, free after fourteen years, ready to rejoin former bootlegging partner Kirk Douglas. Lancaster expects that Douglas will still keep the agreement they made when they last saw each other regarding sharing any wealth. Douglas has gone legit, from running a low-rent speakeasy to now owning a high class night club. The film takes plays over the course of one very long night.

Haskin's film is not considered part of the canon, but for someone unfamiliar with film noir, there are two scenes that serve as perfect illustrations. The accountant of a nightclub, played by Wendell Corey, has walked out on boss Douglas. He realizes that he is being followed by a hitman. Just prior to that moment, Corey is seen in a dimly lit drug store phone booth, desperately trying to contact Lancaster. Sneaking out the back way, Corey walks, then runs down the street, framed in an overhead dolly shot at a slight diagonal angle. He is being followed by the elongated shadow of the hit man. Corey is off-screen, to the right of the camera when gunfire is heard. The dolly shot continues moving to the right, with the sidewalk lit with the light of a store across the street, the store letters seen on the sidewalk, a trail of drops of blood, stopping on Corey's dead body.

Following that scene, Lancaster and Lizabeth Scott confront Kirk Douglas at his New Jersey mansion. Douglas seems to have control with the gun at hand. A desk lamp is knocked over. Douglas is seen in silhouette, with only moonlight, shooting in the direction of Lancaster's voice. Lancaster and Scott are barely visible, hiding in the shadows, counting until Douglas is out of bullets.

I Walk Alone was Haskin's first directorial credit in twenty years. Starting as a silent era cinematographer, he also directed four now lost silent films around 1927. Going back to cinematography and special effects, with uncredited direction on Action in the North Atlantic, Haskin worked for producer Hal Wallis on several films when both were at Warner Brothers. How much of the visual expressiveness should be credited to Haskin, I can't really say, although in retrospect, I Walk Alone could almost pass for a Warner Brothers movie. The handful of films I've seen by Haskin also indicate some thematic continuity in the corrupting nature of self-perceived power with The Boss, with a screenplay by an uncredited Dalton Trumbo, The Naked Jungle and Haskin's last theatrical film, The Power.

New York Times film critic Bosley Crowthers took time to be a public scold in his review, noting, "It is notable that the slant of sympathy is very strong toward the mug who did the 'stretch,' as though he were some kind of martyr. Nice thing! Producer Hal Wallis should read the Code." Burt Lancaster was hardly the first actor to play an ex-con who the audience would root for. Pushing the production code a bit more was the presentation of Douglas' open relationship between his night club's chanteuse played by Scott, and the socialite played by Kristine Miller, who is also open about her flings. I Walk Alone is visually dynamic, but keep the ears open for the still charged sexual banter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

July 10, 2018

A Double Face

A Doppia Faccia / Liz et Helen
Riccardo Freda - 1969

Another visit to a film seen as a grey market DVD, although I just found out it is currently available on Amazon Prime. The version I saw was the French language version of Freda's film, signed under his pseudonym of Robert Hampton. Visually, this looks like a dub made from a video tape, lacking in some detail and accurate color. I passed on getting this on what may well have been a better version about ten years ago, but I'm OK with that.

Not a horror film, but there are moments that will remind those familiar with Freda's better known work. John Alexander meets Helen Brown, daughter of a wealthy businessman, at a ski resort. The two get married, and John gets to work for Helen's father. John and Helen's relationship is uneasy when John sees his wife sharing bath time with Liz. Helen talks John out of getting a divorce, reminding him that even though he works for her father, Helen owns most of the company stock, a fortune that John would inherit should Helen die. And indeed, Helen is the victim when someone plants an incendiary device in her car.

And like several other Freda movies, is the victim truly dead? A mysterious woman, Christine, shows up at John's house, playing Helen's favorite song on a tape recorder. At a warehouse party, Christine takes John to the makeshift theater showing a film with Christine having an encounter with a woman, nude, with an oversized necklace, and for John, a familiar ring on one hand, and scar on the back of her neck. The face is obscured by a large black hat with thick black veil.

The scene where John discovers Christine begins with a shot of Klaus Kinski as John walking up the stairs of his dark mansion, carrying a lit candelabra. The camera is tilted down from second floor so Kinski is seeing initially at the bottom of the steps. It's an image not dissimilar from Freda's other gothic films. A Double Face isn't a horror film, but there a times when it seems like it could be with just a bit of tweaking. And the scene with the big reveal at the end is that other major moment that recalls that Freda made Italy's first contemporary horror film almost ten years earlier.

John buys the film of Christine and the mystery woman, watching it alone, reviewing and rewinding the footage that appears to provide clues to the woman's identity. The next day, John watches the movie with his father-in-law. The movie looks exactly the same, except the woman in question is not wearing a ring, nor does she have a scar on her neck. And aside from being a narrative plot point, the scene could well be read as an observation on film viewing and memory. I know for myself there have have been moments or entire scenes that I was certain were part of a film that turn out not to be there when I revisit the film in question.

What also makes this film unusual is seeing Kinski as an uncharacteristically meek man, easily acquiescing to his wife, seemingly helpless when his father-in-law tells him to take responsibility for the business. The other bright spot is the score by Nora Orlandi, credited her as Joan Christian. Orlandi only has a few film scores to her credit, and much of this is piano based based, thundering and dramatic before moving to a more romantic musical theme. Orlandi started her career writing and singing pop songs, and this film has "Non Dirmi Una Bugia" which translates as "Don't tell me lies". Even though Freda did not think much of A Double Face, it's a film worthy of greater consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM

July 03, 2018

The Complete Sartana

If You Meet Sartana . . . Pray for Your Death/ Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte
Gianfranco Parolini - 1968

I am Sartana, Your Angel of Death / Sono Sartana, il vostro becchino
Giuliano Carnimeo - 1969

Sartana's Here . . . Trade Your Pistol for a Coffin / C'e Sartana . . . vendi la pistola e comprati la bara
Giuliano Carnimeo - 1970

Have a Good Funeral My Friend . . . Sartana will Pay / Buon funerale, amigos! . . . paga Sartana
Giuliano Carnimeo - 1970

Light the Fuse . . . Sartana is Coming / Una nuvola di polvere . . .un grido di morte . . . arriva Sartana
Giuliano Carnimeo - 1970

Arrow Video BD Regions A/B Five-disc set

First, a bit of clarification might be needed. The five films in the package are considered the true Sartana films. I don't know how the various producers came to agreements, but it should be pointed out that none of the films here are any of the dozen or so productions where Sartana is just a name in the title, a lure for the less discerning viewer. Whatever minor inconsistencies may be found in the five films listed above, aside from the name, there is the costume of a black suit with cape, the custom made pistol with four barrels, the use of gadgets not entirely implausible for the time the films take place, and the profession of bounty hunter and gambler. Not to mention the unwieldy titles in the series. The stories can generally be boiled down to the question: who's got the gold? Further inconsistency, perhaps unavoidable, is that some of the films are better than others, but all are undeniably entertaining. The Arrow set is loaded with supplements, primarily fairly lengthy interviews with several surviving members of the cast and crew.

I would even suggest watching one of the supplements from the first disc prior to checking into the films. There is a overview of the various actors, several of whom are seen in two or more of the films, with brief biographical information. Aside from the two Sartanas, Gianni Garko and George Hilton, there are the featured actresses, such as Erika Blanc and Susan Scott (Nieves Navarro). The elfin Franco Pesce is usually cast as the town undertaker, with an English language voice reminiscent of Walter Brennan. (And if you're asking who Walter Brennan is, than you need to stop what you're doing and see Rio Bravo.) And as far as I'm concerned, Fernando Sancho was born to play corrupt Mexican generals. Viewers may have their own favorites, but this supplement helps put names and faces together, and help recognizes some of the supporting players not only in the Sartana films but also Italian genre cinema.

The first film, If You Meet Sartana . . . , is for me the best of the series. The template for the series is established with the double-crosses, triple-crosses, corrupt law enforcement, bandit gangs, and questionable women. Invariably, the worst of the villains is the richest guy in town. But what also makes for great entertainment in the first film is having Garko competing against Klaus Kinski, nutty, and William Berger, nuttier, whether gambling or fighting for the hidden gold. Berger is especially manic, sniffing what I assume to be cocaine out of a little silver box, or getting unhinged at the sound of the music emanating from a pocket watch. No explanation is given about that watch within the story, and I'm sure no one who made the film was concerned that this bit of business was lifted from For a Few Dollars More. Additionally, this is visually the strongest film film in the series. Parolini, who signed this film as Frank Kramer, often emphasizes space within the frame with something large in the foreground as part of a full shot of the setting in question, whether it's the barrel of a rifle, or an actor, usually Garko, seen in close-up on the side of the widescreen frame.

Carnimeo is a good craftsman, who on a couple of films will have the camera tilt when characters are shot in a gunfight scene. One nice bit of creativity is when Sartana has a gunfight against an outlaw trio, each standing in a different part of a cantina, and the film cuts to a triptych of the three falling to their respective deaths. For those who are sticklers for historical veracity or even simple consistency, Carnimeo's films may prove frustrating as some of the props and costumes indicate knowledge that there was the American Civil War, but a vagueness about when it happened. Also, Carnimeo's pseudonym of Anthony Ascot has at least two other spelling variations.

Sartana's Here . . . is worth noting for having a character named Sabata, or Sabbath in the English language track, unrelated to the Sabata of the films directed by Parolini. Played by the blond Charles Southwood, this Sartana is a well-dressed dandy who rides around with a parasol, taking time between gunfights to read Shakespeare. That parasol bit presumably was inspired by Tony Anthony's character known as the Stranger. Hilton makes a credible replacement for Garko, and could have easily continued the series himself.

Sartana Will Pay has a screenplay that is largely the work of the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, best known for his work with Sergio Martino. There's a touch of giallo with a character tortured by having acid poured on him. Not quite Rashomon as Sartana tries to discern which tale of betrayal is true. The gimmickry gets pushed here, especially at the end. There is a particularly funny running gag concerning the self-proclaimed "best shot in the West".

Gastaldi has two interviews here, and those familiar with his contributions on NoShame's disc know he's a great raconteur. Wide eyed Erika Blanc also shares her memories of working in Italian cinema. There is a recent interview with George Hilton, and an older interview with Gianni Garko together with Carnimeo. The interview with Gianfranco Parolini was probably his last, he died last April. The films can be seen either with Italian or English dialogue tracks. Keep in mind that the films were made when post-dubbing was the normal procedure for these European co-productions, and as Erika Blanc notes, even in Italian the viewer does not necessarily hear the voice of the actor in front of the camera.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

June 19, 2018

Back to Burgundy

Ce qui nous lie
Cedric Klapisch - 2017
Music Box Films Region 1 DVD

The original French title of Cedric Klapisch's new film translates as "What binds us". His working title, the homophonic Le vin et le vent translates as "The wine and the wind". Both titles are both more evocative of the familial conflicts at the heart of the film beyond the return of the prodigal son, Jean, to the family vineyard in Burgundy.

As Klapisch confirms in one of the DVD supplements, the film is something of a return to the kind of films made about twenty years ago with When the Cat's Away and Un air de famille. Both films primarily took place within a specific space, a working class neighborhood and the family home. Klapisch also pared away gimmicks and stylistic flourishes, save for a couple of moments when past and present co-exist. As a film about two adult brothers and a sister, Klapisch knows how to economically film the trio in conversation and be visually interesting without resorting to cutting between close-ups and back and forth shots. What is most radical a break for Klapisch is having a film taking place in a country setting, and using a cast of younger, less familiar actors.

After ten years of travel, youngest brother Jean returns to the family domain upon news of his father's illness. Warmly greeted by sister Juliette, Jean has a more tense relationship with older brother, Jeremie. With the death of the father, Jean stays to help with the impending harvest of the grapes. Jean reveals that for the past five years, he's been married with a son, with his own domain in Australia. The siblings have to decide what to do with the family domain as the income from the wine they sell is barely enough to cover the inheritance tax, while they could enjoy a significant profit from simply selling the land. The original French title is more meaningful with the conflicts between the siblings, whether Jean will return to Australia, Jeremie's attempts to keep the peace with his father-in-law - a competing wine maker, and Juliette's hesitation about taking over the family business.

Klapisch chose to make the film about Burgundy, the wine, as it was the favorite of his father's. Also, wine making in the province of Burgundy is still done by individuals and families, and not industrialized. Effort was made to make every aspect shown in both the vineyards and in the processing as authentic as possible. Much of the credit would go to Jean-Marc Roulot, an actual vinter and actor, who shares screenwriting credit and plays the part of the vineyard's operations manager. While not somber, there are just a few lightly comic moments, another break from the big laughs of Klapisch's more recent work.

Klapisch discusses the unusual making of Back to Burgundy in this brief interview.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:20 AM

June 14, 2018

Greaser's Palace

Robert Downey - 1972
Scorpion Releasing BD Region A

I wouldn't be surprised if a smart programmer at at revival house like the Castro in San Francisco has already booked this program, but for those who like to create their own double features at home, I recommend pairing this new blu-ray of Greaser's Palace with Steven Shainberg's Fur. The older film stars Allan Arbus in the lead role, while Fur is a fantasy biography of Arbus' former wife, photographer Diane Arbus, in part inspired by "Beauty and the Beast". And the beast opposite Nicole Kidman's beauty was played by Robert Downey, Jr. The seven year old Downey, Jr. also makes an appearance in his father's film.

A bit of background here - Robert Downey was what was known as an underground filmmaker, based in New York City in the Sixties. Several of those films have been issued as part of a set by Criterion. One of the early films, Chafed Elbows was successful enough for Downey to make his only film that was a critical and commercial hit on a national scale, Putney Swope, in 1969. The time was right for a satire on Madison Avenue and Black power. Pound, produced for United Artists, with live people as dogs in a, yes, pound, came and went. Neophyte producer Cyma Rubin was still hoping lightning would strike twice, with Downey given a budget of nearly a million dollars to write and direct Greaser's Palace. Keep in mind that Putney Swope was made on a budget reported at $120,000.

As it turned out Greaser's Palace had a polarizing response of those who loved it or hated it. The new blu-ray comes with notes by Jonathan Demme who connected with the absurd sense of humor. I also saw the film at the time of initial release, but save for a few moments find the film more funny peculiar, kind of like the friend or acquaintance that tells a story with a few forced chuckles, capping his conclusion with a line like, "I guess who had to be there". Downey's film is a parody of westerns mixed with some religious symbolism which may have worked on paper, but is only effective intermittently on screen.

The title is a play on Caesar's Palace, with a small western town run by Seaweedhead Greaser. The town's populace is primarily grizzled old men. The only woman is daughter Cholera, who provides entertainment with singing followed by briefly exposing her crotch to the appreciative audience. Jessy, parachuting into town wearing an anachronistic zoot suit and large pink fedora, may or may not be the messiah.

Among the better moments are when Jessy, played by Allan Arbus, comes to the shack of Herve Villechaize, a gay Mexican bandit wearing an oversized sombrero. There is something unexpectedly touching seeing Villechaize inch up next to Arbus with romantic longing. In a later scene, a pioneer woman, barely surviving an Indian attack, crawls across the desert, pulls an arrow out of her bleeding leg, only to have another arrow shot into the exact same spot.

The blu-ray comes with a short interview conducted by writer Rudy Wurlitzer with Downey, discussing the history of the film. One of interesting anecdotes is that some of the casting was done near the office of Jack Nicholson, resulting in the casting of Luana Anders as Cholera and a topless Toni Basil as an Indian girl. Another notable credit is that of Jack Nitzsche for the song lyrics and music, one of his first film scores, with songs that almost sound authentic for the era.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:10 AM

June 12, 2018

The Woman in the Window

Fritz Lang - 1944
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

First off, I'm going to assume that anyone who reads this is already familiar with the movie, or the story and plot twist at the end. I also have to say that I don't think I have to much to say that hasn't been said before or better by others. As far as commentary tracks go, there is a certain amount of trepidation on my part, with some almost disastrously improvised by people who are audibly scrambling for their notes or stating "facts" that can be disproven with a little research. Imogen Sara Smith knows her stuff, and her commentary track is definitely worth a listen, even if you've seen Woman in the Window multiple times as I have prior to the new blu-ray release.

Now about that twist ending . . . Edward G. Robinson is seen in the earlier scene, taking an illustrated copy of "Song of Songs" from the library of the gentlemen's club, sitting down with the drink he had ordered, advising the waiter to notify him when it is 10:30 pm. When 10:30 rolls around, Robinson leaves the club for that fateful meeting on the street with Joan Bennett. The surprise for viewers is the reveal that the meeting and subsequent events were all part of a very detailed dream. And yet . . . maybe it's my own interpretation of what I'm looking at on the screen, but when Robinson is framed in that medium shot, with the book in hand and drink at the side, when it is still about 9:15 pm or so, Robinson's eyes seem to be closing. We're only talking about a few frames in a shot that dissolves to the shot of Robinson being reminded that it is 10:30 pm, but Robinson's face in that shot has the appearance of someone at least ready to fall asleep. And again, maybe it's how I'm reading that shot, but it would suggest that Lang was playing with the inattention of viewers, plus the subtlety of bringing something like this off when the film could only be seen theatrical, indicating that Robinson was in a dream state when the bulk of the film takes place.

While there may not be obvious dream logic, there are also a couple of moments that are questionable. When Robinson is attacked by the man known as Frank, is he consciously reaching out for the pair of scissors? And why does Bennett give Robinson the scissors instead of stabbing Frank herself, if not fatally at least enough to stop him from trying to kill Robinson? And the shootout near the end, with the police hot on the trail of Dan Duryea, with the cop shooting at Duryea from inside the police car makes no visual sense. I have to wonder how Duryea gets killed when it doesn't even appear that the cop and the blackmailer can even see each other?

Of course these are things you don't notice when the story whizzes by. Time is always of the essence, with shots of clocks in close-up or within the frame. One of the other benefits of watching a film on blu-ray is to take advantage of freezing a shot, to discover that Bennett has hidden her blackmail loot under a copy of Thirty Clocks Strike the Hour, a very real 1932 novel by Vita Sackville-West. (Other than a very brief description about an old woman with a room with thirty clocks, I could find no detailed description of Saville-West's novel.)

I'm here mostly because I like Joan Bennett in her film noir period, the four films she did with Fritz Lang, plus Jean Renoir's Woman on the Beach and Max Ophul's The Restless Moment. Sure, Lang and scriptwriter Nunnally Johnson signal their intentions with the opening shot of Professor Robinson giving a lecture underneath the name Sigmund Freud written in huge letters. But the subsequent scene of Robinson smoking at the gentlemen's club is a reminder of the adage that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a movie is best appreciated for its surface pleasures.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

June 01, 2018

Frank & Eva

Frank en Eva
Pim de la Parra - 1973
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC / Region 0 DVD two-disc set

The full English language title of Pim de la Parra's film is Frank & Eva: Living Together Apart. This married Dutch couple share the same house, but have separate bedrooms and very individual lives. Eva has her tailor shop, while Frank is said to be a top car salesman. Most of the movie is about Frank, who gets drunk, hates his job enough to not return after crashing a company owned car, has sex with any available female, and is in general an irresponsible lout. The sex as depicted here is relatively mild, so it may come to a surprise for some viewers that Frank & Eva was the film that ended previous Dutch censorship laws. The film can also be seen as an example of the kind of soft core erotic cinema that was commercially popular in the early 1970s.

The Dutch Eye Film Institute restored de la Parra's film, his most popular work at the time of release. With Cult Epic's home video version, de la Parra can be said to be restored as he was an almost forgotten part of Dutch film history in spite of his hand in making Dutch cinema commercially viable. This new disc set helps put things in perspective with a commentary track by de la Parra in English explaining the circumstances of making and releasing the film. One of the supplements is a discussion of erotic Dutch cinema featuring actress Willike von Ammelrooy. Whatever one might think about this story of a love-hate relationship of one couple, the film's historic significance is well established.

The film marked the debut of Sylvia Kristel, who essentially demanded that de la Parra give her a part in his next movie. Kristel is only in the film for a few minutes, seen partially nude during the opening credits during a wild ride in a car driven by the drunk, and inattentive, Frank. Those few minutes were enough to launch a career, with international stardom a year away in Emmanuelle. The film's Eva, Willeke von Ammelrooy, has had a substantial career, including playing the title role in the Oscar winning Antonia's Line. Hugo Metsers, Frank, has also appeared in Paul Verhoeven's Spetters and The Black Book. Even though Frank & Eva is in Dutch, the screenplay was co-written by de la Parra with Charles Gormley, a filmmaker who later gained acclaim in his native Scotland. The often avant-garde score was by Antoine Duhamel, following work done for Godard and Truffaut.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:47 AM

May 29, 2018

The Sicilian Clan

Le clan des siciliens
Henri Verneuil - 1969
KL Studio Classics Region 1 DVD

I had seen The Sicilian Clan once, back at the time of its U.S. release in 1970. This was the version that was cut and dubbed into English. At the time, I had a little bit of familiarity with Jean Gabin from The Grand Illusion, and slightly more of Delon from TV viewings of The Leopard and Once a Thief. As for Verneuil, I was admittedly both snobbish and ignorant about French cinema, assuming that the only worthwhile stuff was made by those filmmakers associated with the Nouvelle Vague and approved elders. I saw the film in a private screening with Denver Post film critic Barry Morrison, and made a crack comparing Verneuil to Gordon Douglas, a journeyman director I have since grown to appreciate.

After almost forty-eight years, I was curious about revisiting this film. What fueled this curiosity was a combination of factors, seeing more films with the lead actors during my time in New York City when the only reliable way to see classic or foreign films was in a theater, followed by seeing more films following the advent of home video, especially when the market for DVDs exploded. Also the availability of information on the internet helped in making some of the other credited names more meaningful than they would be to all but the most devoted Francophile.

The Sicilian Clan originated from the novel by Auguste Le Breton. One of Le Breton's other novels was Riffifi, better remembered for the 1955 film by Jules Dassin. Between Le Breton's novels and Dassin's film, the genre, if you want to call it that, of the heist film, began, or at least became popular. What I call the heist film is one where a group of people, often strangers, get together to stage a seemingly impossible theft. One of the screenwriters was Jose Giovanni, a crime novelist who later wrote screenplays as well as becoming a film director as well. Giovanni's work was frequently in collaboration with Ventura, Delon and Gabin. An interesting footnote here: Jean-Pierre Melville filmed Giovanni's novel, and collaborated on the screenplay for Le Deuxieme Souffle. One wonders if the two would have worked together had Melville, Jewish and a member of the Resistance during World War II, had known that Giovanni, under his real name, had been actively part of the Vichy government, and committed as series of vicious crimes, including blackmail and murder, against French Jews both during and immediately after the war.

Alain Delon plays a killer whose escape is from Parisian police is facilitated by the son of Sicilian patriarch Jean Gabin. Delon is obsessively pursued by cop Lino Ventura. Delon shares plans concerning an exhibition of jewels in Rome. Gabin comes up with an usual plan to steal the jewels. Unfortunately for Delon, family comes first for Gabin, with Ventura neatly wrapping things up at the end.

The film holds up pretty well, with some of the twists and turns in the narrative. I still think that there were too many zoom shots, seen primarily in the first half. Where the Panavision screen works best is the scene where Delon is escaping from a prison van, crawling underneath the van to the one driven by the two clan brothers. I'm not sure if it was meant to be a visual joke, but in a later scene, by a beach, Delon is fishing, catching an eel. He glances at Gabin's daughter-in-law, played by Irina Demick, sunbathing nude (possibly a stand-in for Demick as it is a long shot, and Demick was the mistress of Fox chief Darryl Zanuck at the time). Delon is next seen flogging the eel against a nearby rock, then walks by Demick with the limp eel in hand. This is followed by the two making love somewhat discretely hidden by a very large rock.

The version of The Sicilian Clan I originally saw was dubbed in English, no real surprise there as it was still very much a common practice for foreign language films that were intended for a play outside the arthouse circuit. What I was unaware of was that Verneuil was contracted to film two versions, one primarily in French with some spoken Italian, and one in English. This meant that there are small differences with each shot, with some brief shots also eliminated or shortened in the English language version which Verneuil edited to a length under two hours per his contract with 20th Century-Fox. No changes were made for any of the sexually charged moments. It may surprise some to know that even with the bare breasts and bottoms, the MPAA at the time rated The Sicilian Clan GP, the rating with a note of caution that briefly existed after M, and before PG, for stateside viewers. For myself, I prefer the French version which clocks in at a little over two hours.

Appreciated as a supplement to the DVD is an hour long French documentary from 2013 on the making of The Sicilian Clan with excerpts of recorded interviews with Verneuil, Ventura, Delon and Gabin. There is also a very short appreciation by Fred Cavaye, director of Point Blank (2010) part of France's current crop of action filmmakers, a newer wave unencumbered by some of the orthodoxies regarding French cinema at the time The Sicilian Clan was made.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:18 AM

May 22, 2018

Irma Vep

Olivier Assayas - 1996
Arrow Academy BD Region B

Roughly twenty years since I had seen Irma Vep, on a much smaller television screen in the VHS version. Since that time, I have seen most of Assayas' films as well as a good chunk of films starring Maggie Cheung. In her 2003 interview, one of the supplements here, Cheung mentions that a viewer can enjoy Irma Vep simply as a comedy. But as others have noted, Irma Vep is Assayas' love letter to Cheung and the process of filmmaking.

The story as such is about a middle-aged director, Rene Vidal, well past his career peak, entrusted to remake the 1915 silent serial, The Vampires as a television feature film. Having seen Maggie Cheung in The Heroic Trio, Vidal decides her abilities as a female action star are what is needed to play the role of Irma Vep. The character's name is an anagram for vampire, the the vampires are actually a gang of thieves dress entirely in black. What narrative there is follows the backstage shenanigans and back-biting of members of the production crew as well as the catastrophic attempts at reviving a silent classic.

What struck me was how Irma Vep stands as a response to the currently hot debate about so-called cultural appropriation. Besides the various film references seen and spoken of within the film are others that appear in retrospect. A more perfect version of Irma Vep might have simultaneous annotation. In any event, my revisiting the film set off the kind of tangents familiar to the more hard corp cinephile.

It probably wasn't intended that way but using a clip by Johnny To, of all the film Hong Kong directors Maggie Cheung worked with, is perfect. As is known now, To has expressed his admiration for director Jean-Pierre Melville, a French filmmaker who adopted the surname of the American author of Moby Dick. To even tried to get Alain Delon to revive his character of Jef Costello, from Melville's Le Samourai, eventually settling for French pop star and actor Johnny Hallyday. Thanks to the greater availability of international films on the home video market, this dialogue of East and West is much easier to acknowledge.

Which brings me to the scene where Maggie Cheung is interviewed by a journalist who views cinema as a dichotomy between French art house and Hollywood action films. His only frame of reference to Hong Kong cinema is John Woo. In one of the other supplements from 2003, Assayas is critical of his character limiting his knowledge of Hong Kong cinema to one director. To which I say, lighten up Olivier! I kind of take this personally because the first Hong Kong film I ever saw was a midnight screening of Woo's The Killers. And maybe something was lost in the translation of that interview with Assayas and Charles Tesson, but serious film scholarship often begins in the middle, depending on the history of the filmmaker in question, going backwards as well as forwards, not only with the filmmaker in question, but peers and influences. On a somewhat related note, it was the Criterion Collection supplement to In the Mood for Love, with Wong Kar-wai discussing the films he watched when he was younger, that set me on the path to collecting several films starring Grace Chang from the 1950s.

Assayas and Tesson wrote about Hong Kong cinema for Cahiers du Cinema back in 1984, when Hong Kong cinema was virtually unknown and considered unworthy serious study. At the time of their interview in 2003, that had changed. What I found curious is that there was no mention of Luc Besson and his hybrid productions. Thanks to Besson, French filmmakers have proven to be as capable of making full-throttle action films as good, or often better than Hollywood. Additionally, Assayas and Tesson do not indicate awareness that Besson took a Chinese action star, Jet Li, placing him in Paris, in the English language Kiss of the Dragon. Not only was Hong Kong cinema better known in France, but it was now part of international film productions aimed for the global market.

I watched the blu-ray a second time with the subtitles turned off while listening to the commentary track by Assayas and critic Jean-Michel Frodon. Actually the track is their dialogue with an audience mostly discussing Assayas' career rather that one specifically about Irma Vep. That dialogue runs out before the film ends. But it was with delight watching the facial expressions of Nathalie Boutefeu, as Maggie Cheung's stunt double. In the scene, she tries to explain to the replacement director why Rene Vidal chose a Chinese actress in a role considered iconically French.

Finally, there's the use of the song, "Bonnie and Clyde" by Serge Gainsbourg. The song is really about the characters as embodied by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, not their less photogenic real-life counterparts. And as is well known, the film was once intended to be directed by either Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard. There is no cultural appropriation. I see it as a continuing international dialogue. Can't stop. Won't stop.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:45 AM

May 04, 2018

Legend of the Mountain

Shan zhong zhuan qi
King Hu - 1979
Kino Classics BD Region A

Even the larger widescreen televisions most people would have at home don't seem appropriate for viewing Legend of the Mountain. This is made most clear in several shots with characters seen from a distance, as well as the many panoramic shots within forests and along fields dominated by the sky. My first exposure to King Hu was with his most famous film, A Touch of Zen, presented as part of the New York Film Festival in 1976, seen on the famously big screen of the Ziegfeld Theater.

Unlike A Touch of Zen, or most of Hu's other films, Legend of the Mountain is not a martial arts story, with only a few short scenes of action. Taken from a story from Pu Songling, the story takes place in 11th Century China. Qingyun, getting by as a copyist of documents, takes the job of reproducing a Buddhist sutra on behalf of a temple. Qingyun is directed to a remote location to do his work in peace. The story is one of several legends revolved around scholars who fall in love with female ghosts. The sutra is said to give one power over the spirits of the dead, either for good or evil. Hu would revisit this material, also from Pu Songling, with his final film, Painted Skin.

The supplements to the blu-ray help in explaining how King Hu deliberately chose to make a film that was a departure in style and content. At over three hours, the leisurely pace imitates Qingyun's meandering hike to the location where he is to copy the sutras. On his way, Qingyun glimpses a woman playing a flute who appears to disappear at will. Even when he gets set up to do his work, Qingyun is distracted by two mother and daughter pairs, Taoist and Buddhist priests, and an old retainer with protruding teeth. Whatever thoughts Ho has about dismissing the supernatural are forgotten by the end of the film.

With frequent montages of animals and lotus ponds, only the natural world is to be trusted. Close-ups of spider webs indicate that even in nature there is treachery, a hint of what is to happen to Qingyun. The film was shot in Korea, where Hu was able to take advantage of the still well preserved old temples and stone buildings.

Shih Chun, the toothy star of several King Hu films, plays Qingyun. While virtually retired from acting, it seems less than coincidental that Shih returned to acting for an appearance in Hsiao-Hsien Hou's The Assassin, another period film that went against audience expectations. Hsu Feng, an actress who frequently worked with Hu, plays Melody, a young woman whose designs on Qingyun turn out to be less than harmonious. Hsu, who later turned to film production including Farewell, My Concubine, was largely responsible for financing the restoration of this film. The still very active Sylvia Chang plays Cloud, Melody's rival for the affections of Qingyun.

The blu-ray comes with an essay by Grady Hendrix that discusses the film primarily within the context of Hu's other work. Travis Crawford's visual essay also discusses Legend of the Mountain as part of Hu's career, also covering some of the changes in the Hong Kong film industry, where Hu got his start, initially as an actor. An interview with Tony Rayns was ported over from the recent British Eureka release. Taken from a 4K scan, this is the complete version of the film as intended by King Hu.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:44 AM

May 02, 2018

Moon Child

El Nino de la Luna
Augusti Villaronga - 1989
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC/Region 0 DVD two disc set

Augusti Villaronga's film was inspired by a 1923 novel by Aleister Crowley. Cinematically, Crowley is better known for his influence on the films by Kenneth Anger, usually depicting ancient and esoteric religious rituals. And it is possible that my own reaction to Moon Child is deeply subjective, but it helps to have some knowledge of the origins of the story. The title character is a young Spanish boy who claims to be the fulfillment of a prophesy, that he is to lead a tribe in a remote part of Africa. The trope of the white savior is markedly archaic at this time. Villaronga incorporates personal themes of otherness into his work, sexually as a gay filmmaker, and politically with his father's memories of the Spanish Civil War. Even for a fantasy, the racial element of the premise provides a challenge in appreciating Villaronga's film on its own terms.

The film takes place in what appears to be Spain in the 1930s. David, on the cusp of adolescence, has been told be a mysterious woman that he is the Moon Child, and his destiny is in Africa. David is suspected of having psychic abilities, and is taken by Victoria, distinguished by her Louise Brooks style bob, to an institute run by a severe directress. The unnamed institute appears to be run fascists based on style of clothing worn. Among the test subjects at the institute, Edgar and Georgina are chosen to mate to create a perfect being. Overhearing that the test subjects are to be murdered, David plans his escape. What follows are events that straddle the line between prophesy fulfillment and coincidence.

A recent video interview with Villaronga is included here, helping put Moon Child in the context of the filmmaker's intentions. Younger viewers may have trouble with some of the obviously dated special effects, suggesting that Villaronga's ambitions outweighed the some of tools available to him at the time. The film features an original scored by Dead Can Dance, primarily instrumental, with only a small amount of Lisa Gerrard's signature vocals. That score can also be heard as a standalone supplement. Additionally, Villaronga cast Gerrard in the role of Georgina, more unusual as Gerrard is not an actress, nor does she speak Spanish. Gerrard was fearless here, by turns loopy and wide-eyed, and unafraid to be completely nude. Victoria was portrayed by Maribel Martin, more widely seen in several Spanish horror classics including The Blood-Spattered Bride and The House that Screamed. Lucia Bose, the star of several Italian and Spanish classics in the early 1950s, appears here as the directress.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:53 AM

April 23, 2018

Two Films by Duccio Tessari

A Pistol for Ringo
Duccio Tessari -1965

The Return of Ringo
Duccio Tessari - 1965
Arrow Video BD Regions A/B

My introduction to Duccio Tessari was in the mid-1970s with two of his crime films. The first, released in the US as No Way Out starred Alain Delon as a hitman forced to do one last job. The other, made a year later, was Three Tough Guys. Dino De Laurentiis was producing English language films with a combination of American and European actors, with Tesseri at the helm of this entertaining thriller featuring Isaac Hayes, Fred Williamson and Lino Ventura as the trio in question. No Way Out had some stylistic flourishes that made me more intrigued about Tessari's other work.

It was through reading Christopher Frayling's books on Sergio Leone and Italian westerns that I first learned that Tessari had an uncredited hand in the screenplay of A Fistful of Dollars. The connection between the two preceded that film, with both assisting the writing and production of The Last Days of Pompeii in 1959, and both also among the eight writers on Sergio Corbucci's Duel of the Titans (1961). Because of the delayed release, and general ignorance of trends in Italian genre filmmaking, stateside viewers were unaware that A Fistful of Dollars was one of several westerns produced at the same time, usually with Italian directors working in Spain with a multi-national cast. A Pistol for Ringo, produced in late 1964, was released in the US in November 1966, almost three months before US audiences were introduced to the man with no name.

Tessari's films feature essentially much of the same cast, but with two different stories, different locations, and two very different Ringos. In the first film, Ringo, also known as Angel Face, acts as the conduit between the townspeople and the bandits who have robbed the bank. His services don't come cheap as he negotiates a higher percentage of the loot, depending on which side he is ultimately assisting. Tessari's Ringo here is the opposite of Clint Eastwood's character, well-dressed, loquacious, clean-shaven. He is introduced playing hopscotch before gunning down a quartet that was after him. Tesseri makes use of Giuliano Gemma's charm and athletic ability - Gemma was a stunt man and does his own stunts here. What really impresses is the amount of visual detail Tessari crams into a shot, often with his actors moving in and out of the frame with the camera following the action. A medium shot of actress Nieves Navarro has her with her back against a window. Looking through the window, onto the street, one can see some activity in the background. When the bandits are eating dinner at the house of the town's patriarch, one of the bandits can be seen on the side still chewing on a big slice of meat still outside of his mouth. In this way, Tessari makes me think of Richard Lester, where he will have the main characters placed prominently within the frame, but the viewer needs to glance to the sides to pick up other bits of business.

I'm not even sure if Gemma's character is ever called Ringo in The Return of Ringo. Taking place just months after the end of the American Civil War, Gemma plays a Union soldier returning to his small Texas town. The story is a variation of The Odyssey and the original script even had Odyssey as part of the title. A more serious film than the first, the town is virtually empty of street activity, and in a perpetual dust storm. The screenplay by Tessari with genre stylist Fernando DI Leo, has the unusual racial component of having the town taken over by a gang of well dressed Mexicans who have reclaimed the area as part of Mexico, making the Anglo residents second-class citizens. While not as visually stylized, the second film is notable for the complex traveling shots, as well as some unexpected religious imagery.

The blu-ray includes interviews from 2008 and 2009 with actress Lorella de Luca, Tesseri's wife, and star Giuliano Gemma. Western film historians Henry Parke and Courtney Joyner provide commentary tracks on both films, placing both within the context of genre filmmaking in Italy in the 1960s. There is also a discussion on the Ringo films by the ubiquitous Tony Rayns.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:20 AM

April 20, 2018

A Violent Life

Une Vie Violente
Thierry De Peretti - 2017
Icarus Films Region 1 DVD

Thierry De Peretti uses an unusual visual strategy for filming his main character, the 27 year old Stephane, played by actor Jean Michelangeli. Most of the time, Stephane is not seen clearly. His face is in the shadows. His back is to the camera. There are only a couple of times when the camera is focused on Michelangeli, always from a distance, in the sunlight. The most sustained view is an extended lateral tracking shot of Stephane, walking along the sidewalk, fully certain of his sense of sense and his impending fate.

A Violent Life is De Peretti's second feature, and again takes place in Corsica. His debut feature, Les Apaches was about a quartet of young men of Moroccan descent involved in small time theft that escalates to an ultimately meaningless tragedy within the group. De Peretti returns to Corsica and the more recent past of the country, where simultaneous to factions wanting different degrees of independence from France, also saw violence between rival groups. The film opens with titles giving a brief overview of the historic context to the story.

De Peretti keeps his distance visually through most of the film employing full or medium shots of his characters. There is a sense of detachment to those scenes other filmmakers would usually emphasize for their dramatic qualities. The camera is a distant observer to an early scene with two men sitting in the front seat of a car, each shot at close range by two other mean, with one pouring gasoline on the car and lighting it on fire. Similarly, when Stephane's group of nationalist activists ignite bombs around the city of Bastia, we see a full shot of the main city, with the sight and sound of explosions at various points, while the camera remains as if a passive observer.

As De Peretti is himself from Corsica, one might interpret the visual distancing as a way of providing a counter-balance to that which might considered personal. The major portion of the film takes place in 1997, when the filmmaker was the same age as his main character. At this time, there is very little about De Peretti in English. There is a quote in which he describes A Violent Life as being about a "bruised generation" of which he is a part. From a French interview, De Peretti has stated that wanted, " . . . to give an account, to recall to the memory some atypical and representative paths of the people of my generation. That of this young nationalist militant, Nicolas Montigny, who was killed in Bastia in 2001 and whose character of A Violent Life is inspired, is perhaps one of the most brilliant. He was a young man of his time but who evolved in a fairly conservative environment, the Corsican nationalist movement of the late 90s, I liked this contradiction."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:30 AM

April 18, 2018

Ruby Gentry

King Vidor - 1952
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Considering that Duel in the Sun was retitled "Lust in the Dust", and that there are some obvious similarities to that film, I'm surprised that Ruby Gentry wasn't renamed "Romp in the Swamp". Familiarity, plus a modest budget and under ninety-minute running time helped make this reunion of Vidor and Jennifer Jones a more profitable venture than the 1946 epic. This time, Jones was tussling in the dirt with Charlton Heston, a character as thoughtless as the one played by Gregory Peck, but without Peck's wicked charm.

As Ruby, Jones is first seen in the distance, standing somewhat provocatively in a doorway, wearing a body hugging shirt and jeans. The town's new, youngish doctor, taking a gander at the fabled woman, is told, "Don't let it shake you, Doc. It's only anatomy." Jennifer Jones wearing a bullet bra is almost enough to distract from her now looking about a decade too old for her role. Much of Jones' career has been based on playing characters younger than her real age, and she even appears as the 16 year old Ruby in a flashback. Those kind of concerns disappear the moment Jones scratches Heston's face rather than shrug off an unwanted pat on the rear.

Even if the story of class division in a small Southern town, and a woman "from the wrong side of the tracks" may strike contemporary viewers as archaic, Ruby Gentry might well be reevaluated, at least in part, for the depiction of one woman's agency. Ruby is the only major female character. She has a love/hate relationship with Boake, a would-be entrepreneur who sees Ruby only in discrete liaisons before trading love for money. The other two female characters, the wife of businessman Jim Gentry, and the socialite, Tracy, are valued for the social standing within the community. Ruby, living with her backwoods family, is valued only for her beauty, but is otherwise considered as someone who needs to remember her place. Ruby is subjected to various cruelties by the town following her marriage to the newly widowed Jim Gentry, and the aftermath of Jim's accidental death. When Ruby gets her revenge, it's beyond the comprehension of Boake. Within the context of when the film was made, Ruby has to be punished, and you have to wonder why, after realizing the extent of her wealth, she even wants to stay in a town where she is openly disliked. But there is brief pleasure for Ruby and the audience when the town's movers and shakers get their comeuppance.

Among the best visual moments are the reunion of Ruby and Boake, with Charlton Heston's face illuminated by a flashlight, following the voice of Jennifer Jones. Later, the two drive along the beach, sitting on the car seats, Heston singing along to the radio, while the car loses control and careens into the water. Later, something of a visual end note to the scene of Heston's face seen by flashlight, Heston enters the bedroom of Jones, his face in close-up, lit by an overhead light that is turned off. That the film was shot in black and white is especially an advantage in the climax, taking place in a studio set swamp made more otherworldly with its shroud of fog.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:19 AM

April 16, 2018

Enigma Rosso

Red Rings of Fear / Rings of Fear / Trauma / Virgin Killer
Alberto Negrin - 1978
Scorpion Releasing BD Region A

With six credited writers on the screenplay, I would think at least one of them was familiar with Agatha Christie. Keep in mind that before giallo was associated with a film genre, it was a literary genre consisting of Italian paperbacks of English and American mysteries. Among the more prominent authors was Christie. I bring her up because a significant part of Enigma Rosso appears to be inspired by one of Christie's books. I will not mention the title because it could more easily be a spoiler for Negrin's film, but I would have been unaware of the similarity had I not seen a recent film adaptation.

Among those with a hand in the screenplay were Franco Ferrini, just beginning his career which would include writing credits on several films by Dario Argento, German actor Peter Berling, who as a writer contributed to a couple of Italian crime thrillers, and director Negrin. Also listed was Massimo Dallamano, who had planned to make this film the followup to his previous films about high school girls involved with sex and murder. Dallamano died in a car accident before Enigma Rosso was produced. One can only speculate on how different a film we might have had based on his previous work. This was television director Alberto Negriin's first and only theatrical film.

The discovery of a sexually violated high school girl's body wrapped in plastic, unsuccessfully disposed of by a river, leads to an investigation of the girls three friends at an exclusive boarding school. As most people who love Italian genre films know, it's not the story that's important, but how the story is told. Giallo films, at least those that are most revered, are known for their visual style. Any visual flourishes here are few and far between. While this is purely subjective, Negrin seems unable to distinguish between the erotic and the exploitive, with the camera lingering longer than needed on the girls taking a shower, including those who have no narrative function. Worse is the cross-cutting between one girl's pain from the insertion of an oversized dildo, and shots of forceps while another girl is getting an abortion. Not that young women are the only victims in this film. What happens to a dog shouldn't happen to a dog.

On the plus side, the casually amoral detective played by Fabio Testi forces a confession out of an effete Jack Taylor by taking him on a roller coaster ride. One of the nicer moments is of Testi, lounging on his bed, with his two pet cats crawling over him. A reference to a 17th Century poem by John Donne provides a welcome literary tweak.

Overall, Enigma Rosso is a film best appreciated by genre completists. The blu-ray here is of the film in its correct widescreen aspect ratio, with a choice of Italian with English subtitles or English language dubbing. This was a European co-production with cast from Italy, Spain and Germany. The commentary track by Nathaniel Thompson keeps track of most of the main actors and the history of the production.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:10 AM

April 14, 2018

Aloha, Bobby and Rose

Floyd Mutrux - 1975
Scorpion Releasing BD Region A

Every once in a while, I expect to review a new DVD or Blu-ray that turns out not to have been sent my way. Less frequently, I will receive a disc I hadn't planned on reviewing. Such is the case with Aloha, Bobby and Rose. Since I have been casually following Floyd Mutrux's career, there was some interest, although I passed on seeing this film at the time of its theatrical release.

The essential story is about Bobby, a part-time auto mechanic who never has dollar in his pocket, who likes to race his 1968 red Camaro, and Rose, a young single mother with the dream of visiting Hawaii. An impromptu date goes wrong when Bobby decides to pretend to stick up the cashier at a liquor store. Rose knocks over the shotgun wielding manager, who in turn accidentally kills the cashier. The two are then on the run from the law as Bobby is convinced that no one will believe their story of a prank gone wrong.

Some of the criticism directed to the film is that it hinges on the main characters doing dumb things. It's the kind of charge that can be tossed at a lot of films. One can place Aloha, Bobby and Rose with past films like Quicksand (1950) where Mickey Rooney's pilfering of a few dollars from a cash register initiates a series of bigger problems that he can not control, or the more recent Good Time with Robert Pattinson as the inept bank robber on the run. In the blu-ray's supplements, Mutrux mentions Godard's Breathless, with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg as criminal lovers on the run as his inspiration, although it should be mentioned that Godard was in turn partially inspired by the Joseph Lewis film, Gun Crazy. One critic who has expressed his enthusiasm is the New Yorker's Richard Brody.

Aloha, Bobby and Rose was produced on a budget of $60,000.00, but struck such a popular chord that it made $35 million dollars. I have to assume that everyone involved loved Mutrux enough to work for scale, especially when the crew involves seasoned professionals including William Fraker as cinematographer and Danford Greene as editor. There's also the soundtrack which is heavy on Elton John, but also includes several vintage Motown songs and even Bob Dylan during the end credits. What may not be understood by current viewers is that using actual hit records from the original artists was still a relatively new phenomenon at the time this film was produced.

The film appears to have shot using minimal or available light, with several moments having a documentary feel. Mutrux's previous film, Dusty and Sweets McGee was also filmed on the streets of Los Angeles, in some of the same areas. That film, the filmmaker's directorial debut, also shot by Fraker, was filmed in the style known at the time as cinema verite, that some viewers mistook the actors for real life heroin addicts.

In addition to the interview with Mutrux, there are interviews with star Pau Le Mat and supporting player Robert Carradine as part of this new blu-ray. The three give career overviews in addition to discussing their respective work on Aloha, Bobby and Rose.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:49 PM

April 12, 2018

The Psychopath

Freddie Francis - 1966
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

When Robert Bloch was hired to write screenplays during the Sixties and early Seventies, I'm sure the producers were hoping for lightning to strike again. After all, Bloch had become a famous name based on being the author of Psycho. What seemed to be constantly ignored was that not only was film of the same title more famous than the relatively little known novel, but that the film was not the novel. Save for the basic plot, the film took on a life of its own due to the combination of talent involved, including Alfred Hitchcock's audacity as a filmmaker, Bernard Herrmann's screeching strings, Alma Reville's uncredited contributions, and the various factors that make Psycho, the film, a film of continued fascination.

Hitchcock made Psycho in response to the challenge of Macabre by low-budget shock auteur William Castle. And it was Castle who's made the best of the post-Psycho films, Homicidal, the enjoyably loopy tale of a gender bending killer, with the high point being the beheading of an old lady with the head tumbling down the stairs. Bloch had nothing to do with that film. In the meantime, the early Sixties did see a slew of films that would try to cash in the success of Hitchcock with titles like Paranoiac, Craze, Nightmare and Hysteria, all coincidentally directed by Freddie Francis, typecast as a go-to specialist in horror films. And I'm struck with the sense of desperation, as if the people involved were convinced that recycling plot elements and even the title were good ideas.

As obvious as the title The Psychopath is, at one point the film was to be titled Schizo. The basic mystery revolves around a string of murders where the killer leaves an effigy, a doll made to look like the victim. The film takes place in then present day London. Aside from the title, there is an invalid older mother and her weak-willed son who live together. I wouldn't mind the plot points, red herrings, and periodic lapses of narrative or visual logic if only the filmmakers had chosen to be less discrete in their presentation of horror. The wheel chair bound mother lives among the hundreds of dolls she's created, and the scene introducing her and the climax that The Psychopath achieves an almost satisfying level of creepiness. There should also be credit to composer Elizabeth Lutyens for her film score, with its discordant melodies sparingly heard on the soundtrack, partially reminiscent of Prokovief's main theme from Lt. Kije Suite.

Troy Howarth's commentary track really elevates the blu-ray. The film by itself is at best a mildly entertaining thriller. Aside from the usual biographical bits of the key actors and crew, Howarth reveals an even bigger mystery regarding the making of the film. Reportedly, the original cut of The Psychopath was a brief seventy minutes in length, with the murder scenes not in the screenplay, and the ending changed regarding the identity of the killer. Even stranger is the question of who filmed several of the scenes in question - Freddie Francis or producer Milton Subotsky. Knowing some of the history of the production of The Psychopath makes it more understandable why certain narrative elements don't make sense. I'm still puzzled by the setting of the first murder, a narrow alley with a garbage can on the left side, a literal dead end passageway as seen from the view of the victim. In a following shot, again from the point of view of the victim, that alley is wide enough for a killer car, and where did that garbage can go?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:10 AM

April 03, 2018

Stage Struck

Allan Dwan - 1925
Kino Classics BD Region A

I still have a fleeting memory of meeting Gloria Swanson at Telluride in 1974. There was was a screening of Sadie Thompson, a 16mm print of the existing version of the 1928 film, in a room set up with a projector, a screen and some chairs. Swanson was there as the guest of James Card, the curator at the George Eastman House and co-founder of the Telluride Film Festival. That version of the film was incomplete, and Swanson spoke afterwards about the importance of film preservation. I'm not going to even try and guess where Swanson or Card would stand on the digital divide, but films that would either only be seen at, for example, the Museum of Modern Art, if at all, have more recently become more widely available on home video. As important as film preservation is, the cherry on top is being able to see the films.

What I liked best about Stage Struck is that it showed Gloria Swanson as a very able, physical comic actress. Her make-up was, if not naturalistic, less garish - maybe this is subjective on my own part, but Swanson is attractive here in a way that eluded me in previously seen films. There's a moment when Swanson is teasing leading man Lawrence Gray, flexing a muscle on her skinny arm. She playfully bops Gray on the nose, and walks away, waving at Gray, at one point sticking out her tongue. It's a brief moment that I would imagine caught the attention of Raoul Walsh, whose female characters could often be described as feisty.

Swanson plays the part of a waitress in a workingman's restaurant, with dreams of being an actress. Swanson pines for the restaurant's wheat-cake flipper, played by Gray, who demonstrates his his prowess with a turner in front of a window for his adoring female fans. When she's not taking mail-order drama lessons, Swanson devotes her free time to doing Gray's laundry. But Gray only has eyes for professional actresses, and soon those eyes are set on the visiting Gertrude Astor. Astor is the star of an itinerant troupe that performs on a traveling show boat. There are a couple of scenes that bring to mind Charles Chaplin. In an earlier scene, Swanson is carrying a large tray loaded with dishes, precariously balanced on her hands, while trying to navigate her way through the crowd of workers who have come for breakfast. In the middle of the crowd rushing to work, Swanson is pushed out of the restaurant, still carrying the tray, only to trip on the sidewalk on her way back. Later, the five foot tall Swanson is tricked into a boxing match with the almost six foot tall Gertrude Astor. What is notable is that Stage Struck was made before Modern Times and City Lights. An interview with Roger Ebert as well as the commentary track by Dwan scholar Frederic Lombardi clarify what real life connections there were between Swanson and Chaplin. The blu-ray cover also quotes Photoplay magazine from 1925 comparing Swanson to Chaplin.

Former Keystone Kop, Ford Sterling, takes a couple of pratfalls as well, notably falling into his beloved drum after a young boy beans him on the head with a corn cob. The film begins and ends with two sequences filmed in two-strip technicolor, shot at Paramount's Astoria studio. Most of the film was shot in New Martinsville, West Virginia. There's a view of the countryside with a lateral tracking shot of Swanson following Gray and Astor. A good portion of the town's population of 2341 people, per 1920 census, crowds the show boat theater featuring the boxing match between Swanson and Astor. I assume that popular demand brought Stage Struck to New Martinsville's movie theater.

Stage Struck has an original piano score composed and played by Andrew Simpson. Frederic Lombardi's commentary track is informative, with some discussion on Manhandled, the other Swanson/Dwan collaboration to also be released by Kino Classics. Even more informative are the booklet notes by longtime Coffee pal Farran Smith Nehme, covering the history of the making of Stage Struck, the film's reception and rediscovery following the restoration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:17 AM

March 27, 2018

The Teenage Prostitution Racket

Storie di Vita et Malavita
Carlo Lizzani - 1975
Raro Video BD Region A

The original Italian title translates as "Stories of Life and Crime". The English language title suggests something more exploitive. Carlo Lizzani has made a history of making films derived from true stories and current events, "ripped from the headlines" as the phrase goes. In this case, any difference between an exploitation film and a film about exploitation sometimes gets difficult to distinguish, with any arguments further muddied by the fact that supplemental footage was filmed to satisfy the grindhouse market.

The film was inspired by articles in the Milanese newspaper, Espresso. Lizzani and co-writer Mino Giarda created six fictionalized stories about young women who became prostitutes as a result of different circumstances. There is a recurring bit with an old woman hitchhiking near a highway, who is revealed to be pimping a thirteen year old girl described as almost a virgin. Lizzani began his career as a documentary filmmaker as well as writer during the time that neorealism defined Italian cinema, collaborating with Roberto Rossellini and Alberto Lattuada, among others. In the supplemental interview from 2005, Lizzani still thought of himself and this film in connection with neorealism.

The depiction of sex and the generous amounts of nudity eventually give way to the more serious issues that Lizzani addresses here. The most obvious theme is of women as commodities, with the prostitutes subject to being of monetary value, being available for buying and selling. Even those women in the film who are not prostitutes are seen engaged as sources of cheap labor. Virtually everyone is chasing after money, and those who are not are instead pursuing conspicuous consumption. There is a kind of back-handed nobility given to the old lady who pimps the girl (her grand-daughter?) when it is revealed that the money earned from quick blow jobs is used to feed a family living in dire poverty, in what appears to be a partially destroyed, abandoned housing outside Milan.

Only a small handful of Carlo Lizzani's films are available for English language viewers at this time. For those unfamiliar with the filmmaker, this would not be my suggested introduction. While several of his films can be described as being true crime, Lizzani also made a couple of excellent westerns, with Requiescat featuring Pier Paolo Pasolini as a priest. The supplemental documentary that comes with Racket includes Lizzani, Giarda, and cinematographer Lamberto Caimi, well worth the extra half hour viewing. Curiously, the version of the film here is in English only, with some of the dubbed voices sounding like caricatures of Italian-Americans.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:28 AM

March 20, 2018

It's the Old Army Game

Edward Sutherland - 1926
Kino Classics BD Region A

The most breathtaking gag takes place at the beginning of It's the Old Army Game and does not involve W. C. Fields. A woman is furiously driving on a road, trying to outrun a train. The camera follows her, and later cuts to another traveling shot with the train and car following the camera. The train and car are running parallel to each other, with the gag ending where the road and train track cross. The scene appears to have been filmed in real time, and the split second timing is astounding. No computer generated effects here.

It's the Old Army Game was Fields' first starring film after a handful of supporting roles. Just as his stage stardom didn't take hold until he starting adding his famous verbal patter, likewise his film career was only modestly successful until the sound era. Still there are plenty of sight gags and double takes to evoke laughs, chuckles and guffaws. As pharmacist Elmer Prettywillie, Fields template is already established here as the put-upon man dealing with a bratty child, inconsiderate customers, shady deals, a world too noisy to allow for a good night's sleep. One of the scenes would be reworked just a few years later in It's a Gift.

For his own obscure reasons, Fields appeared in his silent films with a small mustache that is tenuously attached to his famous nose. Some of the wisecracks appear as intertitles. There is no juggling, but watching Fields in a silent film is a reminder of his ability as a physical comic, wrestling with a giant block of ice, tripping on an errant pair of roller skates, or sleepily not realizing that he has two slippers on one foot.

There is a romantic subplot with counter girl Louise Brooks falling in love with a traveling salesman of questionable repute. The salesman gets Fields involved in a real estate scheme. Brooks really doesn't do all that much aside from smiling, posing in a bathing suit, with a notable traveling shot of the camera following Brooks from behind as she sashays along the sidewalks of Ocala, Florida. Brooks made an impression on the critics of the time, but it hardly hints at what was to come when left Hollywood for Germany, two years later.

The blu-ray is from a 2K master from the Library of Congress print, and looks just about perfect. Ben Model's organ score is serviceable. I was disappointed in James Neibaur's commentary track which spends too much time describing what is being seen in the film. Aside from the mention of the Palm Beach mansion that was used for a picnic scene, there is no discussion about the film being partially shot on location in Florida. I would have also like to have known more about how Edward Sutherland filmed a scene with Fields driving the wrong way in one-way traffic, and having a breakdown, all on streets of New York City. Neibaur doesn't mention that the actress Blanche Ring, who plays the woman of a certain age trying to get Fields' attention, was Sutherland's aunt. Sutherland's own film career started as a Keystone cop, with his move into directing encouraged by fellow Mack Sennett alumni Charlie Chaplin. Sutherland would work with Fields in the sound era, including directing one of Fields' last screen appearances eighteen years later in Follow the Boys.

For those puzzled by the title, it's an older slang expression, illustrated in a scene where Fields outplays a would-be fraudster.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:13 AM

March 15, 2018

Two Paths

Unearthed & Untold: The Path to Pet Semetary
John Campopiano and Justin White - 2015

Path of Blood
Eric Power - 2016
both Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

This week has also seen the blu-ray release of a couple of films, both labors of love. Although I think the appeal of these works is limited to a niche audience, the effort of the filmmakers needs to be acknowledged.

I never saw Pet Cemetery at the time of its release in 1989. I've read a couple books, and love Brian De Palma's version of Carrie, but that's about it. I did my homework and saw Mary Lambert's film, including a second time with her commentary on the DVD. My take: a couple good moments and the greatness of Fred Gwynne. While the audience for this documentary is primarily going to be those who love Stephen King and Mary Lambert's film, for others, like myself, it's still worth checking out.

Probably the most interesting aspect was finding out the autobiographical aspects of King's story. I would question the man's choice of living in a house that faces a busy road, especially when you have small children and pets. And yes, there really is a pet cemetery in Maine called Pet's Semetary. Also, a reminder to paraphrase screenwriter William Goldman's "nobody knows anything", is a recounting of how the film almost never got made, because some studio suits had decided that Stephen King's time had come and gone, with the film only produced because of a looming screen writers strike and King's screenplay ready to film on a modest budget. Not only was the film produced in Maine, but the bulk of the supporting cast was of local actors. And what is seen here, and often taken for granted by viewers, is the sheer physical effort of making a film. And while we're at it, kudos to Stephen King for approving Mary Lambert for directing the film at a time when there were fewer active female directors.

Eric Power's Path of Blood is essentially handmade animation with paper cutout characters and background. This tribute to early 1970s samurai films was written in English, and translated to Japanese with dubbing in Japanese. The story is about a masterless samurai, also known as a ronin, who is followed by a young man who wants to learn the ways of the sword. Sword fight after sword fight is amusing at first, but the repetition gets wearying. The "making of" featurette is worth seeing as Power explains how he made his film, and some of the techniques he used, or invented for himself. Power talks about creating a story board rather than trying to keep the narrative in his head, which is definitely a plus, but any future film should also benefit from a stronger story with more character development.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:01 AM

March 13, 2018

Suspiria

Dario Argento - 1977
Synapse Films BD Region A two-disc set

As Michael Mackenzie points out in his featurette on the supplemental disc, you can only experience seeing Suspiria for the first time once. For myself, my initial viewing was during the Summer of 1977, at the Centre Theater in downtown Denver, a single screen theater designed to showcase the then new Cinemascope process with first run films from 20th Century-Fox. I had a vague idea of what I was in for, having seen Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Deep Red. There was the sense of something special about to happen when I first heard that tinkly creepy music from Goblin, and heard that whoosh of air accompanying Jessica Harper, the ends of her scarf flying against the wind, as she step out of the airport. Suspiria stayed on my mind as I bought a gray market video tape dubbed from a Japanese laser disc over twenty years later, and then pounced on the three-disc set from Anchor Bay. I followed the news about Synapse's 4K restoration, and was able to see Suspiria again on screen, a smaller screen and theater, last Labor Day. And yes, it was quite worth it to see and hear the restored version in a theater. Even for those who may have missed the 4K theatrical run of Suspiria should still find this new home version to be a treat for both eyes and ears.

As Troy Howarth mentions in his commentary track, there's always something new to notice when revisiting Suspiria. The first time, the attention is mostly devoted to the story. Suzy Bannion, a young ballet student, goes to a school near Germany's Black Forest, only to discover that the place is run by a coven of witches. The narrative aspects of Suspiria are the least weird parts of the film. The student, Pat Hingle, returns to her apartment with an impossibly ornate lobby, and a skylight that resembles Tiffany glass. A glimpse of the elevator reveals an oversized interior with a full sized cushioned bench. Above the elevator entrance is a light that resembles a glowing jewel. Interior walls are covered with ornate decorations or textured materials. Sometimes there are little bits of business that might not be noticed, like the dancer in black leotards in the background, ending a phone conversation, who seems to be slinking away as if she's avoiding being caught. And why, in 1977, is a young boy dress in the late 19th Century style of Little Lord Fauntleroy?

Do I need to tell you that this is a great looking blu-ray? Luciano Tovoli, the film's cinematographer, was on hand to make sure that the colors look as originally intended. Some scenes are monochrome, bathed in blue or red. With slo-mo and freeze frame, one can savor the textures, the details, and the use of color. If nothing else, Suspiria is one of the great examples of style. And it is no coincidence that two of the characters are named after color, Blanc and Tanner. The English language soundtrack is 4.0 surround sound, as was created for the initial release. There is the option of seeing the film in Italian, but keep in mind that stars Harper, Joan Bennett and Alida Valli all spoke English during the production, and it is their voices on the English language soundtrack.

There are two commentary tracks. Troy Howarth's was the more interesting, maybe because I heard it first, with his connecting Suspiria and the cast to other films of related interest. There were some bits of interest on the second commentary track by David Del Valle and Derek Botelho. Del Valle mistakenly states that Alida Valli was married to Fritz Lang. Also, International Classics, the distributor of Suspiria, was not created by 20th Century-Fox just for this film to cover any concerns the suit may have had about the graphic violence. A simple search in IMDb shows that International Classics was a Fox subsidiary used initially for European art house movies that were considered too adult for Fox, in the early to mid-Sixites. Titles include Roger Vadim's Please, Not Now starring Brigitte Bardot, and Luis Bunuel's Diary of a Chambermaid. I also think one of the commentary tracks should have been done by a female film critic. Suspiria was relatively unique for its time with a female character saving herself in a film where all the major characters are female, while the men here are generally in the background. Maitland McDonagh, the Argento scholar who provided the entertaining and informative commentary track for Synapse's release of Tenebrae, and also did publicity for New York City Ballet, would have been perfect. There are also the usual suspects like Samm Deighan and Kat Ellinger. Also, someone like Farran Smith Nehme would be able provide more in-depth discussion on Alida Valli and Joan Bennett, hopefully inspiring viewers to dig into the classics that inspired Argento's casting of these two actresses.

In addition to Mackenzie's piece, the second disc includes a documentary on the German locations, the making of Suspiria, and an interview with Barbara Magnolfi, the actress who appears as Olga. Even without all the supplements, what makes Suspiria continually fascinating a viewing experience is that everything that is seen was done on camera, all with practical special effects. With walls breaking and props exploding, Jessica Harper had good reason to hope she'd escape from that house of horror alive.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:02 AM

March 08, 2018

No Orchids for Miss Blandish

St. John L. Clowes - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There was a sense of familiarity when I read the excerpts from the reviews. "The most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen." Another critic described Miss Blandish as "the worse film I've ever seen", while another called the film "this repellent piece of work". The reviews of that time are strikingly similar to the reviews of another British film that came out about twelve years later, Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. The kicker here is that there is another connection between these two films - Linden Travers stars in the title role as Miss Blandish, while her daughter, Susan Travers, appears as a model turned victim in Peeping Tom.

Seventy years later, this first film version from James Hadley Chase's novel doesn't seem so transgressive. The thugs here are almost genteel compared to the more obviously psychotic denizens in the novel or Robert Aldrich's remake, The Grissom Gang. There are moments, such as when a small time hood smashes a glass vase onto bartender Sid James' face would anticipate Mark Rydell's slamming the coke bottle on his girlfriend's face in Robert Altman's film of The Long Goodbye. Stateside, there was concern that a forty-five second kiss between Jack La Rue and Linden Travers was at least twenty-five seconds too long. The hero of the piece, investigator Dave Fenner, has a tendency to arrange would-be wardrobe malfunctions with a couple of the women who work at Ma Grisson's nightclub.

The film takes place in and near New York City, where many of the citizens speak with British accents. The actors playing gangsters appear to have studied Warner Brothers movies, or gone to the Bowery Boys School of Elocution. That actor who nearly blinds Sid James does a great impersonation of Leo Gorcey. Most of the film takes place either in Ma Grisson's cavernous nightclub, or in the offices and bedrooms conveniently located upstairs. The basic story is that the initial plan to steal jewels from the heiress of the millionaire "Meat King" turns into a kidnapping. Written before there was the term, "Stockholm Syndrome", Miss Blandish falls in love with Slim, the son of the gang leader.

Reportedly, St. John Clowes wanted Jane Russell as Miss Blandish, but cast Linden Travers, who starred in the 1942 stage production. Travers vaguely resembles Russell, but at age 35 was clearly too old to play the part of a bride-to-be, especially one whom Chase emphasized was a virgin. Jack La Rue, the only American actor in the cast, easily looked the part of the tough guy, although by the end of the film, he is turned into an ersatz Humphrey Bogart. Neither of the leads seem as psychologically unhinged as in Chase's novel or Aldrich's version. What protests Miss Blandish initially has about being kidnapped drift away here mostly because shacking up with Slim is a welcome change from the routines of high society.

There is virtually nothing written about St. John Clowes other than a list of his works as a writer and director. He died fairly young at age 44 in 1951. The story here is a bit padded out with nightclub musical numbers, a couple of dance duos, with a female vocalist as one of the characters. Even with his reputation mostly being literary, Clowes has his moments of visual virtue with relatively long takes of gang member in discussion, with the actors sometimes moving in and out of the frame, and the camera moving to keep them in the frame as needed for dramatic purposes. Maybe this is from originally working as a playwright, keeping dialogue heavy scenes from being static on stage, adding a visual panache on film. Even in a film that can easily be the subject of derision will there also be flashes of undeniable talent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:34 AM

March 01, 2018

Topaze

Harry D'Abbadie D'Arrast - 1933
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

In The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris wrote of Topaze and another film by D'Arrast, Laughter, " . . . seen today, seem fragile and vulnerable exceptions to the boisterousness of mass taste." What Sarris wrote about fifty years ago, seems more so when mainstream films are often so much sound and fury a quick succession of images and lots of noise. This is light comedy that is barely featherweight. It was only a couple years after the publication of Sarris' book that I was able to see Topaze in a 16mm print in a class taught by the venerable William K. Everson. In a more perfect world, it would be Everson who would be providing the commentary track on this new blu-ray version.

A very restrained John Barrymore stars in the title role as a professor for a class of pre-teen Parisian boys. Among the lessons in chemistry and history are emphasis on ethics, with signs posted in the classroom with adages as, "Ill-gotten gains are not worth having." Dismissed from the school for refusing to give good grades to one of the boys at the behest of a baroness on Friday the 13th, Topaze's luck turns for the better. The idealism taught in the classroom is turned on its head as Topaze finds that money can buy a certain amount of happiness, as well as his benefactor's mistress.

This is a pre-code film, most pointedly in the opening scene with Reginald Marsh and Myrna Loy sitting opposite each other in what appears to be a quiet, domestic scene, he playing solitaire, she reading a book. That presumption is broken when Marsh announces it is time to return to wife for the evening. The film concludes with Barrymore and Loy going to the movies, the title, Man, Woman and Sin virtually describes the opening scene, with the marquee also announcing, "Twice Daily".

D'Arrast often uses lateral tracking shots to follow Barrymore. The most notable times the camera doesn't move are in two speeches given by Topaze, with Barrymore in close-up. Barrymore is the star here. This was a year before Myrna Loy made The Thin Man, although a few hints of Nora Charles can be seen here. Humor is also to be found when Topaze discovers that the sparkling water that bears his name is not quite the healthy beverage he assumed it to be as a series of neon signs change their wording to declare Topaze as a thief. This scene becomes a montage of nightmare visions with the small professor overwhelmed by oversized advertisements of dishonesty.

Kat Ellinger's commentary track explains how screenwriter Ben Hecht streamlined the original play by Marcel Pagnol into a relatively short, seventy-eight minute, feature. She also discussed the other filmed versions as well as the Broadway production that was still on stage simultaneous to this film. Topaze was also named as the best film of 1933 by the National Board of Review, although a review of what films made that list reads mostly of titles that have lapsed into obscurity, while ignoring such acknowledged classics as Design for Living. While there is some writing to be gleaned on the films by D'Arrast, there is very little about the life of the director. More hints are to be found from Jonathan Rosenbaum. I was hoping to know a bit more about D'Arrast's life in Monte Carlo after leaving Hollywood, following a decade of filmmaking. The source print appears to be flawlessly rendered on this blu-ray. If there's any problem, it's that I had to remind myself that the film takes place in Paris when several of the interior sets suggested an art deco New York City.

And in case anyone was wondering, my recollection based on William Everson's class is that the name of the director is pronounced "Da ra".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:43 AM

February 27, 2018

The Sect

La Setta
Michele Soavi - 1991
Doppelganger Releasing and Scorpion Releasing BD Region A

Dario Argento originated the story, served as producer, and has his name prominently featured on the posters. Be that as it may, there is enough difference here to mark The Sect as Michele Soavi's film. This isn't like the original film version of The Thing which looks and sounds enough like a Howard Hawks film that people are still arguing as to what Christian Nyby actually did, or Poltergeist, with Steven Spielberg second-guessing Tobe Hooper. The Sect is the last of his first three films to be made under the sponsorship of older filmmakers, with Stage Fright produced by Aristide Massaccesi, followed Dario Argento serving as producer on The Church and The Sect.

What struck me were the moments of quiet contemplation, dreamlike imagery, as well as use of religious symbolism. One of the first shots is with the camera following along a creek, with the water appearing to turn increasingly red. A superimposed title reads "South California 1970" (sic). Music is heard faintly, then more clearly recognized as the song, "A Horse with No Name". Animals are a significant part of this film. A family of hippies is camping out. A man dressed like a biblical character shows up asking for water. He introduces himself as Damon, a name that sounds almost like demon, and quotes from the Rolling Stone song, "Sympathy for the Devil". Damon looks kind of like Charles Manson. Most viewers can guess where this is leading.

Considering the use of animals and images of animals in The Sect, it's an uncanny accident that Kelly Curtis has the lead role here instead of the originally considered actress. Consider that her mother, Janet Leigh, portrayed a woman named Marion Crane in Psycho and was terrorized by giant rabbits in Night of the Lepus. Here the daughter is terrorized by a marabou stork, and has a pet rabbit. Curtis plays a teacher named Miriam, almost a homophone with Marion. Herbert Lom brings his own legacy as a creepy, if not villainous, stranger in Miriam's life. The narrative jumps to Frankfurt, Germany, 1991, with a murderer confessing to his crime compelled by outside forces.

There is lots of use of blue, especially in an oversized basement with walls that have artwork that resemble the stain glass windows of a church, The blue stringy substance that appears with the water in Miriam's house is echoed in a ribbon around her wrist. Doctors wear shiny blue scrubs. A dream sequence takes place in a lushly green field with eye popping red flowers. In addition to her pet rabbit, Miriam's house has images of rabbits on the walls and collection of rabbit figurines.

The dream sequence especially anticipates the kind of visual creativity Soavi would employ almost ten years later with his television film on St. Francis. There are the usual horror tropes with windows that burst open, doors that slam shut, and passageways that could well be portals to hell. The gorier elements are much briefer here than one finds in most Argento films. Unlike most films that involve devil worship, the religious aspects here are pre-Christian.

The blu-ray was made from a 2K scan from the original negative of the English language version. A supplement with actor Tomas Arana not only discusses his playing of Damon, but the differences as an actor in Italian and Hollywood productions. An interview with Michele Soavi covers the history of the making of The Sect as well as some of the films that served as inspiration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:13 AM

February 13, 2018

Don't Call Me Son

Mae So Ha Uma
Anna Muylaert - 2016
Kino Lorber/Zeitgeist Films Region 1 DVD

Anna Muylaert films actor Naomi Nero, the seventeen year-old Pierre, in close-up in his first scenes, barely lit, with his face only partially seen. He's in a crowded Sao Paolo nightclub, wearing an animal ear hat with flaps that further obscures his face. Dancers casually pair up with each other or just as easily drift off to dance alone. Muylaert cuts to a shot of Pierre fucking a girl he was dancing with. What we see is within the frame are the two bodies from the mid-section locked together, taking notice of Pierre's garters and black stockings.

In this opening scene, Muylaert confronts her audience much in the way that Pierre eventually confronts his biological parents. A fluid sense of sexual identity is presented here without explanation or apology. Why I prefer the original poster for the film rather than the DVD cover is because instead of simply showing Pierre's sexually ambiguous appearance, the Brazilian poster also emphasizes Pierre's constant state of rebellion with his turned up middle finger. The story is inspired by a true incident of a child who was stolen from a maternity ward, only to be reunited with his biological parents years later. Pierre and his younger sister, Jacqueline, discover that they were never adopted, but were stolen at birth. The film explores the idea of what family means, in addition to self-identity.

Muylaert has the same actress, Dani Nefussi, play both the biological mother and the adoptive mother. Muylaert has explained this casting choice based on the emotional bonds that the women have with Pierre. This film is in some ways a thematic extension of Muylaert's previous film, The Second Mother, which also explored emotional and family bonds, as well as social strata. Pierre and Jacqueline are first seen in a small, but functional apartment. This is contrasted with Pierre's new home, a large house in a gated community. Pierre's former apartment could fit in the kitchen with room to spare. That contrast of change of parentage and home is made more clear when Pierre, attempting to leave his new home, is thwarted when his biological mother calls to have a guard close the entrance gate.

Even though the film's sympathies are primarily with Pierre, Muylaert also recognizes the pain of the biological parents reuniting with a child thought lost for seventeen years. The English language title is taken from a scene in which Pierre lets his parents know that he will not conform to traditional notions of masculinity. The original Portuguese title translates as "Mother there's only one", which may be more open for interpretation. The DVD comes with brief interviews with Muylaert and the main actors. Aside from discussing the research done prior to making the film, Muylaert discusses how she cast Naomi Nero, making his acting debut here, spotted for his naturalism on the dance floor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:13 AM

February 08, 2018

Seijun Suzuki - The Early Years Volume 1

Seijun Suzuki - The Early Years Volume 1 - Seijun Rising: The Youth Movies

Fumihazushita haru / The Boy who Came Back / The Boy who Made Good / The Spring that didn't Come (1958)

Toge o wataru wakai kaze / The Wind-of-Youth Group Crosses the Mountain Pass / The Breeze on the Ridge (1961)

Hai tin yakuza / Teenage Yakuza / High-Teen Yakuza (1962)

Akutaro / The Incorrigible / Bastard (1963)

Akutaro-den: Warui hoshi no shita demo / Born under Crossed Stars (1965)

Arrow Films BD Regions A/B - DVD Regions 1/2 four-disc set

Among the supplements in this set are four trailers from the films in this set. Sadly, there is no trailer for Teenage Yakuza. While all four of the trailers include mention of being directed by Seijun Suzuki, three of those trailers also add the adjective of "genius". I found those trailers interesting as it adds to the picture of the sometimes uneasy relationship Suzuki had as one of the house directors for the Japanese studio Nikkatsu. Here was a filmmaker publicly championed by his studio, yet for the most part relegated to whatever script was assigned to him at the moment. In another supplement, film critic Tony Rayns discusses Suzuki's frustration that Nikkatsu would not allow him to make more serious, bigger budget films unlike his peer, Shohei Imamura.

Coincidences with Imamura don't stop with the two temporarily being on the same career path in the beginning. Imamura's debut film, Stolen Desire (1958) was based on a novel by Toko Kon. The same author provided the basis for three of Suzuki's films, two of which are included in this set - The Incorrigible and Born under Crossed Stars. Curiously, the basic premise for Stolen Desire, about an itinerant acting troupe that mixes kabuki theater with strip shows would seem to have partially inspired Wind-of-Youth with its traveling magic show that features a popular ecdysiast.

As studio assignments, the stories generally follow an imposed template. The main character is a young man in his late teens with a propensity for getting into fist fights. At worst he's a juvenile delinquent having trouble keeping out of trouble. At his most benign, he's just a young man living independently, trying to figure out his own way in life. Romance is chaste, maybe some hand holding, maybe some kissing. Nikkatsu's audience for these films were generally teenagers, born during or immediately after World War II, more westernized than their parents. The starring roles were assigned by the studio from their contract players.

Where one sees Suzuki's hand is in the visual style. Tom Vick's book on Suzuki discusses this in depth. On of the favored devices is the overhead crane shot. Vick also mentions a scene in Wind-of-Youth where Koji Wada is splashed with different colored paint, though the effect is done with changes of filters. In The Incorrigible, light ripples like waves behind a shoji screen. Throughout the films are shots of legs, such as early scene in The Boy who Came Back, when a group of young women gather to gossip, with only the legs of the women visible in the shot. Suzuki may have had Eisenstein in mind when he alternated shots of a kendo duel with that of roosters pecking at each other in Born under Crossed Stars. Near the end of that film, the young Jukichi is described by his father as being like a "fighting cock".

A sequence involving Jukichi pursued by the equally young Taneko plays on the contrast between the two. Taking place in the early 1920s, the prim, sexually shy Jukichi is wearing a kimono, expecting to meet the proper Etsuko. Instead, he is met by Taneko, wearing a western style dress. Suzuki punctuates the sequence by playing with the spatial relationships between the two, usually with Taneko breaking into the frame from below or the side of the frame. This sequence extends from the two meeting at a train platform, followed by a nervous Jukichi sharing a bath with the uninhibited Taneko.

I would like to think Suzuki took a certain amount of pleasure in cramming as many extras as possible onto the dance floor, whether it's a tiny bar in The Boy who Came Back, or the much larger club in Teenage Yakuza. Suzuki may have been pushing the limits of censorship with the otherwise family friendly Wind-of-Youth when the stripper removes her panties to a well timed black out, and later opens her robe to her male audience demanding more, with her back to the film's viewers. Suzuki has his quieter moments as well that are worth savoring, such as a close-up of Ruriko Asaoka sprinkling sand through her hand at a beach in The Boy who Came Back.

In addition to the trailers, and Tony Rayns supplement, Born under Crossed Stars includes a commentary track by alway informative Jasper Sharp. Part of Sharp's commentary is on author Toko Kon (1898 - 1977), who's loosely autobiographical novels were the basis of the two films that take place in the 1920s, a period in Japanese history that Seijun Suzuki liked to revisit, most notable with the three films collectively known as "The Taisho Trilogy".

Masako Izumi and Ken Yamaguchi in Born under Crossed Stars

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:44 PM

February 06, 2018

The Diabolical Doctor Z

Dans les griffes du maniaque / Miss Muerte
Jesus Franco - 1966
Redemption Films BD Region A

What struck me upon seeing Doctor Z again after several years was the remarkable use of depth of field in the images. This begins almost immediately with the interior of some kind of prison that appears to be underground, an extremely long passageway, with the camera following a prisoner to a gate first seen in the distance. The film was made not long after Franco's work with Orson Welles, primarily as second unit director on Chimes at Midnight. While there is nothing in Doctor Z that can be pointed to as looking like a specific homage, what is noticeable here is the use of space, of placement of characters that force the viewer to consider what is within the entire frame, and the frequent use of extended traveling shots that follow the characters in pursuit.

This is a beautifully rendered blu-ray disc, one of Franco's last films in black and white. This is also Franco's most easily accessible film, for viewers less familiar with the filmmaker or whose preference is for more classical modes of cinema. Certainly working two associates best known for their work with Luis Bunuel may have been an impetus here, with Jean-Claude Carriere on the screenplay, and Serge Silberman as one of the producers.

The titles are a bit misleading. Doctor Z, that would be Doctor Zimmer, dies after the first twelve minutes or so. And Miss Muerte is the stage name of a nightclub dancer turned killer. The villain here is Doctor Z's daughter, Irma, taking revenge on the three esteemed doctors who in publicly mocking her father caused him to die in front of a conference of his peers. While not a sequel, per se, there is reference to Franco's earlier mad scientist creation, Doctor Orloff. Zimmer is a disciple of Orloff's with some unconventional ideas about mind control and good and evil, which consists of placing some unwilling victims on a glass platform, pinned down by two long metal tentacles, and sticking long metal pins through their heads. Told to cease his operations, ends the conference by getting an apparent heart attack. Irma Zimmer's revenge begins by first faking her death with an unwary hitchhiker. Among the detectives on the trail are music composer Daniel White as Green from Scotland Yard, and the still baby-faced Franco as a detective sleep deprived by the cries of his newborn triplets.

The film comes with both an English and French language track. Keep in mind that the cast was made up of primarily French and Spanish actors, and that all dialogue was most likely dubbed in as was common at the time of production. The advantage to seeing the film in English is that it does not distract from the wonderful visual qualities here. Cinephiles will certainly get a chuckle from a cinematic reference in the French dialogue in an early scene. Tim Lucas provides the commentary track here, providing information throughout the entire running time. Unlike previous Franco films, Daughter of Dracula and The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, Doctor Z is less dependent on familiarity with the more arcane aspects of Franco's universe. Still, what makes Lucas's commentaries stand out is his preparation, with no lapses of silence or the fumbling of improvisation with scattered notes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:21 AM

January 30, 2018

Jack the Ripper

Robert S. Baker & Monty Berman - 1959
Severin Films BD Regions ABC / Region 0 DVD two-disc set

David Gregory and his team at Severin Film put in a lot of effort in putting together this set of three versions of this 1959 production. Too bad the film itself wasn't better. It's not that Jack the Ripper is bad, but it does run a poor third behind two later productions from Baker and Berman, Flesh and the Fiends (1960) and The Hellfire Club (1961). Aside from the fictionalized version of 19th Century grave robbers Burke and Hare, written and directed by periodic collaborator John Gilling, Flesh and the Fiends also benefits from a strong cast with Peter Cushing, Donald Pleasance and Billie Whitelaw. The lesser known Hellfire Club, an intriguing period costume drama about a hidden inheritance and a secret society, also benefits from a cast including Cushing, Keith Michell, Adrienne Corri in a bathtub, and the luscious German actress, Kai Fischer.

Hammer veteran Jimmy Sangster wrote several horror films for Baker and Berman. The essential story is based loosely on a since discredited theory that the Ripper was a doctor avenging the death of his son who died following exposure to syphilis from a prostitute. In the film, the son has committed suicide because he found out that the woman he loved was formerly a lady of the night. Where the filmmakers get it wrong is also creating an unnecessary narrative where the investigation is assisted by a detective from New York City, based on the assumption that this would make the film more marketable for the lucrative U.S. market. To that end, bland Canadian actor Lee Patterson, with his thick, 1950s slickly coiffed pompadour gets top billing as the cop on a working vacation in England. The rest of the cast is made up of British character actors including Eddie Byrne (not to be confused with Edd Byrnes) as the Scotland Yard detective who's done most of the investigation. While the events take place in 1888, the murders have been compacted to a matter of days.

Like his work with Hammer, Sangster throws in the expected red herrings, including a mute hunchback with a badly scarred face. And like seemingly every Jack the Ripper movie, there's a music hall scene with Can-can dancers, followed by an unappreciated solo male singer.

I don't recall the source, but I do recall reading that Hammer made three versions of their films, with the mildest version for the British market, more violent for the U.S., and the most violent for Japanese viewers. Baker and Berman have been noted for making at least two versions of some of their productions, with a "continental" version sprinkled with partial nudity for the European market. In the case of Jack the Ripper, the blu-ray has the British release version taken from a telecine at 1.33:1, the U.S. version taken from the Library of Congress print at 1.66.1, and the French version, on the DVD, which is the British version dubbed and subtitled, with the various scenes or shots of bare-breasted women inserted. The "continental takes" can also be seen as a blu-ray extra. If for no other reason, this Jack the Ripper set is valuable as part of genre film history in presenting side by side comparisons of the same film, with slight variations based on censorship at the time as well as commercial concerns.

In an interview, Monty Berman was dismissive of the nudity for the continental version. There is one slightly racy shot that was excised from the British version, but is in U.S. release, of a gentleman nuzzling a showgirl just above her breast after pouring champagne on her. The U.S. version, supervised by showman Joseph E. Levine, is the best of the three versions presented here. Although the source print shows some signs of wear, it is more visually pleasing in wide screen. Also the scenes of violence are more complete. Most importantly, a couple of shots not in the British version are included in the U.S. version, making more sense out of close-ups of characters reacting in horror, especially with the color insert near the end. Levine also replaced the music track by Stanley Black for a new music score by Jimmy McHugh and Pete Rugolo, with Levine getting a few more dollars from the publishing rights. It's a brassy score, but also more dramatic and inventive.

The blu-ray includes a commentary track recorded in 2005 with Baker, Sangster, and Assistant Director Peter Manley. All three have since died. Monty Berman, who was in ill health, and died in 2006, is virtually ignored for his contributions. Where Berman's absence is conspicuous is when Baker takes credit for the "dutch angles" used during the scenes of murder, saying he was inspired by The Third Man. While Carol Reed's film may have been a source of inspiration, it was Berman who was a cinematographer on that film. Berman also was born in Whitechapel, the area of London where Jack the Ripper takes place. It may also be worth noting that one of Berman's first jobs was as a cinematographer for Michael Powell's Edge of the World (1937) and Some Days (1935). I have to wonder if it is less than coincidental that Powell made Peeping Tom the year following Jack the Ripper. A couple of the extras review the history of Jack the Ripper and some of the other films inspired by the legend. The extra of most interest was by French distributor Alain Petit, who was able to restore the French version of Jack the Ripper, and also discusses some of the history of how British films of the late 1950s and early 60s were produced with multiple versions.

One complaint to add is that only the British version has English subtitles. I have some measurable hearing loss, and sometimes dialogue is not heard clearly. However, there were several moments when I understood what the characters were saying, but the person responsible for the subtitles apparently did not and would have a subtitle noting that the bit of dialogue was unclear. I would hope that Severin Films looks into getting someone different for this task in the future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:55 AM

January 16, 2018

Kills on Wheels

Tiszta szívvel
Attila Till - 2016
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Often while watching Kills on Wheels, I thought of the late, quadriplegic cartoonist, John Callahan. The butts of the jokes were often people without arm or legs, maybe a hook for a hand. Callahan didn't even spare himself with a western posse stopped at an abandoned wheelchair, with one of the men declaring, "He won't get far on foot". I still recall one cartoon where a sign was featured stating, "Hire the handicapped. They're fun to watch."

Till sometimes has fun at the expense of his characters as well, as when one wheelchair bound character rolls on a pathway, only to find that his only way down is on stairway. I don't know if Till knew of Callahan and his cartoons, but his two young characters, Zolika and Barba, aspire to be cartoonists. Their adventures as part-time hit men recruited by former fireman Rupaszov may, or may not, be springing from their imagination.

The original title translates from Hungarian as "a pure heart". What is interesting here is that the English title describes the action of the characters, while the Hungarian title is about the intent. Without giving too much of the story away, most of the killing is done by Rupaszov. Zolika and Barba might be accomplices, but their main motivation is a temporary sense of independence from life in the rehabilitation center that is their home. Away from therapists and doctors, the two young men get to enjoy Budapest night life, free flowing alcohol and even some female company.

Unlike the stream of Hollywood films that are centered on disabled characters, Zoltan Fenyvesi as Zolika is genuinely dependent on his wheels. The actor playing Barba, Adam Fekete, has cerebral palsy. Able bodied actors might complain less about any physical demands after seeing these two getting knocked into the Danube River in one scene. The actor playing Rupaszov, Szabolcs Thuroczy, may familiar to those who saw White God from last year. Parts of the film appear to have been filmed in real locations with scores of real-life extras. Till has reportedly worked as a volunteer with the disabled, providing some inspiration for the film.

Several shots are from the level, if not point of view, of someone in a wheelchair. There is one bravura scene of a shootout in a gangster's mansion, with what appears to be a single long tracking shot moving across two divided rooms sharing the same floor, starting with Rupaszov, with the camera following his victims as they are shot. The real life action is occasionally broken up with images of Zolika and Barba's artwork in progress.

The blu-ray includes three brief deleted scenes, plus some brief bits with Till and his actors discussing the making of Kills on Wheels.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:41 AM

January 02, 2018

Miss Zombie

Sabu - 2013
Redemption BD Region A

Much of the activity in Miss Zombie takes place at the home of a middle-aged doctor, his wife and young child, a boy who incessantly takes photos with a Polaroid camera. Their house looks looks like large slabs of concrete, more like a mausoleum than a home. It's a fitting location, with Mount Fuji occasionally glimpsed in the distance, for a film that plays with some of the conventions of the zombie genre.

Writer-director Sabu, the pseudonym for Hiroyuki Tanaka, has created a film both elegant and elegiac. Filmed primarily in widescreen black and white, with a five minute burst of color near the end, this is the kind of film that is an unexpected blend of grind house and art house. The viewer is only given hints about a viral infection that has created a number of zombies, who have been herded into cages. Those with a low level of infection have been sold as menial help or pets. Instructions are to feed these domesticated zombies only fruit or vegetables, and absolutely no meat to prevent them from turning feral. A gun is included for preventative measure.

What is really at the heart here is an exploration of family love and loss of identity. Sara, the title character, is employed mainly to clean a stone pathway in front of the house. Much of the soundtrack is of the sounds made by Sara's brushing the stones. Walking with her face cast downward, she is symbolic of those who are exploited in labor and sexually. As she trudges to the storehouse that is her home, children toss rocks at her, while some neighborhood punks think nothing of sticking knives into her shoulder. Sara continues walking, with nights passed looking at a photo of her former self, pregnant, with an unscarred body.

Sara's presence upsets the family dynamics. The son, Kenichi, is brought back to the house dead from drowning in a pond. We don't see the death of Kenichi, but the description evoked for me that moment in James Whale's Frankenstein where the monster tosses the young girl in a pond. The mother, Shizuko begs Sara to bring Kenichi back to life. Among the unforeseen consequences, Sara becomes more human, while Shizuko becomes more physically awkward and eventually inarticulate in her cries.

Sara's final flashback unmistakably recalls Night of the Living Dead, but in other ways Miss Zombie is closer to such films as the Korean The Housemaid or Joseph Losey's The Servant as examinations of class and entitlement. With the current state of Japanese films available for western viewers being what it is, I'm glad to see a belated release by a filmmaker relatively little known to stateside viewers. Certainly, the ending is the most heartbreaking to be seen in a film about the living dead since Duane Jones' brief moment of victory in George Romero's classic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

December 19, 2017

52 Films

I didn't sign the pledge. I just watched movies. Mostly DVD and streaming films from Netflix, end of year screeners intended for award consideration, and a couple films in theaters, as well a couple in my collection. After a while, I had to remember to update the list. And I stopped counting after I hit the magic number. This was around September. I have seen a few more films by female filmmakers since then. These are the films I counted in the chronology of when they were viewed.

1. Always Shine (Sophia Takal - 2016)
2. The Love Witch (Anna Biller - 2016)
3. Black Women in Medicine (Crystal Emery - 2016)
4. The Gold Diggers (Sally Potter - 1983)
5. Puppylove (Delphine Lehericey - 2013)
6. Nuit #1 (Anne Emond - 2011)
7. Hooligan Sparrow (Wang Nanfu - 2016)
8. Cameraperson (Kirsten Johnson - 2016)
9. Mujer Lobo (Tamae Garateguy - 2013)
10. Dearest Sister (Mattie Do - 2016)
11. Blood Punch (Madellaine Paxson - 2013)
12. Hannah Arendt (Margarethe von Trotta - 2012)
13. 13th (Ava DuVernay - 2016)
14. Zero Motivation (Talya Lavie - 2014)
15. After Sex (Brigitte Rouan - 1997)
16, Portrait of a Garden (Rosie Stapel - 2015)
17. The Lure (Agnieszka Smoczynska - 2015)
18, Some Girl(s) (Daisy von Scherler Mayer - 2013)
19. Adore (Anne Fontaine - 2013)
20. The To Do List (Maggie Carey - 2013)
21. Breaking the Girls (Jamie Babbit - 2013)
22. Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade - 2016)
23. The Dressmaker (Jocelyn Moorhouse - 2015)
24. Sunlight, Jr. (Laurie Collyer - 2013)
25. A Case of You (Kat Coiro - 2013)
26. Things to Come (Mia Hansen-Love - 2016)
27. What Happened, Miss Simone (Liz Garbus - 2015)
28. Wadjda (Haifaa al-Mansour - 2012)
29. Say aah . . . (Axelle Ropert - 2013)
30. A French Gigolo (Josiane Balasko - 2008)
31. The Wolfpack (Crystal Moselle - 2015)
32. Sunshine Superman (Marah Strauch - 2015)
33. The Second Mother (Anna Muylaert - 2015)
34. Empire of Silver (Christina Yao - 2009)
35. What's in the Darkness (Wang Yuchin - 2016)
36. Being Good (Mipo O - 2015)
37. Elvis & Nixon (Liza Johnson - 2016)
38. Father of My Children (Mia Hansen-Love - 2009)
39. A Beautiful Now (Daniela Amalia - 2016)
40. Never Fear (Ida Lupino - 1949)
41. The Leveling (Hope Dickson Leach - 2016)
42. The Unlikely Girl (Wei Ling Chang - 2012)
43. If You Don't, I Will (Sophie Fillieres - 2014)
44. Sophie and the Rising Sun (Maggie Greenwald - 2016)
45. Janis: Little Girl Blue (Amy J. Berg - 2015)
46. Pure (Lisa Langseth - 2010)
47. LOL (Lisa Azuelos - 2008)
48. A Place on Earth (Fabienne Godet - 2013)
49. On My Way (Emmanuelle Bercot - 2013)
50. Mundane History (Anocha Suwichakornpong - 2009)
51. By the Time it Gets Dark (Anocha Suwichakornpong - 2016)
52. Sex in the Comics (Joelle Oosterlinck - 2012)

Simply having a large number of French films made a difference. France seems to be one of the few countries where female directors have actual careers rather that battling for years to make another movie. As far as some of the titles go, if you send me a screener, even one that has no chance of making the best of year lists, much less any kind of award, I'll watch it eventually.

I'm not going to call myself a feminist because I'm not sure what that's suppose to mean when a guy calls himself that. But I did put my money where my mouth is by supporting a crowdfunding campaign of one the filmmakers here. Mattie Do's video was so funny, talking about her need to buy fake blood for her second horror movie, that I contributed $100.00. That was in 2013. What none of us imagined at that time was that the film, Dearest Sister would play at several film festivals, be part of the programming of the online movie channel Shudder, or most amazingly, be the first film ever from Laos to compete for the Foreign Language Film Oscar. This was also the second film that I ever helped in the crowdfunding stage. I contributed a modest $10.00 to help produce a movie so strange in description that also turned out quite well. That was A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. Bragging? Maybe. Participating in crowdfunding just seems like a good idea to show some concrete support, especially for newer filmmakers.

I also want to mention, for those unfamiliar, that Shudder has a section listing all of their available features and shorts directed by women. And sometimes you have to remind people, especially fanboys, that the template for many horror movies was established in a novel by a British teenage girl in the early 19th Century.

I'm illustrating this post with a poster from a film directed by Ida Lupino, who for a while was the only working female director in Hollywood. I got to see the Museum of Modern Art's 35mm print of Never Fear at a modestly attended screening. This was in conjunction with a book tour by Therese Gresham and Julie Grossman, the authors of the book, Ida Lupino, Director - Her Art and Resilience in Times of Transition. Get the book - it covers Lupino's work both in film and television.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:36 AM

December 12, 2017

Maigret

Maigret Sets a Trap / Maigret Tend un Piege
Jean Delannoy - 1958

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case / Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre
Jean Delannoy - 1959
Kino Classics BD Region A

One way of making a blu-ray a "keeper" is by having Nathan Gelgud do the cover art. Kudos to Kino for going above and beyond the lame photoshop efforts of some companies that think just issuing a film on home video is enough.

As for the films themselves? Historical curiosity is what attracted me in the first place. I revisited a vaguely remembered passage of Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema, where he paraphrases Francois Truffaut's declaration that the worst film be Jean Renoir is better than the best film by Jean Delannoy. I can't really argue that point as the only other Delannoy films I've seen were costume epics, both with Gina Lollobrigida, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Imperial Venus. Coincidentally, Renoir also made a Maigret film, La Nuit de Carrefour which Jean-Luc Godard declared as "the only great French detective movie - in fact, the greatest of all adventure movies." The films could well be considered representative of the "tradition of quality" that Truffaut, Godard and the others criticized, and notably were released at the same time French cinema was about to undergo a major shift.

Jean Gabin, re-established as a star in France after a slump following World War II, played Georges Simenon's famed detective twice for Delannoy, and a third time, to lesser effect in 1963 for Gilles Grainger. The first of these films is the best, featuring early performances by Annie Girardot and Lino Ventura. A killer has attacked four women in the Marais district of Paris, with Maigret leading the police investigation. The entire film appears to have been filmed in studio sets, with long, dark alleys. How this works in Delannoy's favor is with his frequent use of tracking shots through streets or within the police station. The scenes of murder are depicted with screams and shadows. There is one very brief moment when a gigolo's girlfriend pops her head through a doorway, topless, with a few seconds of footage that probably was never seen by U.S. viewers back in 1958. One of the other highlights here is the performance by Olivier Hussenot as a mousy detective who can't stop sneezing.

Delannoy took Maigret on location with the second film. A countess, the widow of a small town's land owner, receives a letter stating that she will die on Ash Wednesday. Maigret, who knew the woman as a youth, returns to Saint Fiacre after almost forty years, in hopes of preventing a murder. Something is amiss when the chateau is revealed to be almost empty of furniture, with the outlines on walls where paintings once hung. The mystery is solved in an almost leisurely fashion in the course of two days. Visually, the film is less stylish, though there is a nice use of close-ups of hands of Gabin and Valentine Tessier, as the countess. One nice scene is of Maigret gaining the confidence of an alter boy with tales of his own youth in the same church.

Delannoy could well be deserving of a re-examination. Among the writers, Delannoy filmed screenplays by Jean Cocteau and Jean-Paul Sartre. Even though he made films during the Nazi occupation of France, Delannoy was also a member of the Resistance. Forced to redo a film starring the the Jewish Erich von Stroheim, the film was recast with fellow Resistance member Pierre Renoir, Jean Renoir's Maigret. In 1953, in his book on French cinema, Georges Sadoul described Delannoy as "an honest craftsman, capable of good work and worthy of his international reputation." Sometimes, that's more than enough.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

December 05, 2017

Death Laid an Egg

La morte ha fatto l'uovo
Giulio Questi - 1968
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC / Region 0 DVD two-disc set

Sure, there's a shot of black leather gloves, and a woman's throat is cut, but to describe Death Laid an Egg as giallo seems to be missing the point, or at least misleading the viewer. The genre elements are only a small part of the visual and political shenanigans concocted by Questi in collaboration with co-writer and editor Franco Arcalli. That there is something that passes as a plot almost seems like a way to conveniently end the film.

Where Death Laid an Egg really shines is as a work of pop art on celluloid. Quests begins with a series of off-kilter shots of people who may or may not be connected, in various hotel rooms, with one primping his luxurious hair, another man encasing his head in clear plastic, while we hear, but do not see, the conversation between another man and a woman, perhaps a prostitute. The company where Jean-Louis Trintignant works has a giant egg statue in the lobby, while his office is decorated with a large poster of a chicken skeleton. There's a graph chart with two oversized jagged lines, blue and red, that looks more like a artist's parody of a real graph chart. Only seen up close was some kind of chandelier with glass drops that resembled vials of blood. On the road, Questi focuses on the directional arrow on the highway, and an unexplained car on fire.

I would have suspected that Franco Arcalli brought in the more political aspects of the film, but further research indicates that this might not be the case. English language writing on Questi is scant, based primarily on the two films he is known for by English language viewers. Arcalli would later collaborate significantly with Bernardo Bertolucci as a writer. Trintignant is the business face of a chicken farm owned by wife Gina Lollobrigida. Living with them is a young niece played by Ewa Aulin. The farm has become fully automated, much to the displeasure of the former workers. The farm, as such, is a large structure with row after row of caged chickens. The centerpiece of the farm is a huge, centrifugal machine that seems to somehow do everything from distributing the feed to completely plucking the chickens. Touched are thoughts that have become more widely discussed in the almost fifty years since the film was made, especially discussions of bioengineering the chickens for commercial purposes.

The film also features one of the handful of film scores by Bruno Maderna. One of the supplements on the blu-ray is the soundtrack album. That Maderna did the music score instead of someone more traditionally melodious like Riz Ortolani would be one way Questi would undermine genre expectations. Just as the violence is more suggested than seen, so the potentially erotic moments seem deliberately flat. After seeing Death Laid an Egg, you might not look at an egg yolk in quite the same way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:58 AM

November 28, 2017

Portrait of Jennie

William Dieterle - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

A struggling artist, trying to make a living at a time of great instability, finds his fortunes change when he encounters a beautiful woman with long, black hair. The woman in question is revealed to be a ghost. I finally got around to seeing Portrait of Jennie about six years ago. And I started to re-title the film "Jennie Monogatari", after noting some similarities with Kenji Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari. As it turned out, I've not been alone in noting those similarities.

The film begins with lofty quotes from Euripides and Keats on life and death, truth and beauty, essentially setting up the premise of a love that transcends human limitations and understand. And this is a beautiful film, gorgeously photographed and emotionally stirring. But what is really transcended here is any bit of logic. The film takes place in depression era New York City of 1934. Artist Eben Abner is alone in Central Park when he first encounters Jennie, dressed as a young girl of maybe ten years old from 1910. Why does this girl, not even a teenager, zero in on a guy who's old enough to be her father? More curiously, while Jennie reappears, seemingly at random, a little bit older, with the goal of being of marriageable age for Abner, why is she fuzzy about memories of her own life? And how does one make sense of Jennie being sent to a convent school where most of her classmates become nuns, when the dialogue points out that Jennie isn't Catholic? And while I'm at it, as it is established that Abner lives in a garret apartment, it didn't strike anyone as odd that Abner's Irish pal, Gus O'Toole would haul a full size harp to accompany himself on a song.

Keep in mind that Portrait of Jennie took over a year to produce, with re-writes and re-shoots mandated by producer David O. Selznick for a final cost of about four million dollars. This was slightly greater than the budget for Gone with the Wind, for a film that is essentially an intimate love story. I'm going to have to guess that the assumption was that if the viewer could accept the idea of a love story between a mortal man and a beautiful female ghost, than all the plot holes and inconsistencies will disappear as easily as easily as Jennifer Jones whenever Joseph Cotten glances away from her.

Troy Howarth seems like an unlikely choice for the commentary track, given that he is best known for his writings on Italian horror films. Howarth does provide a plethora of details on the production, giving credit where due, especially as Selznick productions are often known for having several uncredited hands in the final work. The commentary is probably of greatest benefit for younger viewers with less familiarity with the actors, including brief biographies of the supporting players. Howarth also discusses how the final, tinted reels of Portrait of Jennie were shown in the process known as Magnascope in a handful of theaters. Reportedly, it was at these theaters that Portrait of Jennie did well commercially. Having been to the theater where Jennie played in New York City, the Rivoli, I can almost imagine how overwhelming the experience would have been.

Perhaps why Portrait of Jennie works in spite of itself, and why I like this film in spite of its illogic, is because it is a blend of classic Hollywood filmmaking alternating with scenes taking place on location in New York City. Some of this is probably due to the jolt of neorealism that appeared in films only a couple years earlier. And it's probably what inspired Selznick to work, albeit not successfully, with Vittorio De Sica in 1953, with Jones starring in Terminal Station. There are a couple of longish tracking shots of Jones and Cotten walking through Central Park, a location much used in the film. New York City also appears as a ghost town with the pair seen on the streets in a scene that appears to have been filmed early in the morning. In retrospect, Eben Abner sailing through a hurricane to reunite with a ghost names Jennie is dwarfed by the ambitions of David O. Selznick to provide the ultimate showcase for the woman who was about to be his wife.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:08 AM

November 21, 2017

Since You Went Away

John Cromwell - 1944
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The new blu-ray of Since You Went Away is the full roadshow version, complete with an Overture, an intermission and an Entr'acte. Almost three hours long, I'm pretty sure David O. Selznick was hoping to have another Gone with the Wind, albeit one about the civilians at home during World War II. The film, based on a novel published the year before, is epic length. Being topical, there are aspects that are dated, some painfully so, but there are also moments of astonishing visual beauty.

Like Gone with the Wind, the credits don't tell the whole story of who was responsible for making the film. If IMDb is to be believed, John Cromwell wasn't the only one calling the shots, and Stanley Cortez and Lee Garmes weren't the only ones behind the camera. There is no commentary track, nor have I come across any writing that identified the guiding hand(s) on certain scenes, but there are a series of shots that stand out. One of the first shots of several couples on the dance floor, in an airplane hangar, is filmed from a distance with the dancers seen in silhouette, with long shadows. A later scene with Jennifer Jones in conversation with Robert Walker has to the two virtually in the dark, seen in silhouette or with faces partially lit. In the latter part of the film when Jones chases after the train carrying Walker off to war, Jones is seen alone in the train station, lit primarily from behind, with a very long shadow in front of her. I'm guessing that the shots in question, and they do stand out conspicuously here, were the work of Stanley Cortez. Again, I am making a guess here because there seems to the influence of Orson Welles in the composition of some of the shots, with an emphasis of the depth of field. David Bordwell also discusses some of the visual style of Since You Went Away.

Selznick, who also took credit for writing the screenplay, intended the film as a morale booster. Jingoism is kept to a minimum with a motorcycle cop doing a slant-eye gesture, a time when the Japanese seemed a bigger threat than Nazi Germany. Those less familiar with this era may be stumped by the reference to "V-Girls", or why someone would want to name their child after Dwight Eisenhower. By the standards of that time, Hattie McDaniel is treated respectfully, although having her dialogue filled with malapropisms was a stereotype that should have been avoided. What may have been considered humorous at the time could well be considered borderline racist. Perhaps well-intended, but heavy handed, is the presumably Jewish psychiatrist named Sigmund Gottlieb Golden.

While the casting includes the expected actors in a Selznick production - Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten, Hattie McDaniel and Lionel Barrymore, what wasn't expected were comic cameos from Doodles Weaver, W.C. Fields' foil Grady Sutton, and personal favorite, Warren Hymer. There is also a recurring bit as part of some of the traveling shots where the microphone seems to pick up bits of dialogue from the extras, such as the scene in the train station. The effect almost anticipates the seemingly random conversations that weave in and out in something like Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

Where the film as some contemporary meaning is with the brief appearance by Alla Nazimova in her final film appearance. As Sofia Koslowska, a refugee from an unidentified eastern European country, Nazimova recites the Emma Lazarus poem that is engraved on the Statue of Liberty. Clearly identified Jewish characters are incidental to the narrative, with the film ending on Christmas to the tune of "Adeste Fidelis". Nazimova describes America as a fairyland. Over-idealized? Perhaps. But I think the scene may have have had personal importance for Selznick, a first generation child of immigrants, anticipating a more culturally diverse country.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:26 AM

October 31, 2017

The Mercenary

Il Mercenario / A Professional Gun
Sergio Corbucci - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The Mercenary was first released in Italy in December of 1968, just days after the director's acknowledged classic, The Great Silence. In that context, it is even more noteworthy when a prolific genre filmmaker can keep up the quality given the tight schedules and strict budgets required. The Mercenary may not be quite on the level of The Great Silence or Django, but it still has some remarkable moments.

Early on, we see the idiosyncrasies of the two rival mercenaries. The arms dealer, Kowalski, has the habit of striking matches against any available surface, be it the hat worn by a man sitting in front of him, or another man's teeth while in conversation. This match lighting business offers a bit of low humor, but also signals Kowalski's view of people in terms of their perceived usefulness. As he's played by Franco Nero, Kowaski's misbehavior is given a pass by the viewer. The more villainous Curly, played with evident self-amusement by Jack Palance, is provided with a couple of visually inventive scenes given his briefer screen time.

Disappointed by the failure of one of his henchmen to murder Nero, the camera follows Palance riding away from the inept killer. In a single take panning shot, we hear, but don't see, what is happening off-screen. The camera and Palance, complete a full circle, revealing the henchman dead, a pitchfork in his stomach. The camera continues to follow Palance as he makes the sign of the cross while slowly riding away.

The film is one of several of the sub-genre known as Zapata westerns, taking place in the early part of the 20th Century, where the putative hero is a Mexican revolutionary, fighting for social and economic justice. The story was by Franco Solinas, most famous for his hand in writing The Battle of Algiers. Solinas contributed to several westerns that served as parables about the then current issues of American interests in Third World countries, but also may have served as critiques of Hollywood's version of Zapata and Mexico. The other major name of the several writers here is Luciano Vincenzoni, the main writer in collaboration with that most famous Italian Sergio, Leone. Alex Cox's commentary points out what he identifies as those parts of the film that were contributions by Solinas as well as those by Vincenzoni. One of the bits of information of interest is that Battle of Algiers director Gillo Pontecorvo was originally scheduled to direct The Mercenary, but instead went on to make Burn!, starring Marlon Brando, a somewhat fictionalized account with similar themes of First World capitalism versus Third World revolution. Curiously, Cox doesn't mention that he made his own film, Walker almost twenty years later, based on the same events in Burn!.

Like any good Italian western, The Mercenary can be enjoyed for its own surface pleasures. There are several twists and turns with Nero and the peasant leader, played by Tony Musante, scheming with and against each other, plus a spectacular battle with machine guns and a World War I era bi-plane. The music is mostly by Ennio Morricone with some assist from Bruno Nicolai, with Morricone's themes familiar from use by Quentin Tarantino.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:59 AM

October 26, 2017

The Voice of the Moon

La Voce della Luna
Federico Fellini - 1990
Arrow Academy BD Regions A/B and DVD Regions 1/2 Two-disc set

Twenty-seven years? I can understand why English language film distributors might not have been battling to bring Federico Fellini's last film to theaters. And grazie to the Arrow team for stepping up to the plate. What shred of a narrative exists casually strolls from one incident to the next. Still, it took this long for an English language home video release, which is shameful treatment of one of the all-time great filmmakers. And yes, much of the film looks like a rehash of moments from past films which places Fellini in the company of Howard Hawks and Jerry Lewis, as a couple of filmmakers who come to mind with their career closing entries.

The film takes place in a small, provincial town in Italy, but the sense of otherworldliness suggests that it could well be another planet. Ivo, played by a relatively restrained Roberto Benigni, is convinced he hears voices emanating from a well. Ivo is occasionally joined in his escapades by paranoid prefect, Genello, an older man who sees conspiracies everywhere. What there is of a story is virtually free association from encounters with eccentric characters and absurd events.

A later scene takes place in what looks like the world's biggest disco, with what appear to be hundreds of mostly young adults in tangentially punk style outfits dancing to Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel". The revelry is interrupted by an older couple waltzing to Strauss's "Blue Danube". The scene seems to sum up Fellini's own bemusement with the contemporary world, at odds with an idealized romanticism. If the (then) present looks even stranger and more disorienting than it did at the time of La Dolce Vita, the past has become even more remote.

Most of the film was shot on a set constructed in the shell of an old factory. The artificiality aids in the dreamlike visual qualities, with painterly images from cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli. Time hadn't changed Fellini's working methods with much of the film improvised by the huge cast, with dialogue dubbed later. There is also much use of circular shapes with the moon, the round lenses of Ivo's glasses, the well, and even a large tire in the muddy ground.

The blu-ray comes with a documentary on the making of The Voice of the Moon which might have been a bit better had it not tried to be Felliniesque. The framing story of an young American female journalist should have been discarded. Still, we get to see Fellini in action on the set of what turned out to be his last film, with bits of interviews from several of his collaborators, and a glimpse of Jim Jarmusch on the set. I hope that someone has saved parts of that set - some of the wall graffiti was done by the master himself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:08 AM

October 24, 2017

Rumble - The Indians who Rocked the World

Catherine Bainbridge - 2017
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

It was definitely the title. How else to explain that an instrumental would be banned in Boston and New York. The music doesn't suggest a street fight as much as an implacable force of nature, deliberately moving forward and claiming its turf. Link Wray doesn't get the kind of recognition as Elvis Presley, though Rumble suggests that Wray's influence may well have been as important in inspiring a number of teenage boys to pick up the guitar in the late Fifties. There is enough testimony claiming that Link Wray invented the power chord, that loud and distorted sound used by many rock bands to announce themselves.

Rock music is only a part of this documentary which may have better served its subject as a longer work. The more interesting sections that need expansion would be on the Native American influence on music originating from the southeastern United States, permeating its way not always visible in popular music, as well as a more in depth look at jazz singer Mildred Bailey. In one segment, a group of Native American women are singing a song that suggests that the vocal music usually attributed to African-Americans, such as gospel, also has Native American roots. The film discusses the relationship of African-Americans with Native Americans from the colonial era through the time of Jim Crow laws. As for Bailey, a popular singer primarily in the 1930s, her way with a song influenced Tony Bennett, who briefly appears here, as well as Frank Sinatra, among others. With her particular legacy, Mildred Bailey probably deserves her own documentary.

Maybe not a full-length documentary, but I was also intrigued by the transformation of Pat and Lolly Vegas from their time as fixtures as part of the Los Angeles music scene in the early to mid-Sixties, to reinventing themselves as the leaders of the all Native American rock band, Redbone.

While the film is scattershot as a historical narrative, the filmmakers have chosen a loosely geographic sequence working westward from South Carolina through Canada, and finally ending in Los Angeles. Among those discussing their music and identity are Robbie Robertson, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Taboo, from the Black Eyed Peas.

While I commend the film for illustrating the influence of Charley Patton on the many blues and rock musicians he influenced directly or indirectly, the film temporarily goes off course be devoting several minutes to one of Patton's students, Chester Burnett, better known as Howlin' Wolf, seen in vintage footage performing for British teens following an introduction by Brian Jones and Mick Jagger. Also, while he wrote many songs devoted to Native American issues, singer-songwriter Peter La Farge was not Native American as is implied here. The flaws are minor compared to the the achieved goal of Rumble which has the viewer rethinking assumptions about American popular culture.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

October 17, 2017

Red Christmas

Craig Anderson - 2017
Artsploitation Films BD Region A

When a movie gets sent to me for review, even one not specifically requested, I try to give it a chance. While I understand that some films are intentionally provocative, my problem is not only that I find Red Christmas muddleheaded, but completely dispiriting.

A montage of footage of pro-life and anti-abortion protests culminates in a scene with an abortion clinic bombed. A man surveys the damage and sees a small hand appearing out of a yellow bucket. Twenty years later, someone named Cletus (rhymes with fetus) with a heavily bandaged face, cloaked in black, is in search of his mother. Appearing at home of the matriarch played by Dee Wallace, an attempted Christmas day family reunion goes very much awry.

The opening scene of murder in Deep Red is deeper, redder and more evocative of Christmas than the whole of Red Christmas. Anderson might have been better off had he emphasized the Australian location, with December being the height of Summer, rather than passing off the setting as generic North America. Even as a horror film, Red Christmas is too bland to distinguish itself.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track. More interesting is the interview with Dee Wallace with the actress discussing some of the highlights of her career. Best is the frequently funny interview with Gerard O'Dwyer, an actor with Down's Syndrome, whose role in Red Christmas borders on the autobiographical.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

October 03, 2017

Popcorn

Mark Herrier - 1991
Synapse Film BD Regions ABC

'Tis the season . . . and my first review of the month is one of two blu-ray releases featuring Dee Wallace! Popcorn is a frustrating film to write about because of the gap between what's on the screen and what the filmmakers hoped to achieve. This is a horror comedy that's not scary, and only sporadically amusing. The small group of cinematically illiterate film students decide to raise money for their department by hosting a night of three gimmick filled older horror films in a delict theater. While setting things up, they find an old reel of film depicting a sacrificial killing by a bearded man in a robe with his female victim. The footage resembles the nightmares of one of the students, Maggie. On movie night, a mysterious killer is on the loose, with several of the students as his victims.

If these were the film students I've known, no one would rate a Police Academy movie over the collected works of Ingmar Bergman, even for a cheap laugh. And there would probably be earnest discussions about Jack Arnold's 3D fantasies, or why we love the silly gimmicks of William Castle, while the "horror horn" and "fear flasher" from Hy Averback's Chamber of Horrors were poor imitations. As it stands, it is three of the films within the film that are the most interesting. I'm not sure if this is purely coincidental, but I reviewed Synapse release, Mosquito about two years ago. Did this spoof of those monster insect movies inspire some Michigan based filmmakers a few years later? The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man has a bravura performance by Bruce Glover, trying to channel Lon Chaney, Jr. The expressionistic cinematography recalls the work of talented filmmakers working on the fringes like E. A. Dupont and Edgar G. Ulmer. The nightmare horror movie with the human sacrifice looks like the work of Charles Manson trying his darnedest to be Kenneth Anger. The films within the film were the work of the original director of Popcorn, Alan Ormsby. What is discussed in the commentary track is that Ormsby put in so much time and care with his homages that it meant less time and money for the main narrative. Ormsby was fired, replaced by Mark Harrier, an experienced actor taking on his first, and only, feature.

Uncredited producer Bob Clark is acknowledged as the invisible hand in directing some of Popcorn, leaving Harrier on his own for the conclusion of the shoot as well as editing. The mystery about the killer is not very compelling, and the set-up very much owing to Phantom of the Opera. One of the best moments is a short turn by Ray Walston as the collector of movie memorabilia, with his entertaining soliloquy devoted to movie ballyhoo. The other moment is when the villain, unmasked, but not startlingly out of place among the many disguised horror film buffs in the audience, taunts the audience in deciding whether he should kill Maggie on stage, to the delight of the extremely animated crowd.

The blu-ray comes with a documentary of the troubled production history of Popcorn featuring director Herrier, star Jill Schoelen, as well as others in the cast and crew. Schoelen and Harrier are also among those who participate in the commentary track. Bruce Glover has his own little supplement, discussing his role, and satisfaction in the critical reaction from his performance. For a film that's in part about disguises, the best might be with the filmmakers making Kingston, Jamaica look like southern California.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 AM

September 28, 2017

Sex in the Comix

Joelle Oosterlinck - 2012
Doppelgänger Releasing Region 1 DVD

After kicking around for several years, including Youtube, Oosterlinck's documentary has an official U.S. release. Where it is of interest is in introducing a couple of European artists I wasn't previously familiar with. For under an hour, we have what is essentially a tourist's view of depictions of sex by a handful of artists mostly known through underground comics, including the best known of all, Robert Crumb.

The French filmmaker, Oosterlinck, has shown a past interest in art and artists, and related her, has made a documentary about Art Spiegelman, famous for depicting the holocaust with his graphic book, Maus. Molly Crabapple is a socially committed artist in her own right, who could well have been one of the subjects here. And yet, I felt like there was more to explore. Certainly there isn't much to add about Robert Crumb that hasn't already been revealed in Terry Zwigoff's documentary. More interesting for myself were the scenes of the German Ralf Konig, who used his comics as a way of dealing with the changes of gay culture, and France's Aude Picault, who has used part of her life to depict female sexuality, with fine line drawings of women who are not designed as male fantasy figures.

Along with how comics have been a reflection of their respective artists realities or fantasies, is an overview on how comics reflected societal changes, and and dealt with censorship. There is brief footage of Fredric Wertham, the psychiatrist who effectively ruined comics for over a decade with his book, Seduction of the Innocent, which linked comic books with various forms of juvenile delinquency and criminal behavior in 1954. More recently Wertham's book has been exposed for using shoddy methodology.

Another glance to the past is a fleeting look at the so-called "Tijuana Bibles", the compact comic books that depicted sex, sometimes that of Hollywood celebrities, or parodies of well-known comic book characters. Missing are looks at some of the erotic comics of the past, often centered on female characters, such as "Barbarella", "Modesty Blaise" and "Valentina". I would guess that for that person who never looked at a single issue of "Zap Comix", or browsed through the graphic books section of a bookstore, Sex in the Comix might be a good place to start.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 AM

September 26, 2017

Pop Aye

Kirsten Tan - 2017
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

For myself, Pop Aye can be seen as a gently comic, Buddhist fable about transience and illusion. The film is more accessible and entertaining than the above description might suggest. It could also be that has been seen previously, sometimes the most interesting view is that of an outsider, in this case the Singaporean filmmaker in Thailand.

Tan's film follows Thana, an architect forcibly retired by the company he helped make famous thirty years ago, stuck in a marriage held together by formality. Thana discovers his former pet elephant, Popeye, now part of an itinerant circus, in the middle Bangkok. His backyard being an unsuitable home, Thana and Popeye hit the road for Loie, in northeast Thailand, Thana's rural boyhood home. In one flashback, we see that the elephant has been named after the famous cartoon sailor, who also makes a brief appearance, with villagers gathered outside around a small television.

Thana comes across an aging hippie with a death wish, a couple of cops flustered by having to travel "elephant speed" instead of "car speed", a past her prime prostitute, and a worn out ladyboy, among others. Among the delays are a patch of highway covered with shattered watermelons, and Popeye's occasional ability to wander off by himself. Thana encounters with the handful of people on the way are made up of kind gestures and unintended consequences.

Beyond the narrative, Tan is interested in the landscape of northern Thailand - the hills, fields, and the green and brown open spaces that make up what is known as upcountry. At one point, the camera is fixed on Thana while he is driving a truck, he is facing the left of the frame, while the scenery in the back is a succession of short shots of different points along the road, rice paddies, industrial areas and small towns. I don't know if the story structure, with jumps to the past, was in the script, or how much of the shifts in time, as well as the more abstract visual moments, belong to ace editor Lee Chatametikool, most famous for his work for Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

It should be noted that this is Tan's first feature, while supported by a veteran team. An unusual choice was made in the soundtrack, with a relatively new composer, Matthew James Kelly creating a distinctive score. The music is inspired by surf and Hawaiian pop instrumentals from the late Fifties and early Sixties, often with a steel guitar as the lead instrument. Several Thai pop songs are featured as well.

What will be lost to western audiences are the changes in dialect as Thana travels north. Other bits of humor that need no explanation include a Buddhist monk who cheerfully lets Thana know that he can pay for his donation with a Visa card, and a television commercial for a too tall, multi-purpose spiraling skyscraper optimistically named Eternity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:56 AM

September 22, 2017

Suspicious Death of a Minor

Morte sospetta di una minorenne / To Young to Die
Sergio Martino - 1975
Arrow Video BD Regions A/B & DVD Regions 1/2 Two-disc set

Suspicious Death of a Minor is something of an oddity in Sergio Martino's filmography. The film is a sometimes incongruous blend of giallo, poliziotteschi and broad comedy. The tonal shifts are often unexpected, especially during the first half of the film. If the film isn't up there with other Martino films such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, I'll still take it over something like the risible Mountain of the Cannibal God with Stacy Keach as a jungle explorer and Ursula Andress as the involuntary sacrificial human. For those like myself who had never seen this film before, it takes a while to accept the film on its own terms when Luciano Michelini's Goblin inspired opening music seems to set up the viewer's expectations.

As it stands, the death in the title is a small part of a larger puzzle concerning prostitution, drugs trafficking and kidnapping in Milan. The main character, Paulo Germi, is an undercover cop with very unconventional methods of dealing with criminals. The screenplay was written by the very prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, and then revised by Martino. The blu-ray comes with a supplementary interview with Martino where the director discusses deliberately toning down the violence. The hitman with the constant sunglasses, the bagmen and the pimp turn out to be pawns working on behalf of less obvious criminals, the objects of Germi's investigation.

There are a couple of motifs repeated throughout the film. More significantly is having a lens of Germi's glasses cracked several times during the action, the symbolism obvious but effective for someone looking at clues but not quite understanding what he's looking at or how various pieces connect. There is also a running gag with Germi's old Citroen, ready to fall apart at any moment. Just as the opening music seems to have been inspired by Dario Argento's Deep Red, released about six months before Martino's film, I have to wonder if the gags involving Germi's car were inspired by the dilapidated car driven by Daria Nicolodi.

Germ's white Citroen gets a workout in a chase scene. Martino was unable to work with Remy Julienne for this film, but there is a nice sight gag where a side-swiped bicycle becomes a unicycle. There is also a shootout at an amusement park with Germi and a hitman on a rollercoaster. Most inspired is Germi chasing the sunglass wearing killer on the roof of a movie theater, a theater that turns out to have a retractable roof.

Especially for those interested in genre films, or Italian films in general, Troy Howarth's commentary should prove useful. Howarth, who has written extensively on Italian horror films, points out the various character actors and provides short biographies on them as well as key crew members. Most of the commentary is devoted to Martino, his brother, the producer Luciano Martino, and frequent Martino star Claudio Cassinelli. Howarth also briefly covers the careers of two top actors in major supporting roles here, Massimo Girotti and Mel Ferrer. The film itself looks quite good, but I suspect will be most appreciated by Martino completists.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:47 AM

September 20, 2017

The Flesh

La Carne
Marco Ferreri - 1991
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC / Region 0 DVD Two-disc set

Sex and food aren't very far apart in some of Marco Ferreri's film. And the men in Ferreri's films tend to indulge themselves to disastrous effect. For those who have seen Ferreri's best known films La Grande Bouffe and The Last Woman will see the recurring themes in Ferreri's film from 1991. For those unfamiliar with Ferreri, I would not recommend this film as an introduction. It's a relatively mild work from a filmmaker who cast the dark-haired Marcello Mastroianni as the famously blond George Armstrong Custer and recreated the famous last stand in the middle of contemporary Paris.

Paolo, a nightclub singer-pianist runs off to his beach house in Anzio with the very voluptuous Francesca. The two make love, and one morning Francesca paralyzes Paolo, leaving him flat on his back with a permanent erection. The pair also visits a supermarket where Paolo has a butcher describe parts of Francesca compared to the various parts of a cow. Francesca also attracts the attention of a young mother with twins, "nursing" one of them, as well as engaging in a threesome with Paolo and another woman. Several months go by, with Paolo generally happy in his isolation from society, while Francesca decides to move on.

Some of the political aspects may be lost for contemporary viewers. A plot point regarding a child's first communion is very specifically Catholic. Included in the very loaded soundtrack are songs by Queen, Kate Bush and Milli Vanilli.

The Flesh is more remembered for starring Francesca Dellera, a model and actress whose peak period was from the late 80s through the early 90s. Her handful of films include work with Tinto Brass, Sergio Corbucci and Jacques Deray. As a model, Dellera worked with Helmut Newton. While never completely nude, Dellera is seen here in various states of undress, as well as seemingly nude in a flesh colored dress. Dellera's co-star Sergio Castellitto has been seen to best effect in a couple of films by Marco Bellochio, My Mother's Smile and The Wedding Director.

Cult Epics helps put Ferreri's film in historical context with a brief look at Ferreri shooting a scene, interviews with Ferreri, Dellera and Castellitto, and footage from Cannes, where Ferreri frequently premiered his films. It is coincidental that just recently, there has been the premiere of a documentary on Ferreri. Reading about Ferreri's initial desire to be a veterinarian gives an autobiographical slant to Paolo's expressions of grief over the death of his dog, Giovanni.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:08 AM

September 18, 2017

By the Time it Gets Dark

Dao Khanong
Anocha Suwichakornpong - 2016
KimStim Region 1 DVD

By the Time it Gets Dark opens with a shot of a woman opening the glass doors to step onto a patio, while another woman to her left starts taking photos of the same outdoor scenery. Much of the imagery in Anocha's film is through windows, mirrors, or slightly obscured by the reflections on glass. There is no clear narrative as such, but a series of moments blending the self-referential with documentary footage and even a music video that opens itself up for deconstruction. A few minutes are also given to Georges Melies' A Trip to the Moon.

It's not only that Anocha weaves in and out between narrative and non-narrative filmmaking, but that the film has moments of what might be considered visual free association or tangents, as when a discussion of mushrooms eventually leads to a montage of mushrooms and other fungus, as well as the discovery of moldy bread.

The segment of the film that has gotten the most attention is of the young filmmaker, presumably modeled after Anocha, in conversation with an older woman, a student activist involved in the 1976 incident at Thammasat University in Bangkok. There is also a short scene of a dramatic recreation being filmed, with students face down on a floor, arms tied behind their backs, with the actors playing soldiers directed to be "more brutal". As one who has followed Thai cinema for more than a decade, that there is this reference to Thai history in a Thai film, in fact the film that is to represent Thailand's bid for a an Oscar, is astonishing.

Consider that Syndromes and a Century was banned in Thailand due to Thai's censors assertion that Apichatpong Weerasethakul was disrespectful to doctors and Buddhist monks, and that "Joe" also chose not have the more obviously Cemetery of Splendor not shown in Thailand. Thai censors also banned Shakespeare must Die, with the Scottish play as starting off point for a fictionalized look at Thai politics. Filmmaker Ing K. responded to the ban of her film with Censor must Die which ironically was not banned.

By the Time it Gets Dark is deeply seeped in Thai history and culture. Still, what can be gleaned is a film about memory and the production and meaning of images. Independent of any narrative concerns there is the scene with the filmmaker, Ann, running in the forest, with Anocha cross-cutting between shots of Ann running left to right, with those of her running right to left, as if she is racing against herself. In another scene, a screening viewed by some filmmakers is interrupted by the news that the star has died in a car accident. Anocha cuts to footage of the star driving, with the viewer left to decide whether we are watching a scene from a movie, or perhaps the young star taking his final drive. Near the end of the film, a young woman is dancing among the crowd in a night club, the digital image becomes more abstract until we see streaks of gray and black, finally refocusing on a quiet country scene.

Mention should also be made of editor Lee Chatametikool for his hand in the structure not only of this film, but of previous films by Anocha. Lee has also edited the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul, as well as several more relatively conventional Thai films including the horror film, Shutter and Ghost of Mae Nak.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:08 AM

September 14, 2017

OSS 117 - Five Film Collection

OSS 117 is Unleashed / OSS 117 se dechaine
Andre Hunebelle - 1963

OSS 117: Panic in Bangkok / Banco a Bangkok pour OSS 117
Andre Hunebelle - 1964

OSS 117: Mission for a Killer / Furia a Bahia pour OSS 117
Andre Hunebelle - 1965

OSS 117: Mission to Tokyo / Atout coeur a Tokyo pour OSS 117
Michel Boisrond - 1966

OSS 117: Double Agent / Pas de Roses pour OSS 117
Andre Hunebelle and Jean-Pierre Desagnet- 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A three disc set

This series of five films proves, as if proof was needed, that even with clearly commercial fare, the choice of director can make a difference. Three of the films were directed by Andre Hunebelle who also had a hand in supervising assistant Jean-Pierre Desagnet and signing the film under his name. Hunebelle, who was busy with other projects, gave the assignment of directing Mission to Tokyo to Michel Boisrond, a journeyman more associated with comedy. As it turns out, Mission to Tokyo is the best of the bunch, funny, sexy and visually more imaginative.

For those unfamiliar, or who only know of the spoofs starring Jean Dujardin, OSS 117 originated from a series of about seventy books by French author Jean Bruce, about an American super spy. The cold war inspired thrillers preceded Ian Fleming's James Bond. While one OSS 117 film was made in 1957, it was the success of Dr. No that inspired the French company, Gaumont, to re-launch the series. One source claims that Jean Marais, most famous for his work with Jean Cocteau, had suggested the series to Andre Hunebelle as a starring vehicle for himself. Perhaps as the spy was an American, Hunebelle instead cast Kerwin Mathews initially, followed by Frederick Stafford for two films, and finally another American, John Gavin.

As the series continued, budgets got bigger, and settings more exotic, along with bigger named co-stars. OSS 117 is Unleashed has the spy looking for a secret laboratory in Corsica where the bad guys have a device to detect the location of nuclear submarines belonging to the U.S. and its allies. One of the characters lives in an apartment with a window conveniently overlooking an oceanside cliff, making it easy to dispose of dead bodies. In terms of action and humor, it's fairly mild entertainment. Fortunately for Hunebelle, that film was popular enough that the next four films were co-productions with Italy. Panic in Bangkok involves a Dr. Synn who's idea of world peace is to create a new breed of rats to infect enough people with the plague, and let a chosen elite take over. French star Robert Hossein plays the bad doctor, while a somewhat emaciated Pier Angeli plays his sister, also the film's romantic interest. My favorite moment was a fight with a blow torch as the heavy's weapon of choice.

Mathews' demand for a bigger paycheck was the reported reason why Hunebelle chose another actor for the series. Except that Frederick Stafford was not an actor, although he was married to one. What Stafford did have is the right look, more lived in than that of the still boyish Mathews. In Mission for a Killer, we are to believe that an extract of peyote is capable of turning people into suicide killers. As was typical of filmmaking of the time, we get a tourist's eye view of Brazil. Cutie pie Mylene Demongeot shows up as the love interest here. And then things get very interesting . . .

I've never seen anything by Michel Boisrond before, but Mission to Tokyo is the one film where almost everything works. Sure, you can fault the series for the action scenes where the film has been sped up, and other small technical imperfections, but Boisrond makes a film that is visually dynamic, where lots of tracking shots follow the action. One nice moment has OSS 117 walking down a hallway, the camera following him, when a karate chop pops out from the side, knocking him out. Arguably the most attractive of actresses in the series, Marina Vlady, stars as the secretary who may be spying for an organization that is trying to blackmail the U.S. government. Also on hand is Jitsuko Yoshimura, in a sweet and funny performance as an undercover cop posing as a bar hostess. Even if the name is not familiar, Yoshimura has been seen in several Japanese classics including Onibaba and Dodes'ka-den. The film suffers a tad from the Orientalism of past decades, where little attempt was make to distinguish Japanese, Chinese or Korean names. Director Terence Young is credited for the story, although there is some dispute regarding his input. Famous primarily for directing most of the Sean Connery James Bond films, this film was made a year prior to the Japanese based You Only Live Twice and has a few moments similar to that film. As Mission to Tokyo as many of the same key names in the production as the other films in the series, including the screenwriters, I can only attribute the more imaginative cinematography and use of color to the change in director.

It may well have been Mission to Tokyo that convinced Alfred Hitchcock to cast Stafford in Topaz. With Stafford unavailable, Hunebelle cast John Gavin as the American spy. What makes Double Agent of some interest is that it gives a glimpse of what we might have seen as Gavin played James Bond, which almost happened for Diamonds are Forever. Gavin looks a bit more like Sean Connery, and looks more convincing as a man of action than George Lazenby. The film as features a past Bond girl, Luciana Paluzzi, as a doctor with the occasionally accommodating bedside manner, and future Bond villain, Curt Jurgens, as the head of a criminal organization called . . . The Organization. Robert Hossein returns as a different doctor, deadly on a more modest scale, with the antidotes of life and death in his less than trustworthy hands. The action here is in an unnamed mid-Eastern country.

Not as successful as the previous films, Hunebelle discontinued the series, especially with European cowboys taking over movie screens. One more OSS 117 film was produced in 1970, by an Italian company, initiating the career of male model Luc Merenda, who found greater success in poliziotteschi, Italian police thrillers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:01 AM

September 12, 2017

Love with the Proper Stranger

Robert Mulligan - 1963
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Considering the source, maybe this story should be taken with a grain of salt - as Frank Capra tells it, the film A Hole in the Head was originally about two Jewish-American brothers as was written in Arnold Schulman's screenplay. While there was no change in the casting, with Frank Sinatra and Edward G. Robinson as the brothers, Capra decided two make the brothers Italian-Americans. In Love with the Proper Stranger, the characters are written as Italian-American. Aside from Natalie Wood and Steve McQueen, we have a trio of Jewish actors - Herschel Bernardi, Harvey Lembeck and Tom Bosley in three significant roles. One of the aspects not discussed regarding this film is that in addition to the push and pull between a kind of filmmaking that is more street-bound versus the expectations of a Hollywood produced film with two major stars of the day, is the sense of interchangeability of certain ethnic groups as part of that narrative. It also takes a certain leap of faith to see Natalie Wood as the sister of Lembeck and Bernardi, or Steve McQueen as a paisano, especially when seen with his on-screen parents, and yet it is the undeniable sincerity that makes Mulligan's film work even when a closer examination would indicate otherwise.

What also struck me, many years after my last viewing, on late night television, coincidentally with friends in New York City, is Steve McQueen's performance. Frequently lauded as the King of Cool, McQueen's character of Rocky Papasano is anything but cool. You can sense the wheels slowly turning as Rocky first learns from his former one-night stand, Angie Rossini (Wood) that she is pregnant. Rocky is a small-time musician just trying to grasp some tenuous sense of responsibility. He even admits that he's not keen on marriage, although he is willing to do "the right thing". Angie is trapped between traditional expectations of her working class family and fear of actually being independent. Still, she is clear-headed enough to consider having a child out of wedlock rather than a loveless marriage.

Seen in retrospect, the characters of Love with a Proper Stranger are proxies for the artistic and cultural conflicts within the film itself, not quite based in reality, but not a studio based film taking place in an artificial New York City. The real Macy's department store plays itself, at least in the exterior shots around 34th Street. Those more familiar with New York City might recognize Tompkins Square Park, while those who have been around longer will note a scene shot in what was the Meatpacking District. Angie and Rocky meet Rocky's parents in the shadow of the United Nations building. I'm not sure whether the choice of footage was an intentional "in-joke", but behind McQueen and Wood, in a taxi, is a traveling shot of mid-town Manhattan at night that closer examination indicates was filmed in October 1957. Freeze frames and minutes of research followed reading the marquee of the Trans-Lux East theater, then showing Melbourne Rendezvous, a documentary on the 1956 Olympics. The stage production of West Side Story is playing at the Winter Garden theater, while a billboard touts voting for Robert Wagner, the New York City mayor who shared the same name as Wood's former husband at the time. Great care was taken with the interiors, the low-rent homes, which all look lived in, and resemble the kind of modest housing I and several of my friends had known, with everything crammed into a 400 square foot studio apartment, or a curtained alcove was to be a separate room.

The commentary track by Kat Ellinger and Samm Deighan is certainly worth a listen. I was surprised that they were chosen as my familiarity with these two writers is in conjunction with horror films. Aside from discussing how Love with the Proper Stranger can be considered a transitional film, when some Hollywood filmmakers were pushing against the Production Code and attempting to make films similar to those by their European contemporaries, they also touch upon shared affinities with British "kitchen sink" films and Italian comedies.

I'm not quite as certain as Ellinger and Deighan regarding Robert Mulligan as a "forgotten" filmmaker. Certainly, his strongest period was the decade between To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962, ending with The Other in 1972. What I find most interesting is that even with the commercial and critical success of Mockingbird, that Mulligan chose to make mid-budget, character driven films. Somewhat similar in wanting greater artistic freedom, Natalie Wood, like Robert Mulligan, was eager to use her box office success as a means of breaking away from the studio bound films that previously defined their respective work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:28 AM

September 07, 2017

Creep / Creeping

The Creep Behind the Camera
Pete Schuermann - 2014

The Creeping Terror
A. J. Nelson - 1964
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

This is one of those times when the story about the making of a film is more interesting than the film itself. The Creeping Terror is the very low budget 1964 monster movie from writer-director-star Vic Savage. The Creep Behind the Camera was Savage, a true monster, a former street hustler who attempted to hustle himself as the next big thing in Hollywood. What started out as a documentary evolved into a reenactment of Savage's life, punctuated by interviews with some of the people who knew Savage or worked on the production of The Creeping Terror.

The 2k restoration of The Creeping Terror is more than that this film deserves, but the arguable upside is that aside from looking as good as possible, the audio quality makes the dialogue more intelligible. That's intelligible, not intelligent. For those unfamiliar with what some consider one of the worst films ever made, the story is about two man eating monsters from outer space that resemble a carpet combined with a house plant, wreaking havoc in Angel County, California. You would think that people would outrun a slow moving monster, but no, they just stand or lie around, transfixed, waiting to become monster chow. One of the plot points is taken from the 1951 The Thing with a scientist who insists on trying to save one of the monsters in the hope of communication. You can easily guess what's going to happen to him.

There is one brief moment of cinematic inspiration and that's in a dance scene in a community hall. The camera travels backwards as dancers move into the frame. Two young women are wearing skin tight capri pants that make the most of their respective curves. Being a couple years behind the times, everyone is twisting the night away, with one young man leaping around, a graduate of the Jerry Lewis school of social dancing. Of course the monster shows up to spoil the night, with most of the attendees leisurely making their way towards an exit, while a couple of guys get into a fistfight for no apparent reason.

The characters in The Creeping Terror are so stupid that I wish the monsters ate all of them. The monsters creep and so does time - at a sluggish seventy-seven minutes.

A couple of people actually had successful careers following their encounters with Vic Savage. Joseph Sargent directed Savage's screen debut, Street Fighter in 1959, and went on to a respectable career of theatrical and television films, notably the original Taking of the Pelham One-Two-Three. Richard Edlund created the title credits for The Creeping Terror and went on to fame and Oscar glory for his special effects work. The writer who originated the story for The Creeping Terror, Allan Silliphant, had his own low-budget mega-success with the soft-core The Stewardesses 3D, five years later.

The Creep Behind the Camera is the portrait of a man who hustled investors, women, and Hollywood wannabes more desperate than himself. While there is some artistic license here, what is known about Savage, also known as A. J. Nelson, is that he was an abusive husband, often more interested in scoring drugs or sex with aspiring actresses, ultimately abandoning his would be masterpiece in a garage. The footage was saved by the main investor, William Thourlby, who created a soundtrack with post-dubbing and narration, selling the film to Crown International which in turn included The Creeping Terror as part of a package for television syndication. Among the more amazing bit about the making of the film is that most of the exteriors were shot at the Spahn Ranch, more famous a few years later in association with a guy even crazier than Vic Savage, Charles Manson.

The blu-ray comes with an entertaining commentary track for The Creep Behind the Camera from the director, producer and two leads. Locations in and around Colorado Springs, Colorado stand in for California. Other extra include a conversation between actor Byrd Holland and Allan Silliphant, and the film festival journey of Creep. Director Pete Schuermann also teases the viewer with three of the four homages to other horror movies were slipped into his film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:43 AM

September 05, 2017

Phenomena

Dario Argento - 1985
Synapse Films BD Region A two-disc set

In Phenomena, an entomologist played by Donald Pleasance spends a good part of his screen time explaining the interactions between flies and corpses, and how a certain type of fly has acted as a detective, discovering dead bodies. It's interesting stuff, and would indicate some kind of attention to detail, or at least the kind of detail to convince an audience that this is more than pseudo-science. And yet, when it comes to how his characters act in real life situations, some things don't make any sense at all.

Taking place in an area described as the Swiss Transylvania, young Jennifer Corvino is dumped by her never seen movie star father at the Richard Wagner International School for Not Very Bright Heiresses Girls. Finding out that there's a killer on the loose who's victims are within her age range, and about to be institutionalized for her sleepwalking habits, Jennifer tries to reach her father. She finds out he's away on a three day holiday. "What holiday", she asks. Passover is the answer. It's a minor part of the narrative, but I have to wonder because 13 year old Jennifer Connelly's line reading makes it sound like she just found out she's Jewish. And if you know something about Richard Wagner, an observant father would probably have second thought about sending his daughter to school named after an alleged anti-Semite.

Phenomena is admittedly not one of my favorite Dario Argento films, but I appreciate Synapse Films making available all three versions, the original Italian cut, the "International" cut, and the U.S. version released as Creepers. Having seen Deep Red and Suspiria theatrically, I have resisted seeing Creepers as I knew that it was significantly cut, down to 83 minutes from the original 116 minute running time. Aside from a cut scene with Jennifer getting a brain scan, referred to in a later bit of dialogue, Argento's film is essentially still there, but with a more literal cut to the chase, rather than build up of mood. The 110 minute version is the almost the same as the 116 minute version, with tighter editing.

What is lost with the two shorter versions are shots of the trees weaving and waving in the wind, a wind referred to in the dialogue. Argento milks those shots for all they are worth. Otherwise, a good part of Phenomena appears to be the recycling of past films - the boarding school for girls with the strict teachers from Suspiria, the underwater swim with the corpse from Inferno, and thousands of flies with no grey velvet. The images that stick include Jennifer following a firefly to discover an incriminating glove, and the massive swarm of flies, a special effect done with coffee grounds in water. There is also a nice traveling shot taken of the floor of the house where the first murder takes place, with the camera moving past the feet of a real estate agent to a small hole in the floor, which cuts to a shot of maggots feasting on what's left of someone's arm.

The one misstep for me was the choice of music. As they had disbanded, Argento could not use Goblin except for a couple of tracks. I'm not sure why Moorhead's "Locomotive" was used as it seems out of place in a scene with police investigating a murder, and Iron Maiden's "Flash of the Blade" seems chosen simply for its title. I almost wish that Argento would just give in to his own predilections and include Nick Lowe's "I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass".

The 110 minute version also has a commentary track by seemingly ubiquitous David Del Valle and Derek Botelho, author of The Argento Syndrome. Some of the discussion is on how Argento "discovered" Jennifer Connelly in her first starring role, after a small role in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America. One of the more interesting bits is pointing out that in addition to Dario Argento's daughter, Fiore, playing the first on-screen victim, the two other girls to meet grisly ends are the niece of Marcello Mastroianni and the daughter of director Duccio Tessari, another Sergio Leone collaborator. Botelho discusses the evolution of Phenomena from script to film, with anecdotes on the casting of this film. Also included in Michele Soavi's documentary on Argento which is of interest in showing the filming of scenes from Suspiria, Tenebrae and Phenomena.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:57 AM

August 29, 2017

New Battles without Honor and Humanity - The Complete Trilogy

Japanese poster for New Battles with Honor and Humanity

New Battles without Honor and Humanity/Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai
Kinji Fukasaku - 1974

New Battles without Honor and Humanity: The Boss's Head/Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai: Kumicho no Kubi
Kinji Fukusaku - 1975

New Battles without Honor and Humanity: The Boss's Last Days/Shin Jingi Naki Tatakai: Kumicho Saigo no Hi
Kinji Fukasaku - 1976

Arrow Video six disc BD/DVD set

Like other western cinephiles around my age, I was introduced to yakuza films by Paul Schrader, both from the Hollywood film he co-wrote, The Yakuza, his writing about the genre for the magazine Film Comment, and two Toei productions Schrader presented at the Museum of Modern Art, around March of 1975. I bring this up because Schrader presented yakuza films as being about gangsters who lived by a strict code, fought with swords, and would atone for a perceived transgression by cutting off their pinkies. There's a pinkie cutting scene in New Battles without Honor and Humanity, but unlike Robert Mitchum or Ken Takakura merely wincing during their self-amputation, followed by deft wrapping the wound in a bandage, Bunta Sugawara howls in pain while blood gushes on a nearby wall, as well as the other gangster to whom seriousness of purpose has been expressed.

Would it be more correct to call Fukasaku's films "anti-yakuza"? There is no pretense of idealism, either in action or motivation. The weapon of choice is always a pistol, with the occasional knife, but never a sword. And for all of their ambition, some of these guys are inept at being criminals. The first two films begin with botched hit jobs, with Sugawara going off to prison, with the promise of financial rewards by gang leaders for time served. Promises turn out not to be kept, and Sugawara finds ways of getting even.

Following directly on the heels of the original Battles without Honor and Humanity, Fukasaku made three films with Sugawara as three different characters in each of the New Battles films. This was done during Fukasaku's most prolific period in the the 1970s, when he was making two films a year. What links the films is that the stories center around simultaneous internal and external power struggles, with high level gangsters squabbling over their place in their respective hierarchies, and low level thugs seeking ways to make themselves more than expendable soldiers. These men are fighting for their positions within confined spaces, made visually literal in scenes of yakuza crowded together in dining halls, meeting rooms, and in prison. While opening credits announce the films as works of fiction, there is some off-screen narration and hand-held camera work. The settings for each film is in a different metropolitan area, parts of three different regions.

My favorite of the three films here is the third, the anarchic The Boss's Last Days. Unlike the other films, this entry is solely the work of screenwriter Koji Takada, pushing Fukasaku in terms of content and visual experimentation. The film opens with the discovery of a dead prostitute hacked to death with what appears to be a phallically placed ax, with Sugawara as a ranking yakuza unable to avenge the death of his boss due to an agreement placed by the warring families. In addition to several bloody gun battles, there is a chase between a fleet of cars and some very large trucks, drug addled punks and whores, plus hints that feelings between Sugawara and his sister may be too close. Fukusaka plays out one scene with freeze frames, and edits a gun fight with shots of a red screen between gun shots.

The each of the three films here come with excerpts of an interview with screenwriter Koji Takada, discussing the history of the films' productions, a bit about Fukusaku's films outside the Battles and New Battles series, Takada's work with Hideo Gosha, and Toei studios starting to cast actors formerly associated with Nikkatsu who left when that studio began specializing in "pink" films. There is also booklet with writing by, among others, Chris D., Marc Walkow and Tom Mes.

Japanese poster for The Boss's Last Days

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:52 AM

August 22, 2017

Beggars of Life

William A. Wellman - 1928
Kino Classics BD Region A

Throughout most of Beggars of Life, Louise Brooks is seen wear a man's dark suit with a white shirt, often with a flat cap. Brooks' male disguise may not be very convincing, especially for contemporary audiences, but it works as an unintended fashion forward statement. It's when we see Brooks near the end of the film in a simple white dress and bonnet that she looks awkward. With Louise Brooks more popular now than she was in her lifetime, and honored as much for her independence as for some of her surviving films, dressing in masculine garb may well be more fitting the actress remembered for playing women who usually refused to be domesticated.

Brooks plays a young women who has just murdered the man who adopted her, shooting him in the head rather than submit to his sexual advances. Richard Arlen is the hobo who wanders to Brooks' farm home, looking for a meal possibly in exchange for some work, stumbling across the dead man slumped by the breakfast table, and a scared young woman ready to run away from this home. Arlen reluctantly takes Brooks under his wing, and the two hop a train, eventually stopping at a hobo camp that is presided over by Wallace Beery. Brooks is on the lam for murder, with wanted signs and a one-thousand dollar reward offered, but being the one woman among a gang of hoboes with nothing to lose puts her in a perilous position.

The film was inspired by the anecdotal book of the same name by Jim Tully, and it's almost as if several people involved were destined to be part of the production. Published in 1924, Jim Tully was a young former hobo who eventually became a full-time writer. The book was given a narrative structure when made into a play by Maxwell Anderson. The play was seen by Charles Chaplin, a former employer of Tully's, one time accompanied by Louise Brooks. Playing the role of the young hobo on stage was James Cagney, yet to make his screen debut, with stardom under the guidance of William Wellman. Wallace Beery also had his own history as an itinerant performer. Even without sound, Beery is virtually the same burly oaf of the sound era whose big talk masks a generous heart.

Beggars of Life was a more personal project for William Wellman after the success of Wings. Those familiar with Wellman's other films will spot an obvious connection with Wild Boys of the Road, made five years later, with teenage hobos, and another girl, played by Dorothy Coonan (the future Mrs. Wellman), dressed as a guy, trying to survive life on the road. Several of Wellman's best films, including Heroes for Sale and Good-Bye, My Lady, center on people living on the margins of society.

The sound hybrid version with Wallace Beery singing about the joys of alcohol in the time of prohibition is consideredlost. While there is plenty of dialogue shown in titles, Wellman makes the unusual choice of having a purely visual flashback scene take place while superimposed over a close-up of Brooks. Part of the flashback is suggested with the hands of Brooks laying breakfast on the table, the hands of the farmer tearing Brooks' dress at the shoulder, Brooks legs moving back until she is against the wall, where behind her hangs a loaded rifle. One of the other great images is of a jaunty Beery driving a "flivver", feet on the dashboard, facing the camera.

One of the credited supporting roles is played by the African-American actor Edgar Washington. There is very little information on Washington, a former Negro League baseball player. A credited actor in the silent era, Washington played uncredited bit parts for most of his career after Beggars of Life. His role as one of the hoboes may be viewed as having some of the stereotyping of the time the film was made, but is relatively progressive for a Hollywood production made when black actors were usually inserted into films to provide comic relief.

The chamber group, the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, performs the soundtrack, based on the 1928 cue sheets. There are also two commentary tracks, from the director's son, William Wellman, Jr., and Thomas Gladysz, who has a book on the making of Beggars of Life. Additionally, there is a booklet with notes by Nick Pinkerton. Between the three contributors, one gets a good picture of the effort required to make Beggars of Life amidst the sometimes fractious relationships between the various collaborators.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:12 AM

August 08, 2017

Duel in the Sun

King Vidor - 1946
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One immediate bit of irony is that in the opening credit's, the film is listed as King Vidor's Duel in the Sun, when the reality of the production is that Vidor walked off the set, and several other directors helped in the completion. Notoriously hands on as the producer, David O. Selznick also claimed sole screenwriting credit as well. All things considered, including the post-production editing forced to limit, if not eliminate the erotic content, it's a tribute to all involved that Duel in the Sun remained mostly coherent and cohesive in its final form.

For all of his involvement in the production, David O. Selznick seemed oblivious to his group of characters who essentially allow their misguided sense of pride cause their own undoings. Selznick's hope of topping the massive success of Gone with the Wind was his main motivation in producing Duel. Between the cost of production, the publicity campaign, and Selznick being forced to distribute the film himself, Duel became of harbinger of what has become a fairly standard practice in Hollywood, the big budget film that ultimately breaks even or shows a modest profit. It would take one last attempt at big budget filmmaking with A Farewell to Arms, costly and barely profitable, to end Selznick's career as a producer at the relatively young age of 55.

Based loosely on a novel by Niven Busch, the story is about a young woman, Pearl Chavez, half-white, half-Native American, orphaned and left to the care of her father's second cousin, Laura Belle. The cousin is the wife of land baron Jackson McCanles, and mother to sons Jesse and Lewt. Lewt is short for Lewton, but almost a homophone for lewd. The main story is about class and race, mostly centered on the love-hate relationship between Pearl and Lewt, leading up to the climatic finish.

Seen outside of the context of the year of production, and various conventions that were part of Hollywood film production, some might miss what all the fuss was about. In its own way, Duel in the Sun is almost as fantastic as Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. The opening scene features the very British Herbert Marshall as the Creole gambler, Scott Chavez, married to a Native American played by the very bronzed Tilly Losch. Losch performs a dance at a cantina the size of Grand Central Station, kicking up her heels for a mob of very appreciative cowboys. Following her performance, Losch hooks up with her lover, the stocky Sidney Blackmer. Cesar Romero and Anthony Quinn would have been more appropriately cast here. Fortunately, the odd rivalry of Marshall and Blackmer is a short scene, quickly forgotten once the film moves to the main setting of the McCanles Ranch.

Seeing Jennifer Jones as half Native American, with slightly bronzed make-up goes with an era when we were suppose to believe that Jeanne Crain was a light skinned African American in Pinky, filmed two years later. This is one of Jones' most memorable roles as it was also her most expressive physically, fighting conflicting impulses to be a "good girl" or reclaiming her sexuality. As Lewt, Gregory Peck almost steals the film as a mostly likable punk who ends up destroying his family, Pearl, and himself. One image says it all when Pearl is walking to her bedroom, and Lewt is standing in the shadows, leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette, with the hint of a smile. Sure, Lewt rapes Pearl, derails a train carrying explosives, and shoots the upstanding brother, Jesse, played by Joseph Cotten, but none of those things matter when watching Jennifer Jones claw her way through rocks and sand for that final clinch with Peck.

A side note here: Almost a decade later, Jones would again play a racially mixed woman, half-Asian, in Love is a Many Splendored Thing, while at Peck's insistence his romantic interest in The Purple Plain was portrayed by a half-Asian actress, rather than someone in "yellow face".

The blu-ray is as complete a version as we will likely see unless excised footage is discovered and restored. Among the scenes of legend are a dance performed by Pearl for Lewt that was considered too erotic by the production code office, as well as shots of Pearl attempting to fight off Lewt prior to surrendering to him. There is the overture and prelude, that the audience heard in the initial road show presentations, as well as music heard after the end of the film. For those who might not be familiar with the concept of the roadshow movie, there was a time when some big budget films were shown with a limited number of performances, usually a matinee and evening show, higher admission costs, and sometimes reserved seating.

The commentary track by Gaylyn Studlar is especially useful in identifying what parts of Duel in the Sun were directed by King Vidor, and those parts handled by William Dieterle, Otto Brower, William Cameron Menzies, and possibly Josef von Sternberg as well as Selznick. Unsurprisingly, some of the overhead traveling shots as well as long shots with the characters seen in silhouette will recall similar visual work in Gone with the Wind. Gregory Peck's children share their recollections of their father's work on the film and his friendships with King Vidor and Jennifer Jones in the other supplement of note.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:45 AM

August 01, 2017

Me & You

Io e te
Bernardo Bertolucci - 2012
Artificial Eye BD Region B

Is this the last film by Bernardo Bertolucci? It certainly looks that way. And yes, after a career with such high points as The Conformist and Last Tango in Paris, and even films with momentary charms as The Dreamers, Me & You is especially disappointing. From a commercial viewpoint, I understand why the film never got a stateside release. Still, it's a film by one of the greatest living film directors, deserving of a home video release that one esteemed company had promised, but never delivered. As one who has followed Bertolucci's career since the time that Before the Revolution had played in New York City, it seemed like my best option would be to get the British blu-ray while that was still available.

There's not much to the story - a high school boy decides to ditch a school ski trip by secretly spending the week in the basement storage room of the apartment building in a residential part of of Rome. His half-sister (same father) barges in, looking for shelter to go cold turkey from her heroin addiction. Starting off as antagonists, the two eventually become co-conspirators within the dark, enclosed space.

The recognizable themes from past Bertolucci films are visible with the aforementioned set-up of the two characters mostly shut off from the outside world, the hints of incest, centering the narrative on youthful characters, especially a young man who seems in a state of constant rebellion against the world. The film was adapted from a novel by Niccolo Ammaniti, who also contributed to the screenplay. I'm not familiar with the novel but assuming that the film is relatively faithful to the source, it's as if the novelist was writing with Bertolucci in mind. Sadly, there are no breathtaking images or even electric moments such as when Matthew Barry starts dancing to the music of the BeeGees in La Luna. The brother and sister dance to the Italian version of David Bowie's "Space Oddity", with the lyrics re-written as "Lonely Boy, Lonely Girl", but the moment is unaffecting. What comes across is as if the master filmmaker was making an imitation Bertolucci film.

What is best about the blu-ray is the supplement. This is no ordinary "Making of . . ." featurette. Bertolucci has been confined to a wheelchair since 2003, about the same time that his previous film, The Dreamers was released. The supplement documents in part Bertolucci's return to filmmaking and how he has worked in spite of his physical limitations. Debra Winger and Richard Gere are among the visitors to the set. The supplement starts off with Bertolucci at the Venice Film Festival prior to filming, telling the story of a confused admirer who told Bertolucci that he had been following his career since Fists in his Pocket, with that film's actual director, Marco Bellochio, receiving an award from his contemporary and peer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:15 AM

July 25, 2017

Seduction

La Seduzione
Fernando Di Leo - 1973
Raro Video BD Region A

Made in between his action-filled crime thrillers, Seduction is atypical of the films from Fernando Di Leo. No fast moving cars, violence is limited to a couple of slaps. There is a gun, but it's not seen until the final scene. A journalist based in Paris, Giuseppe, returns to the Sicilian city of Catania after fifteen years to close and sell his late father's house. While in Catania, Giuseppe re-kindles his romance with Caterina, now a widow with a teenage daughter, Graziella. The schoolgirl indicates that she would like Giuseppe to be more than paternal. The relationship between the three not unexpectedly unravels with a tragic resolution.

The film is based on the novel, Graziella, by Ercole Patti, a popular novelist born in Catania, who contributed to the screenplay, and has had many film adaptations of his novel. From what I have read about the source novel and Patti would indicate that the film only hints at some of Patti's themes. The opening scene with Giuseppe walking through his father's very large house indicates a history of family wealth, making me think about the homes as described by another Sicilian writer, Giuseppe Di Lampedusa and The Leopard. With his clothes and mentions of his travels, Giuseppe life of wealth and privilege are given. Caterina, in turn, is firmly middle-class in her dress and outlook. The film updates the novel's setting which would affect Patti's observations of class differences. In the then contemporary setting of the 1970s, Caternina tells Giuseppe that she is not like the "liberated" women of Paris. With her hair as a jet black helmet, Lisa Gastoni's Caterina appears reserved, almost forbidding.

Giuseppe's attraction to Graziella seems based more on her making herself available to the man who is on the verge of becoming her step-father. In spite of protestations that he loves Caterina, Giuseppe is revealed to be the least adult in handling relationships. A closer reading of the title suggests that the seduction is not simply sexual, but that of false beliefs.

The blu-ray comes with a supplement created in 2004, with Di Leo, cinematographer Franco Villa, and actress Jenny Tamburi, who plays Graziella, recalling the making of Seduction. I would have wished that Lisa Gastoni, still alive and active at age 82, had participated here. One of the more interesting stories is of the casting of Graziella, with the role originally scheduled for Ornella Muti. Probably most widely seen as Princess Aura in Flash Gordon, the eighteen year old Muti was considered too attractive by Gastoni. Tamburi, 21 at the time of filming, was a last minute replacement, more quietly attractive, and convincing as a girl much younger. Giuseppe was played by Maurice Ronet, best known for his work with Louis Malle and Claude Chabrol. Ronet and Tamburi had acted together three years previously in the Ugo Tognhzzi vehicle, Madame Royale.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:48 AM

July 18, 2017

Terror in a Texas Town

Joseph H. Lewis - 1958
Arrow Academy BD Regions AB

I don't think there's anyway to discuss Terror in a Texas Town and avoid the connections with the Blacklist of the 1950s. The screenplay is by Dalton Trumbo, credited to Ben Perry, who previously wrote, without credit, the screenplay for Gun Crazy (1950), also directed by Lewis. Both films have Nedrick Young in the cast. Young, also blacklisted at the time, acted in several films for Lewis, and also wrote a few screenplays, ironically winning the Oscar, under a pseudonym, for The Defiant Ones, also in 1958. Star Sterling Hayden named names before the House of Un-American Activities, felt guilty about it, and literally sailed away from Hollywood for about six years.

What makes Terror in a Texas Town ironic in retrospect is that Hayden plays a sailor that has decided to settle in landlocked Prairie City, Texas after almost twenty years out at sea. Even if one chooses to ignore any of the political aspects of the film, the film offers the surface pleasure of a showdown between the gunfighter dressed total in black, and the hero armed with a harpoon. Should anyone think I'm giving away a plot twist, the film's posters advertise this gimmick, and even begin the film with part of the confrontation of sea-faring George Hansen and professional gun Johnny Crale. Portly Sebastian Cabot is hotel owner plotting to buy or snatch as much land as possible, although it is never explained how he's the only one to know about the oil underneath. There's also the town populated by familiar faces like Frank Ferguson, Hank Patterson and Sheb Wooley, again faces, though not always known by name.

The blu-ray is a quite nice, probably looking even better than it did when it played theatrically in 1958, most likely as part of a double feature in second run or small town theaters. What is a bit baffling is the introduction by film historian Peter Stansfield, who argues that Joseph Lewis should not be accorded credentials as an auteur because he is intuitive rather than someone who can explain all the reasons why he'll film a two-shot of two characters in an extended conversation while not looking at each other. It's almost as if Stansfield is undermining why this ten day wonder of a film is getting the special Arrow treatment. Better is the short supplement of Lewis' visual style, where Stansfield finds a moment to point out how Terror may influenced Sergio Leone. But again I want to slap Stansfield for mentioning that the character played Hayden shares the same name, George Hansen, as Jack Nicholson in Easy Rider, wondering if the co-writer of the latter film, Terry Southern, had seen Terror, and yet failing to mention that when Sterling Hayden made a return to films, it was in Dr. Strangelove, a film with a screenplay by . . . Terry Southern.

Aside from dropping the ball where a coincidence (or is it?) is concerned, Stansfield complains that Lewis' overall career lacks the "coherence" of other directors honored with Edinburgh Film Festival retrospectives. As to Lewis being an intuitive filmmaker, my own take from those I've interviewed is that most classic Hollywood directors were intuitive and their careers were mostly assigned work. It's the film critic or historians job to identify the elements that make a filmmaker an auteur, and in the case of Joseph Lewis, it's a matter of taking a closer look at how Lewis handles the projects thrown his way.

To get a better understanding of Lewis' visual style, read the booklet notes by Glenn Kenny. Consistently informative and entertaining, with quotes from interviews as well as his own observations, Kenny does a much better job of explaining how Lewis likes to use long takes, with two or three characters within the same frame, each with their own agenda, unlike many contemporary filmmakers who would cut between the actors in conversation. Sure, having two or three actors within the same frame is a more economical way of working when you have a limited budget and short shooting schedule, but Kenny indicates that even with greater resources, Lewis would probably not film any differently. Lewis was known as "Wagon Wheel Joe", and that first wagon wheel shot comes in at 5:55, and we see similar shots of that wagon wheel jutting from the left of the screen nearing the climax. About fifty years ago, Andrew Sarris wrote of Lewis, "It would seem that his (Lewis) career warrants further investigation." Especially for those who have yet to discover My Name is Julia Ross, The Big Combo or Gun Crazy, this new blu-ray is a good place to start.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

July 11, 2017

Japanese War Bride

King Vidor - 1952
Nostalgia Family DVD

While I was a student at New York University, I also had the opportunity to be a student volunteer at the Film Study Center of the Museum of Modern Art. One of the perks was having free museum membership which allowed me to see films at the museum. In the Fall of 1972, there was a retrospective devoted to King Vidor. I didn't see everything, with school and other films occasionally taking priority. And then there was the word that one film that could have been included was specifically not be shown. I never found out his reasons, but Donald Richie made the request that Japanese War Bride not be part of what would have been the most complete retrospective of King Vidor's films. For those who might not be familiar with him, Richie is the one credited for his books that introduced Japanese film to English speaking cineastes. And credit is deserving, although it took me years to discover several worthy filmmakers that he chose either to disparage or completely ignore. As far as Japanese War Bride goes, it never appeared at any New York City revival house, nor appeared on any late night television broadcast. I finally shelled out a few dollars to get a somewhat passable DVD, a couple degrees better than what's often available for films that have fallen into public domain.

The title is misleading in that the film is about the Japanese wife of a an American soldier who was fighting in Korea. Tae and Jim meet in the hospital where Tae is a nurse, and Jim is recovering from his unspecified wounds. The two marry, and move to Salinas, California, where Jim's family has a farm. The drama comes from the varying degrees of acceptance of Tae to the family and the community, with Jim's sister-in-law the cause of much of the trouble.

While Donald Richie would undoubtedly be more sensitive to how Japan and the Japanese would be presented, I still could not be certain what caused his objections. Jim is shown to have some cultural awareness by knowing to remove his shoes before entering the home of Tae's grandfather. The grandfather threatening to kill a couple of monkeys, claiming they are part of a religious ritual, deliberately plays on the assumed cultural ignorance of Jim and by extension, a western audience. Considering how badly Asians have been presented in Hollywood films, Japanese War Bride mostly works to demolish stereotypes. If anyone looks bad, it's the white people, especially the always foolish Woody, played by a character actor with the unfortunate name of George Wallace, and Fran, Jim's sister-in-law, played by eternal bad girl Marie Windsor.

In his book on Vidor, Raymond Durgnat explains that Vidor took up Japanese War Bride when another planned project, also with a rural setting fell through. Even setting aside the racial elements to the story, Japanese War Bride can be seen as comfortably fitting in with other Vidor films, beginning with Beyond the Forest (1949) and Lightning Strikes Twice (1951), and ending with Ruby Gentry (1952). All four films take place in rural or country settings, and revolve around women who act as a disrupting force within a small community.

I have no idea if Japanese War Bride even played in southern theaters. Laws barring interracial marriages were in place in some states prior to Loving vs. Virginia. The rules imposed by the Motion Picture Production code regarding miscegenation specified relations between black and white actors, although it was also the reasoning behind having white actors in yellow face. Don Taylor and Shirley Yamaguchi not only kiss twice, but are seen doing so very clearly in close up which probably caused a stir for some people at the time. On the other hand, the characters are very indirect when discussing World War II, the internment camps, and racial laws that were directed to Japanse-Americans.

Durgnat has described Japanese War Bride as impersonal compared to other films directed by Vidor. And this may not stand as one of King Vidor's better films, but I'm glad I saw it, if for one near perfect shot. Following a family argument for which she feels responsible, Tae takes a walk away from the farm to a relatively open field. Jim catches up with her. To the left of the screen is a single tree that is shaped like a giant bonsai tree. It's as if the all the ideas about different cultures were encapsulated in a single image.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:24 AM

July 04, 2017

Shalako

Edward Dmytryk - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Shalako is an odd western as is pointed out in the commentary by Alex Cox. Most famous for his film, Sid and Nancy, Cox has also written a book on Italian westerns, highly recommended, 10,000 Ways to Die. Shalako is definitely not an Italian western, but it was filmed in Almeria, Spain, the same location as many Italian and Spanish westerns, in this case standing in for New Mexico. The film was produced at the same time as Italian westerns were at their commercial zenith, and a handful of Hollywood filmmakers were looking at trying to infuse new life in the well-worn genre. While some of the violence is a bit more graphic, as Cox mentions several times, Shalako is not the film it could have been had it been filmed with a bit more imagination.

Based on a novel by Louis L'Amour, the inspiration is from the historically noted hunting parties taken by European royalty and celebrities, exploring the western frontier. A group of European royals and a former United States senator and his wife are led into Apache territory by their guide. Former Army colonel Shalako has run into them on the trail. As they have violated a treaty, the hunting party is advised to get out the next morning or risk an Indian attack. Not only is the hunting party attacked, but the guide and his men take food, ammunition and horses, abandoning this aristocratic bunch. Shalako returns to lead the group safely through the desert.

Sean Connery took a million dollar payday to play a cowboy hero. He reportedly showed up with a mustache which was ordered to be shaven, the producers having memories of the 1950 classic, The Gunfighter, not doing well commercially with the blame placed on Gregory Peck's choice to have facial hair as appropriate for the era. The largely European cast included Brigitte Bardot, Jack Hawkins, Stephen Boyd and Honor Blackman. Boyd gets to sport a mustache, possibly to alert viewers that he's the film's villainous white man. Also on hand are John Ford regular Woody Strode, as an Apache warrior, and former Red Ryder star Donald Barry. Not only was Connery reunited with his Goldfinger costar, but another Bond alumni, Charles Gray, provided the voice for Jack Hawkins, unable to speak his own lines due to the removal of his larynx. Unfortunately for producer Euan Lloyd, this all-star cast was unable to bring in the expected box office gold. Lloyd did continue with two other adaptations of L'Amour novels, and had better box office success with another Bond star, Roger Moore, in The Wild Geese.

The film does start promisingly with a mountain lion trapped in a crevice, unable to climb to safety. Taunted by Stephen Boyd and his crew, we see the barrel of a rifle poking in from the left of the screen, shooting the mountain lion. The shooter is Brigitte Bardot, and with her, the hunting party, all seen wearing top hats. While the hunting party is united by class, there are tensions between the married couples, as well as Peter van Eyck's German aristo unsuccessfully pursuing Bardot's countess. The sense of class and entitlement is displayed by the treatment towards Stephen Boyd and his gang. There's no subtlety involved when everyone is reduced to the same level, and are led through the desert by a man whose real first name is Moses.

The blu-ray was derived from what appears to be a perfect print. This is a film that requires viewing on a big screen to follow some of the action, with the characters quite small, seen faintly in the distance. Some may enjoy Shalako on its own merits. Edward Dymytryk has expressed embarrassment over his work here, and it certainly lacks the visual panache of his black and white thrillers from the Forties and early Fifties. The treatment of the Indians tries to play it both ways, justifying their attacks on the hunting party due to Boyd's trespassing, but also letting the viewers know that the Apache's are hardly gentlemanly with white women. Alex Cox's commentary track is of interest, pointing out how one of the sets was also featured in a couple of other Italian westerns, his own experience in Almeria shooting Straight to Hell (1987), discussing the accuracy of the presentation of the Indians, and thoughts on how Shalako could have been a better film.

What remains unanswered is in a film that hinges on the characters' deprivation of food, water and bullets, how does Brigitte Bardot manage to maintain a seemingly endless supply of eye liner?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:22 AM

June 20, 2017

Hell in the Pacific

John Boorman - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

In the Fall of 1969, I was a film student at New York University. Occasionally, film directors would preview a new film, followed by a question and answer session. John Boorman came with his original version of Leo the Last, a bit different from the final release version. What I remember about that evening, verbatim, is when a student had asked Boorman about the ending of Hell in the Pacific. Boorman's response, referring to one of the producers, was, "Henry Saperstein is an evil man."

Hell in the Pacific has received a much needed blu-ray upgrade. The original ending is available not as a supplement but as a seamless conclusion to the film, in addition to the producers' approved theatrical release. What arguably improves the film for viewers who may only know the film theatrically, is that with the subtitle option, Toshiro Mifune's bits of dialogue are translated to English, making the intentions of Mifune as understandable as those of Lee Marvin. Add to that a new interview with John Boorman and Art Director Anthony Pratt, plus a commentary track by film historians Travis Crawford and Bill Ackerman.

For anyone still unfamiliar with the basic story, an American pilot and a Japanese naval officer discover the presence of each other on an otherwise small, deserted island, during World War II. The two, military enemies, first try to outwit and overpower each other before deciding to work together for survival. The film was a commercial failure, possibly too abstract for mainstream audiences use to films with more dialogue and exposition. Over the years, Hell in the Pacific has gained in stature and appreciation.

Certainly the interview with Boorman helps explain why a film with a cast of two turned out to be relatively expensive. Among the elements hampering the production were the extremely remote location of the Palau islands, and Toshiro Mifune's initial refusal to take direction from Boorman and need for an interpreter, causing delays. One of the new bits of information is that frequent Akira Kurosawa collaborator, Shinobu Hashimoto had a hand in the screenplay, primarily in helping develop Mifune's character.

What has made the film hold up almost fifty years later is the visual story-telling. An early shot of Marvin and Mifune's initial face to face encounter is iconic, with the two actors standing on opposite sides of the Panavision screen. I had to re-watch those few seconds because both actors are standing still, and I thought the shot was a freeze frame. Seen again, I noticed the movement of the waves on the beach where most of the film takes place. When the film begins, there appears what looks like the body of a man washed ashore, that later is revealed to be a log fought over by the two men. Boorman also makes use of multiple shots with Mifune and Marvin within the same frame, one in the foreground, one in back. A chase through the jungle with the faces of the men partially obscured by branches, leaves or nets suggests that Boorman may have reviewed several films by Kurosawa in deciding how to film action.

The commentary track will probably be of greatest benefit the younger viewers unfamiliar with Marvin, Mifune, Boorman, or cinematographer Conrad Hall. One nice bit of information is that Hall was the son of the coauthor of Mutiny on the Bounty, and worked on the 1962 film version starring Marlon Brando. With that in mind, Hell in the Pacific could well described the difficult production of at least a couple of films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:45 AM

June 06, 2017

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Terence Fisher - 1959
KL Studio Classics Region 1 DVD

This is what a Sherlock Holmes movie is suppose to look like. I could never embrace the Basil Rathbone series because it was updated to the then contemporary England. The Guy Ritchie version, with Robert Downer, Jr. too cool to wear a deerstalker hat, tried a bit too hard to make Sherlock Holmes a character a century ahead of his time. The Hammer production respects the original novel, keeping Holmes as he has classically been portrayed, with the pipe and deerstalker hat, in an England of the early 1900s.

With three Hammer stars, Peter Cushing, Andre Morell, Christopher Lee, and a behind the camera team of Hammer regulars, it should be a surprise to no one that The Hound of the Baskervilles looks like a Hammer horror film. The scenes of horror are more suggested than seen, but what we have the visual look of shadows, fog, and unexplained sounds. The use of color is not flamboyant as something like Brides of Dracula, but red appears quite often, in the costumes, furniture, as well as several very bright drops of blood. The story, about a family curse, originated from Arthur Conan Doyle, but it would seem that it's also a theme that would appear in most Hammer films, with their narratives of family secrets, insane relatives and uncanny events.

In the supplement to the DVD, Christopher Lee discusses Peter Cushing's precise diction and physical dexterity while playing Holmes. And while Cushing is the top billed star, and looks has the right look to play Sherlock Holmes, he's almost a guest star in his own story, missing for almost half of a film thats less than ninety minutes long. Andre Morell, as Watson, does much of the detective work here, keeping an eye out for Christopher Lee's Sir Henry Baskerville. Watson, here, is closer to the novel, not a detective by vocation, but still smart and observant. As Sir Henry, Christopher Lee has one of his only roles where he is able to kiss the woman who enchants him on her lips, not on her throat.

The mystery is almost besides the point. I think the reason why Hammer films remain beloved in general is because of their familiarity, the above mentioned stories, the actors that appear from film to film, and often consistent pool of directors, writers, and technical support. Would it seem inappropriate to call this "cinematic comfort food"? The Hound of the Baskervilles was reportedly not enough of box office success for Hammer to continue with Cushing as Holmes, perhaps because the horror elements were played down. Another one-off film, with Sherlock Holmes in search of Jack the Ripper, A Study in Terror from 1965, would appear to pick up where Hammer left off. The Hound of the Baskervilles remains as the one film to choose as the best version of Sherlock Holmes on film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:13 AM

May 30, 2017

Zaza

Allan Dwan - 1923
Kino Classics BD Region A

Originally a French play produced in 1898, Zaza has been filmed seven times per IMDb. The first time was as a French silent film in 1913. The most recent version was an Argentinian television production in 1972 by that country's pioneering director, María Ines Andres. Allan Dwan's film was the second of three Paramount versions, following the lost 1915 codirected by Edwin S. Porter, with George Cukor's sound remake produced in 1938. In short, remakes of foreign films, or Hollywood making a new film version of a popular title within a short period of time has been standard operation procedure for a century.

Taking place near Paris, shortly before World War I, the story is basically that this popular music hall singer, Zaza, is in love with a wealthy man, Dufresne, and becomes his mistress. What Zaza does not know is that Dufresne is married. When she discovers that as assumed "other woman" is actually Dufresne's wife, Zaza ends the affair. Dufresne is called away for business in the United States. Some short time after World War I, Dufresne is back in France, meets Zaza for the first time in years. Zaza has found out that Dufresne is now a widower. The two are still in love with each other, but the film ends ambiguously.

I don't know if this version of Zaza is the same as the one screened at Il Cinema Ritrovato four years ago, but at 84 minutes, it's the most complete version available, and generally looks good, with only the titles looking a bit worse for wear. Aside from the fact that there aren't too many restored silent films available, the blu-ray also comes with an informative booklet by film historian Imogen Sara Smith, and a commentary track by Fredric Lombardi, author of Allan Dwan and the Rise and Decline of the Hollywood Studios. There is also an unobtrusive piano score by Jeff Rapsis. Lombardi's commentary can be overwhelming at times discussing not only the careers of Swanson and Dwan at the time that Zaza was made, but also providing history on the early years of film production, when Chicago briefly was a major hub. Zaza was filmed at Paramount's Astoria studio, with several New York based actors in the cast. Exteriors were filmed in Long Island and Yonkers.

For myself, the story has not aged well. What still makes this film of interest on repeated viewings is seeing how Dwan will have multiple planes of action within the frame. My favorite moment is a scene of Zaza and her stage rival, Florianne, clawing at each other behind the stage curtain. The two dominate most of the space within the frame, and will be the subject of attention by most viewers. But on the left of the screen, the viewer can also take a partial peak at the juggler who is performing on the stage. Dwan and cinematographer Harold Rosson were also able to rig the camera so that it moved with Swanson, facing the actress, as she sang from a giant swing on stage to dizzying effect.

A couple of minor points reflecting attitudes of the time have Zaza calling the black actor pushing her swing a "wool head", and Zaza rubbing the back of a hunchbacked man for good luck. Gloria Swanson shakes more than a tail feather here. For the most part, this is a very physical performance with Zaza first seen madly tossing out the clothing in a large chest, in search of the dressing gown she is unaware that she is wearing. Feisty might be the best adjective to use here. I got to briefly meet Miss Swanson at Telluride in 1974, following a screening of a 16mm print of Sadie Thompson. Speaking on the need for film preservation, at age 75, Gloria Swanson was still feisty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:28 AM

May 23, 2017

Obsessions revisited

Bezeten - Het gat in de muur
Pim de la Parra - 1969
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC / Region 0 DVD two disc set

Ten months after my review of the German blu-ray, Cult Epics has made available a stateside release of the Dutch thriller cowritten by Martin Scorsese. Making this very much worth the wait is that this version is loaded with extras. Carried over from the German version is the introduction and interview with German actor-producer Dieter Geissler, at the time a rising star who shifted full time to film production a few years later. The Cult Epics version also has an introduction and interview with Pim de la Parra, an overview of the Dutch production company Scorpio, a transcript of a telephone interview with Scorsese made by Amsterdam's EYE Institute this past February, the organization that restored Obsessions, and a copy of the screenplay with Scorsese's notes. Just that one blu-ray bonus of the full screenplay, with notes by Scorsese, plus some by de la Parra, makes this arguably one of the most important home video releases of this year.

The screenplay may not be in the same realm as The Power and the Glory, Preston Sturges' debut as a screen writer, with a film noted as having influenced the structure of Citizen Kane. Be that as it may, the screenplay notes by Scorsese are worth reading to get an idea of Scorsese's thoughts on filmmaking at that time, with several notes of advice for de la Parra. This is the kind of material one usually is only able to find in film archives, and often under restricted circumstances. One bit that did not make it from page to screen was having the film end with Dean Martin on the soundtrack singing, "Return to Me".

The more casual viewer may wonder what makes Obsessions important if they see the film without bothering with the supplements. The first Dutch film produced in English was a world-wide hit, starring Canadian actress, Alexandra Stewart, highly regarded in Europe at the time. Aside from the restoration of this film more than fifty years after its release, Obsessions was not even shown in the U.S., even though it had exploitable elements, especially the nudity. Scorsese was initially in Amsterdam to film a fantasy sequence with nudity for Who's that Knocking on my Door, following the request of exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner to make the film more commercial. Additionally, de la Parra points out that one of the uncredited actresses in that scene, Marieke Boonstra, is also in Obsessions. There's no explanation as to why none of the smaller distributors passed on Obsessions, even when Martin Scorsese's name would have been a selling point. Curiously, Joseph Brenner did provide U.S. distribution for Because of the Cats, an early film by Dutch director Fons Rademakers, who has a small role here, in a film also starring Alexandra Stewart.

Aside from the historical significance of Obsessions in the history of Dutch cinema, and the careers of several filmmakers, the supplements here make this two-disc set worthy of the serious cineaste.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:16 AM

May 16, 2017

The World of Henry Orient

George Roy Hill - 1964
KL Studio Classics Region 1 DVD

As a student at Yale, George Roy Hill studied music under Paul Hindemith. This may explain why the scene of Henry Orient performing in concert may be a bit longer than it might have been with another director. Only someone with knowledge of music would be able to create a comic scene that gently pokes fun at "avant-garde" music, with a piano solo stretched out due to the ill-rehearsed star not concluding his solo in the correct notes. The performed composition itself takes Elmer Bernstein's lyrical theme heard during the opening credits, and reworks it as a discordant composition.

Hill's film is likewise about harmony and discord. It's not so much Henry Orient's world, but that of two young teenage girls, known by the nicknames of Gil and Val. Gil, the middle class student at an exclusive New York City private school, and Val, the daughter of absentee parents, are two outsiders who discover each other by chance. Their first "adventure" together finds them accidentally discovering Henry Orient in one of his series of failed trysts with a married woman in a hidden section of Central Park. The identity of the man seen at the park, and later at an Italian restaurant, is revealed when Val and Gil are taken to the described concert. Val is infatuated, joined by Gil in observing Orient from not so afar.

The film was adapted from Nora Johnson's first novel, inspired from the author's own youthful infatuation with Oscar Levant. From what I've been able to find out about the novel, published in 1958, is that it takes place during an unspecified time. Had the book been more strictly autobiographical, it might have taken place around 1947. This film, though, takes place in the then present day New York City, albeit cleaner, friendlier and safer. Even if the setting is an idealized New York City, the story is clear eyed about the fragility of relationships between friends, and parents and children.

Coming between Dr. Strangelove and A Shot in the Dark, Henry Orient is Peter Sellers in a low-keyed comic performance. Early on, it is revealed that Orient is Brooklyn born, disguising his roots with a vaguely European accent. There is no attempt to hide that Paula Prentiss, as object of Seller's attentions, was slightly taller, if not quite as manic. Two acclaimed cinematographers closely associated with New York City, Boris Kaufman and Arthur Ornitz, are credited. It may be worth noting that about thirty years earlier, Kaufman was the cinematographer for Jean Vigo's Zero de Conduit. A scene with Gil and Val leaping in slow motion in Washington Square park may well have been inspired by Vigo. The film does belong to the two young actresses, Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker, both making their debut here. Spaeth chose not to pursue acting after a couple of roles, while Walker had a short-lived career for about seven years. It's enough that two young women had the talent to briefly outshine the top billed stars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:28 AM

May 09, 2017

The Indian Fighter

Andre DeToth - 1955
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Is it possible to view The Indian Fighter and overlook a couple of elements that may be uncomfortable for contemporary audiences? The easier part is the Hollywood convention of white actors as American Indians. While there were Native Americans as members of the film's Sioux tribe, key roles are filled by Eduard Franz, Hank Worden and Elsa Martinelli. In this way, The Indian Fighter is not different from most other westerns pretty much until Arthur Penn's Little Big Man in 1970. What hasn't aged well would be the couple encounters Douglas has with Martinelli, forcing himself on her with a big smooch on the lips the first time, grabbing her hair in their second meeting, ending with Martinelli smiling and embracing Douglas, because he is Kirk Douglas. Later, it's the actress known as the former Mrs. Kirk Douglas who grabs the star for a kiss.

If the sixty plus years has dated some of the content on The Indian Fighter, the film itself looks as good as did at the time of its initial theatrical release, and probably sounds better with updated recording technology. There's a scene with the Indians attacking a fort with large, flaming spears, with a thrilling whooshing sound as the spears fly towards the fort.

The Indian Fighter was Andre DeToth's first film in the still relatively know CinemaScope format, two years old at the time of production. As such, the widescreen filming here is conservative, especially compared to Rebel without a Cause, produced the same year, with actors framed in full or medium shots. There are a good number of panoramic shots, but it's only a couple of later scenes that there are couple of shots with the kind of dramatic compositions found in earlier DeToth films. One of the best examples of the former is a traveling shot of the wagon train, stopped for the evening, starting with several people listing to a folk singer performing "Two Brothers" (a Civil War song written in 1951), with the camera moving left to observe villains Lon Chaney, Jr. and Walter Matthau eating dinner, further left with a bearded settler by his wagon, stopping Kirk Douglas sitting with Diana Douglas and her young screen son.
A later shot that is reminder of what DeToth can do within the frame comes after the big battle scene, with a high angle view of Kirk Douglas in the mostly empty space within the fort's entrance seen in the distance, while the foreground on the left side of the frame is partially filled by an anonymous soldier seen as a medium shot, eating from his canteen.

The basic story is familiar enough, with Douglas acting as the go-between, arranging peace between the Sioux and the cavalry, and allowing settlers to travel to Oregon through Indian territory. Chaney and Matthau are the ne'er do wells, selling whiskey to the Indians, hoping to mine the gold hidden in the tribal land. Elsa Martinelli is introduced getting undressed, with as much nudity as could be suggested in a 1955 Hollywood film. This was the first significant role for the twenty year old Italian actress, and her lines are kept brief in her role as the Indian chief's daughter. Neither Martinelli nor any of the other actors playing Indians speak pidgin English. The two screenplay writers credited are Frank Davis and Ben Hecht, and I am assuming that some of the more sarcastic exchanges were from Hecht. How sarcastic? When the Indian chief expressed hope that the white men would entirely kill each other in the Civil War, Douglas responds that the war didn't last long enough.

The blu-ray comes with a commentary track by Toby Roan, a specialist in Westerns, primarily from the 1950s. Several of the actors would be familiar to those watch film and television westerns from the Fifties and Sixties, with three Juniors in the cast - in addition to Lon Chaney, Jr., there is Elisha Cook, Jr. as the photographer attempting to document the journey to Oregon, and Alan Hale, Jr. as the awkward would-be suitor of Diana Douglas. Roan also discusses the production history on location in Bend, Oregon. Roan points out how The Indian Fighter simultaneously stays within genre convention and also goes outside what was expected. I was also relieved that there was no confusion on my part, with Roan confirming that Hank Worden is seen in two different roles, as a cavalry soldier who locks up Chaney and Matthau, and more prominently, as the liquor loving Indian known as Crazy Bear.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:48 AM

April 25, 2017

Anatahan

Josef von Sternberg - 1953
Kino Classics BD Region A

At this point, I would think most people with any interest in Josef von Sternberg's last film are aware that it was primarily shot inside a studio, and was based on a true incident of a group of Japanese men and one woman found on a small Pacific island, virtually abandoned during and after World War II. That the film continues von Sternberg's penchant for artificial and stylized settings is no surprise. What none of the other reviews of Anatahan that I've read bother to note is the orientalism found here. Sure, the basic story actually happened, and the characters are treated respectfully.

At one point, some of the men create a Shinto shrine. Von Sternberg, as narrator, mentions that four of the men were Buddhists, and two were Christians. I don't know if this detail was in the novel that provided the basis for the film, but I do know that Shinto was established as the state religion of Japan during this time, and any other religious practice would have been done in secret.

As for the "Queen Bee", Keiko, von Sternberg has the lone woman living in a jungle island introduced wearing one very nice kimono, with a sea shell necklace. Not realistic, and not appropriate for the setting, but this is a von Sternberg film, made by the guy who sent Marlene Dietrich chasing after Gary Cooper in the desert while she was wearing high heels. Nineteen year old Akemi Negishi is introduced looking more like someone's idea of a geisha, than a woman stranded far from civilization. Again, this is history as filtered through von Sternberg, kind of like The Scarlet Empress. A more recent book as been published about the survivors of Anatahan, and the description of the woman who inspired Keiko, is, well, less inspiring as noted in the Japan Times - "It was certainly not her looks. Kazuko Higa was a diminutive, lantern-jawed woman who could have been charitably called handsome."

By 1953, Josef von Sternberg's career as a Hollywood director was over. Unlike E. A. Dupont, a top silent director reduced to making The Neanderthal Man that same year, von Sternberg was able to make Anatahan mostly on his own terms. That the budget was limited is most obvious in the last ten minutes, with the survivors off the island, Japan seen as a rear-projection still of an airplane on the landing strip. Von Sternberg gets credit for the screenplay, cinematography and direction, while his work as narrator is anonymous.

The blu-ray has both the original 1953 release version, as well as the 1958 revision, notable for showing more of Akemi Negishi with less clothing. In his visual essay, film historian Tag Gallagher mentions how Negishi went on to have supporting roles in several films by Akira Kurosawa, but doesn't mention that fellow Toho house director, Ishiro Honda cast Negishi in several films as well, including King Kong vs. Godzilla. Additional Kaiju connections include a score by Akira Ifukube, and special effects by Eiji Tsuburaya. An interview with son Nicholas von Sternberg includes discussion of working methods, and the display of a chart Josef von Sternberg created to map out the drama. What is pointed out is that von Sternberg did not know Anatahan would be his last film. The blu-ray includes English subtitles transcribing von Sternberg's narration, but not the Japanese dialogue. The justification may be that this is in keeping with the original spirit of the film, with von Sternberg acting as the mediator between the viewer and his visual story. As it is, for those who have familiarity with von Sternberg, the themes and some of the visual motifs are those to be found in his films from the Thirties, any one which might have been titled, The Devil is a Woman.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

April 18, 2017

Broken Arrow

Delmer Daves - 1950
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There has been a good amount of discussion regarding Delmer Daves quest to make the presentation of the Apaches in Broken Arrow as authentic as possible within the context of a Hollywood production. Likewise, the film has been oft noted for showing for showing the settlers and indians where both are capable of sympathy or villainy. And in terms of genre, Broken Arrow, even while dated with its casting of white actors as native Americans, is still worth noting.

What I found interesting, and not mentioned, is that a significant number of shots are extremely tilted, especially in the opening scene, with the camera looking up at a character against the blue sky, or almost overhead, looking almost straight down against the tan, rocky surface. There are very few shots with the camera focused straight ahead, or eye level. The camera angles become less extreme as a visual corollary for those moments when the characters may be seen as equals. The casting of Jeff Chandler as Cochise could well have been due as much to his being as tall, actually one inch taller, than James Stewart, again providing a visual shortcut to the film's message.

Two visually striking moments are reminders that previously Daves had made films now regarded as film noir classics, Dark Passage and The Red House. After a skirmish, three white men have been hanged by their indian captors. The three bodies are seen in silhouette against the red sky, one of the bodies is upside down. While not fully graphic, the grotesque nature of the punishment conveys why there is fear of the indians. Later, James Stewart is seen alone, illuminated by a camp fire. His face is seen half in shadow.

I'm not familiar with the novel that provided the basis for the film. Some scenes can be easily read as referring to the political climate when Broken Arrow was produced. The blu-ray has corrected credits attributing the Oscar nominated Albert Maltz for the screenplay, rather than his front, Michael Blankfort. Maltz was one of the "Hollywood Ten", blacklisted until 1970. The actor playing the most antagonistic of the white settlers is Will Geer, who would also be blacklisted. As the itinerant prospector acting as the self-appointed liaison between the settlers and the indians, Stewart is challenged regarding racial loyalty, and is later almost lynched by an angry mob over his defense of Cochise. While a good distance from the revisionist westerns that often stood in as critiques of the war in Vietnam, Broken Arrow was considered quite progressive for its time.

Stewart's character of Tom Jeffords is similar to the characters portrayed in the Anthony Mann westerns. Jeffords, like the characters in the Mann films, has no fixed home, with the drama initiated by a chance encounter. There is a brief moment when Jeffords is seen as vengeful, the darker James Stewart more frequently associated with Mann, when Jeffords discovers that his young indian wife has been killed in an ambush arranged by Geer. The film is told with first-person narration from Stewart, seen at the beginning and end, riding alone.

The color is quite subdued for a Technicolor production, filmed on location in Arizona. In his first western, Daves finds moments to emphasize the smallness of his actors against the mountains, rocky flatland, and sky. This sense is further underlined when Geer's body is washed away in a river, seen directly above, a view from heaven. Cinematographer Ernest Palmer was an Oscar nominee for his work here. There's one critical study of the films of Delmer Daves, a filmmaker still seriously in need of deeper consideration. The new blu-ray of Broken Arrow is definitely collection worthy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:52 AM

April 07, 2017

The Violent Shit Collection

Violent Shit
Andreas Schnaas - 1989

Violent Shit II: Mother Hold My Hand
Andreas Schnaas - 1992

Violent Shit III: Infantry of Doom
Andreas Schnaas - 1999

Violent Shit 4.0: Karl the Butcher vs. Axe
Andreas Schnaas & Timo Rose - 2010

Zombie '90: Extreme Pestilence
Andreas Schnaas - 1991

Synapse Films All Region DVD Three disc set

I'm not the intended viewer for this film, and I'll be the first to admit it. While I have seen, and written about, films depicting extreme violence, I'm hardly a gorehound. But I do think of myself as a lifelong student of film history, and what I have seen is that, especially with genre filmmakers, what may have been dismissed in the past may be re-evaluated in the future. Not that I'm particularly optimistic that Andreas Schnaas will be subject to the kind of critical thoughtfulness given to, for example, Jesus Franco, but I wouldn't completely rule it out.

Schnaas made a film, not in this collection, with a relatively healthy budget of over a million dollars, in English, but with an Italian cast. The heavy accents of his actors doomed any possibility of importing the film. And with the films here, with the nonsensical plots, cheap looking special effects, bad acting and worse dubbing, plus haphazard videography and editing, comparison to Ed Wood, Jr. comes to mind. No angora fetish, but lots of blood, as well as the offerings of a very generous butcher. The first two Violent Shit films would seem to be made for viewers who find the latter films of Lucio Fulci too plot heavy.

The comparison to Ed Wood is not only based on the competency of the filmmaking. Andreas Schnaas obviously is passionate about making films, but what I've seen would indicate that his ambitions are beyond his abilities. There's some similarity in the subject matter with films involving zombies, science gone wrong, and the grandiose ambitions of the main characters. Like Wood, Schnaas has the ability to round up a group of friends for the cast. Unlike Wood, there is a strain of self-aware humor throughout the films.

I'm not familiar with any of the other German filmmakers who emerged in the 1980s with extreme horror films other than Jorg Buttgereit. Having reviewed the blu ray releases of his films, I have a sense of artistry that Schnaas lacks. I can hardly minimize how graphic these films are with decapitations, breasts carved off, sexual organs mutilated, with one poor guy literally torn a new asshole. Some of the influences are obvious, like Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as well as the post-apocalypse films that followed Mad Max. Even within the context of the genre, the misogyny gets uncomfortably heavy-handed. Then again, these films could well have been made for a less discerning, primarily male, audience that may never have heard or read about Grand Guignol, but simply desires the series of visceral thrills along with a bottle or ten of beer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:06 AM

April 04, 2017

Sword Master

San shao ye de jian
Derek Yee - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD and DVD two disc set

As one of the screenwriters, as well as director, Derek Yee gets to remake the Shaw Brothers production, Death Duel from 1977. That film helped establish the young actor, then known as Yee Tung-Shing. As significant as the material may have been for the actor turned director, the new film still bears more in common with the more recent work of Tsui Hark, credited as producer and cowriter here. As with other Tsui films from the past few years, the emphasis is on sword fights, wire works and making use of 3D special effects. At first, I was afraid that Sword Master would be yet another Chinese film attempting to dazzle the audience with gravity defying swordplay, forgetting that having a good story needs to be part of the mix.

It's when the main characters put down their swords that Sword Master is more interesting. An assassin with a tattooed face chooses to limit his abilities on behalf of justice, and looks for a place to die. An itinerant wanderer turns out to be a martial arts master from a famed family, but would rather be a simple farmer. The two men encounter each other in a small town dominated by a man known as the Big Boss, who runs an extravagant brothel. There is a bit of philosophy here, with the discussion of what it means to live or die honorably. The plot is somewhat reminiscent of westerns, notably Henry King's The Gunfighter, with Gregory Peck attempting to retire, unable to escape his reputation for being the fastest gun in the west. As is found in previous films from Tsui, there is at least one woman of action, in this case the heiress, the former fiancee of the martial arts master, in pursuit of her lost love, and also formidable with a sword.

What struck me first were the colorful costumes of the prostitutes, followed by elaborate fakeness of the various settings, even the exteriors. The classic martial arts films were mostly shot inside the studios, and forty years later, it's the same, even with computer generated technology. And it's not that Yee and company could not have made the setting realistic looking, but that they chose to embrace the artificiality of the classic martial arts film with up to date filmmaking tools. I'm not sure how most western viewers would take to this denial of realism, but for myself, it's analogous to the artifice found in classic MGM musicals, especially those of Vincente Minnelli.

I haven't seen Death Duel, but according to an interview, Yee has made this new film closer to the spirit of Long Gu's novel, where the swordsmen question their way of life. That the film stars relatively unknown actors has proven not to have affected the commercial viability for the Chinese audience, though Kenny Lin Gengxin is getting to be a regular presence in Tsui's films, having appeared in Young Detective Dee and Taking of Tiger Mountain. One can only imagine what might have been had Yee been able to make this film as once planned, in 1999, with Leslie Cheung.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:44 AM

March 28, 2017

Three

San ren xing
Johnnie To - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Three is an exercise in formalism by Johnnie To. Until the inevitable shoot out near the end, there is very little action as such. The pacing is deliberately slow compared to To's other films. Most of the film takes place on the floor of a hospital where all of the patients are separated by curtains. This would make sense if these were all emergency patients, but that's not the case here. The setting is essentially there to allow To to design most of the action within a confined space.

The three of the title are Chen, the Hong Kong cop who has brought the gangster, Shun, to the hospital. Shun has a bullet in his head, yet otherwise is able to function. The neurosurgeon, Tong, is to operate on Shun, adding to a stressful day. In addition to one patient paralyzed following surgery, Dr. Tong finds herself unable to save another patient, resulting in leaving him in a coma. Refusing the surgery that would save his life, Shun taunts Chen, who is hoping to capture the other members of Shun's gang. As Chen, Louis Koo has to keep a straight face, while Wallace Chung, as Shun, gets to show off, whether flopping manically in the gurney while have a seizure, or spouting off the Hippocratic oath in English to Dr. Tong.

This is a film where almost everything goes wrong for most of the characters. That's obvious from the moment when Shun is brought in, handcuffed to a gurney, and the cop called Fatty, played by To regular Lam Suet, has lost the keys to the handcuffs. Even when it looks like Fatty will finally redeem himself in pursuit of a gang member, he almost loses what little dignity he has left. Vickie Zhao takes a pratfall as Dr. Tong, tripping down a flight of stairs. To even has the paralyzed patient rolling and tumbling down a staircase with his wheelchair. There is also a mysterious phone number that seems to lead to a dead end, an unexplained switching of medicine, and characters whistling Mozart. Of course, Johnnie To has his own ideas about what constitutes a little night music.

Shun's gang goes to elaborate lengths to rescue their leader, as seen in the set piece, a series of tableaux of explosions and gunfire within the hospital floor. The action is rendered in extreme slo-mo, with the camera surveying the action with traveling shots circling the floor. On a technical level, this is spectacular, the artistry involved can not be denied. It's not a stretch to see this scene as To's claustrophobic version of the climactic massacre at the end of The Wild Bunch. The difference is that nihilism is integral to The Wild Bunch and Sam Peckinpah.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:32 AM

March 23, 2017

Tower

Keith Maitland - 2016
Kino Lorber BD Region A

I originally saw Tower last November or December as one of the end of the year screeners I receive for awards consideration. The emotional impact was wrenching, enough so that I could not bring myself to view the film a second time. But I did see all of the extras. For those unfamiliar, the title refers to the tower at the University of Texas in Austin, where a sniper, Charles Whitman, shot fourteen people and wounding thirty-one others, on August 1, 1966. Seeing several of the survivors from add to the testimony is still a moving experience. The other reason for seeing the extras is for the Q & A session that followed the screening of Tower at the SXSW Festival in Austin.

Tower has been acclaimed as a documentary. The inspiration was from a magazine article from several witnesses and survivors. But the work brings up questions regarding what qualifies this as a documentary. Similar to Ari Folman's Waltz with Bashir from 2008, Maitland has chosen to recreate the past with animation. One of the extras in Tower shows this process, with staged, film re-enactments based on witness narratives, redone as animated images. Maitland states that he chose this method of presentation so that the film would connect better with a younger audience. What may be disputed is whether a film might still be considered a documentary if what is viewed are recreations of events, either by actors, or by animation, or a combination of the two techniques?

What also could be a point of contention is that Charles Whitman remains virtually unknown here, a killer with no known motivation. What Tower does not mention is that prior to planting himself on the tower, Whitman had murdered his wife and mother, grew up learning how to shoot, and had been cited for his marksmanship as a Marine. An autopsy of Whitman also indicated that he had a brain tumor, although whether that contributed to his emotional state at the time is only speculative. Even though the victims were people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, Whitman's presence on the campus was not a random event. Also not mentioned is that Whitman was a student at the university.

What can not be denied is the power of Maitland's film, irrespective of some of the questions it may bring up. This was for me, one of the best film of last year, and very much worth seeing. I can't imagine anyone viewing Tower and not in some way being unmoved.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

March 21, 2017

Mondo Weirdo

Mondo Weirdo / Jungfrau am Abgrund
Carl Andersen - 1990
Cult Epics BD Regions ABC

Vampiros Sexos / I was a Teenage Zabbadoing
Carl Andersen - 1988
Cult Epics DVD

There isn't much written about Carl Andersen, and virtually nothing substantial in English. It turns out that the Austrian born filmmaker was originally named Karl Brazda. As indicated by the titles, Andersen's work has been inspired by the less critically reputable films from Hollywood and Europe. Mondo Weirdo carries a dedication to Jean-Luc Godard and Jesus Franco. Anyone who finds that odd is forgetting that Godard dedicated Breathless to Monogram Pictures, and that Godard and Franco have a few collaborators in common, including screen writer Jean-Claude Carriere and actor Howard Vernon. I would place Andersen as part of a list of so-called experimental filmmakers like the Kuchar Brothers and Ron Rice, whose films would serve as homages and parodies of the kind of films frequently dismissed as schlock. This is a subject may be in need of some deeper research, as the relationship to commercial cinema was not entirely one way: Ron Rice was able to make his film, The Flower Thief with 16mm film cartridges contributed by Monogram alumni, schlockmeister Sam Katzmann.

Neither of these films are truly narrative, but more of series of images of transgressive sex and violence, no budget cinema in 16mm black and white. Andersen even reveals that prior to making Vampiros Sexos, he was supporting himself working in an insurance office, while keeping his dream of making films alive. And the film themselves might be described best as dream-like, in that dreams are made up of a continuity of images that connect with each other even when there is no other logic to those images.

Vampiros Sexos benefits from having English subtitles, so there is some sense of what people are saying to each other. It's starting off point is that there is some contaminated olive oil that turns people into vampires. The title is clearly taken from Franco's Vampiros Lesbos, but the sex here gets even raunchier and more explicit. Unlike Franco, it's not just a combination of women or men and women, but also two guys very much together. The ending is quite funny and self-referential with the cast and crew declaring the filmmaking concluded.

Mondo Weirdo

I would think that what Andersen took from Godard was the sense of permission to shoot film out on the street of Vienna, at least that's what struck me a mostly Godardian. Mondo Weirdo might also be dubbed "Alice in Sappholand as a young woman, Odile, falls down a rabbit hole featuring a lesbian couple performing in a bar, and encounters with Elizabeth Bathory. Odile is played by an actress billed as Jessica Franco Manera, one of several creative pseudonyms used by some of Andersen's cast, although my favorite is the actor known as Pal-Secam. Andersen makes interesting use of dividing the screen into three parts with three different images simultaneously.

The most substantial writing on Andersen that I found was from a German retrospective. The Cult Epic collection, which includes an Andersen short, What's so Dirty about It?, also has parts of filmed interviews Andersen made with Anneliese Holles in 2012, prior to his death. Also included here is a CD of music by Modell Doo, the band contributing most of the soundtrack to the two films. While some of the music is quite melodic, there are also industrial sounds. The band's website has this wonderful cartoon of a couple dancing on the street to the sound of jackhammers, which says it all.

Vampiros Sexos

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:23 AM

March 14, 2017

The Lovers on the Bridge

Les Amants du Pont-Neuf
Leos Carax - 1991
Kino Classics BD Region A

At one point in The Lovers on the Bridge, Michele, a painter suffering from a degenerative eye disease describes what she sees as flashing blurry light. Sometimes I feel like I'm only seeing the surface of a movie, the images, the basic narrative, but I'm missing the deeper meanings.

For some, it may be enough that Leos Carax's film in available as a blu-ray disc, it the correct aspect ratio. But it's helpful also to read Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's essay, and the video essay by Adrian Martin and Cristina Alvarez Lopez. The video essay opens with a quote from Jean Vigo's L'Atalante about seeing the face of one's true love in the water. The quote refers to the moment of mutual recognition of the feelings that Alex and Michele have for each other, almost drowning while gazing in each others' eyes in the Seine, and rescued by a passing barge, similar to that of Vigo's film. The association with Vigo's film was so strong for me that I kept thinking that Michel Simon should be making a cameo appearance.

Somehow, not mentioned by anyone is that the eye doctor who cures Michele is named Destouches. Maybe any discussion of Louis-Ferdinand Celine is likely to open a particularly messy can of worms. But the final shots in The Lovers on the Bridge do evoke the last lines from Journey to the End of the Night especially - Far away, the tugboat hooted; calling across the bridge, the arches one by one, a lock, another bridge, further, further away.

The last name of Michele also happens to be Stalens, the last name of Juliette Binoche's mother.

Not much is known about Alex, the shambling mess of a young man, addicted to drugs and alcohol, who calls the aged Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris his home. Michele is an artist, plagued by memories of a lost love, rapidly losing her eyesight. These two are more battered and injured than the bridge, itself due for repairs. The story of the making of the film might be an even greater example of l'amour fou, with Carax first envisioning an intimate film shot in 8mm, only to take almost three years with star Denis Lavant injuring himself, filming taking place both on the real bridge and on an elaborate set, and production held up by uncertain financing.

What might be remembered most about The Lovers on the Bridge are some of the striking images - a lateral tracking shot of Binoche and Levant racing down the street against the soundtrack of David Bowie's "Time will Crawl", Levant's breathing fire while performing a cartwheel, and Lavant and Binoche and a sky full of fireworks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

March 07, 2017

Vera Cruz

Robert Aldrich - 1954
MGM Home Video BD Region A

Several cinephile friends and acquaintances have been discussing the television series, Feud, based on the rivalry of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford during production of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. While also a character in the series, the director of that film, Robert Aldrich, seems to have been pushed to the background. I haven't seen any episodes of Feud yet, but it is important to note that it was Aldrich who had the idea of getting Davis and Crawford together. Not only did Aldrich have to persuade the two actresses, but also studio head Jack Warner, as well. Aldrich had worked with Crawford previously on Autumn Leaves, in which we are to believe that mentally fragile Cliff Robertson finds happiness with Joan, after his previous wife has been seduced by Robertson's father, played by the older by eight years Lorne Greene. And keep in mind that Joan Crawford was older than both men. Jack Warner had a much longer history with Davis and Crawford when both were contract stars at Warner Brothers, and had doubts about any box office potential of two "old broads".

While several critics have pointed out to several classic films starring Davis and Crawford to get a better sense of what the actresses were like during the years that cemented their respective stardom, I propose that Robert Aldrich should be given is due. In thinking about his career, well before Baby Jane, Aldrich had also worked with several demanding male stars who also made a point of throwing their weight around. And the first was Burt Lancaster, for whom Aldrich directed two films, that Lancaster produced.

I had seen Vera Cruz once, quite a while ago on a black and white telecast. My interest in seeing it again was piqued by Alex Cox's book on Italian westerns, citing Aldrich's film as an inspiration with a plot that involved a series of double crosses, and Burt Lancaster, often seen dressed completely in black, as the charismatic mercenary, first seen selling Gary Cooper a stolen horse. Lancaster did make a point of making a couple of films with older actors he admired, Cooper here, and Clark Gable in Run Silent, Run Deep. And according to accounts, Cooper also made some demands known to Aldrich regarding what his character would or would not do. I'm not aware of Cooper and Lancaster having problems working together, unlike Gable and Lancaster four years later. What is also notable that Gable and Cooper were still considered viable movie stars well into their fifties, unlike Davis and Crawford.

While a widescreen Technicolor western that takes place largely in the rough terrain of Mexico is in terms of genre a world away from a black and white film taking place within an old mansion, Aldrich has several films with either a pair of characters, or a group, that may be at odds with each other, but more frequently will set aside their own agendas, at least temporarily, for a common goal. Baby Jane is about a relationship too severed to be overcome, with a feeling of regret for the sibling rivalry at the end, suggesting what have been had there been no automobile accident that defined the remaining lives of the Hudson sisters.

More than sixty years later, Vera Cruz will probably be of more interest to contemporary viewers for anticipating some the changes to be seen in future westerns, as well as glimpsing early performances by two actors who became iconic later in life. Certainly, Gary Cooper mowing down a Mexican army anticipates, among other films, a similar scene in The Wild Bunch. The plot of Americans loose in Mexico, hired to take sides in a revolution, has been visited several times. While historically correct, but an anomaly for a big budget western, Lancaster's gang includes the black actor-dancer, Archie Savage, a talent certainly underutilized on the big screen. When not blinded by the sight of Burt Lancaster flashing his famous, toothy smile, Ernest Borgnine and the actor formerly known as Charles Buchinsky can also be seen as part of Lancaster's gang. Aldrich uses his signature overhead shot to catch a glimpse of Denise Darcel's cleavage. That Aldrich later explored lesbian relationships in Killing of Sister George seems less surprising with a scene of Borgnine and Jack Elam dancing together, as well as a later scene with the seemingly most sophisticated, and well-dressed gang member dancing with someone wearing a full mask, only to be revealed as a short, gap toothed man. Hopefully, interest in Feud will generate renewed interest in Robert Aldrich and his films. Andrew Sarris describes the relationship between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis as combustible. I would say that this describes what goes on in almost every Robert Aldrich film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM

March 01, 2017

Bridge to the Sun

Etienne Perier - 1961
Warner Archives DVD

Not that there are exact parallels to be found, but it struck me as somewhat timely to see what was a mainstream movie of the time tackling interracial romance and concepts of patriotism and nationalism over fifty years later. The film is based on the autobiography of Gwen Terasaki nee Harold, a young woman from Johnson City, Tennessee, who married Japanese diplomat Hidenari Terasaki, in 1931. Rather than staying in the United States, Gwen chooses to stay with her husband in Japan during World War II. Gwen Terasaki returned to the U.S. with her daughter in 1949, while her husband remained in Japan due to ill health. Gwen Terasaki's book was reportedly a best seller at the time of publication in 1957.

Since Hollywood was still jittery about anything to do with interracial romance, it would appear that MGM got around the still active production code with what is essentially a French production of an English language film. For Hollywood, it would also be radical to have the leading man played by an actor of Asian descent, rather than a white actor in yellow-face. For those who have recently proclaimed the absurdity of an Asian man as a romantic lead in a Hollywood film, Bridge to the Sun is a reminder that it's been done, albeit very briefly, at a time when "Jim Crow" laws were still enforced.

James Shigeta's first screen role was as a detective, partnered with Glenn Corbett, in Sam Fuller's Los Angeles based mystery, The Crimson Kimono. Both men are in love with Victoria Shaw, but it is Shigeta who wins the girl at the end. If you know Sam Fuller, that ending should not be a surprise. Two years later, we have Shigeta winning the heart of Carroll Baker. And it's not that these two are in love with each other, but they are demonstrably in love with each other, getting kissy face several times throughout the film. Maybe no big deal now, but certainly one at the time that the film takes place, and even at the time when Bridge to the Sun was released. I was hoping to find some reviews of the film from 1961, but came up empty handed except for the New York Times, with Bosley Crowther's at his wisest, concluding, "Obviously, this is not a picture to be compared with Hiroshima, Mon Amour".

Director Etienne Perier would never be confused with Alain Resnais. Bridge to the Sun was the first of several English language films helmed by the Belgian born Perier, probably best remembered, if at all, for When Eight Bells Toll, a failed attempt to launch a spy franchise with Anthony Hopkins. Charles Kaufman's script greatly abridges Terasaki's life which included her husband being assigned posts in Cuba and China prior to World War II, as well as acting as a liaison between the Japanese government and U.S. forces after the war. Too often, James Shigeta and the other Japanese actors, including Tetsuro Tamba, have English language dialogue that is more like Hollywood's idea of how Japanese speak. Compared to other films of the time, the orientalism is not as heavy-handed.

The single best moment requires no dialogue with a scene of Baker and her young daughter traveling by train to the countryside to avoid the bombings of Tokyo. The train briefly stops en route while a group of men are working on some tracks. The men are white, possibly American soldiers doing forced labor. Baker shares an extended look outside her rain speckled window at one of the men. There is a sense of mutual helplessness, that both are prisoners of war.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

February 21, 2017

Cold War II

Hon Zin 2
Longman Leung and Sunny Luk - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

There the small hurdle of watching a sequel that was filmed four years after the first film, taking place about year after the first Cold War left off. Essentially, Joe Lee, a member of a gang of corrupt cops, is imprisoned by police commissioner Sean Lau. Lee is the son of a rival police commissioner, who was to gained political favor had the son's shenanigans not been exposed. In the meantime, Lau's family is threatened by an unknown person seeking Joe Lee's release.

Visually, much of Cold War ii is about Hong Kong as a tiny city-state where space is limited. There is an abstract quality with the very tall, steel and glass, skyscrapers where the more cerebral parts of the film take place, with discussions of power, politics and corruption. There are also frequent overhead shots of the various lines designating traffic lanes. At one point, the abstraction goes further when Leung and Luk cut between Aaron Kwok and Chow Yun-fat diagraming their theories. It is also telling that the three main action set-pieces take place in enclosed spaces - a subway station, a tunnel, and in a junk yard lined with stacks of abandoned cars.

The rivalry between Lau and former commissioner, M. B. Lee, father of Joe Lee, has escalated, with senior legislator caught in the middle. Aaron Kwok, as Lau, is the star with the bulk of action scenes, while Tony Leung Ka-fai as Lee, and Chow as the legislator Kan rely primarily on a dialogue hiding their respective agendas. Unsurprisingly, Tony Leung has been nominated by Best Actor at the Hong Kong Film Awards, having set aside any hint that he was formerly a romantic lead, now with his closed cropped hair, playing a man with a very muddled moral code. It also struck me that Eddie Peng, playing Joe Lee, may be erroneously groomed to be an action hero as indicated in the past films he has starred in, when he seems much stronger here as antagonistic punk, and might be better served in more anti-hero roles.

Of the supplements, the most interesting is the one discussing the action set-pieces. The most elaborate of these is the scene in the tunnel, with a multiple car crash followed by Aaron Kwok shooting it out with a gang of bad guys. Unlike the scenes shots in a real subway station and junk yard, what takes place in the tunnel is a very convincing integration of green screen, practical and computer generated effects. What I also find interesting about Cold War II is that it seems to be part of a more pronounced trend of Hong Kong action movies supported by the deeper pockets of the mainland China film industry. Also, of no surprise especially to those who saw the first Cold War is that the ending of this new film opens the door for another sequel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 AM

February 07, 2017

Bleak Street

La calle de la amargura
Arturo Ripstein - 2015
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

Bleak Street may not be the best film for those unfamiliar with the work of Arturo Ripstein. For those who have seen The Place without Limits or Castle of Purity, Ripstein's newest film is a visit to familiar territory. What begins as a series of seemingly unrelated vignettes linked by a few crumbling blocks within Mexico City, evolves into a story about the fatal encounter between two twin brothers and two aging prostitutes. The brothers are both midget wrestlers, and amazingly, the film is inspired by a true incident. The title more literally translates as "The street of bitterness".

Ripstein's films are often about characters and their families who live in the margins of society. What took me a while to absorb is that with the wrestlers, prostitutes, assorted riffraff and family members filmed from a distance in medium or full shots, Ripstein's real interest was in the neighborhood. Ripstein has talked about how his early films were shot in black and white, and so it is here, almost fifty years since he began his career. This is a chiaroscuro dream of sorts, with limited flashes of light, and lots of deep blacks and shadows. Several shots are through bars, lattices and ornamental metal work. Rooms and streets are virtually barren. The exterior shots were filmed three blocks away from where the real life brothers lived.

The brothers live in figurative shadows as "mascots" to two wrestlers, sharing the pseudonyms of Death and AK-47, but with their size and status emphasized with the added appellation of Little. One of the prostitutes lives with her elderly mother, physically incapable, and trotted out in a wheel chair with a small, empty can to beg for a few pesos. The prostitutes are rapidly losing their business to younger girls, with the mother indicating their grim, and seemingly inevitable future. Love and money are never too far apart, and there is never quite enough of either.

Ripstein began his career as an assistant to Luis Bunuel on The Exterminating Angel, starring Sivia Pinal. There could well be a gesture of taking that career full circle with the casting of Pinal's daughter, Sylvia Pasquel, as one of the two prostitutes who have that fatal date with the twin brothers. Ripstein's final word, or last laugh, in a narrative devoid of a music track, is one of a perverse love of his hometown, with a 65 year old song performed by Spaniard Luis Mariano, in French, with lyrics, "Mexico City, Mexico City ...
Under your singing sun,
Time seems too short
To taste the happiness of every day
Mexico City, Mexico City ...
Your women are burning
And you will always be
The Paradise of Hearts."

More on two early films by Arturo Ripstein from Kimberly Lindbergs at FilmStruck.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:58 AM

February 01, 2017

Two Nights with Coffin Joe

At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul / A Meia-Noite Levarei Sua Alma
Jose Mojica Marins - 1964

This Night I'll Possess Your Corpse / Esta Noite Encarnarei no Teu Cadaver
Jose Mojica Marins - 1967
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Halloween comes a bit early this year with the release of the first two Coffin Joe films on new DVDs with a bunch of extras. I'm something of a latecomer here, having read about the films, but not seeing them until now. At Midnight I'll Take Your Soul is notable for being Brazil's first horror film, made around the same time as Brazilian filmmakers of about the same age were making the first wave of films that were part of the Cinema Novo movement. In one of the supplements, Mojica discusses showing is tiny studio set to Glauber Rocha, probably the most famous of the Cinema Nova filmmakers. Glenn Kenny shares anecdotes about that connection. It's not just a matter of genre, but in creation of a character that is specifically Brazilian, with Mojica taking on church and state, both off and on-screen.

Mojica wrote the first film in response to a nightmare in which he was dragged by a faceless being to see his tombstone. The character, known in Portuguese as Ze do Caixao, is an undertaker, always seeking the "perfect" woman to bear his son. Only a few are attracted to this bearded man in black, with the cape and top hat. Those who reject Coffin Joe, or get hysterical discovering themselves sharing a bed with a handful of big-ass spiders are dispatched in a variety of brutal ways. Men who attempt to stand up to Coffin Joe, or worse, attempt to kill him, lose fingers with a deftly placed broken bottle, or Joe's long nailed fingers stuck in their eyes.

I would guess that Mojica had seen one or two films from William Castle, as Midnight opens with a cackling witch warning viewers to leave the theater or get ready to be shocked. Coffin Joe lives in open rebellion of all religions, beliefs, and mores, starting with a feast of lamb eaten on Good Friday. The shot of Joe chewing on a leg, while a procession led by a priest is seen through a window in the back, is Mojica's opening shot that nothing is sacred, an image that has brought comparisons to Luis Bunuel. The film is mostly a triumph against a very austere budget, with one special effect achieved by gluing glitter onto the negative.

The popular appeal of the first film enabled production of the second Coffin Joe film. Seemingly left for dead, shocked at the sight of his victims putrefying bodies in their respective coffins, the second film takes up at the moment the first film ends. Eyes bulging out of their sockets, Joe is hospitalized, with bandages on his face, recovering completely. Going to a small town to serve as undertaker, the mission to find the perfect woman continues. Rescuing a young boy from getting hit by a motorcyclist, Joe lets us know that he loves children. It's the adults they grow up to be that he hates. Aiding Joe is his hunchbacked servant, Bruno. Bruno has a face that appears to have had a close encounter with a cheese grater.

Not only does this second film have better production values, but Mojica pushes the envelop with both the sex and horror. Six would-be fiancees spend the night at Joe's wearing panties and diaphanous nighties, appropriate for a night interrupted by the nocturnal visit of dozens of spiders, each the size of a man'm fist. While the film was made in 1967, the town and its people could easily be from ten or twenty years earlier. And yet, the color sequence, when Coffin Joe goes to hell can rightly be called psychedelic in its use of color. That sequence is an elaboration of Mojica's inspirational dream. Human statues, a parade of crawling sinners, body parts sticking out of walls, and a riot of lurid colors, horrifying Joe, and delighting the viewer.

Both DVDs contain interviews with Mojica discussing the making of his films. Additionally, Midnight includes an excerpt from an earlier film, Reino Sangrento from 1952, quasi-Arabian Nights historical fantasy, shot in 16mm. The title translates as "Bloody Kingdom". This Night includes the short documentary, The Universe of Mojica Marins, with glimpses of Mojica's other films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:57 AM

January 24, 2017

Wax Mask

Maschera di cera
Sergio Stivaletti - 1997
One 7 Movies BD Region 0

Having read about Wax Mask, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. What was planned to be a comeback film for Lucio Fulci turned out to be the directorial debut of special effects creator Sergio Stivaletti. The screenplay is credited to Fulci, sometime Fulci collaborator Daniele Stroppa, and producer Dario Argento. Unofficially inspired by a story from Phantom of the Opera author, Gaston Leroux, as well as Mystery of the Wax Museum (Michael Curtiz - 1933) and House of Wax (Andre De Toth - 1953), the film is a loving tribute to the classic horror films of the 1930s, juiced up with graphic gore and partial nudity.

There's this wonderful scene with an attractive female victim strapped to a table in a basement laboratory. The partially seen killer is ready to prepare the woman to become one of the wax figures, in a museum devoted to killers, victims, and mythical demons. On one of the walls are four large tubes of what I assume is colored water - blue, red, orange and green, bubbling away. There are also flashes of electric sparks, the kind first associated with James Whale's Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. The killer, disguised in a heavy black coat, fedora, and metal hand, is reminiscent of Peter Lorre in Mad Love. It's not just taking some of the iconic images from older horror films into a new package, but filming them with in deliriously lurid colors.

Veteran French actor, Robert Hossein, in his last major role, plays the proprietor of the wax museum, Boris Volkoff. Romina Modello is the young costume designer, Sonia, who is employed by Volkoff to dress the wax figures. As a young girl, on New Year's Eve, 1900, Sonia witnessed the gruesome murder of her parents. Twelve years later, Sonia attempts to face her fears. Coincidences, some plot holes and a couple of anachronisms follow, but the film is so visually sumptuous that it didn't really matter.

And directorial credit aside, Wax Mask primarily shows the hand of Dario Argento, much in the way that the first The Thing resembles the other films by Howard Hawks, rather than subsequent films by Christian Nyby. There are a couple of point of view traveling shots. A later shot with a face seen as a reflection of glass recalls Deep Red. The discovery by a photographer that the wax figures are actually human victims is similar to the quasi-scientific explanations found in some of Argento's gialli. Additionally, there is Argento's demonstrated love for classic films, mostly demonstrated in his previous casting of Alida Valli, Joan Bennett and Clara Calamai, among others. I would think that Argento had a hand in casting Hossein based on the actor's past history as frequently playing villains, as well as Hossein having a small, uncredited role in Once Upon a Time . . . in the West, which Argento helped write.

The French silent short, Figures in Wax, made by Maurice Tourneur in 1914, is mentioned by the photographer, while the camera pans by a poster in a later scene. Eleven minutes long, it is also a partial inspiration for the story, as well as some of the imagery. You can see it on YouTube, and very much worth checking out, especially in conjunction with this gorgeous blu-ray full of its own visual pleasures.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:31 AM

January 20, 2017

Force of Evil

Abraham Polonsky - 1948
Olive Films Region 1 DVD

An overdue promise I finally kept to myself after about ten years was to revisit Force of Evil. For myself, Abraham Polonsky's film will be linked with Robert Aldrich's Hustle. Aldrich was the Assistant Director on Force of Evil, but more importantly, Aldrich's film serves as a reworking of some of the same themes, most explicitly in the scene when cop Burt Reynolds declares to Ben Johnson, the father of a young woman who died of a drug overdose, that America is now a banana republic, "with color television". Force of Evil is as much a crime drama as is Hustle, which is to say what both films are really about is people caught up in inescapable webs of corruption. (And strangely enough, both films opened on Christmas day of their respective years, 1948 and 1975.)

John Garfield plays the lawyer Joe Morse, working on behalf of a gangster, Tucker, who runs the numbers racket. With so many people choosing the same number, 776, on July 4, the goal is to deliberately bankrupt the smaller "banks", allowing Tucker to consolidate the small-time operators into his fold, with Morse working on making this kind of gambling legal. One of those small banks belongs to Joe's brother, Leo, who would rather operate independently than sell out for a larger payroll. Everyone in this film is touched by corruption, even Leo's secretary, Doris, whom both Leo and Joe try to protect. Doris eventually follows Joe to his most literal descent to the bottom.

It would seem that almost seventy years later, there is more ease, more openness about selling out, no matter the relationships, or who gets hurt in the process. It doesn't take much to turn the story of a monopoly of the numbers racket into a story of corporate mergers or leveraged buy outs. The brothers attempt to make their questionable livelihoods more respectable, with Joe stating that he is in a "fiduciary relationship" with Tucker, while Leo makes claims of being an "honest businessman". I don't feel it necessary to name anyone in recent history who put their personal ambition ahead at the expense of another family member.

Joe Morse's anticipation of his million dollar payday is almost a parody of those who play the numbers, presented here as anonymous working people of modest means. As impassioned as Polonsky was politically, Force of Evil is remembered because of what Polonsky did as a filmmaker. Several others have discussed the use of language, liking the screenplay to blank verse. I thought of song lyrics, with the repetition of small phrases, as when Doris repeats, "I'll never forget . . ." when resigning from Leo's bank.

David Thomson discusses the use of language, and also the use of staircases. Three key moments take place with Joe descending staircases, and all three directly involve decisions that affect Leo. In two of those scenes, the camera is overhead, while in the final scene, the camera tilts up at Joe as he races down to the base of the George Washington bridge. Polonsky allows for visual beauty in shots of Joe, seen in the distance, dwarfed by the buildings around Wall Street and an unusually empty New York City.

I haven't read the source novel, Tucker's People, by Ira Wolfert, but from the available descriptions, Polonsky and Wolfert, who share the screenplay credit, significantly reshaped the story, as well as the characters. What neither probably anticipated is that their examination of the perverse forces of capitalism, and a world of moral flexibility, would still reverberate, in some ways, more so, almost seventy years later.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:12 AM

January 17, 2017

Train to Busan

Busanhaeng
Yeon Sang-ho - 2016
Well Go USA BD Region A

The train travels between Seoul and Busan. In terms of genre, this Train travels somewhere in the middle, combining violence and horror a bit more explicit than to be found in a Val Lewton production, while using a lighter touch following George Romero's use of zombie films as social commentary. While Train to Busan was a big hit in its native South Korea, it will be interesting if it gets embraced, teetering as it does between the demands and expectations of fans of zombie movies, and that smaller audience that has no fear of subtitles, but view genre films with a certain amount of suspicion.

What is certain is the skills Yeon Sang-ho developed as an animator are on display in his live action directorial debut. If Hollywood wanted to make a comic book movie that looked like its source material, Yeon's your guy. Between the dynamic camera work, and the placing of characters within the frame, there are many moments when Train to Busan looks like a live comic book. Yeon emphasizes the limitations of space within a train, that one can mostly move forwards or towards the back within that enclosed space. Again, harking back to Val Lewton and the adage that what you don't see is more scary than what you do see, Yeon plays with the dread of what is outside of the what can be seen by the viewer. One of the more violent moments is seen as shadows against a clouded window, smeared with a few streaks of blood.

Shamed by inattention to his young daughter, Su-an, stockbroker Seok-woo tries to make amends by escorting her on the hour long train trip to Busan to see her mother, his ex-wife. A panicked, infected woman sneaks on the train, attacks a couple of train attendants, biting into them, resulting in an enclosed train full of ravenous zombies. It's up to the dwindling number of uninfected passengers to fight off the zombies as well as find a safe place within South Korea. If the zombies on the train weren't enough, there is the possibility that the rest of the country is infected. As might be expected, the main characters present a small cross-section of South Korean society. Seok-woo's connection to the zombie apocalypse is referred to indirectly with his comment on his employees as lemmings, while the zombies act as a an unthinking group, responding only to what they can see or hear. Upon learning of his occupation, the working class lug Sang-hwa calls Seok-woo a bloodsucker.

The while these are running zombies, most of the time, they are not very smart, as demonstrated when the windows of a glass door are covered with newspaper, hiding the would-be victims. Often they move like spastic marionettes. The film itself moves something like a train, slowly building up steam before moving ahead with little pause.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:27 AM

January 15, 2017

The Monkey King 2

Xi you ji zhi: Sun Wukong san da Baidu Jing
Cheang Pou-soi - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

For those who are more casual observers of Chinese cinema, this is not to be confused with the Stephen Chow-Derek Kwok series titled Journey to the West. Cheang's three part series is based on the same story of the Monkey King, something that has proven not to be an obstacle for the home audience, with both series doing quite well at the box office. What may be somewhat baffling is that Cheang's second film has a different Monkey King, with Aaron Kwok replacing Donnie Yen, who starred as the title character a couple years back.

Kwok is burlier and hairier, but like Yen, not quickly recognizable with all that make-up. Sammo Hung has stepped in for action choreography, replacing Yen's martial arts and athleticism with Kwok standing his ground with a golden staff. Even though Cheang's films were intended as a trilogy, one could pretty much enjoy this second entry without seeing the first, dispensing with the distraction of a change of stars, plus the added confusion of Kwok starring as the evil demon in that earlier film.

The journey is from China to India, with the Monkey King, imprisoned for causing havoc in Heaven, accidentally freed from under a mountain, and directed to accompany a young monk who is to retrieve some Buddhist scriptures. For the Monkey King, it is a challenge to keep his impulsiveness under control, especially the urge to kill his enemies. While the first film emphasized the playfulness of the Monkey King, this second film is more philosophically serious, which is to say, there is just enough gravitas amidst the elaborate make-up, costumes and special effects.

The best special effect here is Gong Li. Maybe there was a bit of digital work done here in addition to the occasional furry eye brows that appear from time to time, but as the White Bone Demon, Gong Li is totally gorgeous. If she needs to drink to stay young looking, or eat the flesh of a devout monk to remain an immortal demon, she's got my sympathy.

The adaptation of the story is loose enough to allow for Kwok to have a sword fight with White Bone Demon's army of skeletons. And while special effects have come quite a ways from Jason and the Argonauts, the obvious inspiration here, the scene also unintentionally, for those who've seen both films, show why computer generated special effects aren't so special for some of us. The older, hand-crafted stop-motion animation of the skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts represents the challenge of imagination against the limitations of the technology available at the time, allowing the viewer to actively collaborate with the filmmakers in the suspension of disbelief. Computer generated special effects essentially emphasize the passivity of the viewer.

While Cheang Pou-soi may be enjoying some rewards with bigger budget films with battles in the heavens, I hope it's not too long before he returns to more earthbound stories. While there is some thematic similarity with stories of violent, antagonistic loners who unexpectedly find redemption, Cheang's best work is to be found in the streets of Accident and Dog Eat Dog.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:09 AM

December 20, 2016

The Devil Lives Here

O Diabo Mora Aqui
Rodrigo Gasparini and Dante Vescio - 2015
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

While my knowledge of Brazilian culture and history is minimal, my reaction to The Devil Lives Here is that there is more to this film than simply the dramatic recreation of an urban legend. In the early Seventies, I was able to see a few films by young Brazilian filmmakers, peers to the various filmmakers around the globe at that time whose cinema was considered new. In this case, it was known as "Cinema Novo". The most significant filmmaker of that movement was Glauber Rocha, whose films mixed history, politics and some of the mystic folk beliefs of Brazil. One of Rocha's most famous films is titled, Black God, White Devil.

I thought of Rocha's film because there is a racial dynamic established immediately in this new film. The narrative shifts between a quartet of white kids, a pair of mestizo young men, both taken place in the present, with the third narrative strand being the confrontation between a wealthy white landowner and a mestizo beekeeper in the unspecified past. The beekeeper is murdered and the bee hives burned down by the white landowner. There is a curse, that results in forces of the dead to be revived, seriously by the mestizo youths, and as an elaborate prank by one of the white young men. Most of the writing about The Devil Lives Here compares that film to Candyman, Bernard Rose's film inspired by an urban legend of a murderous ghost brought back to life.

And perhaps I am reading more into this film than was ever intended, but I would assume that there are elements to this film that would be understood by a Brazilian audience, but overlooked by many viewers in North America. Aside from the historical aspects, such as when Brazil was a slave-holding country, there are matters of cultural colonialism and appropriation. The young white artist, Apolo, has taken the basement where real horror took place, and painted a large pentagram, with candles planted at various points. Whatever he thought he was doing, he liberates forces he really doesn't know or can control. Even the young mestizo who thinks he knows what he's doing in trying to control the situation finds himself over his head. What follows are the more familiar tropes of violent death and demonic possession.

The Devil Lives Here is the feature debut of Gasparini and Vescio. Previously, they had made their mark with the short, "M is for Mailbox", part of The ABCs of Death, Part 2. Much of the horror is by suggestion, with the use of light, shadow and elliptical editing. This is the kind of film that can be enjoyed simply on a visceral level, yet suggests that that there is much more to be appreciated and understood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:46 AM

November 30, 2016

Call of Heroes

Ngai Sing
Benny Chan - 2016
Well Go Entertainment BD Region A

Call of Heroes starts off with some visual and musical queues taken from Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone, before taking on the brutality more associated with Sam Peckinpah. Chan's film can be read as a sort of western, taking place in rural China, in 1914, where the only mode of transportation is by horse. The main characters resemble the kind of archetypes one often finds in westerns, with Eddie Peng as the wandering hero, Sean Lau as the sheriff in above his head, and Louis Koo as the totally amoral, murderous villain. Without pressing the point to hard here, Call of Heroes would be part of what might be called a cinematic dialogue beginning with John Ford's influence on Akira Kurosawa, reinterpreted by John Sturges, Leone and Peckinpah, and back to Asian filmmakers such as Hideo Gosha and Benny Chan.

Initially, Call of Heroes recalls the Leone produced My Name is Nobody, with Eddie Peng in the kind of role more associated with Terence Hill than Clint Eastwood. Sleeping at his table in the rough little roadside restaurant, the bearded Peng's slovenly appearance belies his lethal capabilities, unleashed when woken up to an attempted robbery in the restaurant. Similar to the kind of laid back ethos of Hill's on-screen characters, Peng blindfolds himself, letting his horse decide on the next destination.

The basic plot would appear to be inspired by Rio Bravo, with Cao, the son of a warlord imprisoned after murdering three people. The small town of Pucheng is threatened with destruction by Cao's army unless the sheriff releases Cao. Any resemblance to Howard Hawks begins and ends at this point.

Action director Sammo Hung gets his screen credit immediately after Chan. The four main characters each have their own weapon, with Peng handling swords, Louis Koo's Cao known for his golden gun, Sean Lau's sheriff wielding a whip, and Cao's right hand man, played by Wu Jing, using a spear. Most of the fights are filmed with two to four characters within the frame, intercut with brief close ups of detail within the the action. Visually, the most impressive of the action set pieces is a duel between Peng and Wu on top of what appear to be thousands of clay urns all laid sideways, on top of each other to form a small hill. One can only guess at how the film might have looked when viewed in 3D as was seen by Chinese audiences, with my favorite single shot that of the camera looking directly at Sean Lau behind his whip swirling in front of the screen.

The blu-ray comes with a "Making of . . " bonus that is essentially a series of very short vignettes. The previously mentioned duel between Peng and Wu took almost three weeks to film. The main set was built from scratch in Shaoxing Province, south of Shanghai. As in classic Chinese language martial arts films, there is a lot of wire work, and here we can see just how complex it is to create the appearance of physical dexterity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

November 15, 2016

I Drink Your Blood

David Durston - 1971
Grindhouse Releasing BD Two-disc set Regions ABC

While it's touched upon in the liner notes for this new blu-ray release, what really struck me about I Drink Your Blood can be viewed as a parable about Richard Nixon's America. Taking place in a small, virtual ghost town, the remaining population is a handful of white people and a nearby construction crew. It's not enough that the visiting outsiders are devil worshipping hippies, but that the scariest of them include their East Indian leader, one very tall African-American, and what appears to be the archetypical Oriental Dragon lady, played by Jadine Wong, niece of Anna May Wong. Whether conscious or not, the threat in Blood are very clearly representative of the otherness that was, and for some, still is, what frightened "Middle America".

I have some vague memories of seeing the newspaper ads for the double feature of I Drink Your Blood and I East Your Skin from the time the films were released in February 1971. To be honest, I was living in New York City at the time, as a "serious" film student, mostly catching up on classics and European art films. As it turns out, the scariest images are those on that double feature poster. I can imagine that watching the film theatrically, the section of Blood that would cause the most screaming would be of the rats, hunted and barbecued. Of course the scene with the hippies gorging on meat pies tainted with the blood of a rabid dog would get the crowds whooping and hollering.

Does anyone know if David Cronenberg had seen Blood? Unless there's a film I'm unaware of, Writer-director David Durston may well have been the first to present horror through sexual transmission, well before Cronenberg's Shivers / They Came from Within. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Cronenberg's followup was Rabid. There is also that Lynn Lowry connection. I had first seen Lowry in Shivers, which was the first film to lure me to 42nd Street (because the New Amsterdam was the only theater in New York City showing the film, and I had read great things about Cronenberg in "Take One" magazine). Lowry's not credited here, and it was through reviewing the cast and crew list in IMDb that I realized the identity of that cute, mute girl who has dangerous ways with an electric carving knife.

Why a two-disc set? On Disc One, the complete theatrical version of Blood as approved by producer Jerry Gross. There is also Durston's preferred version which runs a little longer, has some humor that Gross cut out, and a better, more disturbing, ending. Plus there are commentary tracks by Duston and star Bhaskar (full name Bhaskar Roy Chowdhury) from the earlier DVD release, and a new commentary by actors Jack Damon and Tyde Kierney. Also cast interviews and an "Easter Egg".

Disc Two features I Eat Your Skin which was the Gross retitling of a Del Tenney film known either as Zombies or Zombie Massacre. No skin is eaten. Made around the same time that Tenney made Horror of Party Beach, Skin managed to sit on the shelf for seven years before Jerry Gross figured out how to show the film to an unsuspecting public. It's not scary, but it is mildly entertaining. A writer, modeled after Harold Robbins, is invited to a hidden Caribbean island where a doctor is finding a cure for cancer. The zombies turn out to be heavily drugged locals with eyes that look like friend eggs, and skin the texture of cottage cheese. Filmed in Florida, Tenney's zombies might be considered the unintended missing link between Jacques Tourneur and Lucio Fulci. The chief villain is portrayed by Walter Coy, most famous for playing the part of John Wayne's brother in The Searchers.

There's also the inclusion of Durston's soft core mystery, Blue Sextet, in which six people gather to discuss their relationship with the mutual friend, whose death was either suicide or murder. Even for a soft core film, the sex scenes are quite tame. For younger viewers, Blue Sextet is an example of that brief time shortly after movie ratings were introduced, when even some of the major studios released films dealing with erotic matters. As is usual for Grindhouse Releasing, there is an abundance of bonus features.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:02 AM

November 10, 2016

Denver Film Festival: Bang! The Bert Berns Story

Brett Berns and Bob Sarles - 2016
Ravin' Films

Even with Bert Berns' eldest son, Brett, as a producer and co-director, Bang! The Bert Berns Story is hardly a hagiography. Even if the name Bert Berns is unfamiliar, it would seem to me almost impossible for anyone to not have even fleetingly heard a song Berns wrote, or had his hand in as a producer. And if one had to whittle the list down to one song, that would have to be "Twist and Shout".

Bang! is something of a documentary about the short, colorful life of Bert Berns, but what is also of interest is the history of some of the individual songs. In the case of "Twist and Shout", a more frenetic version produced by Phil Spector, sung by the vocal group, The High Notes, was recorded in 1961. Berns felt that Spector ruined the song he had in mind. Still just getting himself established in the music industry, Berns produced the version sung by the Isley Brothers that proved to be a much bigger hit, soon catching the ears of a struggling British rock band cutting their first singles.

Bert Berns was very much a part of the history of popular music of the 1960s. As a teen who use to obsessively read liner notes on record albums back at that time, I had come across Berns' name several times. The then thirty-one year old songwriter had his first hit writing "A Little Bit of Soap", with hits first as a song writer, and later a producer, culminating in Berns' having his own label, Bang!, best known for Van Morrison's early solo hits and introducing a singer-songwriter named Neil Diamond.

The narration was written by Joel Selvin, author of the biography, Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues, and read by Steven Van Zandt, in his inimitable voice. The film is a combination of documentary footage of musicians performing Berns' songs, as well as street scenes of New York City, and interviews with Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Solomon Burke, Cissy Houston, as well as fellow songwriters of the era including Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry. Among the family members, most significant is Berns' wife, Ilene, who is frank in discussing some of the darker aspects of Berns' life.

Which leads us to Carmine DeNoia, who may have not been a gangster, but knew people, and could be intimidating when he felt it necessary. DeNoia's few stories would suggest the best music industry movie or series that Martin Scorsese never made. Even without DeNoia, we still have an amazing story of a young man who outlived predictions of an early death due rheumatic fever, and overcame years of setbacks to be associated with some of the most popular songs recorded, before dying, at age thirty-eight, on New Years Eve, 1967. Even if Berns' life was not totally happy, and it is pointed out that there are several songs with "Cry" as part of the title, there are humorous moments, such as the story of that fake Australian band, The Strangeloves. That Berns' songs continue to get cover versions is enough of a reminder that many of these fifty year old songs are more than "Golden Oldies".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:59 AM

November 04, 2016

Denver Film Festival: Zoology

Zoologiya
Ivan Tverdovsky - 2016

A middle-aged woman faints at work, and later wakes up to find she has a tail. Not just a small growth, but something two feet long, that wags and twitches. It's the kind of premise that might be the basis of a comedy, but is instead is much darker. The second feature by Russian filmmaker Ivan Tverdovsky, by the end of the film, I concluded that even well into this current century, there are beliefs so ingrained from past eras.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, the plain Natasha works at a small zoo, where she gets along better with the caged animals, than with trio of female co-workers who subject Natasha to cruel humor. There is no explanation as to how Natasha got the tail, but what ensues is a sometimes painful journey of self-discovery. In trying to get a satisfactory x-ray of the tail for a doctor, Natasha meets the younger x-ray technician, Petya, who indicates interest in Natasha. Getting her hair styled, wearing make-up, Natasha makes tentative steps towards a relationship with Petya.

In the meantime, as relayed by her mother, and people within her neighborhood, Natasha hears rumors of the existence of a witch, with a tail, who brings death and disease with her. The rumors, as rumors often do, become more outlandish, with Natasha even adding to the legend when speaking to one gullible woman.

I don't think it's much of a stretch to assume that with the film title, Tverdovskiy views all of his characters as animals of one kind or another. In interviews, Tverdovskiy speaks of his film as being about the demands for conformity in contemporary Russia. With the reference to witches, Natasha's mother's deeply held religious beliefs, and even Natasha's visit to a fortune teller, there is this sense that spiritually, Russia is no different than it was five-hundred years ago. I even briefly thought that if discovered for her tail, Natasha would be burned at the stake. Countering the old superstitions, Tverdovskiy also takes some potshots at new age philosophy.

Running less that ninety minutes, Zoology might have benefitted from a little, er, fleshing out, with some brief explanations for a couple of scenes. Tverdovskiy's had previously directed eight documentaries, with the camera here darting between characters in several scenes. That the story goes into a very unexpected, and potentially controversial, direction is to Tverdovskiy's credit.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:02 AM

November 01, 2016

Lost / Assassins

The Lost Bladesman / Guan yun chang
Alan Mak & Felix Chong - 2011
Anchor Bay Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Reign of Assassins / Jian yu
Su Chao-Bin and John Woo - 2010
Anchor Bay Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Two Chinese language martial arts films rescued from the shelves of Harvey Weinstein. I have to wonder if The Lost Bladesman is getting an overdue home video release due to its two stars also appearing in a much anticipated science fiction epic, in roles somewhat similar to the ones they have in this film. Also puzzling, for myself, is with the success of Infernal Affair and especially the Martin Scorsese remake, the team of Mak and Chong haven't had any significant stateside releases since Initial D. Better late than never, though I'm still hoping the pair's Overheard series is given a shot for North American viewers.

This is yet another adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, albeit one that is loosely inspired by the classic. The main narrative centers on the uneasy alliance between Cao Cao (Jiang Wen) and Guan (Donnie Yen), two enemy generals in the battles for unifying China between 169 AD and 280 AD. Guan also acts as protector for Qilan, the concubine of the warlord Liu Bei, and the object of Guan's unstated love.

Literary or historical fidelity is of less interest than the action set pieces here. Donnie Yen also served as the action director, which works well in conjunction with some of the visual stylization. Guan's weapon of choice is a long blade attached like a spear. In one scene, he is pursued through a series of narrow alleyways, and at one point uses his blade to tear off rooftop tiles, which fall upon his pursuer. There is also a scene that might have been inspired by Track of the Cat, taking place in an almost monochrome set of white, black and gray, with red gates and pillars. Perhaps also taking its queue from Hollywood classics is a fight unseen when the compound doors are closed, and the viewer is left with the sounds of Guan fighting a team of soldiers, until the doors open again.

As much as I usually like Donnie Yen, historical veracity might have been better ignored rather than trying to look past the obviously fake looking wig and beard. As it is, that's not Yen's voice, but someone else speaking Mandarin on behalf of the star from Hong Kong. And while there is disclaimer stating that no animals were harmed in the production, I certainly hope that is the case with what appears to be a tripped horse that catapults Yen, flying into a fight, in spectacular fashion.

As in Infernal Affairs, Buddhism is touched upon here, though more briefly. In discussion with a monk, Cao Cao discusses the perceptions of heaven and hell and how elements of each can be found in either state of being. There are also some beautifully filmed quiet moments, as when Guan encounters Cao Cao in a rice field with the harvesting farmers.

Reign of Assassins is an attempt at bringing back the old school Hong Kong martial arts film, with wire work, editing tricks and and twisty swords. There is some historical basis in that there was a monk named Bohdidharma who introduced Buddhism to China as well as the foundation for kung fu. Known throughout this film as Bodhi, rival gangs are in pursuit of the remains, based on a legend that whomever is in possession will have great magical powers. The female assassin known as Drizzle snatches the upper torso of Bodhi, gets facial surgery, and tries to live as an ordinary woman. Known as Zhen Jing, she marries a poor stranger who turns out to be a man, also with facial surgery, who she would have murdered had she known that his internal organs were reversed.

Su Chao-Bin showed much promise with his directorial debut, the horror film, Silk. Since then, most of his career has been as screenwriter for other directors. Su also provided the story for the enjoyable College Confidential which I caught at the Udine Far East Film Festival. How much of the film was actually directed by John Woo may be a matter of dispute, though he was certainly on the set. Even the presence of Michelle Yeoh doesn't make this attempt at reviving Nineties style wuxia more interesting. Barbie Hsu almost steals the film as the conniving assassin, Turquoise, who has no problem shedding her clothes when it serves her purposes, only to be embarrassed when her attempt at seduction totally fails.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:43 AM

October 28, 2016

Nurse Diary: Beast Afternoon

Kangofu nikki: Kemonojimita gogo
Naosuke Kurosawa - 1982
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

It's been over a year since the last Nikkatsu pink film was released by Impulse Pictures. I hope the series continues, although my own preference is with the older films should they be available. I have no idea if the English title is actually a translation from the Japanese title. In any event, what goes on takes place over more than one afternoon.

Nurse Diary: Beast Afternoon often made me think of Jesus Franco with the basic story of a ring inserted into vaginas in order to see video replays of women's dreams (because as a female doctor explains, women dream with their wombs), with Kurosawa even including a shot that is suppose to look like that said ring being removed, with a point of view shot from the inside looking out. The inventor of the ring is a truly mad doctor who is locked up in a jail in his own laboratory, following a failed attempt to murder him by hanging. Of course, if Franco had made this film, the simulated sex would look more convincing and less awkward, and there would be a plethora of graphic shots of the ring inserted or removed.

Young lovers Reiko and her goofy boyfriend, Jun, get stuck together having sex at a graveyard. The two are taken to a hospital, with Reiko kept as a patient to investigate her sexual hangups. The magic ring is inserted, and Reiko also gets hypnotized. What follows are videos of Reiko's erotic dreams, and a plot involving the commercial prospects with the ring. Most of the plot, as such, is nonsense, though things pick up when Reiko is hypnotized to commit murder.

Naosuke Kurosawa does adds a bit of visual panache during the dream sequences, clouds of colored dye floating together, changes of color are the usual bits. When Reiko is walking, knife in hand, to the bedroom of her intended victims, she is momentarily seen in silhouette against a shoji screen. There are hints here that had Kurosawa not have been restricted to making erotic films, he may have done well doing mainstream thrillers. The audience for these films were there for the sex, and in addition to the expected couplings, there are lesbian lovers, group sex, and a guy quenching his thirst by less than conventional means.

As in the previous Impulse Pictures releases, included are liner notes by Jasper Sharp, and a copy of the original Japanese poster.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 AM

October 20, 2016

Killbillies

Idila /Idyll
Tomaz Gorkic - 2015
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

Yes, this film is from Slovenia, the country that gave us Melania Trump, and I'm probably not alone at groaning when I saw that title. But beyond that, this is a nifty film that makes the most out of a small cast and a handful of locations.

As the title suggests, this is a rural horror film, something that recalls The Hills have Eyes and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with its family of miscreants. Deliverance also comes to mind. Two men, possibly brothers, both facially deformed, terrorize a photographer, his make-up artist, and two models who were planning to do a photo shoot in some very pretty country near the mountains, hence the original title. The quartet is captured and kept in a dark cellar. Gorkic contrasts the sunny, open countryside with enclosed, dimly lit space where the men keep their prisoners, and house a makeshift laboratory.

One of the most horrific scenes achieves its power through what is imagined rather than what is seen, with a montage that tells the viewer just enough about what is happening to the victim, followed by shots of liquids running through tubes and into bottles. There is more graphic horror at the end, something that Gorkic builds up to, following the escalation of dread.

For those who care to look more closely, Killbillies casually critiques classism, sexism, and unthinking consumer culture. Attractive women are prized commodities, usually valued for their looks, while the men here are id dominant in varying degrees. The film mostly focuses on Zina, the first character we see, who ties the film together, making explicit the connections of the other characters. What at first appears to be a scene of a girls' night out is the set up for the rest of the film and Gorkic's themes. Another indication that Gorkic has more on his mind that simply scaring his viewers is that while he is aware that audience identification will more naturally go towards the most photogenic of his characters, it is the most monstrous person, the burly Francl, who has the most human moment during a brief, but telling, cry of grief.

Killbillies is both Tomaz Gorkic's first feature, after several short films, but also the first Slovenian horror film. It turns out that the main location for the horror, a large, ruined stone fortress is a real tourist attraction, Fort Hermann, built in 1906, and partially destroyed during World War I.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:32 AM

October 06, 2016

Vampyres

Victor Matellano - 2015
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

It's been a while since I've seen Jose Ramon Larraz"s original Vampyres from 1974. What Victor Matellano has done is not simply remade the film, with Larraz given co-credit for the screenplay, but also tied this new version with literary, historical and cinematic references. Matellano doesn't attempt to go beyond what may have been considered transgressive in the original, so that the blood and sex are relatively restrained by current standards. And in light of the original film, the casting of actors from horror films from the Sixties and Seventies can be seen as more than a gimmick to attract viewers.

Two female vampires, also lovers, live in a supposedly abandoned house in a heavily wooded area. By standing in the woods, with one sometimes pretending to be unable to walk the full distance, they get unwary drivers on the otherwise lonely road to drive to the house. Hospitality, with a very potent red wine, turns the guests into unwilling victims drained of blood. In some cases, the vampires simply catch someone walking through the woods, and deftly cut that person's throat.

The Larraz film ends with an older couple checking into the seemingly unoccupied house that is home to the vampires. The female half of that couple is played by Bessie Love, most famous as a silent era actress. While Love had no horror films to her filmography at that time, unless you want to count The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, her presence brings a connection to cinema's past. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Love's last film was Tony Scott's The Hunger. In the new film, we have Caroline Munro as the owner of a nearby hotel who might have some idea of what's going on at that house in the woods, with Lone Fleming as the hotel receptionist. Munro starred in one of Hammer's last and best vampire films, Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter. Fleming remains still active in Spanish horror. Antonio Mayans, whose filmography includes work with Jesus Franco and Umberto Lenzi, appears as a mysterious man with a scythe. May Heatherly takes on Bessie Love's role, while the then ninety-three year old Conrado San Martin plays her husband. Additionally, another Franco veteran, Jack Taylor, narrates the short "Making of . . ." supplement.

Theophile Gautier is referenced several times, first with a quote from his 1836 short story, "La Morte Amoureuse", and with the short story read by a young woman, Harriet, who is camping in the woods. The passage quoted is of a woman sucking the blood from the wound of a man. Gautier is credited with writing one of the first known literary works about vampires. Harriet also likens her two male friends with her as being similar to Mary Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori, the trio that shared ghosts stories, resulting in Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, and Polidori - The Vampyre. As it turns out, the three turn out to be closer to the would-be ghost hunters of The Blair Witch Project, also directly mentioned by one character, and alluded to when Harriet discovers that the mysterious black cloaked women can not be photographed.

Mattelano takes advantage of using a RED camera, to film with an agility that was not available for Larraz, both in the use of available light and in camera placement, with frequent overhead shots. Unlike the original which was filmed in England, this new version, also in English, was filmed in Spain. Definitely a remake worth seeing, and so very appropriate for the Halloween season.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

October 04, 2016

Phantom of the Theatre

Mo gong mei ying
Raymond Yip - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Phantom of the Theatre mostly takes place in 1930s Shanghai, at that time the center of Chinese filmmaking. And for the first few minutes, it appeared that Raymond Yip's film would take on the look of a film from that era. Those few moments are left behind, though what I did like was Yip's embrace of filming several scenes on a large set meant to duplicate a Shanghai street. That street is about a realistic as what might have been found on the MGM lot, with Vincente Minnelli calling the shots. The fakery is especially undeniable when Tony Yang is alone in the street, crying in anguish.

Yang plays a young filmmaker, Weibang, who's debut film is a ghost story, filmed in the theater where an acrobatic troupe died in a fire thirteen years ago. The troupe's final show was a private performance for Weibang, arranged by his father, an influential warlord. Rumor has it that the theater is haunted, and we see several characters die by what appears to be spontaneous combustion. Weibang's girlfriend is a doctor who figures out what what is really causing the horrifying deaths of the victims. Not that Manfred Wong's script explains everything, but a quasi-scientific explanation is required for Mainland China approval. Less critical viewers might also be more accepting of the overload of coincidences that bring the characters together.

I love movies about filmmaking. Those first few minutes of Phantom of the Theatre suggest a different kind of film. Five actresses are competing to be named the Screen Queen. The established diva wins, but the up and coming actress gets a special prize for being photogenic. The young writer-director, hoping to get his dream project made, hopes to interest the established actress. Neither she, nor the younger star have time for the young man, who finds his script scattered on the floor. There was the potential for a screwball comedy with dueling divas, and an earnest young filmmaker caught between the two women, and the financiers who try to control everything behind the scenes.

That's not this film. Still, there are some nice moments with the characters lost in dreams and hallucinations. There is a phantom, and he it's sufficient to say he's not pretty. There is sympathy for the villainous characters of the phantom and the warlord, played by Simon Yam, the most well-known actor in the cast. As soon as the explanations for the mayhem are revealed, the intrigue dissipates, kind of like the ghosts who disappear as puffs of smoke.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:38 AM

September 29, 2016

Daughter of Dracula

La Fille de Dracula
Jesus Franco - 1972
Redemption Films BD Region A

Not only is the title of Jesus Franco's film similar to the 1936 Dracula's Daughter, but the two films have shared the same title, or translation of the title, depending on what version of Franco's film has been seen. Additionally, Franco was able to depict what was only suggested in Lambert Hillyer's sequel to the 1931 Dracula, with the saphically inclined title character sneaking a few glances to suggest her feelings towards her female victim. In thirty-six years, the stern and forbidding Gloria Holden would be replaced by the centerfold ready Britt Nichols, her desires not faintly implied, but plainly stated and demonstrated, with Anne Libert as the very willing lover and victim.

For those viewers unfamiliar with the various cinematic wanderings of Jesus Franco, I would suggest checking out the earlier, more conventional narratives of The Blood Judge or The Diabolical Dr. Z. For those familiar with Franco's career, where feature films were created quickly with little money and the few resources at hand, the inconsistencies of Daughter of Dracula are less jarring. Sure, the vampires here aren't affected by sunlight, and there is no problem with a crucifix or two on the wall of Castle Karlstein. As for the castle itself, that exterior shot of the castle, filmed in Spain, has no visual relationship to the main set and castle, filmed in Portugal. And even though the version here is in French, like many European films of that era, the language was dubbed, providing voices for actors from several countries.

As he had last year with The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, Tim Lucas proves a helpful guide through Francoland, and the idiosyncrasies of a filmmaker both loves and loathed, sometimes for the same reasons. Filmed the same year, several of the same cast member of Erotic Rites appear in this film. There is no Dracula. The family name is Karlstein, and Britt Nichols comes home to learn from her dying mother that she is the descendant of vampires. Nichols is handed a key to the crypt where her infamous relative is locked away. As Dracula, er, Count Karlstein, Howard Vernon pops up from inside his coffin, bares his fangs, and apparently goes back to sleep. Not only does Count Karlstein never leave his coffin, but Nichols helpfully drags a female victim, shoving her into the coffin, on top of the ravenous Count. While Franco plays loosely with vampire legends, his greater interest is in the time spent filming Nichols and Libert as kissing cousins. And has anybody discussed the connection between Franco's frequent use of close-ups of the female genital area and Gustave Courbet's painting, The Origin of the World?

Lucas does make sense of some of the narrative inconsistencies by suggesting that what is presented as a horror film was originally scripted as a thriller. As a response to commercial necessity, Franco made use of existing material with a few script changes and insert shots. Reading a review of Stephen Thrower's new study on Franco and his films, I am reminded that Franco studied music and especially loved jazz. Perhaps the key to appreciating some of the films by Jesus Franco is to allow that he may well have taken some that most important element of the jazz musician, the ability to improvise, and incorporated that his method as a filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:51 AM

September 27, 2016

The Wailing

Gokseong
Na Hong-jin - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

What I wasn't prepared for when I saw The Wailing was just how funny things get during the first half hour. Yes, the film begins with a small town police Sergeant checking the scene of a very grisly murder. But whether showing up late, losing his footing while on the crime scene, or being caught by his own young daughter having sex in a car with another woman, Jong-goo appears to be a chubby, bumbling cop.

What Na has effectively done is to lull the viewer into thinking that the horror and mystery will be balanced out with some humor. It's after that first half hour that the film becomes a serious meditation on faith and evil. There is still one moment of humor to come, reminiscent of the kind of scene that might appear in an early film by Sam Raimi. People are dying of an unknown malady that manifests as rashes on the body, and intense spasms, often killing those around them. The deaths are attributed to an older Japanese man who lives alone, in a decrepit house in the woods. Jong-goo attempts to question the stranger at his home. In those same woods, a younger woman appears, telling Jong-goo that the Japanese man is a blood sucking demon.

Where Na's filmmaking skill is demonstrated is in a scene of dueling shaman. Jong-goo's daughter, Hyo-jin, appears to be possessed. At the same time that the shaman hired by Jong-goo is performing his dance, the Japanese man is conducting his own ceremony. Na cuts between the two shaman and Hyo-jin, who is thrashing in pain on her bed. A percussion based soundtrack is used, with multiple drums for Jong-goo's shaman, and a single drum for the Japanese shaman. Na took about half a year to film The Wailing, followed by a year to edit, and it shows in this scene with the combination of visual and aural complexity.

The Korean title refers to an actual location in South Korea. Na emphasizes the natural beauty of the lush, green forests and the mountain. There are some similar thematic concerns with Na's previous film, The Yellow Sea, about an ethnic Korean from China caught between rival South Korean and Chinese gangsters in Korea. That the townspeople of Gokseong are ready to blame the Japanese man for the string of deaths would appear to xenophobic. It is worth noting that a temporary English language title for this film was The Strangers. Both the cause and cure of the madness consuming the community would appear to be forms of indigenous shamanism. A lay deacon proves ineffective, and Buddhism is essential reduced to mere props on an altar.

Na refuses to provide any clear answers. There may be more than one devil at work here. Even when using elements that may recall other classic horror films, Na Hong-jin has enough twists and turns so that nothing remains too familiar.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:43 AM

September 22, 2016

Dances and Sin

Erotic Dances of Bettie Page
Irving Klaw
Cult Epics BD

Sin
Nico B - 1990 - 2015
Cult Epics BD

A year before founding the company that eventually became Cult Epics in 1991, Nico B made a student film titled Slime. The 8mm film can be described as a montage of transgressive images. What is striking is that the imagery anticipates the kind of films Nico B would make available on home video, notable for his careful curation of titles by such filmmakers as Tinto Brass, Fernando Arrabal and Radley Metzger. The two new blu ray discs mark the 25th Anniversary of Nico B's Cult Epics label.

The Exotic Dances of Bettie Page is a collection of twelve short films, originally seen by collectors back in the 1950s as 8mm films sold primarily through Irving Klaw's mail order business. And ordinarily, one might not make a fuss about a group of films with no greater ambition than to document a woman shaking her booty in front of the camera, wearing a bra, panties, nylons and high heels. But Bettie Page's greatest asset was her smile, the look that told viewers that she not only was having fun, and sharing that sense of fun with her audience.

These films were never intended to be seen sixty years from when they were made, and some of the footage has deteriorated over the years. I think the reason why Bettie Page is still the subject of interest is because she radiates so much cheerfulness, bringing the word burlesque back to its original meaning of creating a work meant to invoke laughter.

The blu ray includes a brief collection of stills, dance performances for Kamera Club Films - one which is topless, and a documentary of Page's nephew, Rom Brem, discussing his aunt and their family at a Bettie Page exhibit in Catalina, shot last June.

Sin is a collection of short films by Nico B, inspired by 19th Century erotic stories. There are three short films, about ten minutes each, plus Slime and several very short 8mm films. Of the featured short Le Modele struck me with the most interest, cutting between a nude model and a nun, both played by Caroline Pierce. Still, it is Slime that would key viewing regarding Nico B's interests both as an occasional filmmaker, but more significantly as a home video entrepreneur. With a scene of a little girl with a scull, it's no surprise that a few years later, Nico B would be instrumental in making available the necrophiliac comedies of Jorg Buttgereit.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

September 20, 2016

Destiny

Der Mude Tod
Fritz Lang - 1921
Kino Classics BD Region A

Luis Bunuel is quoted on the cover of the new blu-ray as saying that Destiny inspired him to make films because of Fritz Lang's "poetic expressiveness". The film is also said to have influenced Alfred Hitchcock early in his career. The influence on Hitchcock is most obvious in the use of scale. The most striking in Destiny is of the characters in front of a wall. We don't see the entire wall, which has no gate or entrance, but is a totally enclosed space. What is seen are people who are dwarfed by an impossibly high wall that has no top visible to the audience. I know that Lang liked huge props. I was able to have an idea of what it was like to be on a Fritz Lang set when I entered the Berlin Filmmuseum and immediately was overwhelmed by the size of the photos and props there.

But back to Hitchock, I had to wonder if there would have been the scene in the British Museum in Blackmail filmed eight years later, a process shot, with a very small man "observed" by a very large head sculpture, had Hitchcock not seen Lang's films. That shot was done using a method devised by Eugen Schufftan on Lang's Metropolis. In a similar vein, there is the better known sequence of Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint climbing around the faces of the presidents on the side of Mount Rushmore.

The influence Lang had on Bunuel is most strongly felt in the playfulness of the "Chinese" sequence, especially when the female magician turns her alleged master into a small tree. It was also this sequence that caught the eye of Douglas Fairbanks, who bought the U.S. distribution rights, and shelved Destiny for about three years while he and his crew figured out how to make convincing special effects with characters on a flying magic carpet. Lang's silent German films may have tackled the big themes of love and death, but the guy was also the Steven Spielberg of his time, with big budgets and state of the art special effects.

The German title translates as "The Weary Death", focusing on the tall, foreboding character played by Bernhard Goetzke. Not formally named, it is suggested that Mr. Death would like to retire after several centuries of accompanying people as they shuffle off this mortal coil. The English title is more fitting for the framing story and the three short stories within. A woman, unnamed, tries to bargain with death when her fiancé has died unexpectedly. She is told three stories of doomed love that take place at different times and different countries. Finally, she is given the opportunity to revive her fiancé if she is able to find someone equally young to take his place. The title Destiny suggests that there is no way one can change one's fate.

The commentary track by Tim Lucas offers some brief biographical information on most of the cast and key crew members, as well as connecting Destiny to several other films about death in the form of a human visitor. I also strongly recommend viewing the restoration demonstration, with an explanation regarding the choices made for tinting the film, as well as side by side footage showing scenes the same scene tinted and in black and white.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:55 AM

September 13, 2016

Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler

Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
Fritz Lang - 1922
Kino Classics BD Region A

Cocaine addiction. Gambling on credit. Stock market manipulation. The lust of men for showgirls, especially those who show off some skin. "A Story of our Time" shows that not too much has changed in the ninety-four years since Fritz Lang adapted Norbert Jacques' novel. The big difference is that cinema's original super-villain appears modest compared to those who would appear later, more often as comic characters like Dr. Evil in the Austin Powers series, or Gru of Despicable Me, or more dramatically, in the future incarnations of Mabuse by Lang and others. What seems consistent is that as brilliant and capable as these villains are when doing things for themselves, they frequently hire inept henchmen.

Even though Dr. Mabuse is called a gambler in the title, the German word spieler could be translated in several ways, with player possibly being the most accurate. Even though there are many scenes of gambling, and Mabuse is described as gambling with peoples' lives, Mabuse is actually in control through most of the film. Mabuse is first introduced as staging the theft of an international trade agreement that sends stocks tumbling down, low enough so that when the price is right, he stands up above the other stock traders, and like a vulture with his prey, swoops down to buy enough of the near worthless stock, and watch its value double its original worth. A little later, Mabuse visits his counterfeiting shop, operated by a crew of old, blind men, making dollars, rather than any European currency.

In one of the blu-ray supplements, Fritz Lang describes how the film was a reflection of life in Germany at the time. The biographer of Norbert Jacques also discusses how close the Berlin of Lang's film was to the real Berlin of 1922. This is the most complete version of Lang's film, with a running time of four and a half hours. There are none of the kind of overwhelming visual set pieces such as what can be found in Lang's next two films, Die Niebulungen and Metropolis, but a couple of moments stand out. In one scene, Lang cuts between the round, room sized roulette wheel of a gambling club, and the round table where several characters are holding a seance. Later, Mabuse, disguised as a famed psychoanalyst, conducts mass hypnosis on a theater audience, while a caravan of mid-East nomads emerge from an on-screen desert to the steps of the auditorium.

One of the other scenes that struck me took place at the home of one Mabuse's victims, Count Told. What we see of the house looks like a gallery, a combination of the most modernistic, abstract art, with mildly erotic, "primitive" pieces. As portrayed by Alfred Abel, Count Told is appears too sensitive for his own good, even before meeting Mabuse. Collecting art is described by his wife as Told's hobby. What is seen looks like an illustration of the kind of art work declared decadent by the Nazis. I'm not sure how much was coincidence here, but it may be worth noting that Norbert Jacques' novel was published in 1921, and took place in Munich, concurrent with the emergence of the Nazi party in that part of Germany.

In discussing the character of Mabuse as intended by Lang, it's pointed out in one of the supplements, that Rudolf Klein-Rogge is meant to be recognizable, even in disguise. In any event, seeing Klein-Rogge appear as different characters is part of the fun. There are bits of humor here as when the men in the gambling club enthusiastically applaud the appearance of a topless female performer, while a woman comments on the performer's lack of talent. Looking beyond the silk top hats worn by the men, and the floor length dresses of the women, Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler remains a still relevant film exploring the concept of power at a time when society is teetering towards anarchy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:42 PM

September 06, 2016

Tenebrae

Dario Argento - 1982
Synapse Films BD Region A

I'm not sure why I chose to revisit Tenebrae when I did, but it was sometime in late September of 2001. What I do remember is that after the lingering malaise following 9/11, there was a sense of catharsis, particularly with the scene in which John Saxon gets killed in that very sunny, very public square. Maybe it was a sense of acceptance that even the most random, violent deaths can occur in sunshine.

In the academic study of giallo, Italian Horror Cinema, Karl Schoonover discusses the political aspects of Tenebrae, mentioning "global capitalism" and "neoliberalism". I doubt that Dario Argento had any kind of political agenda in mind. And as it is not mentioned, I am also sure that Schoonover was unaware that Argento was intending to have Tenebrae take place in a post-apocalypse near-future, and yet, when one considers the politics that contributed to 9/11 and my own reaction to the film after that one event, the connections seem a bit less tenuous.

Some of this goes to the heart of Tenebrae as well as Argento's films in general which are often based on understanding or misunderstanding what one sees. For the few who are not familiar with this film, it is about an author of mystery novels, visiting Rome, who finds himself caught up in a series of murders that appear to have been inspired by his newest book. The new blu-ray is the most complete version of the film, and it looks and sounds great. Whether it's Argento's best film might be subject for dispute. I just have sound coming from my television, no special speakers, and was taken aback by the hearing the main theme by Simonetti, Pignatelli and Morante, which might provide an idea of how good the audio portion is here. And visually, those red shoes of Eva Robins (as credited here) really pop on the screen.

Beyond the expected visual and audio upgrading, there are the supplements. The documentary, Yellow Fever: The Rise and Fall of the Giallo is something of a career survey of Argento, but also discusses the connection to film noir and the German krimi films. Mentioned is an earlier Italian film that remains relatively unknown, Pietro Germi's The Facts of Murder from 1959 as a proto-giallo preceding the films by Mario Bava that are usually credited as the first in the genre. Among the talking heads are Maitland McDonagh, Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Alan Jones, Luigi Cozzi, Ruggero Deodato, Umberto Lenzi and Argento himself. McDonagh also provides a full-length commentary track that points out some of the illogical moments (why is Anthony Franciosa bicycling from Manhattan to JFK Airport?), and offers some humorous thoughts on the fashions, as well as discussing Argento's motivations for making Tenebrae. McDonagh also discusses how Argento's films have often been unavailable in any form unless one knew where to find a gray market version. It would not surprise me if McDonagh and I had VHS tapes of a couple of those films from the same source.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:41 PM

August 30, 2016

The Bodyguard

Wo de te gong ye ye
Sammo Hung - 2016
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Jackie Chan was the first actor approached to play the part of Ding, the former elite security officer who finds himself losing his memory. Chan wasn't available, so Sammo Hung was tapped for the role. Hung probably should have been considered in the first place. Even at his peak, Sammo Hung never looked anything like the kind of guy who could seriously kick ass. In this film, extra padding on the stomach, with an awkward gait as he walks, Hung projects the kind of vulnerability needed for this role. Hung also directed, his first credited gig in seventeen years, where the influence of younger filmmakers shows up.

I do wish the English language title was still My Beloved Bodyguard to help distinguish Hung's film from the several other films with the same, generic, title. Also, I did have some problems with the screenplay which is somewhat lazy, simply explaining Ding's memory loss as dementia, as well as giving the disappearance of one of the characters a too easy explanation.

The film begins with a brief introduction of the Central Security Bureau, the army of guards that protected the top officials of the Chinese Communist Party. There is a montage of documentary footage that concludes with some photos and footage of Richard Nixon's visit to China in 1972. A photo of the guards includes one with the young Ding standing near the President. Later, Ding discusses his unhappy marriage, and describes his former father-in-law as a "bourgeois capitalist". Both of these moments made me think of films that I'd really like to see - Nixon's visit to China from the Chinese point of view, and a film about an unreconstructed member of the Red Guard who is appalled by the changes in contemporary China.

The film takes place in a town in Northeast China, near the Russian border. The story here has the retired Ding finding himself as the guardian of the young daughter of a gambler. The gambler, in order to pay back his debts, goes to Vladivostok, where he steals a bag full of jewels from a Russian gangster. The jewels are stolen, but the gambler finds himself caught between rival Russian and Chinese gangs. Protecting the daughter, Ding finds himself caught battling both gangs.

Grady Hendrix wrote about how Hung films fights in "Film Comment". Whether it's a refection of Hung's age, or a concern of safety, the main scene with Hung fighting both Chinese and Russian gangsters is filmed in a way that is similar to the overly edited fight scenes in Hollywood films. The difference is that there is still a visual logic to how the fight is edited. Essentially the fight is broken down to one or two movements per shot. We see hung and his opponent, or a pair of opponents. Hung also has chosen to digitally enhance close-ups of fingers or legs broken and in pain. The overall effect seems like a compromise over the kind of sloppy editing favored in some Hollywood films with the misguided idea of how to visually convey on-screen chaos.

Not that it was necessary, but Hung called in several friends for supporting roles. Andy Lau, who was also one of the producers, plays the gambler. Tsui Hark, Dean Shek and Karl Maka play a trio of oldsters who sit out by the railroad tracks, observing the action. While watching The Bodyguard, I was struck by the idea that at age 64, Sammo Hung may well be transitioning away from appearances as an action star to be a character actor, and perhaps spend more time behind the camera. That the final action scene features Eddie Peng, previously seen with Hung in Rise of the Legend, suggests that Sammo Hung is making way for a new generation of martial arts stars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:56 PM

August 23, 2016

3 Bad Men

John Ford - 1926
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One of my favorite moments in this silent western is the introduction of the character, Dan O'Malley, played by George O'Brien. A large wagon train of settlers is traveling to Dakota in 1876. The movement on screen is from left to right. O'Brien is on horseback, very casually, with his left leg down in the stirrup, while his right leg is draped around the saddle horn. And he's playing his harmonica. The title card reads, "Dan O'Malley had come from Ireland at a smile-a-minute pace."

What is charming about 3 Bad Men is that, except for the land rush, there's an easy going spirit to much of what occurs in the film. O'Brien has no problem appearing goofy, as he does when he first encounters the petite Olive Borden and states the obvious when he sees that the wheel has fallen off the wagon belonging to her father. And what may strike some out of of context as being racist is, to my eyes, John Ford's casual sense of inclusiveness of a frontier with "Dagoes" and "Chinks", as well as a budding entrepreneur who addresses a pastor as "rabbi". Consider that that the film takes place less than ten years before the publication of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

While Ford's characterization of a multi-culti America might raise some eyebrows use to only understanding art through a contemporary prism, the one possibly gay character may indicate a more forward thinking filmmaker. The title characters are looking in a bar for a possible husband for Olive Borden. A couple of the men survey a well dressed and well scrubbed dandy who is ruffled caught between two ruffians, not known that their intentions are harmless. One of the bad men states, "If a man's heart is in the right place, it don't matter what sex he belongs to."

Having Joseph McBride provide commentary provides an extra bonus to this blu-ray upgrade from the previous "Ford at Fox" DVD set. McBride discusses both the making of the film, as well as some general observations about John Ford from his own interviews and research. McBride also shares information on the making of 3 Bad Men from interviewing Priscilla Bonner, who's role in the film, the sister of one of the "bad men", was severely cut by the studio.

I wish there was more information regarding what had been cut from Ford's original version. The three bad men of the title, wanted for robbing a bank, inexplicably come to the aid of Olive Borden, discovering her following an ambush by an outlaw gang. That gang works for the sheriff of Custer, the ramshackle Dakota town that passes for civilization. The sheriff, played by Lou Tellegen, is the real villain here, trying to bully a prospector into revealing the location of gold found in protected Indian territory, as well as riding roughshod over the townspeople. While Ford's heroes here are a trio of outlaws who function independently, Ford has no sympathy for the outlaws protected by the sheriff's badge. Whatever makes the three men "bad" is considered lightly, with more emphasis placed on their idiosyncratic sartorial choices.

Tellegen's sheriff is notable for his fancy suit, and his white had with a very wide brim. The hat looks very similar to the one worn by James Stewart in Ford's last western, Cheyenne Autumn. In that film, Stewart plays a comic version of Wyatt Earp. Cheyenne Autumn also marked the last screen appearance of George O'Brien.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:31 PM

August 11, 2016

Observance

Joseph Sims-Dennett - 2015
Artsploitation Films BD

A man is hired to observe a woman, photographing her and listening to her phone conversations, in a run down townhouse directly across from her apartment. Nothing seems to happen. The woman doesn't leave her apartment. From the phone conversations, there seems to be some kind of relationship with a man, and a possible connection to a murder that took place a couple decades ago.

Cinephiles will not be surprised to see echoes of Rear Window and The Conversation. What is unexpected is the turn towards body horror. Not quite Cronenberg territory, but close enough as the investigator, Parker, wakes up to unexplained bruises and abrasions. There is also a nod to Polanski when work and dreams collide into a nocturnal nightmare.

There is also the influence of the so-called "experimental films", Impressionistic close-ups of water dripping from a faucet, a jar collecting some kind of black liquid, rust stains (or is that blood?) on the wall.
The film open with shots of a shoreline on a rocky coast. There are several overhead shots of the ocean. What are eventually understood to be flashbacks are rendered subjective with surreal touches, when Parker remembers his recently deceased young son.

As several critics have noted, Observance is notable for the feeling of dread. As in The Conversation questions are raised as to what exactly is being seen and heard, for what purpose, and to whose benefit. One scene that initially begs credibility is when Parker sneaks into the apartment of Tenneal, the woman being observed. At first glance it might seem that Tenneal is oblivious to Parker's attempts to hiding from her, walking right past him as he crouches in a corner. The film hints that Parker's subterfuge may not have been a secret.

Especially at a time when studio productions hit budgets that are nearly impossible to recoup, Observance shows that you can make an effective, professional film for the cost of a Honda Civic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:38 PM

August 09, 2016

The Tiger

Daeho
Park Hoon-Jung - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

The tiger is best seen in the first half of this film. Fleetingly and short bursts, the viewer is kept from seeing the animal in full form. It's not like Track of the Cat, where the audience never sees the mountain lion pursued by Robert Mitchum, but during that time that the tiger is barely seen, it works best as a metaphor for Korean resistance during the occupation by Japan. Once the tiger is seen in full view, one is conscious that this is a computer generated creature. The mystery and suspense are lost from that point.

I suppose some of this may be due to audiences that hate ambiguity and are literal-minded in their demand to see rather than imagine. Some of this may also be because of the requirements of the story, about the hunt for the last wild tiger in Korea. For myself, the film worked best during the moment when the tiger was only seen in brief glimpses in the forest.

Taking place in 1925, the capturing and killing the tiger is the goal of the Japanese governor in the Korean region where the film takes place. The pursuit has dual purposes, as the governor is a collector of big game animals displayed in his office, and because the tiger has killed Japanese soldiers pursuing resistance fighters hidden in the mountains. Eventually forced to participate in the hunt is the former hunter, Man-Duk, because of his knowledge of the mountain area. Eventually it is shown that Man-Duk and the tiger have a symbiotic relationship.

Symbolic stories of men hunting for legendary animals, goes at least as far back as Moby Dick. The historical aspects give The Tiger an extra twist. Park also makes the story something of an ecological fable showing the extreme measures taken as part of the hunt. The Korean title translates as "Great Tiger". Historically, the last Korean tiger was killed in 1921.

There are recurring moments of the tiger outwitting the hunters. As might be expected, some of the hunters become the hunted, shredded and tossed like so many rag dolls in the jaws of the tiger. The scenes of strategy are reminiscent of Park's previous film, the impressive gangster film, New World. This is a simpler film, one that was written by Park earlier, but produced following the success of New World. There is a thematic thread regarding the uses of power and manipulation of others.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:54 PM

August 05, 2016

Sweet Bean

An
Naomi Kawase - 2015
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

Perhaps because it was adapted from a novel, Naomi Kawase's newest film is also her most accessible. Those most familiar with contemporary Japanese films will also note the presence of two well-established actors in the lead roles, Kirin Kiki and Masatoshi Nagase. Coincidentally, both actors were Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera.

A man, Sentaro, operates a small, one person restaurant, serving dorayaki to junior high girls and the occasional passerby in a suburb in the outer part of Tokyo. An elderly woman comes, inquiring about the post for part-time work. She has no work experience but convinces Sentaro to give her a chance after badgering him to try her bean paste, the ingredient that is placed between the two pancakes that are part of the dorayaki. Word of mouth brings customers in due to the the sweet bean paste. It's also word of mouth that drives customers aware when it is revealed that the woman, Tokue, has had leprosy, indicated by her gnarled hands.

Tokue is a woman who seems especially in touch with nature, stopping to admire the cherry trees in the neighborhood, or viewing the moon. The first time she cooks for Sentaro, he is put off by her eccentricities of "talking" to the beans, or demanding that when sugar is added to the bean paste, comparing the mix to a first date that requires two hours of the ingredients to know each other.

Being a Kawase film, time is taken for a montage of the preparation of the bean paste and the cooking process. The visual lyricism, with shots of cherry trees waving in the wind, and a walk through a heavily wooded area, is similar to Terrence Malick, though it doesn't dominate the narrative as it does in something like Malick's To the Wonder.

As in other Kawase films, there is the focus on outsiders, especially women. In addition to Tokue, and Sentaro, who is revealed to be an ex-con working in the restaurant to pay off a debt, part of the narrative is about Wakana, a junior high student. Unlike her fellow students, Wakana is unable to pay for "cram school" and her diet partially consists of the rejected dorayaki Sentaro has at the end of his day. Mention is made of the 1953 law that forced Japanese with leprosy to be housed in special facilities. That law was repealed in 1996. In a later scene, Sentaro and Wakana visit the run-down housing where Tokue and several other equally aged residents, also with leprosy, live.

The more cynical may treat the conclusion as a bromide about living in a way that is true to one's self. Low-key, muted and very humane, Sweet Bean may also be the perfect antidote to a summer of movie and real-life events marked by lots of sound and fury.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:01 PM

August 03, 2016

Basket Case 2

Frank Henenlotter - 1990
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

For those who may not have them in their collection, or are interested in the upgrade, Basket Case 2 and Basket Case 3 are now available in blu-ray editions. I wrote about Basket Case 3 at the time of the DVD release.

For those not familiar with the trilogy, the films are about two brothers, originally conjoined twins. The physically normal Duane looks after the extremely deformed Belial. The homicidal Belial is essentially a head on body resembling a short tree stump, with two muscular arms and claws. Belial is kept inside a wicker basket, hence the title.

Filmed about eight years following the original film, Basket Case 2 takes up where the first film left off. Duane and Belial have fallen from the window of their seedy Times Square room. Where they are seemingly left for dead in the first film, it turns out the two survive after being taken to a hospital. The two escape and in a case of fortuitous timing, are rescued by Granny Ruth, a family friend, who has a house full of misshaped freaks.

Jumping from a budget of $35,000 to about $2.5 million allowed Henenlotter to make a slicker film with a more professional cast. The blu-ray probably makes Basket Case 2 look far better than it did during its theatrical run. Much of the budget went to the foam rubber masks worn by the freaks, as well as some gloriously gory special effects. I think Caryn James pretty much summed things up for the New York Times when she wrote, "As cheap horror spoofs go, this one isn't all bad."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:19 AM

August 01, 2016

Saving Mr. Wu

Jie jiu Wu xian sheng
Ding Sheng - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

I wish there was more information available on actor Wu Ruofu, the subject of Saving Mr. Wu. Aside from the vague description of Wu being a popular television actor in China, the only films I've seen listed for Wu are The Big Parade (1986) by Chen Kaige, and this film where Wu plays a senior police officer. There's a moment when the film's Wu, played by Andy Lau, is trying to buck up the spirits of the man who was kidnapped the day before by the same gang. There's a reference to God of Gamblers, but that was a film with Lau in the cast.

The actual kidnapping of Wu Ruofu took place in February 2004. As it turned out, Wu was kidnapped by chance, simply because he was seen standing outside a karaoke bar, near his pricy car, and looked to be someone who could bring in a significant ransom. The identity of Wu was only discovered later by the kidnappers. It is possible that Wu's celebrity may have helped save his life.

The film takes place during a period of about twenty hours, from One AM, when Wu is grabbed by a trio posing as cops investigating a hit-and-run accident supposedly involving Wu's car, ending about Nine PM, when the cops rescue Wu. The narrative is fractured with flashbacks of the kidnappers prior activities. Most of the scenes include a superimposed title with the time. Similar titles are used to introduce the main characters.

Ding Sheng wrote, directed and edited the film. As the outcome is already known, there isn't much suspense. What does keep the film going are the police procedural aspects, with the Beijing cops figuring out fairly quickly the identity of the lead kidnapper. There is also watching Andy Lau as Wu negotiate with his kidnappers, saving the life of his fellow abductee by offering to pay his ransom, trying to find ways of reasoning with some unreasonable men. Ding Sheng gives the film some documentary flavor with hand-held camera work, without overdoing the shaky-cam.

This is something of a change for Lau who is usually seen as a man of action. For most of Saving Mr. Wu, he is chained to a chair next to Cai Lu, his fellow victim. Most of Lau's acting is through his voice, small hand gestures, and nodding his head in the direction of Cai. Wang Qianyuan plays Zhang, the lead kidnapper, a real-life counterpart to the cheerful, psychopathic thug of so many crime films. Favorite supporting player, Lam Suet, appears as Wu's trusted friend, sent to deliver the ransom. The film ends with some documentary footage of the rescue of Wu, intercut with Andy Lau singing the theme song, first heard sung faintly by Lau and Cai when their respective characters are facing certain death.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:32 AM

July 29, 2016

Rawhide

Henry Hathaway - 1951
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Darryl Zanuck must have loved Alfred Newman's rousing theme music for the film, Brigham Young. Not only was it used to open and close Yellow Sky, but was used once more, a few years later, for this film. On the plus side, the new blu-ray ports over the extras from the Fox DVD issued about nine years ago, supplements centered on Susan Hayward and location filming in Lone Pine, California.

A quartet of outlaws descends on a stagecoach station in Arizona, holding the two men who run the station, a female passenger and her infant girl, as prisoners, while waiting for a stagecoach with a gold shipment to come through. Any resemblance to the set-up of The Hateful Eight is overstated, although there are a couple of bits that Quentin Tarantino may have gleaned. Tyrone Power plays the apprentice to Edgar Buchanan's station master. Susan Hayward is the passenger with the little girl. The outlaw gang includes Hugh Marlowe, Jack Elam, Dean Jagger and George Tobias. Part of the plot is propelled by false assumptions. Hayward is first thought to be a single, unmarried mother. Marlowe introduces himself to Power as a deputy. Marlowe assumes that Hayward is married to Power. It also turns out that the four outlaws are not a gang, but three convicts who took advantage of being at the right place at the right time when Marlowe escaped prison, with tensions between the four men.

Dudley Nichols' scripts usually have some bit of subversiveness going on. The screenplay was reportedly rewritten at Darryl Zanuck's request to be tailored to Susan Hayward's screen persona as the feisty redhead. The most interesting character, though, is Jack Elam's increasingly psychopathic outlaw. One of his earliest credited roles, Elam here is lean, mean, with his goggly-eyed stare and snaggletooth grin. Elam came in when shooting began, replacing Everett Sloane due to Sloane's roughness when tackling Hayward in one scene. It's hard to imaging what Sloane might have done with that role, but Elam's projection of menace, coupled with his obvious glee being as bad as he wants to be, keeps the film from being routine. It might also be less than coincidental that a few years earlier, Hathaway shocked audiences with Richard Widmark's cackling villain in Kiss of Death.

What also struck me is that while Henry Hathaway is not discussed as a visual stylist, so many of the shots involve depth of field. We're not talking Citizen Kane here, but frequently the shots are composed to emphasize the space between people, whether within the main room of the stagecoach station, or inside Power's bedroom. The few exteriors stress the remote location of the station, suggesting infinite space beyond the surrounding desert and mountains. One striking shot is of Marlowe sitting in the main room's dining table, looking up at a mirror that is reflecting Elam standing in the station entrance.

The supplements are primarily centered on the making of Rawhide, reviewing how the film was instrumental in making Susan Hayward a major star in the Fifties, as well as providing information on what went on during the production of the film while on location.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:04 PM

July 27, 2016

The Perfect Husband

Lucas Pavetto - 2014
Artsploitation Films BD

After making it's mark in the festival circuit, Lucas Pavetto's debut feature is available on home video. The filmmaker's website indicates in interest in domestic discord at least in his first two full length films. Pavetto may well be trying to create some calling card to interest Hollywood being an Italian filmmaker whose films are in English.

In The Perfect Husband, a couple goes to a house in the country, ostensibly to rekindle the passion in their marriage. It is slowly revealed that the wife, Viola, is recovering from the birth of a stillborn baby. Nicola, the husband, promises that the weekend will be fun. During dinner, Nicola gives Viola a bracelet tight enough to suggest a handcuff. The tension between the two escalates from accusations of sexual jealousy to the kind of horror that was only hinted at when the ax-weilding Jack Nicholson was chasing Shelly Duvall in The Shining.

While Pavetto goes for the gory shocks, there is a twist to the story that proves satisfying. There are brief nature shots that provide some clues. The film is an expansion of a shorter version made four years earlier, also included in this release. In some ways, I found that earlier version better in part due to the casting. That earlier version, Il Marito Perfetto was filmed in Italian, and also garnered film festival attention. For myself, the curvier Crisula Stafida is more attractive that Gabriella Wright in the longer version. Also, as Nicola, Damiano Verrocchi does not appear threatening, while the leaner Bret Roberts has a wolfish grin that may set off alarms. Roberts also appears with a "man-bun" which hardly makes him perfect.

Pavetto is one of several younger filmmakers to express interest in reviving the Italian horror film. Unlike a few others who shall remain nameless, he has made a film I was able to watch from beginning to end. Also, the shocks, while explicit, might be considered relatively restrained, without lingering on the blood and gore.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:58 PM

July 25, 2016

River

Jamie M. Dagg- 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Full disclosure: I have previously contributed a couple of film reviews for producer Todd Brown's online publication, "Twitch", and have contributed money to producer Mattie Do's production of her film, Dearest Sister.

Jamie Dagg's modest debut feature is about an American doctor on the run in Laos. The basic set-up is of a man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this case, John Lake, taking a break from surgery at a country hospital, goes to a remote village in southern Laos. He intervenes when discovering a young Lao woman raped by an Australian tourist. Accused of being the rapist, as well as murdering the Australian, the son of a senator, Lake finds his way first to his hospital, finally escaping to Thailand.

For myself, as a Buddhist, I interpret the film as suggesting the even with free will, one can not escape one's karma. What Dagg brings up in the course of his story is an examination of responsibility to one's self and to others. It is hinted that Lake may see himself as a savior when he attempts to revive an accident victim whom the head doctor declares dead. Dagg also touches on the unconscious cultural imperialism of westerners in so-called Third World countries. While the sense of "foreignness" is also expressed by not providing subtitles when Lao or Thai are spoken, Dagg does portray his Asian characters in a negative light.

The use of handheld cinematography works best in a scene with Lake, waking up to discover himself beaten and bleeding, rushes down to the path by a stream, looking for his lost wallet in a state of panic. What is seen of Laos, and the little bit of Thailand, eschews the exotic in favor of the mundane. The one marked exception is when Lake is picked up on the road to Vientiane by a couple of young men in a souped up car that might have been driven off the set of the original Mad Max. In spite of his famous name, Rossif Sutherland does not bring the baggage of stardom to distract from the story, allowing the viewer to make their own view where Dagg chooses to be ambiguous.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 AM

July 21, 2016

Deadline - U.S.A.

Richard Brook - 1952
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I absolutely recommend seeing Deadline - U.S.A. with Eddie Muller's commentary track for younger viewers unfamiliar with a time before USA Today, the series of mergers and buyouts that have decimated the number of major city newspapers, before journalism devolved into corporate mouthpieces. Richard Brooks' film is his love letter to the profession that gave him his start as a writer. It shares something of the same spirit as that of another journalist turned filmmaker, Samuel Fuller and Park Row. Muller's commentary is entertaining, of course, but it speaks of a time when newspapers were the main source of information, and had a much greater influence of public opinion.

Humphrey Bogart is still in crime fighting mode, this time as the big city newspaper editor trying to nail an organized crime boss. The clock is ticking with the newspaper, The Day, just a couple days away from being sold to its tabloid competition. Inspiration for the story would come from the sale of the paper, the New York World, edited by Benjamin Day, in 1931, as well as the then contemporary investigation of organized crime. The newspaper is being sold by the family led by dowager Ethel Barrymore, at the urging of her two daughters, recasting the Pulitzer family heirs. Brooks makes fleeting acknowledgment of television network news, then still relatively new, broadcasting the hearings between congress and accused organized crime figures.

Even though Brooks could have chosen to make the film more documentary style, this is a classic narrative film. There is some location shooting done at the printing press of the New York Daily News. Much of the film takes place within an overly crowded newsroom, a replica of the newsroom of the Daily News. As Muller points out, it's not quite an accurate representation as there are different reporters from different departments within that one space, but it's dramatic license to get most of the main characters within the same space as needed. Brooks follows his characters with a series of tracking shots within that newsroom, and the viewer will be focused on Bogart and company. A second viewing indicates just how much movement is taking place in the background with characters moving in and out of frame, or simply carrying on very lively conversations. One doesn't discuss Richard Brooks very much in terms of being a visual artist, but that first newsroom scene is a marvel for detail.

Brooks' humor, when it appears, is usually wry. There are some genuine chuckles when Bogart, too drunk to realize what he's doing, appears at the apartment of ex-wife Kim Hunter out of habit. Without giving the joke away, Brooks finds a way of making the situation humorous while getting around the production code.

A trio of hit men, dressed as cops, escort of mob informer from the newsroom to the adjacent printing press room. The informer is shot in an attempt to escape. The dead informer falls on the printing press. The overhead image of the dead informer on top of the printing press later appears as part of the front page story. There's no subtlety here, and it's one of those moments where the sensibilities of Brooks and Sam Fuller would be similar, along with their admiration of journalism as social activism. The studio imposed music including "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" adds unnecessary underlining. Brooks knew well enough to not need any emphasis in the film's warmest scene, with Bogart flirting with Ethel Barrymore. The scene allows for two actors to express the mutual admiration that also existed off-screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:37 PM

July 19, 2016

Kill Zone 2

SPL 2: A Time for Consequences / Saat po long 2
Soi Cheang - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Without providing spoilers, the supplements to Kill Zone 2 offer a couple of key bits that would be missed if you only see the film by itself. First, an explanation of the title - Wilson Yip, director of the first Kill Zone film, serving as director here, plans a series that is connected thematically but not with connected story lines. Second, a deleted scene explains the how the little girl we see drowning is the sister of the character played by Wu Jing (the actor also known as Jacky Wu).

The action shifts between Hong Kong and Thailand, with part of the film alternating events in those two countries taking place at the same time. There's a Hong Kong gangster who runs an illegal business kidnapping people for their organs, an undercover cop whose cover has been blown - trapped in a Thai prison, and the prison guard who is unaware that the prisoner who can't speak a word of Thai is the potential bone marrow donor who can save the life of the guard's little girl. Everything gets tied together, with bringing together the various plot strands. The only thing not explained is how a Chinese guy is the warden of a Thai prison.

Tony Jaa is the top billed star, but the best display of martial arts moves belongs to Zhang Jin. During a prison riot, Zhang, as the prison warden, surveys the action. Impeccably dressed in a black suit, he comes out fighting, briefly grabbing cell bars while moving sideways. Prisoners are on the receiving end of punches and high kicks. Zhang walks away without a bruise, his suit neither torn nor wrinkled. Zhang is so nattily dressed that he's like the Cary Grant of Hong Kong martial arts movies.

That prison riot provides one of the big set pieces of the film. Part of the actin takes place in the main cell block with an extended long take. The camera swoops from the upper level to the ground floor with reportedly two hundred men fighting, prisoners taking on the guards or simply doing what they can to tear up the joint. The camera darts around picking up the moves of the lead actors. Cheang later cuts to a couple of overhead shots, not quite Busby Berkeley.

This is a Hong Kong action film, and as such, keeps Tony Jaa earthbound. Not Jaa should needlessly put himself at risk, but his gravity defying abilities aren't on display here, which is a disappointment. Surely it can't only be Thai action choreographers who know how to make the most of Jaa's fancy footwork, even if at age 40, he might not be able to make the kind of moves as in Ong-Bak or Tom-Yum-Goong.

With the emphasis on fight scenes, Kill Zone 2 harkens back to Cheang's earlier films, Shamo and Dog Bite Dog. Bringing up Cheang's more recent association with Johnny To, frequent To star Simon Yam appears here, while Cheang also uses To's editor, David Richardson.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:51 PM

July 14, 2016

Obsessions

Bezeten - Het gat in de muur / Besessen - Das Loch in der Wand
Pim de la Parra - 1969
Koch Media BD Region B

It's been so long that I can no longer remember when I was first aware of Obsessions. But I admit to being obsessed about wanting to see what was seemingly a "lost" film. This is not to be confused with the similarly titled Obsession, the Paul Schrader penned film directed by Brian De Palma made about six years later. Aside from sharing some similar inspirations, both have scores by Bernard Herrmann. The original Dutch title translates as "Obsessed - The hole in the wall". I'm going with the official English language title. The German title is included here as that is the title on the German home video version, the only home video version of a film virtually unseen since its initial release in 1969. While I've seen the English language poster, I have no idea if Obsessions was even released in any English language markets. Certainly, during the time I lived in New York City, no entrepreneur attempted to capitalize on Martin Scorsese's name which is prominently listed on the blu-ray jacket. The blu-ray includes the English language film with the English language title.

The film was co-written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Pim de la Parra, who briefly discusses how Scorsese and Herrman came on board for this film. This article, from the Dutch EYE Film Institute offers the best information available on Scorsese's involvement. Obsessions is not a masterpiece, lost or otherwise, but it is fairly entertaining. The film can now boast of two future Oscar winners, with Scorsese joined by filmmaker Fons Rademakers, the first Dutch winner for Best Foreign Language Film,who appears here in a small role. Four years later, Rademakers would direct Obsessions star Alexandra Stewart in Because of the Cats. Acclaimed cinematographer Jan De Bont filmed second unit work here

.

This is imitation Hitchcock, primarily inspired by Rear Window with a medical student discovering the shenanigans involving sex and drugs of his next door neighbor, through a hole in the wall. The hole is so big, you have to wonder why the neighbor didn't notice. In the meantime, the student has a girlfriend, a journalist, who's investigating a murder. Keep in mind that this is Pim de la Parra's film, and at least with this debut feature, he's no Hitchcock, or even William Castle. Aside from making the dialogue sound authentic, there are a couple of touches that I sure Scorsese added to the film. The first is the appearance of a self-portrait of Vincent van Gogh, with a safety razor by his ear. Aside from the "sick" humor, this could be a self-referential bit as Scorsese had won the Prix de l'Age d'Or from Royal Cinematheque of Belgium for his short, The Big Shave, which is how the Dutch filmmakers would have been aware of him. During the film's opening credits, there is a dedication to Republic Pictures, obviously inspired by Godard and Breathless, with the dedication to Monogram.

Bernard Herrmann's score was reportedly unused music for a television program. As such, it may be second rate Bernard Herrmann, which is still better than much of the unmemorable and generic music that passes for film scores. Most of the music is adeptly used here, fitting in with the action, although one theme that bears some similarity to the romantic scores for Vertigo and Marnie seemed to be chosen at random.

The film is punctuated with so many fades to black between scenes, that I wondered if de la Parra was doing what he could to let broadcasters know when to program interruptions for commercial breaks. The DVD/Blu-ray cover describes, in German, the film using the words "sleaze-klassikers". I don't know much German but in this case, I don't think that's necessary. There's just enough kinky sex and nudity to have brought in an audience in 1969. Had Martin Scorsese kept a print for himself, we might be seeing a more pristine version of Obsessions. Then again, we might not have been able to see it at all. Either the best surviving print suffers from fading colors, or there's a lot of use of brown. The imperfections of the film work in its favor as the heart of Obsessions is more in the grind house rather than the art house.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:18 PM

July 12, 2016

Mountains May Depart

Shan he gu ren
Jia Zhangke - 2015
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Jia's newest film is in three parts, with each part filmed in a different aspect ratio. The screen gets progressively wider, from 1.33, to 1.85, and finally 2.35. The shift in screen shape is symbolic of the characters drifting further apart from each other. Simultaneous to the change in screen shapes is the time element of the narrative, starting at 1999, then 2014, and finally 2025.

The film opens with a group of young people dancing to the Pet Shop Boy's song, "Go West". Even though Jia has stated he used the song because he found it "catchy", it does encapsulate the choices of some of the characters, as well as what has happened in the newly capitalistic China. Three old friends, Tao, Jinsheng and Liangzi meet at a cafe. Jinsheng and Liangzi have let each other know of their romantic intentions towards Tao. The three, all twenty-five years old, grew up in a China where the cultural revolution has long past. Jinsheng likes to show off his material success with his new car, making his money with a successful gas station. Liangzi works at a mine, doling out helmets, in an industry that is hurt by the low cost of coal. Jinsheng buys the mine Liangzi works at, firing him for refusing to give up on Tao. Tao does choose to marry Jinsheng, This portion of the film takes place in Fenyang. Both men have jobs that are related to natural resources. As the narrative progresses, China, as presented by Jia, technology eventually supersedes industry. Jinsheng goes west, to Shanghai, and later, Melbourne, Australia. Linagzi goes west as a migrant miner.

Tao stays in Fenyang. A wealthy divorcee, Jinsheng has left while Liangji makes a brief return in her life. Tao's son grows up in Australia, forgetting how to speak Chinese, forgetting the name of his mother. What is at the heart here is an exploration of what it means to have a Chinese identity, both within and outside of China. Tao's favorite song is "Take Care" by Sally Yeh. What makes this a curious choice is that Yeh was born in Taiwan, and is best known for singing Cantonese pop songs, as well as starring in Hong Kong films. I wish that Kino Lorber has seen fit to provide subtitles for the song, which would have aided in placing it greater context. As it is, including Sally Yeh in the mix provides another look into what it means to be Chinese.

The conclusion is not particularly deep, with the idea that freedom is more of a state of mind than being in a different city or country. Still there is something sweet and satisfying in watching actress Zhao Tao perform a final, solo dance.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:36 PM

July 08, 2016

Yellow Sky

William Wellman - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

My favorite single image from Yellow Sky is of Anne Baxter standing on a large rock, with a rifle. The camera is tilted upwards toward her. It's the kind of shot that William Wellman will use on his heroic characters in some of his other films. It is also the only shot of its kind in Yellow Sky.

The young woman played by Baxter is known by the nickname of Mike. No explanation is given. Baxter wears jeans through the entire film except at the very end when given a woman's hat by Gregory Peck. In his discussion of Baxter's performance in Yellow Sky, William Wellman, Jr. mentions the "Wellmanian woman". Wellman, Jr. describes this woman as being the equal to the male characters in terms of being people of action. Wellman, Jr. mentions a couple of actresses that fit this description, placing Baxter alongside Carole Lombard and Barbara Stanwyck. For those of us who have been reading discussions about the "Hawksian woman", a term bandied about for at least forty years, I have to wonder if maybe a new kind of shorthand term needs to be invented, as the woman of action as described here is not exclusive to either Wellman or Howard Hawks. The terms "phallic woman" or "phallus girl" might be accurate to a point, but also suggest a kind of psychological weight unintended by the filmmakers.

Wellman, Jr. also mentions that Paulette Goddard had originally been considered for the role of Mike. Baxter was Wellman's choice. Jean Peters was considered too young by Wellman, although I think she could have been as good as Baxter. Peters in the lead role in Anne of the Indies gave her the chance to play an action heroine.

One other shot that I really liked here takes place before the final shoot out between Gregory Peck, Richard Widmark and John Russell. The three were part of Peck's gang of outlaws until a dispute came regarding division of a hidden fortune of gold dust. The camera travels on the floor inside a saloon, curving around the bar, finding Widmark hiding in the back. What is surprising is that the shot is not from the point of view of Peck, or any other character. Another reason why William Wellman is in need of greater reconsideration is that during several moments in Yellow Sky, he makes unexpected visual choices. One of the more significant choices is to not show the action, making use of sound and the imagination of the audience, as in the final gunfight, as well as the scene with Anne Baxter fighting off Gregory Peck, the two rolling and tumbling into a barn, heard but not seen, until the roll back out in front of the camera.

Wellman, Jr. points out that his father was unfamiliar with any similarities to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which might be found in the basic premise of Mike and her grandfather alone in the remote ghost town of Yellow Sky. I would assume the liberties with Shakespeare originated with author W. R. Burnett, and that producer-screenwriter Lamar Trotti may have been aware of the inspiration here. Shakespeare aside, one might argue that Yellow Sky, taking place just a couple of years after the American Civil War, in Arizona, is hardly a western. Setting aside the genre markers is a film about sexual tension, of a group of men literally hungering for female companionship, and a young woman who can not articulate her own sexual needs or identity. Although lighter in comparison to Duel in the Sun, with an even less gentlemanly Gregory Peck, or Pursued, Yellow Sky might be considered as part of the evolution toward the psychological westerns of the Fifties that would eventually include William Wellman's version of Track of the Cat.

While I disagree with his assessment of Yellow Sky, I recommend this essay on Wellman by French filmmaker Bertrand Tavernier.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:12 PM

July 06, 2016

A Cat in the Brain

Un gatto nel cervello / Nightmare Concert
Lucio Fulci - 1990
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC

I get the feeling that anyone who sees A Cat in the Brain will have their own interpretation of the film. Lucio Fulci plays a film director named Lucio Fulci, who happens to make extremely violent horror movies. The autobiographical elements pretty much begin and end here. The on-screen Lucio Fulci's imagination takes over he believes he is living in his own horror movie. There are a series of mysterious murders taking place, that this Fulci has witnessed, or maybe committed with his own hand.

About one third of Cat is made up of footage from other films integrated into the narrative. While some of the films within the film are attributed to the on-screen Lucio Fulci, the clips are not all from films directed by Lucio Fulci, at least not officially. David Schow's extremely helpful liner notes explain the sources of these various scenes of murder - beheadings, stabbings, amputations and assorted eyeball gouging. Most notably used are a couple of scenes from Massacre, directed by Andrea Bianchi. There are also clips from a couple of filmmakers who may be familiar names to the most hard core devotees of Italian genre films. Even when recycling his own work, Fulci uses excerpts from his lesser known films, Touch of Death and Ghosts of Sodom.

Not all of the older footage is seamlessly incorporated into the the film Fulci shot in for this film, but that imperfection is part of the fun. This is a film that will appeal most to those who have embraced Lucio Fulci for the bulk of his career, especially the last years with the director fighting inadequate budgets and his own ill health. Even for those familiar with Cat, the various supplements, especially the liner notes, help put the film into context as something both personal while simultaneously fanciful. The notes by Fulci's daughter, Antonella, are especially welcomed, explaining the use of Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" was Fulci's homage to Fritz Lang's M and Peter Lorre's performance.

As for the video supplements, Grindhouse Releasing again makes the gang at the Criterion Collection look like a bunch of cheap punks. Half hour interviews with screenwriter Antonio Tentrori and composer Fabio Frizzi, among others. There's also a forty-five minute interview with Brett Halsey, star of several of the film clips used, which covers his early acting career, years primarily in Italy, and return to Hollywood, as well as work outside of acting. Additional written notes on the supplemental disc cover the careers of Fulci and Halsey. Whomever wrote the notes on Halsey seems unfamiliar with comedian Jack Benny, credited with "discovering" Halsey. Benny never had a late night talk show, as mentioned here, but did have a weekly "variety" show. Fulci and Halsey's filmographies include a few trailers, my favorite for Fulci being the western, Silver Saddle, while Halsey is seen, though not credited, in Hot Rod Rumble. In the department of strange coincidences, both Halsey and Hot Rod Rumble star, Leigh Snowden, got career boosts from Jack Benny, and as part of Universal-Internationals "new talent", played small roles in two different sequels to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and two different films by Douglas Sirk.

Lucio Fulci as "Lucio Fulci"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:45 PM

July 04, 2016

The Mermaid

Mei ren yu
Stephen Chow - 2016
Sony Pictures BD Region A
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Now that I've seen The Mermaid, I can understand why the film was given an extremely limited release in the U.S., expanding slightly in response to popular demand. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the broad humor that Stephen Chow is known for just didn't work for me as it has on past films seen. Not having had the opportunity to have seen the film theatrically, or ideally in 3D as had the Chinese audience, I don't know if I would would been as enthused as had other stateside critics, who were able to see The Mermaid theatrically.

Chow lets his intentions be known immediately, with documentary footage from various ecological disasters as well as footage of how industry contributes to environmental destruction. Chow also satirizes the newly wealthy of China's entrepreneurs, the products as as well as practitioners of capitalism run amok. The billionaire Liu is more interested in buying the pristine oceanside property because he can. Underwater sonars are set up to drive away marine life, with the intention of making the area viable for a reclamation project. The mermaid, Shan, is assigned to kill Liu, in an attempt to protect the colony of mer-people that live near the bay. Shan first appears, popping out of Liu's pool, make-up smeared, as a ditsy admirer of Liu. Attracting enough attention to start dating Liu, Shan proves to be comically inept as a would-be assassin.

Shan's disguise for passing among humans is to wear long dresses. Her tail fin has been modified to allow her to awkwardly walk as if wearing a hobble dress, with big, rounded yellow shoes, almost like the shoes belonging to Mickey Mouse. There were several times when I wondered if The Mermaid might have worked better as an animated film, rather than as an elaborate, special effects laden film with human actors.

Chow's earnestness in getting his message across deserves respect. For myself, his film works best when no one appears to be working hard to get our attention or laughs. Newcomer Jelly Lin's natural charm comes through when she and Deng Chao, the mermaid and the billionaire, take in the rides in an amusement park following a dinner of street food chicken. The two look they they would have had just as much fun even if they weren't in front of the camera.

The blu-ray comes with a "Making of" supplement which is of interest in seeing the biggest set, the inside of an old ship. The physical demands placed on much of the cast and crew is evident as well, with filming in both natural and film set bodies of water.

For whatever reasons, Sony chose not to dispute the "R" rating, which is, to quote the MPAA, "for some violence". There is violence near the end, when the colony of mermaids is attacked, and blood is spilled. The violence in question might be disturbing for some, but it is far less than, for example, The Dark Knight. Just a reminder that the MPAA might be concerned about what is viable viewing for children, but they also find ways of limiting films not from Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:42 AM

June 30, 2016

Napoli Napoli Napoli

Abel Ferrera - 2009
Raro Video BD Region A

Most of Abel Ferrera's films are about about people living in the margins of society. Even in this portrait of Naples, there is the impression that the city itself has a tenuous relationship with the rest of Italy. Ferrara skips between documentary and staged sequences. There are interviews with some inmate of a women's prison, social activists and local government officials. In between these scenes, there is the murder of a small time gangster, a dysfunctional family with an out of work father and a prostitute daughter, and a crowded cell of prisoners trying to make it through another day. Ferrera also includes older documentary footage of Naples in World War II, and city leaders in the 1960s trying to initiate improvements to the city.

The city is as much a character as any of the people who live there. The impression is that Naples is in the condition it is in due to a combination of ineffectual government, and residents forced into bad short term solutions for immediate problems. Everyone, regardless of class or profession, appears to be frustrated by the city. Like several other major cities, oversized apartment buildings were created for public housing, buildings that became instant slums. There are no jobs, no social services and no visible alternatives.

The fictional elements were written by Ferrera, along with Neapolitans Maurizio Braucci, Gaetano di Vaio, and Peppe Lanzetta, who also appears as brutal father whose favorite refrain to his family is that they should kill themselves. Ferrera's fictional family includes Anita Pallenberg as Lanzetta's wife and Ferrara collaborator Shanyn Leigh as the daughter. And while I would not dispute that there may some truth to Ferrara's view of the city and its people, I would have to think that Naples is not entirely the hell presented here. Anyone who has seen a fair sample of his other films would recognize that in the world of Abel Ferrara, the sun never shines, evil is everywhere, and everyone comes to a bad end.

I have yet to see Ferrara's film about Pier Paolo Pasolini, but there may be some similarity here. Pasolini's Rome, in his films and writings, is primarily the rougher part of the Ostia section of the city. Ferrara's Naples, likewise, ignores the tourist attractions for the inner city. There is a glimpse of optimism on the part of one of the female prisoners, looking forward to her release following time served for drug dealing. That would be the brief bit of sunshine in a vision of urban decay and hopelessness.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:45 PM

June 28, 2016

Chronicles of the Ghostly Tribe

Gui chui deng zhi jiu ceng yao ta
Lu Chuan - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Another Chinese special effects driven movie, that was seen in 3D by the mainland Chinese audience. And similar to Mojin, which I covered a couple of months ago, there a some similarities in the basic set-up, with the discovery of an ancient, alien civilization, hidden in a remote are in western China. There are also scenes that take a jaundiced view of China's more recent past. Somehow, the two films, adapted from the same literary source, were produced almost simultaneously, though Lu's film was the first to be in the theaters.

And it's the presentation of China's past that are intriguing. The opening scene introducing the hero, Hu Bayi, takes place in 1979. We see a man singing the kind of song that might have been heard in a musical approved by Mao or the Gang of Four, extolling the virtues of working hard on behalf of China. Lu cuts to a shot of Hu, exhausted, moving dirt from an archeological excavation site. A young woman follows Hu, acting as a kind of coach. Even shouting at someone on behalf of the revolution can take it toll as she faints, only to be replaced by another young woman. What I liked about this scene is that it initially appears as the imitation of a revolutionary musical, the kind that idealized Mao's proclamations, only to reveal a harsh reality.

A later scene, taking place a few years later, is of a China that has opened its doors in a very limited way to the west. Hu is taken to a restaurant that is primarily for westerners. The place is virtually empty. The main entree is steak. And there's a chubby guy, energetically singing in Chinese, dressed up like Elvis Presley. As it turns out, the Elvis impersonator is a long-lost friend of Hu's. But the scene is also of interest in what it shows of China's first faltering steps to accommodate westerners following the Cultural Revolution.

The exteriors were filmed in Gansu, in northwest China. Shots of the actors traveling by camel across desert and mountain regions are gorgeous. It's the countryside of China that is more awe inspiring than any green screen special effects.

The ghostly tribe are the descendants of people who were part alien and part human. Hu is revealed to have some kind of connection being the descendant of the prince who stopped the aliens from taking over earth about 10,000 years ago. There are these creatures that looks like a combination of wolf and stegosaurus that terrorize several characters, as well as little bat-like creatures. There are also some very large creatures that make brief appearances. Yet none of this is as compelling as the scenes of China still very much under the influence of the Red Guard.

Chronicles is Lu Chuan's first deliberately commercial film after a string of mostly critically acclaimed work. Of the two films adapted from the 2006 Chinese novel, The Ghost Blows Out the Light, Lu's film is marginally better. One of the unexpected credits is with the screenplay, with former independent filmmaker Bobby Roth, and his son, Nick, as collaborators. More riveting, is Lu's low budget debut, The Missing Gun, which bears some resemblance to Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog. While contemporary Chinese audiences apparently can't get enough green-screen mayhem, there's more genuine excitement in following Jiang Wen as the small town cop in search of a thief.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:53 PM

June 21, 2016

Shield for Murder

Edmond O'Brien and Howard W. Koch - 1954
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Shield for Murder was based on a novel by William McGivern, who had also written the novel, The Big Heat. Fritz Lang's film came out in 1953. What made me think of that film was not the shared author of the two films' source novels, but Carolyn Jones' brief appearance in Shield for Murder. Normally a brunette, Jones is seen here as a blonde, a floozie sitting and drinking alone at a bar, her eye on O'Brien who comes in alone, trying to figure out how he can cover up another murder he committed. Jones seems to be made up to look like Gloria Grahame, the good bad girl of The Big Heat, so much so, that I started to wonder if Jones was the cheaper, in every way, "sister under the mink".

I found no information regarding how the responsibility for directing Shield for Murder was split or shared by O'Brien and Koch. It's possible that after appearing in two films helmed by Ida Lupino, that O'Brien decided to give directing a shot. One other film, Man-Trap from 1961, was directed solely by O'Brien. This is also Koch's debut directorial credit. Even with several credits directing both modestly budgeted studio films and television serial episodes, Koch is probably better remembered for his producer credits, most famously for Frank Sinatra, and being head of production at Paramount during the mid-Sixties.

O'Brien plays a corrupt cop who's suspected of murdering a bookie, and making off with the $25,000 the bookie was carrying. O'Brien's partner, John Agar, who looks up to O'Brien as a mentor, is sure O'Brien is innocent, just as he was with the several other people killed in the line of duty, but is forced to investigate this latest incident. O'Brien's hoping to buy a new house if the suburbs to share with young nightclub hostess Marla English. Especially for contemporary viewers, seeing O'Brien with English probably elicits thoughts of O'Brien being overly optimistic. A little research indicates that O'Brien, 39 at the time of this film, was extremely popular among female film-goers during this time.

Marla English is introduced with the camera tilting up from her feet, emphasizing the fishnet stockings she's to wear as a "cigarette girl" at the nightclub. One immediately imagined the kind of fish that English could catch with little effort. O'Brien immediately flies into a rage, forcing English to change clothing prior to a visit to his dream home. That house is so full of bric-a-brac and tchotchkes that it suffocates any opportunity to make the place seem more personal.

Visually efficient, but not stylish, with a story that may strike the jaded contemporary viewer as unoriginal, Shield for Murder should be seen for the performances of its cast. Especially when not speaking, but with the use of his facial expressions, one can see O'Brien's stage training and background in Shakespearean roles. Going from out of control anger to panic, I began to wonder what we might have missed in not seeing O'Brien as Macbeth. There is also the fun of seeing character actors, Emile Meyer as O'Brien's police captain, a young Claude Akins as a mob enforcer, William Schallert as an attorney, and an uncredited Richard Deacon helping O'Brien escape to Argentina.

The bar where Carolyn Jones meets O'Brien is also a restaurant that eventually gets a few hungry customers. Claude Akins and partner show up, trying to get the loot they know O'Brien stole of behalf of their boss. O'Brien, once again, lets loose with his anger, fiercely beating the two men. The film cuts to the faces of the other restaurant patrons, looking at the scene of violence in horror. One of the patrons, a man, has strands of spaghetti hanging out of his mouth. It's this scene that makes me think that Shield for Murder can be enjoyed for the visceral pleasures of watching a dirty cop in action, finally getting caught, yet simultaneously, if unintentionally anticipating some of Guy Debord's arguments in The Society of the Spectacle almost a decade in advance. Then again, it may not be a good idea to overthink a film that features a key character who reminds everyone that he's stone deaf, only to reveal a bit later that he had somehow gotten by in life as a street accordion player.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:51 PM

June 16, 2016

The Midnight After

Na yeh ling san, ngo joa seung liu Wong Gok hoi wong dai bou dik hung Van
Fruit Chan - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Battling a cold during the first few days when I attended the Far East Film Festival in 2014, I passed up the late screening of The Midnight After. Almost two years later, and Fruit Chan's film is now getting a DVD only release in the U.S. Now that I've seen The Midnight After, I can understand why there may have been little rush to make the film available stateside. The film serves as something of a a two hour metaphor for Hong Kong following the handover to mainland China, and as such, may be limited in terms how the film will be understood. Even setting aside the politics, those viewers who demand explanations for everything they see on screen will probably feel frustrated by the several unanswered questions.

A mini bus leaves from the main part of Hong Kong to an outlying city. While underneath the tunnel that links the two sections, other motor vehicles disappear. There are no cars or people on the other side, and no communications available. Several of the passengers die mysterious, violent deaths, bodies spontaneously crumbling or exploding. The remaining survivors stay in a small restaurant, trying to figure out what has become of the world they've known, and trying to work together in spite of various tensions.

One of several seemingly random messages received turns out to be the lyrics to David Bowie's "Space Oddity". While in no way intended on Chan's part, the scene with the survivors singing along to Bowie's song is inescapably affecting. Bowie's song is appropriate here as it's from the point of view of someone trying to maintain the illusion of having some control in a situation where there is total loss of control of the space ship. The scene with "Space Oddity" also provides a turning point in the narrative as there appears to be an unexplained shift of time, and the laws of gravity don't apply when the mini-bus is pursued by several large military vehicles.

Unlike some of the recent Hong Kong films that have been produced with companies from mainland China, The Midnight After is pointedly a film made by and for Hong Kongers. The best known stars here are to Johnny To regulars, Lam Suet and Simon Lam, although this is very much an ensemble piece. Chan's film is, in retrospect, one of the first of a new series of Hong Kong films that have expressed renewed anxieties about the handover, with more recent films being more direct about the concerns of being part of mainland China. For Fruit Chan, Hong Kong might be less of a country than a state of mind, one that is caught between a disappearing past, and a unclear, hostile future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:40 PM

June 14, 2016

Hidden Fear

Andre De Toth - 1957
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Probably the clearest indication that John Payne's time as a star of modestly budgeted action films was over can be seen in the posters for Hidden Fear. Not only is starlet Anne Neyland featured prominently, but is seen in a couple of suggestive poses not even in the film. Similar to Peter O'Toole being "introduced" in Lawrence of Arabia, disregarding several previous big screen roles, Ms. Neyland had been kicking around Hollywood for five years. 1957 turned out to be Neyland's banner year with featured roles also in Jailhouse Rock and the American International programmer, Motorcycle Gang. After that, Neyland went back to guest spots on television series for a few more years. The cheesecake promised in the Hidden Fear posters is barely fulfilled with a suggestive shot of Neyland in silhouette against a window, and a couple shots of her cleavage while in conversation with Payne in the Danish countryside.

Payne is mostly seen scowling his way, an American cop trying to clear his mousy sister who's been accused of murdering her boyfriend. It turns out that the guy's been part of a ring of counterfeiters. The sister's best friend is an American girl, played by Neyland, who also happens to be the occasional mistress to one of the ringleaders, played by Conrad Nagel. Alexander Knox is the guy who behind the counterfeit plates, an unrepentant ex-Nazi seeking revenge by creating two million dollars in fake Alexander Hamiltons to damage the economy of the U.S. and several European countries. The film takes place in Copenhagen, although I suspect it could have been filmed almost anywhere.

Anne Neyland is superficially attractive, no more so than several other young or youngish actresses of the day. More viewers will probably be infatuated with the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL that Neyland drives, later seen with Payne behind the wheel in a high speed chase seen through Copenhagen and beyond. The gull wing sports car is the real sexy co-star here.

Payne's journey into Copenhagen nightlife briefly indicates the Americanization of Denmark with a scene at the Texas bar, with a band playing a kind of variation of western swing, while at the Gold Digger bar, Payne walks into a crowd dancing to rock and roll.

De Toth wrote Hidden Fear with John Hawkins. Some of the same themes appear as in previous De Toth films, such as the main character being assumed guilty by a mob of citizens, as when Payne is chased though the streets of Copenhagen after being seen with a murder victim. There are a number of high angle shots, and shots of the characters by windows, visual motifs used frequently by De Toth.

While not credited, one of the cinematographers of Hidden Fear was Henning Bendtsen. Listed in IMDb and also, more critically, confirmed in the Danish Film Institute database, Bendtsen had also filmed the English language film film, Escape from Terror, starring Jackie Coogan, the first Danish film in color. Bendtsen also served as cinematographer for Carl Dreyer, ending his career with Lars von Trier.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:45 PM

June 07, 2016

Sorceress

Jim Wynorski - 1994
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

Jim Wynorski is nothing if not industrious. Unlike several older protoges of Roger Corman who went on to make prestigious films, including several Oscar winners, Wynorski has carved out a path of making the contemporary equivalent to the older Roger Corman films - low budget films, shot quickly and profitably. Wynorski has also remade some of Corman's films, most famously Not of this Earth with Tracy Lords, and has also directed some seventy-odd films to date. For myself, the most interesting aspect of Wynorski's filmography is seeing the names of some of the actors he's worked with, actors who were considered stars for a brief period, and more typically fodder for the where-are-they-now articles that appear on websites or tabloid publications.

I wasn't familiar with Sorceress, but according to Ranker, it's considered Wynorski's eleventh best film. The basic plot seems like an episode of the TV series, Bewitched, with two rival witches trying to get their respective husbands set up to be the next partner at a law firm. What might seem like a comic premise is played straight for the most part. What reportedly has made Sorceress a cult film is the sexual content. In his commentary track, Wynorski discusses the trend in the early Nineties of the "erotic thriller", the kind of films that helped give one cable channel the name "Skinamax". This new blu-ray edition has footage that was not available on the VHS release or in some cable TV versions.

The big names here had their box office glory twenty years earlier. Linda Blair will forever be associated with The Exorcist. Edward Albert, son of Eddie Albert, had his moment with two films adapted from plays, with 40 Carats featuring Albert as the too young suitor of Liv Ullmann. 1973 also saw William Marshall in his second turn as Blacula. As it turned out Sorceress would be Marshall's last film appearance, appearing as the head of the law film that employs Albert and Larry Poindexter. Marshall keeps his dignity, Albert keeps a straight face, and Blair keeps her clothes on.

I don't think anyone watching Sorceress really cares who becomes partner at the law film. And I'm certain there was a sigh of relief when deranged gardner Michael Parks gets shot, although his performance might give a hint as to what we might have seen had James Dean been a better driver. The film opens with Julie Strain nude except for a diaphanous black nightie, slathering some kind of goo over her spectacularly enhanced chest. The other actresses are almost as well endowed. The witchcraft is just Strain and Blair reciting spells at their respective altars, but even that is besides the point. This is a movie for guys who like seeing Julie Strain get naked. We've got a twosome with Larry Poindexter, a threesome with Poindexter and Toni Naples, and most famously, a lesbian threesome with Naples and Strain in festish wear, seducing Rochelle Swanson. If you want to see Linda Blair undressed, you'll have to check out Chained Heat. I hope Swanson was well paid for kissing Larry Poindexter's butt.

Wynorski never mentions the budget, other than that it was limited, and that the film was shot in twelve days. Praise is given to cinematographer Gary Graver, best remembered for working with Orson Welles. There's nothing distinctly Wellesian here, though Graver does manager to make much of the film look like something from the pages of "Penthouse" magazine. Graver is praised several times for his craftsmanship. Filmmakers working with limited funds may find things to be gleaned from Jim Wynorski's commentary. I do kind of wish that the opening scene was filmed in 3D.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:38 PM

June 02, 2016

Something Big

Andrew V. McLaglen - 1971
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The ghost of John Ford is never too far away in Something Big. In addition to having Ford company players Ben Johnson and Harry Carey, Jr. in the cast, Brian Keith is made to look somewhat like John Wayne as Nathan Brittles in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. Carey even strums a few notes from that film's theme song. There's also Carol White speaking with a Scottish brogue, not quite Maureen O'Hara. Andrew McLaglen and screenwriter James Lee Barrett also include a cavalry regiment singing for Brian Keith, in honor of his retirement, before breaking out in a brawl. There is also the casting of former football player Merlin Olsen, large in height and girth, homage to the director's father, Victor McLaglen. Andrew McLaglen began his career as an assistant to John Ford on the The Quiet Man, and his first major film was McLintock!, virtually a transposing of The Quiet Man with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara battling each other in the old west.

Stepping outside the genre expectations of being John Wayne's house director, Andrew McLaglen seems to have been at a loss trying to make a film that fit it with the newer westerns that turned out to be the last gasp of a once reliable genre. While peer and occasional collaborator ended up making his own Euro-western with Hannie Caulder, it would appear that McLaglen was responding to the two big westerns of 1969, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Wild Bunch. While "Raindrops are Falling on my Head" inexplicably became a hit song, and is one of the more memorable parts of Butch Cassidy, does anyone remember that Burt Bacharach-Hal David song that play while Paul Newman was cavorting with a bear in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean? The title song might have been less forgettable had the singer been Something Big star Dean Martin, rather than Mark Lindsay, cast adrift since leaving the mid-Sixties rock band, Paul Revere and the Raiders.

Where the Peckinpah connection comes in is with Dino getting hold of a Gatling gun, with the intent of robbing a legendary bandit's huge stash. Dino's gang of bandits all look grungy. No one looks like they've bathed or shaved. This is more or less a family friendly movie, so most of the violence is bloodless. When Dean Martin mows down a score of Mexican bandits with the Gatling gun, it's impersonal, lacking the catharsis or any meaning that came with Peckinpah's film.

In his New York Times' review, Vincent Canby described Something Big as ". . . one of those Pop period Westerns that's difficult to dislike even though it's not really very good . . .". The was Dean Martin's first film after Airport seemed to indicate renewed popularity. As Nick Tosches' biography of Martin made clear, Martin would prefer to watch a Western rather than act in one, but when it came to acting, Martin usually enjoyed playing cowboy. McLaglen, Barrett and Martin did much better earlier with Bandolero!, with Martin as the outlaw younger brother of James Stewart. Martin, as a failed outlaw in the newer film, resolves to do "something big" before surrendering to domestic life in Pennsylvania. Throughout the film, there are references to "something big", the film's attempt at a running joke. One of the other gags here is that Martin's dog is a little, unkempt, Scotch terrier.

Supporting players Denver Pyle, Joyce Van Patten and Judi Meredith provide some much needed gusto. Martin, for the most part, seems indifferent, expending little energy or even his well known charm in his performance. Whatever Andrew McLaglen and James Lee Barrett thought they were doing, Something Big turned out to be a misnomer of a title.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:55 PM

May 25, 2016

Fever

Raphael Neal - 2014
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

What makes Fever a significant break from the various films inspired by the Leopold-Loeb murder case is that it is an attempt to put the crime into a far bigger philosophical context. I'm not familiar with Leslie Kaplan's novel, though I assume that most of the ideas explored in Raphael Neal's film originated there. Neal, an actor making his directorial debut, co-wrote the screenplay.

The two young men here are younger, both French high school seniors, inspired by flimsy philosophy. The victim is a prostitute. The murder is never shown. We are introduced to the two boys, Pierre and Damien, as they run downstairs and onto the Paris sidewalk. Pierre bumps into a woman along the way, and drops a glove. The woman, Zoe, an optician, picks up the glove. Following news reports and some neighborhood talk, she suspects that Pierre and Damien are the suspects sought by the police.

Neal cross-cuts between Damian's upper class, brightly decorated home, and Pierre's family, more people in a smaller, somewhat dingy apartment. At school, Hannah Arendt's book on Adolf Eichmann. It is eventually revealed that Damian's grandfather was a functionary during World War II for the Vichy government, who helped in the process of the expulsion of French Jews. Pierre's grandmother was sent to a camp. From this point, the film is primarily an exploration of Arendt's ideas of the "banality of evil" as it applies not only to those who supported the Nazis either by action or inaction, but how it manifests in contemporary society.

What's not clear is the connection to the song made famous by Peggy Lee, played at one point in Damian's house, and performed at a concert by Camille, who provides the film's soundtrack. More to the point as pop culture references is when Pierre and Damien pass by a a theater with posters for A ma soeur, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Klute, collectively films where the death and disappearance seem to be random. From what I have read about the novel, it goes into greater detail concerning how Pierre and Damian respond to the historical events that have had a personal impact, as well Kaplan discussing the questions of personal and collective responsibility. At this time, Kaplan's novel is not available in English translation.

There's perhaps more philosophy than can be fully expressed within a film that runs less than ninety minutes. Some of the ideas discussed here, though, make Fever extremely timely, not only considering some of the recent activity in France, but in the United States as well.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:02 PM

May 23, 2016

The Chase

Arthur Ripley - 1946
Kino Classics BD Region A

It's appropriate that UCLA was one of the participants in the restoration of The Chase. Arthur Ripley was the school's first teacher in the famed film school, from 1957 through his death in 1961. There was a short break from academia to direct, at the request of Robert Mitchum, Ripley's best known film, Thunder Road. This was also the last film restored under the direction of UCLA Film & Television Archive preservationist Nancy Mysel, prior to her death in 2012.

We first see Robert Cummings as Chuck Scott, wearing a suit, but unshaven, with scuffed shoes, standing in front of a restaurant where the cook has pancakes and bacon frying on the griddle. Obviously hungry, Cummings pulls his belt in another notch. And then he takes a bottle from his jacket and gulps a pill, without anything to wash it down. It's later indicated that Scott may be suffering from what was then called "shell shock" as a post-war Naval veteran. What is never commented on is that Scott is seen popping pills several times throughout the film, including one time washing a pill down with beer. I'm pretty sure that even back in the Forties, professional opinion held that the combination of psychotropic medication and alcohol wasn't a smart idea.

Cummings might be hungry, but he's also honest. After treating himself to breakfast with cash from a very conveniently discovered lost wallet, Cummings returns the wallet to the owner. Eddie Roman lives in a mansion in a very posh section of a studio set Miami, Florida. Roman lives up to his name as there are statues everywhere in his elegant home. Steve Cochran takes on the part of Roman, a guy who never hesitates to let you know who's in control. The first indication that The Chase is more violent than comparable films of the era comes when Roman slaps a manicurist hard enough for blood to trickle from one side of her mouth. Scott is rewarded for his honesty by being hired as Roman's chauffeur. It turns out that Roman is a back seat driver, with a pedal that allows him to speed at 120 mph, and hope that the driver remains in control of the steering. Peter Lorre plays Roman's right hand man, the one who does the dirty work on behalf of his boss.

There is Roman's wife, Lorna, usually held under lock and key at the mansion. Roman trusts Scott enough to let him take Lorna out of the house for a drive to a beach. As Lorna, Michele Morgan, wears fancy, and overly formal, long dresses, looking out at the ocean while contemplating her unhappy life as a trophy wife. Lorna talks Scott into helping her escape to Havana. Even when fleeing her husband, Lorna remains overdressed, wearing a mink coat for her cruise to Havana.

The plot, such as it is, is nonsense. There is a wonderful dream sequence where Scott has been framed for murder. Stepping further back, based on Scott's pill-popping, I think it's possible to imagine all of The Chase as a drug induced hallucination.

What can not be disputed is what Arthur Ripley was able to accomplish on a limited budget. There are a couple of overhead shots, including one traveling crane shot within a nightclub where, unknown to each other, Roman and Scott are separated by a partition within the club. A murder is indicated by off screen sounds, and the sight of a broken wine bottle, with the spilled wine appearing like the draining of blood.

Guy Maddin provided a commentary track which covers the production of The Chase as well as notes on the careers of Ripley, producer Seymour Nebenzal, screenplay writer Philip Yordan, novelist Cornell Woolrich, as well as the film stars. Those familiar with Maddin's own films, take on not only past films but mimic the technical aspects of older films, will not be surprised by the wealth of references mentioned within the eighty-six minute running time.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:39 AM

May 17, 2016

Beat Girl - Restored and Revisited

Edmond T. Greville - 1959
BFI Flipside Blu-ray/DVD two disc set

A while back, I had read that another home video company would be offering a complete version of Beat Girl "soon". As it turned out, it was the British Film Institute to the rescue. The version of Beat Girl many of us know is the lousy VHS tape, or the even worse DVD, where the scenes in the strip club appear to have been edited by someone handling a dull meat cleaver. The BFI set offers not only the restored film as seen in UK theaters in 1960, but two additional versions as well. While I wrote about Beat Girl about ten years ago, seeing the restored film has brought up questions and connections that didn't occur to me previously.

For those who are unfamiliar, the plot concerns a young woman who goes to art school by day, and hangs out with other "beat" kids at night, and coffee houses in between. Her father has returned from three months away with his new, twenty-four year old, French wife. The girl discovers that her step-mother use to be a stripper and sometimes relied on the kindness of strangers, as it were. As some kind of act of revenge, the girl declares herself to be emancipated, visits the worse strip joint in London to join the ranks of the ecdysiasts, until fate steps in.

The screenplay began life as Striptease Girl until the censors demanded a few changes. Writer Dail Ambler began life as Betty Mabel Lilian Williams, gaining fame for her hard-boiled pulp fiction. At age 40, Ambler probably knew more about the habitués of Soho, than the emerging youth culture of the late Fifties. There is virtually nothing about a musical Ambler wrote, Take Me Over, from 1963, featuring the 1920s style band, The Temperance Seven. With many of the former restrictions gone, Night after Night after Night (1969), directed by schlockmeister Lindsay Shonteff, with a Jack the Ripper killer and more strippers would seem to offer pure, unbridled Ambler, with her last filmed screenplay. Even with revisions, Beat Girl was rated X, meaning that only those 16 and older could see the film in the UK. For those unfamiliar with the then British rating system, X was given out to films that were not pornographic. Jules and Jim was originally rated X, presumably for presenting a menage a trois. So the question is raised regarding the intended audience, when the fans of rising rock star, Adam Faith, are shut out. The X rating was for glimpses of bare breast in the strip club, a very erotic dance by the Haitian exotic performer, Pascaline, and the kids playing chicken with their heads on a railroad track while a train charges towards them. Reportedly, there was a queue for British X rated films forcing a delayed release while later films with Faith, Peter McEnery and Shirley Anne Field hit theaters first.

There is something going on between France and England that I can't get a handle on, and it's not just in the plot. Director Edmond T. Greville was a Frenchman who made several British films. British Gillian Hills, in the title role, made a career for herself as a French ye-ye singer.

In the interview with Hills included here, Greville is described as appearing to be lost. Greville was 53 at the time he made Beat Girl, and far from the guy who began his career assisting Abel Gance, Rene Clair and E. A. Dupont in the silent era. My own inclination is that producer George Willoughby may have contributed significantly behind the scenes. While Greville was a veteran nearly at the end of his career, Willoughby showed a knack identifying promising talent - Clive Donner and Ted Kotcheff early on with Nothing but the Best and Wake in Fright. Willoughby also produced a couple of films directed by Terence Young. The first, Valley of the Eagles from 1951 had a tall actor, Christopher Lee, in a supporting role. Young will always be associated with James Bond, which invokes music by John Barry. Barry got the music scoring gig, his first, due to his work with Adam Faith, then on the brink of stardom. The title theme, featuring the distinctive guitar of Vic Flick may be familiar to some as sampled in Fatboy Slim's "Rockafeller Skank" back in 1998.

While George Willoughby didn't get a youngish director, he did the next best thing by getting cinematographer Walter Lassally his first mainstream British feature credit. Lassally was the cinematographer of the most famous films from the "Free Cinema" movement. The way the camera roams around in the basement nightclub while the kids dance recalls Lassally's work for Tony Richardson and Karel Reisz's "Momma Don't Allow". Lassally, who specialized in on location filming, shot one scene in the Chislehurst Caves, illuminated by candles, as well as some shots on the streets of Soho. The dance scene, done first under the credits, and repeated with different footage later, is remarkable in that it does not appear to have been formally choreographed. Hills and Oliver Reed dance together and apart, the camera wanders over to Peter McEnery and Shirley Anne Fields moving in and out of the frame. Hills loved the opportunity to dance without inhibition. I would have loved an in-depth interview or better, a commentary track by Lassally, but he discusses filming Beat Girl briefly online.

Hills also talks about how she related to the feelings of anger expressed by her character, Jennifer. Fifteen at the time of production, Hills' mother was on the set, forcing the need for a double to be filmed in a scene when Jennifer does an impromptu strip tease in front of her friends. I get the sense that Hills' appearance in Blow-Up, nude with Jane Birkin in that film's most notorious scene served as a declaration of personal freedom for the young actress.

What Beat Girl gets right is the sense of otherness felt by the kids. The slang might not be accurate, but Dail Ambler understood that pride in having a language and culture that separated the younger generation from their parents. Even so, it's dad David Farrar, who probably felt after working with Michael Powell that Beat Girl was a steep step down, who gets the best line. Busting in on Jennifer's late night party in a family home with all the charm of a mausoleum, Farrar smashes a record against the wall, and tosses Adam Faith's guitar to the door. Letting the youngsters know what's up, Farrar yells, "Go on. Get out of it, you jiving, driveling scum!".

The release version works best because it spends the least time on the square dad and his "Frenchie" young wife. Oliver Reed and Shirley Anne Field were both 21 at the time of filming, and just a couple years older than Peter McEnery and Adam Faith, age appropriate casting. Faith's rockabilly song, "Made You", was a hit in the UK. The generous BFI set also includes a couple of very short British films from the Fifties, the kind available very specialized collectors sixty years ago, from a time when the suggestion of nudity was enough to cause excitement for some viewers. And if that wasn't enough, the BFI also included a spooky short starring two guys who would later play Dracula, Christopher Lee and Ferdy Mayne. For myself, patience has been more than rewarded.

The screen grabs are from the DVD, which like the Blu-ray, is not region locked.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:04 PM

May 10, 2016

Symptoms

Jose Ramon Larraz - 1974
BFI Blu-ray/DVD two disc set

The near loss of Symptoms is a reminder that even when the idea of film preservation was gaining attention, it was still possible for even a relatively recent film to be totally lost. In the case of Symptoms, the existence of that film was visible in murky bootleg VHS tapes. The discovery of the negative was followed by digital restoration, and the newly available Blu-ray/DVD release. The film probably looks better than it did in theatrical release where it popped in a couple of grind houses stateside to critical and audience indifference. In the case of the U.S. run, it didn't help that this was one of the last films from distributor Bryanston prior to its closure from bankruptcy. Symptoms, much to the surprise of those involved, was the British entry at Cannes. It should be no surprise that an intimate horror film would be overshadowed in a line-up that included films by Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, R.W. Fassbinder and Alain Resnais, among the heavier hitters in competition.

The career of Larraz was a bit unconventional, moving from cartoons and photography to filmmaking at forty. The high points of Larraz's filmography are the handful of films made in England, signed as Joseph Larraz. Aside from the censorship of art that was standard in Spain at the time Larraz made his first films, those involved in making horror films were forced to use pseudonyms to disguise their Spanish identity. As in the other two British films I've seen, Vampyres and The House that Vanished, Larraz likes to set his films in mansions hidden in the countryside.

Larraz makes the most of the country setting in Symtoms, with its heavily wooded area in Autumn, and leaves nearly covering a nearby lake. The colors of Autumn are echoed frequently in the colors of the clothing worn by the two main female characters. An arm and leg of a woman can be glimpsed. Two women, Helen and Anne drive up to a very large house belonging to Anne. Only a few rooms are still used according to Helen. While Helen is returning from a visit to Switzerland, Anne is taking time from breaking up with her boyfriend. Helen is very girlish in appearance with her long hair and dresses. Anne could almost be mistaken for David Bowie with her boyish hairstyle. Yet it is Helen who glances at Anne with an unstated desire. Interrupting the shared quiet of walking through the woods and homemade meals is the presence of the handyman, Brady, who lives nearby. Seen at one point wearing a wife beater undershirt with a straight razor nearby, Brady would seem to represent brutish masculinity barging in on a refined, feminine world.

Helen has a couple of framed photos of a friend, Cora. The extent of that friendship is never discussed other than that Cora was Helen's houseguest recently. More puzzling for Anne are the sounds of laughter and moaning, either from pleasure or pain, heard late at night. There may be an unexpected visitor, glanced at as a reflection on a mirror, or heard padding around in the attic.

The Blu-ray comes with several supplements. The documentary, On Vampyres and other Symtoms, by Celia Novis, combines biography in graphic art illustrations, with excerpts from several of Larraz's early films, along with Larraz being honored at the Stiges Film Festival in 2009, with a screening of Vampyres. Novis blends shots from Larraz's films with footage of Larraz walking through parts of Barcelona and his hotel. Without having to state it outright, the documentary make the case for Larraz as an auteur based as much on the recurring visual choices as well as his interest in the fantastique. Further investigation requires a look at the writings of the Belgian writer with the pen name of Thomas Owen, who provided inspiration for Larraz. Editor Brian Smedley-Aston, who also produced Vampyres provides a unique link with British film history as the nephew of Frank Launder, one of the mainstays of classic British cinema, and editor for Tony Richardson and Desmond Davis during Britain's own New Wave of the early Sixties. Smedley-Aston, along with stars Angela Pleasence and Lorna Heilbron, are interviewed. Pete Tombs, who with Cathal Tohill, first brought renewed critical attention to Larraz with their book, Immoral Tales, produced several of the supplements. There is also a booklet which includes a deeper examination of Symptoms as well as the rave review by the then young film critic, David Pirie, written in 1974, a time when many fellow cineastes were taking seriously the genre films of the past, while often ignoring what was currently on screen.

The above screen grabs are from the DVD, which like the Blu-ray, is not region locked.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:12 PM

May 03, 2016

Arabian Nights

Miguel Gomes - 2015
Kino Lorber BD Region A

As I've written before, sometimes it's a challenge to be articulate about a film that defies easy descriptions or explanations. Even reading what others have written about Arabian Nights doesn't make my work any easier. It's a sprawling collection of stories that Miguel Gomes claims were inspired by the structure of the classic tales, about life in Portugal during the government imposed austerity program between August 2013 and July 2014. Yet Gomes contradicts himself as there are moments when ancient Baghdad appears in a contemporary Mediterranean setting.

No distinctions of genre are here as Gomes floats between documentary and fantasy, past and present, political engagement and sex farce. Scheherazade told her tales over one-thousand and one nights. Gomes made a leisurely paced trio of films that runs about six and a half hours altogether. The films do need to be seen together, or at least in the proper sequence, as there are some moments that connect to previous tales. A further instance of Gomes' penchant for self-contradiction is that the second film, The Desolate One uses excerpts from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Scheherazade" suite.

It's the song, "Perfidia" that is repeated in several versions throughout the film. You've probably heard the song, even if you don't know the title, as it has been used in several other films, and recorded by a number of musicians. The lyrics are from the point of view of a betrayed lover, about the folly of romantic love. I can only guess that the song was chosen as the expression of citizen who loves his country, but feels spurned by a government that suppose to work on behalf of the least among them.

A Portuguese acquaintance expressed surprise that Arabian Nights has been getting international attention due to the specificity of most of the narratives. Gomes' stories, or story fragments, are of the working class, the ones most severely affected by the austerity programs. A factory town known for ship building sees closure of its industry, with nothing to take its place. Evictions take place at an apartment complex on such a regular basis that residents help those being evicted with sorting out their property. With nothing else to do, men in a suburb of Lisbon trap finches, and have competitions based on the birds' singing. At a trial between a landlord and tenants, multiple stories are relayed, how different people have been made desperate by the effects of the austerity measures, and the unintended cause and effect relationships that link a community.

Gomes made the interesting choice to have Thai cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom for this film. Sayombhu has been associated with Apichatpong Weerasethakul. There is some similarity between the two filmmakers as they both make allegorical films about their respective countries, real life stories are used as a starting off point, and fantasy intermingles with reality.

The Blu-ray includes a booklet with some production notes by Gomes and an essay by critic Dennis Lim. There is also Gomes discussing the first part of Arabian Nights following the screening at the New York Film Festival, and a short made mostly of documentary footage and imagined first person narratives of several European leaders, Redemption.

Miguel Gomes

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:31 PM

April 28, 2016

Mojin: The Lost Legend

Wuershan - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

I'm not sure what a non-Chinese audience will make of Mojin. The basic story of a trio of tomb raiders seeking a lost treasure, in a film laden with special effects, can't help but make an audience think of Steven Spielberg and the Indiana Jones series. With special effects being computer generated, there is nothing special about the effects, as anything imagined can now be rendered with enough sense of realism that any sense of magic is lost.

There is an unexpected aspect to Mojin that raises questions about content and context, based on what is allowed in a film made primarily for a mainland Chinese audience. The film initial takes place in 1988, with a flashback to 1968. The two male lead characters, Hu and Wang, are lured into returning to Mongolia to seek out the Equinox Flower. The reason these two men are sought is because they encountered the Equinox Flower as Red Guard youths. The flashback involves the two, part of a truckload of youths traveling in Mongolia, singing the praises of Chairman Mao. The truck is stuck. The youth see people in the dark that turn out to be statues. There is a debate regarding whether the statues should be left alone as they represent the proletariat of the past, or if they should be destroyed as symbols of feudalism. A young woman, Ding, indicates knowledge of the site as being spiritually significant. The majority of the kids decide to knock over one of the statues, which opens up a pathway to a cave.

Here's where the cultural aspects go into overdrive. There are more statues in the cave, and as far as these young believers in the "Little Red Book" are concerned, more artifacts of the past to be destroyed. The cave also is revealed to have held an underground bunker for Japanese soldiers from World War II. The bones of the soldiers are lying around. Disturbing the statues awakens dead spirits, and the Red Guard youth discover that real battle with zombies is a greater threat than imagined imperialists.

The idea of presenting anything considered supernatural has been, if not banned, at least extremely limited in mainland Chinese films, to be found in those works that take place in a mythical past. Maybe it has to do with three major Chinese production companies banding together here, or a possible acquiescence to popular tastes by the censors, but we have Japanese zombies and other apparitions taking place in a not so distant past. That this key scene takes place during the height of the Cultural Revolution is not simply a gimmick. A summery of the Cultural Revolution includes the concept of "sweeping away monsters and demons", symbolically those representatives of Confucianism or anyone else considered anti-revolutionary. Not only are there monsters and demons found in the underground cave, but it should not be considered a stretch to think that the filmmakers are also setting out to exorcise the monsters and demons from a notorious era of fifty years ago in China.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:39 PM

April 19, 2016

File of the Golden Goose

Sam Wanamaker - 1969
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The attempt was made to update T-Men, Anthony Mann's 1947 film to a (then) contemporary setting. The classic film noir filmed in and around the dark streets of Los Angeles was transposed primarily to "swinging" London. What the two films share is the same producer, with File of the Golden Goose as the second to last film from Edward Small. Seeing the two films back to back, it is the older film that remains entertaining, while the newer film looks painfully dated.

The story of two U.S. treasury agents going undercover to infiltrate a counterfeit ring now has Yul Brynner as a U.S. agent joining with an undercover detective from Scotland Yard, working to get the goods on a British gang known as The Golden Goose. Starting in New York City, Brynner's character is introduced as a prig who is too upright to spend the night with his very young looking girlfriend. It's a date night that ends badly when a car with some gunmen shoot the girlfriend and miss Brynner. Then it's off to London, based on some clues, where Brynner is teamed up with the still relatively unknown Edward Woodward, as his partner from Scotland Yard. A side trip to Liverpool directs the pair to a character known as "the Owl", played by future Bond villain Charles Gray. The Owl is described as a "queer queer", yet the only thing we see that some might find objectionable is that he hosts very loud parties attended by this film's idea of hippies.

The new version repeats the use of off-screen narration from the original, and some of the bridging footage between scenes has a vague cinema verite feel. Longtime Edward Small collaborator, Robert Kent, credited here with his pseudonym of James B. Gordon, gets screenplay credit with John Higgins, who wrote the screenplay for T-Men. Those who have seen both films will recognize the variations on the original film. Considering the new screen freedom allowed when the new version was made, very little is taken advantage of considering how much of the first version takes place in bath houses. The one element that works in the new film is the character of a hired killer, played by Graham Crowden, tall, with red hair sticking out from under his bowler hat.

File of the Golden Goose was the first of four theatrical films as a director for hire by Sam Wanamaker. The Globe Theater was Wanamaker's passion project, and the directorial gigs were a way to secure funding. I've seen Wanamaker's other films, and while none of his films are visually distinguished, he did improve his handling of action. Yul Brynner must have been pleased with Wanamaker as a director as the two worked together on the western, Catlow, two years later. The professional relationship between Wanamaker and Brynner dates back at least seven years earlier, when Wanamaker played a significant supporting role in Taras Bulba, starring Brynner.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:45 AM

April 14, 2016

Schramm

Jörg Buttgereit - 1993
Cult Epics BD Region A

The chances are that if the films by Jorg Buttgereit were nothing more than the sum of their many body parts, I wouldn't bother writing about any of his work. Taking away some of the more horrific moments in Schramm, one can observe a very careful use of color and composition. The opening sequence is composed of abstract use of color, mostly blue, initially out of focus images that eventually are revealed to be the legs of runners on a track. There are some later scenes of the serial killer, Lothar Schramm, running in a race in Berlin, as well as running alone. If Schramm's running has any kind of symbolic meaning, it's not indicated in any way other than that at one point, he hurts his leg, and requires a leg brace. No longer running, Schramm's life appears reduced to staying within his dumpy apartment.

The film roughly follows the memories and nightmares of Lothar Schramm in the days leading up to his accidental death. Save for occasional conversations with the hooker next door, Schramm's life is one of isolation. The injury to his leg is the prelude to his body seeming to rebel against him. Schramm imagines himself with his leg suddenly amputated. To say he may be sexually uncomfortable with himself is putting it in the most polite terms as in one scene Schramm punishes himself in a way that will make most viewers wince. It's no surprise that Schramm masturbates not with an inflatable doll, but with a torso, essentially a female reduced to breasts and a vagina.

Some of the queasiness might be induced by the moments of body horror may be softened by the sometimes very funny "Making of . . . " supplement, featuring Buttgereit, producer-cinematographer Manfred Jelinski, and cast and crew members. Revealed are how some of the very graphic special effects were created, including prosthetic foreskin, as well as hand made rigging for some dazzling overhead cinematography. While veteran Buttgereit star Monika M. cheerfully admits to being up appearing in future productions, it does appear that playing the title character as taken a toll on Florian Koerner von Gustorf. I would assume that von Gustorf has found greater comfort behind the scenes, notably for producing several films by Christian Petzold.

While no hyperbole exists on the packaging, one could safely call this the "Ultimate Edition". In addition to an introduction by Buttgereit, the blu-ray comes with two commentary tracks, one by Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkirchen, the other by stars von Gustorf and Monika M. Additionally, there are three early short films by Jorg Buttgereit. Horror Heaven, dedicated to Boris Karloff, includes no-budget pastiches of The Mummy and Frankenstein, while in Bloody Excess in the Leader's Bunker, Hitler's plans for a new Reich are literally ripped apart. Made up of photographs and some home movies, My Father presents a brief portrait of Jorg Buttgereit's father, suggesting that some of the more exploitive elements of Buttgereit's film have some very personal roots.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:49 AM

April 12, 2016

Shadows in an Empty Room

Una Magnum Special per Tony Saitta / Strange Shadows in an Empty Room / Blazing Magnum
Alberto De Martino - 1976
Kino Lorber / Scorpion Releasing BD Region A

A film known by several titles, from an Italian director credited here as Martin Herbert, is enjoyable if you don't let things like logic and credibility get in the way. The U.S release poster, with a blind woman stepping into a dark room with a hanged man, and title, might suggest giallo, but this is really poliziotteschi, the Italian genre featuring cops who essentially break to law in the name of justice, or plain old revenge. While the Italian genre films, which often had a lower level Hollywood star or two, were normally seen stateside with a post-dubbed English soundtrack, De Martino has made a film directly in English. I don't know if the original script had the action taking place in Italy, but those familiar with other Italian genre films of the era will recognize this as having just about everything except for the product placement of J & B Scotch.

Shot in Canada, the film begins with a bank robbery in progress, with lots of shooting, and lots of broken glass, introducing Stuart Whitman as the very active Ottawa police chief, Tony Saitta, who has no problem taking the law into his own hands, efficiently shooting the robbers who are clearly mismatched and, unlike Dirty Harry, has no time for chitchat.

Whitman travels to Montreal to investigate the death of his young, college student sister, played by French-Canadian Carole Laure. Aside from the considerable age difference, kind of like Dustin Hoffman and Tom Cruise in Rain Man, Laure's accented English gets in the way of thinking that these two people are related. Whitman is aided by local cop John Saxon. Out of town cop investigating the death of his sister instead of leaving it to the Montreal police? No problem here. We've got Martin Landau as a doctor under suspicion, and Gayle Hunnicutt as the wife of the guy who runs university, who may know something. Tisa Farrow is Laure's college roommate, a blind girl who always is walking into trouble.

Along the way, there are a couple of guys who deal with stolen goods, who start running as soon as Saxon and Whitman show up. In an attempt to get some information from a trio of cross dressers, Whitman shows up and immediately gets into a fight with the three. Even forty years, the characters and the attitude shown towards guys "found at a fruit stand" would have been considered crude.

But there is the car chase, filmed and choreographed by Remy Julienne. Almost ten minutes of muscle cars racing through the streets of Montreal is a thing of beauty. Two cars leap and plunge through hilly streets simultaneously in pursuit of the third car. Two of the cars fly over a passing train. Cars crash through store front windows, a hydrant gets knocked over, and people scatter through the streets to avoid the mayhem. This is ballet with a Buick Skylark and a Ford Mustang.

Armando Trovajoli wrote a lightly jazzy score which occasionally uses that mid-Seventies musical staple, the wah-wah guitar. Along with De Martino credited as Martin Herbert, cinematographer Anthony Ford is reportedly the controversial filmmaker, Joe D'Amato. Screenwriters Vincenzo Mannino and Gianfranco Clerici anglicized their named as Vincent Mann and Frank Clark. In addition to writing several screenplays for De Martino, the two also have several screenplays filmed by Lucio Fulci, And while there is very little written about De Martino, it is amusing to read that in college days, he was part of a jazz trio with future directors Fulci and Antonio Margheriti.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:46 AM

April 05, 2016

The Great Hypnotist

Cui mian da shi
Leste Chen - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Like many, I revere Hitchcock, and there are many shots in this film that were inspired by the way Hitchcock framed his suspense films. - Leste Chen

I'm not sure how much credit goes to Leste Chen or too his art director, Lo Shun-fu, but the office of the psychiatrist, where much of The Great Hypnotist takes place, is impressive in its own right, even without the suggestion of elements gleaned from several films by Alfred Hitchcock. Part of the narrative is devoted to the concept of perception, of what is seen, how it is seen, and how it is remembered. The office floor has a pattern of angled, colored rectangles that can fool the eye into thinking one is looking at a raised pattern. There is the office wall covered with multiple brain MRIs. Patterns also appear on specially carved doors, on coffee cups. There is also the multi-armed overhead lamp that hovers over everyone, resembling a very large spider. In the office foyer is a big, dark, wooden staircase that leads up to an unknown space - the kind of staircase that made me think of Cary Grant and the glass of milk in Suspicion.

The Great Hypnostist strikes me as a very welcomed throwback to the psychological thrillers that Hollywood use to make in Forties and Fifties, while taking advantage of current filmmaking technology. The premise is that Karen Mok plays a disturbed woman who claims to see dead people, and it's up to hypnotherapist Xu Zheng to see if he can uncover secrets and memories. Several critics who have reviewed The Great Hypnotist have done this film a disservice by being unable to get past the "I see dead people" line used to describe Mok's malady, and have labelled Chen's film as a rip-off of The Sixth Sense. Going back to Hitchcock, the real antecedent is Spellbound, minus the Dali inspired imagery. Without revealing too much for those who have not seen the older film, there are enough similarities to convince me that the basic plot was the inspiration for Chen. The younger filmmaker brings enough shuffling of space and time, dreams and nightmares resulting in several unexpected twists along the way.

Especially when the most visible mainstream Chinese films usually are elaborate martial arts or fantasy films, it's nice when a more modest production finds its way stateside. Leste Chan is one of the few Taiwanese filmmakers to have worked in mainland China, with a mainland star, Xu Zheng, and Hong Kong's Karen Mok, making this a pan-Chinese production. Due to mainland Chinese restrictions regarding films depicting supernatural elements, a scene near the end explains enough to wash away any shred of ambiguity. There is still enough here between a performance that serves as a nice showcase for Karen Mok, and a set design that provides a purely visual supplementary narrative.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:46 AM

March 31, 2016

The Purple Plain

Robert Parrish - 1954
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Much of the reputation of The Purple Plain seems to rest on the citation Andrew Sarris wrote in discussing the films of Robert Parrish in The American Cinema. Wrote Sarris in 1968: What burst of Buddhist contemplation was responsible for such a haunting exception to such an exceptionable career?. I've only seen a handful of films by Parrish, enough not to write off Saddle the Wind or the several terrific action set-pieces in The Destructors. And I'm not sure what Sarris means by "Buddhist contemplation" is this context, although the film is very much a Christian allegory.

Fortunately, in that regard, Parrish, working from a screenplay by Eric Ambler, from the novel by H.E. Bates, makes his points plain enough without being heavy-handed. Taking place in Burma near the end of World War II, Gregory Peck plays a fighter pilot who experiences his own return from the dead near Easter time. His wife killed in the London blitz, Peck's suicidal actions in battle are confused with heroism. What initially appears to be what would later be identified as post-traumatic stress disorder is revealed to be something deeper, and hidden from others. Peck falls in love with a young Burmese woman who assists at a village mission, initiating is reconnection with others.

Filmed in what is now known as Sri Lanka, the British pilots in Burma are presented as men out of their element in a different environment. Uniforms are soaked in perspiration. Peck is bronzed and sweaty. Although Peck ably suggests are man haunted by his personal demons, Parrish also frequently films Peck from an upward angle suggestive of a heroic man against the sky. Most of the war in The Purple Plain is the conflict going on in Peck's head. There's only one brief scene of the RAF pilots in battle, and later, the suggestion that Japanese troops are nearby, but off-screen.

Contemporary audiences might scratch their heads regarding the presentation of the relationship between Peck and the Burmese woman, a one time performance by the Australian-Burmese Win Min Than. With the "Hays Code" still in effect, Parrish had to dance around filming the relationship between a Caucasian man and an Asian woman, enough to let the audience know that the two were in love with some indirect dialogue and an embrace. Credit reportedly should be given to Peck for his insistence in casting a part-Burmese actress when "yellow face" was still the norm in English language productions.

Some of the special effects look crude, but are only a brief part of the film. Among the credits to become major names in future films are cinematographer Geoffrey Unsworth, and future director Clive Donner, with his second to last credit as editor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:10 PM

March 17, 2016

The War Between Men and Women

Melville Shavelson - 1972
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Does the name of James Thurber mean anything to contemporary audiences? Certainly Thurber's legacy as a humorist wasn't served by the recent film remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Thurber didn't care for the first film version, from 1947, for that matter. For a younger audience, The War Between Men and Women may seem like a curious period piece, from a time when the literary sources of films weren't comic books or novels aimed for "young adults".

Melville Shavelson seems to have been obsessed with adapting James Thurber, one way or another. Well before the short lived television series, My World and Welcome to It debuted in September 1969, Shavelson had worked on a Thurber inspired pilot in 1958. My World was produced by Danny Arnold, who also wrote several episodes. NBC may have been finished with Shavelson and Arnold's version of James Thurber's stories and cartoons, but Shavelson and Arnold weren't finished with Thurber. Taking Thurber to the big screen, the two were able to make a film more acerbic than their television version of Thurber.

The Thurber proxy here is named Peter Wilson, a bachelor cartoonist with failing eyesight, celebrity in New York City literary circles. Detesting any signs of domesticity, Wilson finds himself in awkward situations due to his near blindness. Literally bumping into Terry Kozlenko at his eye doctor's office, Peter fights his attraction to the divorcee with three children and a dog. An awkward courtship is followed by an awkward marriage, made more so when Terry's former husband, a war photographer, visits the family in their Connecticut home.

Jack Lemmon plays Wilson, but the real star is Barbara Harris. I'm not sure if Hollywood was uncertain about what to do with a talent like Harris, or if she just didn't care about stardom, but even before her well regarded turns for Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Altman, Harris shines here. It really starts with her laugh, heard but not seen, that attracts Peter's attention as well as ours. Sweet and sexy, Barbara Harris in retrospect was a talent under seen and underutilized. Even Vincent Canby, who panned the film in the New York Times, described Harris in her role as, "so lovely and intelligent".

It would probably be of no surprise to those familiar with James Thurber that the best part of the film is the opening credit sequence, Thurber's cartoons of the war between men and women animated. There is also a nice bit with Lemmon and screen daughter Lisa Gerritsen walking through parts of the animated short story, "The Last Flower". At this point, it appears that the best film adaptation of Thurber is of the play, The Male Animal, Elliot Nugent's 1942 film originally written by Nugent and Thurber. Like most of Melville Shavelson's other films, The War Between Men and Women is mildly amusing, although there is one very funny gag involving Lemmon, Harris, and a pregnant dog.

I'm not sure if Shavelson has a unusual sense of character placement, but when we first see Barbara Harris, her head is hidden by one of the lamps in the waiting room when Jack Lemmon bumps into her. What may have been more effective in a theater are the shots from Lemmon's point of view, fractured images of Harris, out of focus mid-town Manhattan, and a couple of moments of total darkness. What might have possibly provoked a chuckle in 1972 is when Harris bellows at Lemmon that he's a "male chauvinist pig". The War Between Men and Women might have been better had Shavelson not tried so hard to keep the film family friendly. For comparison, consider Elaine May's more caustic, and G rated (!) A New Leaf from the previous year. The War Between Men and Women has its moments, but most of those moments were drawn by James Thurber.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:16 PM

March 15, 2016

Donovan's Brain

Felix Feist - 1953
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Will the recent death of Nancy Reagan, formerly known as the actress, Nancy Davis, born as Anne Frances Robbins, spur greater interest in the new blu-ray release of Donovan's Brain? Probably not. I admittedly have not found Nancy Davis, as she was known then, to have been attractive or memorable. I saw a film she was in, East Side, West Side, not too long ago, and can easily summon up an image of statuesque Beverly Michaels, who had a smaller part, while drawing blanks on Davis. Three films seen, and I am baffled that anyone thought Nancy Davis had any kind of star potential. Be that as it may, it is also one of film history's ironies that Lew Ayres, star of Donovan's Brain, made films with the first and second Mrs. Ronald Reagan.

On his commentary track, film historian Richard Harland Smith, is more convincing about the merits of Donovan's Brain as an influential genre film. Smith discusses Curt Siodmak's original novel, as well as comparisons with the two other filmed versions. A scientist played by Ayres, keeps alive the brain of a multi-millionaire, with the help of his wife, Davis, and alcoholic doctor buddy, Gene Evans. Ayres tries to communicate with the pulsing brain through mental telepathy, only to have the brain take over Ayres' body. As seems to be the case with stories about preserved brains, Donovan turns out to be one very nasty, and vindictive guy. While Ayres is trying to keep his scientific shenanigans secret, Donovan, through Ayres, makes sure that neither the government nor his children get hold of his millions.

If the story seems a bit cliched, keep in mind that some of those cliches began here. Where the film makes a clear break from cliche is in the casting of Ayres as the scientist. A bit remote in his interactions with others, Ayres' scientist neither looks nor acts like a "mad scientist", but more like a mild mannered academic whose whose curiosity gets the best of him. Ayres effectively indicates through his voice and mannerisms when Donovan takes over without overplaying the part of a megalomaniac.

I've only seen one other film by Felix Feist, The Man Behind the Gun, a reasonably entertaining Randolph Scott vehicle, also released in 1953. What I found significant was the way much of Donovan's Brain was filmed, with the two or three characters frequently filmed together. Part of this was sheer economics, the efficiency of filming and editing a group rather than separate set-up and shots for individual performances. For myself, the scenes within the laboratory are of the greatest visual interest, with Ayers, Davis and Evans filmed behind the glass container with the brain. Even when the actors are discussing the brain, the brain, being placed in front of the actors, dominates the shot. Even when the brain is not in the shot, the actors are filmed in such a way that lab equipment is always visible, often in the foreground.

The blu-ray comes with the always welcomed Joe Dante and his "Trailers from Hell" presentation of the Donovan's Brain trailer. Kino Lorber, to its credit, has kept the black and white cinematography suitably grainy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:37 PM

March 10, 2016

The Vikings

Richard Fleischer - 1958
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I had to remind myself that I wrote about the DVD almost ten years ago. And maybe it's me, but his film that launched a dozen or so movies about Vikings has aged quite nicely. Dismissed by Bosley Crowthers in his New York Times review, "But there is plenty of action and the scenery occasionally is superb-just like a lot of Westerns. It's strictly a Norse opera, in two words." It may be because of the emphasis on action that The Vikings turned out to be one of the big hits of 1958.

I've not read the source novel by Edison Marshall, but it struck me this time that someone with a more thorough knowledge of symbolism might make something of mutilation of the two main characters, half-brothers played by Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis. Neither men is aware of their relationship in the course of the story. Douglas loses his left eye, attacked by the hunting falcon belonging to Curtis. Curtis has his left hand lopped off by an English king, his punishment for making sure the Viking king dies a Viking death. Curtis is unaware that he is the son of the Viking king, and a relative to the English king, as well as heir to the throne of Northumbria. Without putting to fine a point on it, underneath the epic exterior is a discussion of masculinity, power, class and sexuality.

The best reason for the blu-ray upgrade is the cinematography by Jack Cardiff. Yes, there are lots many gorgeous shots in and around the fjords of Norway. There is one visually wonderful moment when the henchmen of the evil Northumbrian king, played by purse lipped Frank Thring, are sent to kill a traitor, a scene with deep shadows and illumination by torchlight. There is a later scene of Viking ships lost in fog, virtual silhouettes in a blue-gray haze.

The film plays up the strengths of the stars, Kirk Douglas is both charming and caddish, Tony Curtis eager to prove himself, while Ernest Borgnine is boisterousness personified. Has Janet Leigh looked more beautiful than in The Vikings? Leigh is seen in form-fitting bodices, one of which is subject of a mildly suggestive moment in a film that is in part about women as property or the subject of sexual desire.

The blu-ray comes with a half hour featurette, from the earlier DVD release, with Fleischer discussing the making of The Vikings. Snapshots were taken of the stars in the small ship that was home for cast and crew. We also see the tower constructed for an overhead shot looking down the side of a fjord, as well as the huge VistaVision camera used for filming. This is the kind of movie that's best enjoyed on the largest screen possible.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:24 PM

March 08, 2016

The Forbidden Room

Guy Maddin and Evan Johnson - 2015
Kino Lorber BD Region A

It should be a surprise to no one that I have dreams about movies as well as dreams about seeing movies. I've even had incredibly vivid dreams about finding hidden movie theaters showing the kind of films that might only appear in the most specialized of cinematheques. One time I dreamt about a volcano and a Korean character from a film I just saw came wandering in.

Probably the best way to approach The Forbidden Room is to think of it as a two hour dream about movies. Characters wander in and out of several different, tenuously connected narratives. The narratives, such as they are, as well as the title, are inspired by a variety of lost films from different eras and countries. The title is from an Allan Dwan short from 1914, with Lon Chaney in a supporting role. Men trapped in a submarine with an unstable explosive on board segues to a story about a lumberjack rescuing a woman kidnapped by modern day cavemen which in turn becomes the story of a woman haunted by the Filipino vampire known as the aswang. Everything ends with a montage of characters all on their respective collision course.

As in previous films by Maddin, what we see looks deliberately archaic. With unnatural colors, and the effects of mottling, this is like a collection of scenes from films rescued from the attics and basements from people who had no idea about film preservation or just didn't care. While the Maddin makes films that have been inspired from forgotten genre films from the past, Evan Johnson's contribution was to make these reveries possible with digital technology. Several well known actors participated, mostly in brief appearances, including Charlotte Rampling, Udo Kier, and Geraldine Chaplin. The commentary track discusses some of the films that were sources of inspiration, as well as the making of The Forbidden Room. The Blu-ray also includes a booklet with an essay by Hillary Weston that provides some sort of explanation about the film, as well as a humorous account of filmmaking by Guy Maddin.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:55 PM

March 06, 2016

Coffee Break

Glenn Shadix in Dunston Checks in (Ken Kwapis - 1996)

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:52 PM

March 03, 2016

Victoria

Sebastian Schipper - 2015
Adopt Films BD Region A

I admit to being ambivalent about films that are presented as one continuous shot, be they actually filmed that way or edited to appear as a seamless whole. At this point, the one film that worked best for me is still Alexander Sokurov's Russian Ark which was dazzling enough with the artwork in the Hermitage Museum. Now that the technology exists to do the filming for the entire length of a feature, there is still the question of whether the challenge to make a film in this manner adds anything to the artistry of filmmaking.

While the craftsmanship of Victoria is admirable, there were times when I felt that at 138 minutes, the story could have used a bit of pruning. The real star of Victoria is Norwegian cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grovlen. That Grovlen followed the action going up and down staircases, in and out of cabs, and on the streets of Berlin, is the most amazing part of the film. The story itself is of some interest. Schipper began with the concept of a robbery and expanded the story from there. Unsurprisingly, it would be a French film critic who would bring up the comparison to the classic noir, Gun Crazy, noted for the long continuous take of a bank robbery and getaway. I would hope that Schipper has gotten around to seeing the Joseph Lewis film from 1950. In Schipper's film, a young Spanish woman meets a quartet of young guys so rowdy, they're denied entrance to a dive of a Berlin nightclub. Relatively new to Berlin, and barely speaking any German, Victoria takes the invitation to hang out with the guys. A night of drinking turns into something more serious as the guys, presumably small time criminals, are to do a robbery. One of the young men gets sick. Victoria, with no idea of what she is getting into, volunteers to do the driving for a what is suppose to be a quick and easy job.

It's some of the individual images that have the most interest. The film begins inside the small night club, dancers appear as shadows against the strobe lights and percussive beat. The camera wanders a bit inside the club until focussing on Victoria. As the story progresses, we are able to see daylight dimly over the city. Victoria and the man she latches onto, Sonne, speak English to each other. The other characters speak German. There are a few moments when there are no subtitles, or what is said is unclear, yet none of that matters. Most of what transpires can be understood visually. Hopefully, the interest in Victoria will make Sebastian Schipper's earlier work available for further evaluation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:13 PM

March 01, 2016

Paprika

Tinto Brass - 1991
Cult Epics BD Region A

It has been too long since I've seen Kenji Mizoguchi's Street of Shame. That film, about the last days of legal prostitution in Japan, and the women who work in a brothel, takes place within about two years of Paprika, and the efforts to close Italy's then legal brothels. I would not be surprised if Tinto Brass was familiar with Mizoguchi's final work, or if it was of some inspiration. The supplementary interview with this new blu ray includes an interview with Brass, discussing his own experiences and observations prior to 1958, when the law closing Italy's brothels took effect.

There is very little shame in Brass's world. His heroine is a naive young lady who initially goes to work for a couple of weeks with the goal providing her boyfriend with the finances to launch a small business. Discovering what the audience suspected, that the boyfriend is a cad, Paprika becomes dedicated to her work, with the goal of making herself financially independent. Not only are there a variety of sexual experiences, but most are found to be enjoyable. In spite of set-backs, Paprika is able to live her life on her own terms.

The perky score by Riz Ortolani sounds like something that might accompany a silent movie. And for the most part, Paprika is a comic fable, with lots of nudity. There is more care than I've seen in some bigger budget films to make everything era appropriate with the costumes and hair styles. One of the nice touches is the use of popular songs from that time, including Edith Piaf and Juliette Greco, as well as the high pitched vocals of the Mediterranean version of "The Chipmunks". There's also a terrific dance number that takes place at a dive in Marseilles.

That dance scene best employs a visual motif that appears frequently throughout Paprika. Brass has a several shots taken from floor level, usually with feet and ankles seen in the foreground. It's a nice touch by a filmmaker who could well have made more of a name for himself as a visual stylist, had he chosen to do so. Lateral tracking shots of women's bare asses isn't the stuff of serious film criticism, but that's never been the point of most of Brass's oeuvre.

Those familiar with the film of Tinto Brass from 1976 on, know what to expect. The interview suggests that for Brass, aside from making films is an enjoyment of finding a new "discovery" and making her his muse for one film. Apparently, Deborah Caprioglio found one kinky scene to be a challenge, although I would think it would be easier than living with Klaus Kinski as she had done prior to making Paprika.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:24 PM

February 25, 2016

Lost in Hong Kong

Gang Jiong
Xu Zheng - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

Since taking over the Lost series, star-writer-director Xu Zheng has indicated that should the series continue, the films will have the same basic premise but also stand alone with different characters. Lost in Hong Kong can be enjoyed by those who haven't seen Lost in Journey or Lost in Thailand, the two previous entries in the extremely popular and profitable Chinese series. As indicated in the title, Xu Zheng has misadventures in Hong Kong, although this time, Bao Bei'er inherits the shaggy wig from Wang Baoqiang, as the traveling companion who always finds a way to make a messy situation even messier.

As one who has seen almost all of the films referenced in an early sequence, the part that worked best was of Xu and Du Juan as two Chinese mainland art students in 1994, alternating between painting large posters for Hong Kong films from the 80s and 90s, with excerpts from those films. Much of the soundtrack is provided by Cantopop singers, most notably Leslie Cheung and Jacky Cheung. Xu provides an overload of references to Hong Kong films, making Quentin Tarantino look restrained in comparison. The precedence for this was Hollywood director Frank Tashlin, whose gags in films made in the 50s and 60s provided inspiration for Jean-Luc Godard, who in turn inspired QT. I don't know if Xu Zheng has any familiarity with Tashlin, but in addition to the basic story of an artist's ambitions being thwarted (Artists and Models), there's a subplot with Xu and Boa literally crashing into the set of a film in production (Hollywood or Bust), with Hong Kong director Wong Jing as himself, and Xu's career as a designer of brassieres (primarily Tashlin's films with Jayne Mansfield). Xu's career also recalls a very funny Hong Kong film from 2001, La Brassiere, which also is reminiscent of Frank Tashlin.

Xu plays the former art student, Xu Lai, now bra designer, under pressure from his wife and her family to father offsprings, hoping to rekindle his relationship with Yang Yi, now a world famous artist, presenting her work in Hong Kong. Xu's brother-in-law, Cai Lala, gets in the way, filming Xu at every point for a proposed documentary. I don't know who's responsible for this error, but Cai's inspiration is mis-named Paul Flaherty, rather than Robert. Along the way, there is the accidental filming of a murder, crooked cops, aging hookers in "Sailor Moon" costumes, and cameos by actors recognizable by the most hard core Hong Kong movie fan, with the exception claimed by the unmistakeable Lam Suet. The results are more frenetic than funny.

Zhao Wei's appearance as Xu's wife has some moments of humor, but mostly wastes the talents of this popular actress. Lost in Hong Kong was the most popular film in mainland China of last year, until the release of Monster Hunt. While Xu's film did relatively well in a limited stateside release, what some audiences may have found ingratiating, others may find simply grating.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:27 PM

February 23, 2016

Gog

Herbert L. Strock - 1954
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Restored after a little more than fifty years to its original 3D glory, it turns out that the only way you can see Gog in 3D is with a 3D blu-ray player. Even though I didn't get the opportunity to have get virtually poke by a hypodermic needle, or have Richard Egan aim a flame thrower at my face, the "flat" version of Gog is still worth checking out for the use of color. The color scheme is made up of solid primary colors, noticeable with brown jumpsuit worn by Richard Egan, and the green jumpsuit for Constance Dowling, with the scientists in white lab coats. The red lights in the hallways of the underground laboratory, where most of the film takes place, also add to the visual qualities that may have taken their queues from comic books. While I wish I could see Gog in 3D, I don't feel like I'm missing a lot in the flat version.

Richard Egan comes to the secret, underground laboratory in New Mexico, to investigate mysterious deaths that have taken place, possibly due to mechanical failure, but seemingly caused by sabotage. Egan is from the OSI, Office of Scientific Investigation. The lab functions with a computer called N.O.V.A.C., Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer. In the lab are two robots, Gog and Magog. And here is where I wish the commentary track, mostly by Tom Weaver, had been more insightful. We have a computer, with a name that is Eastern European, and two killer robots with biblical names. The cold war aspects to Gog aren't mentioned in the commentary track. Maybe William Ahearn will revisit this film in its new blu-ray glory. Not that any person or country is named here, but I'm certain that audiences of the time got the hint that Gog was about a little more than robots running amuck.

I'm not sure how much of the audience then cared about whether anything discussed was, or would be, scientifically feasible. Back during the time of production, computers were huge room sized machines, considered exotic, and operated by scientists. Where producer Ivan Tors, responsible for the original story, almost gets things right is with the gender parity, of featuring female scientists in the cast. Almost, because of a scene where a woman freaks out from the onslaught of ear piercing sounds, and Egan slaps her, immediately causing her to regain composure. Where Gog holds up best is during scenes of mayhem, when nothing can stop the various gizmos from getting out of control.

The two supplements are valuable. One discusses the restoration of Gog, which involved finding the "left-eye" version of the film in order to recreate the 3D version. There is also a video interview with Herbert Strock, shot in 2003, two years before his death. Strock, who had monoscopic vision, gives ample credit to cinematographer Lothrop Worth, and his use of the camera system used to make a 3D movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:40 PM

February 18, 2016

Pieces

Mil Gritos tiene la Noche
Juan Piquer Simon - 1982
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC

The best parts of the new blu-ray of Pieces? That would be some of the extra pieces, from the abundance of supplements found on the second disc. I loved the interview with Paul Smith, who has had an amazing career and some amusing stories. Coincidentally, both he and Pieces star Christopher George both made their big screen debuts under the direction of Otto Preminger. There's also the documentary, 42 Street Memories, with Joe Dante, Larry Cohen, and Veronica Hart, among others, telling about their adventures watching movies at that one block strip of movie theaters in New York City, back when there was sometimes as much or more action in the theater than on the screen. This was something of a nostalgia trip for me as I use to see movies there myself when I worked nearby on 38th Street. A special shout out to Lynn Lowery who shared her memories, and whom I saw at 42nd Street theaters, in David Cronenberg's They Came from Within because it was playing no where else in NYC, as well as Radley Metzger's Score and Fighting Mad, a virtually forgotten film by Jonathan Demme.

As for Pieces, there is the English language version, but I like the original Spanish language version, Mil Gritos tiene la Noche, which translates as "A Thousand Screams in the Night. The extra three minutes provides a little more flesh to the prologue. Also, the original music score by Librado Pastor is better than the library score on the English language release. Much of Pastor's score is piano driven, and sounds like something that would accompany a silent movie.

The prologue takes place in 1942, in Boston, for no particular reason. Ten year old Timmy is caught by his mom, putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a nude woman. Mom goes berserk, and chastises young Timmy, comparing the boy to his no-good father, and ordered to get a trash to dispose of his porn stash. Timmy instead returns to his room with an ax and makes like Lizzie Borden. If matricide was a school project, Timmy would get extra points for severing Mom with a saw. When the cops come calling, Timmy is found hiding in a closet, crying, and blaming a "big man" for the carnage. At this point, the narrative jumps ahead forty years, and someone is slicing and dicing the cute co-eds at a Boston university with a chainsaw and reassembling that naughty jigsaw puzzle.

Pieces is mostly about the gory murders. To complain about anachronisms in the prologue, bits of business unrelated to the story, or even how the, um, execution, of the murders defies logic, is besides the point. It doesn't take much effort to identity the red herrings among the characters. Pieces takes place in a universe where a former tennis champ works as an undercover cop, and the unnamed university has a whole department devoted to anatomy. The most believable part of Pieces is the affection displayed between real life couple Christopher George, as the chief investigating detective, and wife Lynda Day George, billed here as Linda Day, as the former tennis star.

Pieces was produced and co-written by Dick Randall, an American abroad, who specialized in low budget exploitation films that frequently featured stars a decade or more past their prime, like Sonny Tufts and Jayne Mansfield. Edmund Purdom appears here as the dean of the university. Pieces has stabbings, decapitations, and geysers of blood. But nothing could prepare me for the horror of Edmund Purdom, in his luxurious apartment with classical paintings and expensive furniture, serving Lynda Day George two cups of instant coffee.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 PM

February 16, 2016

Hitch-Hike

Autostop rosso sangue
Pasquale Festa Campanile - 1977
Raro Video BD Region A

On the surface, there may seem to be a disconnection, with Pasquale Festa Campanile going from being one of the writers on such certified classics as Luchino Visconti's Rocco and his Brothers andThe Leopard to directing and cowriting Hitch-Hike. I have yet to see other films "Pasqualino" has directed, but if this is any indication, there is an interest in examining how men, especially Italian men, deal with masculinity, both their own and that of others.

The thematic concerns are discussed in part by the character, but the most expressive scene is that in which the man, Adam, picked up on the road by the couple, Walter and Eve, rapes Eve. Taking place in an isolated area off the highway, the three have set up a small campfire outside. The gun-toting Adam ties up Walter, and forces Eve to undress. Walter helplessly watches while Adam climbs on top of Eve. Eve at first seems to be attempting to resist Adam, but eventually appears to be a mutual participant. A close up reveals a teary eyed Walter. Is Walter crying because of what is happening to his wife, or is it a result of feeling humiliated and emasculated, especially in the presence of Eve. Is Eve really responding to Adam in the way Adam imagines, or simply taking the path of least resistance, or possibly doing what she can to control the situation?

While the reputation of Hitch-Hike is that of an exploitation film, there is more going on than the featured sex and violence. Simultaneously, some might cite the casting of Corinne Clery, an actress with no problem being filmed nude, as being exploitive. Yet I think what makes this a film of interest is that it lends itself to more than one reading. Certainly, Freudians, amateurs and professionals, would have something to talk about with one of the most potent and iconic images of Hitch-Hike - that of the nude Clery with the very long rifle.

The film begins with Walter viewing Eva from the scope of a rifle. The scene cuts between Eve walking along a path, and Walter glancing at her through his scope. Walter shoots his gun, and the film cuts to a falling deer. It is after this that it is established that Walter and Eve are an unhappily married couple. Additionally, this opening scene establishes the idea of men as predators, constantly on the hunt.

Some of the same concerns in Hitch-Hike were expressed off-screen as well in the documentary supplement, with Clery discussing her relationship with star Franco Nero. David Hess, the go-to guy for playing sociopathic killers, talk about his involvement in making the film and working with Nero and Clery. Hilly Campo Imperatore was used for location shooting for a story set in Nevada. The blu-ray also has booklet, with an essay by Bret Wood, confirming what my own research indicated - the novel that has repeatedly been mentioned as the basis for Hitch-Hike does not exist except in someone's imagination.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:36 PM

February 11, 2016

The Challenge

John Frankenheimer - 1982
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

One of the little ironies of John Frankenheimer's career is that he made a film titled Ronin about sixteen year after making a film with the actor who personified the ronin for western audiences. Among his handful of Hollywood films, The Challenge may cause some eye rolling on the part of those viewers who at least know Toshiro Mifune from his work with Akira Kurosawa. While Mifune's reputation as a beloved star of world cinema would not be disturbed by this particular misstep, a younger audience might be baffled by the notion that for a very brief moment, top billed Scott Glenn was considered a movie star.

Tall, thin, and perpetually glum, Glenn plays a down and out boxer who's been payed to sneak a coveted samurai sword back to Japan from Los Angeles. Somehow, this guy who lives in a low rent dump just happens to have a valid passport. The film jumps to Glenn showing up at Narita Airport where he promptly gets kidnapped by some hoods who are also looking for the sword. Glenn finds a way of breaking out of the car when it is somewhere outside of Tokyo. If anyone was looking for realism, it's not here, because I have travelled between Narita Airport and Tokyo, a trip that literally takes hours. In any event, Glenn finds himself caught in a deadly sibling rivalry between two brothers, Toshiro Mifune, who runs a school for samurai, even though there have been no samurai for about one hundred years. The younger brother is played by Atsuo Nakamura, who seems to claims full or partial ownership of several corporations, but feels his life is incomplete unless he has that damn sword. Making the most of his supporting role is Calvin Jung as Nakamura's chief thug, so Americanized that he complains about not understanding Japanese thought, and familiar enough with a Yiddish euphemism that makes him the most endearing character here.

Richard Maxwell and John Sayles share writing credit, but I have no idea who did what. Probably credit should go to Leonard and Paul Schrader. Even though The Yakuza was hardly the hit that it should have been back in 1975, I get the idea that the goal was some kind of one-upmanship of Sidney Pollack's film. Instead of the relatively unknown Ken Takakura, get the almost universally familiar Toshiro Mifune. Instead of a couple of shootouts, lets get swords, machine guns and arrows! The violence ante is upped from that moment in The Yakuza where an arm is lopped off while shooting a gun.

The cinematography is by Kozo Okazaki, who also worked on, yes, The Yakuza. Okazaki's work can be seen to better advantage in his work with Hideo Gosha. One wishes the climatic fight scene was staged better, but like the rest of the film, it is entertaining to watch Toshiro Mifune run around with a gray wig, with sword and bow and arrows, in what looks like the world's most opulent office building. There are also a couple of Frankenheimer signature shots involving television screens. And read those end credits closely - the martial arts coordinator was someone named Steven Seagal. That said, it is the very wrong-headedness of The Challenge that makes it a fun trifle of Orientalism, by a group of people who should have known better.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 PM

February 09, 2016

Ostia

Sergio Citti - 1970
One 7 Films Region 0 DVD

When is A Violent Life not A Violent Life? When it is used as the English language title for the Italian film, Ostia. Let me explain. There are three people involved here - Pier Paolo Pasolini, writer-director Sergio Citti, and actor Franco Citti. A Violent Life was originally the title of Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1958 novel, made into a film released in 1962 that starred Franco Citti, with Sergio Citti contributing to the screenplay. Some of the same story elements would also be found in Pasolini's first film as a director, Accatone, which starred Pasolini's "discovery", Franco Citti, with Sergio Citti lending a hand to keep the dialogue representative of the Roman slums of that time. By the time that Ostia was made, Pasolini's filmmaking was in full gear, and he decided that Sergio Citti was ready to direct a film that they wrote, again starring Franco Citti. Also in the cast are the Swedish actress, Anita Sanders, who was briefly married to Franco Citti, and Ninetto Davoli, Pasolini's long time friend and former lover.

In the Guardian obituary for Sergio Citti, Ostia is discussed: Though Pasolini's many biographers barely mention this film, it was a script that reflected much of Pasolini's existential anguish at the time. Most of the film was shot around the very desolate area of the Roman beaches at Ostia, where the writer was to meet his come-uppance six years later. Citti did a competent job in filming it with his brother Franco playing one of two Accattone-type petty criminals (the other was Laurent Terzieff, whom Sergio himself would dub), but he couldn't give the story the autobiographical depth that it might have had if Pasolini had directed it himself.

Setting aside the decision by someone at One 7 Films to cause confusion with the English language title, I would say that Ostia would be of most interest to Pasolini completists. The film centers on two brothers, petty thieves, whose relationship borders on the homoerotic. The are apparently not very good thieves according to the boss of their five man gang. The men discover a blonde woman asleep in a field, and bring her to the brothers home. The two brothers and the woman share stories from their lives, as well as visiting the most desolate parts of the beach on Ostia's coast. The tone of the film is mostly lighthearted, informed by Francesco De Masi's jaunty score, even in a scene of patricide by the brother when quite young. Pasolini's hand is most evident in the tragic conclusion.

The DVD transfer is decent, although what we get is the movie, with an English subtitle option, and no extras. One 7 Films periodically pulls something out of the vault that would probably get greater attention had it been given a home video release by Criterion or Kino. That the DVD is being released slightly less than a month after Franco Citti's death is coincidental.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:10 PM

February 04, 2016

Paolo Gioli: The Complete Filmworks

Paolo Gioli - 1969-2014
Raro Video Region 1 DVD

It's been forty years since I took P. Adams Sitney's class at New York University on what has been called underground, avant-garde, or experimental films. I wish he was around to help me articulate what we have here. Not only does this three disc collection include all of Gioli's films, but there is also an interview, and a short documentary of Gioli trying to duplicate an experiment by Edwin Land, the inventor of the Polaroid film, regarding color perception. There's over eight hours of stuff here, and it is a bit overwhelming to watch even over the course of two days. In Paola Gioli's case, the sometimes misapplied term of "experimental cinema" is appropriate as many of the films were made with in such a way that the results could not be anticipated.

Gioli primarily seems to be interested in the nature of film, specifically the strips of celluloid, how images are recorded and manipulated, as well as how film reacts to different kinds of elements both within and outside of nature. Gioli took up filmmaking after coming to New York City, a young painter, reacting to the explosion of the arts in the late Sixties, and how art and artists informed each other's work. The first film, Tracce di Tracce was created mostly by Gioli's fingerprints painted on the frames to create a series of abstract images. It's the kind of work that evokes Stan Brakhage or Len Lye. Gioli was unaware of Brakhage at the time, but, like Brakhage , most of his work is silent. Gioli's other films have similarities with other filmmakers. In his own way, Gioli makes me think of Ken Jacobs reworking the silent film, Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son. Taking the 1905 film, shot as a series of tableaus, with a stationary camera filming the action from a distance, Jacobs broke down the film into a series of shots, examining the the multiple bits of action within each of the original shots, stretching a five minute short to almost two hours.

The comparison with Ken Jacobs is not to be taken too closely. What Gioli does, is take film either shot by himself, or from other sources, and in addition to closing in on parts of the original image, will create mirror, reverse or negative images. There are also smaller images inserted within the frame. There are film strips exposed through pin hole cameras, with Gioli's hand used as a shutter. Film strips are also seen traveling unmoored from the sprockets. Gioli also "animates" still photos, sometimes creating little narratives with unrelated shots, as well as using different film formats. Additionally, Gioli would build his own cameras to create films that were independent of exposing film at 18 or 24 frames per second, or restrained by the sprockets in a conventional camera.

The thirty-eight films, all of varying lengths, are grouped together roughly by theme, and techniques explored by Gioli. The DVD set comes with a booklet that includes an essay discussing the history of avant-garde and experimental films in Italy, and Gioli's place within that history, an essay by David Bordwell on what he calls Gioli's "vertical cinema", an interview with Gioli, and notes by Gioli that provide the English language translation of the film titles, and a brief description on how each film was created.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:14 PM

February 02, 2016

The Beauty Inside

Byuti Insaideu
Baik - 2015
Well Go USA BD Region A

In its first incarnation, The Beauty Inside was an episodic and interactive program made for Youtube, under the direction of Drake Doremus. The main character, Alex, wakes up every morning to find that he is physically a different person, with a possible change in age, and gender. From what I read about this version, the various actors who portrayed Alex gave the role their own interpretation.

The Korean film version keeps the essential premise, but as part of a narrative story. There are reportedly twenty actors as Woo-jin, some for several scenes, others for just a few seconds, but there the character has some shared mannerisms, providing consistent traits in the various incarnations. Woo-jin is a furniture maker who lives and works alone, his only contacts with the outside world being his mother and his long time friend, Sang-beck. The embrace of the solitary life is challenged upon meeting furniture saleswoman, E-soo. Attraction turns into a few days of dating when Woo-jin appears as a handsome young man. One can stay awake and not change appearances for only a few days. Woo-jin reveals his secret to E-soo. For a while, E-soo seems to be able to live with constant change of identity.

Both E-soo and Woo-jin are 29 years old. There is no discussion, but their relationship is chaste, where sleeping together is no euphemism. The film sidesteps any controversy over such matters as age, gender and race. Woo-jin appears as a European man, a grandmotherly Korean woman, a woman of African descent, and a young boy, among his many entities. One might argue that the relationship is platonic to emphasize the idea of inner beauty. What is interesting to note is that the only versions of Woo-jin that E-soo is seen kissing are played by Koreans, with Woo-jin in female form almost, but not quite pressing lips with E-soo.

I'm not certain about the significance, but both Woo-jin and his mother have their livelihoods based on craftwork. Woo-jin makes one of a kind pieces of furniture, often for customer specifications. The mother sells yarn, and in one scene demonstrates knitting for E-soo.

This is the first feature by Baik following a career of making commercials. There is some visual play, mostly in the use of jump cuts between the different actors as Woo-jin, usually in bridges between scenes. Han Hyo-joo, as E-soo, carries most of the dramatic weight, as has a couple of Best Actress nominations for her performance here. There are some humorous moments, as well as a couple that might tug at the heartstrings. Still, I wish that there was a filmmaker brave enough to address the possibilities and implications that are shied away from here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 AM

January 26, 2016

The Assassin

Cike Nie Yinniang
Hou Hsiao-Hsien - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

For those who may not have had the opportunity to see The Assassin theatrically, rest assured that the blu-ray keeps the 4:3 aspect ratio, with the exception of the "zither scene". The extraordinary use of color is here as well. Still, there are certain moments which may be lost unless the film is seen on a relatively large screen.

The blu-ray comes with four very short "making of" vignettes which are worth seeing because Hou discusses his intentions when he made the film, as well as his method of filmmaking. Cinematographer Mark Lee, costumer and production designer Hwarng Wern-Ying, and stars Shu Qi and Chang Chen also contribute their thoughts on working with Hou. What makes these bonus features important is that The Assassin needs to be understood and appreciated on its own terms, rather than the genre expectations that usually come with a wuxia film.

Hou undercuts those expectations by keeping the fight scenes brief, and by often filming those scenes from a distance. In a sword fight against several soldiers, Hou has a couple of shots of Shu Qi and her adversaries in medium shots before cutting to a long shot where the characters are barely seen in the distance, the action mostly obscured by trees in the forest. In a duel with a swords woman wearing a gold mask, Hou immediately begins with the two women engaged, sword against sword, jumping into what would be the middle of the scene in traditional narrative filmmaking. There is a little bit of wire work, including a scene with Chang Chen chasing Shu Qi across a roof top, a small nod to the more classic wuxia film.

Hou is known for his long takes. There are a couple of shots where the the camera doesn't move, where the viewer needs to concentrate to notice the movement within the frame. Hou talks about letting nature dictate some of the shots, waiting for the wind to blow, making him akin to David Lean, but on a more intimate scale. One of the advantages of being able to see The Assassin on home video is that allows the viewer the leisure to contemplate the carefully arranged palate of colors, the silk costumes and curtains, and use of light and shadow.

This is Shu Qi's third film with Hou. Mostly dialogue free, and seemingly expressionless, Hou deliberately makes Nie Yinniang enigmatic. It's a fitting performance in a film where family relationships also have much larger political meanings, and where what is unspoken can be more important that what is said.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:32 PM

January 21, 2016

Ip Man 3

Wilson Yip - 2015
Well Go USA Enterainment

I'm not sure how factual Ip Man 3 is beyond the famed martial arts teacher having a school in Hong Kong, taking a young Bruce Lee as his student, and having his his wife die in 1960. The real Ip Man was born in 1893, and would have been 66 or 67 years old in 1959 through 1960 when the film takes place. The charitable thing here is to think of Ip Man 3 as a fictional film with a couple of factoids as well as a handful of facts tossed in.

That said, the pleasure here is watching Donnie Yen in what he claims to be his final martial arts film. Whether it really is or not remains to be seen. That the film is getting a wider theatrical release in the United States gives the audiences anticipating Rogue One: A Star Wars Story the opportunity to see Donnie Yen doing what he does best on the big screen. Yen, a bit past 50 years old, is still remarkable in his athleticism. There's a kind of grace in Yen's movements that makes me think of Gene Kelly. And Yen is so self-confident that he has no problem seen with the noticeably taller Lynn Hung as his wife. Overlook the gimmick that he's about to fight Mike Tyson. Prior to the fight, Yen takes a position with one leg in a crouching position, with another leg extended forward on the floor, holding that position, staying perfectly still. One of the things I like about Donnie Yen is his ability to convey a sense of concentration, of thinking and anticipating his moves, as well as those of his opponents.

Wilson Yip films the martial arts with relatively lengthy shots with two or more fighters within the shots, giving a sense of how the opponents are interacting with each other, as well as a sense of space within the scene. By lengthy, I'm still talking about seconds, but still long enough for the actors to make to make three or four moves, and give the viewer the chance to see each punch, kick or block. Yip's lengthiest shots are relatively elaborate, with the camera completely overhead and moving following Yen and an opponent fighting through hallways and stairs. One would wish that with some of the dazzling cinematography, that Ip Man 3 could be seen in 3D as in Hong Kong, and in March, in mainland China.

Mike Tyson as a badass gangster might have been somewhat more believable had someone covered that tribal tattoo. Overlooking that anachronism, Tyson is impressive punching a speed bag. Yen also gets into a fight in an elevator with a Thai boxer, played by Sarut Khanwilai. If Sarut looks a lot like the most famous martial arts star from Thailand, that's no coincidence, as he's Tony Jaa's stunt double in the film Skin Trade. As Ip Man's friend and rival, Max Zhang's performance here suggests potential for taking some of the roles that would have previously been considered for Yen or Jet Li. Zhang had previously appeared in the most critically acclaimed film about Ip Man, The Grandmaster, along with action director Yuen Woo-Ping.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:01 AM

January 19, 2016

Buraikan

Masahiro Shinoda - 1970
Toho Home Video Region 2

We won't be able to see it until November, but one of the more anticipated films of this year would be Martin Scorsese's version of Silence. Will Masahiro Shinoda's version be more widely available in the U.S. by that time, for comparison? I don't have the answer. If not, hopefully those more scholarly, or merely curious, critics will get the British DVD. Will Scorsese's film encourage greater interest in the films of Shinoda? If the aftermath of The Departed is any indication, with the indifference to Andrew Lau's Revenge of the Green Dragons and the stateside absence of Alan Mak's successful Overheard series, probably not. For myself, I did a little bit of research, trying to find where Scorsese and Shinoda intersect beyond their respective films based on Shusaku Endo's novel.

There are some commonalities between the two filmmakers. The main characters are those who live in the margins of society. Discussions regarding Scorsese and Shinoda also discuss the violent content in their respective films. There might have been more similarity had Shinoda chosen to make more films about Japanese gangsters, the yakuza, but he made one, Pale Flower, with a scene that Kimberly Lindbergs cites as possibly having had an influence on Taxi Driver. I would guess that Paul Schrader, who pretty much introduced the yakuza genre to American audiences, would have been familiar with Shinoda's film. And in Buraikan, written by Shuji Terayama, a character proclaims, "I've always wanted to cut virgin skin". The distance to the Schrader penned, "You should see what a .44 Magnum's gonna do to a woman's pussy you should see", seems very close.

What also links these two lines is that they are spoken by men reacting in the most misogynistic terms to disruptions of traditional social order. In Buraikan, taking place in the late 19th Century, near the end of the Shogunate era, Lord Mizuno is trying to impose a series of "reforms", essentially an imposition of rules against various forms of entertainment and pleasure, especially those enjoyed by members of the lower castes. The ranting passenger, played by director Martin Scorsese, in Taxi Driver is not only a cuckold, but additionally resentful that his wife is with a black man. Both films are about characters navigating their way through cultural changes in their respective environments, 19th Century Edo and 1970s New York City.

There is a casual connection in how those environments are presented. New York City is seen mostly in the form of neon signs, garish lights and movie theater marquees. Shinoda's Edo is more deliberately theatrical and artificial with painting of the era appearing on the walls of buildings. There is also some overlap between the two main characters of each film, each attempting to act heroically in their respective stories. Naojiro Kataoka is a would be actor who finally gets his chance, not on the stage, but as part of the rebellion against Lord Mizuno. Travis Bickle essentially creates a role for himself - the famous monologue is like a play rehearsal, while the Mohawk haircut is part of his costume as vigilante.

I have yet to find Shinoda and Scorsese making comments on each other's films, much less discuss Silence. Where the two have some kind of common ground in their careers is that they began when the film industries of Japan and Hollywood were looking to new directors to attract a younger audience. Shinoda retired from filmmaking in 2003, following the box office and critical failure of his film, Spy Sorge. Eleven years younger, Scorsese has maintained the kind of commercial viability and critical attention to allow him to make a more truly personal film, with retirement unimaginable with several announced future projects. I would hope that even if the two directors don't engage in any dialogue, that there is the kind of discussion that brings about renewed attention to Masahiro Shinoda's films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:29 PM

January 12, 2016

Figures in a Landscape

Joseph Losey - 1970
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

If the title evokes some kind of abstract painting, that's no accident. The two men seen running in silhouette are eventually seen, but the landscape that they are running through is an unnamed country. It takes a while before the names of the two men, apparently escaped prisoners, are revealed. The men are pursued by a helicopter, operated by another pair of men, unseen save for the back of their helmets. The relationship between these two groups of men is underlined by shots cutting between the helicopter and an eagle, another bird of prey. The helicopter/bird motif is further stressed by one of the tag lines used in the posters for the film.

That very little is explained in Figures in a Landscape may be why Joseph Losey's film was given minimal release in the United States, in the midst of Losey's peak period, commercially and artistically. I saw the film when it played in New York City's First Avenue Screening Room, a small theater with a screen often described as "postage stamp size". This was a theater that provided week long runs for artier fare that was deemed to have no commercial potential. Star Robert Shaw might have attracted a small audience, while Malcolm McDowell was still relatively unknown in his second theatrical film, following If . . .

What I was unaware at the time was that originally Figures was to be directed by Peter Medak, and star Peter O'Toole. Shaw, who also wrote the screenplay from a novel by Barry England, was probably better suited for the physically demanding role as the older prisoner. Joseph Losey is someone not thought of to take on a film involving a lot of running through mountains and beaches, with the occasional firing of guns. In between the mostly house-bound Secret Ceremony and The Go-Between, Losey was in Spain, with a film that takes place primarily out in the open.

Some of the thematic concerns that frequently appear in Losey's films pop up in the beginning of Figures. Arguments based on age and class threaten to get in the way of any plans McDowell and Shaw may have of crossing the border. The two realize soon enough that they are better off together than apart. In what is essentially a two character film, Losey keeps his two actors within the same frame for most of the story, providing the appropriate visual corollary to their shared situation.

Something that I had overlooked when I saw Figures about forty-five years ago, was how grueling the filming would have been for Shaw and McDowell. The two have their hands tied behind their backs for the first half hour, all while dodging the pursuing helicopter mostly through mountains and woods. Later, McDowell and Shaw crawl though farmland that is both flooded and on fire. The fire is caused by incendiary devices tossed for the helicopter. Briefly, Losey makes visual reference to Viet-Nam, the very real war taking place during the time of the film's production and release. Viewers who demand explanations for everything they see on screen will no doubt be frustrated by Figures in a Landscape. For myself, Losey's film still holds up well after all these years.

* * * From Kimberly Lindbergs, prior to the U.S. home video release.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 AM

January 07, 2016

Memories of the Sword

Hyeomnyeo: Kar-ui gi-eo
Park Heung-shik - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

For the first few minutes, I had high hopes for Memories of the Sword. I'm susceptible to the charms of plucky young women clearly skilled in sword-fighting, even it's with a bamboo stick. I could even forgive a convoluted story in which three of the main characters are known by two different names as part of their particular story details. What gets in the way is how Park Heung-shik is over-reliant on acrobatics achieved with wire works and CGI.

The story involves a romantic triangle, two men and a woman, master sword fighters, fighting against a corrupt governor, during the Goryeo era, roughly the equivalent of Europe's High and Late Middle Ages. One of the men sells out betraying the other two. The narrative also includes two daughters, one of whom is trained to avenge the death of her parents, the main portion of the film. What ensues are the revealings of true identities, ending with what has lately become a cinematic cliche, the sword fight in the snow.

I've only seen one other film by Park, Bravo, My Life!, a more modest production buoyed up by the presence of Moon So-Ri. Between these two films lies the suspicion that Park's ability to tell a story is uneven at best, and that he gets by with a capable cast, whose conviction in their roles covers up Park's weaknesses.

One aspect that I did find of interest, something that is not seen but in a small handful of Asian films, is that part of the film takes place fleetingly in an Arabian section of a Korean city. There is also an Arab who is a minor character. This is the kind of moment that makes me wish that the film was more historically rooted, rather than being a martial arts fantasy.

Jeon Do-yeon is probably the best known cast member, seen here as the blind, former swords woman, and mother of Hong-ki, the young woman seeking revenge. During the very brief time that films from South Korea played in stateside art houses, Jeon was seen in Secret Sunshine and the remake of The Housemaid. Kim Go-eun, as Hong-Ki, looks much younger than her actual age. Kim is more interesting as a sometimes smart-alecky teenager, acting on impulse, than when taking her too frequent gravity defying flights in the course of a duel, or trying to outrun her pursuer. All said, the historical details, and the quality of the production should have been used for a film that too often appears to be a retread of the imitators of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:37 AM

January 05, 2016

The Captive City

Robert Wise - 1952
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

"Ripped from the newspaper headlines" is how it would have been proclaimed back when Robert Wise made this film. The topicality of The Captive City is probably the main reason why Wise's follow-up to The Day the Earth Stood Still doesn't generate the kind of attention or love of the earlier work. That this film was also endorsed by Congressman Estes Kefauver, who also makes an appearance, will probably be meaningless to a younger generation of viewers. Back in the days when television was something broadcast over no more channels than the fingers of one hand, Kefauver was a celebrity politician for his hearings on organized crime, part of the inspiration for The Captive City.

As a former editor, most famously at RKO for Orson Welles, Wise takes the expression, "cut to the chase" literally here. The film opens with newspaper reporter John Forsythe furiously driving down the highway, pursued by another car, until he stops at the nearest police station. Fearing for his life, he talks the desk sergeant into letting him use the station tape recorder to tell his story about the events that have led to the threats against his life. Most of The Captive City takes place in a small town where it would seem that virtually every place of business is a front for small time betting, all secretly under the control of some guys seen wearing trench coats and broad brim hats. These out of town guys are also known to hide their Italian last names.

The narrative elements are of some historical interest, but what really makes makes The Captive City ripe for reconsideration is that visually, this is Robert Wise at his most Wellesian. There are a couple of shots where a character breaks into the frame in close-up, with the other characters positioned in the back. Several conversations are filmed as a two shot, the term used for two people within the frame. One of the actors is placed in close-up in the foreground, while the other actor is seen further back. Wise also has a few deep focus shots, such as one of Forsythe at the entrance of his newspaper office, the hallway, dark, empty, almost forbidding. That the main character of The Captive City is an idealistic newspaper journalist, and co-owner of a small town paper, albeit one who retains his idealism, seems almost too coincidental following Wise's participation on Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons.

Lee Garmes' credit as cinematographer comes with the subtitle mentioning that Garmes was using something called the "Hoge lens". Sharp eyed viewers will then note Ralph Hoge getting credit as Assistand Director. There seems to be bit of Hollywood history that requires a bit more exploration, but Ralph Hoge, with the camera lens that bears his name, was the key grip on those two previously mentioned films by Orson Welles, and would have had some practical experience in making deep focus a reality for his director.

The Captive City may well be of interest to fans of of Fifties and Sixties television. This was John Forsythe's first film where he received top billing. Ray Teal, part of the Bonanza stock company, appears here as the compromised small town police chief. Martin Milner, twenty-one at the time, but appearing like he only outgrew puberty the day before, is the enthusiastic photographer for Forsythe's newspaper. And Paul Brinegar, clean shaven unlike his grizzled, bearded cook in Rawhide, is seen as the desk sergeant who offers Forsythe safe haven in the police station.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:24 PM

December 22, 2015

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

Ana Lily Amirpour - 2014
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Full disclosure here: I helped finance this movie. The Kickstarter campaign appeared on Facebook, and the premise of an Iranian Vampire Spaghetti western mishegoss of a film sounded interesting, to say the least. I tossed in a very modest amount, just enough to get a few emails letting me know that Amirpour has actually made her film, that it was playing the festival circuit, and was getting an actual theatrical release. Obviously, my investment paid off.

The blu-ray comes with several added supplements - deleted scenes, Amirpour discussing her film with Roger Corman, Amirpour and star Sheila Vand discussing the film with some guy from Vice, and a booklet with an essay from Erick Kohn of Indiewire. The booklet also comes with the "graphic novel", setting up the origin of "the girl" prior to her coming to Bad City, the imagined town where Girl takes place. And yet . . .

Some of the discussion adds insight into Amirpour's inspiration for making Girl. Most of the time, my feeling is one of "Cine Ipsa Loquitur', letting the film speak for itself. I think one of the most annoying aspects of Hollywood films is the need to explain things, especially with the comic book films and the fixation on "origin stories". Amirpour is confident enough that she let the audience figure out what's going on. Even though Amirpour has stated that Bad City is in an imaging Iran, it's also not impossible to visualize, as has happened in many American cities, a small town where everyone speaks Farsi. That we don't know where the vampire comes from or why she's in Bad City just adds to the mystery.

For me, the real tension in Girl has nothing to do with the horror genre aspects. The more palpable tension is cultural, a choice between Iranian tradition and a more western way of life. And none of the characters balance these choices in the same way. The young man, Arash, first seen cruising in his vintage Thunderbird, expresses concern about being alone in the same room as an unmarried young woman. The young woman is seen with a bandage on her nose suggesting that she may have had rhinoplasty, making her less obviously Middle Eastern facially. The girl, who is never named, dresses informally, somewhat reminiscent of Jean Seberg in Breathless, except when, out at night wearing the chador. The girl, as vampire, acts as the self appointed moral cop on the beat, sucking the blood out of a drug dealer, and scaring a young boy to stay on the straight and narrow. Amirpour has stated that her film came out the feeling of power she had skateboarding while wearing a chador, and with the cape of the chador flying in the wind, one of the film's most indelible images has been created.

In her discussion with Corman, Amirpour refers to her film as a fairy tale. Maybe not that big a stretch, as it made me think of Catherine Breillat's films inspired by the writings Charles Perrault, which teeter between fantasy and horror. Amirpour is aided in no small way by the black and white wide screen cinematography by Lyle Vincent. The shots of the oil derricks and run down houses filmed in Taft, California would be as fitting in classic film noir. The night here gets very black.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:43 PM

December 15, 2015

Thundercrack!

Curt McDowell - 1975
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

Following a reported five years of restoration work from the only complete print, Curt McDowell's cult film has finally been made available for home viewing. I did have the chance to see Thundercrack! theatrically in 1977, but from what I've read, it may have been just as well that I passed at that time. The version that played on the art house circuit may have been the 120 minute version, cut by the producers with no input from McDowell. Also, the quality of the sound, usually the weakest aspect of extremely low budget films, made parts of the dialogue unclear - and thankfully the Blu-ray comes with a choice of subtitles, including English for people like myself who try to be discrete, keeping the volume low especially when watching films loaded with sexual content.

Which brings up a much discussed point about Thundercrack! - is it art or porno or pornographic art? Even the legendary George Kuchar, McDowell's former teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute, who wrote the screenplay from a story by McDowell and Mark Ellinger, calls the film pornographic. The set-up is a parody of older films, a group of travelers are caught in a major rain storm, find shelter in the house of an older woman. Eventually, they are joined by a man driving a truck for a circus, carrying a lion, an elephant, and a gorilla. What transpires on everyone's part is an explosion of repressed libidos, and the graphic depiction of sexuality, primarily between consenting adults. George Kuchar was responsible for the most notorious coupling here, no doubt inspired by a screening in his youth of Curt Siodmak's Bride of the Gorilla from 1951. In this case, Kuchar plays the part of the bride.

On the down side, at 159 minutes, some of the jokes and double entendres wear thin with repetition. Apparently no one was willing to pare down any of the dialogue in Kuchar's screenplay. At its best, the black and white cinematography visually is reminiscent of Edgar G. Ulmer's films from the Forties, with the use of shadows, and filming people in close-ups in exterior scenes to disguise the absence of an actual set.

The Blu-ray comes with hilarious and essential documentary about George and Mike Kuchar, Jennifer Kroot's It Came from Kuchar, made in 2009, two years before George's death. It appears that there was an earlier effort to make Thundercrack! available, as the supplemental DVD has footage of star Marion Eaton, writer/composer Mark Ellinger, and self-shot video from George Kuchar, all from 2004. There is also a selection of several short films by Curt McDowell, all but one, "Loads", made prior to Thundercrack!, with the musical, "Boggy Depot" highly recommended.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:03 PM

December 08, 2015

The Crooked Way

Robert Florey - 1949
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Sonny Tufts?

Believe it! Only a year older than John Payne, there should be no problem with Tufts as the long-time former friend who grew up with Payne. Maybe it was the effects of reported alcoholism, but Tufts does look at least ten years older, with his creased face, with the black and white cinematography making his blond hair appear prematurely white. The voice is as smooth as sandpaper. As the gangster, Vince Alexander, Tufts is eminently effective here, making life miserable for those he sees as standing in his way.

John Payne plays a former G.I., Eddie Rice, released from a military hospital. Shrapnel in the skull has caused amnesia, and with the doctors seeing no cure for the memory loss, Rice is released, headed to Los Angeles, his last known address. In Los Angeles, Rice quickly finds out that he's been known as Eddie Riccardi, a criminal associated with Vince Alexander. The more that is uncovered about Eddie Riccardi, the more Eddie Rice learns the hard way that ignorance is bliss.

As a genre exercise, The Crooked Way is an almost perfect example of Film Noir. The central character is a loner, dislocated from his past, alone in a big, imposing, city. The main nemeses is a very organized man, shielded by wealth, a legitimate business to cover the illegal activities, and if needed, hired muscle if force is needed. The exception may be in Ellen Drew's character of Nina Martin. Nina is not quite the femme fatale, only putting Eddie's life in danger somewhat reluctantly, based on her past relationship, one that Eddie does not remember.

Visually, this is the stuff that Film Noir dreams are made of. There are more than enough visual flourishes here. Sharing the frame are extreme close-ups in the foreground, with lesser characters standing in the back. There are shadowy people in a shadowy world. A nice touch includes the oversized shadow of the railing leading up to Eddie's hotel room. Hunted down by Tufts, Payne and Drew are seen as silhouettes in a darkened house. At a later point, Robert Florey cuts between close-ups of Drew, her face illuminated, and Payne, his face in the dark, a shadow of himself, unlit save for faint backlight providing an outline.

From Thomas Pryor's review in the New York Times: "The Crooked Way" races along as a melodrama should and it has more than enough plot to keep its hard-working actors going from one dangerous situation to another. But there is so much pointless brutality in it that one may seriously question whether the movie people are wise to go on with the making of such pictures. The human family may not be perfect, but why subject it to so-called entertainment that is only fit for savage beasts.

Be that as it may, contemporary viewers may well get a bit of a jolt when after being beaten senseless by a trio of gangsters, Payne is tossed down the stairway of a fire escape. As an example of classic Film Noir, that's entertainment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:23 AM

December 01, 2015

Assassination

Amsal
Choi Dong-hoon - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

What ever one might think of Choi Dong-hoon, I don't think he will ever be accused of being understated in his films. Choi's films are chockablock full of spectacular set pieces. So it is with Assassination, the historically inspired story that takes place primarily during the time of Japan's occupation of Korea.

Choi's previous film was The Thieves, the wonderful pan-Asian heist movie from 2012. Choi tries something as ambitious here. What gets in the way is that even with some knowledge of the history taking place, there are times when I felt the need for a score card to remind myself of which side some of the characters belonged to in the fight for Korean independence. As it is, the one part of the story that was a variation of The Corsican Brothers, with female twins separated following the assassination attempt of their father, was the least confusing part of this film.

Until the second half of the film, Choi mixes up comedy with adventure, with three disgraced rebels are assigned to kill a Japanese official and one of the leading Korean collaborators. The story hops from Manchuria to Shanghai, and finally to Seoul. It is made clear later why three unlikely persons were chosen for this assignment. The comic elements come in with the different playings of identity, primarily of the Korean characters navigating their way through Japanese territory. Further adding to the complications is the knowledge that there are rival factions of groups fighting for Korean independence, as well as persons who may be acting as double agents.

Among the three rebels in Ok-yun, a young woman and sniper who may or may not have deliberately shot her superior officer. Except for one brief moment when we see guns strapped to Ok-yun's thigh, Choi has chosen not to play up Jun's attractiveness, instead emphasizing the seriousness of Ok-yun, even as she samples coffee for the first time at French hotel in Shanghai. Jun is also in the most tragic scenes, in which the destruction of a family may well be representative of what happened to a country.

With all of the shooting, explosions and assorted mayhem, it is also to Choi's credit that the best scene, or more accurately, the most satisfying scene, is near the end, when the identity of the Korean rebel working for the Japanese is revealed. Identified and shot, revenge having no time limit even after Korean independence, the man staggers away from the camera, framed by two lines of laundry, white sheets, on the right and left side of the screen. The camera views that action without dramatic emphasis. After almost two hours of blood and bullets, Choi Dong-hoon also knows when to stand back.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:46 PM

November 24, 2015

The Mask

Julian Roffman - 1961
Kino Classics BD Region A

Not to be confused with other films with the same title, this film was also known as The Eyes of Hell. I had to opportunity to see The Mask, part of it, when it was revived in the early 1970s in an attempt to lure the youth audience of the time with the "psychedelic" visuals. The audience at the late night show at the New York City theater was having none of it, bellowing loudly enough to force the theater to discontinue The Mask in favor of a documentary on Jimi Hendrix.

Without the 3D sequences, The Mask would probably of moderate historical interest, as both the first Canadian horror movie and the first Canadian 3D movie. I was able to see Julian Roffman's previous film, The Bloody Brood, mostly notable for showcasing a then unknown Peter Falk. That earlier film, about Toronto beatniks, and The Mask similarly frame the act of murder as some kind of intellectual adventure. Of interest is that Roffman's cinematographer on The Bloody Brood was Eugen Shufftan, who had worked with Georges Franju before and after working with Roffman. Why this is worth noting is because the masked characters in the 3D sequences have some similarity to Edit Scob in Franju's Eyes without a Face, with cinematography by, yes, Eugen Shufftan. There is also the more obvious similarity to Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the probable influence of William Castle.

For most cinephiles, the selling point of The Mask is the contribution of Slavko Vorkapich. Known for his montages, primarily during the "Golden Age" of Hollywood, Vorkaphich's contribution here is listed as writing the dream sequences. As it turned out, most of Vorkaphich's ideas were not used by Roffman due to the complexity, as well as budgetary considerations. The Blu-ray includes a montage of montages by Vorkapich, and based on the evidence, images of skulls, or in this case, the titular mask, flying towards the audience, was a favorite visual motif. While Vorkapich's participation in The Mask was a little less that has been advertised, one wonders what we might have had, had Roffman been able to use Vorkapich's ideas, or those of experimental filmmaker Len Lye, who sketched out a flying blade capable of beheading victims.

The story itself is about a scientist who stole the mask, an ancient South American artifact, from a museum, and is suffering from the nightmarish images when the mask is worn. He tries to convince a psychiatrist that the mask is the source of his troubles. Prior to committing suicide, the scientist mails the mask to the shrink, who in turn makes the mistake of wearing the mask, releasing his own murderous tendencies. For the viewer seeing The Mask theatrically, an off-screen voice would command, "Put on the mask now", which would signal the viewer to wear 3D glasses during the three special sequences.

Now about watching those 3D sequences - I don't have a 3D Blu-ray player so I can't tell you how that stands as a viewing experience. I do have a pair of the old fashioned red/green 3D glasses that were provided as part of another DVD, so I was able to see the 3D sequences pretty much the way as the original theatrical audience. However, those sequences are shown as separate supplements. The entire feature can be seen in 2D, with the dream sequences seen flat for those without glasses. The more ideal situation would have been for an option to allow The Mask to be seen in 2D with an option for those with two color glasses to see the 3D sequences as part of the feature for a truer theatrical experience.

The supplement about Julian Roffman should be of interest to cinephiles. Significantly, Roffman's earliest work of note was as a documentarian for the Film Board of Canada, with John Grierson as his mentor. There are some clips of Roffman's work from the Thirties and Forties. Additionally, the Blu-ray includes the famed experimental short Slavko Vorkapich made with Robert Florey, The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra. The commentary track by 3D specialist Jason Pichonsky discusses some of the technical aspects in making The Mask, as well as more historical information regarding the cast and crew. There is also a bonus supplement of a very entertaining 3D animation piece, One Night in Hell, that features music and the appearance of Queen's Brian May.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:37 AM

November 20, 2015

A Hard Day

Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da
Kim Seong-hoon - 2014
Kino Lorber BD Region A

There's a scene in A Hard Day where a giant, and I mean over-sized, block falls on top of a car, virtually flattening it. Any potential laugh is undercut with the knowledge that there was a police officer in said car. Yet the exaggerated size of that block and the visual impact made me think of something that Chuck Jones would have done in a Road Runner cartoon. This is the story about a bad, corrupt cop being blackmailed by an even badder, more corrupt cup. Between the punches, explosions, and seemingly indestructible nature of these two, no matter how beaten and bruised, there are times when A Hard Day would seem like the Korean thriller as imagined by Chuck Jones.

Homicide Detective Ko drives to his mother's funeral drunk, hits some guy on the road, gets in trouble with the cops at a DUI checkpoint by trying to hide his inebriation and the body in the car trunk, and then tries to hide the body in his mother's coffin. Making things worse is when Ko finds out that far from being alone on the road, someone else has observed him, and that there's also a video camera that filmed his car at the time of the accident.

The Korean title translates as "Take it to the end", which is essentially what happens when Ko encounters fellow cop Park. Ko's job is on the line for the various bribes taken, small potatoes when he finds out about Park and Park's interest in the buried man. Kim presents the various factions of cops as a kind of boys' club where throwing things at each other, slapping, and hitting each other for real or imagined infractions, small scale violence, is the order of the day. Each team thinks of itself as a brotherhood, simultaneous with a sometimes vicious sibling rivalry.

Kim mixes things up visually, with a car chase shot low from the front of a car, virtually hurling the viewer into the action, tilted shots during the fights, and at one point filming Ko chasing a small-time hood with the camera high overhead with the two avoiding the rush of car traffic. As Park, Cho Jin-woong has been nominated, and in several events, won for Best Supporting Actor. Physically bigger than anyone else in the film, Cho plays Park as the overly friendly and helpful pal who let's you know in no uncertain terms when you are on his bad side.

The blu-ray come with interviews with Kim, Cho and star Lee Sun-kyun, as well as deleted scenes which primarily add a little more to the characterization of Detective Ko.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

November 18, 2015

The Voyeur

L'uomo che guarda
Tinto Brass - 1994
Cult Epics BD

Two of my favorite films are The Conformist and Contempt. Both are generally considered to be the best films by their respective directors, Bernardo Bertolucci and Jean-Luc Godard. Both films also are adapted from novels by Alberto Moravia. Now it is possible that something got lost translating Moravia from Italian to English, but Bertolucci and Godard improved upon the source novels. With that in mind, I'm pretty sure that the film Tinto Brass made is probably better than Moravia's novel, or at least livelier.

While not officially credited, Brass pointedly has one of his female characters reading the original novel, L'uomo che guarda in bed. In the supplementary interview, Brass stated that Moravia encouraged him to not worry about fidelity to the novel. The basic set-up is there, a youngish professor of French literature, nicknamed Dodo, is trying to reunite with his wife. There is the unproven suspicion that she is having an affair. Dodo is not the most faithful of husbands. There is also the uneasy relationship with his bed-ridden father, marked by sexual competition. From what I have read about the novel, Brass has tossed aside the political segments.

There is briefly, a lecture given by Dodo discussing the concept of voyeurism, with mentions of Herodotus, Andre Gide and Stephane Mallarme. Dodo discusses a Mallarme poem in, um, greater depth, with a young African student, at least until the housemate, a female photographer, walks in. Some might accuse Tinto Brass of the same accusation aimed at Moravia, of providing a bit of intellectual veneer to justify an interest in eroticism.

And let's face it, the point of seeing a Tinto Brass movie is to see attractive women in various states of undress. As Sylvia, Dodo's wife, Polish actress Katarina Vasilissa is one of Brass's most photogenic stars. The camera lovingly, some might say too lovingly, explores all the peaks and valleys of Vasilissa's body. That she is often filmed wearing diaphanous lingerie and clothes that barely conceal, adds to the visual pleasure. The film opens with Dodo fantasizing about Sylvia, with one of the sexiest scenes of a woman getting dressed. There's also some male nudity on display here, the enjoyment of which I will leave to the individual viewer.

This is Brass's film as originally intended, at 104 minutes, significantly longer than the running time listed in IMDb. Aside from the thematic continuity of stories populated by voyeurs and exhibitionists, Brass makes use of several shots using mirrors and in one scene uses a refracted lens, adding to the unreal quality of Dodo's voyeurism. There's a nice sax-driven score by Riz Ortalani, an aural sweetener to the highly polished visuals.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:46 AM

November 16, 2015

Pitfall

Andre De Toth - 1948
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Supporting players in the late Forties, not yet the iconic television stars of Fifties, the two most interesting performers in Pitfall are Jane Wyatt and Raymond Burr. Wyatt's role as wife and mother is something of a warm-up as matriarch of the Anderson family, warm, wise and witty. What Wyatt shows in Pitfall as all of those aspects, plus a spine of steel when she discovers that husband Dick Powell is, to put it bluntly, a dick, seeing Lizabeth Scott on those late nights supposedly at work. Wyatt's clipped cadences are especially effective here in letting Powell, and the audience, know that she's nobody's fool.

Raymond Burr is seen wearing a black suit that emphasizes his bulk. With his marcelled hair and longish sideburns, Burr comes across as a self-styled Romeo, intimidating when he thinks he is being charming. De Toth films private eye Burr as a graceless elephant who barges into Powell's office or Lizabeth Scott's apartment.

Powell plays in insurance agent recovering items bought for Lizabeth Scott with embezzled money. Powell tries to keep things as business only. Scott might be famous for her low pitched voice, almost a whisper at times, but De Toth lets the audience know that Scott has a nice pair of gams as she enters wearing some stylish shorts. A ride in an old motor boat, and a couple of daytime drinks, and it's not much later when Burr, doing his own private investigation, spies Powell leaving Scott's apartment well after sunset.

The influence of Italian neorealism is felt here, with a significant portion of scenes shot in and around Los Angeles. We see the outside of the Macy's where Scott works as a model, as well as several scenes with Powell in the downtown area. There is also a nice series of tracking shots of Powell walking through downtown L.A. at night, with the reflection of the Brown Derby restaurant scene against a window.

Eddie Muller's commentary covers how the story changed from novel to film. Much of Muller's discussion is centered on the screenplay being the work of uncredited William Bowers and De Toth, rather than the screenwriter of record, Karl Kamb. Muller quotes from an interview with De Toth on the making of Pitfall, providing evidence that this was a personal project for the director. Pitfall was an independent production, as that term was understood in the Forties. One moment of cultural specificity that may raise eyebrows is when Powell and Wyatt's young son has a nightmare, blamed on the mayhem of comic books. If comic books are bad, movies are good. To shield the boy from anticipate violence, Powell announces an impromptu trip late night trip to "the movies". Wyatt talks Powell out of that plan, though the son brightly informs Dad that he's game for going to the movies anytime.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:49 PM

October 29, 2015

The Golden Cane Warrior

Pendekar Tongkat Emas
Ifa Isfansyah - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment BD Region A

I'm glad to see that Well Go USA has made available a film from Indonesia. With the limited availability of films with English subtitles, it's good to see something from a country that is usually overlooked in discussions of Asian cinema. Sure, it's a martial arts film, the most exportable genre available, other than horror movies. Though some of the blurbs compare The Golden Cane Warrior to Gareth Evans' The Raid, it is only the country of origin and the genre that these films have in common.

Ifa Isfansyah's film mostly takes place in the open country. The narrative is closer to that of a classic western, unlike The Raid and its sequel which take place largely within the confines of a single building, and have narratives that are similar to a video game, with the protagonist ascending higher and more difficult levels. That The Golden Cane Warrior is similar to a western can be seen in the various panoramic shots of the hilly countryside, some of the narrative elements, some bits of the music score which reveal the influence of Ennio Morricone, and even a scene with a group of exiled villagers living in shelters similar to the Native American tipis.

I don't know the time period when the story takes place, other than in some past era. We are introduced to an older martial arts teacher, Cempaka, who acts as a surrogate mother to three grown children of adversaries she has killed, plus a young boy abandoned by his family. Sensing that she is near death, Cempaka bestows a weapon she keeps wrapped, a golden cane, to the younger of her two "daughters", Dara. The older Biru and Gerhana try to hide their jealousy. Not quite Shakespeare, but we have a rivalry between this group of adopted siblings, with Biru and Gerhana framing Dara, and the young boy, Angin, for the death of Cempaka. At stake is not only possession of the cane, but the special knowledge of the cane's power.

Some of the same themes found in other martial arts films are here - family loyalty, the corrupting influence of power, and the use of martial arts on behalf of the community rather than personal gain. Isfansyah is clearly interested in making a film that approaches the epic, cinematic myth making like that of the classic Western. Even with a Chinese action director on hand, it is the depiction of the cane fighting that is the weakest part of the film. Too many choppy close-ups and medium shots, and not enough full screen shots make the fighting less than engaging. There are a couple of nice moments of martial arts practice filmed against a sunset, or two warriors leaping out of water. Isfansyah is much better with shots of his characters running through the open fields and forests, with close-ups of flowers and spider webs. Isfansyah made The Golden Cane Warrior in an attempt to revive what was a moribund genre in Indonesia. For the most part, Isfansyah is successful, and the ambiguous ending makes me interested in a possible sequel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:35 AM

October 27, 2015

Tu dors Nicole

Stephane Lafieur - 1014
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

"You're sleeping, Nicole", would be the English translation. Mainly what Nicole is doing is trying to get through Summer in an unspecified town in Quebec. Her age isn't stated but it would appear Nicole's a couple years out of high school. She's working at a thrift store that by appearances would less of a career path that simply something to do. Otherwise, Nicole spends what seems like most of her time at her parents house, where she still lives, helping in the maintenance while the parents are on vacation, and listening to her brother, Remi's rock trio perpetually practicing.

This is a low key film with small comic moments. Nicole gets a credit card, and unsurprisingly reacts as if she's received free money. The credit line is almost immediately reached with the purchase of a trip for herself and her friend, Veronique, to visit Iceland. What do they plan to do there? "Nothing", is the reply. Nicole further elaborates that the lure of Iceland is that she and Veronique would be doing nothing somewhere else. Nicole is also pursued by Martin, a pre-adolescent boy, whose body has yet to catch up with his very adult voice. While Nicole is in a space where she is not quite an adult, Martin persistently woos Nicole by assuring her that in the future, their ten year difference in age will make less of a difference. Yet Martin is not yet ready to totally give up on being a child when he plays cowboy to Nicole's Indian after financial necessity forces Nicole to return to babysitting.

The film takes place in what appears to be a remote suburb, with a few middle class houses, a few cheap apartments, a handful of places to go, and lots of empty spaces. Most of the shots are from a stationary camera, with a some lateral tracking shots. One shot has the camera tracking away from Nicole with what seems like a music score, only to have the camera track end on the band in rehearsal. The film was shot in black and white which suggests that what we see is a memory or dream. Much of the look of the film was influenced by the photographs of Robert Adams' Summer Nights, Walking. There are moments devoted to those nights when it is too warm to sleep. For Nicole, stepping out for late night walks in the neighborhood may simply be a part of a greater restlessness for something she's not able to articulate.

The DVD includes a couple of very short, deleted scenes. Both are lightly humorous, but their omission does not impact the narrative.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:05 AM

October 22, 2015

Heart of Midnight

Matthew Chapman - 1988
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I was intrigued by opportunity to see Heart of Midnight primarily because of the memories I have of Matthew Chapman's best known film as writer-director, Strangers Kiss. That film was inspired by the making of Stanley Kubrick's Killer's Kiss. Chapman has had an interest in the people who exist in the margins of show business, whether it is Peter Coyote as a fledgling filmmaker in Strangers Kiss, or Helen Mirren as a hostess in a London "gentleman's club" in Hussy. Most of Heart of Midnight takes place in an old nightclub inherited by Jennifer Jason Leigh.

The name of the nightclub is Midnight. The heart might well be the rooms upstairs, a couple of conventional spaces for living, and several that are decorated for use for people with specialized tastes. Among the spaces is what appears to be a child's bedroom, with a permanently placed Christmas tree, and a teddy bear that is always face down. When Carol, the young woman who has inherited the club from her Uncle Fletcher, first enters the upper floor of the nightclub, we notice that the hallway is painted red, and round lamps decorating the hallway resemble breasts.

Carol may, or may not, be hallucinating or hearing sounds, and the nightclub may, or may not, have a life of its own. Either way, Heart of Midnight owes a bit to The House of Usher and Repulsion. This is apparent in an early scene when Carol undresses by an open window, spotted by three young men (including a young Steve Buscemi) sitting across the street. The doors of the night club open, suggesting an invitation. That two of the men might have an unacknowledged homoerotic attraction to each other is suggested when the two make a few sinewy dance moves, before an abrupt cut shows the two simultaneously attempting to rape Carol. When Carol attempts to escape from the men, and the men try to escape when a desperate Carol pulls a fire alarm, the doors are discovered to be locked. The situation is not dissimilar to that of a haunted house where the guests enter easily, and then finds themselves trapped.

Especially in the earlier scenes, with her hair blonde, and with the deep red lipstick, Leigh looks closer to a movie star from an earlier era. A scene with her smoking and singing definitely belongs to an earlier time when a musical number in a smoky joint was not out of place in a primarily dramatic film. Leigh appears with a knee length cast on one of her legs until the final scene. Matthew Chapman, in the commentary track, explains that Leigh already had the cast when she took the role. There's no back story provided, and there is no sense that Leigh's physical performance would have been significantly different had there been no cast.

Chapman, joined by co-star Peter Coyote, discuss the making of Heart of Midnight, but mostly leave any interpretation of the film to the audience. There's a red apple that mysteriously appears in a refrigerator, a painting of apples, and dozens found gathered on a floor. Not coincidentally, a clip from Hitchcock's The 39 Steps appears on television, with Madeleine Carroll undoing her stockings, setting up a scene involving bondage and fetish wear. And where a film might conventionally fade to black, Chapman fades to red. Not everything works here. I have to respect Matthew Chapman for making a film that makes no attempt to appeal to popular tastes. And Jennifer Jason Leigh's performance is worthy of greater attention than has been given to this otherwise little seen film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 AM

October 20, 2015

Northern Limit Line

Yeonpyeong Haejeon
Kim Hak-soon - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The tensions between North and South Korea are usually abstract for those of us in the U.S. Northern Limit Line might not substantially change that viewpoint, but it does give a sense of how serious things have gotten between the two countries. Based on a true incident, the film is the dramatic recounting of the attack of a South Korean patrol ship by the North Korean naval forces. The battle took place on June 29, 2002 while many people around the world were watching the World Soccer game between South Korea and Turkey. The title refers to the maritime border between the two Koreas in the Yellow Sea, with the event officially knows as the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong.

The film begins with the entry of Petty Officer Dong joining ship 357. Assigned as the ship's medical officer, Dong finds out that there is no sick bay, and the medical supplies consist of a few rolls of gauze, and treatment for cuts and bruises. Kim cuts to subplots about helmsman Han and the ship's commander, Yoon. Kim establishes how the three men evolve, in their relationship with each other, a look at their respective families, and finally, courage under fire. The narrative follows a familiar template of personalizing history, including scenes of camaraderie among the sailors, and a few moments of humor.

The battle is presented graphically. Blood is shed, a leg is dismembered, a sailor's fingers are shot off. What caught me by surprise was seeing how close the main North Korean ship was to ship 357. In addition to the expected cannons and machine guns, North Korean forces included snipers to shoot at individuals. Dong is seen initial overwhelmed by the carnage that is more than he can take care of, taking initiative to tear off a bed sheet to in attempt to staunch bleeding of several of the sailors when possible, and taking a machine gun in hand when there is no one else available for battle.

With a local box office of almost Forty million dollars, Northern Limit Line is currently the most successful South Korean film for 2015. Amazingly, this is Kim's debut feature, made for a relatively modest Six million dollars, with a third of the budget reportedly crowd funded. Kim closes the film with documentary footage from the military funeral of the sailor, as well as photographs of the real life participants. Kim Hak-soon isn't John Ford, but the film is an honorable effort. The reviews I've read criticizing Northern Limit Line for "jingoism" strike me as being condescending. As for the influence of Saving Private Ryan, I have to wonder if some critics have not watched any South Korean films made in the past decade. This is primarily a South Korean film made for a South Korean audience, and the popular response should be considered. Northern Limit Line is hardly flawless, but is worth seeing for its glimpse of an otherwise overlooked piece of history.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:43 AM

October 15, 2015

Mosquito

Gary Jones - 1995
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

The cover of the blu-ray proclaims the 20th Anniversary Edition. So why do I not know about this film, or recall it ever playing at a theater remotely near me? The answer is in one of the supplements, where Jones explains that the distribution rights were bought by the Hemdale Film Corporation, just months before the company when bankrupt. Not only did Mosquito not get the release Jones had anticipated, but he only received a third of the payment promised.

Someone should write, if not a book, at least a good, detailed article about how a group of Michigan based filmmakers made it to Hollywood. There is the Sam Raimi connection. Gary Jones started out working on special effects for Thou Shalt not Kill, except . . . and Evil Dead II. By the time he was ready to make his own directorial debut, almost ten years later, Jones was more than ready.

Mosquito has no greater aspirations than to be an entertaining creature feature. And for the most part, Gary Jones is successful. There are some shots of very obviously animated giant mosquitos chasing the main characters. Where it counts, in scenes of the mosquitos coming in for the kill, the special effects are better than might be expected. There is no CGI here. It's all practical effects, with mechanical mosquitos and a miniature set used for the climax. There's some T & A, as well as comic book gore - in other words, a movie designed for the drive-in and neighborhood theater circuit.

Gunnar Hansen, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the best known name here. He plays the leader of a trio of bank robbers who collide with the quartet of a park ranger, a meteorologist, a recent college grad and her boyfriend. Hansen and company wear military type garb, suggesting that they might be survivalists, although that possible thread is never explored. The unlikely group realizes that they have to join forces in order to beat the threat of the giant mosquitos. Hansen gets to wield a chainsaw and make verbal reference to the film that first brought him fame.

The rest of the cast is made up of Detroit and Ann Arbor based actors, including Ron Asheton, from the band, The Stooges. Asheton provides most of the comic moments as the well meaning, if incompetent, park ranger. Several cast members provide memories of working on the film with several humorous anecdotes. Gary Jones has since had a successful career as a director. It's not just that Mosquito is a better film than might be expected, but that Jones and his team made the most of the limited resources.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:32 AM

October 13, 2015

Diary of a Lost Girl

Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
G.W. Pabst - 1929
Kino Classics BD Region A

Two of the greatest close-ups are here. The first comes a bit after fifteen minutes, when a smarmy pharmacist, the family business partner, sets himself up to seduce teenage Thymian. Louise Brooks' face is seen in profile against Fritz Rasp. Light reflects off of Brooks' lower lip. The second close-up is more conventional, but still effective, of Thymian looking out a window while it's raining. She's gazing out at her step-mother, and the step-mother's two young children, suddenly reduced from a cozy middle class life to immediate penury following the death of her husband, Thymian's father. Stills barely convey the power of these images. And as wonderful as they appear in blu-ray on a good sized television, I can only imagine the impact made when seen as nitrate film projected on a large movie screen.

Louise Brooks was about eight years older than the character she portrays, a girl whose day of confirmation is follow by a downward spiral of unwed motherhood, internment in a reformatory, and star attraction at an brothel servicing wealthy men. After the first few minutes, it doesn't even matter that Brooks doesn't pass for someone thirteen or fourteen years old. Mostly, it's about the face as it expresses curiosity, skepticism, and trust.

The blu-ray is from the reconstruction supervised by the F. W. Murnau Foundation. Censored almost immediately upon release, what we see is a composite version with scenes and shots from several archives. This may not be exactly the film Pabst intended, but it's as close as we have for now. The piano score uses a couple of classic themes, but is otherwise unremarkable. Commentary by Thomas Gladysz, director of the Louise Brooks Society, is informative, pointing out the identity of the actors with some biographical information, discussion of the source novel by Margarethe Bohme, as well as covering some of Pabst' career and the critical reception of Diary.

There is more than Brooks. This is a film where the value of a person is measured monetarily, with close-ups of hands exchanging or grasping money. While not a horror movie, two of the male characters are presented as monstrous - such as the pharmacist Meinert, played by the previously mentioned Fritz Rasp, is seen glancing at his collection of pornographic photos, there is something feral in his smile, with hands that constantly need to possess a person or an object of value. Even creepier is Andrews Engelmann as the enforcer at the reformatory, tall, bald, ready to clutch one of the girls by the back of her neck or poke her in the shoulder lest she forget her place. There is also the grandmotherly madame of the brothel, the client with the goat-like beard, and even a toddler who pointedly resembles a pint sized Louise Brooks.

The blu-ray comes with the short, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood. Produced by a poverty row outfit in 1931, with Brooks getting second billing to forgotten comic actor Jack Shutta, it's one of the last films Brooks made before calling it quits a few years later. The direction is credited to William Goodrich, the pseudonym for another silent era castoff, Fatty Arbuckle. Brooks expresses the experience of making this film best: He made no attempt to direct this picture at all. He just sat silently all through the three days of filming in his director's chair like a dead man. He had been very nice and sweetly dead ever since the scandal that ruined his career. But it was such an amazing thing for me to come in to make this broken down picture, and to find my director 'William Goodrich' was in fact the great Roscoe Arbuckle.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:33 AM

October 09, 2015

Manos: The Hands of Fate

Harold P. Warren - 1966
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

I seem to be the only person I know who never saw Manos: Hands of Fate on Mystery Science Theater 3000. And I did see that show on a regular basis during the peak of its popularity. That said, while I can see where Manos could generate snarky comments, it is hardly the worse film ever made. I was able to watch Manos from beginning to end, which is more than I can say about some other films.

I don’t think that Manos could have ever been a good film. It might have been less bad had director-writer-producer-star Hal Warren been a bit more visually adept. One thing the best filmmakers working with limited budgets understood best is that film is not always about what you see, but what you don’t see. Warren undercuts the sense that his vacationing family is lost in the middle of nowhere, when a wide shot shows a highway within view. The bigger problem is that neither the characters nor the premise is very interesting.

Manos sets itself up for snark when one of the characters, the grotesque caretaker, Torgo, appears to be slapped and jostled to death. The cat fight between members of The Master’s harem is so badly staged that I wished that Edward D. Wood, Jr. was on the set to show Warren how it’s done. I’m not sure what Tom Neyman had in mind when he designed the costumes for the harem, but adding those wide red strips hanging from the waist, on the front and back of the women otherwise dressed in white may have an unintended meaning.

There is a supplement where we get to see Tom Neyman discussing his work as actor and set and costume designer. If anyone decides to make a film about John Carradine in his later years, Neyman is a dead ringer for the actor who spent most of the late Sixties and early Seventies in bargain basement claptrap. Diane Adelseon, billed as Diane Mahree, the young wife coveted by Torgo and The Master, talks about stifling laughter at the film's premiere. A former fashion model, Adelson is still very attractive almost fifty years later.

Ben Solovey gets a supplement of his own, very much worth seeing regardless of how one feels about Manos. The restoration process is discussed, as well as the decisions made on what where an improvements would be made, while keeping the essential visual qualities of this 16mm production.

Sure, the budget for Manos was the relatively tiny $19,000.00, not very much even in 1966, but I refuse to buy the argument that this was the best that could be done with the resources available. Consider that there have been more recent and better films done for the same amount or less, with proportionately less buying power, such as Primer, the original Paranormal Activity, Eraserhead and Christopher Nolan's Following. For those who love Manos for whatever reason, go ahead and get the new blu-ray. For myself, this is one cult movie that does not hold me under its spell.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:26 AM

October 07, 2015

Blasts from Hong Kong Past

The Raid / Cai shu zhi heng sao qian jun
Tsui Hark and Ching Siu-Tung - 1991

The Avenging Fist / Kuen Sun
Andrew Lau and Corey Yuen - 2001
both Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Well Go USA has reissued a couple of films from two old masters of the Hong Kong action film. Not solo works, both are collaborative efforts, one worth checking out, the other probably to be chucked out by all but the most dedicated fan of Hong Kong cinema.

The Raid, directed by Tsui and Ching Sui-tung, is somewhat reminiscent of Peking Opera Blues. Based on a popular Chinese comic book adventure of the elderly Dr. Choy, this is a combination of action adventure and that unique Hong Kong staple, the nonsense film. Those demanding tonal consistency may be put off by the spurting blood when characters are shooting each other. In addition to the gun play is plenty of old fashioned martial arts, wire work, editing tricks, and pre-CGI special effects. As a reminder of the source material, the film occasionally has animated links between scenes.

Taking place in Manchuria in 1932, Dr. Choy is brought in to aid some soldiers in the field. Advised to stay at home, Choy sneaks back to join the soldiers. Along with his young niece, Nancy, a budding pole fighter, and boy known as Smartie, Choy is caught up in a plot to stop “The Last Emperor”, Pu Yi, collaborating with the Japanese, by blowing up a factory used to create poison gas. Adding to the confusion is the sibling rivalry of two brothers, Bobo Bear (Jacky Cheung) and Big Nose (Corey Yuen), and their respective factions, and a couple of women with secret identities. (And shouldn't Jacky Cheung be playing a character named Big Nose?)

Best are a Nazi inspired musical number that rivals any of Mel Brooks’ Third Reich satires, and a scene of several lovers hiding from each other in a bed room. I would hope that some more of the earlier works by Tsui Hark get some DVD love. On my wish list, the hard to see Shanghai Blues, and the madcap The Chinese Feast with improved English subtitles.

Uncle Choy was Dean Shek's final film performance before retiring at age 42. Shek started as a Shaw Brothers actor in 1968 at age 18. Still reportedly alive, to be 65 on October 17, there is nothing about Shek's life since a final credit as the producer of the film Angel Hunter. The Raid also was the last role for Joyce Godenzi, seen here as a Chinese star who turns out to be a Japanese agent. Godenzi is married to Sammo Hung. Which brings us to the other DVD here . .

As for The Avenging Fist, one would have hoped for something better from Andrew Lau and Corey Yuen. That the film is a mish-mash of elements, off the top of my head, Metropolis, Blade Runner, Star Wars and Clockwork Orange is the least of the problems. How to make sense of a film in which the premise involves wearing a special glove that helps the wearer use significantly more than ten percent of the brain, but is shown used for powerful, cosmic punching? Somehow, this glove also turns the person wearing it into a killer, except for Sammo Hung, who blames the glove for making him fat.

This is an hour and a half of cheesy special effects, and poorly thought out plot points. As soon as I saw the name of schlockmeister Wong Jing in the credits, I knew there was trouble ahead. More trouble than I knew when doing some research - the film was intended to be adapted from the video game, Tekken - but due to the failure to properly get rights to the property, there is an awkward disclaimer at the close of this film. Lau and Yuen redeemed themselves in 2002, Lau with Infernal Affairs, and Yuen turning Shu Qi into a formidable martial arts star in So Close, and the two collaborating again with the first entry of The Transporter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 PM

October 05, 2015

The Phantom of the Opera

Rupert Julian - 1925
Kino Classics BD Region A

Somehow, I had it fixed in my memory that I had actually seen the silent Phantom of the Opera. What I saw was a highly edited version. I know that I had seen the unmasking scene quite a few times. But until I got the Kino two disc set, I never saw the actual feature length film.

What we have primarily is the original 1925 version taken from a 16mm print, plus the 1929 re-issue shown at 24 frames per second with two different music tracks, or at 20 fps, the correct projection speed, with a music track or a commentary track. The 1929 version originally had a synchronized track of music and sound effects, no longer available. The print, reported taken from a European release version, is the best preserved, and has color tinting, plus the early Technicolor footage in the masked ball sequence. The 1929 version also improves upon the 1925 version in a couple of other ways.

Rupert Julian's original version takes a lot of time setting things up, mostly with the romance of Christine and Raoul. Julian shoots the dance numbers as if from the back row of the auditorium. As visually unimaginative as Julian was, he was also not very observant, as there is an audience member furiously waving a fan in the long shots. The dance scenes were reshot for 1929 version to go with the soundtrack, and were filmed by someone who knew a thing or two about editing and camera angles. Additionally, the 1929 version runs for about an hour and a half. Not only is there little of narrative import missed, but Lon Chaney shows up earlier. It should also be noted that while Julian was listed as the director, with Chaney reportedly directing himself, other uncredited studio hands contributed to both the 1925 and 1929 version. This is a rare case where studio interference improved the film.

In retrospect, while the Phantom is Lon Chaney's most iconic role, it is neither the best film to showcase his talents, nor is it really that good a film. What makes Phantom memorable are Chaney's make-up and Ben Carre's incredible sets, especially the giant demon face with the doorway in the mouth leading to a mysterious passageway. For myself, Tod Browning's The Unknown remains not only a much better made film, but one that is better as a showcase for Lon Chaney's skills as an actor, with an ending that continues to horrify.

That the sound reissue of Phantom is the version that is considered definitive is somewhat ironic in that the careers of most of the principle participants were undone by talking pictures. Mary Philbin, the would be opera star, could not sing in real life, and had a high pitched voice. His speaking voice also hampered Norman Kerry, a popular star who appeared in other films with Chaney. Rupert Julian made his last movie in 1930. Even Lon Chaney's career in talkies was short-lived, most cruelly with death at the age of 47 from throat cancer.

One of my favorite moments is the scene of the ballerinas backstage running in fear of rumors of the Phantom, with giant shadows against the wall. There is also Chaney's grand entrance in the masked ball, dressed in red, with the skull mask. Unlike the remakes, there's no back story to explain how the Phantom has a deformed face, nor is there any attempt to make the Phantom sympathetic beyond Chaney's own characterization. Whatever thoughts I have about the film, I can not deny the impact made ninety years after the initial release, and this new blu-ray set is the version to have for any personal collection.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:40 PM

September 29, 2015

Black Coal, Thin Ice

Bai ri yan huo
Diao Yinan - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

With a bad cold, trying to watch Black Coal, Thin Ice on the big screen at the Udine Far East Film Festival was less than ideal. While the momentum of the win at Berlin in January of last year has dissipated, the film can now be more widely seen with the home video version.

Diao's film has been described as film noir. As overused as that genre appellation may be, it is fitting here, with it's drunken ex-cop doggedly trying to solve a case, five years after a botched arrest, and his pursuit of the woman who is the possible link to several murders. The story takes place first in 1999, and primarily in 2004, in an unnamed city in northern China. Most of the action takes place during winter nights, where people meet in cheap restaurants, low rent dance halls, or little movie theaters on dark streets. As others have pointed out, the milieu here is not to different from that of the novels by James Cain's with their working class settings.

Wu Zhizhen may not be the most obvious femme fatale. Gwei Lun-mei is neither as exotic nor as glamorous as seen in several of her roles for Tsui Hark. Diao departs from convention as Wu is fairly ordinary in appearance. Lana Turner bared her midriff, while Barbara Stanwyck showed off her anklet. Gwei remains fully dressed, more so, in exterior scenes with a scarf around her face. For most of the film, Wu reveals little of herself, exposing only the smallest of parts that she chooses to be seen.

What is visible are the results of grisly murders, body parts that appear in the coal processed at different plants. Zhang, the cop on the case in 1999, now a security guard, has a chance meeting with his former partner, and discovers similar murders taking place five years later. He knows Wu is connected to the murders but he doesn't know how. As in classic noir, the two briefly become lovers, though everyone - the audience as well as the characters - knows nothing good will come of their liaison.

The Chinese title translates as "Daylight Fireworks", which becomes more significant as a clue later in the story. Diao has explained this original title as expressing the need for catharsis. Diao has also gone on record as having seen The Maltese Falcon, The Third Man and Touch of Evil while preparing his screenplay, an eight year effort. Unmentioned by Diao, but of possible influence would be two later films influenced by film noir, Band of Outsiders and Pulp Fiction. Zhang makes a return visit to the dance studio from an earlier scene. Given the chance to be appreciated, Liao Fan's wild, solo dance to contemporary Chinese pop music is as memorable as Anna Karina doing the Madison, or Travolta and Thurman twisting to Chuck Berry.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:27 PM

September 24, 2015

Man with the Gun

Richard Wilson - 1955
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Man with the Gun begins with titles superimposed over a sheet of burlap, kind of like a film from Yasujiro Ozu. The similarity to Ozu is unintentional, but Richard Wilson's take on the western is to strip it down to the essential elements. There is a lot of empty space here. Wilson probably had a very modest budget, so he worked that in as part of the narrative, about a small town with a dispirited citizenry, bare trees, surrounded by flat, dusty plains.

Wilson's film is something of a companion piece to Invitation to a Gunfighter, with a professional gun man hired at the behest of the townspeople. Robert Mitchum's character of Clint Tollinger is what is termed a "town tamer". The deputy's badge gives Tollinger the right to start establishing a bit of law and order in a town mostly owned by the unseen Dade Holman. Holman's presence is felt by the thugs he sends to town to do his dirty work.

This was the directorial debut of Wilson, a former assistant to Orson Welles. Wilson also had a hand in the screenplay, and plays a bit with genre conventions. Tollinger is noted for wearing gray. That's a nice bit of shorthand, a visual queue for Tollinger's moral ambiguity, and seeming ambivalence. In the meantime, some of the bad guys can be spotted seeing the biggest hats, with oversized crowns and brims, that even a pimp from a blaxploitation movie might find in dubious taste. One of those hats is worn by perennial bad guy Claude Akins. Playing another of Holman's henchmen is Leo Gordon, who shoots a boy's dog in the opening scene. Somewhat less malevolent is Ted De Corsia as the proprietor of a small bar dominated by an absurdly oversized chandelier.

Photographed by Lee Garmes, the film provides some good examples of economical filming, especially in keeping two or more characters within the frame during conversations. While not as obviously showy as Welles could be, Wilson would seem to have taken what he's learned from Welles, especially in blocking his actors, keeping scenes of exposition visually interesting.

Wilson obeys some of the genre rules expected of a Hollywood western from the Fifties. It's hardly a spoiler to know that Tollinger is going to clean up the little town of Sheridan, or that he will finally reunite with his former sweetheart, now the town madame. The joys to be found here are mostly due to watching the cast of character actors, credited or not, such as Henry Hull as the talkative, if ineffective, sheriff, Jan Sterling is the woman from Tollinger's past, Barbara Lawrence as a dim-witted dancing girl, Emile Meyer as the town blacksmith. James Westerfield, as the mysterious Mr. Zender, is one of the several faces that will strike some as familiar, even if they don't know the name, as with much of the supporting cast. Some viewers will also recognize Burt Mustin, an actor often tapped as as the old man, as a hotel clerk. It would be a year later that Angie Dickinson would be formally "introduced" in Gun the Man Down. Dickinson, and her famous legs, are seen here as one of Sterling's dancing girls, Kitty. Dickinson is only seen for a few minutes, but it's no surprise that Samuel Fuller and Howard Hawks took notice.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

September 22, 2015

The Destructors

Robert Parrish - 1974
KL Studio Classic BD Region A

For those who saw this film outside of North America, the title was The Marseilles Contract. I wish I knew why the suits at American International Pictures thought calling this The Destructors was a good idea because it doesn't evoke anything, or at least anything pertinent to what's goes on here. On the other hand, maybe someone thought The Marseilles Contract seemed too much like The French Connection, which was pretty much the point. And while Robert Parrish's final film is no French Connection or, alas, a French Connection II, there are some moments worth checking out.

The story involves gangsters, cops and drugs, but also cars. And while there is nothing here that compares to William Friedkin's wild car chase in The French Connection, one of the best moments here is a race choreographed by Remy Julienne. What begins with Michael Caine and Maureen Kerwin trying to outpace each other becomes, at certain hairpin turns, a duet with the cars turning simultaneously, as they maneuver the narrow French roads. Eventually Caine and Kerwin get together in the flesh, but their roadside manners make for the film's most erotic scene.

Copper Anthony Quinn hires old pal Michael Caine to put a hit on drug kingpin James Mason. For the top lined stars, this was probably done for the paycheck. Better are a couple of French actors, two fairly familiar names, Maurice Ronet as a French cop working with Quinn, and best of all Marcel Bozzuffi, from The French Connection, as Mason's right hand man. Everybody gathers in Marseilles, where there's a big drug shipment due, with Quinn hoping to bust Mason.

Quinn and Mason share the screen near the end, briefly. Before moving to the director's chair, Robert Parrish was an Oscar winning editor. I don't know how much of that scene with Quinn and Mason was personally cut by Parrish, but the timing and coordination of the shots is superb. Without giving too much away, the scene takes place at a dance for French society hosted by Mason. There is motion in each of the shots making it crucial regarding where the two actors are in relation to each other within the crowded floor. The effect is as everything else was building up to this one climatic scene.

Almost as good is the scene with most of the principle actors shooting at each other. Again, there is the sense of space, of placement of the actors, and meticulous timing of each shot, both film and bullets. It is quite possible that the shaky cam chaos of more recent films makes a scene like this look better than it is for someone who prefers old style craftsmanship, but this is another moment that redeems the leisurely paced set up.

The Destructors was one of the few films written by producer Judd Bernard. Notable is that Bernard was the producer of two classics, Point Blank and personal favorite, Deep End. Also of note is a card game that Quinn walks in on, with a who's who of Paris based expatriates including Variety contributor Gene Moskowitz, author James Jones, and JFK press secretary Pierre Salinger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:42 PM

September 17, 2015

The Satan Bug

John Sturges -1965
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Made in between the more expensive and elaborate The Great Escape and The Hallelujah Trail, is this more modest produced thriller. Based on a novel written by Alistair MacLean under the pseudonym of Ian Stuart, the action was moved from Great Britain to the U.S., mostly within driving distance of Los Angeles. Reportedly, Preston Sturges was distracted while making The Satan Bug as he was preparing The Hallelujah Trail at the same time. In retrospect, The Hallelujah Trail either should not have been made or had been directed by someone more adept at comedy. The source book as I recall was pretty good, though the set looks absolutely nothing like Denver of 1867. I suspect that as a reliable moneymaker for the Mirisch Company and United Artists, Sturges may have been encouraged to provide something for the studio pipeline.

The more literal minded will be disappointed to know that there is no Satan, and there are no bugs. The title comes from the naming of a chemical designed for biological warfare that theoretically is capable of killing all forms of life. The security at Station Three might have been state of the art for 1965, but it's not enough to stop someone from stealing a bunch of glass flasks, with the threat of releasing enough toxin to kill everyone in metro Los Angeles. It's a premise that could happen, especially with enough accidents that occur by people who are entrusted with hazardous material. Being 1965 though, most of the heroes are serious white guys in suits and fedoras.

The film is visually of interest in the first half hour or so. The titles, by DePatie-Freleng of Pink Panther fame, attempt to mimic the abstract symbolism of the animated titled by Saul Bass. The best part is when the close-up of the veins of a cartoon eye dissolve into an overhead shot of the forks of a desert road, with a lone truck cruising towards its destination. The secret lab is a collection of glass rooms, with the design enabling the viewer to see action in two different spaces simultaneously. There is also visual beauty in a crane shot with the wide screen filled with the pattern of the security fences outside the lab. An early scene with a hard working scientist is lit from below, giving the actor Henry Beckman the look of a character in a horror movie. A scene involving a shootout between the bad guys and the feds is unsurprisingly reminiscent of the several westerns by Sturges.

Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant provided a commentary track that mostly discusses The Satan Bug in relation to some similar films. What might, for some some, provide a reason to see The Satan Bug is the news that Pauline Kael claimed this was the worse film ever made. This isn't even the worse John Sturges movie ever made - that would be the overlong and unfunny The Hallelujah Trail. In retrospect, the cast is made of top billed actors whose glory days were in the past, and a few supporting actors who were on their way to big things on the small screen. Former television star George Maharis never achieved big screen success like Sturges alumni Steve McQueen. Anne Francis, who stepped in when Joan Hackett dropped out, plays the former girlfriend of Maharis. Unlike her pivotal role in Sturges' Bad Day in Black Rock, there's not much to her role here. Dana Andrews was reduced to supporting roles, while Richard Basehart became a character actor in too many films that wasted his talent. Ed Asner is here, with a head full of hair, as one of the bad guys, while James Doohan, his distinctive Scottish accent not heard, has a dialogue free role as a federal agent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:19 AM

September 15, 2015

Angst

Gerald Kargl - 1983
Cult Epic BD Region A

Maybe time has made Gerald Kargl's only feature film seem less transgressive than it seemed to be back in 1983. Kargl has gone on record as saying that if he had to do it over again, the violence in Angst would not be as graphic. I'm hardly a gore-hound, I don't look for films that deliberately try to shock an audience, but if something comes my way for review purposes, I'll do my best to give that film a fair shake. All things considered, I would have to say that those who banned or called to ban Angst over-reacted. Maybe because the film is based on true events, made by a young filmmaker, Angst was considered more extreme than the slew of cannibal and zombie movies also playing in theaters at the time.

Setting aside that Angst, German for fear, was inspired primarily by a then recent story of an Austrian serial killer, and that the viewer witnesses the murder of three victims, what Angst is really about is the sense of control. None of the characters are named, but for the sake of convenience, the killer has been referred to as K. Released from prison after ten years, and two murders, K's immediate thought is how to kill again. He has scenarios in his mind. What plays out is completely different, as the havoc of real life gets in the way.

The film is held together by Erwin Leder as K. There is voice over narration revealing his state of mind during the twenty-four hours or so that the story takes place. Observing people as possible prey, Leder looks positively feral. When the unexpected upends his plans, Leder's eyes convey total panic.

The cinematography provides a visual counterpoint to the narrative. Cinematographer Zbigniew has extended traveling crane shots with the camera looking over K almost like a god's eye view. Even the short bursts of K running through a forest have the illusion of appearing like a continuous shot. There are also floor level shots as well. We see extreme close-ups of eyes, lips, sweat and saliva. It should be no surprise that Kargl went on to make commercials for a living, in part because of the financial beating he took on making Angst, but also because this film demonstrated that, whatever one thought of the story and characters, Kargl's craftsmanship is unquestionable.

Most of the time, I prefer to let the film speak for itself. For those interested, the blu-ray comes with a forty page booklet about the making of Angst, and interviews with some of the talent, as well as information taken from newspaper articles on Werner Kniesek, the real life inspiration for the film. Bonuses include an introduction by admirer Gaspar Noe, and interviews with star Erwin Leder, as well as Kargl and Rybczynski. If that wasn't generous enough, there is also a commentary track by Kargl.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:04 PM

September 08, 2015

Morituris

Raffaele Picchio - 2011
Synapse Films BD Regions ABC

I'm not sure what it says about me, or about this film, but I did not find Morituris to be any more extreme than some of the films that provided inspiration. "Banned in Italy"? I'm not denying that there's graphic imagery here, plus several moments that have the viewer imagining things most would rather not think about. Still, Morituris is slightly more restrained than several notorious films with "Cannibal" as part of the title.

As it is, Morituris is still probably of greater interest to certain aficionados, with a story that begins as something of an homage to Wes Craven, veering into something close to the spirit of Lucio Fulci. Inspired by a true incident that took place in Italy about forty years ago, the film first takes place inside a car, with three young men and two young women. They are driving outside Rome on their way to a rave in a forest. Everyone is laughing, drinking, with some imbibing of illegal substances. We don't know anyone's names, but we do know that one of the guys is able to drive a fairly nice car. The women are Romanian. Once the group is in the woods, there is no rave, but the five continue drinking around a small camp fire. One of the women goes off with one of the guys to a spot marked by Latin epitaphs written in stone. The woman describes the place as magical, and in a way, she's not completely wrong. It turns out that the guys intentions are less than honorable.

What takes place next might be comparable to Last House on the Left, as well as the several Italian films that took their queues from Wes Craven, sometimes casting House villain David Hess in these films. It is significant that the two women are Romanians. This part of Morituris might well be read as social criticism of the sense of class and privilege of certain Italian men. At one point, one of the men, certainly no older than their early 20s, mentions to the other that he is the son of a senator. The men may well be abusive of women in general, but there is the sense that the pair of women here are considered acceptable targets due to their status as cultural outsiders.

Where the title comes in is that morituris is Latin, roughly translated as "those who are about to die". It turns out that the gang is in a patch of forest claimed by a group of dead gladiators who consider anyone to be a trespasser that should be killed. It's never any explanation provided, and perhaps that's just as well. Where Fulci is recalled is that these reanimated beings are single minded in their pursuit of the five visitors, and their punishment includes beheadings, crucifixions, and the general ripping of flesh.

Whether Picchio has said anything of substance about evil in the world might remain the subject of debate. As a film that pays tribute to past horror films, Morituris is better than expected. Digitally filmed with a RED camera, this is a fairly polished debut feature, taking place almost entirely outdoors at night. I've seen a couple of other recent Italian films that claimed inspiration from earlier films, at least one which I gave up on after less than half an hour. The preview of Picchio's newest film, the English language, The Blind King, would indicate a genre specialist of promise.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:33 PM

September 03, 2015

The Honey Pot

Joseph Mankiewicz - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

In 1972, I had the opportunity to interview Robert Benton and David Newman in conjunction with the film they wrote, and Benton directed, Bad Company. They had told me that the character of the outlaw known as Big Joe was modeled after Joseph Mankiewicz, the director of their previously filmed screenplay, There was a Crooked Man. Prior to being hanged, Big Joe proclaims, "I'm the oldest whore on the block". That line was reportedly Mankiewicz's description of himself.

The Honey Pot bears the distinction of being the first theatrical feature Mankiewicz made following the debacle known as Cleopatra, and the last film with his name in the screenplay credit. There isn't the snap of back to back Oscar winning Letter to Three Wives and All about Eve. Still, there are moments, especially at the end, that it becomes clear just how personal this film is, an acknowledgment by Mankiewicz of his limits as a writer/director.

That the film is essentially an updating of the play Volpone is even stated within the film, starting with the Volpone character, here named Cecil Fox, watching a performance of the play, from his own box seat, a private show in an empty theater. Pretending to be dying, Fox hires sometime actor McFly to act as his private secretary, setting up a "performance" involving three former lovers who believe they are to be named as beneficiaries of Fox's estate in Venice, Italy. In several scenes, the Fox and McFly refer to the 17 Century play, comparing their version to that of playwright Ben Jonson.

Where The Honey Pot becomes personal in the intertwined themes of time and money. Early on, Fox declares that even if one is rich, you can never have too much money. And going back to Mankiewicz's quote, the question is raised as to what will someone do for money, especially for the promise of being extremely wealthy. The three women, former lovers, who come to Fox's estate each bring a gift, an elaborate time piece from different eras, an hour glass filled with gold, an ornate clock from the 17th Century, and a modern clock - more like a large glass brick with clocks set at various international time zones.

Time and money undoubtedly were on Mankiewicz's mind during the years he spent filming, and editing Cleopatra, a film already five million dollars in the red at the time he first took over production. As it turned out, just has the final version of Cleopatra had been taken out of his hands, so too was The Honey Pot, shorn of about twenty minutes of footage. Scenes involving Herschel Bernardi were cut, although his name appears in the final credits. The film concludes with the off-screen voice of the recently deceased Fox stating that life doesn't always follow the script one writes. In Joseph Mankiewicz's case, neither do some of his films.

One of the highlights is 59 year old Rex Harrison, as Fox, doing a solo dance in his bedroom, leaping on his bed, and across the room. The scene that follows, a conversation between Harrison and Maggie Smith, displays flashes of true affection the two had for each other. The device of the off screen voice, heard by Smith, and later by Harrison, was to be found in other Mankiewicz films. The Honey Pot also belies the assessment of Mankiewicz's films as being being a form of filmed theater. Dialogue driven, to be sure, and People will Talk could easily be the title of several Mankiewicz films. But between the camera gliding along with the characters, and close-ups that almost fill the screen, The Honey Pot is also decidedly cinematic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:29 AM

September 01, 2015

Wolf Warrior

Wu Jing - 2015
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

This may not have been entirely intended, but Wu Jing's Wolf Warrior made me think of that discarded Hollywood genre, the military adventure movie. Older cinephiles will have memories of a time, primarily from the middle of World War II through the mid-Sixties, when movies were made about men at war. These were not epics, but small or mid-range films more concerned with male camaraderie and fulfilling a mission. There was some acknowledgment of lofty ideas and ideals, but those were dispensed with in a sentence or two. Not to make Wolf Warrior seem like a much better film than it is, but in its own way, it's close to the spirit of a film from Raoul Walsh, with its hero who's known to operate independently of authority, but also knows when to pull for the group.

The film is about a group of soldiers, the elite of the elite, who in the midst of war game exercises find themselves in real battle with an army of mercenaries that work on behalf of a drug kingpin. The newest member of the Wolf Warriors, Leng, is a sniper who killed the kingpin's brother. While Leng is the target of the mercenaries, led by a former American veteran, known as Tom Cat, it's a battle between the two armies, finally ending with the inevitable encounter of the two enemies. For those looking for a display of martial arts between Wu and Scott Adkins, it comes near the end. Most of the fighting comes in the form bullets, bombs, and big explosions.

There are a couple of moments that should have been reconsidered. Before fighting the mercenary army, a group of the Wolf Warriors encounter a pack of wolves. Aside from the wolves being mostly computer generated, the scene pulls the film into an unnecessarily supernatural direction. Also, it is revealed that the drug lord is working on some kind of bio-chemical scheme with some kind of formula that will attack only those with "Chinese genes".

I wish Yu Nan, who displayed her own martial arts ability with Wu Jing in Wind Blast, had done more than show up in uniform, as the commander of the Wolf Warriors. The film is essentially a vehicle of Wu Jing, and as such, is an improvement over Wu's directorial debut, Legendary Assassin. As the chief bad guy, Scott Adkins snarls, sneers and never bothers to disguise his British accent.

A sequel is promised at the end of the credits. Fortunately for those concerned, Wolf Warrior was a major hit in mainland China. The film was made with the cooperation of the Chinese military, and the nationalistic elements are not too different from what might have been found in a World War II era film from Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:45 PM

August 27, 2015

The Summer House

Das Sommerhaus
Curtis Burz - 2014
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

Watching The Summer House is like watching something like a car crash in slow motion. You know that several vehicles are going to collide, it is something inevitable, but what is not known is how bad the damage will be. Some of the elements here are classic, the family torn apart by the presence of an outsider has been told many times. The adult male with the attraction to a young boy plays in part like a contemporary version of Death in Venice.

The film is also a study in dualities. The husband is established as a closeted gay man. It is suggested that the wife seeks some sexual gratification outside the marriage as well. The daughter, junior high school age, speaks German with her father, English with her mother. The outsider, the son of the husband's business partner, not yet 12 years old, has his own agenda. The action largely takes place between two locations, the family's apartment in Berlin, and the summer house, in an area with an abundance of foliage. It is never made clear how far the two places are from each other, but it is enough of a distance to allow activity unknown to others.

Where supplements are helpful is when director Curtis Burz explains how his film was largely improvised, following establishment of the basic premise. How this works in the film's favor is that certain part of the narrative are kept open for interpretation. This is especially important in a scene with the husband and the boy, in the summer house. The two plan to spend the night together, the camera pans to left, away from the shelter and to the lush vegetation in the area, while their conversation is still heard. In an earlier scene, the boy bolts away from the husband when he receives a small kiss on the cheek. Still, the boy visits the husband on a regular basis at the summer house. The exact nature of the relationship is never made clear so that we never know if the husband has actually acted on his desires. There may also be the question of who was actually the seducer or the seduced?

The daughter, not yet an adolescent, is starting to question what it means to be a female. In one scene, she attempts to try putting on some of her mother's make-up. The mother constantly denies the daughter the chance to play, suggesting that whatever sense of denial she is dealing with is to be passed on to the younger generation. Whatever affection the wife seeks from the husband seems to be played out in the warm relationship between father and daughter.

Burz admits that there are elements in his film that are uncomfortable and challenging, even for himself. The cast is largely made up of actors who have worked with Burz previously, with all of them, even the children, discussing their respective roles as well as having a hand in determining the story arc. It is remarkable that had it not been explained in Burz's interview, I would never have guessed that this film was improvised, especially with an ending that brings up some very unexpected implications.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:27 AM

August 25, 2015

Play Motel

Mario Gariazzo - 1979
Raro Video BD Region A

I was totally unfamiliar with Mario Gariazzo until almost a year ago. Another DVD company, one that specializes in relatively obscure European films, sent me a copy of L'attrazione, retitled Top Model. Something of a thriller with erotic moments, neither very thrilling or erotic. The most I could find about Gariazzo is this interview about his favorite topic, UFOs. Play Motel is an attempt to meld the giallo with eroticism. The eroticism in question reminded me of photo spreads from Penthouse magazine. Neither the giallo elements nor the erotic scenes are very effective, with the film coming off as a bad hybrid of Dario Argento and Tinto Brass as imagined by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione.

People are having rendezvous at Room Three of the Play Motel, cosplay with sex. Afterwards, some get murdered by an unseen killer with the required pair of black leather gloves. In Room Four, photos are taken of the action in Room Three, for purposes of blackmail. A young couple that discover the corpse of a woman placed in the trunk of their car do their own investigation on behalf of the police. Figuring out who the killer is was no mystery. What is a mystery is how he seems to be at two places at once in one scene? Another mystery is how the photographer of the blackmail photos is using a Fuji AZ-1 camera, which uses 35 mm film, but when a snooping model checks out his dark room, the negatives are from medium format film? Even more illogical is the killer appearing from the back seat of a car, and bonking his victim on the head with a large wrench while she's driving.

Younger audiences might find it of interest to see a movie that takes place in olden times, in the days before home computers and online streaming, when people took photographs with film, and porn was something available in printed magazines. The one part of the film that almost passes as contemporary would be the Fiat 500s some of the characters drive.

The supplements offer the biggest mystery - who made parts of this movie? The movie is signed by Roy Garrett, Gariazzo's occasional pseudonym. There's plenty of nudity, tongue wrestling, simulated sex. In the blu-ray supplements, there is discussion of the hard core inserts that Gariazzo denies filming, though in at least one instance, the same actors are clearly used rather than doubles in graphic close-ups. The hard core scenes were added to Play Motel for certain markets, distributed simultaneously with the version that received mainstream release. What is certain is that star Ray Lovelock found himself in a movie that strayed from the more conventional mystery he had signed up for.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:22 PM

August 18, 2015

British Noir

They Met in the Dark
Karel Lamac - 1943

The October Man
Roy Baker - 1947

Snowbound
David MacDonald - 1948

The Golden Salamander
Ronald Neame - 1950

The Assassin
Ralph Thomas - 1952
Kino Classics Region 1 Five DVD set

The five films in this package may not all fit but the loosest definition of film noir, but they all are entertaining. Made between 1943 and 1952, each film comes on its own disc. The filmmakers represented here range from the obscure, to a future Oscar nominee. Some of the supporting crew plus one of the directors will be familiar names to fans of Hammer Studios. World War II, and its affects on life, both during and after the war years, informs much of the action in most of these films. What also links these films is that they were either produced or distributed by the British J. Arthur Rank, the company with the giant gong for a logo, or an affiliated company.

They Met in the Dark has a couple of brief moments that take place in the dark, but it's more truly an espionage thriller with some comic elements. James Mason, first seen sporting a beard, plays a naval commander formally dismissed from service, due to unproven sabotage. Attempting to retrace his steps, Mason goes to Blackpool, and makes an arrangement to meet with a woman he recalls from his last days before his ship sailed. The woman, a manicurist named Mary, asks that they meet an an out of the way house. Mary is found dead, with Mason following a lead to a talent agency that's a cover for a nest of spies.

The film was directed by the Czech Karel Lamac, one of his handful of British films. More credit should go to screenwriters Anatole de Grunwald and Miles Malleson, both of whom would go on to more notable work. Malleson, as a character actor, appears in The Golden Salamander and The Assassin. What to look for are some of the smaller moments, a naval officer's date getting two slices of pie, the main villain barging in on a card trick in progress, and the discovery of a missing corpse. Perennial screen Nazi, Karel Stepanek, plays one of the talent agency's stars, a mind reader named The Great Riccardo. The other highlight is a barroom brawl instigated by Mason's mischievous right hand man, played by character actor Edward Rigby. Joyce Howard provides the romantic interest, though she's no match for the more comely Phyllis Stanley as the talent agency's star chanteuse. Stanley, twice, sings the what was intended to be a morale boosting tune for wartime Britons, "Toddle Along".

* * *

Roy Baker worked as an Assistant Director to Alfred Hitchcock on The Lady Vanishes, and Carol Reed on Night Train to Munich, but it was his his military service under writer-producer Eric Ambler that got Baker promoted to the directors chair. The October Man, Baker's directorial debut, is about a brain injured man who suffers from guilt, surviving a bus crash, but unable to protect the child of family friends. There is some tangential connection with the earlier films, with a suicidal John Mills contemplating suicide several times, standing over a bridge while a train is coming towards him. The plot is Hitchcockian with Mills accused of a murder he did not commit, with no proof of his innocence, and his paranoia so deep he starts to wonder if he maybe is the murderer. It doesn't help that Mills has a nervous habit of tying his handkerchief into a knot.

As the chemist gingerly trying to integrate himself back into the world at large, Mills finds himself in a rooming house with several residents arguably in greater need of psychiatric intervention. Among the boarders is a creepy guy named Mr. Peachy. There is support to be found in Joyce Greenwood as the sister of a co-worker. Even if the identity of the murderer is hardy a mystery, what makes The October Man watchable is the cinematography by Edwin Hillier. Having begun his career with Fritz Lang's M, and honing is skills with Michael Powell, Hillier is at his best with several scenes that take place in the dark. There's a scene with a blown fuse causing a blackout in the boarding house, with an encounter between Mills and femme fatale Kay Walsh illuminated by match light. Best are the extreme close ups of Mills and Greenwood under a street lamp. When the film was released in 1947, the New York Times critic Bosley Crowthers complained the story was was "virtually a clichee" (sic). Sometimes, dynamic cinematography can provide an otherwise modest production with unanticipated staying power.

* * *

David MacDonald might seem to have a predilection for movies that take place in enclosed locations. His most famous, or infamous if you will, work is Devil Girl from Mars, about a family and some travelers trapped in a hotel in a remote part of Scotland by a dominatrix from outer space. Snowbound has a slightly more realistic premise, with several people trapped inside a hotel on a remote mountaintop in the Italian Alps, both by a raging snow storm on the outside, and an unreconstructed Nazi inside.

The initial premise is equally bizarre, with film director Robert Newton putting extra player Dennis Price on his personal payroll, and sending him off to the Alps hotel to look for a mystery woman, in the guise of a screenplay writer accompanied by photographer Stanley Holloway. Perhaps taking a queue from Thomas Mann, our cast of characters all claim to be rooming at this mountainside retreat for their health. More than an hour has past before it's revealed that there is stolen gold that has brought everyone together. In addition to the previously mentioned actors, we have Herbert Lom as the unrepentant former Gestapo officer, British character actor Guy Middleton as another schemer, Marcel Dalio wildly hamming it up as an Italian gentleman, French actress Mila Parely as an Italian countess, also after the gold. Considering their personal circumstances, the most chilling scene is of Price and Newton in conversation, drinking alcohol.

* * *

Ronald Neame began his film career as an Assistant Camerman on Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail. The connections don't end there. The Golden Salamander, Neame's second film as director, competed against Hitchcock's Stagefright at the Locarno Film Festival in 1950, where both films lost to John Ford's When Willie comes Marching Home. The Golden Salamander is based on a novel by Victor Canning, whose novel, The Rainbird Pattern was the source for Hitchcock's Family Plot.

The story here is of an archeologist who stumbles upon a gun running operation in an out of the way town in Tunisia. He stays at the combination hotel-bar run by a young French proprietress. While preparing for antique treasures to be catalogued and shipped to a British museum, the archeologist finds himself in trouble for trying to reveal the gun running operation, though he doesn't know who really is in charge. People get killed, and the archeologist falls in love with his hostess. There's a nod or two towards Casablanca, and a glance to The Maltese Falcon. With his form fitting leather jacket, Herbert Lom looks like an overaged juvenile delinquent. Wilfred Hyde-White is uncharacteristically disheveled as the bar's piano player.

Much of the action takes place at the hotel-bar, Cafe des Amis, Cafe of Friends. There is almost some wordplay here as the place could have been called Cafe d'Aimee after the actress who plays the proprietress. Anouk Aimee was only eighteen at the time of film, and billed here under the mononym of Anouk. Of course Trevor Howard, Herbert Lom and virtually most of the other men would be drawn to her. The appeal of Trevor Howard as a romantic lead has eluded me. I'm even less convinced of Howard as a two-fisted hero, but the guy was a big star in British films at the time, with a history of working with Ronald Neame since Brief Encounters. As might be expected from a director who started out as a cameraman, this is the most visually accomplished films in this collection, with exteriors shot on location in Tunisia.

* * *

My first encounter that I recall with films by Ralph Thomas was when I saw his version of The 39 Steps on television. I knew that there was an Alfred Hitchcock movie with that title, but I didn't see Hitchcock's name anywhere on the credits. I was maybe in my early teens at the time, and my cinephilia was embryonic at best. Anyways, my mother asked me what was on television, and decided that this was not the 39 Steps I should be watching. I did finally see the Hitchcock film years later, but have yet to revisit Kenneth More following the steps taken by Robert Donat.

Victor Canning's novel, The Venetian Bird also provides source material for Ralph Thomas. The film, released in the U.S. as The Assassin is about a private detective seeking the former Italian partisan who saved the life of a U.S. airman. The partisan is difficult to find, and as it turns out, does not want to be found. A woman running a large gallery of antiques and artifacts may know more than she is willing to reveal. The private eye, who doggedly is trying to find out the truth about the partisan, ends up getting framed for the assassination of a popular politician.

For most of the 1950s, Richard Todd was a very popular actor, first in Britain, and later is the U.S. Todd's forte was playing very physically able heroes, which he did quite well. Eva Bartok is the femme fatale here. While most of the cast is British, they play Italians without the wild gesticulations found in Snowbound. Included in the cast is future Carry On mainstay, Sid James. The film was shot in Venice, climaxing with a rooftop chase, with an ending that visually looks Hitchcockian. Extra bonus, a score by Nino Rota, who happened to begin collaborations with a young writer-director named Federico Fellini that same year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:05 PM

August 13, 2015

Face to Face

Facia a Facia
Sergio Sollima - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

There's a wonderful meta moment in Face to Face. The outlaw Beauregard Bennett shows up in a town to try and free a jailed member of his Wild Bunch. The person who knows the whereabouts of the prisoner is a man named Williams who represents himself as an "honest citizen". William is a heavy-set man, the kind of character played by Raymond Burr or Robert Middleton in Hollywood westerns. The price for freeing the prisoner is Bennett's taking on the henchmen who work for Taylor. Taylor is the town boss, and his name is on several buildings, notably the hotel, the bar and the bank. Bennett has a shootout with the henchmen, with Taylor coming up to watch the proceedings, sitting next to Williams. Right before the shootout, Williams looks at his pocket watch. It's a darkly humorous scene revealing that the gunfighters are essentially pawns for monied interests. The scene also works as commentary on the spectacle of the gunfight as part of the western genre.

Unless you have a phobia regarding subtitles, it's the "bonus" of the full original version of Face to Face that you want to see, in Italian with English subtitles. There is a marked difference with the longer version, significantly with a couple of scenes that show the initial development of the relationship between Bennett, and the former history teacher, Brett Fletcher. Based on a remark by Fletcher, and a photograph of President Grant in a sheriff's office, the film takes place sometime not long after the Civil War. Fletcher, a history teacher, leaves Boston for somewhere in Texas, for his health. Fletcher is told that his apparent lack of ambition has held up his academic career. The scene foreshadows Fletcher's change of character following his initial encounter with Bennett. A scene deleted in the English language version shows Fletcher coughing and physically weak while hiding in a shelter with Bennett, at first a prisoner of the outlaw, but later to join him in banditry.

Face to Face was the second of three westerns made by Sergio Sollima, all starring Tomas Milian. Like the previous, The Big Gundown, it's a film about a symbiotic relationship between to men. The two men exchange some the characteristics of each other, both for better and for worse. The film is also an observation on how the concepts of strength and weakness are perceived.

I find it interesting that the one scene that did not get cut out from the English language release was the scene that provides a pause in the narrative. Bennett brings Fletcher to the remote mountain village called Blazing Rock. It's some kind of utopia for former outlaws, slaves, some Native Americans, and others, away from the legally established communities and their hierarchies. With the return of Bennet, the community has a dance, mostly people gathered in a circle. We get to see Tomas Milian and some of the other cast members literally kicking up their heels. A fair number of Italian westerns were barely disguised political allegories, and the dance scene was designed to show an idealized, classless society.

Still relatively early in their respective careers, Tomas Milian started to establish himself as the loose cannon in Italian genre film, while Gian Maria Volonte would frequently be the cerebral protagonist. One other way the Italian language version wins over the English language version - an extra minute or so of Ennio Morricone's music closing out the film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:06 AM

August 10, 2015

Z Storm

Z fung wan
David Lam - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Z Storm is a police thriller about the financial industry. And while it is set in Hong Kong, inspired by true events there, it touches on the way the financial industry affects people globally, in ways related to recent and current news. What I also liked is that going against current commercial trends, David Lam filmed his made in Hong Kong movie in Cantonese, the spoken dialect of Hong Kong. The city itself is the subject of several gorgeous shots, especially at night.

A branch of Hong Kong's police department, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, investigates the accusation of one of Hong Kong's chiefs of the Commercial Crime Unit, Wong, for accepting bribes. Wong is first seen helping cover up the the evidence in his own bust of an accounting firm. Luk, from the the ICAC, discovers connections between Wong's cover-up, and a highly publicized stock offering that is to get government backing. What takes Luk longer to discover is that behind the dazzle of promises of high financial returns, is someone behind the scenes, the one chiefly responsible for the bribery, blackmail and intimidation, that hamper the investigation. The main villain, Malcolm Wu, is working on behalf of financier, Zoro, for whom the Z Hedge Fund is named.

While Malcolm Wu does his best to get away with murder, among other crimes, it is the actor playing Wu, Michael Wong, who runs away with this film. The guy's a native English speaking Chinese-American actor, and the best Hollywood can do is give him a supporting role in a Transformers movie? Wong mostly speaks Cantonese here, with a smattering of English, slipping back and forth between languages without pause. It's not too different from the way Wong speaks in the DVD supplement in discussing his role. What makes it appropriate for the character is that he is this high priced lawyer who also slips between legalities, using the law when needed, going around the law when more expedient.

There are some car chases, and a shoot out near the end, the staples virtually required in a film about any cops. More thrilling than the visceral set pieces, are the scenes that play like movements in a chess game, each side anticipating or attempting to outguess the other. There are several moments devoted to visual evidence, photographs and videos used for blackmail, investigations into overlooked laws, and the discovery of connections between several characters. Ultimately, the film is about not only manipulation and criminality within the financial industry, but how people can be easily corrupted even with relatively modest amounts of money, or the promise of easy financial gains.

Z Storm is a personal film for David Lam, who made films for the ICAC between 1980 and 1985. Unfortunately, there is only a sliver of information about Lam, mostly his filmographies and little else. This is Lam's first film since 1999. The ending of Z Storm suggests a possible sequel, one I would look forward to seeing.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:12 PM

August 07, 2015

Sexual Assault at a Hotel: Rape Me!

Hotel kyosei waisetsu jiken: okashite!
Horetsugu Kurahara - 1977
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

The Japanese Pink movie is something that reveals a cultural gap between the Japanese and North Americans. As Jasper Sharp points out in his liner notes, the title should not be taken at face value. It has been several months since the last entry in the Nikkatsu Roman Porno series. I don't know if Impulse Pictures has any more in the series to offer, but my own preference has been for the other films that occasionally made a stab at artistic and / or social statements. Koretsugu Kurahara's main claim to fame is being the younger brother to Koreyoshi Kurahara, who twenty years earlier made his directorial debut at Nikkatsu with I am Waiting, one of that studio's earlier offerings to the newly discovered youth audience.

Keeping in mind that the definition of rape has been undergoing various shifts, there is a certain amount of irony that the bedroom of one of the characters, Rumiko, has a poster of Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh from Gone with the Wind, the American classic with its own scene of non-consensual sex. As these were films made by and for Japanese men, the pink films are fantasies of otherwise milquetoast salarymen satisfying their libidos with attractive young women who offer token resistance.

Rumiko has a friend, Ryoko, who has come to Tokyo to study. The two have had a lesbian relationship in high school, but as far as Ryoko is concerned, it's a relationship she's outgrown. There is talk of Ryoko losing her virginity to a college athlete, a pole vaulter who supposedly looks like Steve McQueen. Here is where the film contributes some visual innuendos, between shots of the young man with his long, thin pole, and several shots of the tip of the pole pounding the ground. There are also some scenes of an artist and his nude model, as well as a young made identified as a drug dealer, the kind of elements that gives this film a loose connection to the social outsiders of the Nikkatsu films produced in the late Fifties and early Sixties.

There is also some business about an assistant professor who tells Ryoko that she resembles the virgins from ancient Japan, concluding with Ryoko getting spit roasted by a couple of older professors supposedly reenacting an otherwise forgotten ritual. The climax of the film is abrupt, not satisfying, as if there was a rush to finish things up, in a word, premature. Erina Miyai, who had a five year run in Nikkatsu's pink films plays the sexually adventurous Rumiko. Yuri Yamashima, the sexually repressed Ryoko, had been with Nikkatsu as a teenager, retiring at age 30, in 1983.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:17 PM

August 05, 2015

A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die!

Una ragione per vivere e una per morire
Tonino Valerii - 1972
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I guess it says something less than encouraging when you find that a movie was distributed in the U.S. by K-Tel, that company famous for the compilation albums of various "golden oldies", hit songs from the past, sold through commercials that were a staple on late night broadcast television. K-Tel's cinematic venture was short lived, primarily from 1973 through 1974, with about half a dozen films, with a too late attempt to jump on the Euro-Western bandwagon, when interest in the genre was fading. Among the couple of titles of interest: Sonny and Jed by Sergio Corbucci, and Frenchie King starring Brigitte Bardot and Claudia Cardinale. As the titles were a couple years old by the time K-Tel picked them up, they were presumably at fire sale prices.

From what I have read, Tonino Valerii's original version of A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die! ran for almost two hours. The version we have from KL Studio Classics is the shortest version, at 92 minutes. On the plus side, this is the version that has James Coburn and Telly Savalas dubbing their own voices for the English language track. From what little I've been able to glean from online sources, what is mostly missing from this version are scenes establishing the relationship between Coburn and Bud Spencer. For those unfamiliar with Bud Spencer, his is one of the more famous American sounding names used by Italian actors who became famous appearing in Italian westerns. The burly Spencer, born Carlo Pedersoli, was frequently cast opposite the blond, blue eyed Terence Hill, born Mario Girotti. Hill would star in Tonino Valerii's next film, My Name is Nobody. This version also has most of the cast and crew credited with the kind of names that attempt to disguise that most of the talent was Italian, Spanish or German, as if most American viewers would be fooled into thinking this was Hollywood production.

The story takes place during the Civil War. Superimposed over war photos taken by Matthew Brady or one of his contemporaries is a text supposedly taken from a Missouri newspaper from 1875. The photos appear to be authentic. Everything else in A Reason to Live . . is not. Coburn plays a Union colonel who's been dishonored for surrendering his fort, located in the New Mexico Territory, to a Confederate major, without engaging in battle. Coburn convinces a fellow commanding officer to let him take a group of men, condemned to be hanged, to retake the fort. Not only do the condemned men like the option of living a bit longer, but Coburn tells them that there is gold hidden in the fort. I have to assume that Telly Savalas, who plays the major, experienced some deja vu with his experience making The Dirty Dozen almost five year earlier.

As if a not-true story about a half dozen criminals taking on a small army isn't fantastic enough, I'm not sure what to make of Savalas or his character of Major Ward. Savalas speaks in his familiar cadence, with absolutely no attempt at anything resembling a southern accent. More perplexing is: what is that nude male statue, Michelangelo's David, without a fig leaf, doing in Major Ward's office? Was there anything in the original cut that would have provided some kind of explanation, or was the viewer to draw some kind of conclusion regarding this unusual aspect of this otherwise brutal character?

There may be a reason to live and a reason to die, but is there a reason to see this film? Probably more for the more dedicated fans of Italian westerns, than for the more casual viewer. A Reason to Live, A Reason to Die! is entertaining, mostly due to the presence of Bud Spencer. There isn't the goofy charm of My Name is Nobody, or the intriguing concept of The Price of Power, in which the assassination of John Kennedy is recast in the old West.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

August 03, 2015

Police Story: Lockdown

Jing cha gu shi 2013
Ding Sheng - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Jackie Chan is showing his age. And it's about time. The Beatles' era shagginess replaced by a short, almost military trim. Even without the scars, make-up for his character, there are the creases on Chan's face. You can see the years of brutal punishment taking its toll, almost Sixty years old at the time of filming, with a career spanning over forty years. Even with the hair cut drastically short, Chan can still be recognized by the back of his head. Being on screen in so many films can do that for some stars.

Just as Chan has lost is recognizable long locks, he's first seen lost in an unrecognizable China. Unlike the previous Police Story films, Chan is now a cop in Beijing. He looking for a bar on a street that makes the Las Vegas strip look under lit in comparison. This is an unfamiliar China, where people are celebrating Christmas and getting drunk in public. The bar Chan is looking for isn't just some little dive, but a huge former factory with several levels, with patrons dressed in high fashion and leather, punks with foot high mohawks, and young women covered in make-up from MAC and Sephora. The scene is one of the most vulgar of western culture run amok.

Chan's character, Zhong, goes to this huge bar, more accurately a nightclub, to meet with his estranged daughter, Miao. The meeting takes place during an invitation only anniversary party for the nightclub. Miao reveals that she is now the girlfriend of the nightclub owner, Wu. For Zhong, it's bad enough that Wu is much older than his daughter, but worse is when he and several patrons are held hostage as part of an elaborate scheme concocted by Wu, revenge for the untimely death of his younger sister, against the people he holds responsible.

Ding, who also wrote the screenplay and edited the film, goes for some art house influence in his narrative. There are several flashbacks as Zhong reflects on several previous arrests he's made, thinking that these are the ones Wu refers to when Wu negotiates the release of an unnamed prisoner. There are also flashes of alternative scenes as imagined by Zhong, when trying to choose a correct course of action. When the group of hostages take turns explaining their roles in the events that led to the death of Wu's sister, there is the influence of Rashomon.

If the narrative is sometimes overly elaborate, the fight scenes are not. Gone are the extended fights, combining martial arts mastery and silent comedy use of props. The fights are short, serious, and in confining spaces, with the punches and kicks edited in quick succession. Police Story: Lockdown ends with the familiar outtakes of stunts gone wrong. The outtakes might be considered a gesture towards fans from a star attempting to re-invent himself for films that make fewer demands on the physicality that brought him world-wide fame.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:03 PM

July 30, 2015

Storm Fear

Cornel Wilde - 1955
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Not a exactly a classic, but Storm Fear is worth seeing for some of its counter-intuitive casting. I wasn't prepared to see Dan Duryea, usually cast as a smarmy, sadistic weasel cast here as a hypersensitive writer in ill health. Duryea is so sick that he walks around the house with a big woolen scarf around his throat, and is on the verge of coughing and wheezing off this mortal coil at any moment. What kind of writer is he? It's never clear whether Duryea's character writes novels, inspirational bromides, or self-help books, just that he had something published about four years earlier. Duryea also plays husband to Jean Wallace, as he says later, because it was the noble thing to do, hinting that he got a pregnant Wallace on the rebound after she's ditched by true love Cornel Wilde.

And Cornel Wilde, casting himself as the anti-hero, a bank robber on the lam. A very skinny Dennis Weaver is the unlikely hero. Steven Hill gets an "introducing" credit for his first significant screen appearance as one of Wilde's partners in crime, a very nattily dressed thug who Wilde attempts to keep on a short leash lest he impulsively pummels or shoots anyone considered in the way. Hill's character tries to come of with ways to keep the stolen money for himself, and has no sympathy for anyone. Best of all is Lee Grant, as a peroxide blonde moll whose relationship to Wilde and Hill is never made clear. Her mink coat is her prized possession. Grant has the best line in the film when she pours some whiskey in a glass and proclaims that she can't drink her milk straight. Grant may look cheap and trashy, but when Duryea and Wallace's eleven year old son sets his eyes on her, it's clear that adolescent hormones are starting to jump.

Most of the film is about this volatile mix of characters stuck in a mountain cabin during a December snow storm. Aside from a glimpse of a calendar, there's a big tree in the house, decorated with tinsel. This is where Duryea and Wallace call home, with a crank telephone, and the home entertainment center consisting of a radio, a gift from the love-struck Weaver. The opening scene establishes family tensions with Duryea's son having a closer relationship with Weaver than with his purported father, and the arguments Duryea has with Wallace, disturbed by the music from the radio. Duryea and Wilde are brothers, one a failed writer, the other, not much of a crook. There's no love between brothers, husband and wife, or the hoodlum trio. It's not a question of whether somebody's going to get killed, but an inevitable who and when.

This was Cornel Wilde's directorial debut, and unsurprisingly, stronger regarding the acting than in any kind of visual style. There are some nice images via cinematographer Joseph LaShelle, such as a close ups alternating between Wilde and Wallace while a bullet is crudely extracted from Wilde's legs, with Wilde flexing his muscles gripping the headboard of a bed. Also, Lee Grant looking up at a mountain path, lying in snow, ankle broken, unable to move, with wads of money at arms length, abandoned by her partners. Wilde gave Elmer Bernstein freedom to compose a score that weaves between jazzy riffs and abstract percussion. The adapted screenplay was by Horton Foote, his first theatrical film credit, hardly a harbinger of the acclaim to come just a few years later.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM

July 28, 2015

He Ran All the Way

John Berry - 1951
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

For me, another example of a film that serves as a metaphor for an actor's career. Blacklisted by the studios while being investigated by the House of Un-American Activities Committee, it was fitting that John Garfield was able to make one last film with United Artists, a company that for the most part was home for filmmakers with liberal leanings. Also affected by HUAC were Dalton Trumbo, with his contribution to the screenplay credited to Guy Endore, screenplay writer Hugo Butler, who soon fled to Mexico, and director John Berry, who continued his career in France. By the time He Ran All the Way was released, John Garfield's film career was dead in Hollywood, while the character he plays, Nick Robey, dies face first in the gutter.

Garfield's Nick Robey is a small time hood who always lets his worst instincts get in his way. Even before his botched payroll robbery takes place, Robey is trapped in his shambles of a slum apartment, sweating, and nervous. Robey lives with his mother, who is seen in a shabby nightgown that hints at slightly better days of being someone's floozy, probably when Calvin Coolidge was president. The two would sooner engage in a bare knuckles brawl than anything resembling family affection. With a pile of unwashed dishes, clothes and trash strewn around, the clutter and disrepair of Robey's apartment is such that the rats have left for more hospitable lodgings.

Even when Robey is on the run, there is a constant sense of entrapment. Following the robbery, Robey runs through several hallways and staircases, spaces that allow limited movement. Even in the outside, Robey runs between several freight train cars, with the camera positioned to emphasize the small space of light between each car. Robey temporarily evades police capture in yet another enclosed space, a public swimming pool called Plunge. And plunge Robey does, ingratiating himself on Peggy Dobbs, a young woman who visits the pool regularly even though she can not swim.

Robey holes up in the apartment belonging to Peggy's parents. Again, there is a sense of setting that seems realistic. The Dobbs are presented as lower middle class. The apartment is bigger, but nothing looks new. A nice touch is the peeling wallpaper seen in the background. That the Dobbs are lower middle class is also indicated with the father working at a newspaper press plant, while Peggy works the assembly line boxing cakes in a bakery.

What I liked best were the exterior shots, filmed around the streets of Los Angeles. John Berry may well have been influenced by the then recent works of Italian neo-realism. The street where Robey and his partner-in-crime meet, the aforementioned train yard, and even some of the shots of the swimming pool and its surround environment, have an authenticity that could not be recreated in a studio. There are a number of traveling shots by James Wong Howe, with the camera movement providing visual correlation to Robery's nervousness.

Nick Robey couldn't escape from the law, and John Garfield couldn't escape from the effects of appearing before HUAC. In several shots, Garfield appears visibly aged, older than his thirty-eight years. While Garfield's film career ends here, the film may have provided the opportunity for Shelley Winter's to show off her ability as a serious actress. There may be something about Shelley Winters and water. Following He Ran All the Way, Shelley Winters played another character whose lack of swimming ability, and questionable choice in men, is part of A Place in the Sun.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:36 PM

July 21, 2015

House of 1,000 Dolls

Jeremy Summers - 1967
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

What would Jesus do? Had Jesus "Jess" Franco directed House of 1,000 Dolls, maybe this film would have truly been the sleaze-fest alleged by various detractors. What we have are a dozen reasonably attractive young women running around in their underwear, plus one whipping of one of those women. Not family viewing as commonly understood, but mildly transgressive by most standards. That the film was shot in Spain, from a producer would be associated with Franco, Harry Alan Towers, makes me wonder what might have happened had this film been made a year or so later.

Towers wrote the screenplay, with the lurid premise of a magician and his assistant making unsuspecting young women disappear on stage, on for them to wake up as captives of a white slavery ring for a very exclusive house of ill-repute in Tangiers. The real slaves were stars Vincent Price and Martha Hyer, both in the film to fulfill contractual obligations. More screen time is given to George Nader, at the time a very popular star in Germany, important for a film that was a Spanish-German co-production. Mrs. Towers, better known as Maria Rohm, wakes up screaming in the opening minutes.

This was the last of three films Jeremy Summers did for Towers. The only other work I've seen was Ferry Cross the Mersey, essential produced as consolation for the various musical acts managed by Brian Epstein who were not The Beatles. The only thing I recall is Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers, looking visibly excited as the camera tilts up, while he is playing his guitar. I am not sure if there is any significant meaning, but Summers does have something of a visual style here, filming several of the action scenes with shots partially obscured by window frames, fences, or what every he can use as a momentary framing device. There are several shots making use of the reflections of mirrors, with a shot of Yelena Samarina, reflected in Price's sunglasses, used in some of the posters. There is also one beautifully lit shot of a man coming out of the shadows to threaten Price. What ever one might say about the story, or the questionable Orientalism presented here, there can be no question regarding Summers' craftsmanship.

The Blu-ray comes with a commentary track by two Davids, DeCoteau and Del Valle. Somehow, the only Double Ds that are part of a movie about sexually exploited women are the voices of two men. David DeCoteau is a film director with a slew of titles primarily made for the home video market. Del Valle, who's commentary for The Crimson Cult was mentioned a couple of weeks ago, shares his knowledge of genre films and filmmakers. Aside from explaining the how this film evolved from one of Tower's unrealized projects, there are stories about the producer, whose life was often more colorful than some of the films he produced. We are assured by the Davids that this is the most complete version of the film, which was abridged in its initial theatrical release in the U.S., and may well have had some more explicit nudity in versions for other markets.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:06 AM

July 16, 2015

Gangs of Wasseypur

Anurag Kashyap - 2012
Cinelicious Pics BD Region A

The Blu-ray cover comes with an endorsement from Martin Scorsese. The blurbs used to sell Gangs of Wasseypur appear to be aimed towards an audience that is more familiar with several high profile gangster films from the likes of Coppola, Scorsese and Tarantino. While this is understandable given the story about the decades long conflict between to criminal families, and the increasingly brutal violence that takes place, it may also diminish what makes this an Indian film. And at a total of almost five hours and twenty minutes, describing this film as an epic is not inaccurate.

The first film periodically breaks into documentary footage, providing historical context to the narrative which begins during the final years of British rule over India. Part of the country has been turned over to the coal mining industry. Workers, paid paltry wages, steal coal and grain for survival. Even when India becomes an independent country, the situation does not improve for many workers as the British are replaced by an equally ruthless coterie of Indian industrialists. With the first half hour, Kashyap establishes a story not simply about gang warfare, but a history of a country that can not, or will not, break the cycle of exploiting its resources or people. The film can also be said to be about how easily even those who profess to have certain ideals can be corrupted, personifying the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Indian popular culture is also intertwined here. There are a couple of scenes of people watching television, movie posters are everywhere, there are a couple of scenes of film-going, and a couple discussing which Bollywood film, if any, they will go see. The chief villain explains that the reason he has out-lived his rivals is due to his not watching any films, not imagining himself as whoever the current screen "hero" is at the time. Even if one is not well versed in Bollywood film, some familiarity may be helpful in appreciating how Kashyap uses that staple that characterizes the popular Indian film, the use of song. In the past few years, films have been using songs in the background as commentary, cutting down, if not always eliminating, the song and dance numbers that break up the dramatic portions of the film. The songs are a combination of original work created for the film, some folk songs, and songs from older Indian films. Most of the songs are heard as background commentary, although there are scenes with a singer performing "live" as part of street rallies. Where Gangs of Wasseypur songs make a significant break from other Bollywood films is that they are not designed for music video play, and the lyrics are sexually more frank than what is found from a film industry that has historically shied away from onscreen kissing.

Kashyap also makes clear that most of his characters are Muslim, making the taking of a Hindu woman from Bengal as a gangster's mistress a point of contention. In one scene, when a dinner is to be set up, a wife asks if the "meat plates" should be used. There is also reference to the remnants of the caste system, with one of the extended families noted as historically working as butchers.

Almost unbelievably, the story, though fictionalized, is based on the very real rivalry between two families in Wasseypur. Most of the film is about the Kahns, with the descendants more brazen in their predecessors. It's as if being a criminal is in the DNA. We go from mere bludgeoning, shootings and stabbings, to the beheading of a drug dealer, and one of the younger generation holding a double edged razor in his mouth, while another walks around threatening others with a live cobra. The bloodshed is not only between the crime families, but between family members. Pride and power trump everything else.

The Blu-ray comes with a booklet, with an essay by journalist Aseem Chhabra, that provides some helpful information on the making of the film, and the work of Anurag Kashyap. There are also two family trees, valuable in keeping track of the characters and their relationships.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:06 AM

July 14, 2015

Reckless

Bloedlink
Joram Lursen - 2014
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

Reckless is the Dutch remake of the 2009 British film, The Disappearance of Alice Creed. The producer, Frans van Gestel, has been quoted as stating, "Obviously, if you make a remake of a British film, it is not meant to travel around the world. It is meant to work really strongly in the domestic market." While Lursen's version is not a shot-by-shot remake, this version does not deepen or alter the original story. If you've seen the original film, you know what to expect.

What the Dutch version has is Tygo Gernandt in the role of Vic, the part played by Eddie Marsan in the British version. Gernandts hair is shaved to form a V shaped mohawk. His lips are curled, as if he is eternally snarling at the world. This is the kind of face that looks as if has been beaten by the elements as well as opponents' fists. There is hardly a moment when this Vic does not look threatening. Between Vic and his partner in crime, Rico, there is no question as to who is the Alpha dog here.

I liked the opening montage, with the kidnappers shopping in preparation of the kidnapping, buying a bed to be modified for restraining their victim, duct tape, and sound-proofing material. Most of the action takes place in an empty, abandoned high rise. There is also the sense of emptiness in most of the exterior shots, even in a parking lot filled with cars but no other people. The white van used for the kidnapping is the only vehicle seen moving in the streets. The windows in the kidnappers' apartment are closed, with those of the kidnap victim boarded up, further stressing the idea of a depopulated environment, save for the three characters. The use of lighting in the basement of an abandoned greenhouse, with a golden glow cast on the kidnap victim, Laura, is especially striking.

While I can understand remaking a film for a local audience, especially in a different language, the choice of Reckless for a North American release strikes me as baffling. It's not that this film is badly made, far from it, but there is not enough to make a significant departure from The Disappearance of Alice Creed. The kidnap victim here, played by Sarah Chronis, is a pouty blonde with none of the charm of Gemma Arterton. There is one cultural difference, with the casual nudity of the two men, something that I don't recall from the original film, which telegraphs their relationship as having been more than simply former prison cell mates.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:05 AM

July 09, 2015

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein

Jesus Franco - 1972
Redemption Films BD Region A

Maybe I'm reading a little too much into this, but while watching The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, it occurred to me that the tuft of a goatee that the normally clean-shaven Howard Vernon sports in this film looks a bit like the the pubic hair on the women, lovingly photographed here, especially Britt Nichols. I can only say that I've seen enough films from Jesus Franco to know that the guy has a certain fascination for full frontal female foliage.

This is one of those Franco films that those less familiar with the filmmaker might use as an argument regarding the prolific Spaniard's abilities behind the camera. And there are moments when on a technical level, so-called good filmmaking yields to the demands of a short schedule and shorter money. And yet, even before I gave Tim Lucas the chance to explain everything and more regarding Franco and this film, I started to think that whether intended or not, maybe The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein might be closer in spirit to the kind of pastiche/homage/parodies of the Kuchar Brothers, then something from the House of Hammer.

What Lucas' commentary does is put the whole shebang into the context primarily of European comics made for adults, the most famous of which is probably Barbarella. Lucas also mentions the inspiration of the early novels of Jean-Claude Carriere, writing under the pseudonym of Benoit Becker. There is also the inspiration from the classic Universal Frankenstein series, with part of the plot taking The Bride of Frankenstein to its logical conclusion. The viewer is also assured that the French version that is presented here is the version closest to the film Franco intended.

We've got Dennis Price as Victor Frankenstein and Jesus Franco as his assistant, giving the monster the power of speech. The monster is kidnapped by Cagliostro, accompanied by his creation, a blind, vampiric bird-woman who screeches as much as she talks. Vera Frankenstein brings Dad back from the dead to find out what happened to his creation. Cagliostro hopes to mate the monster with his own female creation, made from parts of several beautiful women, with the goal of creating some kind of master race. This is not Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, but something closer to The House of Frankenstein, a monster rally, updated to include an abundance of nudity.

As Tim Lucas makes clear, Jesus Franco never intended this film to be taken seriously. The most horrifying part of The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein is seeing the toll of alcoholism on Dennis Price, almost twenty years after his acclaimed appearance in Kind Hearts and Coronets. Franco's frequently used composer, Daniel White, appears here as a police detective. The English language soundtrack has Howard Vernon dubbing his own voice.

Another appreciation for this film, from the previous home video version, can be found from Kimberly Lindbergs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

July 07, 2015

The Treatment

De Behandeling
Hans Herbots - 2014
Artsploitation Films BD Region A

A difficult film to watch. A difficult film to write about. This is primarily a police procedural that deals with pedophiles, so between the subject matter, and writing about a film without giving too much away, there is for me, a look for the right balance. Adding to the complication of the manhunt, is that the lead detective, Nick, is the brother of a boy who was kidnapped by a pedophile, and has not been seen since then, adding personal motivation to Nick's detective work. And Nick has a neighbor, an older man, who taunts Nick with letters that suggest that he knows what has happened to the brother since he disappeared almost twenty years ago.

And while this Belgian film is not graphic in its depiction of what happens to any of the young boys who are victims, there are enough visual and aural hints to cause discomfort for all but the most insensitive viewer. It is as if Hans Herbots has taken the adage regarding horror films, that the scariest thing is what is left to the imagination of the audience. Without giving anything away, some of the answers to Nick's questions have turned out to be right in front of him.

The story might be described as a tragedy of errors, where Nick's zealousness, coupled with partial information, or misinterpreting what may be seen or head, causes many mistakes even as he gets closer to resolving the current investigation. The viewer may take on Nick's viewpoint, such as a scene with a swimming instructor, as it turns out falsely accused of being a child molester. The instructor is surrounded by a his students, all early elementary school aged, too close for the comfort of the instructor or the viewer. There are shots from the point of view of the instructor, underwater, looking at the children swimming, that are open to interpretation. There is at least one "MacGuffin" driving the action.

Nick's flashbacks to the last time he saw his brother have some visual clues as to the future of Nick and his brother, Bjorn. The two are playing "cowboys and indians". In addition to his cowboy hat, young Nick has facial hair added to his face, done with some kind of make-up, that makes him look, from the distance, like the man that he will become. What Nick remembers about the last time he saw Bjorn was the indian headdress his brother wore that day.

As with other films from Artsploitation, The Treatment teeters between art and exploitation, pushing the proverbial envelope. Films such as this do raise a multiplicity of questions regarding the role of film, the filmmaker and the subject matter. There is no question about the quality of the craftsmanship of Hans Herbots. The blu-ray comes with deleted scenes and an explanation for why each of those scenes was not used. At various points in the film, children talk about a possible threat by someone or something called the troll, initially dismissed by Nick as an urban legend shared between children. What makes The Treatment discomforting is that it is about real monsters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:19 AM

July 06, 2015

Truck Turner

Jonathan Kaplan - 1974
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

A bit of a disclaimer here. I knew of, but wasn't personally acquainted with, Jonathan Kaplan, at the time we were both at New York University. I probably crossed paths with him a few times without know it, and there were a couple of people we both knew from the film department. I never directly encountered Kaplan until several years later when Heart Like a Wheel was presented at the Denver International Film Festival.

Kaplan has a commentary track on the new Blu-ray version of Truck Turner, and it is very informative about the making of the film. Kaplan signed up for what he was told would be an action picture to star Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin or Robert Mitchum. After signing the contract Kaplan found out the star was to be Isaac Hayes, and that American International Pictures was more interested in the anticipated profits of an Isaac Hayes soundtrack album. The dark and gritty action movie AIP thought they were going to get was turned into something frequently humorous and occasionally warm as a result of the collaboration by Kaplan and Hayes. Kaplan is also generous in discussing the work of editor Michael Kahn, who became a member of Team Spielberg as a result of his work here, as well as crediting Oscar Williams for his contributions to the screenplay.

For those not familiar with the film, it revolves around a skip tracer, former football star, Mack "Truck" Turner. Taking the job to find a pimp named Gator, the pimp is killed in self-defense. Gator has a stable of prostitutes managed by a madame, Dorinda. Various pimps look to take over from Gator. Dorinda offers a stake in the stable to whomever kills Turner. The deadliest of those in this competition is a pimp named Harvard Blue.

I saw Truck Turner at the time of its initial release in 1974. There is a lot of hand slapping, racial epithets, a pink Lincoln-Continental, and questionable fashion statements. Whatever one might feel about blaxploitation movies in general, or this film in particular, Isaac Hayes' music has definitely held up after forty years.

The pleasures are in the casting and the personal touches. The opening shot pans across Turner's apartment, littered with beer cans and packaging from fast food restaurants, a glimpse of an Otis Redding album, before settling on Hayes' world famous, clean shaven, top of his head. "That guy", Dick Miller, appears, wearing his own pink sports coat. James Millhollin, one of those character actors I've seen many times in film and television, without knowing his name, makes a brief appearance. There is also Scatman Crothers as a retired pimp. Nichelle Nichols, in the gap between Star Trek the TV series, and Star Trek the film franchise, plays the foul mouthed Dorinda.

Kaplan talks about the relative freedom he had in making Truck Turner. The most distinctive scene involves the death of Harvard Blue. While it's not mentioned, I think there is some inspiration from Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties, with Yaphet Kotto shot in the back, staggering for what seems like an extended moment, down the steps of a building, opposite of James Cagney, who staggered up a flight of stairs for Walsh. The soundtrack is silent. Kaplan filmed close-ups of Kotto, whose eyes have the look of someone stunned to discover his vulnerability, that his life may by ending on someone else's terms. The close-ups of Kotto alternate with point of view shots of Kotto approaching his car. The silence ends when Kotto falls head first onto the steering wheel, with a blast of the car horn.

The Blu-ray includes part of an appearance by Kaplan discussing Truck Turner at the New Beverly Theater in 2008, host by fellow Roger Corman alumni, Joe Dante. There is also the "Trailers from Hell", presented by cinematographer and director Ernest Dickerson.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:29 AM

July 03, 2015

The Crimson Cult

Vernon Sewell - 1968
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Talk about timing. What's best about this new blu-ray is that it comes with a 2012 documentary, taken from a television series, British Legends of the Stage and Screen, devoted to the career of Christopher Lee. We get to see Lee talk about the false starts to his acting career, how he almost became an opera singer, a bit about his parents and other relatives - Ian Fleming was his cousin, and his his thoughts on his iconic role as Dracula. There are clips from various films, including The Man with the Golden Gun, The Three Musketeers, and the film he was most proud of, Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Lee also talks about how he preferred to play Dracula as the character described by Bram Stoker, although no clips from the Jesus Franco film, that come a bit closer to the novel, are included here. There's only so much that can be stuffed in a forty-five minute documentary, but for the most part, this is a nice overview of Lee's life and films.

While the blu-ray is packaged as The Crimson Cult, what we see bears the original British release title of Curse of the Crimson Altar. Lee, along with Boris Karloff, Barbara Steele and Michael Gough, share top billing. Most of the screen time is given to Mark Eden and Virginia Wetherell, and if you are like me, you'll realize that you've seen them in other films after check the IMDb, but not recalled a single performance. I am also assuming that this is more complete than the version released in North America by American International Pictures.

Eden plays an antiques dealer, looking for his brother who disappeared in a small town. His search brings him to the estate of a country squire played by Lee, who lives with his niece, played by Wetherell. The squire most frequently socializes with an elderly historian, played by Karloff. Karloff is usually seen with his aide, a guy in a black chauffeur's uniform and sunglasses, who looks virtually like Elton John. Spending a couple of nights at the estate, his sleep is disturbed by nightmares involving Steele as a witch, demanding that Eden sign his name in blood. Meanwhile, Michael Gough creeps around as demented butler with a serious speech impediment.

This is a film in which a grab bag of parts are stuck together in the hopes that no one will notice how not all of it fits into a coherent whole. There is a partial quotation in the beginning, from an unnamed author, about drugs used for hypnotism, superimposed over some kaleidoscopic images. And while Eden's character is supposedly hypnotized, that really the last time there is a reference to drugs. The swinging party hosted by Wetherell and her hedonistic friends seems to have been included, along with the drug reference, to make what is essentially a gothic horror film relatable to those kids who flocked to Roger Corman's The Trip, released at about the same time as this film was produced. There's also a bit of nudity provided by Wetherell, thanks to the newly relaxed production code.

There is one moment, maybe too cute, maybe too meta, where our young couple takes a tour of Lee's mansion, and Wetherell states, "It's like a house from one of those old horror films.", and Eden replies, "It's like Boris Karloff is going to pop up at any moment." And pop up, Karloff does, in one scene, barely getting a grip on his chair, falling back. This was one of Karloff's last films, and as frail as he was during the filming, his way with words never failed him as he grins just enough while mentioning that his collection is of "instruments of torture".

The film takes place during a local holiday marking the celebration of the burning of a witch named Lavinia. We get to see Steele wearing some kind of hat shaped like ram's horns with long feathers. In her coven is a whip wielding woman with some kind of swirl design black pasties covering over her nipples, and a blacksmith in a black leather speedo. While the scenes fail to inspire dread, this might be campier than anything in Rocky Horror.

Alas, Christopher Lee doesn't do much here except look dapper.

The commentary track with film historian David Del Valle and Barbara Steele doesn't do much in terms of providing any insight into the making of The Crimson Cult, but does allow for Steele to tell stories about various high and low points in her own career.

A more curious inclusion is an interview with Kendall Schmidt. A music composer, Schmidt was hired to create new music scores for a number of A.I.P. films after the library had been bought by Orion Pictures. While it is explained that this was done for legal reasons, it doesn't explain why this was an issue for this particular studio. I can understand the rights issue regarding specific songs, which has caused some films to not get home video releases. There is something odd when finding out that Schmidt not only was hired to replace the original score by Peter Knight for this film, but also the music by Gino Marinuzzi for Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, and that of Paul Ferris for Witchfinder General, among titles mentioned.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:26 AM

July 01, 2015

For the Emperor

Hwangjereul Wihayeo
Park Sang-jun - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A small army of hooded thugs gather in the corridor of a building. The lights are off. The only illumination is from flashlights going in multiple directions. There's a gang war with men knifing each other. It's hard to tell exactly what's going on, but the flashing lights give the scene a kinetic quality. Sometimes the pleasure of genre films is just doing enough to make it stand out from other films.

While not specifically recalling other films, there is even a moment when the mob connected attorney declares that he needs some popcorn in anticipation of another plot twist coming up.

The original Korean title, according to Wikipedia, refers to the name of the loan company that the characters work for, Emperor Capital. Behind the fancy office building, and gentlemen wearing coats and ties, is a loan shark operation, one that will see you beaten and blood if debts are not paid in a timely manner.

Hwan, a formerly promising young baseball player, is having a terrible season. Making matters worse, he's busted in a gambling raid and has additionally been revealed to have been involved in fixing games. His own indebtedness is causes him to be attacked by a gang who collects money. Hwan ability to take on the gang brings him to the attention of Emperor Capital's CEO. Hwan works his way up the ladder of the organization, also gaining the attention of a glamorous prostitute known as Madame Cha, and the real head of Emperor Capital, an older gangster who works behind the scenes. The basis for the film is a comic book by Kim Seong-Dong. It is also the second film directed by Park Sang-jun. And in some ways the story follows a familiar pattern of the rise of a young gangster, and the power struggles that take place within organized crime.

The lights of Busan are seen from a distance, and appear glittery and golden. The film could be said to be about Hwan seduced by what he sees - money, power, respect, sex. It may be too obvious to have Madame Cha working out of a bar called Temptation. Park Sang-jun is also less than subtle with several shots angled in a way to help emphasize the breasts of actress Lee Tae-im. Hwan and Madame Cha get together, but it is later that one has to ask who seduced whom? Lee Min-ki as Hwan and Lee Tae-im are in the kind of scene that Hollywood might have made forty years ago - hot, nude, with bodies tangled. Not exactly "Last Tango in Busan", but viewers on this side of the globe might forget this is, for South Korean audiences, a mainstream movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:38 AM

June 29, 2015

Hard to be a God

Trudno byt' bogom
Aleksei German - 2013
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Throughout Hard to be a God, I felt like I was caught in the midst of a painting by Pieter Breugel the Elder. The density of people and details sometimes was overwhelming. Yes, the era depicted in German's film is a few centuries earlier that the scenes in Breugel's work, but there is, for me, an undeniable similarity with the cramming of people and animals within a limited space. The faces, especially, are remarkably like those found in Breugel's paintings.

Only rarely do you come across a face that might be remotely photogenic. There's snot and grime on most of those faces. Some of the teeth, if someone has close to a full set, look like the sharp set from the mouth of an animal. The film takes place on a planet that is similar to our own, but the civilization, such as it is, resembles that of a small European village in the Middle Ages. With almost constant rain, the streets are essentially muddy trails. It's impossible to not be streaked with mud and shit. Dirt and disease seem to be everywhere.

A group of scientists visit the planet primarily to observe life, but end up being involved in the political conflicts that prevent the possibility of a "renaissance". The science fiction aspects are set aside quickly, so that what is seen is a story of intrigue captured by a periodically acknowledged omniscient camera. The camera follows the action, sometimes seeming to be lost in crowd, sometimes having the field of vision partially obscured by some bit of bric-a-brac, hanging nearby. The only indication that one of the men is from a more contemporary time is when he plays a jazzy tune on a clarinet type instrument. And the basic premise goes against the more familiar stories of scientists, or the humble "Connecticut Yankee" sharing their magic with those relying on more primitive technology.

Aleksei German spent about six years simply in the filming. And there are far more details than can be absorbed in a single viewing. Another five years was spent on the editing, which was completed under the supervision of German's son and wife, screenplay collaborator Svetlana Karmalita. Some of the delays were due to German's own ill health. The legendary fastidiousness of German makes Stanley Kubrick look slap-dash in comparison.

There is an accompanying documentary, partially about the making of Hard to be a God, but also a look back at German's career. The glimpses of his previous work makes me hope that German's previous five films become more readily available. A booklet that includes a statement by German, and essays by his son, Aleksei German, Jr. and Aliza Ma, of the Museum of the Moving Image, help provide greater context for both the film and the filmmaking.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

June 25, 2015

Der TodesKing

Jörg Buttgereit - 1990
Cult Epics BD Region A

There's a scene in Der TodesKing where a young woman is reading aloud from a book, more or less, to a little girl sitting next to her. I wish I knew the source of the passage read because it seems even more appropriate, and timely, at this moment. I'm roughly paraphrasing here but the essence is that there are people who, considering their lives meaningless, hope to give their lives meaning by suicide, or suicidal acts that will bring some attention, and therefore meaning, to their lives. The title translates as "The Death King", an entity that makes people want to kill themselves. The film is composed of seven vignettes, one for each day of the week, bridged by footage of a decomposing body.

There is a history of artists who have depicted death. And as exploitive as Der TodesKing may seem in writing about certain scenes, there is a serious intent behind some of the moments that are clearly designed to be shocking. These moments may briefly bring to mind Takashi Miike and John Waters, but Buttgereit, more than any filmmaker I can think of, appears to be obsessed with death of the unnatural kind, whether by choice or circumstance.

There is one scene that manages to be both appalling and hilarious at the same time, where you might find yourself laughing while covering, even partially, your eyes. A young goes to a video store, one that has a big poster for Nekromantik. We are able to scan some of the titles available, including Citizen Kane, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Ms. 45. The young man takes home a film similar to Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S., about a female Nazi officer named Vera. In the film-within-the film, Vera supervises the, um, shall we say, extreme circumcision using a hedge clipper. We see the surgery in close-up, in its sepia glory. The young man watching the movie is interrupted by his girl friend, home with groceries. He shoots her in the head. Punching out the photo of the girl's mother, he takes the frame and places it over the part of the wall splattered with blood and bits of brain. It's gross and funny, and seems to encapsulate whatever Buttgereit might want to say about art and violence.

Buttgereit also has his restrained side, as in a scene composed of shots taken on a bridge known for the high number of people who have leapt to their death. The names of several people, their ages and occupations, are superimposed a montage, a study of of the bridge from its highest points. There is also one visually dazzling moment that should be credited to producer-cinematographer Manfred Jelinski, with the camera making a series of 360 degree pans around the apartment of Hermann Kopp, with Kopp in various stages of preparation for his suicide, and in a different part of the small studio each time the camera catches him. Also, Buttgereit replies to Jean-Luc Godard's famous adage by presenting a girl and a gun, actually two guns, and a camera harnessed to her, allowing her to shoot bullets and film simultaneously.

Also included here is a commentary track by Buttgereit and co-writer Franz Rodenkichen, a documentary on the making of Der TodesKing which shows how the disintegrating corpse was created, a documentary, Corpse Fucking Art - about the Nekromantik films. Additionally, the superb soundtrack, not unlike the music played by the Kronos Quartet at their peak, is an extra bonus.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:36 AM

June 23, 2015

Cross

Dai6 Leok6 Gaai3
Daniel Chan, Steve Woo, Lau Kin Ping and Hui Shu Nin - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

If there was a film that really needed a "Making of" supplement, this could well be an extreme example. Begun in 2010 by writer-director Daniel Chan, the film was completed the following year by Steve Woo, Lau Kin Ping and Hui Shu Nin. I have not found any information as to what happened during the production. As Chan is still alive and has completed three films since that time, I might guess that there was a possible difference of opinion with the producer of Cross, that has both shortened the running time with a significant amount of footage being replayed as part of of several flashbacks, and has provided the story with a resolution that leaves a few plot holes.

The basic premise may be troubling for some. Simon Yam is a devout Catholic, whose wife commits suicide rather than endure the pain of dying from leukemia. At the wife's funeral, the priest presiding over the burial unsubtly reminds Yam that suicide is considered a sin, and it's up to the discretion of God as to whether the wife will be allowed into heaven. Racked with guilt about how the wife died, Yam finds a website, an online forum of people contemplating suicide. Some of these people seem to be in hopeless situations. Rather than letting these people sin against the church as his wife did, Yam turns into a serial killer, murdering these people to keep them from killing themselves. It seems like an extreme case of euthanasia, rationalized by Yam. Due to one of the killings being a bit messy, Yam turns himself in to the police.

Where the narrative gets even messier than the murders is when there is the suggestion that Yam was manipulated in killing his victims. There is one plot line that is left dangling. The other plot line that appears to provide an explanation still has lapses in logic. It's as if the producer decided to cut his losses by presenting something that almost runs the length of a feature, what with the re-used scenes and about five minutes of closing credits, and hoped that no one noticed that none of the filmmakers who followed Chan were really paying attention to what had transpired in the first forty-five minutes.

Chan's screenplay was a prize winner at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in 2010, so I have to wonder what was originally intended here. The only interview excerpt I could find from Chan has him discussing his love for Hong Kong gangster films. Whether intended or not, there is some connection here to that very Catholic filmmaker, Alfred Hitchock, though not with his priest in peril, I Confess, but with Stage Fright, and its reminder to the audience to not not believe what they see.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:19 PM

June 18, 2015

Sugar Hill

Paul Maslansky - 1974
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Should I feel guilty about enjoying Sugar Hill? Maybe. It seems like no one involved could remember that the title is a play on the Harlem neighborhood of the same name. I did enjoy seeing several "blaxploitation" movies back when they were new. The one development that did bother me was that as Hollywood realized that there was a niche audience hungry to see black faces on the big screen, that same audience didn't seem to pay attention to what was going on behind the camera. Gordon Parks and Melvin Van Peebles, the filmmakers who more or less invented the genre, were replaced by aging white directors like Gordon Douglas and Henry Hathaway, or relatively new film school grads like Jonathan Kaplan. Paul Maslansky had been around for about a decade, making a name for himself as a producer, when he made his first and only effort as a director.

We have Diana "Sugar" Hill, the girlfriend of a guy who runs Club Haiti, where white people come to watch a mock voodoo show. A gangster wants to buy out Club Haiti, but it's not for sale. The boyfriend gets killed by some mobsters who get their duds from "Pimps 'r' Us. Sugar wants revenge and seeks out an old voodoo priestess who brings out a legendary voodoo priest, Samedi, from the ether. Samedi wakes up a small gang of dead slaves, zombies, who do most of the dirty work on behalf of Sugar Hill. The bad guys end up killed each in a unique way, one as the meal for some very hungry pigs. Sugar gets her revenge. Samedi goes back to the ether, with the chief gangster's very white and very racist girl friend carried away in his arms.

This is a very PG rated horror movie. The violence usually involves a few trickles of blood. The sex consists of some shots revealing Marki Bey's cleavage. What would probably shock anyone not familiar with the blaxploitation genre is some of the racially charged language. It's no accident that as the head bad guy, Robert Quarry speaks with a Southern accent. Sugar calls her first victim "Whitey" and "Honky". There is the one black bad guy with the pimpadelic wardrobe, and name to match - Fabulous. What is curious is that when she's relaxing, or working as a fashion photographer, Sugar's hair is straight. While directing her "zombie hit men", Sugar has a big afro.

In his commentary track, Paul Maslansky never explains why he only directed one film. He gives credit for some of the look of the film to cinematographer Richard Jessup. Visually, the film was done economically, partially for budgetary reasons, but much of the action is filmed using lateral tracking shots and traveling shots, with little need for cross-cutting. The horror movie vibe is provided with the use of a fog machine and lots of spider webs.

Marki Bey, perhaps best known for a supporting turn in Hal Ashby's The Landlord plays the title role. Don Pedro Colley owns this film as the voodoo priest, Samedi, with his booming voice and hearty laugh. In top hat, and black jacket and pants, he's also the best dressed character here. It's no stretch to believe that this guy maintains a harem in the afterlife.

In his commentary, Maslansky provides a few moments to his first credited film as producer, Castle of the Living Dead, as well as his most prestigious film, The Russia House. And say what you will about the Police Academy series, Maslansky produced the first films directed by Walter Hill and Michael Reeves. Maslansky also has an one camera interview as do actors Richard Lawson, Don Pedro Colley and Charles Robinson, recalling what it was like when blaxploitation was often the only professional opportunity for black actors.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:25 AM

June 11, 2015

Killer Cop

La Polizia ha le Mani Legate
Luciano Ercoli - 1975
Raro Video BD Region A

The Italian title translates as "The police have the hands tied", although both that and Killer Cop are misleading regarding what goes on here. The official English language title was The Police can't Move. Quibbles about the title aside, this is one of Luciano Ercoli's better films of eight films he directed.

Without being overly quirky, the cop hero, Matteo Rolandi, looks more like an academic, has longish hair, and never goes anywhere without his paperback copy of Moby Dick. Rolandi has his own white whale, an old, slightly beat, Mercedes-Benz. Pursuit of a drug smuggler brings Rolandi to a hotel, coincidentally at the same time a bomb explodes. Supposedly the work of an unnamed radical group along the lines Italy's Red Brigade, Rolandi discovers that there are other forces at work with a different kind of agenda.

Things get complicated when Rolandi's best friend, a fellow cop, is murdered by the suspected bomber, and the investigation of the bombing is taken up by a judge who finds Rolandi to be a nuisance. The judge is played by Arthur Kennedy, providing a token of Hollywood star power, but the film mostly belongs to Claudio Cassinelli as Rolandi.

Ercoli is especially good in filming the bombing of the hotel lobby, with a montage of flying body, lobby furnishing breaking apart, not quite in slow motion, slow enough to provide a sense of how much damage was done in something that would flash by in real life. There is a second explosion, with a car destroyed in a fire that lasts long enough to allow Kennedy to warm up his hands in the waning flames when he arrives at the scene. It is some of the throwaway moments that help distinguish Killer Cop, as when Rolandi's girlfriend pulls down her panties for a "quickie" in Rolandi's car, or Rolandi tosses his cigarette lighter onto the descending coffin of his friend prior to burial.

Ercoli also has a penchant here for several shots employing mirrors within shots, as well as glasses, and reflecting surfaces. The bomber has had his glasses taken from him in a scuffle before the bombing, so there is a sub-plot involving his own inability to see things accurately. But one might take that particular element further in that that Kennedy may have his own near-sightedness involving his interpretation of events, as well has how the audience, with Ercoli as guide, may view the activities of the real conspirators.

The film ends ambiguously. I would like to think that the inclusion of Moby Dick was no gimmick, but a comment on Rolandi's idealism in his role as as a policeman, as well as his obsession in pursuing the real criminals.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:18 AM

June 09, 2015

The Sadistic Baron von Klaus

La mano de un hombre muerto / Le Sadique Baron von Klaus
Jesus Franco - 1962
Redemption Films BD Region A

In the opening credits, The Sadistic Baron von Klaus is credited as an adaptation of a novel by David Kuhne. As pointed out by Antonio Lazaro-Reboll in his extensively researched book, Spanish Horror Film, there is no indication that Jesus Franco actually wrote any published pulp novels prior to filmmaking. The existence of David Kuhne and his novel, with the title translated as "Hand of a Dead Man" are as fictional as the baron.

One of two films made in 1962, along with The Awful Dr. Orloff, we have the earliest Franco film in the horror genre, starring frequent Franco stock company player, Howard Vernon. And for the most part, Baron von Klaus looks like a gothic horror movie from the early Sixties, albeit one in a contemporary setting. There are mysterious deaths of young women, attributed to the ghost of the original Baron, who died about five-hundred years ago. There is the young descendant of the Baron, Ludwig, who may possibly inherited madness that has infected the men of the family. Ludwig shows up just in time to see his mother taker her last breath, though not before she hands over the key to the forbidden cellar. Could Uncle Max be the killer? Howard Vernon looks creepy enough to be the probable killer. Ludwig seems like a nice, clean-cut kid, especially with his cute fiancee, Karine, but there is something odd about a guy who shows up at the family castle wearing a black leather coat and pants. Without giving too much away, there is no ghost, but the killer couldn't be more obvious than when he tells his lover, "I love you to death", and, "I'm crazy about you".

It's all fairly standard stuff until a little more than an hour in the the film when the restaurant proprietor, played by Ana Castor, gets ready to go the bed, letting the audience take a nice gander at her garters and stockings while she pulls her dress over her head. For Señor Jess, he's just warming up. Going beyond what was usually seen even in most "adult" films of the time, is a scene in the basement with near nudity, whipping, some mild sadomasochism, and the delight of a female treated to oral sex. In other words, the kind of stuff of the Jesus Franco we know and love.

Even without kink and eroticism, there is some very nice wide screen black and white imagery. At it's best Franco makes use of light and darkness, especially in a night time chase scene, where cinephile Jesus includes one canted angle, because he's probably seen The Third Man several times. There is also one very long shadow stretching across the screen, of a woman walking alone on the small town street at night.

I would have to assume that budgetary constraints kept Franco from matching shots. In one scene taking place out doors during a winter night, it's snowing on one character, but not on the other. The film was presumably shot with most of the actors speaking Spanish. The French dubbing of this version is most off-kilter in an early scene of singing revelers. Someone also misspelled the name on the family crypt as Klous. I wish Redemption had been able to port over some of the elements from the Image DVD - the English dubbing, as well as the collection of alternate shots and outtakes. What I got from revisiting The Sadistic Baron von Klaus on blu-ray was a greater visual sense of the textures of stone walls, wooden floors, and the leaf covered swamp, said to be the home of the first, cursed, baron.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

June 01, 2015

Taking of Tiger Mountain

Zhì qu weihu shan
Tsui Hark - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

During the closing credits of Taking Tiger Mountain we see what is suppose to be an imagined alternative ending. The hero, Yang, finds the villain, Hawk, has a secret runway in a huge fortress. Yang attempts to keep Hawk from flying out on a small bi-plane. Yang hops on the plane, barely hanging on, and finally causes Hawk to crash, with the plane and Hawk falling down what looks like thousands of feet off a cliff. This is the kind of action scene one might expect from Indiana Jones, and Tsui makes no secret of his wanting to be thought of as the Chinese Steven Spielberg. As it turned out, that scene was part of the ending that Tsui originally planned and filmed until some government officials requested a scene closer to, if not reality, at least the novel and the Chinese Revolutionary Opera.

The opera and the film versions are based on the Qu Bo novel, Tracks in the Snowy Forest, published in 1957, inspired by Qu's experiences. A member of the People's Liberation Army, Qu fought against the various warlords in Northeast China. Qu married a nurse who was stationed in the same region. Qu was about twenty-four years old when the events in his novel take place, in 1947. There is a young Army leader and a nurse who could well be the literary stand-ins for real life characters. Tsui's film, the third version, might best be described as having been inspired by history, choosing to present the story with some of the more fantastic elements from the previous versions of this story.

A small band of about thirty soldiers take shelter in what remains of a small village, Leather Creek, virtually destroyed by bandit gangs. After assuring the villagers that no harm will come their way, a bandit is captured, and with him, a map coveted by Hawk, the leader of a thousand man bandit army. The guide for the region, Yang, pretends to be a bandit, and works his way into the castle fortress of Hawk. The fortress is part of the spoils of war left by the defeated Japanese army. The small people's army takes on Hawk's huge force through various means belying their actual numbers.

On his way to Hawk's fortress, Yang fights an impossibly large Siberian tiger. I don't know if the real Yang had encountered any tigers, but the scene was probably created to establish his abilities as a hero appropriate for a national epic. The main villain, Hawk, has a bird-like face with his beakish nose. Tony Leung Ka-fai is unrecognizable with the combination of make-up and a fat suit. Hawk is accompanied by a hawk, like the tiger, oversized, and trained to peck to death any of Hawk's designated enemies. Tsui Hark's films are not known for their subtlety, and some of the exaggeration was probably inspired both by the opera and the 1970 film version that Tsui briefly refers to in a couple of brief excerpts.

Taking of Tiger Mountain was seen as a 3D film in China. What we get in the home video version can only suggest some of what Tsui had done to take advantage of the technology. There are several shots playing with various planes of depth, primarily of the soldiers in the snow, between the trees, as well as the previously mentioned shot looking straight down the fortress edge. During battle scenes, bullets temporarily pause in mid-flight, and blood spurts out and freezes for a few moments. Tsui has eliminated most of the more political elements, primarily to appeal to the contemporary pan-Chinese audience. Some of the historical aspects may be lost for those viewers without some knowledge of post World War II China. Taking of Tiger Mountain may be best enjoyed as a continuation of Tsui's portrayal of fantastic heroes rather than verbatim history.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 PM

May 27, 2015

Cannibal Ferox

Umberto Lenzi - 1981
Grindhouse Releasing BD Region A

Included in this new Blu-ray release of Cannibal Ferox is a genre overview titled Eaten Alive! The Rise and Fall of the Italian Cannibal Film. Among the participants discussing the genre is Ruggero Deodato, director of Cannibal Holocaust. Had Deodato's mentor, Roberto Rossellini made a cannibal movie, would it look like Cannibal Holocaust? I'm not sure I would go that far. However, it made me think, what if Umberto Lenzi's favorite director, Raoul Walsh, had made a cannibal movie. In terms of the actors, the psychotic exploiter of the tribesmen could have been played by James Cagney with the mania of White Heat, the quietly attractive young anthropologist is not far removed from the roles of Olivia De Havilland, Virginia Mayo would be the blonde bad girl, Jack Carson as the not so bad guy who realizes he's over his head, and Jeffrey Lynn as the brother of the anthropologist.
Even with regards to the story, Lenzi has traces of other Walsh films - Distant Drums with the white people on the run from the Native Americans in the Florida swamps, and A World in His Arms, with Americans exploiting the resources and people of mid-19th Century Alaska, at the time, Russian territory. And let us consider the reaction of White Heat at the time it was released in 1949, courtesy of Bosley Crowthers of the New York Times - "If that is inviting information to the cohorts of thriller fans, whose eagerness this reviewer can readily understand, let us soberly warn that White Heat is also a cruelly vicious film and that its impact upon the emotions of the unstable or impressionable is incalculable. That is an observation which might fairly be borne in mind by those who would exercise caution in supporting such matter on the screen." Not difficult to substitute Cannibal Ferox as the title referred to here, is it?

Not that any of this is of much interest to those most enthusiastic of the cannibal genre in general or this film in particular. What is also noticeable is the ambivalence several of the people involved in the making of these films, with the exception of Deodato, who is more than happy to declare Cannibal Holocaust as one of his best films. For his part, Lenzi feelings about his film seem to depend on the mood he's in at the moment. There is some mild reflection that the films, perhaps arguably seen as parables about western colonialism, were in their own way as exploitive of the indigenous people or extras portraying the cannibal tribes. Eaten Alive! includes clips for several films, including Lenzi's Man from Deep River, the 1972 film that kicked off the genre, as well as the more recent homage, Eli Roth's The Green Inferno. Roth also contributed liner notes. I'm not counting on any academic books on cannibal films, although with other serious volumes of genre studies, it's not something to be entirely discounted. The most interesting observations about cannibal movies comes from the most academic contributor to Eaten Alive!, Dr. Shelagh Rowan-Legg.

Why this is significant is that in addition to the filmmakers trying to top each other with large heaps of graphic violence, there is also much more nudity, usually involving the female actresses. One might argue that the dialogue is a reflection of the coarseness of the character, but calling a female character a "twat" several times seemed excessive. Not all viewers are discerning of the sexism of film characters versus any sexism on the part of filmmakers, but most of these films could be counted on for bare breasts if not full nudity. I don't think it's necessary for me to discuss the various notorious moments in Cannibal Ferox, but it is interesting that two of those scenes are the ones usually presented in the posters, selling the anticipation of seeing those scenes, rather than surprising the audience.

Say what you will about Cannibal Ferox, Grindhouse Releasing makes the gang at Criterion Collection look like a bunch of pikers. In addition to Eaten Alive!, the two disc set includes individual interviews with Lenzi, actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice aka John Morghen, and the still amazingly gorgeous Zora Kerowa. There's also the soundtrack album CD in addition to the overly generous supply of extras.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:30 PM

May 25, 2015

Invitation to a Gunfighter

Richard Wilson - 1964
KL Classics BD Region A

In the early Sixties, Stanley Kramer produced, but did not direct, three movies. As with the films that he directed, these films were noted for their "messages" from the well-intentioned Kramer. The three films, Pressure Point, A Child is Waiting and Invitation to a Gunfighter are all more idiosyncratic that Kramer's films, with the first two known for the clashes between the producer and the directors who wanted to be more than simply hired hands. I'm unaware of any conflict Richard Wilson may have had with Kramer, and it may well be that as a more experienced filmmaker, Wilson was given more control than was allowed the younger Hubert Cornfeld and John Cassavetes.

Taking place in a small town in New Mexico following the Civil War, a professional gunman is hired to kill the town's lone Confederate soldier, Matt Weaver, by the town boss, Sam Brewster. What follows is a peeling of several layers, of the corruption in a town that has the Mexican citizens living in their own section, with most everyone motivated by their own perceived needs. The hired gun, with the exotic name of Jules Gaspard d'Estaing, hangs around town long enough to force several people that have their own reasons for wanting Weaver to be dead or alive to confront truths about themselves. It's not a Western insofar as fitting the usual genre requirements, most of the film takes place in town, and the only real action takes place during the final ten minutes.

What makes Invitation to a Gunfighter interesting is how some of the layers complicate what appears on the surface to be a set-up for a B-Western. Weaver's main reason for fighting on behalf of the Confederacy was an act of rebellion against Brewster. The Civil War here is discussed only in terms of slavery. Weaver is shown to be the least prejudiced person, with established friendship with the Mexican community. D'Estaing, as exotic looking as his name, reveals himself to be the son of a slave owner and a slave. The idealism of the Civil War is a sham used to exploit others. Not exactly a Greek chorus, but there is a trio of former Union soldiers, one blind, and one with missing his lower leg, that have nothing else going for them other that to observe what's going in town. They are the among the ones who actually fought in the war, and have nothing else except each other. For this trio, the drama of the town's leading citizens is comic fodder.

Of course Yul Brynner proved he could rock a black cowboy hat in The Magnificent Seven. This was Brynner's second Western, but not a box office success. George Segal was building up his resume at the time he was cast as Matt Weaver. There are several terrific character actors including Pat Hingle as boss Sam Brewster, Bert Freed, Clifton James, Strother Martin, and William Hickey as a blind Union vet. Brad Dexter from The Magnificent Seven appears briefly, unrecognizable behind a beard.

Richard Wilson is best known for his association with Orson Welles. Of the handful of films he directed, Al Capone might be considered the best. Pay or Die, about the early years of Italian organized crime in New York City, is reputed to have been influential for Martin Scorsese. For those who have not seen Invitation to a Gunfighter, the other high point is the score by David Raksin, the last of three films he did with Wilson. Raksin's score was included in an album from Westerns produced by United Artists, and was described as "a psychological score in that its often chamber-sized forces seem to evoke the characters' emotional anguish."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:06 AM

May 21, 2015

The Jester's Supper

La cena delle beffe
Alessandro Blasetti - 1942
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

There is some dispute as to whether The Jester's Supper was the first or second Italian film to feature a bare-breasted actress. In any case, it was a scene that made waves in 1942, and probably would have still raised eyebrows twenty years later. Clara Calamai cemented her stardom in that brief, eighteen second moment when here blouse is torn off by Amedeo Nazzari. As it turns out in the course of the film, that scene is the cherry on top of other scenes with Calamai dressed in very low cut gown that barely cover her cleavage, as well as a diaphanous nightgown that does nothing to hide her nipples.

As for the film itself, the interest is probably more of a historical bent. The story is based on a 1909 play that takes place in 15th Century Florence. The title might seem misleading to those expecting some guy in a harlequin outfit. A feud between two rivals for the affection of a beautiful woman gets out of hand. Neri and his brother, Gabriello, toss Giannetto into the Arno River after tying him up in a sack. Neri claims Ginerva for himself. Ginerva is the subject of gossip, a commoner whose looks provided an entrance to royal society. The supper in question is hosted by Lorenzo De Medici. Giannetto tricks Neri into appearing as a madman, made worse when he beds the unsuspecting Ginverva who can't tell the difference between lovers in the dark.

Some contemporary viewers may be put off by this combination of tragedy and sex farce, that seems closer in spirit to the theater of its 15th Century setting than an early 20th Century play. Sem Benelli's play even made it to Broadway, performed in 1919, starring John and Lionel Barrymore. A 1924 operatic version also followed, with a staging done in 1999 by Liliana Cavani.

For the more serious film scholar, this is one of the rare pre-World War II Italian films made available on home video, and with English subtitles. Alessandro Blasetti was a pioneer in Italian cinema, and this was one of his most popular films. The Jester's Supper also provides an opportunity to see Clara Calamai as a star in popular cinema, outside of her better known with Visconti, or as the murderous mother of Dario Argento's Deep Red. The other recognizable name in the cast is Valentina Cortese, eighteen at the time she made this film. Here, Cortese plays a young woman, one of Neri's casual romantic partners, who still loves Neri. Unlike her main competitor, Anna Magnani, Calamai never starred in any English language films. Even without the partial nudity, Clara Calamai reveals enough to make clear why in Italy, she was one of the biggest female stars of her time.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:27 AM

May 19, 2015

X

Roger Corman - 1963
KL Classics BD Region A

Along with historian Tim Lucas, who provided a commentary track, and director Joe Dante, who discusses the film in the supplement section, I also have a vivid memory of seeing X theatrically. While I don't recall the exact date, it was sometime in the late Winter or early Spring of 1964. X was playing in a double feature with Jacques Tourneur's Comedy of Terrors at Varsity Theater in Evanston, Illinois. It was the Saturday matinee, and the theater was packed. What I remember best is the second shot of the film, a floating eyeball that looked like it had been ripped out from some unwilling victim, now bobbing around in a clear glass container. The audience, mostly junior high and high school kids, shrieked or laughed or maybe both. I was 12 at the time.

The shriek at the beginning of the film would be matched by the shriek of the audience in the final shot. While we never actually see him do it, Ray Milland rips out his own eye, leaving blood red holes in their place.

I've seen X twice theatrically, plus at least one time on a black and white television broadcast which was no less captivating. And while as an older, and more experienced viewer of film, I notice things the viewer is suppose to overlook, there are other things that my somewhat more sophisticated self also find adding to the more recent visits. Because I was more concerned about the story, I was oblivious to the difference between the second unit shots around Las Vegas, and close-ups of Ray Milland driving furiously on a highway outside of Los Angeles. Likewise, it didn't occur to my 12 year old self that Corman was cutting from establishing shots at an actual amusement park, to scenes filmed on studio sets. Conversely, what I noticed is how the story of Dr. Xavier depicts his decent into a hell of his own making in the settings of the major scenes, from the height of a large, multistory hospital, to the ground level of a carnival side show, to a lonely basement apartment, and finally to a vast, empty desert.

The Roger Corman commentary track is informative regarding the origin of X as originally to be about a jazz musician. Making it about a doctor doing medical research makes more sense. X does make an interesting companion piece to The Trip in that both films are about characters driven to look for some kind of hidden truth. Dr. Xavier in X is hoping to expand what can be perceived by the human eye, while the motivation in The Trip is expansion of human consciousness through LSD.

Tim Lucas finds connectivity through various science fiction stories and films, as well as the work of primary screenwriter Ray Russell. There are brief biographies of several of the cast members, and anecdotes about working with Corman or Ray Milland. One surprising bit of information was learning that 78 year old Allan Dwan had been considered for taking the directorial reigns. Considering the amount of information contained in the seventy-nine minute running time of the film, the Lucas commentary provides ample material for further critical and historical discussion regarding the place of X both as a science fiction film and the discussion of any symbolism, whether intentional or coincidental.

You won't find the rumored alternate ending, because there was no alternate ending. There is a prologue that fortunately was junked, and may have only been used for situations where getting the film closer to the ninety minute mark was required. Does X succeed for those who love this film in spite of the low budget special effects roughly approximating what is seen by Dr. Xavier, or because the special effects hint at things that could only be depicted in more realistic detail with the advent of computer generated effects? I'm not sure there will be any agreement. What I can say, along with others, is that more than fifty years later, and multiple viewings, X continues to be a very watchable movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:09 AM

May 15, 2015

Stay as You Are

Cosi come sei
Alberto Lattuada - 1978
Cult Epics BD

I have the feeling that even with the small handful of movies now available on home video, Alberto Lattuada will still be stuck with being known as the guy sharing a directorial credit with Federico Fellini on Variety Lights. Even with his far greater number of films, Lattuada had never distinguished himself as a filmmaker in the way that Fellini had, more of a craftsman than artist. Stay as You Are never changed things for Lattuada even though it was probably the closest he came to an international success.

Stay as You Are is mostly famous for thrusting the then eighteen year old Nattassja Kinksi into the spotlight. As the obituary in The Guardian points out, Lattuada had an eye for young female talent. One of the best examples for me was his segment for the omnibus Love in the City, with men falling over each other as eighteen year old Giovanna Ralli walks around Rome. Almost twenty-five years later, Lattuada was able to show what in the past could only be imagined, with scenes of a nude Kinski during the final twenty minutes.

Some of Lattuada's films revolve around men who place themselves in situations that they can not control. The fortune of a poorly paid clerk to purchase an expensive overcoat in The Overcoat leads to his early death when the coat is stolen on a cold winter night. The middle aged office bureaucrat who wins the hearts of three homely, but wealthy, spinsters in Come Have Coffee with Us is reduced to an almost infantile state following an unexpected heart attack, presumably from to much sexual exertion. For Giulio, his dilemma is how to respond to the flirtatious Francesca, who may, or may not, be his daughter from an almost forgotten affair from twenty years ago.

That Giulio is portrayed by Marcello Mastroianni, it's almost a given that the guy is more adept at being a lover than somebody's father or husband. At one point, Giulio is seen reading the novel Homo Faber, about a similar situation with a tragic ending for most of the characters. Unlike author Max Frisch, Lattuada doesn't clarify the relationship, and ends his story on a bittersweet note.

The main selling point of the film is the very young and very naked Nastassja Kinski. Arguably, Lattuada teeters on a very thin line between the tasteful and the prurient. There is also a scene of Kinski stumbling in on a party hosted by her roommate, with all of the guests undressed and in active couplings. Lattuada was sixty-three at the time he made this film, and there is the sense that he was straining to be as contemporary as the newer generation of Italian filmmakers, particularly Bernardo Bertolucci. Not so coincidentally, Stay as You Are was produced by cousin, Giovanni Bertolucci.

The blu-ray has both English and Italian language tracks. I went for the Italian track because even though Ms. Kinski is dubbed in both versions, I like listening to Mastroianni in his own, familiar, voice. A supplemental bonus is the soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

May 13, 2015

For the Love of Film - The Film Preservation Blogathon: Spaceways

Terence Fisher - 1953
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

"Space is a cold place to die!" doesn't quite grab your attention like "In space, no one can hear you scream". Back when Spaceways was produced, just the idea of a man traveling by rocket was still sufficiently the stuff of science fiction, the first artificial satellite, the Russian Sputnik still about five years in the future, with Yuri Gagarin making his historic voyage in 1961.

For most of its brief running time, people talk about space travel, but most of the action is earthbound. A coproduction of the low budget Lippert Pictures with Hammer Film Productions, Spaceways is one of several films that had a second string Hollywood star with a primarily British cast. Howard Duff is the American scientist. Stephen Mitchell, who works with a small team on Britain's space program. Also on the team are the boyishly enthusiastic Toby Andrews, the unctuous Philip Crenshaw and the obligatory smart babe of the bunch, Lisa Frank, whose also the exotic foreigner from an unnamed European country. (For those interested, the life of Eva Bartok was more dramatic than any of her films.)

The scientists attend a party where it has been announced that funding has been approved for more experiments. We first see Stephen's wife, Vanessa, the bored with the scientific chit-chat, her pinched face suggesting that she's doing her best to keep from breathing a nearby fart. Claiming a headache, she leaves the party, followed by Crenshaw. The two make plans to run away together, and are spied upon by Stephen. Prior to going home, Stephen takes a walk with Lisa to her place. They way the two look at each other, it's obvious they would rather knock boots than shake hands. Vanessa later complains that Stephen could be making significantly more money for private industry instead of toiling for the government. As far as Stephen is concerned, he wants to see his current work completed.

Vanessa and Crenshaw later disappear. No one knows where they are, but a certain Dr. Smith suspects that Stephen murdered the lovers, and stuffed their bodies in a rocket that is currently orbiting the earth. There is also a mystery concerning missing rocket fuel. The only way Stephen can hope to clear his name is to retrieve the rocket, and coincidentally be the first man in space.

It's only in the last few minutes that Terence Fisher displays any hint of the style he would bring to the horror films that won him fame. What we have is marginally film noir for the bulk of the first sixty-four minutes, with science fiction talking over for the final ten minutes. Unlike some films from about the same time, the interior of the rocket here is hardly dazzling in its gadgetry, but mostly brutally utilitarian. Those metal chairs don't look comfortable for any kind of travel. The space suits consist of dark plastic jump suits with heavy divers helmets.

Being short of running time and money, Spaceways ends a bit abruptly, and too easily. For a few brief moments, with Stephen and Lisa adrift in orbit, the end of Spaceways could have been the beginning of Gravity.

This entry is part of the For the Love of Film - The Film Preservation Blogathon hosted by Ferdy on Films, This Island Rod and Wonders in the Dark. The goal is to raise $10,000 for the preservation of the silent romantic comedy short, Cupid in Quarantine, with online viewing made available through the National Film Preservation Foundation. So get off your, um, duff, and make a donation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:15 AM

May 11, 2015

The Evil Eye

La ragazza che sapeva troppo / The Girl who Knew too Much
Mario Bava - 1963
Kino Classics BD Region A

Was it murder, or was it a dream about a murder? Tim Lucas, in his commentary, mostly taken from his exhaustive book on Mario Bava, lists films and books that had influenced various aspects of this film, also known as The Girl who Knew too Much. Lucas also discusses how Bava had probably influenced Dario Argento. For myself, there is an unintended connection to Lucio Fulci. Bava's "girl", Nora, is first seen as a woman in a lizard's skin, a snakeskin coat. About eight years later, Fulci made A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Both films are about women who may have confused dreams about murder with real events, and possible drug induced hallucinations. Add to this that both Bava's film and Fulci's were both distributed in the United States by American-International. While the Bava film was retitled The Evil Eye, the initially planned English language title, and that of the Fulci film, retitled Schizoid, indicates the influence of Alfred Hitchcock, primarily has as a point of reference for capturing audience attention.

The new blu-ray provides the ability to see two variations of what is essentially the same movie. The main difference is that the English language version released as The Evil Eye has a few extra minutes of comedy, mostly with with Leticia Roman bumping head first into Rome, and an appearance by Bava, in a photograph, that recalls a similar sight gag in Sullivan's Travels. What makes this something of a challenge to traditional film scholarship is that there is no definitive version as such, but one made primarily for an Italian audience, another for American audiences. The original production was instigated by American-International following the success of Bava's Black Sunday. As was common at the time, the actors performed in their own language, to be dubbed later, so that if one is concerned about which version is in the "correct" language, it would arguably be English.

It seems fortuitous that Bava's film would star an Italian-American actor, John Saxon, and an Italian born American actress, Leticia Roman, originally Carmine Orrico and Letizia Novarese. There may be a joke about a Saxon and a Roman here. Was Roman cast because of her big, Margaret Keane sized eyes? There are several shots that emphasize those eyes that may not coincidentally remind some of the eyes of Barbara Steele. Roman's eyes look bigger here than they appear in the stills from her other films, as if Bava somehow grafted the eyes of Steele onto an actress who could have easily passed as a California beach bunny. In any event, the casting of the two stars made the film less foreign for American audiences.

In his book, Lucas explains how Eye/Girl was not the first giallo, or even a proto-giallo. What is certain is that the film, a financial failure in Italy, given minimal release elsewhere, has developed greater interest and respect as part of the overall interest in Mario Bava's career. Like other Bava film's the narrative aspects are almost besides the point. The reason to see Eye/Girl is for the fantastic images, of deserted Rome at night, the zig-zag web that Nora creates to trap potential intruders, the ghostly image of Nora reflected on the window of an old fashioned elevator in a seemingly vacant apartment building. Lucas' commentary can be heard along with The Girl who Knew too Much, and if you haven't read his book, be sure to give it a listen. See both versions, decide for yourself if one version is better than the other. Or to put it another way, let the films speak for themselves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:07 AM

May 07, 2015

Winter Sleep

Kış Uykusu
Nuri Bilge Ceylan - 2014
Adopt Films BD Region A

Sometimes, being a film critic is like being a gourmand at a buffet table. I am sometimes offered more films to write about than I really have time to cover. My other problem is to recognize that there are some films that I really am unable to write about. These are films that are worth watching, but that I feel I can not write about in any meaningful way. Such is the case of Winter Sleep.

I've seen several of Ceylan's previous films. I wrote a short review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia. And it's not like this is a bad film. This is not going to be a rant stating that the other film critics and Cannes jurors who liked or loved this film are wrong.

Maybe I have to come to grips with my own limited intelligence. Part of the film is devoted to a discussion about how one is to deal with evil. One of the characters is certain that the way to reform her abusive husband is to apologize to him with assumption that her act will create in the man a sense of shame. Aside from my inability to be convinced by the woman's argument, the conversation became too abstract and not very interesting. And it's not like I don't like people having philosophical discussions in movies. Most of My Night at Maud's is Jean-Louis Trintignant having a high brow discussion with Francoise Fabian, and I've seen Eric Rohmer's film several times, including television. I also liked Mindwalk with Liv Ullman discussing abstract ideas with John Heard and Sam Waterston, wandering around Mont St. Michel.

There were a few moments of interest, the scenes with the wild horses, the exploration of the rocky landscape with the hotel build within a mountain top. And I would not think of dissuading anyone who wants to see Ceylan's film. Every film worth watching usually has its own set of demands on the viewer. This was one of those rare times when I found myself unable to connect with what was happening onscreen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:14 PM

May 04, 2015

The McKenzie Break

Lamont Johnson - 1970
KL Classics BD Region A

I still have some memory of when The McKenzie Break played in New York City in 1970. I'm pretty sure that United Artists was hoping the film would make some money, but this was basically a modest production intended to keep product flowing from the studio to the theaters. Unexpectedly, some film critics took notice. It was enough to get me to hop on a subway to a neighborhood theater in Manhattan's Upper West Side, away from my usual screenings in Greenwich Village. What I also recall was that, while not up their with The Great Escape, The McKenzie Break was a good, solid film.

For any younger readers here, there was a time when movies that took place during World War II were a viable genre. Even during the time of the Vietnam war, and even without pontificating on the evils of war, such as Paths of Glory. These were essentially "adventure films". One might identify those movies about soldiers escaping from P.O.W. camps as a sub-genre. These films routinely were about Allied soldiers escaping from German camps, such as the previously mentioned The Great Escape, The Colditz Story and The Wooden Horse come to mind. The only previous English language film I'm aware of with any Germans escaping an Allied camp is Roy Ward Baker's The One that Got Away, from 1957. Baker's film was forgotten when Johnson's film was released, but part of the interest in this film was that it was about German soldiers escaping from a camp in Scotland.

The prisoners are all officers, under the command of Captain Schlueter. Not only does Schlueter and his men not cooperate with their captors, a frustrated lot of British soldiers, but he is able to intimated them to the point where he has claimed ownership of the grounds inside the barb wire fence. A tunnel is being dug with an attempted escape imminent. The Irish Captain Jack Connor is enlisted by intelligence to try and find out why there is an extreme discipline problem at Camp McKenzie. It takes someone who disregards some of the rules of military protocol to take on Schlueter.

With a career primarily in episodic television, as well as making a name for himself with the then novel concept of movies made for television, Lamont Johnson was probably initially hired for his economical filming methods. One scene that stands out is early in the film. Refusing to leave their respective barracks, the German soldiers signal each other when the British soldiers are about to enter the inner part of the camp. Johnson uses a zoom lens to catch the hand signals between buildings, zooming forwards or backwards, as required by the shot, through the windows.

The other genre flip is rooting for the escape plan to fail. As Schlueter, Helmut Griem's Teutonic good looks play against his basic ruthlessness, calling out a Luftwaffe pilot as "queer" for refusing to support his rebellion, and his disregard shown later towards the other prisoners. It seems fitting that like the director, the film's star, Brian Keith, would be an actor known for traversing between television and movies. Keith's physical build consistently projected the idea of solidity. Mostly what he does here is crack wise with an Irish accent. And that's really all he needs to do.

Lamont Johnson probably is better remembered for his television movies, controversial at the time, That Certain Summer and The Execution of Private Slovik. His handful of theatrical films are an inconsistent bunch, though not without interest, with the other critical high point being The Last American Hero, a film embraced by Pauline Kael.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:59 PM

April 30, 2015

Tip Top

Serge Bozon - 2013
Kino Lorber BD Region A

The premise of Tip Top had some potential: two women from Internal Affairs go from Paris to the small suburban town of Villaneuve to investigate the murder of an Algerian police informant. One of the investigators is portrayed by Isabelle Huppert, one of the best contemporary actresses around.

And no mistake, Huppert doesn't hold back here. She's as fearless as they come, but I think only the hardest of hard core admirers should bother with this film. This is a French language film made primarily for a French audience. The investigation takes place simultaneously as riots are taking place in Algeria. While I have seen and enjoyed other films concerning French-Arab characters, this one might be a bit too specific in its references.

There is also the quirks of the characters, Esther, played by Hubbert and her junior partner, Sally, played by Sandrine Kimberlain. Sally has been demoted to Internal Affairs due to her propensity for voyeurism. Esther's passion for rough sex with her husband, involving a lot of hitting, biting and bruising between the two, may raise a few eyebrow, especially when there is a shot of Esther tucking a mason's hammer under the pillow for future use. As the song goes, love is a hurting thing. For myself, there was an overload of quirkiness.

And yet, there is something to be admired when Huppert is seen in the last third of the film with the bridge of her nose an open wound, blood carefully dripping straight down to the tip, with her sticking out her tongue to lick some of the blood. Whatever one might think about Esther and her relationship with her husband, there is no denying that Huppert totally embraces her role.

Serge Bozon has transposed Bill James' novel of the same title, from Britain to France. I haven't read the novel, but I suspect from the description that while there is a similar framework involving an investigation of possible corruption within the small town police force, that Bozon has jettisoned most of the mystery in favor of attempting to say something about the relationship between France and Algeria, as well as the tangled relationships between people, privately and publicly. A French audience will find more significance that the husbands of Esther and Sally are of Arab decent. And even though the mystery is solved, it seems incidental to Esther's maneuvers between the police force, the Algerian community, and her relationship with Sally.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 AM

April 28, 2015

Appropriate Behavior

Desiree Akhaven - 2014
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

On a broader scale, Appropriate Behavior is about traversing through the various aspects that make up one's identity, how it is used, and what parts are shared, how one reveals one's self, and with whom. That Shirin is a young woman, Iranian-American and bisexual, tells only part of the story.

The film begins with Shirin moving out of the apartment she has shared with her girlfriend, Maxine. Shifting between past and present, we see how the two women met, their life together, and their breakup, in between scenes of Shirin trying to make her way professionally, as well as sexually while pining for Maxine. Part of the tension between Shirin and Maxine is based on Maxine's demand that Shirin out herself to her parents, in some ways still traditional Iranians.

Shirin accepts a part-time job teaching filmmaking, only to discover that her students are a small bunch of anarchic five year boys. Dates and spontaneous flings go awry, especially with a very awkward threesome. There are times when Shirin can be abrasive, as when she tells another young woman, a friend discovered dating Maxine, that the has "the sex appeal of a ferret".

Shirin doesn't spare herself either. Some of the self-deprecating humor and the Brooklyn locations are lightly reminiscent of Woody Allen.

What I found interesting about the locations is that there was no attempt to dress up Brooklyn. It's a place of open garbage cans, a few cramped stores, and dingy dives. This is a Brooklyn where no one attempts to clean up the graffiti. One might consider that Appropriate Behavior is about the search for romance in the least romantic places.

The questions Shirin asks of the woman she is sharing an apartment with are how do couples first meet, and how does one maintain the feeling of love for that person, questions that might be considered universal. What Shirin is going through is not a problem of self-acceptance, but of accepting that how she identifies herself and how she acts on those parts of her identity may not always be embraced by others. Being bisexual is as much a part of Shirin as is her being a young woman of Iranian descent.

Desiree Akhaven wrote and directed her debut feature as well as playing Shirin. In interviews, she has stressed that the film is not autobiographical although it has been inspired by parts of her life. Akhaven benefitted from being able to make the film on her own terms, making this a very promising beginning.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:52 AM

April 23, 2015

Fire Line

Kasen chitai
Hiromichi Takebe - 1961
Beam Entertainment All Region DVD

Taking the opportunity to see and write about something purely by choice, I took this DVD I've had for well over a year, but hadn't gotten around to seeing. I wrote about three other films in the Shintoho "Line" series, and this entry is equally entertaining.

Cowritten by Teruo Ishii, the screenplay credit is shared with director Hiromichi Takebe. There is very little about Takebe that I could find online. What little I could glean would indicate that Fire Line was one of the last releases of Shintoho prior to bankruptcy, ending the "Line" series, and apparently, Takebe's filmmaking career.

The film begins with the sound of gunfire while we see the Shintoho logo, instead of the usual studio fanfare. Cutting immediate to footage shot at a racetrack, the thought ran through my head that this might be a Japanese version of something like Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Instead, we are introduced to two punks, Shinichi and Kenji, who have a scam involving phony racetrack betting. They're caught by a hood dressed in black who suckers them when it turns out that his gun is actually a cigarette lighter. The pair is soon chased down by a yakuza gang. Shinichi has a gun and is able to ward then off long enough to hide temporarily in town. The yakuza catches up with the two who hide out in a car, a car that turns out to belong to Yumi, the girlfriend of the chief of a rival yakuza gang. Shinichi and Kenji are invited to join the gang, which almost immediately puts them into more trouble.

I'm not sure where Fire Line was filmed, but based on some of the locations, with nearby docks, I would guess some of the exteriors were in and around Yokohama. As in the other films of the "Line" series, there is a documentary quality to the exterior footage. One shot definitely appears to have been shot with the camera carried by the cinematographer, chasing after the actors. Some of the interior, studio based shots, would seem to have been composed under the influence of John Huston, with the use of space and especially the use of several characters within a shot, with the use of contrasting positions and sizes.

Several of the actors from the "Line" movies are here. While Teruo Yoshida, as Shinichi, is the nominal star, the narrative mostly shifts to being about Yumi, played by series regular Yoko Mihara. There is a psychological can of worms that gets opened later in the film, when Shinichi confesses to wanting to kill the mother who abandoned him as a young boy. There is the suggestion that Shinichi's attraction to the more sophisticated, and somewhat older Yumi may be some kind of transference. Compounding that is Yumi's calling her gang boss lover "Papa", giving this movie a bit of Oedipal subtext.

Even without reading too much into this story of gang rivalries, double crosses and unrequited love, there is enough going on in Fire Line to indicate that there is more here than what was presented as a low budget exploitation film for less than discerning viewers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:59 AM

April 21, 2015

The Beyond

Lucio Fulci - 1981
Grindhouse Releasing BD Region A

I first saw The Beyond as a midnight show in the summer of 1998. At the time I had mistakenly thought that the re-issuing of the film was primarily the work of Quentin Tarantino, only to learn much later that most of the heavy lifting was done by Grindhouse founders Bob Murawski and Sage Stallone. Tarantino's participation was in his clout as a brand name, bringing attention to a handful of films through his short-lived Rolling Thunder distribution company. I had recalled the original American release title, Seven Doors of Death, but had never seen anything by Fulci, limiting myself in my pre-DVD/Netflix days exclusively to films by Dario Argento when it came to Italian horror.

Like others who have seen The Beyond, I loved the final minutes of the film when the two main characters, Liza and John, try to escape from the zombies, only to end up in a desert-like environment with a few scattered bodies in the landscape. It is the landscape that is in a painting made by an artist, murdered for black magic at the beginning of the film. Are they in hell? We know that the flooded basement passageway covered a legendary portal to hell. A white film covers their eyes. They are blind with nowhere to go. And then they seem to evaporate, to disappear into the painting. Those final minutes provide some wonderful dreamlike imagery.

What put my off that first viewing was that The Beyond made no sense. Especially distressing was that John would figure out that the only way to stop marauding zombies was to shoot them in the head, only to forget seconds later, and ineffectively shoot them in the chest, wasting bullets. There seemed to be an absence of any kind of internal logic.

Over the years, I've seen several Fulci films. My own preference is for the films that might be considered more conventional, One on Top of the Other and Lizard in a Woman's Skin. I might not be an enthusiast, but I figure that I should have some familiarity with Fulci, as well as now being more familiar with several of his peers. Also, I am more aware of the some of the requirements of popular Italian cinema as opposed to the films that appear at the art house and film festival. In terms of writing seriously about Lucio Fulci, the best approach may be as if one is watching a film by Terrence Malick - don't expect or demand a traditional narrative, and allow yourself to encounter the film on its own terms.

So back to The Beyond. The blu-ray is gorgeous. Of course this is subjective on my part, but I think that the best way to appreciate The Beyond is to think of it as the cinematic equivalent to an amusement park haunted house ride. There is no story. It's a short journey with ghosts, goblins, witches and skeletons popping out of the dark to scare you, make you laugh, or maybe both at the same time. And when you really think about dreams, they don't make any sense, especially when at one point you're in some kind of room, and then you're suddenly in the mountains (at least in my dreams). So when John and Liza exit the zombie ravaged hospital and suddenly find themselves in the flooded basement, there may be no literal connection, but it is the kind of connection one might find in a dream.

Even though the top billed actors are Catriona MacColl and David Warbeck, the real star is Cinzia Monreale. As the mysterious and blind Emily, it is her image that has become iconic for The Beyond. That Catriona MacColl is driving the long and empty Lake Pontchartrain Causeway alone is magical in itself. Looking ahead and seeing nothing but a straight line that seems to have no end is strange enough. But stranger is a blind woman with her guide dog, standing in the middle of this highway. How did she get there? How could she know that Liza was driving? It's a terrific image that keeps on getting reproduced in various posters, and even inspired what is euphemistically called an action figure.

The nice thing about the blu-ray is seeing just how good the special effects are. The bristles on those flesh eating tarantulas really stand out. And while one might argue on who would dumb enough to leave an open bottle of sulphuric acid on a table, that scene with the melting face is effective. Eyes are gouged, flesh is ripped, and blood spurts out by the gallon. What ever arguments are to be made for or against this vivid presentation of violence, there can be no argument regarding the artistry at work here.

On a purely aesthetic level, a shot of MacColl, illuminated in part by the light filtered through a blue curtain, took my breath away. Cinematographer Sergio Salvati supervised the transfer. There are enough quiet moments to appreciate the use of color, especially the warm brown tones in many of the interior shots. The film takes place in New Orleans, and the exterior shots in and around the city help in creating the sometimes other worldly atmosphere.

There are loads of extras, but among the best is a brief introduction to The Beyond by a still very attractive Catriona MacColl. Definitely make a point of listening to the commentary track recorded by MacColl and the very funny David Warbeck. Done for a laserdisc release shortly before Warbeck's death in 1997, the two exchange stories about their experiences not only in making The Beyond, but their other work with Fulci. There is also Warbeck's joke about a pair of cannibals that almost made me fall out of my seat from laughter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:10 AM

April 16, 2015

The Wicked Lady

Michael Winner - 1983
Scorpion Releasing / Kino Lorber BD Region A

With the DVD release of Leslie Arliss' original version of The Wicked Lady, it is now easy to compare it with Michael Winner's remake. Winner must have thought that taking advantage of what could be shown onscreen instead of merely suggested would bring in an audience that might have at least heard of the first version. Winner was never known for being subtle, and the sex and violence are generously served, but really do not help make her version more entertaining. The casting of Faye Dunaway was also a bad decision, lacking the charm and sauciness of Margaret Lockwood, and being at least a decade too old for the part.

For those unfamiliar with either version, the story is about a young woman, Barbara Skelton, in 17th Century England, who connives to marry for money, finds herself bored living away from the social hubbub of London, and impersonates a highwayman initially to regain jewelry lost in a card game, and finds a thrill in stalking unwary coach passengers. She meets the real highwayman, Jerry Jackson, that she has pretended to be, and the two become lovers and partners, temporarily.

Leslie Arliss is credited along with Winner for the screenplay, and for very good reason, most of the dialogue is from the original film. Winner, with cinematographer Jack Cardiff, also duplicates several of the shots, especially the iconic shot of a highwayman in black, silhouette against the sky. What Winner lacks, though, is the light touch of the original, where the décolletage of Lockwood and Patricia Roc, and the brief glimpse of Margaret Lockwood's leg are enough, and were actually more than enough for American censors in 1945. Rather than tease the viewer, Winner literally opens the doors wide enough to reveal various couplings. More troubling, in addition to unnecessary is a scene with Barbara and Jackson's mistress whipping each other as part of an extended fight scene.

Not that Winner's version is a total wash. There are plentiful scenes of celebration, dancing around the Maypole, to give some idea of life for the common townspeople. Winner probably presents a truer vision of 17th Century life with the hanged men seen in various states of decomposition along what then passed for a highway. The rats certainly were healthy looking.

The main difference is that Margaret Lockwood appeared not only to conspire to get what ever she wanted, but did so with the viewer. When Barbara appears to have lost control of a galloping horse as a means of attracting the attention of her best friend's fiancé, she also makes her horse a partner in crime, letting it know when she is ready to fall to the ground. In comparison, Faye Dunaway, in Winner's version, is less spontaneous appearing in her fall, which is on a relatively comfortable bed of leaves. Arliss allowed Lockwood to charm the audience, while Winner relies on the shorthand that we would be on the side of Faye Dunaway simply because she is the star of his film.

LIkewise, for Jerry Jackson, under Arliss, James Mason gives a modulated performance. He is filmed in medium close-up for most of the scene where Jackson is to be hanged, given a hero's welcome on his way to the gallows, and giving a speech about love and betrayal. Winner undercuts Alan Bates, like Dunaway, too old for his role, by filming him in long shots or completely cutting away from Bates altogether, while reciting the same lines used by Mason.

If Leslie Arliss saw the remake, his impressions of that film have gone with him. There is a small connection in the casting, with Maggie Rennie, the former wife of the original's Michael Rennie, as an unlucky coach passenger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

April 14, 2015

William S. Burroughs in the Dreamachine

Jon Aes-Nihil and David Woodard
Cult Epics Region 0 DVD

The dreamachine was a device created by the artist Brion Gysin and mathematician Ian Sommerville as a brain wave simulator. The object was to induce hallucinations and visions without drugs. The stroboscopic effect created with light coming out of holes matched alpha waves. The way to use the dreamachine is with eyes closed for hypnagogic visions.

Those special brownies attributed to Alice B. Toklas originated as a joke inserted by Gysin. His collaborations with William S. Burroughs lead to the cut up technique of literary assemblage usually credited solely to Burroughs. What I wish we had here would have been a documentary on Gysin and Burroughs.

What we have is probably more of interest to the Burroughs scholar or completist. Part of the film is video footage of Burroughs holding court at an outdoor table at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with Allen Ginsberg sitting next to him. The event was a 1996 exhibit of paintings by Burroughs. People come by to get an autograph. Not the kind of image one usually associates with Burroughs, but we see him briefly cradling an infant, like a wizened old grandpa.

Writer and composer David Woodard has built his own dreamachines. One was used in the 1996 Burroughs exhibit, and one was given to Burroughs as a gift. Part of this film is of Woodard and Burroughs in conversation in Burroughs' small, unassuming house in Lawrence, Kansas. Woodard is also filmed making one of his dreamachines, and ruminating on the highway that once was numbered 666. A bonus feature is of Woodard presenting a dreamachine at the Freud Museum of Dreams in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2007

The significance of the Burroughs footage here is that it was shot shortly before his death in 1997. I'm not sure if any of the video tapes were intended for public consumption. For those passionate about all things related to William Burroughs, this film may be of some interest.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:24 AM

April 09, 2015

Vengeance of an Assassin

Rew thalu rew
Panna Rittikrai - 3014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Panna Rittkrai begins his last film with a soccer game. Not just an ordinary soccer game, but one played indoors, in a warehouse, dusty, and with shelves of abandoned tools, and a sizable motorboat. And it's soccer combined with Muay Thai fighting so that players are giving and receiving roundhouse kicks. And if that's not enough, there are a couple of open grills knocked over so that the game continues on a floor of hot, flaming coal. It turns out that it's only a dream, but it is one of several memorable set pieces, reminders that when it came to filming martial arts, Panna Rittkai not only thought outside the box, but he smashed it to smithereens with his imaginative use of his athletic performers. The title roughly translates as "Faster than fast" which is appropriate for the action and camerawork seen here.

Panna's visual sense is also displayed in an extended tracking shot done roughly from the perspective of a hit man. The camera pans across patrons at a restaurant from underneath the table tops. We see the arm of a man circling around the waist of his female date, another man scratching his leg, and follow the legs of the unseen hit man as he shoots his intended victims. It's a nice bit giving some mystery to the proceedings.

There is a story involving a young mechanic, Thee, who's curiosity about the death of his parents gets the best of him. His search brings him in contact with a man who claims that Thee's parents saved his life. The man is now part of some clandestine organization. Not that everything has been answered, but Thee decides to join this same organization, with contract killers nattily dressed in dark slacks and gray cardigans. Thee finds himself acting as protector to a young actress, the granddaughter of an influential politician, following a failed kidnapping attempt.

If you demand logic in your movies, don't even try to look for it here. Vengeance of an Assassin makes about as much sense as that soccer game inside an abandoned warehouse. On the other hand, if it's delirious kick assery you're seeking, look no further.

It's been eight years since Dynamite Warrior, and Dan Chupong doesn't look any older. He may not have the balletic grace of Tony Jaa, but he's still amazingly quick with his hands and feet. In a second warehouse scene, he fights off the bad guys with any available tool, throwing a license plate with enough force that it cuts into a guy's arm, while another man's face gets bloodied by an open electric fan. People, including Dan, get shot, cut and maimed, and it doesn't look pretty. If that's not enough, there's a face off with a female killer, the gorgeous Kessarin Ektawatkul, a former taekwondo champion, so yeah, your not just watching an attractive actress pretending to do martial arts moves.

And then there's a chase with a Range Rover loaded with some big guns, a helicopter, and a fast moving train with guys doing Muay Thai fighting on top. And an old Chinese doctor with some deadly kung fu. Want more? How about a chicken wing grabbed from someone's lunch, used as a lethal weapon?

Sadly, Panna died at the relatively young age of 53. It's too soon to know if any Thai filmmakers will even try to match or surpass the kind of nuttiness Panna was known for either as a director or as stunt coordinator. It is nice that for a filmmaker who helped bring greater attention to Thai cinema, he goes out with a very loud bang.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:09 AM

April 07, 2015

Long Weekend

Colin Eggleston - 1978
Synapse Films BD Region A

There is a nice bit of visual humor in Long Weekend. A young couple, Peter and Marcia, have set up camp by a remote Australian beach. The have a tent, the kind that looks like a small cabin. Even before heading out for the weekend retreat that will supposedly help their prickly relationship, they've been fighting. The weekend has gone miserably, and they have started putting away the camping gear. The tent has been taken down, except for the metal frames. The two argue again, more violently, inside the frame work. The effect is one of a domestic scene in an staged, abstract setting. I don't know if this was what screen writer Everett De Roche was aiming for, but that's how I read this scene. That they are filmed within metal bars might also be interpreted as being in a trap or a prison. What is certain is that even in nature, Peter and Marcia are incapable of totally abandoning city life.

Long Weekend has developed a reputation over the years as an ecological horror movie. That it is, with the combination of Peter and Marcia's casual and deliberate disregard for the environment, ranging from the tossing of a lit cigarette, the spraying of insecticide, to the unnecessary chopping of a tree, and killing of a dugong, a type sea cow - all adding to karmic retribution. Peter is attacked first by an eagle, then by a small possum. The two, who have settled at their beach location through a series of wrong turns, try to escape, they find that the wooded area aways from the beach leads them to circular paths and dead ends.

The idea for the beach weekend is Peter's. Yet he is also the one who is overloaded with a rifle, harpoon and a surfboard, unable to enjoy the outdoors without extra augmentation. Marcia, more true to herself, stays within the tent to read Harold Robbins, and give herself some time for her own sexual pleasure. When Peter discovers a damaged Barbie doll on the beach, and later the remains of an abandoned camp site, there are indications that the beach itself may be hostile to outsiders. What nature does, by the end of the film, is force Peter and Marcia to face uncomfortable truths about each other.

The blu-ray includes commentary by producer Richard Brennan and cinematographer Vincent Monton, recorded around 2005. The discuss the making of the film, which looks far better than its modest budget would suggest, as well as the contributions of cast and crew members. They do mention Ivan Durrant, credited for special effects, but don't mention what may have been a joke that bears mentioning. On the way to the beach is a sign for Tolarno Abattoir. That there is a sign about an abattoir is one big hint of horrors to come. The name of the abattoir is a reference to where Durrant , more famous now for his art work, had his first exhibit. Long Weekend also ends with a shot of a truck carrying cattle, presumably on their way to slaughter. Durrant also worked in an abattoir, and raises cattle. Sometimes the footnote to making a film has information most worth gleaning.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 AM

April 02, 2015

Woman of Straw

Basil Dearden - 1964
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

It may have been coincidental that Sean Connery, recently minted star as James Bond in Goldfinger, appeared in two other films displaying varying degrees of caddishness. For most viewers, whatever he did with or to Pussy Galore was excused because he was James Bond, and it was part of the job of saving the world from Mr. Goldfinger. Playing employer and husband in Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie, some have argued that Mark Rutherford raped his wife, but again one can claim mitigating circumstances, as he was trying to cure Marnie of her various psychological problems in the only way he knew.

No such excuses exist for Connery's character of Anthony Richmond. Nephew of a multi-millionaire, Anthony wants to make sure he can inherit a more substantial portion of his uncle Charles' estate. The plan involves recruiting an attractive Italian nurse, Maria Marcello, with the goal being that the old bully marries the nurse, who in turn will provide one million pounds to the nephew. And for a while, things seem to be going as planned for nephew, getting even for the wrongs committed against his father and his mother, who later became Charles' wife. Not quite Hamlet, as Anthony is hardly a prince.

Ralph Richardson has no problem conveying the nastiness of the wheel chair bound Charles Richmond, a guy who always gets his way, treating everyone like servants, and his servants even worse. Xenophobic and racist, are just the beginning. Charles seems to mellow a bit after marrying Maria, yet his pride almost kills him during a fishing expedition. Maria also finds herself developing some affection for the cantankerous old man. Charles also is humanized with his passion for classical music, especially Beethoven. In a scene following their marriage, Charles plays a tape of Beethoven's Fidelio, an opera with a plot that almost echoes what takes place in the film.

Gina Lollobrigida is top billed here, as Maria. Fifty years later, it may be forgotten that she was the original Italian bombshell, paving the way for Sophia Loren, Elsa Martinelli, and a host of others. She is first seen as a shadow on the doorway, before entering the massive living room of the Richmond home, essentially a small castle. Wearing a modest blue suit, the sexuality Lollobrigida was famed for is kept under wraps. Alone, Maria undresses wearing a low cut black slip. Dearden shows just enough to suggest that Maria is maybe not the "good girl" she presents herself to be.

After a series of social conscious films, it would seem that Basil Dearden wanted to make something that was more popular entertainment, with color cinematography and a bigger budget. Woman of Straw isn't as compelling as those earlier films, notably Victim where Dirk Bogarde virtually outs himself onscreen, or the contemporary version of Othello, All Night Long set among jazz musicians in London, and Dearden doesn't abandon previously explored themes of race and class. What makes the film work are the performances, especially the nuances among the various underlings, and a delicious, if not unexpected, serving of justice near the end.

Here's another look at Woman of Straw, mostly about Sean Connery.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:49 AM

March 31, 2015

Love Hunter

Nemanja & Brane Bala
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

Filmed documentary style, it takes a few minutes to realized that everything in Love Hunter is staged for the camera. The film follows Milan Mumin, a rock star in his native Serbia, working as a struggling cab driver in New York City. Forty years old, and hoping to make his first recording in the U.S., Mumin, would at first glance seem an unlikely star. That changes when I takes out his guitar on a bet that his song would make one of his passengers happy.

Beefy, with hair cut close to his scalp, and a very prominent nose, Mumin looks like a workaday guy you might find almost anywhere in New York, or any major city. That changes when he sings. The voice is gruff, the English is accented but not heavily. There is a brief moment from a documentary showing Mumin and his band, Love Hunters, performing in a stadium, from 1995. Even then, Mumin hardly looked like the expected notion of a rock star.

A little bit of historical context - Mumin sang in English, even during his time in what was then Yugoslavia. The Love Hunters in their original lineup, with a couple of changes, played from 1987 through 2003. The real Mumin has continued to play music professionally, both in the U.S., and in Serbia.

Trying to secure enough money for recording studio time, Mumin deals with his bass player suddenly quitting and his long time fiancee coming to visit from Serbia. Not happy with the musicians he auditions, Mumin finds Kim, the roommate of a friend, playing behind the closed door of her bedroom. The two have a relationship that alternates between adversarial and platonically romantic, a relationship that Mumin's fiancee, Lela, finds threatening. In between, the film shows Mumin with his various passengers and friendship with a fellow cabbie. Additionally, Mumin's drummer and guitarist are unhappy with the preferential treatment Mumin gives to the newest band member.

The film is also the Bala brothers love letter to New York City. There is one scene with the Washington Square arch in the background. The Balas New York City is mostly comprised of the parts not hit by gentrification, inexpensive all night restaurants, and neighborhood bars.

There is footage of Mumin performing his songs, and having his songs heard offscreen as a kind of commentary. Additionally, Mumin lip synchs some of his songs as seemingly impromptu musical numbers.
It's a nice touch to this modestly produced film about a musician whose need to create music takes presidents over everything else.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 AM

March 26, 2015

Gone with the Pope

Duke Mitchell - 1976/2009
Grindhouse Releasing Region 0 DVD / BD Regions ABC

Bob Murawski and his team put in admirable effort into restoring, as best as possible, the film now titled Gone with the Pope. For myself, the film and the work involved in making it available both theatrically and on home video bring up a slew of questions concerning both personal filmmaking and restoration.

Shot in 1975 and '76 on less than a shoestring budget, Duke Mitchell's film was still not completed at the time he died at age 55 in 1981. Had he lived to complete the film, had it been distributed, it would have been picked up by some very tiny company that specialized in providing films that filled holes in various theaters' playdates, or Mitchell may have tried to distribute the film himself. Had the film been released, it would have probably been hooted off the screen for its outdated racial attitudes, or the scene, which does nothing to forward the narrative, may have landed on the cutting room floor.

Mitchell, as an ex-con, gets together with two buddies, and buy the services of a black prostitute. As in his previous Massacre Mafia Style, Mitchell's character refers to blacks as "spooks". The uncredited actress who portrays the prostitute keeps smiling even when Mitchell tells her that she can use her earnings for watermelon and chicken. Also cringe inducing is when Mitchell compares the prostitute's pubic hair to brillo. While I don't think Mitchell, or his character, are deliberately racist, Mitchell seems firmly of an older era, even when attempting to appear contemporary with his too long sideburns, and "leisure suits".

A would-be comic sex scene with one very oversized woman should have been avoided as well. If that wasn't enough, the film has enough reminders of the general awfulness of mid-Seventies fashions.

What redeems Gone with the Pope for some viewers is the impassioned speech Mitchell makes to the too easily kidnapped Pontiff, about the how the Church did nothing to save Europe's Jews from Hitler. And the speech comes off as very sincere. A little further examination indicates that Pope Piux XII had less control over Mussolini than Mitchell imagined, and that there was greater activity in saving not only Italian Jews but, Jews in other parts of Europe, that was not made public.

You do have to hand it to Mitchell to be able to fool some people into thinking he shot part of the film in Rome. The moral is to never underestimate the power of a carefully positioned poster in background behind a close-up of an actor.

What seems to have been the reason behind producers Sage Stallone and Bob Murawski to rescue Gone with the Pope is that the film stands as an example of personal filmmaking - personal in that the film was entirely self-financed, and personal in that Mitchell expressed himself in ways that would make some viewers uncomfortable.

On a conventional level, Gone with the Pope is not very good. Many of the shots look like they were illuminated by a flashlight. Sound Mixer Marti Humphrey did a miraculous job, noticeable in the blu-ray version, of making the dialogue audible. Several cast members appear to be straining to recite the dialogue. There are plentiful lapses of logic, as well as plot holes. As a filmmaker, Duke Mitchell's ambitions far exceeded his budget or abilities. The soundtrack does make clear that Mitchell's reputation as a lounge singer, and singing voice for Fred Flinstone was not unearned.

It is the obvious faults of Gone with the Pope that should serve as reminders that personal filmmaking isn't just the province of those whose viewpoints aren't questionable, or of those whose artistic stature is well established. The film also serves as a reminder that any questions regarding what films are, or are not, worthy of preservation, are both subjective and challengeable.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

March 24, 2015

Cover Up

Alfred E. Green - 1949
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Sure, Alfred E. Green is the director of record. Green's filmography is primarily memorable for a couple of pre-code movies at Warner Brothers - Smart Money with the only pairing of Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney, plus Boris Karloff with an oversized fedora, and Baby Face, with Barbara Stanwyck sleeping her way to the top of the business world. But as Andrew Sarris pointed out, the auteur of a movie isn't always the director, and in this case, the auteur is Dennis O'Keefe.

O'Keefe isn't as well remembered as some of his starring films. There's the Val Lewton produced The Leopard Man, a couple of Alan Dwan comedies - most notably Brewster's Millions, and a couple of film noir classics with Anthony Mann - T-Men and Raw Deal. O'Keefe's stardom was on the decline following World War II, and rather than wait for a good role, O'Keefe started writing his own screenplays under a pseudonym. As Jonathan Rix, O'Keefe collaborated with Jerome Odlum, whose novels, Dust Be My Destiny and Each Dawn I Die were both filmed by Warner Brothers in 1939. Based on a similar bit of business in O'Keefe's later film, The Diamond, the star incorporated a bit of business about his chain smoking, a habit that caused O'Keefe to die at age sixty.

O'Keefe was apparently pragmatic enough to cede top billing to William Bendix, seen here as the small town sheriff who doesn't think to highly of O'Keefe's insurance investigator snooping into a suicide that took place in Cleberg. The film takes place a few days before Christmas, and from what is seen, Cleberg is cold, sunny and dry. The film opens with O'Keefe "meeting cute" with Barbara Britton, both departing from a train, Britton unable to carry all the gifts purchased at the big city. The two are taken to town by bus. The bus driver mentions the suicide of the well-known man, but seems unusually cheerful in spreading the news of the untimely death. O'Keefe ruffles quite a few feathers of the townsfolk by insisting that what occurred was murder rather than suicide. Along the way are revelations of family secrets and the search for a missing gun.

Cover Up is enjoyable, if not particularly memorable. Best are the wise guy quips, especially between Bendix and O'Keefe. Ann E. Todd appears as Britton's teenage sister, in awe of the insurance investigator, and the victim of one very funny, self-inflicted pratfall. Briefly seen are future coffee pitch woman Virginia Christine, and John Wayne stock company player, Hank Worden. Also adding to the fun is George MacDonald as a smart alec Cub Scout who would rather annoy O'Keefe and Britton than watch the movie playing in the theater. MacDonald's kid turns out to be the wisest of a group of characters who act foolishly. When wondering why O'Keefe doesn't kiss Miss Britton, MacDonald reasons, "She's pretty".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:25 AM

March 19, 2015

Vice and Virtue

Le Vice et la Virtu
Roger Vadim - 1963
Kino Classics BD Region A

Having come from the same literary source, the Maquis De Sade, every discussion about Vice and Virtue will invariably mention some similarity to Pasolini's Salo. What remains unanswered is whether Pasolini was in any way inspired by Vadim to transpose De Sade to a World War II setting. I would think it probable that even if he had not seen Vadim's version of De Sade's Justine, he would have at least been aware of the film, Vadim at the time being a very popular filmmaker, at least in Europe. Vadim's version begins with a statement by Vadim giving a brief explanation as to why he transposed the story to the last years of World War II. Vadim's justification seems more for himself than for the audience which probably didn't need a reminder that Nazi's were bad, bad people.

After opening with a montage of documentary war footage, Vadim cuts to a wedding party walking to church. The group walks past a bar called "A Tout va Bien" (Everything goes well). The irony is hardly subtle as German soldiers surround the family outside the church, and arrest the groom, spoiling the wedding for Justine. The bride is played by Catherine Deneuve, a year or so prior to her star making turn in Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Still in bridal wear, Justine seeks out sister Juliette, the mistress of a German general, to get her fiancé released. Disowned by her family, Juliette has traded her looks for the best available comforts of life. As Juliette, Annie Girardot is not conventionally attractive, but is able to convey her ability to take on the men in her life by letting them know she can be their equal in ruthlessness.

In their first scene together, Girardot and Deneuve meet in a sauna popular with the officers. The two are seen surrounded by steam, visually suggesting a meeting in Hell. And while Roger Vadim may have less to say about morality than he may have thought at the time, the reason to revisit Vice and Virtue has more to do with Vadim's visual style, which gets doesn't get discussed as much as the babes he bagged over the years.

It might be a theatrical device, but there are also a couple of moments when Vadim darkens the screen so that the viewer can only see, as in one scene. Girardot, Deneuve, and as the most evil Nazi, Robert Hossein. In another scene, taking place in a long hallway, the camera moves backward with Girardot's back to the camera, Hossein slapping her to submission. Where other filmmakers might simply move the camera forward or use a zoom shot, Vadim edits close-ups of Girardot's face while she is wincing, witnesses the torture of a prisoner.

Vice and Virtue was released in the U.S. by MGM, probably the last major studio to be considered in association with anything remotely avant-garde. In his review for the New York Times, Eugene Archer sums up his thoughts on the film with, "Even so, Mr. Vadim is a man with audacious ideas about movies. He misfires, but he scatters plenty of sparks along the way." A fair judgment of this film I would say. Any intellectual aspirations as shallow, and those looking for the eroticism that Vadim has been linked with in previous fins, will probably find disappointment here. But well after fifty years, the virtues to be found here are in Vadim's visuals.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:26 AM

March 17, 2015

From Asia with Lust, Volume 1

Camp
Ainosuke Shibata - 2014

Hitch-Hike
Ainosuke Shibata - 2013
Troma Entertainment All Region DVD

I've been reading Kier-La Janisse's part autobiography, part survey about women in horror films, House of Psychotic Women. I can't find the exact quote, but if I can paraphrase it, she puts the Japanese "pink film" in a different light, so that the point for the Japanese audience is not that the women find themselves in horrible situations, usually involving rape and/or torture, but that they overcome their respective adversities at the end of the film. Be that as it may, there is something of a disconnection between how these two films by Ainosuke Shibata, starring adult video star Miyuki Yokoyama, have been sold, both to the home audience, as well as in this double feature DVD.

In both films, Yokoyama plays women who are terrible drivers, prone to accidents, and winding up at the wrong place at the wrong time. In Camp, Yokoyama is one of two sisters who end up crashing the car on their way to some resort. They take shelter in a cabin that's closed for the season. A man who lives nearby invites them to his place, only it turns out that he's one of several men who were former mental patients with unusual sexual hang-ups. That the guys go by nicknames like "Pyro" and "Copro" gives a hint as to their particular fetishes. The younger sister is sexual violated and murdered. Yokoyama is able to escape courtesy of the one guy who's doing his best to keep his pants on. A former nurse from the hospital discovers Yokoyama, teaches her archery, and the two return for revenge.

A little bit of research indicates that Hitch-Hike is a remake of an Italian thriller from 1977, starring Franco Nero, Clorinne Clery and slasher movie fixture, David Hess. Yokoyama is the put upon wife abused by her husband, the hitchhiker picked up along the way, and even the guy she initially thinks is her savior. By the end of the film, Yokoyama has the good sense to ditch her husband, but not enough sense to wear a jacket while walking on a snowy mountain road.

Anybody who thinks they're going to see the star dressed in either movie like she does on the DVD covers will be disappointed. There's more violence than sex in both of these films, and not much in the way of nudity. For those who have a, ahem, yen, for naked Japanese women, you're probably better off seeking a "pink movie" from the Seventies.

On the other hand - keep in mind that while Miyuki Yokoyama's claim to fame is as an adult video star, she is also in a more mainstream film, appearing in Sion Sono's Tokyo Tribe, mainstream being a relative term here. Ainosuke Shibata seems like a fairly competent director with no particular style. Being a director of videos, adult or otherwise, in Japan, doesn't always have the same onus as it does in most other countries, so it is possible that Shibata might be heard from in the future with a film that gets more critical attention. The guy who won an Oscar for Departures probably wasn't pegged for future glory when he made Molester's Train: Momoe's Tush.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 AM

March 12, 2015

Massacre Mafia Style

Like Father, like Son / The Executioner
Duke Mitchell - 1978
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC/Region 1 DVD Combo

As a filmmaker, Duke Mitchell was championed by Grindhouse Releasing co-founder, Sage Stallone, the late son of another writer-director-star, Sylvester Stallone. But the coincidences go further. As an actor, Mitchell was usually cast in smaller supporting roles. One of those last jobs was in the final film of another writer-director-star, Hugo Haas. The film, shot in 1958, but not released until 1962 was titled Paradise Alley, the title also of Sylvester Stallone's film of 1978. Much of the writing about Massacre Mafia Style discusses Mitchell's film in relationship to The Godfather. I would think that even if unstated, that Mitchell probably got a certain amount of inspiration from Hugo Haas. The bulk of the filmography for Haas is of low budget genre films that have only recently garnered more critical attention. Paradise Alley was done with very little money, and a cast that included silent stars Corinne Griffith, Billy Gilbert and Chester Conklin, as well as Marie Windsor, William Schallert, with Duke Mitchell lower in the list. One could argue that Mitchell learned first hand that a movie might be made with a small amount of money and a lot of willing and available friends.

I have to also assume that Mitchell picked up some pointers on the set of two Don Siegel films, Crime in the Streets, and especially Baby Face Nelson. Siegel was known for being quick and efficient, knowing how to make a film in spite of limited budgets, improvising when needed to get the needed footage in the can.

Massacre Mafia Style shows some of the influence of Don Siegel with its images of untethered violence, but is closer in spirit to the work of Hugo Haas with its idiosyncratic world view. That this is a personal film is made clear with Mitchell playing a gangster with the last name of Micelli, Mitchell's own real family name. The son of a retired mobster, Micelli travels from Sicily to Los Angeles on a misguided attempt to regain is father's past glory, killing off other gangsters and a pimp called Superspook. The gangsters complain about Italians being stereotyped while at the same time reenforcing the worst cliches about Italian gangsters. At one point, Micelli and his loyal sidekick, Jolly, are on a yacht while a porn film is being shot below deck. Micelli talks about how porn films have earned huge profits against the small production costs, and I have to wonder if Mitchell may have had second thoughts about the kind of film he was trying to make.

There is one unforgettable image, with a rival gangster hung on a meat hook, the hook going through the back of the head and through an eye. There is also the shots of the pimp crucified on Easter Sunday. On the down side, when we see the porn film in production, it seems like the entire cast and crew had no idea about what to do with two naked women together in bed. The opening montage of what seems like a random killing spree is done with a cheerful song about the heart going "Teeka-teek". The soundtrack includes several songs performed by Mitchell that invoked Italian culture.

Which brings us to the proverbial elephant in the room, namely Bela Lugosi meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. That oft-maligned film can be seen as a blu ray bonus looking better than it ever did sixty years ago. And in another bit of coincidence, before joining with Jerry Lewis lookalike Sammy Petrillo, Mitchell even had a bit part in the Lewis-Martin comedy, Sailor Beware. Whatever one might think of the most famous, or infamous, film by William "One Shot" Beaudine, it is the one film that Duke Mitchell, singer and romantic lead, will be best remembered for, though not by choice of the musical star.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:04 PM

March 10, 2015

Life of Riley

Aimer, boire et chanter
Alain Resnais - 2014
Kino Lorber BD Region A

I swore that I would refrain from making any references to the television series, The Life of Riley, but this is too good to pass up. In that Fifties show, the title character played by William Bendix was famous for the catchphrase, "What a revolting development this is." That same phrase was recycled for use by the comic book character, Benjamin Grimm of The Fantastic Four, created by Marvel comic's Stan Lee. And Lee, as some already know, wrote a never filmed screenplay called The Monster Maker and also, decades before Sam Raimi came on board, tried to make of film of Spider-Man, both to be filmed by Alain Resnais. OK, so there's this roundabout connectivity that I enjoy, but I think that Alain Resnais might have found it a bit amusing.

The French title translates as the equivalent to, "Eat, drink and be merry". The English language title is from Alan Ayckbourn's play. The title character is George Riley, and though the film and play revolve around him, Riley is never seen. The six characters we do see are reacting to Riley's impending death.

I should admit that Resnais lost me after Providence. I've seen most of his films that followed, but never felt particularly enthusiastic about any of them. I Want to Go Home is one of the couple of films I liked best in this latter period. The supplemental material here, essays by Resnais and critic Glenn Kenny, as well as interviews with the actors shot soon after the completion of filming, are helpful in pointing out what to look for here, in what turned out to be Alain Resnais' final work.

Much of the time, Riley looks like filmed theater, with the actors on a stage with a painted backdrop. This may have been a result of budget constraints, but Resnais tries to use this obvious theatrical setting to his advantage. During the times Resnais breaks into a close-up of the actors, what we see behind the actor is not the stage backdrop but something that looks like the cross-hatching in comic books. Interludes between scenes are a combination of traveling shots in the parts of Yorkshire where the story takes place, with those shots dissolving into colored pen and ink drawings of the respective homes of each character, with the action taking place in their gardens.

That the final shot is of George Riley's coffin has turned out to be an uncanny coincidence. Life of Riley was never intended to be the 91 year old Resnais' last film. As final images from final films go, the post card with the image of angel of death on top of a coffin is as unintentionally fitting as that of some other filmmakers, including Anne Bancroft's defiant, "So long, ya bastard" prior to her suicide drink at the end of John Ford's Seven Women, or Barbara Harris' wink to the camera at the close of Alfred Hitchcock's Family Plot.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

March 05, 2015

White Haired Witch

The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom / Bai Fa Mo Nu Zhuan Zhi Ming Yue Tian Guo
Jacob Cheung - 2014
Well Go Entertainment Region 1 DVD

During the end credits for White Haired Witch, we hear the song "Red Face, White Hair. That song is from the earlier film version of the same story, Bride with White Hair, performed by that film's star, Leslie Cheung. It's a nice tribute to the late, and still beloved, star.

Fan Bingbing and Huang Xiaoming don't have the kind of sparks that fly as when Leslie Cheung shared the screen with Brigitte Lin in Ronny Yu's film from 1993. Still, for me, the high point was a first meeting of Fan and Huang, a martial arts ballet choreographed by Stephen Tung, inspired by Peking Opera. That scene might not be the wuxia equivalent to Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but it comes pretty close. Fan might be saying no to Huang, but you know she will eventually succumb to his persistence. Sure, Leslie Cheung has the charm, and Brigitte Lin is one of the most intimidating women in film, but Fan and Huang have an effective scene here.

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If only the film had more of Fan Bingbing. She plays the leader of a rebel community in 17th Century China that lives in a remote mountain village. Huang is a government official who gets framed for murdering the emperor. Fan gets framed for killing Huang's grandfather. Various government officials are plotting against each other, and the more attention is devoted to Huang's pursuit of justice. Fan's hair turns white when she thinks she's been jilted by Huang, but until the final scene, when she magically gains the strength to literally bust out of prison, there is little to suggest the she is a witch.

Tsui Hark is credited as the "Artistic Consultant". I'm not sure what that meant in terms of this film, as Jacob Cheung is hardly a novice filmmaker. Maybe Tsui's involvement was related to making a 3D film, which has become his format of choice based on his most recent work. In any event, one gets the suggestion of how Cheung made use of 3D, especially in the early scenes which emphasize distances, either in open fields where battles take place, or the size of the emperor's palace. There is also a lot of wire work with Fan, Huang and assorted others flying around.

From the "Making of" supplement, there is footage of Huang Xiaoming in an accident while performing a stunt. While Huang did come back to complete the film, there are hints that he was still hurting during the shoot. Cheung and company did a masterful job of working around Huang's physical limitations as well. Photos of Huang's scars and x-rays are more shocking than anything seen in Cheung's film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:07 AM

March 03, 2015

Blood Car

Alex Orr - 2007
Horizon Movies Region 1 DVD

I try to give novice filmmakers, especially those working with extremely limited funds, a wide berth. Based on the pull quotes, I was looking forward to seeing Blood Car. The film played in various festivals which seemed to indicate there was something worth checking out. Whatever it was that struck the Variety critic as "fresh and funny" or earned raves from Time Out London and Sight and Sound is lost on me.

On paper, the concept would seem promising. In a future where gas costs over thirty dollars a gallon, people have stopped driving. A grade school teacher, Archie, attempts to create an engine that runs on wheat grass, but accidentally finds that his engine works with human blood. He drives around with a car with a special motor in the trunk that grinds those unlucky enough to be shoved in. A dedicated vegan, Archie also becomes the occasional lover of Denise, who runs a small butcher stand, and the object of longing for Lorraine, who sells wheat grass drinks. There also some generous exhibition of breasts on the part of several females, and a bit of gore involving the car with appetite for human blood.

The premise would seem like something that Roger Corman might have made about forty years ago. Alex Orr isn't Roger Corman. Alex Orr isn't even Corman protege Jim Wynorski. I know that the budget was reportedly on $25,000. When finances are limited, much more careful planning is required, especially if the film demands special effects. Some of the problems may be budget related, but too frequently the action is cut so that there is only one scene where we see one victim ground up by the chopping blades in the trunk. Where there might have been some humor in a few sight gags is lost with badly thought out framing. Even the raunchy humor wears thin quickly. The sight of horny teens having sex in cars in automobile graveyards is neither funny nor erotic. When Denise declares to Archie that she wants a taco in her mouth and a dick in her ass, it's enough to make me long for the double entendres lobbed between characters in a pre-Code film the the Thirties.

The DVD comes with a couple of shorts directed by Mike Brune, the actor who plays Archie. The Adventure is the stronger of the two. An older couple are stopped on their road trip by a mime standing in the middle of the highway. The mime performs, and is killed by another mime whose weapon in an invisible, that is to say, mimed, gun. The performer dies on the hood of the couple's car. The polish and composition of the shots would indicate to me that Brune maybe should have directed Blood Car as well.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:59 AM

February 24, 2015

52 Pick-Up

John Frankenheimer - 1986
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

I saw 52 Pick-Up at the time of its initial release. Among films directed by John Frankenheimer, it's a middling effort. Even though Elmore Leonard had a hand in writing the screenplay, it's not among the better adaptations of his books. There's one scene that comes close to the kind of corrosive humor found in Leonard's novels. After the combined efforts of Roy Scheider and Ann-Margret disarm would be murderer Clarence Williams III, Scheider offers Williams a bandage for his bruised nose. In retrospect, what we have is Frankenheimer's best film in what turned out to be a lousy decade.

The basic plot involves the attempt by a disparate trio to blackmail industrialist Harry Mitchell with videotape of his rendezvous with a young "model". Mitchell tries to avoid revealing anything to his wife, Barbara. When the stakes are raised with Mitchell to be framed for murder, he come up with a plan to turn the blackmailers against each other for the coveted loot.

Throughout a good part of the film, Frankenheimer keeps the camera moving on his characters. The effect is that it there is no other choice but to move forward. One of the rare times that there are static shots is during scenes of emotional intimacy between Scheider and Ann-Margret. Much of the film also takes place in shadowy areas, emphasizing the morally ambiguous behavior that Scheider and Ann-Margret fall into when dealing with the blackmailers. The only scenes in clear open light are in the first and final scenes, establishing and re-establishing the relationship between Harry and Barbara.

Where the film works best is in diving into the seedy side on Los Angeles in the mid 1980s. One of the blackmailers, Leo, operates a joint where customers can take photographs of the available nude models with polaroid camera. Alan manages a porn theater, and shoots movies on videotape on the side. It is suggested that the murderous Bobby Shy has worked as a pimp. There is one scene at a party featuring several porn stars including the ubiquitous Ron Jeremy, Amber Lynn, and Sharon Mitchell.

The other reason to take a look, or revisit, is for John Glover's performance as Alan, the lead blackmailer. To describe Alan as oily or sleazy is inadequate. Elmore Leonard's bad guys are usually the most entertaining characters in his novels. Alan is smart enough to read and understand accounting ledgers, but his garish bachelor pad with the ceiling mirror is indicative of someone with no distinction between his professional life and personal proclivities, and unsurprisingly, his greed gets the better of him.

And I hope the performer known as Vanity is happy where ever she is. Her moment of stardom was brief, but the actress introduced to many of us, strutting around in music videos usually wearing suggestive lingerie, was one gorgeous enough to induce me to spend my money on otherwise forgettable Action Jackson and the wondrously dopey The Last Dragon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:34 AM

February 19, 2015

Ten Seconds to Hell

Robert Aldrich - 1959
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

The choice of artwork for the new blu ray of Ten Seconds to Hell is from the Italian poster. What I like about that poster is that what is suggested, with that face of Jeff Chandler's as a partial skull comes closer to suggesting some of Aldrich's thematic concerns. Death is never very far away for the six men who take on the job of diffusing bombs found in various locations in a ruined, post World War II Berlin. In the way that their faces are lit, there is the sense that Chandler and Jack Palance were cast in part because of their nearly skeletal faces. Chandler, forty years old at the time of filming, looks at least a decade older in some shots. While a collapse in communications meant that Ten Seconds to Hell was the last of three films Aldrich made starring Palance, many of the shots emphasize the tautness of Palance's face, with pain or anguish unmistakably expressed.

What I didn't know until I did a bit of research is that Aldrich's original cut ran over two hours. The version we have available is the theatrical release, a little over an hour and a half long. I have no idea if any of the deleted footage is still in someone's vault, nor do I know what was cut regarding the content. Aldrich has been dismissive of this film, and has readily taken some of the blame for the critical and commercial failure. Time has not made Ten Seconds to Hell a better movie or some kind of lost masterpiece, but visually, it is very much an Aldrich film. Additionally, with a script by Aldrich done with Teddi Sherman, the film demonstrates the consistency of Aldrich's themes revisited throughout his other films.

Others have already pointed out that the six demolition experts make for a not so dirty half dozen. They are somewhat similar to the characters of Aldrich's most famous film in that they are former rejects of the German military, who were assigned to the bomb squad instead of prison or concentration camps. There is a very loose sense of camaraderie between the six, and a sense of not belonging to society at large. Unlike the Dirty Dozen, the six men, recruited by Allied forces to diffuse stray bombs, work alone, each man taking on an assignment in turn. The six pool part of their money, based on a bet that the funds will be claimed by whomever is survives the next three months.

There is suspense during the scenes of bomb diffusion, even though you have to figure that Palance or Chandler would be the last to go, as you don't go killing off the main star in the middle of your movie (unless you're Alfred Hitchcock). Still, there is tension, especially in an almost silent scene of Palance alone in the rubble, diffusing a bomb, sweating, the only sound being the squeaking of a bolt loosened. In another scene, Aldrich just shows the arms, legs and hands of one of the men diffusing a bomb, unsuccessfully, so that we don't know until after the explosion who was killed.

As in other Aldrich films, Chandler and Palance alternate between being partners and rivals. The rivalry is in part philosophical, with the seemingly nonchalant Chandler, concerned his needs and winning at all costs, versus the brooding Palance who risks his life on behalf of the other team members. There is also the romantic rivalry for Martine Carol, another outsider as a French woman married to a German officer, also without a sense of belonging anywhere.

There are a couple of Aldrich's signature overhead shots. Much of the film is made up of low angle shots, frequently with two or three characters within the frame, sometimes placed in such a way as to play with differing proportions within the shot. Part of it is also that this is a more economical way of presenting the characters, but it also goes back to the thematic concerns of characters sharing a space that barely contains them or their respective tensions. This is made especially clear near the end when Palance and Chandler work together on a double fused bomb, only part of their faces seen in an extreme close-up.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:07 AM

February 17, 2015

No Tears for the Dead

Uneun Namja
Lee Jeong-Beom - 2014
CJ Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The original title translates as "Crying Man". The English title does convey the attitude of some of the characters, and how the allowance of human emotion gets in the way, especially if your occupation is that of professional killer.

The killer is a guy named Gon, who accidentally kills a four year old girl at the time that he kills her father in the back room of a Los Angeles nightclub. Working on behalf of a pan-Asian syndicate, Gon is sent to Korea to kill the mother as she has some incriminating evidence. The girl's mother, Mogyeong, is introduced, working in a brokerage where she has successful made a deal involving a drug manufacturer. When someone points out that eighty people will be unemployed, Mogyeong's response is that the goal is to make money, not be sentimental. Although Lee Jeong-Beom shows that Mogyeong has channeled her grief into her work, he could have gone a bit deeper in creating parallels between the mercenary who kills people and the mercenary who kills companies, both for profit. Making money the impetus for most of the characters here. The essential message might be one regarding the corrupting influence of big money, but Lee also is concerned with a bit of superficial psychology regarding Gon, and how his childhood influenced his present day actions.

Lee's previous film was The Man from Nowhere. There are a few fleeting similarities, especially with the main character being a rogue hit man. Working with a much larger budget, there is a flashback that takes place in the desert area of California, as well as more elaborate set pieces including a room full of computer equipment and large monitors, and a mob hit done with one very large truck.

One of the more visually striking scenes involves Gon in a fist fight with a rival killer. The room is illuminated by sunlight filtered through the slates of a window shade. The alternating light and shadow against the two men, seen mostly in close up, gives the scene an abstract quality. Nothing else in No Tears for the Dead comes close in visual panache.

The DVD comes with a "Making of" supplement which is of some interest in showing the mechanics of how how certain scenes were set up. What is billed as a "Director's Commentary" is not an alternate soundtrack, but simply a few minutes of Lee discussing what he was aiming for in making this film. Lee explains why he chose the well known song, "Danny Boy", performed by the Mogyeong and her daughter in separate scenes. Not explained is the choice of old pop hit, "Smooth Operator", performed by the nightclub singer in the opening scene. There's no specific reference to any character with this song, but I suspect the choice was due to the title, and the criminals' false sense of invulnerability.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:58 AM

February 13, 2015

Le Pont du Nord

Jacques Rivette - 1981
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Possibly the kind of coincidence that Jacques Rivette might have found amusing, but I saw Le Pont du Nord on the day I first read about the restrictions of filming movie scenes involving guns in Paris. It's not only because there is some shooting in Rivette's film, but also the reasoning behind this new rule is in response to some of the so-called terrorist activity in Paris. How this connects to Rivette is that his film, shot in the Fall of 1980, was in part a response to what goes going in Paris at that time. One of the characters collects newspaper clippings related to some of the high profile and violent news of the time. Those who follow recent French cinema will probably recognize the name Mesrine. Additionally, the character played by Bulle Ogier, while not providing details, hints at being part of a group that robbed a bank ostensibly as a political act. The events that were a year old at the time of the film's initial release still have some contemporary relevance.

Two women meet on a Paris street. Marie has just been released from prison. Baptiste rides around in her motorbike until a chance encounter of the two women causes an accident, leaving the damaged motorbike behind. Marie is claustrophobic to the point where she orders two croissants from the doorway of a bakery, and keeps the door open in a phone booth when she makes a call. She is attempting to reunite with a man named Julien who says he will be ready for her in three days. Baptiste essentially acts as Marie's shadow, following her around before becoming a traveling companion as such. Marie's claustrophobia is so strong that the two sleep the first night on an outdoor bench. Although budgetary were the original impetus, Marie's condition provides an explanation for why the entire film is made up of exterior shots, shot in 16mm using available light.

Unlike Cahiers du Cinema cohorts Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, Rivette was not known for making obvious references to other movies. The exception would be in this film. Baptiste convinces Maria that they can sleep inside an all night movie theater, appealing to Marie's needs to be in open spaces as the current film in question is The Big Country. Leaving the theater the next morning, we see that the new film is La Prisonniere.

Baptiste discovers that Julien is carrying a map of Paris. A second map is found, with Paris divided into a spiral of gridded spaces. Marie explains how the spaces relate to an old game, and the significance of some of the spaces. Marie and Baptiste may or may not be moving in a deliberate direction, based on the maps and their interactions with the mystery men that appear on their journey.

The blu ray includes a booklet containing Jacques Rivette's "director's statement", which raises more questions. French film critic, Jean Narboni, also has his "Six Questions". While certain narrative questions remain unclear, there is a visual essay that breaks down the locations in Paris where Le Pont du Nord was filmed, adding insight to where Rivette was playing with the geography of the city he seemed to know intimately.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:08 AM

February 11, 2015

Schoolgirl Report Volume #13: Don't Forget Love during Sex

Vergiss beim Sex die Liebe nicht - Der neue Schulmachenreport 13. Teil
Walter Boos - 1980
Impulse Pictures All Regions DVD

I would have to watch this particular scene over again just to make sure if there was a literal translation, or of someone was having a little fun with the subtitles. In one of the several vignettes that make up this German film, a young woman describes an equally youthful Lothario as not being kosher(!). This brief moment comprises the most humorous moment to be found in this last entry of the Schoolgirl series, soft core theatrical films that could no longer compete against the tide of hardcore pornography available to be seen at home with recently available videotape.

And speaking of brief moments, screenwriter Gunther Heller has two stories that hinged on women's underwear. The framing device in a high school rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet, with the teacher discussing the meaning of the balcony scene with his students. Shakespeare probably never imagined Juliet in tight white hot pants and high white boots, at least in this rehearsal version. The students and teacher discuss the importance of balancing sex with love or vice versa, going off in tangents about other students attempting to navigate their way towards adulthood, or what they imagine is being adult.

Drama, usually of sleazy guys taking advantage of young women, alternates with tepid comedy. I don't know if John Hughes had seen this film, or if someone had told him about it, but one of the vignettes anticipates Sixteen Candles, where a young man makes a bet that he can get the panties from a female student. In another episode, the chubby younger sister tags along with a pair of more conventionally attractive girls on a bicycle trip. The filmmakers return to yet another scene of making hay in the hayloft, with someone's idea of comedy having one of the boys stuttering his way through an attempt at seduction. An older couple spies on the kids, but it is the chubby sister who has the most fun with a chance encounter with a handsome stranger.

We're not talking Fassbinder here, but there may be some viewers who will find the cultural attitudes expressed here of interest. A sexually blackmailed panty thief is the daughter of Greek "guest workers". There is also a rivalry between one of the students with a girl from France, complete with assorted name calling and remarks bases on stereotypes. Other viewers might simply cringe at the bad hair and awful clothing that passed for fashion. Boos and Heller dispense with any pretense that opened the other films in the Schoolgirl series that we were watching a documentary, while the sanctimonious closing narrative about the importance of love with sex is dispensed with quickly. What is sad about this last Schoolgirl film is that while none of the entries were more than mildly humorous or erotic, what we have here is mostly worn out and limp.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:31 AM

February 09, 2015

Nekromantik 2

Jorg Buttgereit - 1991
Cult Epics BD Region A

Just in time for Valentine's Day! Jorg Buttgereit provides a brief introduction to the Blu ray. His German accent is a bit heavy, so at first I think he's describing his film as a "laugh story", but what I am mis-hearing is "love story". Be that as it may, there is plenty of humor to be found here.

Not stated are some of the advantages of having a dead lover. They don't back talk, don't stray, and you always know where they are. On the down side, they often stink, and may be prone to fall apart under too much stress.

Buttgereit follows a female necrophiliac, Monika, who finds the grave of the recently dead Rob, the suicidal character from the original Nekromantik. Monika also finds herself attracted to Mark, a man she meets by chance at a movie theater when he is waiting for a date who doesn't show up on time. Their relationship eventually hits a snag when Monika demands that Mark lie on his back and not move during sex, implying that she would prefer him to "play dead". Mark makes his living dubbing sex films, but finds that the more time spent with Monika, the more he finds her to be too perverse for him.

Buttgereit was smart not to try and top his first film. There are a few gross out scenes, mostly involving Monika with Rob's corpse. The film is also an inquiry into transgressive cinema. When Mark and Monika meet, they are watching a movie, My Dinner with Vera, consisting of a nude man and woman sitting at a table loaded with soft boiled eggs, while the man drones on about birds, and how they descended from dinosaurs. Mark likes the film because it contrasts with the kind of films he works with. Later, Monika and her girlfriends gather to watch a video of the dissection of a seal, while eating pizza. Mark unexpectedly shows up, the girlfriends leave, and Mark asks to watch the video. The graphic depiction of the seal being skinned upsets him, while Monika protests that she would rather watch such a video than close-ups of genitalia in a porno film.

The history of Nekromantik 2 raises the question about limits in depicting transgressive activity. The film was temporarily seized by German police soon after the initial release, supposedly for violence. What some may have found disturbing is that Monika is presented as a sympathetic character, and no judgment is made, no punishment meted out for any misdeeds.

The blu ray comes with loads of extra features, including a commentary track, excerpts from the live music performance accompanying the Twentieth anniversary of the film (with star Monika M. still looking quite attractive), and trailers. A short film shot at the grave of Ed Gein made me wonder why Buttgereit has thus far resisted making a film combining necrophilia with incest, although, honestly, it is a very nice piece of minimalist filmmaking. Very delightful is the music video, "Lemmy, I'm a Feminist", performed by German band Half Girl, featuring the cult figure from Motorhead.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:40 AM

February 07, 2015

Rape Shot: Momoe's Lips

Reipu shotto: Momoe no kuchibiru
Katsuhiko Fujii- 1979
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

It's been several months since the last Impulse Pictures DVD release from Nikkatsu erotic films series. Jasper Sharp's liner notes are helpful here in explaining the title as there is no character named Momoe. There was a popular singer and actress, Momoe Yamaguchi, and someone thought it a good idea to cast an actress, in this case Minako Mizushima, with enough of a physical resemblance to evoke memories of the aforementioned star.

Momoe's Lips does provide an illustration of cultural changes in Japan when compared to a couple of earlier films. Akira Kurosawa's Scandal from 1950, is about a singer pursued by tabloid photographers, trying to make more out a chance meeting with a photographer. Kurosawa concluded his film with a condemnation of falsely created news used to sell newspapers, as well as the loss of privacy. There is also some connection here with Nikkatsu films from the Fifties and early Sixties about popular singers such as I Hate but Love, about the star making machinery, and the conflict between the demands of celebrity and private life.

Part of it may simply be because of genre demands as well, but everyone in Momoe's Lips is sleazy. The tabloid reporter, Toru, is so desperate for a story the will bring in a big payday, that in order to prove that the young singer, Yoko, is a drug addict, he corners her in a bathroom stall, and forces her to urinate onto a handkerchief that he hope will be analyzed. Following her to her apartment, Yoko is witnessed getting kidnapped by three thugs who take turns raping her. Toru tracks Yoko to a small bar in Yokohama, where the girlfriend of one of the kidnappers greets Toru by removing her panties, the prelude to a very personal introduction. As it turns out, Yoko is kept in line by her record company, injected with an unnamed drug.

There are indications that had he not spent most of his career in erotic film, Katsuhiko Fujii might have been noted in mainstream films for his flashes of style. In a scene of Yoko singing her current hit song, we see Yoko performing excerpts, first in a recording studio, then in different performances, wearing different clothing, the shots linked with swish pans. There is something of a pop art sensibility at work with the giant photos of Yoko on the walls of the record company office. The notion of celebrity is also played with as the kidnappers lair has a giant poster of Yoko. One of the kidnappers stops molesting Yoko long enough to watch her on television, as if having possession of the live star is not enough.

Whether Momoe's Lips is truly erotic is dependent on the individual viewer. Fujii does begin with an extreme close-up of a tongue finding its way into a belly button. This is followed by several other shots, also composed in such a way that the female body is abstracted into smaller segments that are not immediately recognizable. In much the same way, the whole of Momoe's Lips may be of questionable value, but there are several parts that are worthy of consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:56 AM

February 05, 2015

Brotherhood of Blades

Xiu Chun Dao
Lu Yang - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Brotherhood of Blades is one of those films I wished I liked better. It's not that it is a bad film. The main problem for me is that there was not enough to make the film substantially distinguished from other Chinese period films.

The story takes place in the early 17th Century, with the eight year reign of the influential eunuch, Wei, ended by the Emperor. There is a purge of Wei's supporters carried out by a special team of assassins. Three of these members have a sworn brotherhood, and are chosen by the head of the secret service to find and kill Wei. What happens is that past secrets catch up on the major characters, with ill-fated results for all. Within the first few scenes, the vulnerable aspects of the characters are introduced.

The biggest problem is that Lu Yang's depiction of action mistakes excessive quick cuts makes a scene more exciting. The organization of each shot is logical, flowing with each successive shot. Yet every bit of movement is broken up into so many smaller parts that it loses the sense of physical exertion that would be taking place were the action filmed in longer takes. What we have are a collection of shots lasting no more than a few frames, rather than even whole seconds of screen time. One of the strengths of past Chinese language action films was to let the camera roll long enough to provide a full portrayal of where the characters were in relation to each other, the space they were in, and their respective movements.

One of the more interesting characters, given short shrift, is Wei's female bodyguard, Ting. Introduced when the three "brothers" first trap Eunuch Wei, Ting is seen again when traps are set on the trio. There seems to be a scene missing as Ting's reappearance is abrupt, possibly the result of the modest budget for the production. Nonetheless, Ting does provide contrast to the two more traditional female characters, a courtesan who has her own reasons for not wanting a seemingly chivalrous buyout of her contract, and the cute daughter of a doctor.

The literal Chinese title is "Embroidered Spring Blade", referring to the design of the swords used by the assassins. A modest hit in China, Brotherhood of Blades managed to get five Golden Horse nominations, including star Chang Chen for Best Actor, and Chin Shih Chieh, who played Eunuch Wei, for Best Supporting Actor. The sole win was for Best Costume Design.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:49 AM

February 03, 2015

John Wick

Chad Stahelski - 2014
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

One aspect of John Wick that I noticed was that it took place in a version of New York City that was strangely depopulated on the streets. Part of the action takes place in a hotel, although from the exterior one would not know the function of that building, an older building, wedge-shaped, something like a thin slice of cake. It is a private hotel that caters exclusively to highly paid assassins, with the one rule being that no business, as such, is to be conducted within the hotel. The name of the hotel is The Continental, perhaps named after Dashiell Hammett's character, The Continental Op.

Unlike Hammett's character, we know the name of the retired hit man. Unfortunately, the son of Wick's employer does not, instigating the man against the mob narrative by stealing Wick's vintage Mustang, which Wick refused to sell, and killing Wick's puppy, a posthumous gift for the wife Wick has just buried. The mob boss, Viggo, offers a two million dollar bounty for the killing of Wick, an offer accepted by Marcus, Wick's friend and mentor.

There is a visual reference to Jean-Pierre Melville's The Red Circle within the elaborate nightclub where Wick first tracks down the son. What is worth noting is that Keanu Reeves at age 49 when the film was made is older than Alain Delon, in his early thirties at the time he appeared as a world-weary hit man for Melville in that film as well as Le Samourai. One can interpret what exists of a story line as one about people in a profession that in general does not allow for aging. Even when Wick is able to dispatch a prodigious number of thugs and bodyguards, he not entirely superhuman, succumbing to body blows and a well placed knife.

John Wick does not have the substance of the films that were the sources of inspiration, but the film does offer plenty of visual pleasures. One such scene is in the night club with Wick shooting his way through the crowd, chasing after the son who clad only in a bath towel, the flickering lights of the nightclub adding to the kinetic quality of the action. The flashing red light of a police car parked in front of Wick's house lights Keanu Reeves from behind, suggesting his turn as a vengeful creature from Hell. New York City is primarily a collection of imposing, often ornate buildings, silent stone edifices from the outside, hiding chaos and anarchy within. Only Brooklyn Bridge Park is filmed in warm colors.

It is probably to the film's benefit that John Wick does not pretend to be more than it is, essentially just allowing the film to speak for itself without any side characters attempting to justify Wick's actions. Sure, the scenes with puppy dogs tug at the heart, that's their function, and it's designed specifically to make John Wick essentially a good guy in a universe of bad guys and girls. Here, sound and fury signify sound and fury.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:23 AM

January 27, 2015

Duane Michals: The Man who Invented Himself

Camille Guichard - 2013
Alive Mind Cinema Region 1 DVD

What I find interesting in the past few years is that what is categorized as a documentary has taken on various forms, all veering away from such traditional notions of chronology, revealing of facts, or any attempt at objectivity. A good part of Guichard's film takes its visual queues from Michal's photography, so what we are looking at are glimpses of dreams and imaginings.

Michals discusses photography as being a reflection. What are first seen are portraits of celebrities, most easily recognizable, and within the context of style and subject, relatively traditional. Most of Michals' photographs, the more personal work, plays with light, is often sexually charged, and often makes use of just a portion of a body, or bodies. Some of these photos are parts of dream-like narratives.

Filmed not long after the photographer turned eighty, Michals comes off as a child in an octogenarian's body, giving voices to various props like a stuffed bird or a model head, playing with a bowler hat in tribute to his time meeting Rene Magritte in Brussels. The closest to anything biographical are references to his childhood in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. Michals does some discussion of his work as a photographer who originally was intending to be a painter, who finds his visual inspiration from other painters. In terms of becoming a photographer, Michals did invent himself, describing his transition from painter and graphic designer as being "self-taught".

I've not been able to find much about Camille Guichard. His other available work as a director was a documentary on sculptor Louise Bourgeois. In a description of what was intended while production was still in progress, Guichard's aim was to create a "kaleidoscope of photographic sequences". This posting by Shelley Rice discusses some of the making of the film, making it clear that what we see is the result of an active collaboration between the filmmakers and their subject.

The playfulness of Michals does get pushed when a photographic exhibit is created for the benefit of the wildlife that lives near Michals' Vermont home. For those with either a vague knowledge of Michals, or no knowledge at all, some of what is seen will be confusing, without context or any kind of explanation. While their relationships to Michals is usually assumed by their function, be it model or photographer's assistant, various people appear and disappear without any explanation, some just seeming to act as foils for Michals' story-telling. Again, neither Guichard nor Michals has any interest in the more traditional or expected demands of documentary. Hopefully, this will not dissuade those unfamiliar with Duane Michals from taking a look at his life and work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:48 AM

January 20, 2015

The Pirates

Haejeok: Badaro Gan Sanjeok
Lee Seok-hoon - 2014
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Without apology, I happen to like pirate movies, a once viable genre that eventually disappeared about fifty years ago. Even better are movies with female pirates, not that there are there are more than a handful, with one of my favorites being Jacques Tourneur's Anne of the Indies. While pirate captain Yeo-wo shares the narrative with other characters, Son Ye-jin's action set pieces set her apart from past actresses who at most swung from the ropes, and briefly waved swords.

Some of the finer historical points may be lost, but the film takes place in 1388 during the foundation of the Joseon dynasty. A royal seal from China is lost at sea, swallowed by a whale. Several rival groups are after the whale. Among those in search of the whale, are Yeo-wo's former captain, Soma, renouncing his piracy for amnesty with the new government, a mountain bandit names Crazy Tiger who is totally ignorant of sailing or sea life, as well as Yeo-wo, who has a past link with the whale. One of the better visual gags is of Crazy Tiger's boat speeding across the ocean, pulled by the unseen shark, observed by Soma who was assured that he had the fastest seafaring vessel.

In ways both expected and unexpected, Lee Seok-hoon has been inspired by Steven Spielberg. The story, stripped down, of course recalls Moby Dick, but also there is a bit of that most famous redo, Jaws, especially when the mountain bandits encounter a shark for the first time, sailing in a very small boat. More elaborate is a scene that takes the runaway ferris wheel from 1941 and amplifies it, with a giant, runaway wheel destroying a village, while at the same time, Yeo-wo flees pursuing soldiers by hurtling down and elaborate course of water slides. While going down the slide Yeo-wo breaks apart portions behind her, contributing to the scene of massive, comic destruction. Lee also recalls other films, with Yeo-wo and Crazy Tiger shackled together and on the run as in The 39 Steps, and a scene with the two comparing scars was certainly inspired by Lethal Weapon 3.

Maybe it was because her role was the most physically demanding, but Son Ye-jin won as Best Actress for the most recent Grand Bell awards, South Korea's equivalent to the Oscars. Winning Best Supporting Actor was Yu He-jin in a mostly comic performance as a seasick pirate who takes off for land, joining Crazy Tiger's gang where he is constantly promoted or demoted, depending on the whims of his boss.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:20 AM

January 15, 2015

Screaming Mimi

Gerd Oswald - 1958
Sony Pictures Choice Collection DVD

In most of her screen appearances, Anita Ekberg would be a character, sometimes of herself. To paraphrase Andrew Sarris on the similarly endowed Jayne Mansfield, if she hadn't already existed, she would have had to have been invented. More than any of the European "bombshells" of the Fifties and early Sixties that simultaneously exploited their sexuality and were exploited themselves, Ekberg always seemed a bit bigger than life. Her face was broader, her breasts appeared bigger, her thighs, meatier. How it came to pass that her two films that gave her roles of substance were both directed by Gerd Oswald is unknown to me, but Ekberg's recent death was motivation for me to see Screaming Mimi again.

There is some resemblance to Fredric Brown's novel, but much of it is tossed aside. In the novel, Yolanda is first seen in a state of undress. The series of murders is reduced to one unsolved case. Most significantly eliminated is the question of what was witnessed, who was the murderer, and who was the victim? One might argue that in relation to the themes presented by Brown, Dario Argento's unofficial remake, The Bird with Crystal Plumage is the more faithful filmic recreation.

Oswald plays with the idea of Anita Ekberg as a mostly unattainable sex object. In the first shot, Ekberg emerges from the ocean, maybe not Venus in the shell, but close enough. Her one piece bathing suit seems a size too small, revealing a little extra flesh both front and rear. Nudity could only be suggested, but for its time, imagining Anita Ekberg nude in the outdoor shower was probably good enough for male audience members.

The fantasy of sex, more specifically with Anita Ekberg as an object of fantasy, is played with when she performs her nightclub act. Ekberg's body is recognizable even in shadow, and there are several shots where she is only seen in shadow. The nightclub performance has Yolanda dancing with chains that she eventually breaks, suggesting that she is neither to be thought of as a slave or someone who could be kept. The film ends with the recognition that Yolanda is schizophrenic, and unaware of her own reality. One might interpret Screaming Mimi as being something of a parable about Hollywood, about a woman who invokes interest due to her strong sexual presence, of men fighting over her, confusing what they think is best for her with their own respective self-interest, and the confusion these men have between the image of Yolanda, whether it's the image they create, or the image Yolanda chooses to project.

Can a film be both a critique of the "male gaze" as C. Jerry Kutner has written, and at the same time an act of self knowledge? That first low angle shot of Anita Ekberg's posterior suggests that the film plays it both ways, which is OK with me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:53 AM

January 13, 2015

Once Upon a Time in Shanghai

E Zhan
Wong Ching-po - 2014
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

It's been a while since I've seen any films by Wong Ching-po. And even if Wong relies on style over substance, I don't mind if only because too many films seen recently lack anything resembling a visual style. I don't know who made the decision to have Once Upon a Time in Shanghai be presented in a digitally created monochrome, with bits of color tinting on a couple of details, but I liked it. And if the influence was more Sin City than, say, Lady from Shanghai, so be it. Call it "kung fu noir".

The film takes place in 1930. And similar to a couple more famous, and epic, films with the "Once Upon a Time" title, Shanghai is presented as a land of promise for some young men from a mainland Chinese village. Ma Yongzhen wears a turquoise bracelet given to him by his mother, a reminder to be careful about using his lethal right fist. Not that wearing the bracelet keeps Yongzhen from getting into any fights, but it does keep him from killing anyone until later in the film.

Yongzhen learns how Shanghai is controlled by four gang leaders, with half of Shanghai controlled by the upstart Long Qi. There's also business dealings with the Japanese with opium shipped in the guise of tea leaves. After Qi and Yongzhen test each other's martial arts skills, Qi hires Yongzhen to work for him in his nightclub as a waiter. Even though Yongzhen is aware that he can easily follow Qi using his fighting skills, he chooses to live honestly, in modest circumstances. Even though he is a gangster, Qi even has his own code of honor, choosing not to go into business with the Japanese, aware as he is of their plans for eventual takeover.

Wong's film is a loose remake of Boxer from Shantung (1972), with the older film's star Chen Kuan-tai appearing here as one of the older gang leaders. Sammo Hung is the big name here, but his part is really a supporting role, as the chief of the various peasants and laborers who eke out marginal lives, away from the bright lights. As Yongzhen, Philip Ng does possess some resemblance to Bruce Lee, with his lithe body, hair combed over his forehead, and boyish grin that makes him look much younger than his 37 years. Andy On is equal to Ng in martial arts moves, though his forced laugh in his early scenes is grating.

The "Making of" supplement gives a hint of what Once Upon a Time in Shanghai might have looked like in color. Not so coincidentally, another variation on the story, with a bit more effort in recreating the era, is the John Woo produced Blood Brothers, with musical numbers also taking place in the Paradise Club. If past history is any indication, Wong Ching-po's film will hardly be the last version we will see of this story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

January 08, 2015

Finding Fela

Alex Gibney - 2014
Kino Lorber BD Region A

It's been about thirty years so my memories about this are a bit fuzzy, but my introduction to Fela Kuti took place at Denver's Film Festival. I handled the physical presentation of 3/4 inch video tapes of Kuti in concert. This was somewhere around the time that Talking Head's album, "Remain in Light", came out, and there were several artists incorporating African music into rock music, the genre that was dubbed Afrobeat. Since the tapes were shown at the theaters in the Tivoli 12 multiplex, the walls didn't do too much to prevent the music from bleeding into the adjacent theaters. If you really wanted to enjoy Kuti's music, it was best to play it reasonably loud.

Alex Gibney's documentary might actually work best for those with some familiarity with Kuti, rather than those encountering his music for the first time. Gibney cuts between some chronology of Kuti's life, the real talking heads, people who knew Kuti over the years, and choreographer-director Bill T. Jones' efforts to bring a musical about Kuti to the Broadway stage.

For those familiar with Gibney's past work as documentarian, Kuti's life and music is as politically charged as any of Gibney's past subjects. The film is partially a history of Nigeria, primarily its post-colonial history, given to a succession of dictators, and an oil based economy that has favored a select handful. Kuti was the son of a nationally known Protestant minister and educator, and a feminist mother. Not mentioned in the film are that Kuti has two brothers, bother medical doctors, or that he is first cousin to the Nobel Prize winning author, Wole Soyinka.

There is some comparison of Kuti with Bob Marley, in that both used the popular music native to their respective countries to address social issues. Also, both charismatic men had several "wives" simultaneously, Kuti going so far as to marry twenty-seven women at once. As a reaction to the lack of real democracy in Nigeria, Kuti and his large entourage of musicians, dancers and support lived in a compound named the Kalakuta Republic, for Kuti, an independent state within Nigeria.

Gibney incorporates a section of the 1982 documentary, Music is a Weapon, in which Kuti shows off the various scars received following his arrest and imprisonment following the release of "Zombie", an album containing songs critical of the Nigerian military. There are also excerpts of Kuti and his ensembles in concert, though not enough of them, as well as excerpts from the Broadway show.

I'm not sure if Fela Kuti is really "found" here. The various parts give hints regarding the life, music, politics and contradictions, with some discussion of his musical influence. There is a sense, for me, of incompleteness. Perhaps the inclusion of Jones and his staged tribute may have been an attempt to make Kuti relevant almost two decades after his death. For myself, the best way to find Fela is to let the music speak (or sing) for itself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 AM

January 06, 2015

The Claire Sinclair Show

Nico B - 2014
Cult Epics Region 0 DVD

Until this DVD found its way to my mailbox, I had never heard of Claire Sinclair, or known of the existence of the Erotica Channel, apparently one of the many channels found on YouTube. As a result of a couple of serendipitous events, catching the eye first of pin-up artist Olivia De Berardinis, leading to an introduction to Hugh Hefner, Sinclair became the 2011 Playmate of the Year. Sinclair interviews herself via cross cutting between two sides of the stage, with each version of herself distinguished with a change of clothing and make-up. Some shots of Sinclair nude indicate that she is, convincingly, abundantly all natural.

That in itself wouldn't be enough incentive to check out this disc, but an interview with Bunny Yeager was cause to take a look. As it turned out, what is documented here is a last interview with Yeager and what is listed as her last shoot, with Sinclair as her subject. If the name of Bunny Yeager is unfamiliar, most would know of her most famous muse, Bettie Page. The most commonly reproduced photos of Page were those shot by Yeager. Sinclair does her darndest to be a second Bettie Page, but doesn't have Page's disarming smile that transformed tawdry cheesecake into not quite innocent fun. What might be said of Sinclair is that she appears to be smart enough to know how to make the most of her fame, and not find herself in the kind of precarious financial position Page was in after she stopped modeling, or discovered that others, much later, were making money from her name.

Yeager, who died last May at age 85, deserves mention as a pioneer. A former pin-up model herself, Yeager found lasting fame behind the camera, not only as one of the first models to become a photographer, but with her niche of gorgeous women in various states of undress. Amazingly, the collaboration with Page only lasted one year, 1954. Yeager discusses how Page wore costumes designed by Yeager, and how she made her models feel comfortable in front of the camera.

Yeager mentions photographing Maria Stinger, dubbed the "Marilyn Monroe of Miami" due her close resemblance to the actress. Further investigation shows that a deeper interview would have been fascinating, as Sammy Davis, Jr. acted as an photographic assistant to Yeager in 1955, and also did the iconic photo of Ursula Andress in the white bikini, undoubtedly helping sell tickets to a public about to be introduced to a character named James Bond.

Most of the shots of Bunny Yeager photographing Claire Sinclair, concentrate on Sinclair, which I guess is fitting since it is her show. We do see some shots of Yeager operating her camera. What I would have liked is if the soundtrack, a variation of a theme by Bill Haley, had been dispensed with, and instead, we would have heard Yeager coaching Sinclair on her poses, as well as directing how lighting would be used. Sure, the cheesecake can often be delicious, but I want to know about this particular chef's recipe.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:38 AM

January 01, 2015

Honey

Miele
Valeria Golino - 2013
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

I don't know if there is an Italian equivalent to the expression, "to die like a dog", but that is what happens to the people who choose suicide rather than continuing a painful existence with a terminal illness. These deaths are made possible by Irene, a young woman known to her customers as Honey, who provides an illegal barbiturate purchased in Mexico, sold as a veterinary product.

Valeria Golino's film follows Irene in her routine of pretending to be a college student, involved with a married man, her flights between Mexico and Italy, and her dispensing of her services. Irene works on behalf of an unseen arranger, and sees herself as providing a service that has its own rules and ethics. Things are upended when it is revealed that one of the clients is not ill at all, but is considering suicide as a reaction to his own loss of interest in the world. Much of the film follows the conflict between the client, Grimaldi, and Irene, and the relationship, an odd and fragile kind of friendship that follows.

Golino isn't interested in debating the morality or validity of what Irene does from a greater, social standpoint, but is instead interested in the questions from a strictly personal point of view. The film then is not about the right or wrong of assisted suicides, but about Irene's steps to confront the ambiguities in her life.

As a filmmaker, Golino uses lots of close-ups of Jasmine Trinca's face. Mostly, these are full frame shots, sometimes using shadows, but also partial shots of Trinca's face, as well as frequent use of negative space. I am not sure if this was intended to provide a visual correlation to the ambiguities in Irene's live, but her appearance is subject question, especially when she strolls around a Mexican border town in jeans and a short sleeve shirt, neither clearly male nor female.

The idea of death as a form of travel, of going to a different or better place, is echoed in shots of a bridge, as well as planes flying in the background of shots of Irene. Golino also uses shadows extensively. Irene keeps herself in motion, perhaps an unconscious act to ward off death, scuba diving and especially bicycling. There is symbolism, certainly, but it is deftly integrated within the narrative structure.

Music is also key, with the music being completely diegetic, be it the rock music Irene listens to on her earphones, to the music the clients choose to hear during their final moments. The songs range from Talking Heads, Thom Yorke, and The Shins to Bach and Italian pop singer Marino Marini. Not official, but a soundtrack album of sorts can by found at Youtube for now.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:34 AM

December 30, 2014

Verdun: Looking at History

Verdun, visions d'histoire
Leon Poirier - 1928
Carlotta Films US All Region DVD

Even if there is no specific interest in World War I, or in this historic battle, as a work of cinema, Verdun should be of interest as a lot of what is commonplace in film and television has its roots here. What is significant is the combination of large scale historical recreation, a fictional story, and some incorporation of documentary footage. As is mentioned in one of the supplements discussing the restoration of this film, there is also the unmistakable influence of D. W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein.

Not exactly as "lost" film but one that was only available in shortened versions, the film we have is the complete two and a half hour version, restored from a print in the Moscow archives. Poirier's recreation of the battle scenes, done with World War I veterans, was so convincing that his footage has been misinterpreted as having been shot at the scene of actual fighting, and used in other documentaries on Verdun.

But it addition to the convincing footage, are the other questions regarding making a film about a national even, especially one that is emotionally loaded. Just as, to give a recent example, how does a filmmaker responsibly recreate any part of the events related to September 11, 2001, so too was this a problem for Poirier. As reported in the discussions by those involved with the restoration, there was resentment in Poirier's choice not present the German soldiers as villains, but with the same dignity as the French troops. One also needs the perspective of history, with Marshal Petain, re-enacting a moment from 1916, still considered very much a popular hero at the time the film was made, a hero so beloved that it enabled his ascent to the leadership in France in 1940, and the personal and political disaster that followed.

An example of Poirier's cleverness is in using documentary footage from a parade of German soldiers. The solders go by an open barn or storage shed. We can see some soldiers peering out from the dark interior. Poirier cuts to a shot of his actors as the soldiers looking out from inside the building. It's the kind of moment that viewers are use to seeing now, taken to an extreme in something like Forrest Gump, but still a new technique at the time. On a more intimate level, Poirier frequently uses close-ups of hands - a woman giving a soldier a small crucifix before he goes off to battle, hands manipulating a compass. The mechanics of war are best illustrated with a shot of the soldiers manning a cannon, with each of the four soldiers having a distinct function in loading, shooting and unloading the cannon.

As the French soldier, who is followed into battle, Albert Prejean is best remembered for his association with Rene Clair's films The Italian Straw Hat and Under the Roofs of Paris. As Prejean's younger brother, Antonin Artaud appears briefly in the scenes at home, occasionally reading a book, and generally looking pained.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

December 18, 2014

Traffickers

Gongmojadeul
Kim Hong-sun - 2012
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

Probably not the first choice for viewing in the holiday season, Traffickers is a relentlessly grim look at black market organ transplants, inspired, as they say, by true events. The film cuts between several characters, seemingly unrelated, until they are gathered on a run down cruise ship that travels from Korea to China. One of the passengers, a wheel-chair bound woman, is abducted, with surgery done by a drunk, discredited doctor. Even when one thinks all the narrative pieces have come together, Kim has a couple more surprises at the end.

Even though the story involves black market criminals, what brings all of these characters together is money, or the lack of it. The ones who profit the most, perhaps unsurprisingly, are those who need money the least.

It is near the conclusion that sense is made of the several flashbacks employed throughout the film. Even with an explanation that is suppose to tie things up, there are a couple of loose threads to the story.

I'm not going to fault Kim for being ambitious with his disjointed narrative, but not everyone can be a Robert Altman or even a Quentin Tarantino. What Kim does, that I liked, was that he would make cuts that the viewer would assume were from the point of view of one character, but are revealed to be that of someone completely different. There is just enough invention to explain why Kim won for Best New Director for the 2012 Blue Dragon Awards.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

December 16, 2014

The Long Hair of Death

I Lunghi Capelli della Morte
Antonio Margheriti - 1964
Raro Video BD Region A

Anybody looking for scares is probably going to be disappointed with The Long Hair of Death. Maybe fifty years ago, there were a few screams at the sight of what was suppose to be the decaying corpse of Barbara Steele, with a handful of maggots moseying around the remaining flesh near her eyeballs. Otherwise, what we have is pleasure of the camera surveying a deep, dark dungeon decorated with spiderwebs aplenty.

And while the experience is nothing like seeing this film theatrically, this very handsome blu-ray does look quite nice viewed on a plasma television. There are several moments when what we see are several shades of black, with only a small portion of the screen lit. Even if gothic horror isn't a favorite genre, for those of us who love black and white movies, this is a treat. One of my favorite images is of the interior of a chapel, with the light pouring in, and the dust motes giving the shot an extra bit of texture, the camera panning from the window to the mourning courtiers.

The film takes place near the end of the 15th century, with a feudal lord burning a woman alive at the stake as a witch. Revenge comes in the form of the woman's two daughters who come into the lives of both the lord and his son. The younger daughter has grown from being a ward of the lord, to wife of the lord's son. There is a bit of mystery regarding the relationship between the men and women that is revealed near the end. A more serious analysis might position The Long Hair of Death as something of a critique of male entitlement and privilege, as well as a portrait of karma, with the film ending similarly to how it begins.

I usually don't do this, but I did see The Long Hair of Death twice, once in English, and once in Italian with English subtitles. Keep in mind that all of the actors were dubbed in both versions, a common practice in Italian movies at the time, but I was hoping that I would hear Barbara Steele's real voice in the English version. The voice for Steele was definitely not British. As it stands, the voices of the Italian actors are stronger dramatically, and reading the subtitles helped clarify who some of the characters were, and their relationship to each other.

Among the supplements is an interview with Margheriti's son, and horror screenplay writer Antonio Tentori, providing a couple of overviews of Margheriti's career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:49 AM

December 10, 2014

Werewolf Woman

La Lupa Mannara
Rino Di Silvestro - 1976
Raro Video BD Region A

In the accompanying interview, Rino Di Silvestro wants to make the case that his film was inspired by a recorded case of female lycanthropy, the only known case. This is the only film I have seen by Di Silvestro, a filmmaker known exploitation movies of, at best, questionable taste. But it is entertaining to see him talk about his films, so thoroughly is he convinced of his own hucksterism.

From what is seen onscreen, it is certain that Di Silvestro was also inspired by classic Universal horror movies. We have the title character seen in Eighteenth Century Italy chased after by torch-bearing townspeople. Unlike the classic monsters, though, this werewolf woman is first seen dancing naked by fire light before turning into a furry beast with a snout more like that of a dog than a wolf. It turns out that the werewolf woman is someone dreamt of by a young woman, Daniela, who almost two centuries later, bears a stunning resemblance to her fabled ancestor. That Daniela acts like a werewolf without the physical transformation makes this film closer in spirit to She-Wolf of London, a minor 1946 Universal horror film in which June Lockhart is led to believe that she is the curse descendant of a female werewolf. The concept of the female werewolf as the basis for psychological horror has been given more recent currency, by a female filmmaker, in the Argentinian Mujer Lobo.

Daniela has enough issues, having been raped at age thirteen, and conflicted about sexuality, both her own and everyone else. Several people are killed by teeth, hands and sharp instruments, with a brief respite in the form of the only man who does not come on to Daniela, allowing the relationship to blossom on her terms. This is arguably a psychological horror film, although the psychology as such is as messy as the killings.

The killings do take place during a full moon, and Di Silvestro uses a repeated visual motif of distant shots of the moon, alone in the dark, as well as moon-like images of car headlights and lamps. In addition to trying to place his werewolf story within the context of a legend, much like the classic Universal films, there are visual moments that also recall Italian horror films from the previous decade, although Annik Borel's nightgown is decidedly more diaphanous than anything worn by Barbara Steele. This was the only significant film appearance by Borel, who previously was in small supporting roles in U.S. films and television, notably Jonathan Kaplan's Truck Turner, returning to small roles in European productions after Werewolf Woman. Cinephiles will more likely recognize the name of Frederick Stafford, the police inspector investigating the murders related to Daniela, from his appearance in Hitchcock's Topaz.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

December 04, 2014

Sweet & Perverse Milly

Dolce e perversa
Christopher Clark - 1990
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

Usually I don't bother with hardcore porn, but I made an exception here. The bait was that this film was supervised by Gerard Damiano. For anyone not familiar with the name, Damiano was most famous for making Deep Throat, probably the most famous pornographic movie ever made. I had also seen his Devil in Miss Jones, his 1973 follow-up which attempted to up the ante with a mix of lesbian and straight sex, plus an ending inspired by Sartre's No Exit. Tried as I might, I was hoping to find some kind of information on the making of this film to find out what Damiano did here, as well as getting a better list of the cast. The version here also has truncated credits at the beginning, so I have no way of knowing which screenwriter was responsible for the poetic line, "C'mon, jizz on my ass".

Unlike the porn movies from the Seventies, there's no attempt at creating anything resembling a plot. Essentially it is about Italian porn star Milly D'Abbraccio coming to America, and coming in America, supposedly in search of guys with big penises. We first see Milly getting clean, taking a shower, showing off her abundant breasts and generously rounded ass. After that, Milly gets really dirty as it were. And there are several scenes with her having sex, including a threesome, with the kind of close-ups of coupling that make me wonder: how did they place the camera there, and wasn't it extremely awkward for the cameraman?

What makes this film odd is that it seems as if another movie was intended, as in order to get a feature length film, there are scenes that have nothing to do with Milly's American journey. Did the producer run out of money? Did Milly's visa expire, forcing her to return home? Did someone decide that there is only so much you can do with footage of Milly sucking, fucking, and being on the receiving end of some very dedicated cunnilingus? The film cuts to a scene in a strip club, the kind of place where calling it a dive makes it sound classy. A "gentleman's club" this is not. There is also a scene in some other club where there is an on-stage orgy. Is this a performance piece? Hard to tell. Some of the guys seem more interested in their drinks than in the male-female and female-female connections that are seen here, in a variety of combinations and contortions.

What is interesting is that, unusual for a film aimed at an audience of straight males, is a scene of two transexuals getting it on. The two here are quite passable. The way they are filmed makes their sexual identity elusive, especially in the beginning. Unlike the scenes with Milly with the long, uncut, close-ups of Milly's oft-used vagina and the several dicks that find their way into her orifices, the scene with the transsexuals is filmed with enough distance to make the viewer question what is going on in that bed, the kind of question that is answered best with the finger on the freeze frame button. Admittedly, this kind of scene might not appeal to everyone, but as far as I'm concerned, this is what sweet and perverse is all about.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:56 AM

November 25, 2014

The Conformist

Il Conformista
Bernardo Bertolucci - 1970
Raro Video BD Region A

Is it possible that I saw a slightly different version of The Conformist back in March 1971, prior to its New York City opening? I am certain that there were scenes of Pierre Clementi not simply describing his "Madame Butterfly" robe, but wearing it onscreen. Maybe I imagined Clementi's description so vividly that I've been certain for all these years, decades really, that the two scenes of Lino, the chauffeur, have him wearing the very feminine robe.

One shot that there is no question about is of Marcello, the title character, going to an official fascist government office, a huge, empty space. A large bust of Mussulini's head and a statue of an eagle pass each other across the frame. There was something surreal about that shot that has stayed with me.

There is also the low angle full shot of Marcello and his mother, shot from the ground tilting upwards, Marcello helping his mother into a car, the ground covered with golden brown leaves blowing. It is a shot that takes my breath away. I'm not the only one who has responded to that specific shot as it is briefly discussed in the supplement that looks at the history of the making of The Conformist.

And then there is the scene of Dominique Sanda and Stefania Sandrelli dancing together, what I like to refer to as the "First Tango in Paris". I was nineteen when I saw The Conformist for the first time, and that dance scene was, for me, one of the the most erotic things I had ever seen.

That one scene with Jean-Louis Trintignant walking along the sidewalk with the tilted angles? It wasn't until much later that I understood that this visual bit was taken from The Third Man, a film that featured Alida Valli, who appeared in Bertolucci's previous film, The Spider's Stratagem.

I can't be the only one who thinks that the scene of the killing of the professor not only is evocative of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, but Orson Welles' modern dress stage production, with its black shirted Romans, from 1937, a year before the main narrative of The Conformist takes place?

The other most famous film adapted from a novel by Alberto Moravia is Godard's Contempt. I read the novel, A Ghost at Noon as well as Moravia's novel which provided the basis for Bertolucci's film. Trust me on this: both films are better than the novels. Which brings me to both films have Georges Delerue providing the music. Both scores convey the sense of romantic yearning, although there is also a musical theme usually played in association with the fascist agent who keeps tabs on Marcello, a theme that owes something to Kurt Weill in his collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. There is also a little joke in the film with the announcement of dance music composed by "Maestro Delelrue". There is also the revelation that Bertolucci had originally approached Contempt star Brigitte Bardot for the part taken by Dominique Sanda.

The Conformist was not my introduction to Bertolucci. I had seen Before the Revolution thanks to the recommendation of a fellow film student. What seemed revelatory at the time has, in retrospect, also been a work that indicated some of what was to follow, especially Last Tango in Paris and 1900. Much of the imagery still remains powerful more than forty years later.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:06 AM

November 24, 2014

Touch of the Light

Ni guang fei xiang
Chang Jung-chi - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Like the use of color in the film, any drama in Touch of the Light is muted. Based on part of the life of blind pianist Huang Yu-siang, there are no crushing lows or overly triumphant highs. There is an ebb and flow of small obstacles and modest victories, giving the story some more of a sense of reality.

Chang and Huang knew each other at the university they were attending in Taipei. A documentary short made by Chang of Huang was seen by Wong Kar-wai who encouraged Chang to make a feature. The film is about Huang's first year away from home, with both the challenge of being the first blind piano student in Taiwan's university system, as well as learning how to live somewhat independently. The story is given a dramatic framework by cross-cutting with a story about a young woman, Jie, who has all but given up on her dreams of being a professional dancer, slogging through life working at a juice stand. The blind pianist and the aspiring dancer meet when Huang is spotted having difficulties crossing a busy intersection. While there is no romance, at least in the traditional sense, the low-wattage sparks between Huang and actress Sandrine Pinna seem to have been enough to help the film's commercial viability in Asia.

From the little in English that I've been able to read, the inclusion of Jie was not the only fictionalized part of Huang's life as portrayed in the film. What does seem truthful is Huang's reluctance to participate in competitions, where the students demonstrate their musical abilities in the form of small ensembles. That reluctance stems from both the assumption stated by some that have Huang winning as a kind of compensation for being, as well as the self-doubts created by overhearing that assumption expressed. Not stated in the film, but known to that Taiwanese audience, is that Huang has validated himself as a professional musician.

Chang does makes some interesting choices visually, using out of focus shots to convey Huang's visual impairment, as well as use of sound which for Huang was highly developed, be it the tinkling of ice, the rumbling of motors, or scratching the surface of a wall. Quick shots of hands and legs emphasis life as a tactile experience. One humorous scene has Huang playing a percussive version of "Flight of the Bumblebee" by tapping against his mouth and teeth. Huang also contributed to the film's score. Someone in Taiwan was observant of Hollywood's habit of awarding Oscars to movies about the physically challenged, with Touch of the Light offered as the Foreign Language Film submission last year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

November 10, 2014

As the Light Goes Out

Gow for ting hung
Derek Kwok - 2014
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

This is one of the few films that really could have benefitted from having a "Making of . . ." supplement. Even though As the Light Goes Out doesn't really connect on an emotional level until near the end, I was still curious about what it took to make a film that mostly takes place in a collapsing power plant, in the midst of a raging fire, with smoke so thick and black that it disorients even the experienced firefighters.

Having seen this film theatrically in Udine, Italy, I can attest that there is a loss of visual impact on the home screen. The story centers on the firemen themselves, with those rescued mostly on the periphery. The basic setup could well have been taken from a classic Hollywood template with the older veteran with one last day before retirement, the younger guy who has overwhelming responsibility thrust on him by chance, and the various professional rivalries. There is also the conflict between following the rules of safety and protocol versus taking chances to save lives.

As the Light Goes Out did make me think of Howard Hawks, minus any females helping or getting in the way, or Hawks' humor - primarily Only Angels Have Wings. These are working guys, whose job entails life threatening risks, with some kind of personal flaw, connected by a camaraderie based on their sense of professionalism and shared experiences not understood by outsiders. The back story of one of the firefighters taking the blame for not following orders, while the other gets the promotion echoes the theme repeated in several Hawks films where one of the characters takes on a challenge to redeem himself in the eyes of others as well as himself. Where Kwok differs from Hawks is that even with stars Nicholas Tse, Shawn Yue and Simon Yam, the films is more of an ensemble piece than Hawks' films centered on John Wayne or Cary Grant. The other significant difference is that while Hawks' men put themselves in suicidal situations, they always get out alive.

It will be interesting to know whether there will be more films like As the Light Goes Out, that is, big budget films financed by mainland companies, that take place in Hong Kong, and to see which filmmakers and actors will be involved. The one bit of humor involves a fake recruitment television ad for the Hong Kong Fire Department featuring Jackie Chan. The joke in the film is someone mentioning how Chan was the star of Police Story. With Chan evolving from the most famous face of Hong Kong cinema to one of the most vocal supporters of mainland China following the recent protests, his presence is more disconcerting than funny.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

November 07, 2014

Iceman

Bing Fung: Chung Sang Chi Mun
Law Wing-cheung - 2014
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

Would I have liked Iceman a bit more had I not seen the original version? Maybe. Would I have liked Iceman more had I seen it in 3D as did the audience in China? Maybe. But I did see the film from 1989, with the English language title of The Iceman Cometh (and, no, Eugene O'Neill had nothing to do with Clarence Fok's film other than the title).

The story about a frozen Ming Dynasty guard, discovered, and accidentally defrosted in contemporary Hong Kong, was sort of interesting. The real reason for watching Fok's film is to see that martial arts fantasy stolen by Maggie Cheung as the ditzy prostitute who takes the befuddled stranger from another century reluctantly under her wing. Cheung's underused comic chops are on display here, especially in one laugh out loud scene where she fakes an orgasm while with a client, sneaking a glance at her watch. For those unfamiliar with his earlier film, the much respected critic, Jonathan Rosenbaum, includes The Iceman Cometh as one of his one thousand favorite films, primarily for Maggie Cheung's performance.

As the "Making of . . ." supplements makes abundantly clear, this new version is definitely Donnie Yen's joint, even if Law Wing-cheung is the credited director. Unlike the earlier version, there is nothing and no one to distract from Yen as the most important character here, even with the heavy duty support of Simon Yam, Lam Suet and (the very popular in China) Wang Baoqiang. Eva Huang won't make anyone forget Maggie Cheung, and is seen here as a bar hostess who takes Yen's character for a ride financially when she discovers the value of the little gold pieces he carries in his pocket, but really has a heart of gold in caring for her aging mother.

The major mistake of this new version is that the character of Ying, waking up after a nearly four hundred year sleep, too quickly adapts to his new environment. There is a scene with Ying drinking out of a toilet bowl, one of several scenes of bathroom humor, but it is hard to believe that someone from the past would figure out how to use an internet search on a tablet within days such a radical shift in environment. Funnier is when Wang, as a rival Ming Dynasty guard also frozen in the same avalanche, uses his first pistol, and a more effective means of being a killer.

Much of the film is given over to special effects, making the most of the 3D effects. There is a lot of wire work, with Yen uncharacteristically making high leaps across buildings, lampposts and buses. There is also an elaborate chase of cars and people on one of Hong Kong's busiest bridges, actually shot on a life size reproduction. And as admirable as it is that having past the age of fifty, Donnie Yen is still making films that display his martial arts chops, his character of Ying is barely two-dimensional in this 3D extravaganza.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 AM

November 05, 2014

Dormant Beauty

Bella Addormentata
Marco Bellochio - 2012
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

It was purely coincidence that I would be seeing Dormant Beauty at the same time that Brittany Maynard's medically assisted suicide would be in the news. The closest in recent memory that the debate over the right to die made serious headlines in the United States was in the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, who remained in a coma for ten years. Marco Bellochio's film is about a more recent even in Italy, 2009, taking place during the last days of Eluano Englaro, in a coma for seventeen years, in a case that involved the government trying to intercede on behalf of the Vatican.

For Bellochio, the personal is almost always political, and vice versa. The film has four parallel stories, two of which are more directly connected to Englaro. A senator, dealing with his dying wife's request to not continue life with artificial support, has a crisis of conscious when deciding to maintain his political career by voting against the right to die along with the rest of his party. His daughter, Maria, has joined the protest against euthanasia, traveling to Udine, where Englaro spent her last days. At a rest stop restaurant, Maria and her friends encounter two brothers who are also traveling to Udine, in join the right to die supporters. Overhearing the conversation of the girls to bring water to Englaro, the younger brother splashes his glass of water in Maria's face. The older brother, Roberto, takes out his handkerchief, tenderly drying off Maria's face. It's love at first sight, even though Maria and Roberto haven't quite figured that out yet.

In the other stories, a young doctor tends to a suicidal young woman, a drug addict who sees no point in living, and a mother, a famed actress, keeps alive her comatose daughter at the expense of her relationship with her son and husband.

In an interview, Bellochio discusses how the title could have just as well been translated to English as "Sleeping Beauty". Probably to do so would have caused a misunderstanding with audience expectations. Further, the title could well refer to Englaro, seen briefly in a photograph on a news show, as well as the daughter of the actress, the drug addict, and the senator's wife.

Unlike the last film by Marco Bellochio, Vincere, with its more immediately recognizable subject matter of the rise of Mussolini, Dormant Beauty has received a less heralded stateside release. This might not be surprising as it took me some time to do some quick online research to get a clearer idea of the context, particularly in regards to the narrative strands for the senator and his daughter.

Even without understanding all of the political and cultural strands, there are several moments worth savoring - Alba Rohrwacher and Michele Riondino as Maria and Roberto, having a spontaneous tryst, with Maria quickly moving the crucifix around her neck backwards, Isabelle Huppert as the actress, reciting the famed lines from Lady Macbeth in her sleep, and Maya Sansa, who won as Italy's Best Supporting actress, as the addict squaring off against the doctor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:36 AM

November 03, 2014

Lamberto Bava's Demons

Demons / Demoni
Lamberto Bava - 1985

Demons 2 / Demoni 2 . . . l'incubo ritorna
Lamberto Bava - 1986
both Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

I have had a recurring dream that I recall twice, each time taking place in a different location, but the same story. I am wandering in nature, a path in the foothills or a desert region. Tucked away where there a no other buildings is a movie theater. The movie is something so rare, so difficult to see, and might possibly be a film by an esteemed director that doesn't actually exist. I wake up convinced that I had actually been to this movie theater in my dreams, although I the closest I get to watching a movie is the sound from the lobby.

I thought about that dream because Demons is suppose to take place in a theater that supposedly no one knew existed. That "Metropol" theater is pretty hard to miss. Maybe more difficult to believe is that a theater showing a free movie wouldn't be packed to the rafters, even if the tickets are being given out by a tall guy with metal pieces covering parts of his face. The theater is kind of snazzy, with posters for Metropolis, Four Flies on Gray Velvet and, um, No Nukes, and there's a motorcycle and a samurai sword exhibited in the middle of the floor for no particular reason other than to be used later in the movie. Even though the rules of exhibiting memorabilia are that you look but don't touch, it doesn't stop one woman from temporarily donning a gold mask with the face of a demon. No sooner that you can yell, Onibaba, the woman finds herself with a small bloody cut.

While the woman is in the bathroom, turning into some kind of demon with sharp teeth, frothing green foam from her mouth, the audience is watching a horror movie where some dumb teens find the grave of Nostradamus and of course have to open it. There is cutting between the demons in the theater and the demons on screen until the story concentrates on the kids trapped in the theater.

There are a couple of moments of visual wit going on here. The opening shot is if the headlights of a bus in the dark. That shot is almost duplicated in the film within the film, where the two headlights turn out to belong to two motorcycles. The demons' eyes light up in the dark like headlights as well. The opening scene on the bus nicely sets up the sense of disorientation experienced by the character, Cheryl, both a sense of uncertainty where she is traveling as well as in a seemingly deserted station. There is also one very funny visual joke involving coke and Coke.

Like the first film, Demons 2 bogs down to a humans versus demons battle, with most of the best scenes taking place in the first twenty minutes or so. The film begins with some visual humor when we see the explanation for what appears to be a very bloody knife. The narrative alternates between residents of a high rise apartment building, several whom are watching the same television show about demons. The television show is suppose to be a documentary, but it looks more like actors similar to those of the first film, trespassing on a grave where a demon is buried. One of the residents is played by ten year old Asia Argento, cute, but hardly giving evidence that she would grow up to be a respected filmmaker and prize winning actress. There is also a youngish woman named Sally, having a birthday, who would rather watch television than show up at her own party. Somehow, the televised demon pops out of the TV set, and turns Sally into a demon. Sally would rather chew on her guests than the specially prepared birthday cake.

The television show of the demon hunters features a moment that pays homage to Lamberto's father, Mario Bava. The photographer of the crew accidentally cuts herself. Some blood drips on the dead demon, bringing him back to life. The scene is lifted from the elder Bava's Black Sunday, when the vampire played by Barbara Steele is brought back to life in similar fashion. Shots of demon Sally, running in slow motion towards the camera, against a cyclorama depicting dawn, has a dreamlike quality also reminiscent of Mario Bava.

Both DVDs are gorgeous looking, and the image and sound are probably better than when the films first appeared at local multiplexes. If Demons 2 has the edge for me, it is because of the very nice establishing scenes of the apartment residents, divided by walls, but all watching the same television show, as well as scenes with a little, shaggy terrier becoming a demon dog, and the emergence of a flying baby demon. With four screenwriters, including producer Dario Argento, on both films, one would wish that there would have been a few more inspired moments to carry the nuttiness from beginning to the final fade out. To get an idea of what the Demon films could have been, had the filmmakers been more unhinged, I would encourage those who haven't seen it, to check out the Thai horror comedy SARS War. Both films take place in a high rise, as well as sharing flying baby monsters. Sometimes you have to take the ridiculous to extremes in order to be sublime.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:35 AM

October 30, 2014

Prince of the Night

Nosferatu a Venezia
Augusto Caminito - 1988
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

I'm not entirely sure what to make of Prince of the Night, starting with why One 7 Movies would bother creating a new English language title. Nosferatu in Venice sums up all you need to know. That the film stars Klaus Kinski is enough to inform most interested viewers that Kinski is reprising the title role in Werner Herzog's film from 1979. The film is not really a sequel to Herzog's film, nor does it really have much to do with F.W. Murnau's silent classic, other than the name of the vampire. More confounding is that it's a film that might have actually been better than what we have here had the production not been disrupted by the whims of the star.

Original director Mario Caiano doesn't have the most distinguished filmography, but it does include Nightmare Castle starring Barbara Steele. Reportedly Caiano was fired at the request of Kinski. According to IMDb, Maurizio Lucidi, who directed the very good Designated Victim, had a hand, as did Luigi Cozzi of Starcrash infamy, as well as Kinski. Directorial credit went to producer Augusto Caminito. While there is no discernible sense of visual style, the chaos of the production may at least partially explain why what is seen is serviceable most of the time, when the film could have benefitted from a better composed and lit shots.

Most of the action takes place at a mansion in Venice, where the Van Helsing proxy, Professor Catalano, shows up at the request of a princess. The legend is that Nosferatu was last seen in Venice in the 18th Century. Rather than assuming that the vampire has finally died or at least has found new hunting grounds with a new identity, Catalano and company have a seance which brings Nosferatu back to life. As it's carnival time, Nosferatu's centuries old clothing fits in quite well with the rest of the revelers. In this movie, Nosferatu has no fear of crucifixes, crushing one in his hand, and making the one held by Catalano red hot, burning the professor's hand. He also sees his reflection. Shotgun blasts through the stomach don't stop this vampire. What is suppose to kill Nosferatu is the love received from a virgin. And sure enough, there's a young woman ready to give her all, with little concern that the object of her affection is a nocturnal blood sucker, or that there is a considerable age difference.

As it turned out, Christopher Plummer, who plays Catalano, also played Abraham Van Helsing in Dracula 2000. The DVD comes with both English and Italian language tracks. I chose English in part to hear Plummer and Donald Pleasance in their own voices. Pleasance appears as a priest, a resident of the mansion. Having Plummer and Pleasance in the cast helps provide some instant gravitas to the film. Evidently, Pleasance must have enjoyed whatever work he did with Cozzi to work with him the following year on The Paganini Horror. Whatever pathos Kinski brought to the role of Nosferatu under Herzog's direction is absent here. Most of the time, Kinski just glares at the camera. His vampire visage, with the rodential teeth, is seen very briefly. Kinski took the role in order to finance his pet project, Paganini, what turned out to be his final film, and not to be confused with Cozzi's film. Of course, frolicking onscreen with a naked young lady might have had some incentive for the volatile actor.

With whatever was spent on providing something resembling star power, there wasn't much for special effects. A scene with with Nosferatu flying over Venice with his virgin in his arm is very obviously a superimposed shot, the kind that barely passed muster in cheapjack science fiction movies more than fifty years ago. Venice, usually seen at night, and a few fog machines, do most of the heavy lifting here, providing the kind of atmosphere that was probably used best in Don't Look Now. In a French interview, Luigi Cozzi describes the film as a catastrophe. And upon closer examination, the film is cobbled together with various elements that don't quite fit. It's a film maudit, alright, but one that is watchable for its own idiosyncratic pleasures.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:43 AM

October 28, 2014

Body Count

Camping del Terrore
Ruggero Deodato - 1986
Quadrifoglio All Region DVD

I just had to look. An Italian slasher film that takes place in Colorado. Starring Mimsy Farmer. What could go wrong?

I'm not sure how much was actually filmed in Colorado. IMDb says that Body Count was filmed in Abruzzo, Italy. If that was the case, it sure looks more convincingly like Colorado than what I've seen in several Hollywood films. A couple of details that Deodato and company got wrong were that at one point there's a sign for Interstate 80, which is north of Colorado, in Wyoming. I know because I drove from Oakland to Denver on that route. The main highway that winds through the Colorado Rockies is I-70. Also, at the camp where most of the film takes place, there's a big sign for Schlitz Beer. This could only take place in a parallel universe. Sure you can get your choice at your favorite place to imbibe, but if you're only going to have one sign at your drinking establishment, it better be for Coors. It's not quite like in Amsterdam where there are big neon signs for Heineken on virtually every corner, but you get the idea.

Anyways, the film takes place somewhere in Colorado. A high school girl goes off to a cabin with some guy, they have sex, and the girl, wandering in the woods, gets killed by someone with a very big knife for no apparent reason. Anybody looking for logic might as well give up at this point. There's no reason why a bunch of kids would want to go camping at a lodge that the owner declares is closed, and you have to wonder why no one check on the place before going there in the first place. The camp is run by a married couple played by David Hess and Mimsy Farmer. Hess made a reputation for himself as one of the home invaders in Last House on the Left so already he's under suspicion. Mimsy Farmer provided nightmares for Michael Brandon in Four Flies on Grey Velvet so you know that she's probably not to be entirely trusted. In addition to this pair being a match made in Hell, Mimsy is having an affair with Sheriff Charles Napier, the square jawed hero of several Russ Meyer movies. Seeing Farmer and Napier together was almost as horrifying for me as it is for Farmer's movie son.

So is the murderous "Old Indian" real, or part of somebody's imagination? Whoever or whatever he is, he goes around murdering the visiting kids - usually with long, sharp metal implements. Now you would think that the guy who gave the world Cannibal Holocaust would make a movie where sudden death would be accompanied by lots of tasteless gore and violence. Disappointingly, no. When the Italian DVD box features a rating saying the movie is acceptable for those older than 14, you know that whatever happens, it's not going to be very scary. And sure, there is some gratuitous nudity as well, but just not very much of it. This definitely the kind of movie that would benefit from at least one scene with someone's head on a stick.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:58 AM

October 23, 2014

Crazy Dog

Canepazzo
David Petrucci - 2012
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

This Fall has seen a couple of the smaller DVD labels offering films that are a bit outside their usual offerings. Crazy Dog is a relatively new film, from two years ago, from a company better known for excavating some of the most obscure European movies from the Seventies and Eighties, stuff from the most forgotten corners of film history. The writeup on the DVD cover attempts to make the case for the film as something in the style of Italian cinema from the Seventies, a blend of some giallo and police thriller, but the film is, for me, nothing like that at all.

What we have is a pretty good mystery, possibly inspired by a true story, although I take such declarations with a grain of salt. Crazy Dog is the name of a serial killer who has murdered a slew of people, seemingly at random. Marco, the son of one of the victims, interviews a criminologist who seems the best informed about Crazy Dog. The criminologist recounts events from twenty years ago, when Crazy Dog struck, and then disappeared, pursued by a freelance journalist.

The serial killer signs his work, on the body of one victim, the painting of another, and in blood on the doormat of the journalist. The film ends with a flashback tying several of the victims together, but not all of them. The explanations don't entirely make sense, suggesting that when David Petrucci wrote his screenplay, he hoped that the viewer wouldn't notice plot holes the size of craters.

Petrucci tries to goose up interest with cameos by Franco Nero and Tinto Brass. Nero actually has a fair singing voice that should have been used more. Here, he's an abstract painter of sorts and philosopher, like several of Crazy Dog's victims, living in the margins. Tinto Brass, with his ubiquitous cigar, is a mobster who makes a point of getting the respect he thinks he deserves. The inclusion of Nero and Brass is an attempt to provide some tenuous link to the glory days of Italian cinema as a provider of commercially popular, if often critically maligned, films in the Seventies.

Petrucci plays with color, tinting the scenes with the murders, but otherwise, any resemblance to earlier genre films is tangential. There are no extended point of view shots, and the scenes of violence are restrained, so much so that I almost wished that Ruggero Deodato, of Cannibal Holocaust infamy, would have stepped in to show Petrucci how to make the audience pay attention to what's on the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:54 AM

October 21, 2014

Kundo: Age of the Rampant

Kundo: Min-ran-eui Si-dae
Yoon Jung-bin - 2014
WellGo USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I would think that if anyone were to listen to the soundtrack to Kundo without knowledge of the film, hearing it cold for the first time, they would assume that the music was from an unfamiliar Italian western, and the score, if not be Ennio Morricone, than someone under the influence of the maestro. The ghost of Sergio Leone is in the film as well, with the close-ups of eyes of men challenging each other, the shots of horsemen riding the barren plain, and the lone warrior who comes alone, with a huge, where the hell did that come from?, machine gun. While this South Korean film is not as overtly indebted to Leone as The Good, the Bad, the Weird, the influence of the Dollars trilogy is impossible to miss.

Taking place in 19th Century Korea, the fate of a region is primarily played out by two outsiders, a butcher (considered the lowest in the caste system of the time) against the illegitimate son of a former governor, who acts on behalf of his father in hopes of gaining official position and acknowledgment of his paternity. The son schemes to eliminate any future heirs, and finds ways to force the peasants to give up their land, becoming slaves for a chosen elite. The butcher is compelled by circumstances to take up with an army of thieves who live in a hidden, mountain community, planning to take revenge on the injustice of the local government.

There are a couple of nice set pieces. In one, their is a fight between the government soldiers and the thieves at night. The illumination from a nearby fire and lighting provide a stroboscopic effect. The second is the final duel between the butcher and the former governor's son, done in a bamboo forest, with the trees cut down in the course of the fighting, providing both barriers and temporary platforms for each man. A chase through the bamboo forest unsurprisingly evokes memories of similar lateral tracking shots from Akira Kurosawa. Humor is provided by some very earthy dialogue, mostly provided by the band of thieves.

I think it worth pointing out that WellGo USA has significantly shortened the gap with the initial theatrical run of Kundo, last July, to its new US home video release. That short wait time for US viewers would be meaningless if Kundo wasn't worth watching, and not just a record setting box office hit in South Korea. Yoon tries to help the viewer with little freeze frame introductions to several of the characters, and there is some supplementary narration that provides historical context. Mostly, though, I would give credit to composer Jo Yeong-wook for providing the audio cues for the viewer, providing a musical shortcut to introduce the kick ass action, which needs to translation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:37 AM

October 17, 2014

Violette

Martin Provost - 2013
Adopt Films Region 1 DVD

So much of Violette seems to occur in shadows or in darkness. And some of this might be a visual signifier, with Violette LeDuc emerging from relative obscurity to late fame and fortune at about the same time that she ditches overcast Paris for sunny Provence.

As to how much of LeDuc's life was accurately portrayed in the film, I don't know. I only knew of LeDuc's literary reputation, primarily after her death. The film version of LeDuc is more complicated in terms of her sexuality, or more precisely, the disconnect between literature noted for its eroticism, and LeDuc's life mostly alone. There is the passion for Simone deBeauvoir, who refused LeDuc sexually, but in other ways proved to be of constant support, spiritually and financially. There is the constant neediness that puts off some that rightly or not, can not provide the kind of affection she seeks.

Provost's film provides a glimpse also of the politics and celebrity of the French writers who emerged after World War II, sometimes erroneously lumped together as "existentialists". LeDuc is initially helped by Albert Camus, who sponsored a series of novels by promising writers. Jean Genet thinks of LeDuc as his sister prior to their falling out. LeDuc is frustrated that her novels do not sell. The film chronicles LeDuc's fighting her own self doubts at being a writer, first encouraged by Maurice Sachs, and later by deBeauvoir, first tentatively taking pen in hand, and later pouring out her thousand paged memoirs which she assures deBeauvoir was pared to the essentials.

The film is organized by chapters, named after key people in LeDuc's development, by their first name. The first chapter is the most problematic in that if one does not know that Maurice is Maurice Sachs, the viewer might think that this is no more than a gay man, some kind of writer, who is married to LeDuc, has gotten her pregnant, and ditches her at an inconvenient time.

Arguably, it is also easier to make a film about a painter than a writer as the viewer can see examples of the art work, whereas for the writer, the hope is to convey the value with a few choice quotes and the endorsement of a few famous people. Provost's Seraphine was a more successful film because it was about a visual artist, and perhaps also because the historical setting was more remote, and the scope of the film smaller. Much of that film was from the point of view of the title character. In Violette, there is the feeling of observing a conversation where it is assumed you know what every one is discussing, that the names of writers and publishers have an understood significance.

Provost does attempt to create a visual corollary in frequently filming Emmanuelle Devos from a distance to indicate the aloneness of LeDuc. Devos, unconventionally attractive, but attractive nonetheless, is not convincing when LeDuc makes claims regarding her lack of beauty. It could well be that making a biographical film about a writer is a questionable endeavor. The films that seem to best convey what it means to be a writer are fictional, like Alain Resnais' Providence, or fanciful as in Spike Jonze's Adaptation. Ultimately, Violette is closer to a textbook, technically perfect but emotionally uninvolving, when it should have attempted to be messier and more transgressive, closer to LeDuc's life and literature.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:05 AM

October 15, 2014

Nekromantik

Jörg Buttgereit - 1987
Cult Epics BD Region A

Just in time for the holiday season, that is, if Halloween is your holiday, comes this infamous film released as a Blu-ray disc. I don't recall when I first was made aware of Nekromantik, but I was disappointed when, right after I joined Netflix in 2001, Jorg Buttgereit's film was no longer available. I guess this is an example of how good things come to those who wait, as the Cult Epics disc is loaded with both the director's version, the "grind house" version (complete with scratchy images), an earlier short film by Buttgereit, Hot Love, filmmaker's commentary tracks, and more.

Admittedly, a love story about a man, a woman, and a corpse, isn't going to appeal to everyone. On the other hand, the one left on the side of the road, I was not prepared for a film this funny. Sure, some of the over the top gore makes Herschell Gordon Lewis look like a master at discretion. Shooting Super 8, with friends over the course of many weekends, Buttgereit is closer to the Hollywood in the Bronx aesthetics of the Kuchar Brothers, if more transgressive than dared by the twins.

The tone of the film is set when a young couple, driving in the dark, try to look at a map instead of the road. Of course this leads to an accident, and what an accident. Buttgereit probably never heard of the Kuchars, and probably never heard the Jimmy Cross novelty song from 1965, "I Want My Baby Back", a parody of songs like "Leader of the Pack" and "Last Kiss". After waking up from a car crash, Cross looks for his sweetheart - "Over there was my baby. . . and over there was my baby . . . and way over there was my baby!". Hey, for some of teenagers at that time, this was pretty funny stuff the first fifty or so times we heard this song. "I Want My Baby Back" ends with Cross climbing into the coffin of his sweetheart. In short, young people, black humor, necrophilia - nothing new. Buttgereit has put on film the kind of stuff that was considered somewhat acceptable if kept in the imagination.

There has been serious analysis of Nekromantic by others. Suffice to say that this is the kind of film that will evoke different responses from different viewers, some plainly more interested in the visceral impact of the transgressive imagery than any meaning that might be derived from the strange love of Rob and Betty. For fans of Nekromantik, this new Blu-ray might constitute an embarrassment of riches. For those insisting on more tasteful artistic expressions, Nekromantic will be dismissed as an embarrassment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:06 AM

October 13, 2014

The Devil's Business

Sean Hogan - 2012
Mondo Macabro All Region DVD / BD Region ABC two-disc set

What, ahem, possessed Mondo Macabro to take on The Devil's Business? The inclusion in their catalogue is unexpected as it is a relatively new film, made by people for whom English is their native language, and hardly what one might expect for a genre mashup that starts off as a gangster film that turns into a horror movie of sorts, where even the blood and gore might be considered done in good taste. Writer-director Sean Hogan is frank in the commentary track about the debt owed to Harold Pinter in this dialogue heavy film. I can imagine that someone picking up this film for the title might be infuriated that there is more time spent on atmosphere, with extended scenes of a couple of white guys sitting around talking, while the kind of person who's familiar with Hogan's reference to The Dumb Waiter, possibly might be dismissive of a film featuring a vampiric homunculus.

In print, it might not sound like much, but there is something intriguing about Irish actor Billy Clarke, with only the left side of his face illuminated like a sliver of the moon, talking about the ghostly apparition of a woman who appears at night. The older Pinner, and the young Cully, two hit men, sit and wait in home of their victim, out for a night at the opera. For Pinner, "A job is a job", and waiting is part of what is required. Cully is impatient for something to happen. What begins as the story of two hit men waiting in the dark, turns into something else when the pair finds a room with a giant pentagram, a goat's head, and dead body.

This is also the kind of film I like to recommend to other filmmakers, to see what can be done with just a handful of actors, and a small digital camera. The commentary track is worth listening to, as producer Jennifer Handorf discusses some of the last minute changes done when the original location was lost, and production moved to the family home of her in-laws. Sean Hogan doesn't shy away from mentioning some of his sources for inspiration. Hogan doesn't attempt to pad things out, so that the film clocks in at about seventy minutes, taking in the lesson from Val Lewton that it is better to suggest horror with what you don't see, and let light and shadows do most of the work.

The DVD/Blu-ray set discs include interviews with Hogan, Handorf, Clarke and composer Justin Greaves, as well as a couple of music videos by Hogan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:16 AM

October 09, 2014

Chanthaly

Mattie Do - 2013
Lao Arts Media DVD

An admission here, that I have exchanged emails with the director and am a Facebook friend. If that doesn't bother you, read on . . .

Living even a few months in Thailand provided enough of an impression on me. Between the movies, with what seemed to be a new ghost story every other week, and just walking by the little ghost houses scattered throughout Chiang Mai, I started adapting the attitude that, yes, ghosts were among us, and as long as you don't bother them, they won't bother you.

Even though the basic premise of the Lao Chanthaly is similar to that of Thai films, that ghosts live among us, that is the extent of the similarity. No one runs around screaming hysterically. Nothing here to make the audience scream or laugh, or scream followed by laughter (and nothing compares to watching a Thai horror movie with a Thai audience). If anything, Chanthaly is more similar to Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, with the idea that ghosts live among us, but in a parallel environment within the same space.

The title character, a young woman, has a combination ghost house and altar dedicated to her deceased mother. Has she actually seen her mother's dead body, fifteen years earlier, the result of suicide by hanging, or is the a false memory? Her father insists that Chanthaly's mother died shortly after giving birth to Chanthaly. At various points, the viewer is teased into not being entirely sure about who is telling the truth. Chanthaly lives in virtual seclusion with her father in a firmly middle class house, providing a small laundry service from home, but otherwise never leaving the premises. Diagnosed with a weak heart, she is locked in, as she is told, for her protection.

While Chanthaly has been noted as the first horror film in the Lao language, the horror elements are minimal. What caught me off guard was that Mattie Do, and screenwriter Christopher Larsen eschewed many of the conventions one comes to expect from seeing a ghost story from Southeast Asian filmmakers. The first hour, especially, is closer to the more highbrow psychological horror films that more frequently garner critical attention.

The argument presented by Chanthaly's father and a doctor who treats her, is that a belief in ghosts is superstitious. For myself, as a Buddhist, I had to wonder what kind of karma would visit the father after he knock's down Chanthaly's altar. Some of the choices in the narrative were probably determined by the extremely limited budget, shooting in one location, with five actors and a dog. For those who have some kind of belief in the afterlife, Chanthaly suggests some reassurances. For others, this can be appreciated as a solid first film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:32 AM

October 07, 2014

The Slave

Scacco alla regina / Check to the Queen
Pasquale Festa Campanile - 1969
Mondo Macabro DVD Region 1 / BD Region A two disc set

Because she never appeared in any films that either got stateside theatrical release or any serious critical attention, I had made the assumption that Eric Rohmer's La Collectionneuse was the beginning, and end, of Haydee Politoff's acting career. I had forgotten that she also appeared in Rohmer's Love in the Afternoon. Seeing here name prominently listed for this film sparked my curiosity. Even though she is second billed here, Politoff has the title role. One can possibly interpret The Slave as being somewhat allegorical regarding Politoff's career as an actress, being passive about her choice of roles, going where the offer was most financially rewarding, and drifting away from acting when the producers stopped calling for her.

The opening titles of The Slave are printed over colored versions of Rorschach ink blots. Festa Campanile emphasizes the psychological aspects of the story over the erotic, which may well explain why the film failed at the box office. The film was one of a handful of films Festa Campanile made, hoping to repeat the international success of The Libertine. Most of eroticism here involves the masochistic fantasies of Sylvia, the character played by Politoff, on the receiving end of a woman's whip, the action obscured by heavily tinted lenses. The original title refers to a movement in a chess game, something apparently explained better in the source novel than in the film.

Sylvia takes on the job of being a non-sexual companion to the actress, Margaret, to keep from being bored with her upper class existence, giving her the illusion that she is doing something with her life. There is something self-contradictory as Sylvia also chooses to live in the most isolated way possible, away from as much outside stimulus as possible. Sylvia surrenders herself to Margaret, picking up after her, dressing as ordered, allowing herself to be transformed into a living statue, or become her footrest. Sylvia also deliberately gets caught with Margaret's lovers in order to be punished by Margaret. Yet in spite of living in an all female household, save for the chauffeur, Margaret has no sexual interest in other women, and toys with Sylvia's sapphic desires before ultimately rejecting her.

The Slave may be of greatest interest to those who love the films primarily from Italy and France that appeared in the late Sixties and early Seventies. The sexual subject matter was in part a reaction to the newly-enacted ratings code in the U.S., itself a reaction acknowledging that audiences were flocking to European films with their brief glimpses of nudity and more adult themes. One of supplements is a discussion of the films by Festa Campanile by critic Roberto Curti. There are also some trailers to other films by Festa Camanile. The brief look as Con quale amore, con quanto amore, with one woman slowly removing the stocking from another woman as a prelude to lovemaking, is quite sexually charged.

I suspect that Pasquale Festa Campanile's film will be remembered better for the sets and costumes, and serve as a snapshot of a certain era. A couple of the more memorable images are of star Rosanna Schiaaffino, seen on a floor surrounded by paper lira, and as a visual reference to the film's thematic concerns, as a Venus in fur.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 AM

October 02, 2014

Iguana

Monte Hellman - 1988
Raro Video BD Region A

Even though I think it's good that Monte Hellman's cut of Iguana is available, I still feel ambivalent about the film. I don't have any explanation other than that I don't connect with this film as I have with the others, and I have seen most of Hellman's films, the exceptions being Flight to Fury and China 9, Liberty 37. Still, there are things that I missed in a previous viewing on the original DVD release.

What did work for me was when Hellman cut between the character of Oberlus, the sailor with the scaly half face, and Carmen, the woman Oberlus would eventually kidnap to make as his unwilling wife. Oberlus rebels against both the mistreatment received by his fellow sailors, as well as maritime law. Carmen enjoys sexual freedom and rebels against the laws of the Catholic Church. Oberlus escapes from the ship he is on, finding himself on a small island where he proclaims himself king. He discovers a castaway, Sebastian, whom he makes his slave. At one point, Sebastian calls Oberlus a monster. Hellman cuts to Carmen telling a lover that she is not a monster. The characters are ultimately bound by institutionally established rules. Self-created senses of freedom are either short-lived or illusory.

I do have the nagging feeling that I should be seeing one of Hellman's favorite films, Outcast of the Islands, to have a better sense of what Hellman was aiming for. The Carol Reed film and Joseph Conrad story have some similarities, with a sailor protagonist destroyed by his own arrogance. I am simplifying things here, and Hellman never mentions Reed's film in any interviews about Iguana, but even the couple of video clips I saw of Outcast of the Islands right after seeing Iguana made me think there is some connection.

What did catch me off-guard was the introduction of the Iguana himself, Oberlus. He's first seen in profile, tossing his harpoon at another sailor who has insulted him. When Oberlus is first seen full face, I had to remember that I only imagined what he looks like based on the profile. There is never an explanation for why Oberlus has a disfigured half-face. It doesn't take too much psychological acumen to see Oberlus as a study in a man's dual nature, with the side considered monstrous overwhelming the less frequently seen human side. Without revealing too much, the film ends in a way that can be considered ambiguous, where the final act of Oberlus might be seen as both monstrous and humane.

The Blu-ray comes with a short interview with Monte Hellman, explaining how he got involved in making Iguana, as well as some stories about the production, and the fate of the film upon completion. There is also additional information in the booklet with an interview by Fangoria's Chris Alexander. I'm not sure why it wasn't mentioned, but while the filmography and interview include Avalanche Express, with Hellman completing the work of Mark Robson, who died prior to post-production, there is no mention of The Greatest, with Hellman finishing up for the late Tom Gries.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:50 AM

September 30, 2014

The Man who will Come

b>L'Uomo Che Verra
Giorgio Diritti - 2009
Palisades Tartan Region 1 DVD

The Man who will Come might not be quite in the rarified company of Forbidden Games or Come and See, but is still an effective film about war from the point of view of a child. Diritti's film was awarded several David di Donatello Awards, Italy's equivalent to the Oscars, winning best picture against Marco Bellocchio's stunning Vincere, with Paolo Virzi's The First Beautiful Thing running close behind. Unsurprisingly, ten year old Greta Zuccheri Montanari was nominated for best actress in her debut film performance.

The film is told mostly from the point of view of Martina, a young girl, who is also mute. The film takes place in a small Italian farming village, opening in December 1943, with German soldiers occupying Italy. While Martina can not speak, she is revealed to be an eloquent writer, almost getting into trouble for an observant essay culled from the conversations heard by the adults about the different factions involved in the war, knowing that there are people called Fascists, Nazis, and Allies, but not understanding exactly who they are or why they are important. The peasants are less concerned about taking sides, then of getting by, with several joining partisan activity primarily because it means getting the Germans out of Italy.

Shot with a digital camera, Diritti appears to have depended primarily on available light. This is especially effective with several scenes that take place with candle light. The use of light is especially important to the narrative as several scenes involve efforts by the farmers, partisans, and children, to stay hidden in darkness, whether in a farm house or in the woods. Diritti also allows for a point of view shot, with Marina partially covering her eyes while looking at the women make preparations for the birth of her baby brother.

in discussing the motivation for making The Man who will Come, Diritti was inspired by the events surrounding the massacre of civilians at Monte Sole, and how Italian cinema has avoided certain topics - ". . . Italy itself has essentially repressed the most heinous chapters. It has not come to terms with what was a civil war, albeit an undeclared one. It has preferred to make films on the stereotypes of the Resistance, or else give in to triumphalism, instead of reckoning with the many facets of history, whose memory it is important to keep alive. Especially when it comes to events such as the Monte Sole massacre. What happened 60 years ago in Italy is happening elsewhere today, and we must stay vigil so that civilians are always protected, and so that ideologies such as those that led to these massacres do not take hold."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:56 AM

September 26, 2014

Stunt Squad

La Polizia e Sconfitta
Domenico Paolella - 1977
Raro Video BD Region A

In the first scene of Stunt Squad a pair of repairmen show up at a tiny bar to fix a pay phone. Neither the owner nor the couple of patrons notice that the guys are planting a small bomb inside the small box holding the phone. After the repairmen leave, we see a guy, strangely shirtless, but wearing a fur lined jacket, making a call from a nearby phone booth. This is a rotary phone. Every time the shirtless guy dials a single number, the film cuts to a shot inside the bar. The viewer knows that that the bar phone is being dialed and that there is certainly a mechanism that is going to trigger a bomb. It's a simply done scene, yet very effective. There may be no surprise that there is going to be an explosion, but that still does not deny tension in this scene.

The original Italian title translates as "The police are defeated", and it is more accurate description of what happens in this film. The stunt squad devised by lead cop Marcel Bozzuffi is suppose be a bunch of Italy's brasher cops, guys who can speed through the streets on motorcycles while accurately shooting their targets at the same time. These guys are quite talented regarding stunts, but they aren't the most effective enforcers of law, managing to get picked off by the shirtless criminal, named Villa, who runs a protection racket.

Villa is play by Vittorio Mezzogiorno, described in an unattributed quote as "perhaps the most gruesome and ruthless villain of the Italian crime drama". There is a later scene where Villa and his gang beat up the pimp that gave away his hiding place. The pimp is then subject to amputation of his penis with a straight razor, the surgery suggested by camera placement rather than anything seen onscreen. The pimp, holding onto his bloody crotch, is shot to death by the machine gun wielding Villa. Under those circumstances, I would consider this a humane ending for the pimp. For gruesome and ruthless, I'd nominate the character Tomas Milian plays in Almost Human, a smalltime hood who gets his kicks breaking into someone's house, and kidnapping and torture are just the beginning.

The modest pleasures of Stunt Squad stem from the low tech special effects employed here. The cars and motorcycle chases are done on real streets, crashing and catching fire, without the benefit of any computer generated effects. Stelvio Cipriani's score is inventive in using a slide whistle in the main theme. Paolella employs his background as a journalist and documentarian for a scene with the movie cops watching a slide show of photos taken of real and recent Italian crime scenes. The English dubbing is quite good here, which is how I like to watch genre films from this era.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:13 AM

September 24, 2014

Run Silent, Run Deep

Robert Wise - 1958
KL Studio Classics BD Region A

Even though Burt Lancaster had established himself as both producer and star at United Artists, one of his savvier moves was to pair himself with actors who had greater box office clout. The first time out was with Gary Cooper and Vera Cruz, a film that has gained critical appreciation for having inspired some of the first Italian westerns almost a decade later. The teaming with Clark Cable is a bit more low key. Produced a year after Sweet Smell of Success, Burt Lancaster needed to make a film that had guaranteed commercial viability to counter the financial loss from the previous production. Made at a time when films about World War II were a viable genre, Run Silent, Run Deep is well-made, but hardly unconventional. As part of Robert Wise's filmography, it's an assignment, with the more personal I Want to Live! and Odds Against Tomorrow to follow.

What Wise brings is a visual discipline so that the viewer will think the film was actually shot on board a submarine, rather than a soundstage. While not the definitive submarine movie (that would be Das Boot), Wise limits the camera movement, can composes the shots to emphasis the limited space and the forced physical closeness imposed on the sailors. Most of the film takes place inside the submarine.

Gable is a captain forced to a desk job when his previous ship has been sunk by the Japanese. He is given the opportunity to take over command of a submarine, a position Lancaster has assumed would be his. Grudgingly continuing his role as executive officer to a new captain, Lancaster and the crew sail to the area where Gable's ship was sunk. Gable is hoping to get revenge against the ship that sunk him. It shouldn't surprise anyone that following a period of tension between Lancaster and Gable, or between crew members, that the Japanese ship is found and sunk.

The Japanese are generic here. There's a distance from the jingoism that might have been found in films made during the war. Office Brad Dexter does cast aspersions towards Jack Warden's sailor with the Germanic last name of Mueller. The film is more interested in the ideas of duty and protocol, done with impersonal professionalism. In an early part of the film, Gable forces the crew to repeat a drill where the submarine has to dive and be battle ready simultaneously in about thirty seconds. While the goal of the drill may well be for Gable's personal vendetta, there is also the sense that even without Gable, the crew would benefit from this kind of preparation.

The Blu-ray is basic, with just a trailer for extras. But the black and white cinematography by Russell Harlan looks beautiful here, with the occasional tilted angle and use of shadows that recall Wise's roots in horror and film noir. While he has written about his debut screen experience with Run Silent, Run Deep in his book, A Memoir, I don't think I would alone in wishing for a commentary track by Don Rickles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:05 AM

September 22, 2014

Firestorm

Feng Bao
Alan Yuen - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Firestorm may well be symbolic of not only what's has happened with the Hong Kong action movie, but Hong Kong itself - it's more sophisticated and more expensive, but not necessarily better than what was available in the past. It's obvious that Alan Yuen wants to take the police thriller to a couple of places were it's never been, both in terms of characters and set pieces, yet nothing in these efforts is more than surface deep.

Yuen seems to want to make a vague comment on the randomness of life, done with vehicle fatalities that come near the beginning and end of the film. In the first instance, a car driven by an ex-con, Tong, slams into cop Andy Lau's car while Lau is in the midst of chasing after crooks involved in an armored truck heist. Tong had nothing to do with the heist but is at the wrong place, wrong time, and his forced to act as a mole on behalf of Lau, who is trying to bust a major crime boss. The heist itself is one of Yuen's attempts to up the action film ante by having the armored truck picked up by a large construction crane, and lifted off the road.

Tong also has a young daughter. There are explanations, but I am going to assume that as the daughter only communicates by screaming, that she is meant be Yuen's idea of an autistic child. I don't know whether Tong is suppose to be a loving, but ignorant, father, or if Yuen really didn't think things through, but slapping a screaming autistic child probably isn't the best choice for trying to calm her down.

Lau plays a detective Liu, in charge of a squad that is trying to bust gangster kingpin Cao. Liu is so intent on making his case that he does what he can to incriminate Cao, only to to find himself compromised by hidden surveillance camera footage. Electronic surveillance is all over the place, used by cops and criminals alike. In one scene, Tong is about to participate in a robbery, but stops to make a call to make sure his daughter is looked after by an "auntie". Actually, the call is to Liu. The leader of this criminal gang checks to make sure about whom is receiving the call. Liu and company anticipate this kind of follow-up with a woman receiving the verification call by Tong's partner in crime.

Firestorm was shown theatrically in 3D in Chinese theaters. The final scene, especially, would be set up to wow the audience. Cars fly and crash, guns are blazing, and there are lots of fiery explosions. As Liu, Andy Lau takes one beating after another, including a chase that concludes with his falling from a ten story building into the kitchen of a little old lady. The "Making of . . . " supplements are interesting in showing how the film was produced. For all the flash and noise, Firestorm manages to be forgotten as soon as it is over.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:52 AM

September 18, 2014

Tinto Brass: Maestro of Erotic Cinema

Cheeky! / Trasgredire
Tinto Brass - 2000

Black Angel / Senso '45
Tinto Brass - 2002

Private / Fallo!
Tinto Brass - 2003

Monamour
Tinto Brass - 2006
Cult Epics BD Region A Five Disc Set

On the package jacket for this set is the anonymous quote describing Giovanni "Tintoretto" Brass as, "The Hitchcock of erotic cinema". I'm going to have to assume this is based more on Brass making appearances in his own films. With that constant, a very large, cigar in his mouth, Brass reminds me more of cigar chomping Ernst Lubitsch or William Castle. I would suspect Brass might even appreciate the comparison to Lubitsch as there are some thematic similarities the two share, although what is hinted at by Lubitsch is totally uncovered by Brass. As for that Hitchcock comparison, one guy is famous for Rear Window, while several of Brass's films could have been titled Rear End.

I also hardly think it coincidental that the picture of the new Blu-ray set has as disc partially out, reading "Ass Cinema".

The five disc set includes the last four features by Brass, plus an interview with Brass discussing his career as a filmmaker, with clips from several of his films. There is also a forty page booklet that has a transcription of the interview, done in 2001. Missing in the interview is any discussion of a name that appears frequently in the credits, Carla Cipriani, Brass's wife and a collaborator on several of the screenplays. My own familiarity with Brass's films prior to this set has been limited to Attraction, a somewhat experimental film from 1967, and The Key, something of a key film in Brass's filmography with a more constant emphasis on eroticism. What the documentary on Brass reveals is that female nudity has been a part of his work since the first feature.

It may be no surprise that the best of the films here is the one with the least nudity. For Black Angel, Brass took the same literary source used for Luchino Visconti's Senso, but updated the story to the last days of World War II, when German troops occupied Italy, still barely under the control of Mussolini. The woman, "of a certain age", is played by a real actress, Anna Galiena, a David di Donatello (italian Oscar) nominee both as Best Actress (No Skin and Best Supporting Actress (But Forever in my Mind. Entranced by an icy blond German officer, Galiena plays a woman who tries to avoid facing the realities of war, as well as Italy's precarious position, months away from liberation by Allied troops. There is an orgy that might well be a tip of the hat to Visconti's own World War II drama, The Damned. I wish Brass had resisted the need to show that the wife of a partisan, shot dead on the streets by a German soldier, was not wearing any underwear. The film is so handsomely produced that it looks like it was filmed in a more classic style than a film from 2002. Galiena, forty-eight at the time of filming, reminded me of the leading ladies from 1940s Warner Brothers movies, particularly Joan Crawford and Kay Francis. The soundtrack also includes the song made famous in The Blue Angel, "Falling in Love Again", sung in German by Marlene Dietrich. Visually, Brass takes some queues from the German artist, George Grosz, whose unflinching, and often exaggerated look at Germany after World War I. Grosz's work was classified by the Nazis as entartete Kunst - degenerate art.

Of the other three films, Monamour is the best, and might well be interpreted as Tinto Brass's final summation on film, art, and philosophy. The film also has the closest Hitchcockian moment when Anna Jimskaia is stalked by a man in an art museum, bringing to mind Kim Novak in Vertigo. Still, if one is to compare Brass with a more classical filmmaker, it would be Ernst Lubitsch. Several films by Lubitsch are about imagined infidelities, while very real infidelities are part of Brass's films. Whether sexual jealousy, real or imagined, is an aphrodisiac, is subject for debate. The female protagonists in both Brass and Lubitsch films live life on their own terms. In a Lubitsch film, these women are often elegantly dressed, while in a Brass film, the women live in a universe where you're overdressed if you're wearing panties. Ultimately, Brass makes explicit what Lubitsch could only hint at in the relationships between men and women.

The "Making of" supplements are worthwhile just to have Brass explain the wordplay involved with the Italian titles of his erotic films. In this regard, I would hope no one needs an explanation for the double entendre English language title, Cheeky!. Brass also shows himself to be a "hands on" director with his actresses. The frequent motif of mirror shots in these films, as well as the incorporation of large paintings, especially pop art, make Brass's films of visual interest. The frequent close-ups of bush, tush, poles and holes are more interesting in theory as Brass blurs the line between art and pornography. Even a comparison with Courbet's painting, "Origin of the World" will only get you so far. Whether or not one agrees with Tinto Brass and whether his stated intentions actually are realized with what is onscreen, makes this series of interest to the more serious film scholar. And to quote Sir Mix-A-Lot, "I like big butts and I cannot lie".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:53 AM

September 16, 2014

Faust

Alexander Sukurov - 2011
Kino Lorber BD Region A

Winning the top prize at a film festival doesn't guarantee very much, if it ever did. Winning at the the 2011 edition of the Venice Film Festival didn't do much for the other winners, as the buzz on Michael Fassbender's exposed penis in Shame eclipsed everything else. After that, Alexander Sukurov's film made a couple more festival appearances, and only recently has been made available on home video, with a new blu-ray release.

This is not an easy film to watch like Russian Ark, although like that film, Sukurov reframes a good part of the narrative as a constant journey. The film takes its inspiration from Geothe's version, with a setting in early 19th Century Germany. Except for part near the end, Sukurov dispenses with the more fantastic elements of the story. The effect is that Sukurov keeps the essence of story, with the more literal aspects tossed aside in favor of a more abstract interpretation.

Where there is a fantasy element is in the very beginning, an opening shot that resembles the kind of special effects work for something like Frank Capra's version of Lost Horizon. The image is in a hard matte 1.33:1, with most of the colors desaturated to give the film something of the monochromatic look of an older movie. There are a couple of moments when parts of the film are specially tinted, not quite what one would see in some films from the silent era, but close enough. Some of the imagery, especially those scenes in the crowded town, seem inspired by the paintings of Pieter Bruegel. Sukurov is probably well aware of his own similarities to his character, from having the film made in no small part due to the intercession of Vladimir Putin, as well as being a filmmaker who chooses to work on his own terms with total disregard for commercial demands.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

September 11, 2014

Friend 2: The Legacy

Chingu 2
Kwak Kyung-Taek - 2013
CJ Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Even before it was actually stated in one of the DVD supplements, I suspected that Kwak Kyung-Taek had The Godfather II on his mind when he made Friend 2. The ambition, though not the running time, is there. The film shifts around at various time periods, showing a brief history of organized crime in Korea, from small independent gangs, to the much larger, formally assembled families. I only wish that CJ Entertainment had issued a new DVD of the first Friend from 2001, or better, included that film as part of a set, making the narrative of Friend II a bit easier to follow.

This is a story of fathers and sons, and mentors and proteges. The main story is about a crime boss, Joon-seok, newly out of prison in 2010 after serving a seventeen year sentence for the murder of a friend who was in a rival gang. Joon-seok takes on Sung-hoon, the son of a high school acquaintance, as a new recruit for his gang upon release. The film contrasts the loyalties of biological families with crime families, as well as the different ways of male bonding, whether through shared experiences, or purely mercenary.

There is an impressive scene when Joon-seok is released from prison and goes to a formal dinner welcoming him back to his organization. There is a procession of black Mercedes, all the same model. The gang is composed of men dressed identically in black suits with open collar white shirts. The scene tells the viewer everything needed about how formalized gang life is at the moment. There is another scene of formal elegance, that of the cremation of the crime family chairman, with the casket moving forward down a long, golden corridor. Even if one loses track regarding how the characters are related to each other, Friend 2 is full of beautiful composed visual moments.

The original film is said to have autobiographical elements, taking place in Kwak's home region around Busan. The flashback section to 1963 is a capsule view of how Korea's organized crime was able to capitalize of Busan's location as a port city. The flashback also includes the rivalry between the street gang led by Jeon-seok's father against the yakuza, which at the time had control over port activity with unstated cooperation by the U.S. military. Especially as Korean films usually have present-day settings, and this part of Korean history is generally unknown to western viewers, it suggests that perhaps Kwak Kyung-taek should take on a film that takes place entirely in Busan, fifty years ago.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

September 09, 2014

Prom Night

Paul Lynch - 1980
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

In it's own idiosyncratic way, Prom Night is more interesting as a time capsule than as a horror movie. The film takes place in a time when the people communicated by rotary phones, which plays a major part in the story. One of the side character drives a van, a reminder of that very brief moment when being a "vanner" had status among young adults. As a slasher movie, this is pretty mild compared to the Halloween movies, but it does offer the spectacle of watching Jamie Lee Curtis dance.

The film begins with a group of ten year old kids playing in an old, decrepit building. Their game involves chanting, "the killer is coming". Essentially, they scare one girl who accidentally falls out a window. Somehow, the kids manage to keep their promise to each other not to reveal their part in the accident. The death of the girl is blamed on the neighborhood "catatonic schizophrenic" who has terrorized the community. Forward six years later, and the kids are about to go to the big prom at Disco Alexander Hamilton High School, the crazed killer has escaped from the local loony bin, and someone is making threatening phone calls to those guilty kids.

Truthfully, and without giving too much away, the film is based on a premise that really makes no sense. Why would the person who knows knows who was responsible for the accidental death, bother to wait six years, and then chase everyone involved with an ax while wearing a mask, when it would have been a whole lot easier to just call a cop or some authority figure? I would guess there's something to taking revenge in your own hands, and of course, without it, there wouldn't have been much of a story here.

There is some use of frames within frames, shots using windows and mirrors, as well as reflecting surfaces, that give the film some visual interest. Leslie Nielsen, as both the high school principal and father to Curtis, doesn't do much here, although it is fun to watch him awkwardly on bust a move on the dance floor while Curtis vigorously dances up a storm.

The DVD comes with a supplement with Lynch and several cast members sharing their memories, as well as a commentary track by Lynch and screenwriter William Gray. One revelation, if you will, is that one of the subplots, one of a couple MacGuffins, was contributed by uncredited writer John Hunter. Lynch mentions how he wanted to use the song, "Born to be Alive", although some might argue that "I Will Survive" might have been more fitting. The filmmakers got away with using a song that sounds very similar to the Gloria Gaynor hit, appropriate for a film that liberally reflects and barrows from, if not always intentionally, the zeitgeist of a very specific time.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 AM

September 04, 2014

Juggernaut / Forum

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
Richard Lester - 1966

Juggernaut
Richard Lester - 1974
both KL Studio Classics BD Region A

For a brief time, the Fall of 1973, I was working as the Assistant Manager of the Greenwich Theater in New York City. I don't recall all the details, but while a movie was playing inside the theater, a commercial was being shot in the lobby. The commercial featured character actor, Jack Gilford, a face many viewers would recognize even if they don't know the name. During a break from shooting, I went up to Gilford to ask about his experience making A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I am paraphrasing here, but he didn't like the film, and said something to the effect that Richard Lester did not respect the show.

I have to assume that Gilford was hoping that the film version of Forum would be a bit more like the traditional filming of a Broadway musical. And if you compare two musicals from the previous year that Forum was released, Lester's film more strongly resembles Help! than The Sound of Music. And from my point of view, that's how it should be. The two new Blu-ray releases of Forum and Juggernaut are compelling arguments in favor of the auteur theory as both are projects that Richard Lester originated, but both unmistakably show his hand.

The musical number, "Everybody Ought to have a Maid", in particular, visually resembles the what Lester did in Help! with the song filmed in such a way that the characters will sing part of the song in one location, inside a house, with a jump cut, to Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Michael Hordern and Phil Silvers, suddenly on a rooftop. An apt comparison would be with The Beatles performing "Ticket to Ride".

This is the first time I have seen Forum since its initial theatrical release. Almost fifty years later, the film comes off as more frenetic than funny. Richard Lester's demand for historical realism may be seen in sets and his insistence that Phil Silvers not wear glasses, but is absent from the one scene of Silver's courtesans performing various seductive dances. Aside from the pleasure of watching the main cast, there is Buster Keaton in his last screen performance, with one final pratfall. Also, Stephen Sondheim's lyrics still tickle the mind as well as the ear.

In contrast, Juggernaut is a more conventional film visually. Lester was brought in to direct following the departures of Bryan Forbes and Don Taylor. Where the two filmmakers would have made films that would have probably been more straight forward thrillers, Lester found ways to insert visual and verbal humor. On an ocean liner with seven hidden bombs, one of the subplots involves the ship having faulty gyroscopes, as well as sailing in inclement weather. As a filmmaker who loved the pratfalls of silent comedies, Lester films the crew and passengers slipping and sliding on deck, as well as buffeted about in the passageways.

That the name of the ship is Britannic sounds close enough to the name of a more famous ship. At one point, the hapless entertainment director of the ship, played by Lester favorite, Roy Kinnear, in preparing for what may be the ship's last party describes it as, "A night to remember", and later tries to reassure passenger Shirley Knight that there are no icebergs. Those who have followed Lester's career might have been amused by a moment in that same scene when what is heard sounds very much like the famous opening, jarring chord for A Hard Day's Night.

This is my return to Juggernaut, forty years after the theatrical release. The scene of Richard Harris and David Hemming trying to defuse their respective bombs still retains tension. One can see the sweat on Harris' nose as he tries to determine which wire is to be cut. A name more meaningful for current viewer is Anthony Hopkins as the London based policeman, whose wife and children are on board the ship. Still, the heart and soul of this film is Kinnear, giving the performance of his career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:36 AM

September 02, 2014

14 Blades

Jin yi wei
Daniel Lee - 2010
Anchor Bay Entertainment BD Region A

Made between the very good Three Kingdoms and the less satisfying White Vengeance, Daniel Lee's film gets an overdue home video release. This is a film that will more likely be of interest to genre enthusiasts, but the genre isn't so much the martial arts film, but the western.

This story set at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, about 1386, has Donnie Yen as a soldier with loyalty only to the emperor, assigned to carry a seal, proof of the traitorous intentions of a prince. The basic narrative follows the template made most famous by John Ford, or having his group of characters travel to their destination, overcoming the obstacles placed by various opponents, as well as the divisions between themselves. In this case, Lee's film kicks in when Yen shows up at the door of the Justice Escort Agency, hiring the weather-beaten gang, and the chief's attractive daughter, to take him to Yanmen Pass. The western genre element is made more obvious with the setting in the western part of China - desert and mountains. It might not be Monument Valley, but it is a serviceable setting.

A good portion takes place at the town near the Yanmen Pass, and it is easily analogous to the kind of border towns seen in countless westerns. While historically not part of the Silk Road, the town is presented here as having a mix of Arab and Mongolian residents along with Chinese. It's also a stopover for outlaw gangs. Daniel Lee took some heat for casting Eurasian Maggie Q in Three Kingdoms, but he has an ongoing interest in the often ignored multicultural aspects of Chinese history.

The title refers to a boxed set of swords Yen carries with him though out the film. While they are each named, and are stated to each have a specific purpose, according to the introductory narration, nothing more is made of this detail. Most of the martial arts here is fairly routine, the wire work and computer generated effects having been so overused in the past decade. Where it is of greater interest is with the female assassin, Tuo Tuo, played by Kate Tsui. In the course of fighting, Tuo Tuo has the ability to become a spectral figure, an empty cloak floating in the air, seemingly two places at once. The final fight places her against Donnie Yen's character in an older building filled with abandoned terra-cotta warriors covered in dust, in spaces made smaller by the various gates between the rooms. There is a point in the fighting when Yen's sword gets heated. The rooms, Yen and Tsui, are mostly blue, but the point of Yen's sword is red. When Yen is able to cut off one of Tsui's garments, there is a splash of red, similar to the effect in an action painting, where it seems to spread across the screen almost at random.

Other reviews of 14 Blades have noted the cross-cultural aspects of the film with such terms as "fried noodle western" and "chow mien western". Be that as it may, Daniel Lee does a couple of nice visual bits - an overhead shot of a tiny rider on horseback racing through a canyon, and a silhouette shot of Yen and the gang along a desert pass. Lee isn't at all shy about having his characters, twice, riding straight into the sunset.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

August 28, 2014

Baby Blues

Po-Chih Leong - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region ! DVD

He doesn't talk, or stalk his victims with any tools for murder, but the malevolent doll in Baby Blues will probably remind a few viewers of Chucky, especially in the earlier films from the Child's Play series. This is a Hong Kong film, in Cantonese, made primarily for a local audience, and as horror films go, fairly mild. As a film from the director best known for The Wisdom of Crocodiles, Baby Blues is a disappointment.

An affluent young couple moves to a huge, modern house. The previous residents have left a doll that looks like a pasty faced Prince Valiant, that has somehow captured the heart of the wife. Hao is a staff songwriter for a record company, while his wife, Tian, is an obsessive blogger. Pressured to come up with a big hit, and a new direction for the company's popular singer, Bobo, Hao gets the idea to write songs about death, inspired by legend of "Gloomy Sunday. Hao's attempts at song writing get an unexpected hand, actually a couple of small feet, when the doll jumps on the keyboard of Hao's piano. As the film continues, it becomes apparent that the doll has more on its mind than writing a song that seems to coincidentally make the listener vomit or find themselves in a life threatening situation.

Even worse, Tian becomes pregnant with twin boys. One of the infants dies after birth. Tian names the doll Jimmy, the name of the dead child, and becomes obsessed with treating the doll as a member of the family. Post-partum depression becomes Post-partum obsession. Later, Hao learns that previous victims of the house were two sets of twins.

The film was originally presented in 3D. The record company president blows perfect smoke rings at the audience while smoking a cigar. The doll frequently points an accusing finger towards the audience. The only other time that the 3D might have made a difference when a car spins out of control, briefly flying, before crashing in a nose-dive.

A bigger mystery might be about the making of this film. Calvin Poon, a filmmaker of some acclaim, is credited for a first draft of the screenplay. I've been unable to find anything in English concerning Poon's work on this film, although I suspect that Baby Blues was compromised in various ways primarily to pass mainland Chinese censors. Inadvertently, Baby Blues reminds me why I have a possibly irrational love of Thai horror movies. What I love about horror movies from Thailand is that no matter how utterly nutty, bizarre or downright stupid the given premise or the characters, Thai filmmakers usually run straight ahead without fear of such concepts as logical plotting or good taste. When a horror movie has neither smarts, tension, nor any frightening moments, you have to wonder what's scaring the filmmakers?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:09 AM

August 26, 2014

Ghost Bird

Scott Crocker - 2010
Matson Films / Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

A bird thought to be extinct, the ivory-billed woodpecker, is thought to be seen in Eastern Arkansas, in 2004. The discovery brings in ornithologists, reporters, and bird lovers to the small, depressed town of Brinkley. For a very short while, Brinkley is a boom town with gift shops and a couple of new restaurants. There are questions about whether the observed bird was in fact the bird reportedly last seen decades ago. Kind of like the fictional bird, The Maltese Falcon, the ivory-billed woodpecker becomes the stuff that dreams are made of.

Whether that particular woodpecker was seen becomes less important than how the alleged discovery becomes follows a classic trajectory of the fleeting nature of any kind of celebrity, or as the old adage goes, putting one's eggs in one basket. Even without the brief fame from the woodpecker sighting, the story of Brinkley is one of a small community that has its existence based on transitory industries. The forest that once was home for eight species of woodpeckers was cut down by a lumber mill that eventually closed down when there was no more forest. The garment factory that made clothing for Wal-Mart closed when Wal-Mart chose to have their manufacturing done for less money in Third World countries. The forest now is a vast soybean farm. And the nearby Wal-Mart store, the creation of Arkansas native Sam Walton, has devastated Brinkley's small downtown.

By focusing on Brinkley and the elusive woodpecker, Scott Crocker also provides a better understanding on how changes in the environment, frequently brought about by commercial interests, have caused the extinction of over one hundred species of North American birds. There is also the mind-boggling discussion of proposals to spend millions of dollars to save the ivory-billed woodpecker, some of which is discovered to be at the expense of documented rare birds.

For all of the environmental alarms, this documentary is not without humor. It's easy to see the story of Brinkley's brief brush with fame, and some of the town's more colorful residents, being the source of a comedy by Preston Sturges. That Harvard University has rooms with drawers and drawers of hundreds of stuffed birds almost begs for a reunited Monty Python "dead parrot" sketch.

There is also the clash of egos of the various academics and experts regarding what was seen by various bird watchers. That the woodpecker was thought to be seen in the bayou country for Arkansas makes it a perfect place for a mystery.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

August 22, 2014

Triad

Jat jik
Daniel Chan - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I would think it deliberate that the main narrative in Triad begins in 1997. Aside from being the year of the handover of Hong Kong from Great Britain to mainland China, the film can be seen as a reclamation of sorts of the kind of genre cinema that belonged distinctly to Hong Kong. Triad is a film specifically about Hong Kong, made primarily for a Hong Kong audience, and in Cantonese, as opposed to the Mandarin language productions made to appeal to mainland audiences and the Chinese diaspora.

Nothing here will come as anything new to those who have seen the now classic, or even not-so classic Hong Kong gangster films from John Woo, Tsui Hark, Johnnie To and a host of others. What distinguishes Triad is that it does place extra emphasis on the organized aspect of organized crime. Most of the crime is in the beatings and killings between gang members, and it is less important that respect for position and a sometimes complex structure of relationships. Blood oaths are made where the gang relationships take precedence over everything else. Gender is even set aside in the case of a female gang leader, given both honorifics of Big Sister and Uncle.

The basic setup of three young friends who join the triads is familiar enough. The smart one, university educated William, comes to the aid of his mother, attacked by a self-styled gang operating a protection racket. The mother's extremely modest fruit stall hardly looks like it's worth the effort of extorting more than pocket money. William is assisted by his two best friends, but it is local gangster, Patrick, who puts an end to the street brawl. William vows to join Patrick's organization when he graduates, ultimately climbing the ranks with a combination of street smarts and book smarts.

It's the two main supporting players who are of the most interest here. Both are older, about the same age, and more interested in staying behind the scenes. Patrick, who acts as mentor to the the three friends, chooses to dress casually most of the time, and conduct business in the fruit market section of Hong Kong, away from the high rises and the expensive clubs and shops. Irene is something of a Lady Macbeth, who has men, especially her husband, act as her proxy for the physical violence meted out to various enemies. The two deaths near the end of the film might even strike some viewers as being Shakespearean with the bloody stabbings that take place.

A reference that might be lost on stateside viewers is when one of the characters mentions that he felt like he was in a "Teddyboy" movie. While the British roots can not be denied, what is actually referred to here is the graphic novel that inspired the Young and Dangerous film series. The visual aspects of Triad often appear inspired by the Hong Kong manga, and it is probably what has led Daniel Chan to have followed up this film with Young and Dangerous:Reloaded, renewing the Hong Kong gangster movie for a younger audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

August 20, 2014

Worm

Doug Mallette - 2013
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

Talk about support for independent filmmaking, Synapse Films has come through in a big way. Filmed in "Middle Tennessee" by a gang from Watkins College in Nashville, for a stated budget of almost $10,000, Worm is about as independent as a film can be. At the very least, this film may prove encouraging to those who think a degree from one of the better known universities and / or a budget of at least six figures, if not seven, is required for that first step in cinematic glory.

The film takes place in an unspecified near future where people apparently just completely go blank when they sleep. A new product allows people to dream, the kind that offer refreshing sleep, in the form of worms that are offered in jars with daily delivery. The worm are placed in the ear, and induce an immediate, dream filled sleep. And yeah, the premise is creepy, and you can guess that nothing good is going to come out of having a live worm, actually bunches of them, trolling around in your noggin.

Socially inept Charles, the son of the apartment maintenance guy, tries to ingratiate himself with one of the residents, Reed. Trying to get at Reed's stash of worms under the pretense of fixing a light, Charles meets June, Reed's girlfriend. Not having much money, Charles gets the lower priced dream worms which he switches with Reed's higher priced variety. Charles also starts having dreams of being with June, with disastrous consequences in real life.

One might consider Worm something of a parable about the various "miracle cures" that turn out to have unforeseen, and deadly consequences. I don't know if this was intentional, but the basic premise of Worm reminded me of David Cronenberg's Shivers. The big difference is that Mallette's worms are suppose to be benign, so much so, that there is a cartoon mascot for the company, Fantasites, as well as children's masks and a stuffed Fantasites worm doll.

The DVD comes with a commentary track by Mallette with three members of the production team. One of the more interesting aspects is to know that while the basic story structure was planned out, the dialogue was improvised by the cast. For novice filmmakers, the commentary may prove useful in having an idea of what to watch for when making a film on an extremely limited budget, especially something like Worm that makes use of a few special effects. In some instances, the limited funding is a hindrance, as shown by a dependance on available light. The DVD also includes the original short film that inspired the feature.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:39 AM

August 18, 2014

When I Saw You

Lamma shoftak
Annemarie Jacir - 2012
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

The first image in Annemarie Jacir's film is a pair of roller skates worn by a young boy. A title announces that the film takes place in Jordan, 1967. On the soundtrack is Arabic rock music. That opening scene belies what is to follow, although those with some knowledge of history should pick up on the clues immediately.

The young man, Tarek, lives in a refugee camp in Jordan with his mother. They are among the Palestinians displaced by the Six Day War. The population increases seemingly with another truckload of passengers. Tarek gazes at each truck with the hope that his father will be among those new residents, or that someone will at least have news of this father. While Tarek is illiterate, and barred from school for distracting the other students, he proves his ability with numbers, figuring out large sums in his head. For a moment there is the dread that what is about to come is a Palestinian variation of Rain Man.

That Jacir indirectly addresses the political context of When I Saw You is ripe for interpretation. Tarek expresses his longing to return home to his mother. The reasons for why the two live in a camp in what is later revealed to be a more remote part of Jordan are never explicitly stated. Seeing Yasser Arafat on television discussing the Palestinian fedayeen, Arafat's paramilitary group, Tarek only understands that these are people returning to the Palestinian territories. Wandering on his own to return home, Tarek is discovered by a man he recognizes from the village, and is taken to a fedayeen boot camp. It is later at the camp that a news report mentions an attack by the Israeli military of the refugee camp.

There may be other reasons why Jacir chose indirect historical references for her film. In the greater scheme of things, Jacir's story might be understood as that of Tarek seeking out a place where he belongs. A perpetual outsider even in the refugee camp, Tarek seems to find a temporary home with the fedayeen, where his ability with numbers is noticed by the Mao enamored military leader. While home is a specific place for Tarek, Jacsir also suggests that home is an abstract ideal.

That the DVD is released at this time makes watching When I Saw You more difficult. For that matter, it's impossible for me to be entirely objective regarding the tangled history of Palestine and Israel, and that whole, messy, conflicted region. On the other hand, I'm not one to run away from a film or filmmaker that might want to challenge my point of view, because I like the idea of writing about independent filmmakers. And I hope to see Jacir's debut film, Salt of this Sea.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 AM

August 14, 2014

Mr. Majestyk

Richard Fleischer - 1974
KL Studio Classics Region A Blu-ray

Anyone familiar with the novel by Elmore Leonard can not help but be a little disappointed that the plot for Mr. Majestyk isn't a little more clever. All Vincent Majestyk wants to do is harvest the watermelons on his 160 acre farm. Things start off badly when a would-be contractor shows up with a crew described as winos who are already working the fields. Chasing the small-time hood off his land, Majestyk gets in deeper trouble arrested with a trumped up charge. Things get worse when a fellow prisoner, a hit man, decides to hang around the town of Edna, Colorado, to extract revenge when the law-abiding Majestyk spoils his plans for escape.

I can pick on this film for a story that defies credibility. The migrant workers' clothing looks too clean and new. But I also like that a film about a Colorado melon farmer was actually filmed in Colorado, mostly in the southeastern part of the state, in Otero County. There's some state pride at work here. And at least that part of Mr. Majestyk is relatively accurate.

This is unmistakably a Seventies movie. In addition to one of the most iconic movie stars of that decade, Charles Bronson, he is pitted against one of the actors who could well be considered one of the more iconic big screen bad guys, Al Lettieri. Putting aside the question of how a notorious hit man could have been caught by small town cops, Lettieri should have been arrested by the fashion police for those awful checked jackets and matching pants and shirt outfits that he's forced to wear in this film. Also pegging this film to a specific era of filmmaking is the score by Charles Bernstein, part Morricone-lite with a flamenco guitar styled riff, alternating with someone on the wah wah pedal. There's also an indirect reference to activist Cesar Chavez that might fly by younger audiences.

Richard Fleischer's visual style here is straightforward and economical. Much of the action and dialogue is done in group shots, with an emphasis on two-shots. Rather than cutting back and forth between characters, Fleischer takes his time to compose shots informing the viewer of where the characters are in relation to each other, as well as the space they are sharing. Without stretching the point too much, the film is about the dichotomy of shared spaces, Majestyk's open melon field versus the enclosed spaces of the jail, police station, even cars versus open bed trucks.

Keep in mind that Elmore Leonard's novel was written after the screenplay as a movie tie-in, and is closer to what he had envisioned for the story. Leonard was reportedly unhappy with the film, with the characters being a bit over the top, especially Lettieri as the volatile hit man. And yet, and yet . . . it's what makes Mr. Majestyk fun to watch. Sure, there is Linda Crystal as the Chicana union organizer, giving the proceedings a whiff of social consciousness. But there are also guys blown away with shotguns, a couple of car chases, a shoot out in a small town, and thugs blasting watermelons to bit with shotguns. This might not be classic Fleischer, classic Leonard, or even classic Bronson, but I'll take it just the same.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:22 AM

August 12, 2014

We Won't Grow Old Together

Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble
Maurice Pialat - 1972
Kino Classics BD Region A

The first thing I noticed was the frequency of blue. The blue came was in various shades - turquoise, powder, royal blue. The blues as it were would mostly be seen as part of the Jean's life - his shirts, bed sheets, table cloth, and his car. Probably not surprising considering that Jean is essentially the on-screen proxy for Maurice Pialat, not the happiest of men.

This was was first time seeing this film, though not my first exposure to Pialat. It took me a while to get into the rhythm established by Pialat. The narrative as such is a series of meetings and partings, sometimes within the same scene, of Jean, a documentarian, and Catherine, a younger woman who hasn't quite figured out what she wants to do with her life. The two aren't happy with each other, nor happy without each other. Jean is especially brutal at times, both verbally and physically towards Catherine. It is only through the dialogue that one understands that years have passed. The film begins when Catherine and Jean have been together for three years, and the next three are an irretrievable downward slide.

In one scene, Jean refers to the Italian poet Cesare Pavese. An interesting choice in that Pavese was simultaneously a romantic, yet held most people at arms length, a celebrity during his lifetime with a very public, failed relationship with actress Constance Dowling. A prize winning writer, Pavese committed suicide at the peak of his career. In somewhat similar fashion, Jean wants the companionship of Catherine, yet can't get her out of his apartment, his car or his life, fast enough.

The supplements, Nick Pinkerton's booklet notes, and a video essay by filmmaker Alex Ross Perry, are helpful in discussing the unusual structure of the film. There is also an interview, from 2003, with Marlene Jobert, discussing the conflicts between Pialat and Jean Yanne, who played Jean, and her own attraction to playing the part of Catherine. A hint for the youngsters - if you want to know where Eva Green got her looks, Jobert is her mom.

One of the surprises was to know that Luciano Tovoli was the cinematographer. Better known for more stylized work with Antonioni, Argento and others, the visual look here is stripped down, seemingly artless. This is not to imply carelessness, far from it. The shots are carefully composed on behalf of the interactions mostly between Jean and Catherine. While the hirsute Jean Yanne does much of his acting with his body, Marlene Jobert's acting can be seen in the various small facial expressions while she is being berated. This is not an easy film to watch, but Maurice Pialat would not have it any other way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

August 06, 2014

Lyle

Stewart Thorndike - 2014

I wouldn't be surprised if the ghost of Ira Levin comes to haunt Stewart Thorndike, demanding credit for his part in inspiring Lyle. Anyone who has read Levin's novel, or, more likely, seen Roman Polanski's film, can not avoid seeing similarities, especially near the end - a point of view shot of several people looming over mother-to-be Leah in Thorndike's film virtually duplicates a similar shot done from the point of view of Rosemary.

Unlike Levin's story, with a struggling actor and his wife getting a Manhattan apartment that in reality they could never afford, Thorndike has her youngish lesbian couple move into a vintage apartment in Brooklyn under mysterious circumstances. The couple, Leah and June, have a toddler, a girl named Lyle. Leah is also pregnant with a second child, another girl. Like almost all toddlers, Lyle is inquisitive, wandering around the apartment, causing Leah concern when she's nowhere to be seen. And when Leah is having an online conversation, Lyle finds her way to a front window, with fatal consequences.

There is also the strange apartment manager, a single woman "of a certain age" who feels the need to pretend she is pregnant, and the young woman upstairs, said to be a model. Leah does some online investigations regarding her home which further distress her, with the stuff of urban legends. Then there is Lyle's small toy horse which seems to disappear and reappear mysteriously. Like most intelligent horror movies, nothing is obvious or explained in detail, at least until the end.

While the story might be dismissed as a retread, what makes Lyle of interest are Thorndike's visual choices. At one point, there is a shot of the front of the apartment, with June and Leah framed by a window on the right third of the screen. In another scene, June and Leah are in bed, but we only see their arms in the shot. Thorndike also plays with focus, allowing one scene to be played out as an almost abstract image. The solo piano score by Jason Falkner is stark and effective, Amazingly, Thorndike shot her film in only five days.

Lyle can be seen online for free, coinciding with Thorndike's Kickstarter campaign to fund her new feature, Putney. Lyle is also the first of three proposed horror films, indicating a dedication to genre filmmaking that has increasingly interested a younger generation of female filmmakers. For any squeamish souls out there, the horror aspects are only suggested, not seen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 AM

August 04, 2014

The Bankers of God: The Calvi Affair

I Banchieri di Dio
Giuseppe Ferrara - 2002
Raro Video Blu-ray Region A

This is one those films that should have been more interesting. The subject matter was there: a banker finds himself up to his neck, with complicated financial schemes involving the Vatican, organized crime, and the Italian government. If that's not enough, there are the rival factions within those various organizations, and the banker, Roberto Calvi, has damaging information on everyone. And this is a true story.

Whatever potential there was for an involving story gets lost. Maybe Italian audiences found this film to be of interest, but there seemed to be little of interest gong on here, until near the end when Calvi is set up for a murder staged to look like a suicide, hanging underneath the Blackfriar Bridge. The languid pacing did not help, with a narrative mostly composed of meeting between the various players. This is the kind of subject matter handled better by Francesco Rosi in several of his films.

I tried watching this film in Italian but found myself distracted by dubbing that did not appear to synch properly. The English dubbing is even stranger, sounding as it did as if recorded in an echo chamber at times. Neither voice used for Rutger Hauer, playing the Vatican's top banker, was anything close to Hauer's own voice. The blu-ray also includes a documentary supplement about Calvi and the Blackfriar Bridge that inexplicably does not have either subtitles or an English language track.

Unsurprisingly, the best part of this film is the score, by the usually excellent Pino Donaggio.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 AM

July 31, 2014

Curtains

Jonathan Stryker - 1983
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

As the "Making of . . . " supplement explains, there's a good reason why the director's credit for Curtains is that of the character in the film, a film director named Jonathan Stryker. The released film was was actually the work of original director Richard Ciupka, completed by producer Peter Simpson. For all of the problems, with Simpson shooting approximately two years after Ciupka left the set, this is pretty good "body count" film.

The basic premise is that the fictional Jonathan Stryker has invited six actresses to his mansion to audition for the starring role in his next film. The main character is a woman, gone mad with jealousy, who kills her philandering husband. The part was originally slated for Stryker's live-in love, Samantha Sherwood. In order to understand the character's mental breakdown, Sherwood has herself committed to an insane asylum, which as everyone who's seen at least one movie with this kind of set-up knows, is a terrible idea. Stryker decides to make his movie without Sherwood, who in turn manages to escape from the asylum to claim the part she knows should be hers. Not so coincidentally, the other actresses competing for the same part have unexpected dates with the grim reaper.

Just don't look too closely because there are a few bits and pieces that don't quite make sense, like the creepy dolls which appear in a couple of scenes and then seems to have been forgotten as a recurring motif. Unlike many of the films of this type, this one has an older cast, led by John Vernon, virtually typecast as an aloof and arrogant character, as director Stryker. Almost as much fun to watch in his brief scene is that axiom of Canadian cinema, Maury Chaykin, as the agent of one of the actresses. As for playing the part of a woman with issues, Samantha Eggar probably found this part to be a breeze compared to her work in The Brood. Too bad Peter Simpson had issues with the accent of French-Canadian actress Celine Lomez, she was (and still is) far more attractive than Linda Thorson, a woman best known for attempting to step into the boots worn by Diana Rigg in the television series, The Avengers.

That said, what is nice here is that the film takes time to allow for some distinction between the six actresses, among them a stand-up comic, an ice skater and a dancer. It should be no surprise that care was taken visually - Ciupka worked as a cinematographer, for Louis Malle prior to Curtains, and Claude Chabrol a few years later. In the meantime, Simpson, as a producer, made the far better known Prom Night and that film's three (!) sequels.

This is one of those times when it's worth watching the DVD supplement with several cast and crew members discussing their experience with Curtains. Everyone seems to have been embarrassed that they participated in making this film, which seemed to take on cult status on cable television and home video following a desultory theatrical release.

I hope someone has told Lynne Griffin, who plays the stand-up comic, Patti, that the Embassy Theater, where Curtains had its New York City premiere, was not in the Lower East Side. For a former New York City resident like myself, such a geographical faux pas is scary.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

July 29, 2014

Dragonwolf

Raimund Huber - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Raimund Huber needs to just admit that there is an inverse scale between his ability to stage amazing martial arts fights and his ability to construct a decent screenplay. The reason why his previous film, Kill 'Em All is his strongest achievement to date is because there was little pretense here, just a bunch of assassins finding ways to kill each other until they realized that they needed to kill the guy who pitted them against each other. As it stands, Dragonwolf is mostly worth watching for the intricately choreographed fights, spiced up by gratuitous topless displays from various females. On the down side, the story gets in the way.

The story is essentially a bromance between Mozart and Julius, who meet as schoolboys, when Mozart comes to the aid of Julius, pushed around by a trio of equally young punks. The favor is returned when Julius and his mother take in the orphaned Mozart. The two grow up to be top ranked gangsters in a city called Devil's Cauldron, crime capital of the world, and a place that looks remarkable like Bangkok. And then along comes Mary, the girl with the dragon tattoo on her back. The inevitable sibling rivalry takes place, made worse by the fact that the dying mother of Julius is hardly subtle about her preference for the adopted Mozart.

It does't help that the entire cast seems to have been unconvincingly dubbed in English. Actions speak louder than words, and they have to in this kind of movie. The effort put into the fight scenes is obvious with the high kicks, the quick movements of legs and hands. There is a trio set out to put down Mozart, dressed in flashy garb that screams an obvious lack of taste. They don't seem very bright, yet for all of their apparent goofiness, their fight skills can not be dismissed, even if they do get vanquished by Mozart.

There is also the sight of a small army of about twenty thugs, all dressed in identical black suits, white shirts and white masks, as well as the three ninjas dressed in black leather. In other words, a few moments of visual pleasure in seeing how some of the characters are dressed, but that scene with identically dressed thugs is one of the reminders that Raimund Huber sometimes tries to be a low rent Quentin Tarantino, at least as far as some of his action scenes are concerned. Huber also tries to keep things interesting with one very manic bad guy whose facial tics and maniacal laugh become so much that it's a relief for the viewer when he is suddenly killed by Julius.

The ending of the film suggests that we might be seeing more of Guk Srisawat as the vigilante Umiko. Sure, you have to get through almost two hours of Dragonwolf for the one seen that will probably endear her to fanboys of all ages. If Raimund Huber can put as much thought into a screenplay as he does with the martial arts and costuming, a movie about the sword carrying Umiko might be quite entertaining.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:02 AM

July 25, 2014

Love in the City

L'Amore in Citta
Cesare Zavattini - 1953
Raro Video Region A Blu-ray

While there may be some debate as to which film marked the beginning of Italian Neo-realism, this omnibus film certainly marks the end. What ideas Cesare Zavattini had when he came up with the concept, commissioning several mostly new filmmakers to create short films around a central theme, the best work here are the films that stray furthest from the kind of work associated with such classics as Shoeshine or Bicycle Theives.

Federico Fellini couldn't be bothered with making his segment, "Marriage Agency", appear like a documentary, albeit a staged recreation of reality. Anticipating future work, the film is about a journalist, in this case one investigating a small match-making operation. Much as Marcello Mastroianni would wander through various maze-like environments, Antonio Cifariello gets lost through several impossibly long hallways looking for the marriage agency. Claiming he is looking for a friend who has the tendency to turn into something like a werewolf, his story and money are happily accepted. The woman this imaginary friend is matched with turns out to be something of a dim bulb, faintly attractive, looking for a real home. Like the women portrayed by Giulietta Masina, this would be bride is virtually kicked to the curb.

Better is the final segment by Fellini's directorial collaborator on Variety Lights, Alberto Lattuada. Shot with a hidden camera in a truck, "Italians Turn Their Heads" is purportedly cinema verite of Italian men ogling attractive women. As notes and the commentary track indicate, the women in question are mostly young actresses, the most famous being an eighteen year old Giovanna Ralli. Marco Ferreri, a producer on this film, also appears, chasing a babe up a flight of stairs only to find that the young lady has a rendezvous with a man at the top. This segment is undoubtedly sexist with its presentation of gorgeous women with wide hips and spectacular breasts, but it also serves as a reminder as to why Italian movies were a popular art house staple when Hollywood was still under the yoke of the Production Code. The music by Mario Nascimbene might be worth mentioning for possibly inspiring Ennio Morricone to use the Jew's harp in his own scores.

Dino Risi nowadays might be remembered for a remake of one of his films, A Scent of a Woman. The only available feature for stateside viewers is Il Sorpasso, released with the English title of The Easy Life. Risi's segment, "Paradise for Three Hours" shares much of the flair for observation and humor of Il Sorpasso. Taking place on a Sunday evening, the film takes place in a dancehall. The women are housemaids, the guys are probably blue collar workers slicked up for the evening. Some of the couples are oddly matched - either in height, girth or looks. A shy soldier sits next to an equally shy young woman - they exchange glances, but no words until the young woman bolts out of the dance hall due to the time, and the soldier, realizing that he's almost lost his moment, chases after the woman, catching up with her at the film's end. There is also the woman who has captured the eyes of most of the men, a beauty in a dress with a checkerboard pattern more appropriate for a table cloth. Risi's segment is sweet and funny, and my favorite chapter here.

I don't have anything more to add on the segment by Michelangelo Antonioni, also seen as an extra on the new Blu-ray of I Vinti. Carlo Lizzani's segment on street prostitutes was considered shocking at the time, but comes off as the work of a condescending male whose notions of middle class morality have been upset. As indicated by the poster below, Lizzani's episode was excised in the original release outside of Italy. While the credit is shared with Zavattini, Franco Maselli's commentary seems to indicate that the filming of "The Story of Caterina" is mostly his work. The recreation by the real Caterina of her time as a homeless woman who temporarily abandons her child, the film very much resemblesUmberto D with its tale of someone with minimal resources trying to find their place in a virtually indifferent Rome.

All of the segments have commentary tracks, some of which were done by Italian documentary filmmakers. Lizzani and Maselli contributed commentaries to their segments. Based on notes with the Blu-ray, the commentary tracks were done around 2001 for the Italian DVD release.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:26 AM

July 23, 2014

Bethlehem

Yuval Adler - 2013
Adopt Films Region 1 DVD

At this particular time, it would be impossible to watch Bethlehem without thinking about what is happening in Gaza. And while real life and what a movie may reflect as reality are not the same, I would like to think that Bethlehem offers some kind of reminder that there might be some nuances that are overlooked in much of the reportage.

Keeping in mind that this is an Israeli film, what is presented might well be questioned. The basic story is of an Israeli agent, Razi, who has cultivated a friendship with a Palestinian teen, Sanfur. Sanfur's brother is a known militant wanted by Israeli authorities. Razi has an awareness that Sanfur could well become a part of the Palestinian resistance movement in the near future, but uses his trust to track down the brother, Ibrahim, albeit indirectly.

Where the film is of interest is in its depiction of the internecine rivalries among the Palestinians. Ibrahim is secretly funded by Hamas. Even within their association with Hamas, there are smaller "brigades" out to prove themselves as being the most truly radical. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority tries to keep a balance of asserting their role over the demands of Hamas, while keeping the peace with Israel. In one scene that plays out like a crime thriller, Ibrahim meets with the militant leader with close ties to the Palestinian Authority, suddenly pushing him back over a staircase railing, several floors up.

While how the Israeli army performs its role within the West Bank is questioned, there is a greater look at the quandary of Palestinian life. More cruel than the Israelis are the Palestinians who choose public executions for those branded as collaborators. Ibrahim's lieutenant, Badawi, isn't trusted by either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority, being of Bedouin descent.

Beyond the political, Bethlehem might be viewed as an examination of how masculinity is defined. Sanfur and his friends are first seen playing with a loaded rifle. In a deadly game of chicken, one of them is to wear an old bullet proof jacket, and be able to take being shot. The ideals of trust and honor are continually shredded by self-serving lies. No one is allowed neutral ground. There are choices to be made, but all are equally bad. Women are in the periphery. It's if life is just one continual pissing contest, where the men are trying to outgun each other literally and figuratively. I would not think it coincidental that the film that takes place in a town of religious significance ends with an act that might remind some of Cain and Abel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:26 AM

July 21, 2014

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Boksuneun naui geot
Park Chan-wook - 2002
Palisades Tartan Video Blu-ray Region A

Once upon a time, there was Tartan Video, famous for its "Asian Extreme" label. Tartan Video was bought out and became Palisades Tartan in 2008. Palisades Tartan is now revived in affiliation with Kino Lorber, but the movies that are identified most with the label are the one that were released under the watch of Tartan founder Hamish McAlpine. And yes, I have seen most of those releases, and was saddened when the original company went under, the victim of its own success with a couple of imitators, perhaps too many films marketed as "Asian Extreme" and critics and viewers who didn't bother with, or care about, any cultural context for many of the best films.

I think what makes the revival of the Tartan label worthwhile is that for many of us, it allows for an opportunity to see the films again with greater familiarity with the filmmakers and actors. In the case of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, I have now seen the bulk of films by Park Chan-wook. Bae Doona, still in the early stages of her career, evolved to become a pan-Asian star, to a star in international productions. Korean film, once virtually unknown in the west, has emerged as an international powerhouse. Much has changed in the past decade.

This new home video release consolidates extras from previous releases - an audio commentary by Park with filmmaker Ryu Seong-wan who has a small role in this film, "Making of . . . " footage from the original Korean DVD release, and a brief overview of Park's career from a 2006 BBC presentation. This is one of those times when the commentary is worth listening to, as Park discusses the changes and choices made during the shooting of this film. Mentioned several times is that while Mr. Vengeance was a critical success, it was also a commercial failure, more striking in that it followed J.S.A., not only Park's biggest box office hit, but the biggest Korean film of 2000.

Park and Ryu joke about the green hair of Shin Ha-kyun, but it's the kind of comment that may prod the viewer to take notice of how green is used throughout the film, such as in a scene on an escalator, and in various rooms. There is also pink, seen on Bae Doona's t-shirt, and the radical leaflets she hands out. Helpful also is to learn that the portrait on Bae's t-shirt is of Korea's most famous anarchist. Removed from the "Asian Extreme" label that introduced Park and his earlier films to western audiences, Mr. Vengeance can now be seen for helping lay the groundwork for the visual and narrative themes Park Chan-wook would explore again in his more recent work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:19 AM

July 17, 2014

The Suspect

Yonguija
Won Shin-yun - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

It isn't until the epilogue that the shots in The Suspect are held long enough to get a sense of the environment and the people within the shot. Up till then, the film is virtually like a two hour series of action paintings. Each shot is so fast, in some cases almost subliminal. Had The Suspect been made with film rather than produced digitally, it would have probably been even more of an editor's nightmare. Just as the film seems composed of many small shots with small hints of information, so it is with the story, that it takes a while to piece it together to make some kind of sense.

On the most basic narrative level, Ji, a former North Korean agent who defected to South Korea, is accused of murdering a businessman, him employer. The businessman is known to have dealings with North Korea, but the nature of his business is in question. The pursuit of Ji involves rival South Korean security agencies, with eventual involvement of what seems like every cop in Seoul. Ji is alternatively the pursued as well as the pursuer, chasing after the people who set him up. Ji's main pursuers, Min, had a run-in with Ji years earlier - that neither spy killed each other put a cast on both in their respective countries. As is eventually revealed, both are pawns used by others.

The double dealings extend to both side. A flashback shows the punishment meted out to Ji by North Korean officers, leading to his defection. Those in power in South Korea prove themselves to be almost equally treacherous. Unlike Won's previous films, this one was written by Lim Sang-yoon, whose A Company Man was a notable film about a hit man considering getting out of "the business".

Won, a former stuntman, uses all of his past resources here. Hollywood filmmakers might want to take notice of a car chase scene where Ji races forwards, backwards and even sideways through the streets of Seoul. Cars crash, flip over and spin out of control. There is even, for the blink of an eye, the equivalent of Roger Ebert's favorite car chase cliche, the fruit cart, in this case, oranges flying across the screen. According to AsianWiki, The Suspect took nine months to shoot which makes sense considering how many quick shots were used for a film with a longer than average running time.

Not exactly an "in joke", but there is also a subplot with data held on a disc contained in a DVD case for Mr. Vengeance. Nothing here is as brutal as what's found in Park's trilogy, but most viewers should feel quite sympathetic about Ji's vengeance as the screen fades to black.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:56 AM

July 15, 2014

Five Dances

Alan Brown - 2013
Wolfe Video Region 1 DVD

I might be exaggerating a bit here, but I think Alan Brown was very daring with Five Dances - he allows the camera to be still while filming parts of the dances, and even has shots of the four dancers in full frame. I know I've harped on this before, especially when some directors who have been former choreographers, think that the cuisinart style of fragmented editing makes the filmed dance look more cinematic. Actually, it just makes the dance look like an incomprehensible jumble of movement. There is something to be said about keeping things simple.

The first time we see the main character, Chip, he's doing a solo in the studio. When his dance ends, Brown ends with a close-up of actor Ryan Steele's face. There are a few beads of sweat. What a lot of films miss is the physical effort of performance dance, whether it's "Swan Lake" or something like Twyla Tharp's "Sinatra Suite".

What hobbles this film is the bit of narrative that holds the dance scenes together. Chip, an eighteen year old, fresh from Kansas, is now dancing with a small company in New York City. He's suppose to have a scholarship, yet he's sleeping on the floor of the dance studio, not going to any kind of school, and describes what he's doing to his mother as his job. I don't mind some implausibilities in movies, but Brown, the director, should have let, Alan Brown, the screenplay writer, work with a collaborator to create a screenplay that made a little more sense in its setup. Also chafing is the portrayal of Chip's mother, only heard as a voice in telephone conversations, distraught at losing her home. There's a heavy Southern accent, and a strong hint of homophobia, the kind of stereotype of straight people from the landlocked parts of America, that is both unnecessary and offensive.

Brushing the narrative flaws aside, the film is, aside from dance, about loneliness and connection. Chip is invited by one of the dancers, Katie, to sleep on her couch. After tentatively rejecting the openly gay dancer, Theo, Chip gets hot and heavy and naked on the dance studio floor. Aside from providing a temporary home for Chip, the not to much older Katie becomes a surrogate mother when Chip asks her permission to be with Theo. Heterosexual couplings don't fare as well here: Chip's parents are divorced, Katie has broken up with her boyfriend of seven years, and the other female dancer, the married Cynthia, is having an affair with the choreographer, Alexander.

The dances of the title more or less coincide with Chip's evolution from a kid from Topeka trying to maneuver his way through New York City, to someone starting to get more comfortable with himself and his new environment. The film is at its best when Brown isn't trying to tell a story, but allows the camera to move back and let the dancers, through their performances, speak for themselves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 AM

July 10, 2014

The Rise and Fall of "Legs" Diamond

Budd Boetticher - 1060
Warner Archives DVD

It hasn't happened often, but I ran out of screeners. Part of it was deliberate, as there were some new DVD releases I just didn't care to see, so I passed on those invitations. On the plus side, it gives me the chance to see something that I bought a while back, that had been on the shelf (actually two shelves at two different addresses) for over a year.

I know I had seen "Legs" Diamond at least once, maybe twice on late night broadcast television. The time I do remember was some times in the very early Seventies, when I was starting to get acquainted with the films of Budd Boetticher, and Dyan Cannon, listed as Diane Cannon in this film, was at her peak at stardom. I also recall Cannon mentioning being in this film, her big screen debut, on the "Tonight Show" when Burt Reynolds was the substitute host, with Reynolds making a snarky comment about movies starring Ray Danton.

Regardless of how one might feel about Ray Danton, this is still an entertaining film. Screenwriter Joseph Landon plays with some of the facts, no matter what the opening titles say, but that's hardly why I've enjoyed this film. Part of it is the zeitgeist, made at a time in the late Fifties and early Sixties when there were a slew of biographical films about Prohibition era gangsters. While contemporary audiences may watch the film for early performances by Cannon and especially Warren Oates, as Diamond's ill-fated younger brother, there is also the visual comfort food for those who grew up in an older era, where supporting players Jesse White, Sid Melton and Simon Oakland were familiar faces. For those primarily interested in "Legs" Diamond as part of Budd Boetticher's filmography, this also contains the last performance by frequent muse Karen Steele.

The story, possibly apocryphal, is that Jack Warner, or producer Milton Sperling, was upset with Boetticher and cinematographer Lucien Ballard for deliberately making the film look like it was shot in the Twenties. If that were really the case, than Boetticher and Ballard failed. That it was produced in black and white was not unusual, and would have been standard, in part to also make the incorporation of documentary footage easier. Without calling too much attention to itself, there are some nicely composed shots using frames within frames, often using car windows, as well as use of the dividing barrier when Steele's character of Alice visits an imprisoned Diamond. Boetticher's tenure as director of several westerns starring Randolph Scott comes to good use when Diamond is seen shooting down two rival gangsters, with pistols in both hands.

One can view "Legs" Diamond as thematically the reverse image of the films Boetticher made with Scott. The Scott westerns generally followed a similar template with Scott as a loner, both by choice and circumstance, who usually stops traveling and settles with either the woman he was always suppose to be with, or the woman who conveniently gets widowed during the course of the narrative. Diamond lets it be known that he's out for himself. Any relationships formed, whether with women, or with other gangsters, are primarily for his own advancement. Unlike Scott's characters, who would frequently go out of their way to help those most vulnerable, Diamond lets his brother die, viewing him as needless emotional and financial baggage.

And yes, the guy is cold-blooded, but there is also amusement in seeing Diamond, witnessing a bungled jewel story robbery, eye the surrounding area to figure out how to break in, or work his way into Arnold Rothstein's mob by racking up charges at various Miami Beach stores in Rothstein's name.

In what has been listed as his last interview, Boetticher discussed his own inspiration for making a film about "Legs Diamond": When I was doing research for that picture, I went out to Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, and I met all the hoods. They would meet me in restaurants, and they would say, "Mr. Boetticher," pronouncing my name correctly, "may we sit down?" always two guys, very well dressed, Brooks Brothers suits, and they would sit down and say,"we understand you're gonna make a picture about Jack Diamond." I said, "well, I'm gonna try." They said, "what kind of picture is it gonna be?" I responded, "well, the greatest picture I ever saw was made by a woman, Leni Riefenstahl, Triumph of the Will (1934), about `one of the most despicable men of all time, Adolf Hitler. So I want to make a picture about a miserable, no good son-of-a-bitch that when you walk out of the theater, you say, "God, wasn't he great!" And then you take two steps, and you say, "wait a minute, he was a miserable son-of-a-bitch!"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:05 AM

July 03, 2014

Cannibal Holocaust

Ruggero Deodato - 1980
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC

What is striking about Cannibal Holocaust is how the film as taken a life of its own almost thirty-five years after it was produced. Much of the film's reputation is based on its reputation, the reports of the various times the film was banned for its depiction of violence. The after-life of Cannibal Holocaust is much like the film itself, where fact and fiction, outrage and ambivalence all seem to blur together. One of the pull-quotes is from Tim Lucas describing Cannibal Holocaust as the Citizen Kane of cannibal movies. This might not have been the intent of Lucas, but both films share somewhat similar trajectories with the character piecing together a mystery, trying to discern fact from legend.

I may be putting more into this film than Deodato may have intended, but there is, at least for myself, more here that the surface shock that has made the film a cult item for gore hounds. I am proceeding with the assumption that more readers have a general idea of the story, which is essentially in two parts - an anthropology professor goes to the Amazon to find out what happened to a quartet of young filmmakers who went searching for "lost" aboriginal tribes. The filmmakers have been discovered dead, but their film stock has been saved, and viewed by the professor. Cannibal Holocaut has since its initial release been considered the progenitor of the "found footage" horror genre.

And it is the scene when Professor Monroe discovers the hanging film cans decorating part of a tribal village that I decided that Cannibal Holocaust is, in its own very idiosyncratic way, a film about the acts of making and watching movies. There is some kind of magic that the tribal people attributed to those cans of film, and to revisit a beloved cliche, movies are magical. Also, keeping in mind that much of the film is fake documentary that many people thought was actual footage, there should be consideration that there are audience members who put their trust in what they see on the screen, whether it is something that looks like it was videotaped in the woods of Maryland (The Blair Witch Project, or supposedly based on a true story (Fargo). Never mind that in real life, tribal people unfamiliar with films or how they are made would have probably taken that last roll out of the camera and left it exposed to the sun, heat and moisture, or that there are moments when you see the four film crew members in a single shot, making the more observant wonder: who's operating the camera? Deodata further confuses things by using documentary footage of actual atrocities filmed primarily in Africa and Southeast Asia. The film explores the various notions about the power of the image, and the investment the audience has on believing what they are seeing.

When the footage of the young explorers is viewed, Cannibal Holocaust takes a self-reflexive turn. There is discussion as to whether the footage should even be made available for public viewing. The depiction of sex and nudity simultaneously straddles the divide between exploitation and a critique of exploitation, especially when the lone female of the quartet questions what is being filmed. I am deliberately trying to avoid spoilers for those who have yet to plunge into what is frequently referred to as "the green inferno".

And again, without giving a key moment away, I would like to think that Cannibal Holocaust is a critique of the sense of privilege that those of the industrialized world have in a so-called "Stone Age" environment, especially the sense of of white male entitlement. It may not have been consciously intended by Deodato but the scene I am referring to made me think of American soldiers in Vietnam. The scene is anticipated by an earlier scene of local soldiers shooting a group of natives, powerful rifles versus blow darts. That Cannibal Holocaust has the ability to be provocative in this way is what elevates it above other films in this genre. I had put off seeing earlier versions of Cannibal Holocaust with a certain amount of dread, not interested in blood, guts and gore for their own sake.

In addition to the original release version of the film, there is also a version without scenes of animal cruelty, commentary tracks by Deodato and three of the actors, and scads of interviews. Deodato fans Eli Roth and Chas Balun have contributed to the liner notes in an accompanying booklet. While the film will always be the subject of controversy, there is almost universal agreement on the beauty of Riz Ortolani's score, which is available on a separate CD.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 PM

July 01, 2014

I Vinti (Revisited)

Michelangelo Antonioni - 1953
Raro Video BD Region A

It's been a little more than seven years since I was able to catch a rare 35mm screening of I Vinti at the Pacific Film Archives, my first full day back in the U.S., following a flight from Chiang Mai, Thailand. The Blu-ray probably will be of greater interest to the Antonioni completist but is worth checking out not only for the nicely transferred film, but also the extras. There is also a booklet that goes over the history of the making of the film, and various controversies at the time of production and initial release.

Antonioni's second feature is three short stories taking place in Italy, France and England. Inspired by true newspaper stories, all three about about murders committed by young men, late high school age or early college.

I do wish Raro Video had included information on when the two interviews included as supplements were done. Producer and co-writer Turi Vasile, who died in 2009, gives his side of the production of I Vinti which involved re-writing and re-shooting the Italian sequence. Franco Interlenghi, star of the Italian sequence, also tells entertaining stories about his professional and personal relationship with Antonioni, which based on one comment, was filmed sometime prior to Antonioni's death in 2007. The Italian sequence in question was originally about a young man on the run for blowing up a munitions factory. While no specific political organization is mentioned, the sequence was still considered such a hot potato that it was re-done with the young man now involved in an operation smuggling cigarettes and killing a cop. That original sequence is included, and is worth watching to see the ways Antonioni shifted around some of the footage for the version that was included in the official theatrical release.

The inclusion of the short film, Tentato suicidio for the omnibus feature, Love in the City, also filmed in 1953, provides an interesting contrast. While I Vinti is three short stories about meaningless deaths at the hands of disaffected youth, Tentato suicidio is about young women who have failed suicide attempts in the name of love. The women re-enact parts of their lives in addition to telling their respective stories. One of the young women, nineteen years old at the time, in both appearance and attitude, anticipates Antonioni's most famous muse, Monica Vitti.

It would seem that Antonioni's sympathies towards the younger generation changed in the fifteen years between the completion of I Vinti and the initial work on Zabriskie Point. The finger-wagging scold of the older film, with his scorn of "boogie woogie" music, would refashion some of the same elements from the original Italian sequence for another look at kids on the run from the law, complete with music by Pink Floyd. The two films seen back to back would make for quite a juxtaposition.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:51 AM

June 26, 2014

China Gate

Samuel Fuller - 1957
Olive Films Region 1 DVD

"With Fuller, the distinction between the personal plot and its political context evaporates with the first leggy sprawl of Angie Dickinson." Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema

And with it, Sarris should have added, any sense that that this is a rigidly right wing view of the conflict in what was then French Indo-China. Yes, the commies are the bad guys. Fuller makes that point clear when a French priest tells mercenary Gene Barry about how he got his leg cut off. Dickinson's character is know as "Lucky Legs", and she is able to act as an apolitical traveler between the opposing forces in Indo-China. The priest is certainly unlucky, but his minor part in the narrative can be seen as a variation on the use of legs and feet by Fuller. What is often overlooked in discussing Pick-up on South Street is Richard Widmark's response to the feds, "Are you waving a flag at me?", and one of the main plot points of China Gate is racism in the United States, personified by Barry. Fuller's anti-Communism may have peaked here, but he never resisted the urge to point out what he thought was the biggest failing of the United States.

The introductory shot of Angie Dickinson's legs also is visually fitting for a film which is mostly about a group of free-lance soldiers hiking through the countryside in search of a hidden tunnel with a large cache of weapons supplied by Russia. One of the best scenes pivots on the close-up of a foot, that of Nat "King" Cole when he steps on a very long spike that pierces through is boot. Fuller cuts back to show Cole with a hand in his mouth, which he removes. The man is in incredible pain, and must remain silent in order not to get the attention of the nearby enemy. And perhaps it takes a vocalist to have the ability to express agony without making a sound. The scene is more effective that had we heard him scream. On the more comic side is a scene with Dickinson leading a group of Vietnamese guerrillas in "La Marseillaise", with its chorus of "Marchon, marchon", again reiterating the theme of using legs and feet. Barry's character of Brock is noted as having walked away from Dickinson, unable to accept that his racially mixed son looks more Chinese than American. The film ends with Brock walking away from a bombed out city with his newly accepted son. The shot that indicates the reunion frames the young boy in full, with Brock seen from the waist down.

I had seen China Gate once before. It was in the summer of 1971, when awareness of Vietnam and Ho Chi Minh, who briefly appears in China Gate, was more significantly part of American life. I was taking classes at UC Berkeley, where there was an extraordinary series of films presented on campus. In the intervening years, I have since seen all of Fuller's theatrical features, plus read his autobiography which clears up some misunderstandings about his political leanings.

Someone only familiar with the title song might think that not only does China Gate take place in China, but in Hollywood's idea of China. And for all I know, that might have been what lyricist Harold Adamson had in mind when Cole sings of "bitter tea" (of General Yen?) and the "good earth". The title song is musically one of the film's strong points, with Victor Young's music mostly evoking the China part of China Gate. The casting followed the standards of the time with Angie Dickinson and Lee Van Cleef barely passing for Eurasians, with some smaller parts filled by Chinese and Chinese-American actors. Be that as it may, it was genius of Fuller to cast Cole, especially at a time when black actors were rarely seen in mainstream Hollywood films. China Gate may well fail under historical and cultural scrutiny, but Nat "King" Cole's presence, glistening with sweat from the jungle heat, transcends any scholarly concerns.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:44 AM

June 24, 2014

The Chef, the Actor and the Scoundrel

Chúzi Xìzi Pǐzi
Guan Hu - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Unlike the films that followed Pulp Fiction with stories about idiosyncratic gangsters, Guan Hu seems to have taken Tarantino's Kill Bill films as inspiration, both visually and in story structure. Without any specific motivation, Guan's film veers from mock silent movie with intertitles to spaghetti western to animation, and that's just within the first five minutes. There is also the unmistakable influence of Sergio Leone, with both the title, and the basic premise of three people who may be working together, at least some of the time, but mostly are out for themselves. One could well evoke the cliche of what goes around, comes around, or something like that, with this film as a further example of the globalization of cinema.

The three title characters, plus the mute wife of the chef, are a very motley crew who have kidnapped two Japanese officers in Beijing of 1942. As such, the quartet tries to intimidate their captives and each other with manic displays of eccentricity. Taking place during a cholera epidemic, the captives may possibly also have a very valuable cure on their hands. While the cholera is decimating the civilian population of Beijing, it also is a threat to the Japanese army. The chef and his wife appear to be aiding the two officers. Simultaneously, the chef is at odds with the actor, a Chinese opera performer who is dressed for the stage, and the cowboy garbed scoundrel.

Like Tarantino's films this one is also comprised of multiple flashbacks, looking at set pieces and more intimate scenes from different perspectives. The film takes place over several consecutive days, as part of an elaborate scheme of Chinese resistance to the Japanese army during one of the most dire periods during the war.

The clincher is at the end of the film when photos and titles provide the historical basis for the film. There are a series of old photographs of the characters, as well as an epilogue about the post war life of the main characters. As such, with daring of the real life events, I have to wonder if turning the story into a mostly manic comedy was such a good idea. There is an overflow of comic exaggeration for a story that would probably have more than enough drama and tension while sticking to the facts.

Taken on its own terms, The Chef, the Actor and the Scoundrel can be enjoyed for both the shameless mugging of the four stars, and for the elaborate visual setups. Most of the film takes place inside the chef's restaurant, a multi-storied building with secret doors and passageways. In addition to the previously mentioned uses of visual and narrative style, Guan also gooses up the red and blue, uses multiple screens several times, and has one very deliberate anachronistic dance performance. Is there a Mandarin word for tweaking?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

June 19, 2014

Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq

Nancy Buirski - 2014
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

So I had no idea who Tanaquil Le Clercq was. And it's not that the world of dance, much less ballet, is unknown to me outside of dance on film. I've been to a few concerts by some of the great choreographers. More personally, I did some video documentation for some local dance companies and performers, so I was interested in seeing what I could glean from how dance was documented in the days before digital media.

As it stands, the unknown documentarians always had the right idea. If you are going to visually document dance, you need to show the entire body. Even when dance was performed for television, as seen on several kinescope recordings, it's the entire body that we see. There are a few moments given over to partial views, the camera following the legs, and a couple more abstract images involving arms. Most of the dance performances are filmed in much the same way so that the viewer understands where dancers are on the stage, and in relationship to each other. Some might assume that the cuisinart style of editing the dance in many small pieces is more cinematic, but it destroys the sense of performance. What some might call old fashioned more truly honors the dance and the dancers.

The story of Tanaquil Le Clercq involves a couple of tragic twists of fate. As a rising young star, Le Clercq performs on behalf of The March of Dimes as a young woman who beats polio. Almost ten years later, she puts of getting the vaccine prior to a tour of Europe, only to be struck down at the height of her career. If Le Clercq's life were a Hollywood movie, people would be questioning the imagination of the screenwriter.

Concurrent to the dramatic events is an abbreviated history of dance in New York City, mostly in the form of George Balanchine's company, The New York City Ballet, and the dancers he mentored, and in the case of Le Clercq, married. Much of the footage is devoted to Le Clercq with frequent dance partner Jacques d'Amboise. Additionally seen is Balanchine choreography performed by Suzanne Farrell and Allegra Kent. Le Clercq's long friendship with Jerome Robbins is part of this story.

What may surprise younger viewers is to know that there was a time when ballet was not considered too rarefied for mass audiences. Footage of Le Clercq is taken from national broadcasting, with Red Skelton's show, as well as a children's show hosted by a fixture of New York City television fixture, Sonny Fox. For those with a more casual interest in ballet, there is the question as to whether interest in Le Clercq is in spite of, rather than because of, the premature ending of her career as a dancer. A look at a novel about Le Clercq's life after polio gives many hints about what is not in this documentary. The footage of Le Clercq dancing does reveal a special gift, a difference that may be understood viscerally, with the quick movements and agility on a pair of undeniably long legs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:28 AM

June 17, 2014

The Attorney

Byeonhoin
Yang Woo-Seok - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A good part of The Attorney takes place in the shadows. People are only partially seen in dimly lit areas, or seen in silhouette. The darkness provides easy symbolism for a film that takes place during a dark era in modern South Korea, when the government was taken over by a military coup. While the film is a fictionalized account of a historical events, the film takes on a level of contemporary relevance with news of recent events in Thailand.

Yang's debut film struck a chord with Korean audiences, becoming one of the most successful films of 2013. At the same time, the film generated quite a bit of controversy depending on one's political bent, as well as discussion on those elements that have been fictionalized. It should be understood that while the main character was modeled after the man who would become the ninth president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun, and what was known as the "Burim case", the film is presented as a work of fiction.

The film primarily takes place in Busan, around 1978. Song Woo-seok is something of an outsider in the legal profession, a lawyer by dint of having passed the bar exam, scoffed at by most of his peers for having no more than a high school education. Due to changes in the law, Song takes up real estate work formerly done only by notaries, establishing a very lucrative practice, followed by becoming a wealthy tax attorney. A flashback shows the younger Song running out of a small restaurant at the time when he was short on cash, and uncertain about his future. This connection to the restaurant eventually leads to Song's involvement with a trial that changes his life.

Some aspects of the film could well have reverberations for the stateside audience regarding the use of torture to obtain information. Within a historical context, there is also the question regarding U.S. support of countries that may not have been democratic, but were loudly anti-communist. The trial of nine students accused of subversive activities is shown clearly to a vehicle for displaying government power and a means of keeping citizen dissent at bay.

For most viewers, I suspect that they will enjoy The Attorney simply as a kind of David and Goliath story, where one lone man takes on an entire country at the risk of himself, his profession and his family. Were it not for the historical roots of the story, this is almost the Korean equivalent to the kind of narratives one might find from the likes of John Grisham where a seemingly unqualified lawyer takes on the establishment. On those kinds of terms, The Attorney is effectively entertaining. For other viewers, there is more than enough to ponder.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:17 AM

June 12, 2014

Pete Walker: A House and a Home

House of Mortal Sin
Peter Walker - 1975

Home Before Midnight
Pete Walker - 1979

both Redemption / Kino Lorber BD Region A

Is love impossible, or is it just that the characters in these two new home video releases are in impossible situations? That impossible love is revealed near the end of House of Mortal Sin, between two priests and the women in their lives. In Home Before Midnight, even when the twenty-eight years old songwriter known that the object of his affection is underage, he continues, even though he is aware of the legal consequences of his actions. In terms of subject matter, while some may have a sigh of relief knowing that the priests in House of Mortal Sin are heterosexual, Walker's film takes place in a community where the institutions of medicine and law are unknowing collaborators in the cover-up of the crimes of Father Meldrum. There is audacity in having a priest commit murder with a communion wafer.

I don't consider House of Mortal Sin to be anti-Catholic or even anti-church, but rather an attack on the institutional conditions that allow for a priest to abuse others. There is the assumption that a priest would not resort to blackmail or murder. Father Meldrum's actions are attributed to his sexual frustration, due in part to his now bedridden mother who steered him to the priesthood, and of course, the Church's rules of celibacy. The most interesting scenes are the ones between Father Meldrum, his geriatric mother, and the housekeeper with one dark lens on her glasses. It is the tension between the three, plus the severe settings of stone walls, that provides a gothic feel to the proceedings, both visually and in narrative terms. That the film stars two "scream queens" from the Seventies, Susan Penhaligon and Stephanie Beacham is enough to give House of Mortal Sin instant cult status.

Home before Midnight almost appears to be Pete Walker's most mainstream film, and might have been so had there not been the various soft core scenes. Even when the relationship between fourteen year old Ginny and musician Mike is presented as innocent to Ginny's parents, you have to wonder why the parents weren't curious enough to meet Mike much earlier. Alison Elliot, even with her baby face, still looks too old for passing as a teenager. One of Mike's pals and musical collaborators, is played by Chris Jagger, brother to the better known Sir Michael, giving the film a mild dash of rock and roll legitimacy. The music by Jigsaw is best described as soft rock, and as such, is no threat to the standing of the Little River Band.

Richard Todd effortless adds gravitas and well-honed acting chops as the attorney who defends Mike, trying to salvage what he can so that his client is, if not innocent, at least less guilty. What works in the film's favor is that Ginny is not presented as a teen seductress, nor Mike as a lecher praying on underage girls.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:39 AM

June 10, 2014

Omar

Hany Abu-Assad - 2013
Adopt Films BD Region A

There's a scene I really liked in Omar. An Israeli agent is interviewing the imprisoned Palestinian Omar, trying to convince him to provide information in exchange for freedom. The agent is twice interrupted by phone, first by his wife, then by his mother. The agent has to remind both women that he can't do anything about their respective problems because he is in the West Bank. The guy is exasperated by both women who are seemingly oblivious to his work. Maybe the scene worked for me because it was a moment of humor in a generally humorless film.

Stories involving the conflicts between personal loyalties and political loyalties can be engrossing, much to the point where one is not sure which screen character should be awarded the most sympathy. Omar, in contrast, largely left me cold. And that might be because the political aspect of the film reduced the conflict to one of "us versus them", the Israeli oppressors and the Palestinian oppressed. In contrast, the relationship between the three friends who are self-described freedom fighters is of more interest because of the various shifts between the three men.

The trio set up the shooting of an Israeli soldier. During a raid, Omar is caught. The Israelis seem especially interested in capturing Tarek. Omar is freed on the condition that he provides information leading to the capture of Tarek. Omar is suspected of being a collaborator, or a double agent. Omar tries to protect the identity of Amjad, his rival for Tarek's sister, and the actual shooter. What is of interest is the continual shift between perception and reality. That shift involves all of the major characters, which in turn precipitates the film's tragic conclusion.

I also have to wonder where anyone got the idea of comparing Omar's relationship with Nadia to that of Romeo and Juliet. These are not the children of two families with some kind of ongoing dispute. The reason why their relationship is kept secret has more to do with specific cultural practices, as well as the more practical concerns when one lives in the West Bank and the other in a section of the Palestinian Territories. Even when everyone is in western style clothing, Omar still would need the traditional approval from Nadia's family, and especially Tarek, to marry Nadia.

What is also of interest to me is to see the difference between how a Palestinian filmmaker presents Palestinian life and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in comparison to those films by Israeli filmmakers who have made an effort to be sympathetic to Palestinians, if not to some of the political objectives.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

June 06, 2014

Death Bed: The Bed that Eats

George Barry - 1977
Cult Epics BD Region 0

It is so easy to get snarky about an independently made, extremely low budget horror movie with a ridiculous premise. As one who has served on a couple of less than professional film crews, I know that making a movie isn't as easy at it looks, and often is tedious work. For that reason, I'm willing to give a small cheer for George Barry for making his one and only feature film.

This is not the kind of film that would have been improved significantly by a bigger budget, better special effects, or more professional actors, although it should be noted that Rusty Russ went on to a still active career as William Russ. But rather than point out some of the films shortcomings, which filmmaker George Barry is willing to do on the commentary track, it should be noted that most of the film was made in 1972, by someone just twenty-three years old at the time, with a budget of only $10,000, in 16mm. Barry might have benefitted from making some shorts prior to producing a feature length film, as the similarly aged Michael Reeves and Stephen Weeks had done before making their debut features, at a time when making a horror movie was the most viable genre for kickstarting a career.

This huge, demonically possessed bed has telekinetic powers as well, helpfully opening the doors for potential victims, as well as using the sheets as arms to drag anyone trying to escape. Mostly it seem to be a disguise for a very large stomach of yellow digestive fluids with an appetite for various food, drink, people and even a stray suitcase. There is one kind of funny image of a bottle of Pepto-Bismol floating around. Barry does have a sense of humor about the premise, best shown in some of the vignettes of the bed's past victims.

What may be more interesting is how this film, which never received any kind of release after its completion in 1977, somehow made the jump to a bootleg video that acquired a devoted cult following. Barry took so long to finish the film due to the inconsistencies of self-financing the post production. There are some gaps which neither Barry nor film scholar Stephen Thrower explain. Somehow, Death Bed acquired a life of its own among horror film aficionados, more widely seen initially on VHS tapes made by, shall we say, independent entrepreneurs. I seriously hope George Barry will at least break even on this first official Blu-ray release. In addition to the commentary track by Barry and Thrower, there are two introductions, one by Barry from 2003, and a more recent intro by Thrower made specifically for this release. A conversation between Barry and Thrower, filmed in a Detroit area restaurant sheds more light on the origins of Thrower's book, Nightmare USA, about independent horror movies produced in the Seventies and early Eighties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:22 AM

June 04, 2014

Office Love: Behind Closed Doors

Ofisu rab:: Mahiru no kinryoku
Yasuro Uegaki - 1985
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

A couple of shots in the beginning of Office Love might indicate that Yasuro Uegaki might have done well had he been making more mainstream films rather than a career in Roman Porno. The film introduces the main character, Reiko, with traveling shots from behind, following her legs and the upper part of her dress, office wear, which changes to a shot of her legs coming out of her car while in evening wear. It's not in the class of Henry King's traveling shot following the famed legs of Betty Grable in A Yank in the R.A.F., nor is it as sexy, but still it is an interesting visual choice, especially as the later Roman Porno films from Nikkatsu had a tendency to be more formulaic.

Reiko sits alone in a restaurant. A man on a date notices Reiko, and sits down to talk to her. The camera moves around so that we see Reiko and the man conversing at the table while in the background, the man's date observes the two, who it is revealed knew each other in the past. Uegaki was certainly working with a limited budget, but even if finances necessitated economic story telling, there is an understanding here of how to tell a story making the most of a single shot.

Reiko is a secretary for a large travel agency, with a special apartment used for entertaining various men, The sex that bookends the film could well have been provocative for the original audience. Reiko beds a gaijin, something which might have caused unease among some socially conservative viewers, the rough equivalent being the scenes from blaxploitation movies where Jim Brown or Fred Williamson is shown in bed with a pretty blonde actress. The film ends with a threesome, Reiko with two men at once, the trio becoming a tangle of sweaty flesh, ending with Reiko going to bed alone, a smile on her face.

There really isn't that much to the story. Reiko is a single mother. The former lover she encounters in the restaurant is the father. Reiko now works for her former lover's father. What makes the narrative of interest is that Reiko deliberately goes against traditional Japanese culture, choosing to remain unattached, and clear eyed about herself, turning down the men who offer marriage.

I usually don't write much about film scores, but the music here is at times lush and romantic, and far better than what one might expect in this kind of film. This was in fact the debut score for Masahiro Kawasaki who went on to provide music for more mainstream films, getting a couple of nominations from the Japanese Academy. One of those nominations is for a film that received a U.S. release, Rampo. Sometimes the talent worth noticing, even in a soft core sex film, is not in front of the camera.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 AM

June 02, 2014

Female Gym Coach: Jump and Straddle

Onna Taiiku Kyoshi: Tonde hiraite
Koyu Ohara - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

In comparison to previous Nikkatsu releases by Koyu Ohara, especially those with Junko Asahina, this is a lighter film, both in tone and eroticism. Not so much like the earlier Roman Porno films, but there is a vague attempt at social relevancy with the women displaying some self-determination regarding there sex partners, the wearing of condoms, how women are used as sales and marketing tools, and even a gay male sex scene.

Of course the big advantage to making a movie about women in leotards is that you can shoot the women in various positions that are sexually suggestive without breaking any rules. Sure, there are some bare breasts and backsides, and the usual simulated couplings. The story as such is about several young women who are members of a cosmetics company's gymnastic team. Shortly before a competition, the team is told they are now to do something called rhythmic gymnastics. Their new coach, was the former high school coach to one of the young women, Kei. The two had a falling out following an unsuccessful showing. Kei needs to have sex the night before in order to be her best in competition, while coach Aoki seems to be impotent. The team slut, Ichigo, fails at seducing Aoki, leading to rumors that he might be gay.

The rumors result in the kind of scene that rarely appears in a film aimed presumably to an audience of straight salarymen. Aoki is attacked by another man in some kind of costume made up of leather straps. It's not entirely clear what the two are doing, and Aoki doesn't do much to fight off this unexpected lover, seeming to surrender under the other man's weight. Aoki is determined to prove himself "normal", finally getting cured by Kei oral ministrations.

Junko Asahina was a graduate of Takarazuka Academy and Musical Theater, and this was put to good use on the gym floor with her dance performances. The film ends with Asahina nude, performing with a bright red streamer. The soundtrack includes some Japanese pop songs that I can only assume are representative of that disco tinged era (and flashbacks of Pink Lady and Jeff). Further research shows that Koyu Ohara probably chose the songs, and that just three years after making this film, he concentrated on making music videos, with one final feature shot in Hong Kong, China Scandal: Exotic Dance. Chroniclers of Japan's pink cinema have already pointed out Ohara's auteurist credentials with recurring themes. While Ohara praised visual style is not significantly shown here, he does make an interesting choice of filming a scene of fellatio in silhouette.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM

May 28, 2014

Two by Alain Robbe-Grillet

The Man who Lies / L'homme qui meant
Alain Robbe-Grillet - 1968

Eden and After / L'eden et l'apres
Alain Robbe-Grillet - 1970

both Kino Classics / Redemption Films BD Region A

I feel mixed about Robbe-Grillet's films. I'm glad that they are available to be seen again, theoretically by more people than had the chance to view these films theatrically. At the same time, I think what is on screen is more interesting as an idea for film. What may have seen interesting on paper works better in one's imagining of a scene than what is played on film.

Not surprisingly then, the high points of both The Man who Lies and Eden and After aren't the films, but the supplementary interviews where Robbe-Grillet discusses how the films were made. It is surprising that both films actually are the results of chance in differing degrees. For The Man who Lies, the invitation to make a film in Czechoslovakia leads to the discovery of a small castle in disrepair, followed by the inspiration of Borges' short story, "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero", where the two are actually the same person. Adding Jean-Louis Trintignant allowed for French production money. As for the film, what we see and what Trintignant says are two different things, such as claiming to go to an empty bar, when we see it full of men. We see enough to known not to trust anything that Trintignant's character says. And other films have employed the same story telling mode, though not as an entire feature. As such, it brings up a very valid discussion about uses of film narrative, but in practice, this doesn't quite work in the same way as Hitchcock's Stage Fright where the viewer gets absorbed by Marlene Dietrich's extended flashback, and the rug is pulled under the viewer when it's been revealed that her story is a lie.

More astonishing is to learn that Eden and After was made without a script, and that Catherine Jourdan was cast only three days before shooting. Jourdan's double who appears near the end of the film was the fiancee of one of the actors, and a quick addition to the narrative in progress. In a very abstract way, the film is a reflection of that time of student rebellion. And certainly it is easy to see why Robbe-Grillet would end up creating what exists of a story around Jourdan, very watchable in her very short minidresses, very high red boots, and flash of panties. In his interview, Robbe-Grillet points out a visual joke, a literal rendering of Duchamp's painting "Nude Descending a Stairway". And I agree with the interviewer that the film is visually stunning. There is also some sado-masochistic images that probably seemed more shocking in 1970. For all that, the parts don't add up to much, making me think of two better films of women losing themselves in North Africa, The Sheltering Sky and Gavin Lambert's Another Sky. I have not seen the supplement, Robbe-Grillet's reworking of the Eden and After footage titled N. Took the Dice, but if I was a gambling man, I would guess the "Sky" is the limit.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

May 26, 2014

The Max Linder Collection

"Max Wants a Divorce"

Four films directed by Max Linder
Kino Classics Region 1 DVD

Done in conjunction with Serge Bromberg's Lobster Films, this collection of four films might be best understood as representative of Linder's late Hollywood period, from 1917 through 1922. What is not explained to anyone coming in cold to Linder, like myself, is that the films here are from a period mostly of commercial and critical decline. Which is not to say that this set should be dismissed, but that these films do not represent Linder at the height of his fame, prior to World War I, when he was one of the most popular, and well-paid comic actors in the world, and a serious rival to Charles Chaplin who looked at the few years older Linder as his "professor".

Three of the films feature Linder's on-screen persona, also named Max Linder, a man about town, wealthy, and not a little foolish. My favorite of these films is the earliest, from 1917, "Max Wants a Divorce", where the just married Max gets a letter informing him that he stands to inherit three million dollars if he is still single. He convinces his wife to get a divorce with a promise of a string of pearls, and remarriage once he gets the loot. This agreement only follows the after the wife has thrown some vases and several hard bound books at the flummoxed Max before stomping away in her wedding dress. Made before the existence of no-fault divorces, the pair concoct an elaborate scheme involving Max being caught with another woman by a detective. Things get more complicated when Max rents a love nest and it's on the same floor as an apartment used by a psychiatrist with half a dozen extremely eccentric patients. Max's plan to get caught cheating on his wife fails when the detective is assumed to be yet another lunatic patient. "Max Wants a Divorce" is another example where shorter, in this case under half an hour, is funnier.

"Seven Years Bad Luck" from 1921, features two scenes that may have proved inspirational for other screen comics. Early in the film, a butler canoodling with the maid, accidentally break a very large mirror. Instead of admitting to a hungover Max that the mirror is broken, the butler arranges for the cook, who faintly resembles Max, to pose as his reflection in the mirror. It wouldn't surprise me if some brothers named Marx caught a showing of this film. Max almost catches on to the fact that he's not looking at his own reflection, when the mirror is, unbeknownst to him, replaced. Thinking he's about to bean the impostor, Max instead breaks his new mirror. A later scene involving Max in a cage with a friendly leopard and a couple of equally amiable lions might well have inspired Chaplin to create a similar kind of scene in The Circus, although in the latter film, the lion is less than hospitable.

"Be My Wife"

Linder sometimes made use of silhouettes for comic effect, and one of the nicest sight gags of "Be My Wife", also from 1921, is that of Max watering a flower pot. As a silhouette, it appears that Max is pouring water on a woman's head. There is also a gag involving a doorbell that triggers a series of moving walls and a trap door. With his career waning, Linder jettisoned his usual cast, crew and on-screen image for the parody, "The Three Must-Get-Theres". Taking some of the basics of the classic Dumas store, the film gets some laughs from some deliberate anachronisms, such as a jazz band in King Louis' court, as well as telephone lines seen in exterior shots. Linder's last ditch attempt at regaining commercial viability in Hollywood also failed, although the parody was reportedly appreciated by the object of Linder's spoofing, Douglas Fairbanks. What is apparent here is Linder's own athleticism and acrobatic skills. Some of the gags here may not have aged well, but the ability to take a tumble never goes out of style.

"Be My Wife"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

May 24, 2014

Blue Movie

Alberto Cavallone - 1978
Raro Video Region 1 DVD

Maybe it will take more, ahem, exposure, to the films of Alberto Cavallone, but I'm not convinced of anything other than a talent for creating a pastiche of other films from some better filmmakers. There's the disillusioned photographer from Blow-up encountering a psychologically disturbed young woman form Repulsion. The photographer collects urine in empty soda cans, and feces in cigarette packs. He also prefers to photograph empty soda cans rather than attractive young women, dressed and undress, because he thinks it's more honest. As the notes in the booklet mention, this is also one of two movies Cavallone made with a title previously used by Andy Warhol.

The film open with the sound of a clicking camera and gunfire. The photographer also has flashback's of various scenes of violence in Vietnam. A young woman that he rescues, and keeps in his house, has flashbacks of being raped, with her attacker reappearing in various unlikely places. Maybe Cavallone thought he was saying something radical with piss in Coke cans, and shit in Marlboro packs, and perhaps for some audience members, he was. My own reaction is that following in a path set by others does not constitute transgressive cinema.

There is not much in English on Cavallone. Short of the DVD booklet, there is also this piece in Mubi. The DVD was taken from a 16mm print. Extras include some excerpts from an 8mm version including some hard core sex. This is one of those rare times when I find it hard to put a positive spin on what I've seen, other than to say that the film may be of some historical interest. The DVD includes interviews with some of the crew members and the lead actor, plus excerpts from an audio interview with Cavallone. As long as Raro Video is going to bring back the work of forgotten Italian filmmakers, I say that Ugo Gregoretti should be given attention. Who's that, you ask? He is the G of the omnibus film RoGoPaG, the other guys being the still revered Rossellini, Godard and Pasolini.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:22 AM

May 22, 2014

Eastern Bandits

Pi fu
Yang Shu-peng - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

My first encounter with a film by Yang Shu-peng, and what a bravura piece of filmmaking. The film opens with a Strauss waltz, and a traveling camera that introduces several of the main characters within a room where a formal reception is taking place. It takes a few visual clues to realize that the scene takes place during World War II, with Japanese soldiers in China. The seemingly good natured, but also pointed banter, between an officer and a man identifying himself as a reporter, ends with a quartet of people with guns discretely aimed in each others ribs. The film's Chinese title is translated as "An Inaccurate Memoir", and most of the film is an extended flashback on how this gang of Chinese bandits made their way into a Japanese fort.

There are several other notable traveling shots in the film. Yang composes these shots to give a sense of the space where the gang is operating, and their relationship to each other within that space, such as the scene where the gang leader is busted out of prison and onto the street. One of the more amazing shots takes place in the gang's underground hideout, a labyrinth of tunnels, where the camera snakes around while various gang members engage in a shootout with Japanese soldiers. The camera follows the a gang member or two in action, while moving through the various pathways, giving a sense of the depth and pathways, similar to an ant farm.

The memoirs are those of Gao, a man on his way in the desert to be married, kidnapped by the bandit gang. Infatuated with the sister of the gang boss, Gao decides to join the gang, proving his worth when he saves the surviving members following a robbery gone wrong. Based on the gangs gumption and guns, mostly the guns, Gao decides that the gang should use their talents to take on the Japanese, and makes a plan to assassinate the brother of Emperor Hirohito, visiting a remote fort in the desert.

Some other writings about Yang, specific to his previous film, The Robbers, mention the influence of Akira Kurosawa. What I see in this newer film is the influence of a couple of Kurosawa's cinematic heirs, primarily Sam Peckinpah, with a bit of Walter Hill. Walter Hill? This is the first Chinese movie I've seen with slide guitar as part of the soundtrack, and I kept anticipating seeing Ry Cooder's name in the credits. The Peckinpah influence is a bit more obvious with sense of absurdity and nihilism that inform the final shootout.

The big difference is that unlike Kurosawa, Peckinpah and Hill, if you discount The Warriors, women have the place in the gang. The one known as Lady Dagger shows off her sex appeal in distracting a soldier, and shows why she's known by that sobriquet, when doing her part to get gang boss Fang out of jail. Gao's relationship with Fang's sister, Jen, alternates between hostility and affection, with humorous results.

I have to assume that Eastern Bandits looks spectacular on an actual movie screen. There are several shots of the characters in the distance, riding horseback through the desert. The exuberance of the opening scene eventually settles into a steady pace, but between the audacity of the characters, and Ynng's visual stylings, the film remains intriguing. And when was the last time you saw a Chinese movie end with Mandarin heavy metal song?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

May 20, 2014

Gang War in Milan

Milano rovente
Umberto Lenzi - 1973
Raro Video BD Region A

I have to admit that this may be the prettiest Umberto Lenzi movie I've seen, due in no small part to some very nice Blu-ray mastering that help emphasise the bold colors. The deep sea blue of Antonio Sabato's apartment, the light blue cityscape of Milan, the red railings in a subway station, and the pop art dresses worn by Marisa Mell and Carla Romanelli are part of the visual charm here. The other advantage of seeing this film in its new home video release is that it is probably more complete, with a running time of one-hundred minutes, four minutes more than what's listed in IMDb - and it's not hard to guess what might have been cut.

A French gangster who specializes in the drug trade tries to move in on Sabato, a Sicilian who controls prostitution in Milan. Nothing is really made of it, but the rivals both operate out of clubs named after animals, The Scorpion and The Red Turtle. One of Sabato's girls is found dead in his club's swimming pool, incongruously with sea weed in her mouth. From there, the two gangs work to disrupt each other's businesses while Sabato and Philippe Leroy try to find ways to blackmail each other. Lenzi's not been one to shy away from violence with the prostitutes scarred on their faces and breasts by Leroy's thugs. These same guys kidnap Sabato's lieutenant, with electric shock treatment where it hurts the most.

There is one scene which begs for some cultural explanations. Sabato and this closest gang members are having dinner at a restaurant, the classic Italian kind with the red and white checked table cloths. They are eating some kind of meat on a skewer, what appears to me as some kind of regional dish, but what is it and from what region, I don't know. The gang gets together to sing what the accompanying booklet only describes as a "folk song". As happens too often, the song lyrics don't get subtitles, so I have no idea if this might be a Sicilian song or what the song might be about. What makes this particular scene of interest is that it is cross-cut with a scene of one of Leroy's guys getting killed in the restaurant bathroom. Explanation aside, this is one part of Gang War in Milan that makes the film of more than casual interest.

Lenzi has previously stated that Raoul Walsh is one of his favorite directors. While not played out in the same way as White Heat, Sabato's character is characterized as something of a mamma's boy, doting on his ailing mother who dreams of returning to Sicily. One can push the comparison with Walsh's films further with the men, especially Sabato and Leroy, using their hyper-masculine personas to hide the more sensitive aspects of their natures which are reserved for very private moments. (And am I the only one who would like to see Lenzi's earliest films like the female pirate movie, Queen of the Seas get some Blu-ray love?)

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

May 19, 2014

Martial Arts Movie Marathon

Manchu Boxer / Qi sheng quan wang
Wu Ma - 1974

The Skyhawk / Huang Fei-hong xiao lin quan
Cheng Chang-ho - 1974

The Association / Yan ku shen tan
Cheng Chang-ho - 1975

The Dragon Tamers / Nu zi tai quan qun ying hui
Wu Yu-shen - 1975

Shout! Factory Region 0 Two disc set

For those who have some degree of nostalgia for the kind of stuff that played in theaters about forty years ago, or who are curious about what was usually dismissed by critics as "chop-socky", the four movie set may be of interest. All four films are from Raymond Chow's production company, Golden Harvest, notable for the films that made Bruce Lee a star. For some, it may be hard to imagine that there was a time when movies that were mostly about the rivalries between different martial arts schools were commercially viable, usually with indifferent English language dubbing, often presented by fly-by-night distributors looking to make a quick buck. Nothing here is of the quality of something like King Hu's influential A Touch of Zen, but three of the four are worth a look for various reasons. Also, all four films are dubbed in Mandarin and have very readable yellow subtitles.

From a critical and historical perspective, one can view these films with the kind of appreciation given to a Warner Brothers movie from the Thirties or Forties. There is something of a house style, yet as one can see stylistic differences between a Warner movie directed by Raoul Walsh or Michael Curtiz, one can also discuss some of the differences between the directors represented here. Other recognizable elements are some of the names in the credits, music by Joseph Koo, as well as recurring cast members such as Sammo Hung, listed as Hung Kam-bo, and Carter Wong.

Manchu Boxer is the most generic film in this collection. Liu Yung wants to be a high minded practitioner of martial arts, but where ever he shows up, he's challenged by one badass after another. He feels sorry for one guy he's killed, and decides that he's going to donate his match winnings to the guy's family, claiming it's a debt he owes. This is the kind of film people probably imagine most kung-fu movies to be like, with lots of fighting, and a forgettable plot. Even when the scripts are questionable, the other three films display varying degrees of visual imagination.

There's a story waiting to be told about Cheng Chang-ho, born as Chang-hwa Jeong. A Korean filmmaker whose best known films were Hong Kong productions, signed with a Chinese pseudonym, gives his two films here some visual panache. Mostly this is in the form of canted angles, but in The Skyhawk Cheng finds ways of letting the picturesque scenery and architecture of Thailand do much of the work. Sixty-nine year old Kwan Tak-hing is the star, playing, as he did for most of his career, a fictionalized version of Wong Fei-hung. The basic story is one about rival martial arts schools trying to beat Wong and his students, while Wong always tries to take the high road in avoiding fighting if possible. There's a sub-plot involving the bad guys cheating the owners of their restaurant through gambling debts. Sammo Hung tags along while Carter Wong exchanges glances with Nora Miao.

The Association

Cheng's The Association is the high point of this collection, where he lets his imagination run amuck. The film opens with a female agent shot by a firing squad. The backdrop is a very pink sunrise. From there things get progressively nuttier as a Chinese cop, Huang, with a modified Afro discovers a secret sex club with some very wealthy patrons and corruption in the police department. If there was ever a movie that seemed to be designed for exhibition at New York City's grind houses in the Seventies, this is it. Finding a young dead female, Huang, pokes at her exposed breasts before carting the corpse around accusing several people of murder. At the private club, supposedly a charity organization, two blondes engage in a lesbian sex show, followed by the men making high dollar bids for bedmates. One of the blondes also does some kind of dance wearing a very sheer red nightgown for an audience of other women, with a mostly nude female victim on a table. In order to catch a criminal, Huang hides in the wardrobe of a wealthy young widow, who has a dream about being ravished by the cop who makes clear that his intentions are strictly honorable. And that woman who gets shot in the film's opening? She has an identical sister, with Angela Mao looking cute dressed as a boy with a plaid newsboy cap.

There's a brief scene of sex in The Dragon Tamers, but unsurprisingly for a film by John Woo, bromance is the more palpable relationship here, between two guys who are both friends and temporarily romantic rivals. The second film by Woo, it seems to promise a bit more than what is delivered with the setup of rival groups of female martial artists. No doves fly here, but there is a flock of pigeons. Again, we're back to the trope of martial arts school rivalries, with domination by the baddest of bad guys in cahoots with the baddest of bad girls. Anyone who would have watched this film when it was released would never have guessed that the director would go on to define a new generation of Hong Kong filmmakers with films like The Killers or Hard-Boiled, or become internationally acclaimed for Hollywood and mainland Chinese films. At the time the film was made, Woo lacked the discipline to realized that there is such a thing as too many zoom shots. He seems to have been under the influence of Sergio Leone with close-ups of eyes, and the placement of characters, especially in the last two fight scenes. There is also the use of rack-focusing in a conversation between the two chief villains. While mostly of historical interest as an early example of John Woo's work, the film serves as a reminder of a time when young filmmakers were allowed to practice their craft before evolving into artists.

The Dragon Tamers

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

May 16, 2014

Back in Crime

L'autre vie de Richard Kemp
Germinal Alvarez - 2013
Kino Lorbeer Region 1 DVD

The English language title, not the cleverest of puns, might not have been the best idea, although it does indicate the time travel aspect of this film, unlike the French title which translates as "The other life of Richard Kemp". The premise is familiar, in this case a cop goes back in time to solve a case he wasn't able to resolve twenty-five years earlier. What might be considered audacious is that the time travel is accomplished with a simple conk on the head, with present day Richard Kemp falling off a bridge and into the water, only to find himself in 1989 when he swims back to shore. Sometimes not providing an explanation is better than trying to make sense out of a nonsensical premise.

Several scenes take place on bridges. It's a great visual metaphor for a film about connections between past and present, or present and future. All of these bridges are above bodies of water, also a familiar symbol for the passage of time. It's not quite Alphaville but the 1989 Paris looks faintly futuristic, especially the curved exterior of Kemp's apartment building, and the interior with the checkerboard pattern walls that play with perspective. The bridges tend to become abstract images, where the more functional aspects as structures providing connections or as paths are only suggested.

The big question is whether the future Richard Kemp is able to stop a crime he knows is about to happen. There is also a twist when Kemp returns to the present day involving his relationship with a woman he encounters, a psychologist. This is the kind of narrative that depends on taking the basic set-up on faith without too close an examination. As such, the 1989 Kemp crosses paths with the contemporary Kemp without any sense of recognition. A greater leap might be required for a scene where Kemp shows a series of photos stored on his yet to be invented cell phone.

Alvarez also has a color scheme at work with contemporary France on the cold side with various shades of blues and grays, while the past is dominated by shades of brown. Just as the film requires the viewer to glide past various aspects of the story that don't quite make sense upon closer examination, most of the pleasures to be found here are on the surface, with the use of color, shadows and images. Sometimes, that's really all a film needs.

One goof that bothered me, that could have been fixed with a couple minutes of research, is when a lecture on serial killers refers to Bob Bundy, instead of Ted Bundy. Or it could be that Bob Bundy is a serial killer in an alternate reality.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

May 14, 2014

Countess Dracula revisited

Peter Sasdy - 1971
Synapse Films BD Region A / Region 1 DVD Combo Pack

Most of what I have to say about Countess Dracula was covered about four years ago. The screen cap about is from the new DVD, but the way to go is to see this film on Blu-ray. Most striking is the use of shimmering reflective light in several scenes. Still the sexiest of Hammer films, with the cleavage generously spilling out. There's, of course, Ingrid Pitt, as well as big breasted gypsies, bar maids and chambermaids, and the future second Mrs. William Friedkin, Leslie-Anne Down. The brief biographical supplement about Miss Pitt is worth watching, especially for the glimpses of an early film, The Sound of Horror (and nobody's kidding about that title, either). In any case, this film is my idea of what a PG rated movie is suppose to look like.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

May 12, 2014

Special ID

Te shu shen fen
Clarence Fok Yiu-leung - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In Special ID, Jing Tian plays Ginger Rogers to Donnie Yen's Fred Astaire. Maybe not the best analogy, and while Jing isn't dancing backwards in high heels, she shows herself as up to the task of high kicks and bruising stunts. Jing leaps from a bridge onto traffic, and during a high speed car chase is kicking bad guy Andy On, stretched out inside the car, while On is trying to push her out of the passenger side which is missing a door. She shoots, she hits, and has no qualms about arresting a gangster who's taking a piss in the men's room. I don't know what's planned for the future, but as far as female action stars go, I would hope Jing is provided with more opportunities to show what she can do, and yes, she did most of her own stunts. And as far as that Fred and Ginger comparison is concerned, Donnie Yen and Jing Tian do start off on something of an adversarial relationship that evolves over time to one of mutual respect.

Yen plays a Hong Kong undercover cop with a desire to get back into uniform. He's been undercover for so long, there are questions about whether he could even function again as straight policeman. Based on his past associations, Yen works with mainland police in Nanhai, China, most directly with the female cop played by Jing. There's also the usually rivalry between several Triad gangs, plus Yen's struggle with both his identity pretending to be a gangster, and making sure his cover isn't blown. The narrative aspects are not the most compelling here, much of it is familiar, but the action set pieces are often impressive.

There is some unusual use of color here, such as Jing's red car, or Andy On's watermelon red shirt worn on a rooftop basketball court, contrasting against shades mostly of gray and brown. There's also this shade of green that pops up, on that rooftop basketball hoop, and a car that appears in the big chase, blocking traffic. I can't think of a film with cinematography by Peter Pau that wasn't visually interesting. Pau is also listed as a producer, and I think of this film mostly as his work with Yen, credited as Action Director, rather than the work of director of record Clarence Fok (and I write this with affection for Fok's The Iceman Cometh).

And back to the Fred Astaire comparison, as Yen is not handsome in the conventional leading man sense, but has that charismatic smile. Playing somewhat against type, he's a bit grubbier in this film, unshaven. In the "Making of . . ." supplement, Yen discusses some of the types of martial arts used in the fight scenes. And for many viewers, Donnie Yen would be the big draw, but when Jing Tian decides she can't wait for backup and takes on a few dozen triad members for a street fight, it's clear that Donnie Yen has found his distaff match.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:11 AM

May 02, 2014

Far East Film Festival - Day Seven

I started the day by attending the "FEFF Talk" for Thursday, a brief roundtable with four newer directors - Roh Deok, Chiu, Derek Kwok and Panjong Pisanthanakun. Spoke a bit with Panjong afterwards about Alone, and my experience of getting contacted by the "godfather" of Hollywood remakes of Asian movies, Roy Lee, about that film, and how the bottom fell out on the "Asian Extreme" market at almost that same time. I also got to be Darcy Pacquet of Koreanfilm.org., who I once wrote to back when there was a special showing of Korean films at the Starz Denver Film Festival in 2011.

Panjong's Pee Mak was the only Thai film to be shown in Udine. It also has been a critical hit, as well as the most financially successful Thai film ever made. I wish I liked it better. The basic story is of a soldier, Mak, in some past 19th century war who leaves his pregnant wife, Nak, and comes home. Mak is the last one to figure out that his wife and child are dead and that he's been living with ghosts. What may be considered the best film version was made by Nonzee Nimibutr in 1999. There have been a few more versions since, including one in 3D.

Panjong begins with the original premise but has created a more comic version, aiming towards a youthful audience with popular star Mario Maurer. Even though the film takes place in an unclearly defined past, there are relatively contemporary references to Rocky and Ang Lee. Those unfamiliar with Thai films might be taken aback by some of the humor which is hardly politically correct. There are also sight gags making fun of some of the conventions from Thai horror movies, such as the upside down hanging ghost and the arm that seems to extend infinitely. Goofiest of all is a scene at a carnival haunted house where those in costume are scared by the real ghost. Panjong is good in creating a creepy atmosphere, and could well have made a straight horror film if he wanted to. Too often though, the film depends on how funny it is to see grown men shrieking like little girls. Pee Mak starts off well enough but after a while was closer in spirit (pun intended) to something like Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein.

The lure of Venus Talk (Gwanneungui Bubchik) was seeing my favorite Korean actress, Moon So-ri, on the big screen. The film is about three friends, women "of a certain age" trying to navigate their respective ways through satisfying relationships. Moon's character, a housewife who seems sexually demanding of her husband once again shows how fearless she is onscreen, including taking on the role of a woman a few years older than her actual age. The title literally translates as "The Laws of Pleasure".

Jo Min-su, better known as the mysterious "mother" in the Kim Ki-duk film, Pieta, turns a poignant performance as the coffee house owner who faces cancer. There is also Uhm Jung-hwa as a television executive, dealing with a relationship with a man in his Twenties. Uhm is considered the "Madonna" (the singer, not the religious icon) of Korea. At age Forty-four, she looks great. Venus Talk is entertaining, and touching at times, but I also starting to nod out . . .

. . . and then I saw Boy Golden: Shoot to Kill. Director Chito Rono stated in his introduction to the audience that the film was his homage to Filipino action movies of the Seventies and Eighties. Be that as it may, it's a finely calibrated piece of work, and far better than anything I've seen from Cirio Santiago, probably the best known filmmaker of that time to get films released stateside. The story, which takes place in 1960, was inspired by real life criminal Arturo Porcuna.

This film is lovingly and unapologetically lurid and unsubtle. Everything is big, from the bloody gunfights to the displays of love and hate. In one of the many wonderful scenes, the showgirl on the run played by KC Concepcion gets into a no holds barred cat fight with a gangster's moll. The two tumble down a flight of stairs and into a casino. The moll tears open the top of Concepcion's shirts, stopping the fight long enough to let the men in the casino gawk at Concepcion's overly generous cleavage. The top billing goes to the seemingly unstoppable Eddie Garcia, still busy at age Eighty-five, and by busy, this includes a bit of lovey-dovey with Gloria Sevilla, just a few years younger. Sevilla may look like a grandmother in appearance, but a scene that brought spontaneous applause showed her character to be far from matronly. I do hope that Boy Golden will have the chance to shine on US screens.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:25 AM

May 01, 2014

Far East Film Festival - Day Six

Like opening night, three film in a row during the late afternoon, past Midnight. But first, a few minutes with French freelance photographer/documentarian Fred Ambroisine, who is in Udine doing coverage of the festival. Fred is also working on a project of video greetings for Hong Kong star Gordon Liu. Most people may be familiar with Liu from his appearance in both Kill Bill films, if not the classic Shaw Brothers martial arts films like The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. Liu has had a stroke which explains why this action star has more recently been seen acting from a chair, as in Kill 'Em All. I feel so fortunate to have had the opportunity to participate in Fred's project.

First up for viewing was the debut film by Korean Roh Deok, Very Ordinary Couple (Yeonaeui Wondo). Putting this on-again, off-again, on-again couple on a very twisty roller coaster ride is probably too obvious a visual metaphor for this young couple. There may be some who will view the relationship between Young and Dong-hee as a cautionary tale about co-workers in love. It is, for the most part, a very likable film. The Korean title translates as "Temperature of Love".

Roh has her couple speak directly to the camera about how they view their relationship, as well as alternating parallel situations that the two find themselves in. Attempts to be civil disintegrate quickly, when Dong-hee gets his destroyed laptop returned in a collect shipment. The comic high point would be watching Young and Dong-hee takings steps to subvert each other at work. Nothing is secret at the bank where they both work, neither about themselves or anyone else, with havoc spilling over to their coworkers at a special employees retreat. The two try their best for a reconciliation after wandering away from the hotel where they have disrupted the team building activities. It's a relatively modest first film, and as such, should be enjoyed on those terms.

Far more ambitious is Derek Kwok's film about firefighters, As the Light Goes Out (Gow for ting hung). Things do get a bit stacked when you have an abandoned warehouse that should have been dismantled decades ago, close to the gas pipeline that helps keep Hong Kong functioning, which is barely a hop, skip and a jump from the power station where the son of one of the firefighters is lost. There are also old and new rivalries between old and new firemen. A monsoon is coming. And it's Christmas Eve.

What really makes this different from something like Backdraft is that it is based on the premise that it is the smoke, not the fire, that is the most dangerous part of firefighting. While Kwok goes about too heavily into the hallucinatory effects of smoke, where the film is best is in depicting the uncertain sense of space when trying to find your way through a thick, black cloud.

Best of the evening was The Snow White Murder Case (Shirayuki hime satsujin liken). This is a murder mystery for the Twitter era. Not having read the novel by Minato Kanae, I don't know how much of the film owes to the source novel, or where to credit director Yoshihiro Nakamura or screenplay writer Tamio Hayashi. The film begins with the discovery in a national park of the charred corpse of a woman, stabbed multiple times before being burned. A youngish reporter, essentially a slacker who seems to have drifted in to television news is contacted by a female acquaintance who worked with the victim, and is pretty certain about the identity of the murderer. The reporter, who mostly kills time with quickie reviews of ramen joints in Twitter, interviews his friend as well as others who knew the victim and the alleged killer, both employees at a company that makes "Snow White" soap. The reporter has a very tenuous grasp on the concept of confidentiality and lets loose with various clues on Twitter, while the tabloid news show he works for takes his footage at face value.

What we see are various incidences replayed from two or more points of view. Sometimes the changes are minor, though there are sometimes huge differences in details. What makes the film fascinating is that part of its structure resembles that of the French novelists like Duras and Robbe-Grillet in which there is no objective history but only the way people recall specific events, but done within a recognizable genre framework. The Twitter messages are like an ongoing Greek chorus of people ready to make certain judgement behind their respective pseudonyms. There are also subplots involving a classical music trio of young men who look like members of Asia's ubiquitous boy bands, and two young girls who bond over the book, Anne of Green Gables. A very clever film, and one of my favorites of this festival, so far.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:34 AM

April 28, 2014

Far East Film Festival - Day Four

Josephine Siao in Nobody's Child

Another restored film to start the day: Nobody's Child (Kuer liulang ji). Released in February of 1960, Bu Wancang has a film that is quite different from other Hong Kong films I've seen from that era with its country settings. Aside from my interest in Hong Kong films from that time, the big draw was seeing Josephine Siao as a child star, eleven years old at the initial time of filming. Additionally, there is the "Denver connection" at work here, as Ms. Siao, received her Master's in Child Psychology from Regis University as part of her segue way from acting full-time.

Young Mei enjoys life on the small farm. Her absentee father, unseen for eight years, returns following an injury to his leg. It is then that Mei discovers that she was adopted by the woman she has called mother. An elderly street performer takes Mei under his wing, where the young girl learns to spin plates, sing and juggle. The street performer gets arrested for supposedly beating up to bigger and younger men, and Mei is left to travel and perform alone with a monkey and three dogs. She is temporarily adopted by another kindly woman who lives on a boat, acting as companion to the woman's bedridden daughter. The street performer is released from jail after two months, and Mei rejoins him for the itinerant. Disaster hits the pair when they are stuck in snow country, with the old street performer freezing to death. Young Mei is rescued by a family staying just long enough to say goodbye to the only kind paternal figure she has known, before hitting the road for the town she thinks of as home.

For those who only know Josephine Siao as Jet Li's mom from the two "Fong Sai Yuk" movies made a little more than thirty years later, here we can see that Siao has been a gifted physical performer well before she became a character actress. Lo Wei, latter to be best known for directing the pair of Bruce Lee movies that became international hits, is seen here as the "father" who pushes Mei out of the only home she has known. The digital restoration was from a 16 mm print, that show some deterioration in the beginning, from the Hong Kong Film Archive. The scenes in the snow were filmed in Hokkaido, Japan. Siao also sings three songs, one, about mothers, was a popular hit. Yeah, it's a tearjerker, but I can live with that.

Brontosaurus Love poster

On a far more cheerful note comes Brontosaurus Love (Cinta Brontosaurus). As I understand it, the movie is more about the misadventures of Raditya Dika after he published his book of the same title. Playing himself, Dika finds himself thoroughly discouraged in looking for love, certain that no relationship can last more than six months. A chance meeting with Jessica looks to be the change needed, but as expected, the road to true love is never smooth. Indonesian films rarely get festival screenings stateside, but hopefully this very charming film will be an exception.

Much of that charm comes in the form of cutie-pie Eriska Rein whose Jessica matches Dika for some off-center humor, but also has a sense of awareness that Dika eventually gains by the end of the film. Among the comic moments are the first date at a French restaurant where Dika is finds the menu unpronounceable, followed by the pair eating instant noodles on the roof of a gas station. Dika is talked into selling the rights to his book to a director of horror movies. This allows for satire with a director whose pretensions are even more foolish than his series of movies involving zombie nurses.

Black Coal, Thin Ice poster

It's been noted by others that in Hitchcock's films, you sometimes can't tell whether two characters are trying to kill each other or kiss each other. There is such a moment in Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai ri yan huo) when the ex-cop played by Liao Fan is on a ferris wheel with mystery woman Gwei Lun-Mei one cold winter night. That the film has made its stateside debut at the Tribeca Film Festival suggests that it is being fast tracked for distribution rather than waiting for the usual Fall showcase. Certainly a film that begins with a shot of a dismembered arm on a coal conveyor belt is indication that officially sanctioned films from mainland China have moved quite a distance from the historical dramas that were the usual mainland fare.

One wonderful scene is of Liao visiting his ex-wife at her dance studio, and doing a joyful solo dance to a disco song, a scene of unexpected exuberance that reminded me of a similar moment in Bertolucci's Luna. There is also a moment where we just see the close up of hands, the rebuff of touching, and what appear to be hand signals. That this film won the top prize at the Berlin Film Festival may set off unmatched expectations of what is onscreen, but there is enough going on to make this another film worth seeking out.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:30 AM

April 22, 2014

Hallucination Strip

Roma Drogata: a polizia non puo intervenire
Lucio Marcacinna - 1975
Raro Video BD Region A

Hallucination Strip is one of those odd films best appreciated by the more curious cinephile. How odd? This was the first film Bud Cort made, almost five years after Harold and Maude. Even with facial hair, Cort's wide eyes and baby face hadn't changed much since his onscreen fling with Ruth Gordon. Cort's filmography up to that point had several unconventional films, notably Brewster McCloud, so being in an Italian crime drama that take a break for an LSD trip doesn't seem like such a stretch.

Weirdly enough, there is Robert Altman;s French connection from Images here, Marcel Bozzuffi as the cop with an eye on Cort, mostly in the hopes of nabbing Rome's bigger drug dealers. Too bad Altman wasn't on the set of this film. Just having two names from two films that defined Hollywood in in the early Seventies can't make Hallucination Strip more than a film that is neither bad enough, nor bold enough to even be considered cinema maudit.

This is the only film by cowriter and director Lucio Marcaccini. As reported by editor Giulio Berruti, Marcaccini seemed to be adrift on his own set. Maybe someone will get Bud Cort to relay his own version of the making of this film. In the meantime, Berruti's story is of an editor for a small production company, who is asked by the producer to "stitch" a film together, and finds himself occasionally advising the novice director. Marcaccini also reportedly produced the film with his own money. The only consistent information about Marcaccini is that he made this film. His stint as an assistant on Garden of the Finzi-Continis and a couple other films is not documented.

It could be that some of the basic story ideas were percolating in Marcaccini's mind well before he had the opportunity to make the film. Certainly, by 1975, making a film about rich high school kids smoking very fat jays and going on bad LSD trips was hardly topical. Add to that a scene of body painting, some performance art, a bit of consciousness raising, and you have a film that might have seemed marginally more "with it" had it been made in 1968. Bozzuffi is Marcaccini's proxy here, disapproving of the drug taking, and questioning the kids' politics, but also taking the parents to task for being too self-involved to really know what their children are up to. In keeping with that beloved cinematic tradition, the high school kids all look like they've all past their 21st birthday.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:03 AM

April 17, 2014

Death Occurred Last Night

La morte risale a ieri sera
Ducio Tessari - 1970
Raro Video BD Region A

It was future screenplay writer Ric Menelllo who clued me in on Ducio Tessari. We saw Tessari's one foray into Hollywood filmmaking, Three Tough Guys, starring Fred Williamson, Isaac Hayes and Lino Ventura. On my own, I saw the Alain Delon crime thriller Tony Arzenta, released in the U.S. under the title of No Way Out. Tessari's most familiar work is as one of the writers for A Fistful of Dollars. Death Occurred Last Night has none of the exuberance of Three Tough Guys, nor is it an exercise in style like Tony Arzenta, but Tessari makes some interesting choices here.

Raf Vallone is a panicked father whose daughter has disappeared. The daughter, Donatella, is twenty-five, but is described as "mentally deficient". Vallone is seen in a series of full shots, some from a pronounced distance, that emphasize his isolation and sense of smallness in trying to find the truth about his daughter. The film takes place in Milan, and Tessari often uses shots where the scale of the city, the tall apartments, office buildings and even a stadium dwarf the characters. Police captain Frank Wolff reminds Vallone that his daughter is just one of many missing young women, and Tessari creates a visual motif to illustrate a sense of personal anguish in an indifferent environment.

There is also a very unusual scene where Wolff and his wife, played by Eva Renzi, have alternating monologues. The wife has just published a book, it's suggested that it is pictorial, documenting the violent state of the world. It takes a little while to realize that the two are not having a dialogue, but are each commenting on the kind of void one feels after accomplishing something, whether it it solving a case, or getting a book published. It's not every genre movie that gives room for the characters to have a little existential crisis of justifying their lives.

Even though the film begins with Raf Vallone confronting the police, the narrative mostly follows cops Woff and Gabriele Tinti who persuade a former pimp to help them seek out Donatella. I was a bit thrown off when Wolff is seen with a syringe, and medically treats Vallone, until I learned that the source novel is one of several books about physician turned detective Duca Lamberti. The novel's author, Giorgio Scerbanenco, lived in Milan, where all of his books take place. The source novel's English language title is "The Milanese Kill on Saturday".

A couple more visual bits that I liked: a shot of Frank Wolff handing out cash to a couple of madams at one of several "houses" visited, while in the background, behind frosted glass, we can see one of the girls undressing. Also a shot with the camera tilted up at a staircase where several floors above, several oranges fall to the floor, dropped by one of Vallone's startled neighbors.

Chris Alexander, of Fangoria magazine, provides a video introduction, as well as an overview in the booklet to Death Occurred Last Night that in retrospect tries too hard to position the film within the dominant Italian genre films of the time. The problem is that this approach brings certain expectations for the viewer. There is also some discussion of the film score by Gianni Ferrio, that some critics have cited as inappropriate. I had no problem with the music, which would seem to coincide with Tessari's overall aim which would be to go against the grain of familiar genre conventions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

April 15, 2014

Seven Warriors

Zhong yi qun ying
Terry Tong - 1989
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In Christopher Frayling's biography of Sergio Leone, Frayling recounts how issues of plagiarism held up the release of A Fistful of Dollars in the United States. After making millions of dollars, well more than a fistful, throughout most of the world, Leone had to settle a legal dispute over his publicly acknowledged use of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo before United Artists would introduce American audiences to what became known as a spaghetti western. Just a few years earlier, and with the same studio, Kurosawa made more money from the United Artists' remake of Seven Samurai than he had earned making the original film.

I wouldn't know if Kurosawa was unaware of the Hong Kong film that was very obviously inspired by both his work as well as the Hollywood remake by John Sturges. Maybe he thought any financial rewards would not be worth the effort. Certainly, at the time Seven Warriors was made, it was not seen by anyone outside of Hong Kong and some Chinese language areas in East Asia. If the film played in the U.S., it would have been seen in the circuit of Chinatown theaters. Whatever the case of the film's visibility, Kurosawa's name is nowhere to be seen in the credits.

The concept is of some interest, transposing the story to China of the 1920s, known as a time of conflict between various warlords vying for regional rule. The more remote regions of China were similar to "the wild West" with people essentially fending for themselves. There is one scene that plays on that analogy, with one of the soon to be members of the seven, a tall man armed with several knives, facing a man in a very western style black suit, along with a cowboy hat. The story is essentially the same: a group of peasants wish to defend themselves against a gang of bandits, and hire some professionals to fight on their behalf. The professionals are men, down on their luck, who take on the job as a means of keeping what is left of their self-respect.

At a little more than ninety minutes, Seven Warriors is quite a bit shorter that either Kurosawa's original, or Sturges' popular remake. Character development is set aside for action. A couple of sources list Sammo Hung as having had a hand in the direction. Hung is quite visible in an opening scene, saving his sister from the clutches of a warlord, and showing off his kung fu moves. The most notable stars would be Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Jackie Cheung, both relatively early, when they were starting to gain traction as Hong Kong stars. Leung is more of a lover than a fighter, the idealist of the group. A scar-faced Cheung is a martinet, training the villagers in military tactics. Old school Shaw Brothers star, Lo Lieh, has the plum role are the warlord the seven are fighting against.

Seven Warriors hasn't aged as well as the films it was trying to emulate. Particularly grating are the sound effects, the punches and clanging of swords that sound like they came from the same library as countless other Hong Kong martial arts movies. There are a handful of nice action scenes, especially those with Ben Lam as the knife throwing Mao, and a heroic Jackie Cheung. I also like the inclusion of a point of view shot from blacksmith, the top screen grab, taking a peek through the burnt out bottom of a pot.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:32 AM

April 10, 2014

Confession of Murder

Naega Salinbeomida;
Jung Byung-gil - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The best reason to see the South Korean Confession of Murder is for the action set pieces. This is the kind of stuff that reveals the conventionality and lack of imagination in big budget Hollywood. The first chase scene has the brother of one of the victims in pursuit of the confessed killer. When the two are not leaping around from one fast moving car to another, they are having a fist fight on one of the moving vehicles. The action is cut between point of view shots with the camera at bumper level. There is a lot of fact cutting, but Bung is able to organize the shots so that the sense of direction remains coherent. There is a second high speed chase with the dogged detective in a high speed chase driving one very large truck, following a man on a motorcycle. The dynamics of scale are immediately set up here, along with the constricted space of part of the chase filmed in a tunnel. Many of the scenes throughout the film take place in very restricted or enclosed spaces, but Bung amps up his chases with cars and trucks that spin sideways and upside down, and lots of breaking glass.

As a critique of celebrity, Confession of Murder takes a few pot shots at a familiar target. Shortly after the statute of limitations has expired, a book is published, written by a confessed serial killer. The book is a best seller, with the killer earning millions of dollars. There is still one death that the killer may have been responsible for, but he's not admitting to more than what's been published. Detective Choi, who sports a scar on his mouth from when he almost caught the killer, finds himself conflicted in still wanting to bring the man to justice, yet at the same time finding himself protecting the killer from relatives of the known victims. The killer, Lee, with his boy band good looks, enjoys his time appearing on television, and taking the admiration of his young female fans. In spite of the evidence, Choi is not totally convinced that Lee is the real killer.

There are some scenes with the producers of a reality show, setting up a meeting with Choi and Lee. The producer is concerned that Choi might shoot Lee on live television. The station owner sees that possibility as an "exclusive". Several characters debate the use of celebrity and mass media manipulated for personal advantage. Whether Lee is the actual serial killer, and if so, is truly remorseful, are almost beside the point.

Where writer-director Jung excels is in setting up a sense of almost constant claustrophobia, of the action taking place in enclosed spaces. The first scene takes place on a dark, rainy night. This is one of those few times when use of a shaky-cam, with the camera lens smeary with rain drops, is used to good effect. The killer is introduced wearing a storm bucket hat, his face partially covered by a surgical mask. The is very little visibility, and the the surrounding darkness seems more like walls rather than an infinite space. The crowds who have come to see Lee, and the shots of multiple television screens add to the oppressive atmosphere. Jung also films a fight inside an elevator, alternating shots from the observational camera with some point of view shots, as well as overhead shots showing a little room there is for the two foes to maneuver.

It should be noted that Confession of Murder was inspired by a real life, unsolved case, of the murder of ten women in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province. Until 2007, there was a fifteen year statute of limitations for murder, later changed to twenty-five years. Currently, the South Korean government is considering a bill to abolish any statute of limitations for first degree mursder, making release quite timely.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

April 08, 2014

A Touch of Sin

Tian zhu ding
Jia Zhangke - 2013
Kino Lorber BD Region A

I saw the name of Office Kitano in the opening credits. I had forgotten that Jia had made past films in collaboration with this production company. And for those who don't know, that is the production company of Takeshi Kitano. Hopefully, anyone reading this has some familiarity with Takeshi Kitano. The context of the violence in Jia's film is quite different though.

I wouldn't pretend to know enough about life in China. The characters are those most marginalized in the changed economic landscape. The film is made up of four loosely connected stories of people who have nothing, and nothing to lose. Extreme actions are taken against those who become extremely wealthy at the expense of others, or simply find ways to exploit others for their own gain. And even though the film takes place in China, there is the uneasy feeling that some of the stories could well be transposed to other countries, including the U.S. One could say that the film lays a persuasive argument against privatization, especially of land and resources. All of the stories are based on true events. The title translates as "Ill-fated".

Maybe it's my own reaction, but the sense of irony and wry humor of Jia's past films seems to have been replaced by a sense of despair. There are those who still have some appreciation for China's cultural legacy, but what brings in the rich male tourists are young women in sexed up Red Guard uniforms or Chinese opera headdresses worn with bikinis. Jia's films have been examinations of the effects of modernization in China, but this is certainly his harshest work.

For a good sense of context, there is Tony Rayn's article from Film Comment. It should be pointed out that Rayns was responsible for the English language subtitles. Still, I appreciate the explanation for the English language title with its phonetic resemblance to King Hu's A Touch of Zen.

As a cinephile, I found it interesting that the two films within the film were excerpts of films by Hong Kong filmmakers Johnny To (Exiled) and Tsui Hark (Green Snake). Unlike Jia, To and Hark have been making films that have been designed to cater to mainland Chinese audiences, keeping in mind the dictates required for approval prior to release. While there has been discussion by others on considering A Touch of Sin a wuxia film, it is helpful to know that the term literally translates as "armed hero", and more specifically someone from one of the lower classes that is compelled to use a weapon as a means of achieving social justice or to use against an oppressor. Stylistically, Jia doesn't share the flashy techniques of the other filmmakers mentioned. What the four have in common is rooted in the stories from the past.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

April 07, 2014

The Bold and the Brave

Lewis R. Foster - 1956
Optimum Releasing Region 2 DVD

The Bold and the Brave is a film that use to appear on late night broadcast television every Veterans' Day. It was made back at a time when war films, and this usually meant taking place during World War II, were a Hollywood staple, much like those other almost extinct genres, the western and the smaller scale musical. The title belies a much more intimate film here. The first hour is devoted to establishing the shifting friendships and conflicts between three soldiers. Opening titles proclaim how man's biggest battles are those within himself rather than those in war. It might have been those philosophical moments that earned the screenplay an Oscar nomination. Until his nod for The Black Stallion in 1979, The Bold and the Brave was Mickey Rooney's last bid for Oscar glory.

Rooney plays a soldier who loves to eat and gamble. Even when playing with the available girls in a small Italian town, his dream is to gather enough cash to open his own restaurant in New Jersey. Rooney's Oscar competition that year included Robert Stack, Anthony Perkins, Don Murray and Anthony Quinn, the winner for Lust for Life. Considering that Rooney's film was a more modest production from the nearly on the ropes RKO, he was something of a long shot. Say what you want to about Mickey Rooney, he did great death scenes.

My own viewing of Rooney's output has been scattershot, but his work in the Fifties and early Sixties has struck me as being the most interesting. The guy went straight from MGM to much lower budget, and less prestigious independent productions. It's appropriate that one of Rooney's earliest films after leaving MGM was titled Quicksand. More clearly in that film is the sense of sadness and not a little desperation, befitting someone who once was the top star of the top studio, now fighting to keep a small place as a constantly working actor rather than a former child star. Rooney's most interesting appearances for me were in dramas, the title role in Baby Face Nelson, and supporting turns in King of the Roaring 20s and Requiem for a Heavyweight.

Robert Lewin's screenplay reportedly has autobiographical elements. I know that you can't expect more than some broad strokes in creating even a few characters in a film that runs less than ninety minutes. And while it's great to watch Wendell Corey take on a German tank all by himself, his change from a guy whose sense of humanity overwhelms his ability to shoot a rifle seems inspired by the vaguest of motivations. More detailed is Don Taylor's performance as a soldier known as Preacher, whose world view has been determined by fundamentalist Christianity. What little Lewin seems to be saying is that survival is best served by compromise and flexibility, with Rooney killed and Taylor almost killed by their respective rigidity and sense of purpose.

Credited to journeyman director Lewis R. Foster, IMDb lists Rooney as having also served as director of The Bold and the Brave. Rooney did have a credited hand in writing the title song with Ross Bagdasarian. Just a couple of years away from introducing his novelty act, The Chipmunks, it should be noted that Bagdasarian was the cousin to William Saroyan, author of the play, The Human Comedy, which was made into a film starring, yes, Mickey Rooney, in, yes again, an Oscar nominated performance. What control Rooney may have had off screen, he generously cedes much of the movie to Corey and Taylor. Even if The Bold and the Brave might not be good enough to be accorded classic status, it's worth seeing as a high point in a very long career. In the best of his performances, Mickey Rooney conveyed his own experiences as someone who knew well both the pinnacle of success and the depth of failure.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

April 01, 2014

Meet Him and Die

Pronto ad uccidere
Franco Prosperi - 1976
Raro Video BD Region A

I don't know if any heads will roll at Raro Video over this goof, but somebody wasn't paying attention. In his video introduction to Meet Him and Die, Eurocrime expert Mike Malloy makes a point of reminding viewers that the Franco Prosperi who directed this film is not the Franco Prosperi best known for directing the documentary Mondo Cane. Even in the perpetually mistake laden IMDb, it is noted that the documentarian was sometimes credited as Franco E. Prosperi, most likely to minimize confusion. And yet, in the booklet that comes with the disc is a biography of that other Franco Prosperi.

The Franco Prosperi for Meet Him and Die might not be known for the films he's directed, but among his conspicuous credits are a handful of collaborations with Mario Bava in the early Sixties, as an assistant director and/or screenwriter. Judging from the work here, Prosperi isn't the stylist like Bava, but there are a few stylish touches here, particularly a mirror shot of Ray Lovelock and Elke Sommer. The title, by the way, translates as "Ready to Kill", and most of the characters seem more than ready.

I saw this movie with the English language soundtrack. Keep in mind that most Italian movies were dubbed in post production during this time, so that the Italian voice you heard was not always the voice of the Italian actor on the screen. I chose the English track for the pleasure of hearing Martin Balsam speaking his own lines. And he sounds like he phoned them in, literally. Especially in the first few minutes, there is a metallic quality to his voice which indicates that Balsam did his dubbing at a different studio. At any rate, in this gig he took in between more high profile work in All the President's Men and Two-Minute Warning, we get to see Martin Balsam as an action star. Well, maybe not quite, but as a mob capo, he does a bit of shooting, and even takes a bullet in the shoulder. When one of the other characters suggests that Balsam get some medical attention, he responds, "The hell with doctors!". It's moments like that which may help explain Balsam's frequent trips to Italy in the Seventies, plus the ego boost of his name usually as one of the top billed stars.

There is a chase scene involving Ray Lovelock on a motorcycle in pursuit of a big truck. It's not that such a scene is unusual, but it is easy to forget how much more dangerous the stunt work was in the years before CGI. In his booklet notes, Malloy suggests that it was Lovelock who took several spills on the highway, as well as climbing on that fast moving truck. Whether it is always Lovelock we see in action or a stunt double, this last chase is one of the film's highlights. Probably less challenging for Lovelock was a bedroom scene with Elke Sommer, where the actress shows just enough skin to please her fans. Meet Him and Die might not be a genre classic, but the craftsmanship is undeniable.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 AM

March 27, 2014

L'Immortelle

Alain Robbe-Grilet - 1963
Redemption / Kino Classics BD Region A

I have some very vague memories of seeing L'Immortelle back in 1969, in New York City. It was at the Bleecker Street Cinema, part of a series of films distributed by the publisher, Grove Press, with a series of films more or less as avant-garde as some of the novels they had published. I had no memories of Francoise Brion cavorting in a bustier and stockings, but retained images of a series of point of view shots, driving a night, on a tree lined road.

I'm not going to share Robbe-Grillet's interpretation of what the story is about. You can choose to find that out in the interview that is included with the disc. But Robbe-Grillet also stated that "art does not necessarily have to signify anything". I find that to be a liberating thought in that it does free the viewer to make up their own mind about what is on the screen.

A French professor in Istanbul encounters a beautiful woman who appears and disappears from his life. He's not sure of her name, has no idea where she lives, or why she demands to be elusive. To have a better handle on this film, I think it important to have some familiarity the French Roman Nouveau, the literary movement that included Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, and Jean Cayrol, among others. As described by Thomas Kendall in his overview: "The 'world' in the Nouveau Roman novels is stripped of symbol, reduced to prosaic evidence and yet irreducibly strange and bewildering. It suggests a lineage with mythology, in which the hero is always cast into a reality beyond rational comprehension. The estrangement engendered by the Nouveau Roman is not to be equated with an Existentialist sense of alienation but rather something older, more profound, dream like."

As a narrative filmmaker, Alain Resnais first made films in collaboration with the two best known Nouveau Roman authors, and transposed some of the literary ideas into their cinematic equivalents. There a couple of moments in Robbe-Grillet's debut feature that resemble scenes from Last Year at Marienbad. Even more deliberately, Robbe-Grillet ignores the rules of traditional narrative film.

There is a kind of dream logic at work here. Images are sometimes linked by gestures. Characters appear in different settings. There is also the repetition of sounds, notably a sharp whistle, and the barking of a dog. There are times when Jacques Doniol-Valcroze seems to be observing himself. When Francoise Brion tells Doniol-Valcroze that the Istanbul that they are visiting is really a dream, she may well be telling the audience as well. The supplemental interview is interesting in pointing out that there was a time when film producers knowingly took artistic and commercial risks. Robbe-Grillet also discusses what he sees as his films shortcomings. What is most interesting to me about L'Immortelle is that it stands as the first attempt by a writer, whose works have been described as cinematic well before he collaborated with Resnais, to apply his theories of literature onto the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:16 AM

March 25, 2014

Something to Live For

George Stevens - 1952
Olive Films Region 1 DVD

I was first made aware of Something to Live For about forty years ago. I was doing some volunteer work at the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art. Another student, I think his name was Jon, from Ohio, had mentioned that film to me. He pointed out that somehow, it was omitted from George Steven's filmography in Andrew Sarris' The American Film. Why there was this oversight, I don't know, but it made me curious. To the best of my knowledge, the film never even got airplay on broadcast television, back when late night viewing was often the only way of seeing vintage films. When I lived in New York City, I had the opportunity to see Alice Adams, Woman of the Year and Giant theatrically. Meanwhile, Something to Live For seemed buried in a vault.

Much later, I also saw George Stevens, Jr.'s documentary on his father. I was hoping for a glimpse of this elusive film. A few minutes of A Place in the Sun and then a skip over to Shane. I had to wonder if this 1952 entry is as bad as The Only Game in Town, Stevens' final film, not mentioned either by George, Jr., perhaps with the thought that it would be more discrete to have Dad's Hollywood career end with the deeply personal big budget flop that was The Greatest Story Ever Told.

So I finally shelled out some money to see the DVD. And it is a pretty good film. But I can also see why it might be a forgotten film. I don't know the circumstances of the production, but it seems like beginning with A Place in the Sun, Stevens was chomping on the bit to make big films, important films. And Something to Live For is relatively small, almost intimate. Even the running time is small, a shade under ninety minutes. Maybe Stevens was under the gun to fulfill his contract with Paramount, or maybe Barney Balaban, Paramount's president, made the making of this film a condition to making Shane, Stevens' last film before going independent.

And as a story, Something to Live For isn't "important". Alcoholic actress Joan Fontaine can't overcome her stage fright when she steps on a Broadway stage. Former alkie Ray Milland, an AA member, helps her while fighting his own demons, falling in love with Fontaine while maintaining a home and family with Teresa Wright.

I would have loved to have seen this film in a theater. Not for the story, but for the images. I am assuming that Something to Live For was originally shot with nitrate film stock. What I loved was watching the grain, and the light, which must have sparkled on the big screen. The first close-up of Joan Fontaine's face partially in the shadows, and I was hooked. Cinematographer George Barnes presumably should also get credit. But for me, the fascination of this film is watching Joan Fontaine and the play of light, the previously mentioned shadows, Fontaine and Milland back lit by a window, the kind of lighting that often is frequently associated with film noir.

One might wish Stevens wasn't so enamored of the lap dissolve, where the end of one scene fades out while at the same time another scene fades in. Most of the scenes of visual interest are in Fontaine's small hotel room, the kind that served only single women. All other places, Milland's home and office especially, are well lit. The only time it is bright in Fontaine's room is when Milland pushes her into a cold shower to sober her up.

There is one scene that benefits from a second viewing. It's Christmas Eve, and Milland needs the step ladder to put the angel on top of the tree. The two elementary school sons, sent to get the step ladder, run past it to get a full size ladder. Most viewers will simply pay attention to Milland and Wright having an intense conversation in the foreground, but if one looks past them, in the back is a partial view of the dining room, and the two small boys trying to maneuver a large ladder over and around the dining room table. I don't know if Stevens had anything more elaborate in mind. That bit of business is dropped as the boys put down the full sized ladder for the smaller step ladder they were originally sent to get. It's an amusing moment that for myself recalls how Stevens' career began as a cinematographer on several silent shorts with Laurel and Hardy.

Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of George Stevens, nor am I normally one to go out of my way to see a film with Joan Fontaine, and yet I have am glad to have finally caught up with this film. Some may prefer to pre-war work, or the more epic films by Stevens. I'll take Joan Fontaine in the shadows, with a lone tear streaming down her cheek.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:56 AM

March 20, 2014

The Swimmer

Frank Perry - 1968
Grindhouse Releasing BD Region ABC / Region 0 DVD Two disc set

More films like this and Grindhouse Releasing may need to change their name to Arthouse Releasing.

There will be others, hopefully smarter than me, who will offer their analysis about The Swimmer. For those still unfamiliar with the film, Burt Lancaster plays a man, wearing nothing but his blue swim trunks, who decides that he can virtually swim his way from one Connecticut neighbor's house to another, winding up at his own home. But the film is more than that. Adapted from a short story by John Cheever, it's both a story about one man's disconnection with the truth about his life, and a look a wealth, class and tangentially about race in America.

Deliberately, there a several uninsured questions. The character played by Burt Lancaster, Ned Merrill, seems to appear out of nowhere. When asked where's he's been, the reply is "here and there". As the story progresses, inconsistencies in Merrill's talk about himself and his family appear. The various friends, neighbors, and others familiar with Merrill seem to know things or think they know things that are either unmentioned or barely hinted at. Nothing is spelled out. It's up to the viewer to connect the dots and draw their own conclusions.

The Swimmer might be said to contain the essential Burt Lancaster performance, a display of both his physical prowess and acting abilities. Running a race with a horse, jumping hurdles, initially a show of over-confidence, to revealing increasing personal vulnerability, the effect is of watching a summery of a career in one performance.

No studio would make this film now. And the film almost wasn't made back in 1966, There;s a set of supplemental interviews that are longer than the film, that tell much of the making of this film, in some ways more dramatic than The Swimmer itself. If there is a hero, it's probably a heroine, the tenacious Eleanor Perry, while the villain could well be Sam Spiegel. Eleanor Perry seems to have managed to keep involved with a project she initiated, even after Spiegel took the film out of Frank Perry's hands. How much of the film is Perry's and how much was the reshoots by Lancaster hired gun Sydney Pollack is a matter of dispute as Perry claims about half of the film, while Pollack downplays his contributions. One of the more interesting twists is that Sidney Katz, the editor hired by Spiegel to "save" The Swimmer subsequently went on to edit Frank Perry films from Last Summer through Rancho Deluxe.

What is missing is the testimony from the most important players to the making of The Swimmer, the Perrys, Lancaster, Pollack and Spiegel, all deceased. There are quotes from interviews, and from surviving correspondence. What video interviews are presented here are informative of both personal experiences in making The Swimmer, as well as recounting the various twists and turns from initial conception to the final released version. The interview is Katz was done before his death in 2009. Also interviewed is Marvin Hamlisch, whose lucky break came when a friend offered him a job to play piano at a party hosted by Spiegel. The Swimmer was Hamlisch's first movie score, and he was only 22 at the time that Frank Perry was filming. Joan River's tells of being caught in a tug-of-war between Frank Perry and Burt Lancaster in how her scene was to be filmed. A personal friend of the Perrys, River's one scene was written specifically for her.

One interesting quote from Lancaster has him suggesting that The Swimmer might have been a better film had it been made by Federico Fellini or Francois Truffaut. The second filmmaker, maybe. There is a scene where Ned Merrill observes an empty tennis court, while we hear the sound of a tennis game as well as the laughter of the girls playing. There is the similarity to the end of Antonioni's Blow Up, which makes me wonder if this scene as played was part of the original script, or part of the lengthy post-production tinkering. The Swimmer does share thematic concerns with some of Antonioni's films, particularly the trajectory of an alienated man on a simultaneous inner and outer journey in an increasingly hostile environment.

Would The Swimmer be a better movie had Spiegel given the Perrys the support he original promised? Judging from the evidence, author John Cheever had enough faith in the Perrys to appear in a party scene, and in one shot with Eleanor Perry. I don't know if there are any plans, but I would love it if Grindhouse Releasing could do something similar with another film produced by Sam Spiegel, the Arthur Penn directed The Chase. It's worth noting that both films were taken from their respective directors, and that both films reflected some of the cultural shifts in America in the mid-Sixties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:21 AM

March 18, 2014

Pete Walker: Two Feasts of Flesh

The Flesh and Blood Show
Pete Walker - 1972

Frightmare
Pete Walker - 1974
both Redemption / Kino Lorber BD Region A

What I find most interesting about Pete Walker is the fact that he entered and left filmmaking pretty much on his own terms. For a career that spanned only fifteen years, Walker certainly knew how to leave a lasting impression, "rattling the cages", as he puts it in one of his interviews. The history of exploitation cinema has always been about films with questionable subject matter, And for Walker, his films are more about subject than style. Be that as it may, the home video revival of his films provides an interesting look at a chapter of British exploitation films.

As others have pointed out, The Flesh and Blood Show" shows more flesh than blood. For some of us, there is no complaint when the film begins with two young women in bed, and someone is knocking on the door. The woman who answers the door is not the one in the nightie, but the one without any clothing at all. This is the kind of illogical story telling I can, ahem, get behind. On the other hand, I wish Walker had made the actor appearing in a 1944 flashback get an era appropriate haircut. And while having a child in the same room as her adulterous mother with her lover in naked coupling makes for compact storytelling,
thornier questions arise.

A group of young actors and a director are contracted by an unknown, and never seen, producer, to create an improvised show at an abandoned seaside theater. The place is huge, dark, with a maze of staircases and underground passages, with an assortment of odd costumes and props. Sleeping in various parts of the theater, the lack of anything resembling proper accommodations does not deter these young thespians. Mysteriously, several cast members disappear, only to show up dead.

The highlight is a flashback that can be seen in 3D either with special glasses, or for those with a 3D television. I saw this sequence flat, which worked out fine. It's in black and white, and for the first couple of minutes I thought I was watching footage that actually was part of a 1940s B movie. I was jolted into the 70s when an actress bared her breasts. The action takes place during a performance of Othello, with some real adultery played against the adultery imagined by Shakespeare's Moor.

In the supplemental interview on The Flesh and Blood Show, Pete Walker states that he was not influenced by any filmmaker. And while there is nothing stylistically about this film that might be similar to anyone else, I have to think that Walker and/or screenwriter Alfred Shaughnessy, must have been familiar with George Cukor's A Double Life. That 1947 film starred Ronald Colman as an actor who increasingly confused his offstage life with his onstage performance as Othello. And this may be pure coincidence, but Shaughnessy once served as an assistant to British filmmaker Thorold Dickinson, whose most famous film, Gaslight, was remade more famously by George Cukor.

In his interview, Walker states that he showed more flesh than blood based on the current demands of the exploitation marketplace. For someone like myself who enjoyed 70s exploitation movies for that reason, I didn't mind a bit.

For all the fuss about Frightmare at the time of its original release, the film is fairly restrained with most of the blood and gore offscreen. Those with an appetite for more graphic horror are better off with something by George Romero or Lucio Fulci. This story about an older woman, whose taste for murder and cannibalism remain unabated following fifteen years in a psychiatric hospital, has been beautifully presented on the Blu-ray disc. As it stands, the images on the film's poster might actually be more disturbing than what is seen in the film, although those more curious may keep their fingers on the freeze frame button.

At its heart, Frightmare is really about unconditional love and the desperation of lonely people. Dorothy Yates lures her victims with tarot readings, uncanny as is revealed later in the film, but always with the same future. Also revealed are some family secrets. Beyond the more lurid aspects of the story is a family tragedy of a daughter who inadvertently sets herself up as a victim, an ineffectual husband who ultimately surrenders to the demands of his wife in the name of love, a second daughter takes after her mother, and the woman whose special needs dominate this family.

The disc includes a brief interview with Pete Walker, commentary by Walker and cinematographer Peter Jessop, and a short profile of actress Sheila Keith, whose performance here was the peak of several collaborations with Walker.

And how appropriate it is that the younger daughter, Debbie, is played by an actress named Kim Butcher!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:16 AM

March 12, 2014

Flu

Gamgi
Kim Sung-soo - 2013
CJ Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There are two scenes of humans being incinerated. It is the second such scene that is more disturbing. It is a stadium sized pit with about one-thousand bodies of victims of a deadly virus. Bodies a dumped in by a giant crane. If the image is reminiscent of documentary footage following the discovery of Nazi concentration camps, it is not coincidental. Director Kim Sung-soo mentions, in the "Making of" supplement that he had the camp where the flu victims are interned to look like Auschwitz.

While the events in Flu get increasingly grim as the film progresses, Kim does start off on a light-hearted note. Beginning with a car improbably stuck in an underground construction site, the two main characters, a rescue worker and a doctor, are introduced in the manner of a screwball comedy. The doctor is temporarily more concerned with protecting her modesty than simply getting getting out of her perilous situation. The two are reconnected with the rescue worker meets up with the doctor's pre-school age daughter, as well as the illegal immigrant who has entered Korea from Hong Kong with the mysterious virus.

It is significant that the film takes place in Bundang, a city near Seoul. A specially designed space, with an affluent population living in high rises, the real Bundang may represent the best in a highly planned community. Having a virus of unknown origin and no known cure creates havoc and anarchy in a place where all elements of life are suppose to be under control. As the story progresses, the concerns grow from trying to isolate a few infected people to isolating a city, to a point where the entire country of South Korea is threatened.

Playing against and with the drama of the main characters are the conflicts between medical doctors, politicians, and the intervention of military forces. Kim presents a worse case scenario that takes place in the near future, this April as a matter of fact.

Five year old (at the time of filming) Park Min-ha steals the show as the doctor's daughter. It is her banter with Jang Hyuk as the rescue worker, and Park Soo-ae as the doctor, as well as the banter between the two adults that provide the initial emotional hook.

After a decade of serving as producer, as well as having several proposed projects fail to get financing, Kim discussed in an interview why he made Flu: "At the time when I was contemplating whether I should shoot his film or not, in Korea there was Foot and Mouth disease that was spread through pigs and was expanding so the government decided, to prevent an outbreak to bury alive 3 million pigs in the year 2011 in a way that was completely unimaginable and terrible. Somebody from the animal rights sector filmed it and put it online which then went viral and I remember thinking how could this happen and how could we do this?

The reason why we could do something so unimaginable is that we want to continue eating pork so there’s a real sense of selfishness in that and although it feels really unconceivable, if we could do this to pigs, I wondered if we could give this cruel treatment to humans by other humans as well and I thought why not, that it was equally applicable. When I read the script this had much more resonance, once these events had occurred, there were these emotions present within the film."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

March 10, 2014

Commitment

Dong-chang-saeng
Park Hong-soo - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In substance rather than style, Commitment reminds me of classic film noir, especially films by Fritz Lang and Samuel Fuller. It doesn't take long to realize that we are in an environment, in this case contemporary Incheon, and you just never know who's really a North Korean agent, either sent on a mission, or simply biding their time between assignments. Even more treacherous is that there is a power struggle between factions, with the internecine murders making any conflicts between North and South seem almost an afterthought.

I don't know how much of the film to take at face value, but I assume that there's some basis in reality. Where Lang is recalled is in how the viewer, much like the main character learns to never trust anyone, and not to make assumptions based on exterior appearances. The most innocuous facade, whether that of a pharmacist, or a grandmotherly street vendor, could actually be an enemy agent. That there are networks supposedly on the same side, but murdering each other, adds to the paranoia. Where Fuller comes to mind is how within this story of political espionage, personal loyalties trump are more important than politics of any kind.

The story pivots on family relationships. Nineteen year old Myung-hoon and his sister are in a North Korean prison due to their father, a secret agent, getting caught and killed in South Korea. Myung-hoon's only way out is to become an assassin, with a mission to kill other North Korean agents belonging to a rival faction. Myung-hoon's youth would appear to be a great disguise. More challenging than stalking and murdering other spies, is playing the part of a high school student. The school bullies are bad enough, but what undoes Myung-hoon is a growing attachment to a fellow student with the same name as his sister, a young woman without a family. The major shifts revolve around Myung-hoon's adoptive family in South Korea, and the two young women named Hye-in.

I took a glance at a music video of star Choi Seaung-hyun just to make sure if he was capable of anything other than an impassive expression. Indee, it is deliberate that Choi appears almost blank. Choi's face is like a mask hiding thoughts and emotions. Myun-hoon's only wish seems to be to anonymously fulfill his mission in this alien environment. When he lets down his guard long enough to show enough physical force, the effect is dramatic.

High school is easy because there is no second guessing about the students and teachers. What makes Commitment fascinating is that it is outside of school that the viewer is kept off-kilter, not knowing the hidden agendas of several of the characters, or what they might do to each other. The Korean title translates as "classmate", though I think the English title is better. The English title not only works on multiple levels, but can be applied to several characters. For Myung-hoon the conflict is between the personal and the political, until the finale, when there are no more choices.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:40 AM

March 06, 2014

Soft Spoken Germans / Hard Silent Yanks

Schoolgirl Report Volume 12: If Mom only Knew / Schulmadchen-Report 12. Teil - Wenn das die Mammi wusste / Carnal Campus
Walter Boos - 1978
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

42nd Street Forever: The Peep Show Collection, Volume 1
Impulse Pictures Region 0 DVD

Well if my Mom only knew I was writing about vintage erotic movies, she would probably say something to the effect that I should be writing about more high-minded cinema, and then laugh about it with her friends. Of course I could remind her that she got me out of high school to attend the advanced critics' screening of Midnight Cowboy, and it was a slippery slope from that point on.

As it stands, with this second to last entry, the Schoolgirl Report series was running out of steam, and the competition from the more graphic films was taking its toll. There's a lot more nudity and simulated sex going on here. The framing device is a group of high school students reading letters detailing the sexual misadventures of several female students. You might wonder that if one of the stories is about a young woman who fulfills her sexual fantasies about her older brother, how much worse were the rejected ideas?

Even the print used for the DVD is on the tatty side. This is surprising considering the good quality of the prints from the earlier films. On the other hand, some might argue that the various bits of dirt, and obvious splices, helps recreate the effect of having watched this movie in a run down grind house.

There are a few chuckles to be had in the episode about a visit to the doctor's office where the young patient is actually getting a check up from a plumber in disguise. Also there's the story about a French exchange student who turns out to be a boy named Niki, dedicated to his physical training and oath of abstinence, much to the frustration of his hostess.

For those who want to immediately dive into the action, The Peepshow Collection makes no pretense about what it offers. A collection of fifteen silent short films, shown in booths at adult arcades or in private shows, there is nothing simulated here. Even though the films are silent, there is the clackety clack sound of a movie projector on the soundtrack.

More interesting than seeing close ups of penetration and genitalia are the "actors" themselves. No artificial additives here. Bodies are less than perfect, breasts sag, and the only thing waxed might be the floor. If you saw most of these people on the street, you probably wouldn't give them a second thought. There are some notes regarding some of the performers by Robin Bougie of Cinema Sewer, most notably Annie Sprinkle and John Holmes, but I wish there was more detailed information on who was in front of the camera and when the films were made, even if those behind the camera chose to remain anonymous. The high point might be the short with the young couple who get it on while having breakfast, with the woman adding extra spice, courtesy of her boyfriend, to her fried egg. The grubbiness can not be denied, the sex is sticky and messy, and still the impression is that some of these groups and couples look like they are actually having fun.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

March 04, 2014

The Wrath of Vajra

Law Wing-cheong - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

This film must have been awesome in 3D. Of course, I can only guess, but there are plenty of moments given to depth of field shots, the long corridors of the prison, and shots of the coliseum built for the trained assassins to fight to the death. There are also some frankly painterly exterior shots, green fields and mountains, where nothing dramatic happens, but the pictorial beauty is worth considering.

One of the smartest decisions made in making The Wrath of Vajra was to hire David Richardson as editor. Hopefully, the name is familiar as a regular part of Johnny To's production crew. As is now standard, several of the scenes of fighting are done as a combination of very quick shots. Unlike some films that look like they were edited with a kitchen blender that chopped up the footage into something incomprehensible, Richardson is able to maintain a sense of spatial logic throughout the proceedings.

Rapid cuts are made between full shots and close-ups of punches, without loss of where two dueling
fighters are in relation to each other or in the space where they are fighting.

Director Law Wing-cheong was an assistant director and editor for Johnny To, which makes this connection less surprising. In front of the camera is a cast primarily chosen for their martial arts abilities. The athleticism of the actors is quite evident, not only in the action scenes, but simply with some of them, especially the two main characters, standing around with their shirts off.

Taking place in the 1930s China, Japan revives a death cult, the Temple of Hades, to help subdue the Chinese. The cult is made up of young men, kidnapped as children to be trained killers. One escapee from the cult, Vajrasattva, now a Shaolin monk, is forced to return to the temple when one very young novice is taken as part of a round-up of young boys to be part of a new generation. Once back at the temple, Vajrasattva is forced face off the best fighters including a giant of a man and a sinewy fellow known as Crazy Monkey.

Even though the film has a historical setting, I could not find any evidence that there was anything like the Temple of Hades, or even a multinational army of soldiers who fought with the Chinese against Japan. Certainly, the daughter of the temple's founder, a journalist named Eko, would have been hauled away by the very real "thought police for choosing to report truth over propaganda.

Those quibble aside, Law Wing-cheong should be heard from more decisively later this Spring, when his new film, Iceman is released. I would recommend the 1989 film, The Iceman Cometh (apologies to Eugene O'Neill), with a hilarious turn by a young Maggie Cheung. Law's film will be a bit more serious, with the focus on an unfrozen Donnie Yen. The teaser trailer suggests that Law is building on his use of 3D action that will be even more stunning.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

February 27, 2014

Memory of the Dead

La memoria del muerto
Valentin Javier Diment - 2011
Artsploitation Region 1 DVD

From Argentina comes this well done piece of grand guignol. What I like is that there are no pauses to explain exactly what's going on or why. At a shade under ninety minutes, there's no dawdling around with exposition or setting up every scene. Everything takes place in and around a suburban house, exactly the kind of environment one doesn't expect the various shenanigans to take place.

Alicia has a premonition that her husband, Jorge, is going to die suddenly. The premonition turns out to be true. Forty-nine days after the death of Jorge, Alicia gathers the closest friends of her husband for some obscure ritual that is to bring him back from the dead. The mayhem begins right at the stroke of Midnight. Of course nothing works out quite as planned. Not everyone is quite the friend to Jorge that is originally assumed. Even worse, the half dozen guests encounter ghosts from their own pasts, and these are not happy reunions.

The first indication that nothing is quite right is when a rat is spotted scampering across the back lawn of this well kept house. The assumption that the ghosts are all outside the house turns out to be false, as they materialize and disappear at will. Nor even within the context of horror fantasy is there certainty that what is being viewed is part of that peculiar reality, or just a dream. The peak of the grotesque is certainly when the gay painter encounter the faceless ghost of his twin sister. The scene could well be a Freudian nightmare with a slit in the face that not so coincidentally resembles a vagina, soon to be a vagina with teeth.

The difficulty about writing about a film like this is that you don't want to give too much away. For those looking for where Memory of the Dead fits in as a genre piece, I think it close in spirit to some of the films of Nobuhiko Obayashi, particularly Hausu and The Discarnates, as well as the earlier films of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi (and I am hardy the first to note the similarities with the latter two filmmakers).

The film starts off with a folk song about a seagull in love with the sea. The song is both about unrequited love, but also about the folly of not being aware of the nature of things, or in this case, nature's indifference. Jorge's friends are initially bound be what is assumed to be their love for him. Their ghosts are all family members, indicative of unresolved traumas. As it turns out, spectral relations are the not all that the house guests need to worry about, especially when the sanity of the hostess is questioned. Everything does end happily for a couple of the characters here, and this is one of those rare times when I can say it was a twist I never expected.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:48 AM

February 20, 2014

Lost in Thailand

Ren zai jiong tu: Tai jiong
Xu Zheng - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I was never lost in Thailand. I did temporarily lose my bearings walking through a couple of the many winding sois, the smaller streets, of Chiang Mai. Eventually, I figured out where I was. Part of Lost in Thailand takes place in Chiang Mai, although what is seen of the city itself is just a few quick shots. The old city wall is unmistakable, even when glanced for a few seconds. The film takes place during Songkran, the festival in which people douse each other with water, in late April. I did feel some nostalgia during a scene that takes place during a lantern festival, watching my own lit lantern fly away to parts unknown.

Lost in Thailand has been compared to The Hangover, but I think comparisons to John Hughes' Planes, Trains and Automobiles are more appropriated. For one thing, there is none of the raunchiness of the Hangover films. The most sexually charged scene, with Xu caught underneath the bed of a threesome, a western tourist with two beauties, could well have been from a Hollywood film from the late Fifties, when it was daring to show women frolic in bra and panties. The nudity is all below the knees. A later scene, when Xu reads the diary of his traveling companion, Bao, and discovers the reason for Bao's "heath tree", a small cactus, is reminiscent of Steve Martin finally warming up to John Candy in the Hughes film, as is the setup of two mismatched men forced to travel together, using any conveyance at their disposal. Xu's film could well have been titled, Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Elephants.

Xu Zheng portrays Xu Lang, a businessman who has developed a special additive that increases the volume of gasoline with just a couple of drops. In competition with Gao Bo (Huang Bo), the two are in a race to Thailand to get the approval from their boss who is staying at a temple somewhere in the vicinity of Chiang Mai. One the plane, Xu meets up with Bao (Wang Baodiang), a member of a tour group, both overly friendly and perpetually clueless. Losing his tour group in the Bangkok airport, Bao seeks Xu's assistance in helping him make his goals in visiting Thailand. Xu, who has lost his passport in a cab, reluctantly finds that he needs Bao's help, initially in getting a hotel room.

Most of the comedy comes from Wang Baodaing, first with his appearance with his blond mop of hair. Some of the humor involves Bao's ignorance about "ladyboys", his martial arts ability limited to a single high kick, and his insistence that he is the boyfriend of Chinese actress Fan Bingbing. Among the misadventures are the pair stumbling upon an artifact smuggling operation and getting chased by gangsters. There is also a running gag involving Xu attempting to get the location of his boss, and continually getting stymied unintentionally by Bao.

Xu Zheng wrote and directed the film in addition to acting. Call it beginner's luck as the film holds the record as China's top box office success. Even though the film mostly takes place in Thailand, a caveat is in order that it needs to be understood that this is still a Chinese movie that was made for a Chinese audience. Don't expect the same kind of humor found in a Hollywood film, or better, a Thai film where being politically incorrect is virtually a requirement. The laughs here are more mild than wild.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

February 18, 2014

Fists of Legend

Kang Woo-suk - 2013
CJ Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Ignore the generic title. Really. I was quite pleasantly surprised because I didn't know much about this film and was expecting it to mostly be about guys beating each other up. Not that there's anything wrong with that as I've written about films where the fighting is the prime reason why the film was made in the first place. And there is a generous amount of guys pummeling each other here, but there is also the back story which is what makes Fists of Legend of more than passing interest.

The basic premise is that there is a Korean television reality show where men try to show off their fighting skills against each other. Many of the contestants are not trained. While billed as a boxing match, there is kicking and wrestling moves as well. The producer of the show, a youngish woman known as Ms. Hong, goads Lim, known for taking on a rival high school students and a local street gang, into appearing on the show. What is in the works is for Lim to be reunited with three friends from his high school days, in 1988, when he was also in training for the Olympics.

The story really isn't about who has the greatest fighting skills. With the many flashbacks to 1988, the film is about how you can leave high school, but high school never really leaves you. Denied a chance at the Olympics due to questionable judging, Lim ekes out a living with a small noodle restaurant. His new found celebrity following his winning bout on television brings in customers, but also a new set of expectations that he would prefer not to deal with. For the characters here, there is a question of how much of the past do you allow to define yourself, and what parts are you willing to let go.

"Eye of the Tiger" is part of the soundtrack, and there is a bit of similarity to Rocky in that Lim initially hopes that boxing will be his way out of what appears to be a less than promising life. A scene with the younger Lim running while wearing a hoodie certainly is a reminder of Stallone. There is even the equivalent to Rocky's ringside opponents in the form of a menacing, bald headed brute known as The Turtle. The question here isn't whether Lim will win, or at least go the distance, but rather, will he win, or lose, honestly? Manhood isn't defined as the ability to kick someone's ass, but by a sense of integrity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:05 AM

February 16, 2014

New World (Shinsekai Story)

Lim Kah-Wai - 2011
Tidepoint Pictures All Region DVD

An explanation of the title is in order. As I understand it, the part of Osaka where most of this film takes place is known as Shinsekai. This is also a bit ironic as much of the area is run down, and badly aged. On a symbolic level, the title also refers to the main character's discovery of a place and people that she would never have discovered prior to her visit to Japan.

The various cultural and economic tensions that have always seemed to exist between China and Japan are taken to a personal level here. Tying everything together is the now ubiquitous celebration of Christmas, unconnected by any religious significance, and now an international celebration of electric lights, fir trees and consumerism. With this, is the implied promise of the holiday being a special time for all.

The young Chinese woman, Coco, goes to visit Osaka to see her friend, Ivy. She also wants to spend time away from her boyfriend, a youngish businessman named Jimmy. The hotel room reserved for Coco is in a run down hotel, with a small room set with the traditional tatami mat. Ivy works at a tiny bar, run by a Chinese woman in debt to Chinese gangsters. Coco's first day in Japan is an immersion in a community populated mostly by well-meaning people brought together due to their respective misfortunes. There is a happy ending, just in time for Christmas Eve.

Lim, who is of both Chinese and Japanese heritage, plays with the notion of otherness. That notion of otherness, especially as it applies to sense of the exotic foreigner, is mirrored when a local Japanese gangster tries to "buy" Ivy, and later, when Coco, in a modern, and presumably expensive, hotel, is eyed by some male Chinese tourists who think she is Japanese. This is a Japan that is dependent on Chinese imports, while the Chinese look to Japan for their fashion queues.

Lim sets things up in the beginning by alternating between the bright lights of Beijing and the general shabbiness of Shinsekai. Coco's story is one of initial disappointment or anger over unmet expectations, transformed by the connections made with a handful of people who remain optimistic even when down on their luck. For the characters here, it's not a wonderful life, nor It's a Wonderful Life, but it is the life they've chosen and they wouldn't have it any other way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:25 AM

February 14, 2014

Chastity Bites

John V. Knowles - 2013
Grand Entertainment Group Region 1 DVD

This is one of those times when I figured I would venture a bit outside of my usual turf. And I know that I am far from the target audience for Chastity Bites, in part by virtue of having said goodbye to high school several decades ago. (Class of '69 if you must know, and don't bother with the jokes, we were already there with them.)

In a small, affluent community, Countess Bathory, in the guise of Liz Batho, shows up to encourage high school girls to preserve their virginity. What appears to be another program of promoting abstinence education is actually designed for the Countess to cultivate donors for one of her rejuvenating baths of blood. Meanwhile, school reporter Leah Ratcliff is trying to convince everyone that the town's foreign visitor is up to no good, much to the annoyance of almost everyone she encounters.

What gets in the way here is that too much of the film is dependent on topical humor, the kind of stuff that might possibly be amusing during a brief moment in time, but is the kind of stuff that years later can befuddle a casual viewer. I can't entirely dismiss any movie where the boy and girl initial hook up with the discovery of shared admiration for Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex. I'd even be thrilled to know that someone who saw this film was inspired to do some reading of their own.

I don't know how tall Louise Griffiths is, but she towers over the rest of the cast, and virtually owns this movie as the visiting vampire. Sure, she speaks with her own British accent and never attempts to sound even faintly Hungarian, but her screen presence makes such details unimportant. Grittiths' regal bearing is such that it's never a question as to why everyone is in awe of her.

Writer Lotti Pharriss Knowles, wife of the director, may have a feminist agenda, but she also comes with an interesting group of credits, producing the documentaries Vito and I am Devine. She also appeared in something called The 50 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen. More impressive is that when there is commercial pressure to dumb things down, the Knowles aren't afraid of letting the audience know that they've read a few books.

I will also admit that the first onscreen death took me by surprise. Even while grimacing to jokes about Rachel Maddow or the Kardashians, some of the horror elements were handled quite nicely. And I would hope that I wasn't the only one who laughed as that totally unexpected reference to Du Maurier and Hitchcock's Rebecca.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:04 AM

February 10, 2014

On the Job

Erik Matti - 2013
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

Without giving too much away, one of the main characters is in On the Job is shot on the street. Filmed overhead, he is lying on a pathway with crossed lines. The patterns serve as a visual reminder of the greater concerns in the film, connectivity not only of the major characters, but even those in the periphery. The aging hit man tells his young partner that the people they work for know everything about them, including everyone they have any kind of relationship with. And so it is in On the Job that everyones' life seems to intersect eventually.

On the most basic level, this is about two parallel, and eventually intersecting, stories, about the two hit men and the cops who are after them. What Erik Matti is concerned with is not simply examining corruption within the Philippines, but also how said corruption touches everyone. In the end, it's not just cops and criminals, but those from two opposite ends of the social strata acting as cogs for the same machine.

There is a claustrophobic sense of space. The film opens with an outdoor celebration, with crowds in the street, barely room to move. The hit men, actually prisoners released for a day or two. who do jobs on behalf of some of the top politicians, return to an overcrowded prison. Almost every place is dimly lit, even the golf course where the idealistic investigator, Francis, meets with men who seem to be in charge of everything.

Even Francis is not exempt, seeming to have gotten his position based on being the son-in-law of an important congressman. His partner is a local cop who hasn't risen in the ranks due to his honesty. The two are in pursuit of an aging hit man who is up for parole and his young partner, an apprentice learning both how to kill and how to survive prison politics. The hit men have killed a well known drug dealer whose death has wider implications that few suspect. The older man, Tang, is concerned that parole would mean not making enough money to support his wife and daughter, as he would be retired or possibly killed himself. When the younger man, Daniel, gets a chance to show what he can do, with Tang as his backup, a messy situation gets out of control.

I've only seen one other film by Erik Matti at this point, the very funny superhero comedy Gagamoy. This is a much darker film in every sense of that description. The soundtrack is of interest in that it mostly work that is more experimental and discordant than what might be found in what is presented as an action film. One of the deleted scenes is scored to the much more familiar sound of the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter". That On the Job played last May at Cannes provides a good indication of the critical appreciation Matti has achieved.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:48 AM

February 07, 2014

Reel Zombies

Mike Masters and David J. Francis - 2008
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

A fake documentary about a fake documentary about the making of a zombie movie, Reel Zombies is never scary, and only occasionally funny. The best way to see this film is with the commentary track, because if nothing else, Reel Zombies does provide something of an education for wannabe filmmakers. And this means making any kind of movie, although in this case, the film in question is a no budget horror movie shots over several weekends.

There is a scene involving actors auditioning for a key role. What we see are several different ways of saying the same line, often with the emphasis off, or expressed awkwardly. Tromo head Lloyd Kaufman, playing himself, joins the fun in this scene, a wink to those viewers familiar with his public persona. There is also a bit of fun regarding the almost obligatory gratuitous nudity in these films.

Masters, Francis and most of the rest of the onscreen performers portray versions of themselves. The setup is that following the two Zombie Night movies, the crew makes a third film. At the time this is taking place, there are real zombies. As can be imagined, no matter how much one thinks one has them under control, making a zombie movies with real zombies turns out to be a disastrous idea.

A little bit of research reminded me that Masters had also produced The Son of the Sunshine, a film with higher artistic aspirations that I saw as part of the Starz Denver Film Festival in 2011. Francis appeared as Jesus in Dracula 3000. Throughout this film, the two reveal how certain scenes were filmed as well as other biographical bits concerning the making of Reel Zombies. The film itself is a combination of script, improvisation and accident. While some of the scenes are clearly a parody of no budget filmmaking, such as those involving craft services, the food provided for the production crew, there are lessons to be had on how not to make a movie. Filmmaking, even in the best of circumstances, isn't easy, and Masters and Francis who what can be done when there is no money, but plenty of passion.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:22 AM

February 05, 2014

Young Detective Dee: Rise of the Sea Dragon

Di Renjie: Shen du long wang
Tsui Hark - 2013
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

While I would not want to begrudge Tsui Hark's current success with big budget, special effects heavy, movies that have played to great popularity in mainland China, I miss the guy who made smaller movies for his Hong Kong audience. The film that really hooked me was The Chinese Feast, a screwball comedy about a cooking competition, and in spite of terrible subtitles, for me, one of the funniest movies ever made. What I also miss is that by making films centered on male heroes, the female characters get less screen time, yet it is the two main female characters, here, as well as in films past, that are the more interesting elements from Tsui's extensive filmography.

Carina Lau returns as Empress Wu in this film that presents, as the title indicates, Detective Dee, the name westernized from DI, at the beginning of his career. Lau simply needs to flash hauteur with her ornate costumes. At half Lau's age, Angelababy might be hoping for as significant an acting career. As the courtesan who is on the verge of being a human sacrifice for the sea dragon in question, her costumes also are part of the performance.

While comparisons are made between the 7th Century Chinese detective and Sherlock Holmes, Dee seems to recede in the background, with his partners in crime solving often taking the spotlight. There is a subplot involving the courtesan and her lover, with echoes of Beauty and the Beast, which is part of the greater plot involving the overthrow of the Wu kingdom.

Dee alternates between competition and cooperation with the kingdom's top cop, proving himself worthy of joining the elite police unit. Part of the plot also involves an enemy that speaks Dondo, a language originating from Indonesia. Some of the historical aspect may well be fuzzy for western viewers. More universal is that the plot involves the members of the royal court drinking a special tea, one that contains parasites, or that the only known cure involves drinking the urine of "male virgins". Tsui often has, for lack of a better choice of words, gags, in dubious taste.

Neither this, nor the first Detective Dee film engaged me as other films by Tsui have done so in the past. Again, I think this may have something to do with the role of women in Tsui's films, as his previous effort, Flying Swords of Dragon Gate was held together by the performances of Zhou Xu, Li Yuchun and Gwei Lun-mei, providing the emotional core, with Jet Li's presence mostly to insure ticket sales. Things pick up during the second half of the film when mysteries are solved and the sea dragon is finally confronted. An abundance of wire work and special effects is not enough to cover for a less than compelling story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:35 AM

February 03, 2014

Sex Hunter

Sekkusu hanta - sei kariudo
Toshiharu Ikeda - 1980
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Sex Hunter is probably not the most perverse movie ever made, but it will still raise the eyebrows of all, but the most jaded viewers. In addition to a lesbian orgy, a gang bang, sadomasochism with ropes and whips, miscegenation, there is sex on a wheelchair, and a Coca-cola douche. Most of the film takes place in a mansion where the initially unwilling young ingenue is assured that no manner of pleasure is forbidden. The semi-Gothic mansion houses a very private ballet school, where some of the dancing is horizontal. While in his notes, historian Jasper Sharp links Sex Hunter to Dario Argento's Suspiria, I found myself thinking more of the films of Radley Metzger, where sex was part of private, or not so private, performance, along with Joseph Losey's The Servant with that film's exploration of power dynamics. In its very twisted way, this film also anticipates parts of Black Swan.

It all begins with a little prick. Ballerina Mike receives flowers and a card from an admirer following her lead performance in Swan Lake. The card has a sharp edge. The close up of Miki's hand serves as a terrific visual queue for the end of her physical and emotional virginity. Walking along the street the next day, Miki is followed by Akiko in her car. Akiko is the one with last night's flowers. She is also the sister to Miki's absent boyfriend, Genichiro. Akiko invites Miki to check her home, complete with a ballet school. A former dancer, Akiko intends to stage a ballet with Miki in the lead. What waits for Miki is a descent into hell.

Many of the scenes involve the use of two way mirrors. What makes the scenes interesting is most of them simultaneously invoke both voyeurism and narcissism. Several of the scenes have the revelation of sexual transgression being forced on an unwilling viewer. Yet because the sex always takes place in a mirrored room, there is the implication that those performing the sex are also doing so for their own pleasure, regardless of whom else might be watching. There is also one scene where the mirrors are clear on both sides, and sexual desire is expressed by lovers separated by glass.

Much of the credit should go to the manga artist Dirty Matsumoto, who created the original story. At the same time, Toshiharu Ikeda has made a name for himself, most famously with Evil Dead Trap, pushing the boundaries of what can be shown on screen, especially with anything considered taboo in Japanese culture.

Not that he would be entirely unique in this regard, but Ikeda also has a nice use of red here, with the shot of blood on Miki's finger, as a cloth belt on the white leotard of a dancer, the red rope that binds Miki, and red petals in a bath. The intelligent filming of Swan Lake that opens the story indicates that Ikeda not only had a better understanding of how to visually present dance, but that he probably could have done well as a mainstream filmmaker had he not preferred to make a career out of finding new ways to shock the audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 AM

January 30, 2014

Nurse Girl Dorm: Sticky Fingers

Kango joshiryo: Ijiwaru na yubi
Yoshihiro Kawasaki - 1985
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

The DVD cover has the title listed above. On the DVD, the title is translated as "Assy fingers". In any event, fingers belonging to the men and women here do plenty of exploring in dark and sticky places. For myself, I'm fingering this DVD as one of the best I've seen in Synapse's ongoing series of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno.

As far as the sex goes, it's fairly standard issue simulated straight and lesbian couplings, gropings, and tongue wrestling, as well as an abundance of exposed breasts. As if to leave nothing out, there's also a bit of cross-dressing, sado-masochism, and accidental buggering. In short, just about something for everyone. No sense dawdling when the film starts off with an unusual, and very personal use, of a vacuum cleaner. Minus the sex, there's a very entertaining and funny movie about nurses with very accommodating bedside manners, in and out of their dorm.

Unlike some of the other worthy efforts from the studio in which the filmmakers were allowed some freedom to make social statements or experiment visually, Yoshihiro Kawasaki just aims to be entertaining, and he does this quite well. Much of the credit goes to star Jun Izumi. She's attractive, but in a approachable kind of way, reminding me somewhat of the iconic Setsuko Hara. Unlike Miss Hara, she's not defending her virginity at all costs. Izumi's attitude makes me think of Bettie Page, with her infectious cheerfulness, inviting the viewer to join in on the fun.

The plot, as such, has experienced nurse Yuki returning to dorm life after divorcing her accident prone husband, a cop. Not only does this give Yuki the opportunity to hook up with one of the other nurses, but she also gets to show the younger dorm mates how to sneak in their respective boyfriends. The dorm is run by a disciplinarian who later gets the chance to literally crack the whip. In between, there's an opportunity for a peppy song performed offscreen, from Yuki's point of view, about leaving behind bad relationships, and going forward alone. I don't know who the singer is, but knowing what I do about Japanese movies, I wouldn't be surprised if that was also Jun Izumi.

Mostly why I like this film is because it seems like everyone in the cast is having fun. One of the nice running gags involves a bulldog often seen wearing a medical headlight, the pet of the dorm mistress. Most of all, though, is Jun Izumi's performance. I know she's faking orgasm after orgasm, but for someone pretending to have sex, Izumi does it with convincing sincerity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:10 AM

January 28, 2014

The Sack of Rome

Oro
Fabio Bonzi - 1992
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

I should give the folk at One 7 Movies some credit. They come up with movies that I've never heard of, movies that seem to be plucked out of some vault of forgotten European cinema. Also, they must have gotten these movies for chump change, because it's not that cheap to produce DVDs, but they must have figured out that there is an audience out there for whatever they've got.

It's not that The Sack of Rome is a bad film, but, let's face it, are there more than a handful of Americans who even know about the actual events that took place in 1527, or even care? I did some reading about the history which was basically part of a power play by various royal families and their respective armies over the influence Pope Clement had with the balance of power in Europe. German mercenaries also became involved, adding another element of discord as they were largely Lutheran. The sack was a form of payday for the mercenaries, looting gold and jewelry from the Romans. According to the historical overview, the mercenaries left after eight months when there was no more food or anything of value that they could carry with them.

I'm not sure how much of the film is historically accurate. The main character is a painter favored by the Church, Gabriele da Poppi. Gabriele is certain that as an artist, he will be untouched by the ongoing war. As it turns out, the mercenaries don't care, although one of the royal leaders attempts to protect Gabriele. Bonzi touches on a few interesting ideas such as the relationship art and artists have to politics, and how it may affect them. Also, while Gabriele's art is commissioned depictions of religious subjects, his models are from Rome's lower strata. His live in muse, Gesuina, becomes the mistress to a mercenary who takes over Gabriele's house.

There is a shot of Franco Nero and Vittoria Belvedere, Gabriele and Gesuina, posed like the classic image of Jesus taken from the cross, in the arms of Mary, the image associated with the Pieta. And while Franco Nero is largely a passive character in this film, the shot made me flash back on Nero's most famous role, one that less obviously has a degree of religious inspiration, Django. I was not familiar with Vittoria Belvedere although I have picked up that she does have her devotees. She is lovingly photographed here. One aspect of this film that can not be argued is that it is often beautifully lit, with some effort to make the film resemble 16th century painting. Director Fabio Bonzi's most famous credit is as the Assistant Art Director for Cinema Paradiso. The original Italian title translates as "gold". This was also a coproduction with Russia's Mosfilms, and some of the dubbing to Italian is obvious. I can see how the subject matter would interest an Italian audience. As for a stateside audience, I have to admit that Vittoria Belvedere does look quite cute dressed up as a pageboy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:13 AM

January 23, 2014

Erotic Blackmail

Le corps a ses raisons / Rivelazioni erotiche di una governante
Eddy Naka - 1974
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

I like the original French title, roughly translated as "The body has its own reasons". Literary types will recognize this as a play on the maxim attributed to Blaise Pascal. What we have is an Italian dubbed, English subtitled version of a soft core French movie, credited to Hedi Naka. Eddy or Hedi, there seems to be little information on the guy. What little is listed in IMDb indicates a brief career with barely a handful of credits.

I'm not even sure what to make of this film. The title refers to two socially prominent women who were photographed in compromising situations, unconscious and naked. The short running time, about sixty-five minutes is padded out with scenes of the two women getting it on with the men in their lives, dancing at the local disco, and general lollygagging. In all, not much really happens. Naka pads things out some more by repeating shots at the end of the film, essentially a recap of everything that happened during the previous hour.

Evidently, no one told Hedi Naka that the Sixties were over, as there a couple of sex scenes using psychedelic colors and other visual effects, none of which aids in making this film more than mildly erotic.
There are also some songs which sound like bad imitations of the stuff that Serge Gainsbourg use to record several years previously. About the only thing that really works is the outdoor photography of the woods and a nearby river - possibly abetted by the slightly washed out quality of the print, giving it the effect of looking at watercolor paintings.

The choice of idiomatic expressions in English is baffling. There is a reference to a BFF and MILFs. Yet one of the men calls a younger woman a bobby-soxer (for the kids reading this, that last reference was what teenager were called once upon a time, check out Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant and Shirley Temple). I can't imagine what was on Hedi Naka's mind when this film was first conceived. I'm guessing that there was some sort of half-baked social critique only vaguely envisioned, something that someone like Claude Chabrol could have done something with, but with better sex scenes. There is the vaguest sense that Naka wanted to say something about voyeurism, sex and class distinctions. I also have to wonder what is missing as the DVD is ten minutes shorter than the published running time. The actresses are reasonably attractive, especially blonde France Nicolas. Presumably, there is a niche audience for this film, but others with a more casual interest would be better served looking elsewhere.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

January 15, 2014

Odd Obsession

Kagi / The Key
Kon Ichikawa - 1959

I haven't yet read the Junichiro Tanizaki novel that Ichikawa's film is based on, though I have read a couple of Tanizaki's other novels. There are shared themes, essentially that love is a very messy thing, and whenever you think you are in control regarding affairs of the heart, you really aren't.

Odd Obsession is mostly about an older man, his younger wife, their daughter, and a young doctor. The man tries to hide that he is seeing the young doctor for shots to help keep up his diminished virility. The doctor and the daughter hide that they are seeing each other. The wife has to pretend that she does not known that her husband is getting treatment. The husband comes to conclusion that jealousy helps keep him young and sets things up so that the doctor gets several opportunities to see the wife naked. Eventually the doctor and the wife are involved with each other.

The doctor may at first be polite enough to avert his eyes, but Ichikawa gets away with showing as much of Machiko Kyo as he possibly can, based on what was allowed in 1959. Donald Richie has written disapprovingly of Kyo's displays of physical appeal, preferring the perpetually well-mannered Setsuko Hara. For myself, I am hoping more of the films that Kyo made with Ichikawa become available, that is to say available with English subtitles. Ichikawa seems to have made the most out of Kyo's sexiness, and Kyo would appear to have no problems obliging her director in a handful of films made in the late Fifties. And yeah, the nudity is more suggested than seen, but I can just imagine the men in the audience with their eyes bulging just like Tatsuya Nakadai when he develops those first rolls of photos.

As the young doctor, Nakadai exudes sleaziness from the very opening shot. He's only interested in the daughter because he thinks Dad has enough money to help him get set up with his own practice. Even the relationships within the family descend into parodies of filial piety. Throughout the film, people get confused between the truth and the appearance of things, ultimately personified by a colorblind maid who gets containers of cleanser and insecticide confused. While voyeurism is a big element of the story, Ichikawa and Tanizaki also remind one not to believe everything that one sees.

Fortunately, the DVD I have is the full version. The original U.S. release was 96 minutes long, short by eleven minutes. While I don't know exactly what was cut, there are a couple of scenes I can imagine being deleted, especially one shot of Kyo, nude and unconscious on a bed, her body from her breasts to her upper thighs blocked by her husband looking over her. Ichikawa includes a close up of Kyo's famed legs> with the camera tilting up from her feet to just above her knees and than dissolving to a shot of a desert. I am hoping more Ichikawa films made with Kyo become available, especially as the clips from Shunji Iwai's documentary on Ichikawa has whetted my interest. I'm sure that most will agree that Kon Ichikawa's peak period was from the mid Fifties through the early Sixties. My obsession will seeing films from that period isn't odd at all.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

January 09, 2014

Brutalization

Because of the Cats
Fons Rademakers - 1973
One 7 Movies Region 0 DVD

Five years before making Because of the Cats, Fons Rademakers had an acting gig on a film that also starred Alexandra Stewart. This was also an English language production with an eye towards the international market. The Dutch full title is Bezeten - Het gat in de muur. The English language title is Obsessions. The film was directed by Pim de la Parra, and was, in fact, the first Dutch film made in English, paving the way for other Dutch filmmakers hoping for a taste of commercial success. For some reason, that film is lost, or locked away in a vault, yet it would seem to be exactly the kind of film that someone would want to put out on DVD. There are a couple of good reasons why a Dutch film that advertised itself as being in the mode of Alfred Hitchcock would be ripe for rediscovery - the soundtrack is by Hitchcock's most famous musical collaborator, Bernard Herrmann, while the screenplay was partially the work of a struggling young filmmaker named Martin Scorsese. The reason why Scorsese was in Amsterdam in the first place was to shoot a sexual fantasy scene for his own debut film, Who's that Knocking on My Door, in order to get a distribution deal with exploitation distributor Joseph Brenner. It was also Brenner who distributed Because of the Cats in the U.S.

Brutalization is the DVD cover title given to Rademaker's film. I guess the distributors figured, perhaps rightly, that people would think that Because of the Cats would be a movie about animals, with little commercial appeal. The film is more or less being sold here as a home invasion type thriller, along the lines of Last House on the Left. Those looking for a film starring Sylvia Kristel might well be disappointed to know that she has a small, though important, supporting role. I will from this point refer to the film by its original title, discussing what is actually on the screen.

Flickering briefly as an X rated exploitation film in a few U.S. movie theaters, Because of the Cats serves as an example of commercial European cinema in the early Seventies. The source material is a novel by the respected and popular Nicolas Freeling, part of his series of detective Van der Valk. The sex and nudity were part of the zeitgeist of the time. The film also comes at a midpoint in Rademakers directorial career, roughly between his debut film, which happened also to be the first Dutch film up for an Oscar, and his 1986 film, The Assault, which was the first Dutch film to win the coveted prize for a foreign language film.

A gang of young men, all well dressed in tailored black suits, vandalize a house in Amsterdam, and when discovered by the home owners, rape the wife while her husband helplessly looks on. Van der Valk is unofficially on the case, with clues leading to a small, seaside town. It doesn't take him long to figure out who the perps are, but finding proof is more of a challenge. While searching for clues, the detective finds time to be with a high priced prostitute, and banter with the restauranteur who owns a pet raven.

Animals do figure in the story. What happens to some cats in this film may well be considered more disturbing than the rape scene that sets up the plot. Some of the philosophical aspects that motivate the young men and women probably appear even more nonsensical than they did forty years ago. For a guy whose job it is to enforce the law, Van der Valk has a relatively fluid sense of morality. For those more interested in visceral pleasures, there is a generous amount of female nudity, as well as some male nudity including star Bryan Marshall. For those looking for glimpses of Sylvia Kristel, you might have to look elsewhere, but Alexandra Stewart provides an eyeful. Curiously, Kristel and Stewart worked together a few years later when Kristel portrayed the role that made her internationally famous, in Goodbye Emmanuelle.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:22 AM

January 07, 2014

Badges of Fury

Bu Er Shen Tan
Wong Chi Ming - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There's a scene in near the beginning of Badges of Fury that is a reminder of why Corey Yuen remains one of the best action directors. Jet Li is chasing a bad guy. The bad guy goes to a stairwell and rather than simply run down the stairs, does a bit of parkour, skipping a couple of floors by bouncing against the walls. The stairwell is not that wide, so that even though wire work is involved, the scene does not seem entirely exaggerated. Li, however, does the bad guy one better by jumping into the middle of the stairwell, using his arm to navigate himself against the staircase railings, in order to catch up with his suspect. The two finally fight it out on the stairs. One of my favorite examples of Yuen's work is in the first Transporter film, and again Yuen shows how to choreograph a fight scene with a very confined space. And, yes, it's done with a combination of wire work and special effects, but that doesn't diminish the fun of watching Li in action.

For the most part, Badges of Fury is an amiable goof on both Hong Kong cinema and some of the cliches of police action films. There are a lot of quick cameos, most quickly recognizable of which is Lam Suet as a taxi driver. Cop Jet Li is praised for his work in stopping video piracy, which is notable for involving downloads of several films starring . . . you guessed it . . . Jet Li. Most people with some familiarity will get some of the gags here, which would be comparable to some of the topical Hollywood joking found in a Road movie with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.

That there is a story here, with a team of three incompetent detectives trying to find out who is murdering several men. The victims are all former fiances of an upcoming actress, and all die under mysterious circumstances, with a smile on their faces. When it seems that the actress is innocent, all eyes fall on her older, sexier sister. Of course all eyes are on the sister anyways due to her penchant for her admittedly stunning decolletage.

Most of the heavy lifting here is done by Wen Zhang and Michelle Chen, as Li's crime fighting partners. The two bicker about everything, from Chen's knowledge of psychology to Wen's seemingly preposterous deductions. Aside from doing most of the action scenes, Wen also takes the most pratfalls. One of the reliable signs of a good comic actor is being unafraid of looking totally foolish, and Wen is up to the task. In the film's opening scene, taking place during what is suppose to be a Scottish style celebration, Wen wears a kilt, actually a plaid miniskirt, and is caught in an upskirt shot.

The use of comic sound effects, the kind of stuff I usually associate with Thai comedies, is fortunately abandoned after the first half of the film. Better is when Wen faces off with a bunch of old kung fu masters who all go into their poses. One has certain expectations with Jet Li, especially when he shows up to face off against several men at once. Without giving too much away, it should be pointed out that Li's character's name is variation of the name of one of the most popular characters portrayed by Li, the martial arts master, Wong Fei-hung. Li has more fun at his own expense, with the former Miss World, six foot tall Zhang Zilin. Li might have fists of legend, but in getting a laugh regarding his height, he's fearless.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

January 02, 2014

Adventure in Kigan Castle

Kiganjo no boken
Senkichi Taniguchi - 1966

There was a potential for a far more interesting film than what became of Adventure in Kigan Castle. It's all in the beginning. The setup is that Toshiro Mifune crosses what was known as the Silk Road with a Buddhist monk, on a quest to get relics of the original Buddha. The monk's goal is to help establish Buddhism in Japan. The pair join a caravan, leaving from Dunhuang in western China, going eastward. At one point in the desert, the caravan is beset by bandits. Everyone hides in a cave that turns out to be an old Buddhist temple. Mifune and the monk are abandoned by the caravan, but poke around long enough in the temple to have found hidden under a stupa, a small container with a few remains of the cremated Buddha.

I sort of exited about the premise. I read Yasushi Inoue's novel, Tun-huang many years ago. The book offers theories about the establishment of the famed Buddhist caves. Also, much of the exterior work on this film was done on location in Iran. I can only imaging how spectacular some of the shots looked on the big screen, having to settle for seeing this on letterboxed DVD. I don't know enough to know where the film was shot, but there is the wide expanse of mountains and desert. It's also not made clear when the film takes place, but there are some considerable historical liberties just within those first few opening minutes.

Buddhism is recorded as having been established in Japan by the mid Sixth Century. I'm not sure if any European women would have actually been in western China during that time, but the film begins with a slave auction in Dunhuang, with a pretty blonde sold to the highest bidder. In a scene soon after that, Mifune is enjoying a meal in a restaurant, serenaded by another blonde. That these two women are part of the cast sets helps set up the more fantastic aspects to the film.

What might have been a fictionalized historical adventure soon shifts gears to become an Arabian nights fantasy. For that matter, the costumes worn by much of the cast aren't too different from what might have been worn by Rock Hudson or Tony Curtis in the kind of programmers churned out by Universal ten years earlier. Not that the film isn't fun to watch. Still, a story about castle intrigue, a king so distrustful that he begins executing the people he should be trusting, while somehow letting those plotting against him live, can hardly be thought of as being original. There's a magical hermit and an old witch, plus special effects that aren't very special.

Most of the cast is Toho Studios stock players, the most famous of which are Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi, just a year away from being immortalized as Bond girls in You Only Live Twice. Wakabayashi gets to vamp it up as the scheming daughter of the chamberlain, getting set up to replace the Queen. The monk is played by Tatsuya Mihashi, probably better known to more people as "that guy" who plays the inept spy, Phil Moskowitz in Woody Allen's What's Up, Tiger Lily. The films that Allen dubbed were also directed by Senkichi Taniguchi.

I've only seen a couple of films by Taniguchi, but it seems like he is overdue for a more thorough review of his work. His directorial debut, Snow Trail not only was Toshiro Mifune's first film, but has a screenplay by Akira Kurosawa. And I don't know if Woody Allen has anything to do with the original films unavailability, even in gray market DVDs, but I would sure love to see the Mihashi, Hama and Wakabayashi in the spy thrillers as Taniguchi originally intended them to be seen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

December 26, 2013

The 47 Ronin (1994)

Shijushichinin no shikaku
Kon Ichikawa - 1994
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Not that I am surprised based on the trailers and description of the reworking that the response to Universal's new version of The 47 Ronin is universal scorn. Will this new version inspire a new audience to seek out any of the previous versions? There might have been more interest had the film contained a bit of commercial viability and some critical praise. More likely, it may give reason to those who take film history seriously to see one of the earlier films. Whether the title incorporates the Japanese Chushingura or 47 Ronin, or uses an altogether different title, there are at least as many film versions as there are masterless samurai, with the earliest known version produced in 1907.

I'm not certain if any version is considered definitive. Certainly Kenji Mizoguchi's 1941 is held in high regard because it's by Kenji Mizoguchi. Hiroshi Inagaki's 1962 version was the first to get a U.S. release, while the 1958 film by Kunio Watanabe has a cast that includes more internationally recognized stars including Machiko Kyo, Shintaro Katsu, Ayako Wakao and Kazuo Hasegawa. These versions generally follow the same story line. A daimyo, Asano, perceives an insult from an official, Kira, cutting him with a sword rather than take the insult. For several reasons, Asano is forced to commit seppuku, and his fief is abolished. Asano's three-hundred retainers are now ronin, masterless samurui. One of the top ranking members, Oishi, organizes a plot seeking revenge. The previous three films concentrate more on discussion of the nuances of protocol and the meaning of samurai loyalty.

Perhaps done with the sense that the core audience was overly familiar with the basic story, Kon Ichikawa chose to concentrate more on Oishi's strategy for revenge. The scenes involving Asano and Kira are fleetingly told in flashbacks. While we see Asano injure Kira, the actions that lead up to this incident are not seen, nor any motivations discussed. Even when confronted by Oishi, Kira is unable to explain or justify what had happened.

Those looking for straight out samurai action might be disappointed. The there is the confrontation between the ronin and Kira's men, and it does have its bloody moments, the bulk of the film is about Oishi planning the attack, and the counter-strategy devised by Kira's retainer, Irobe. As Oishi, Ken Takakura is more contemplative here than in the action films that established his stardom in Japan, or the film that introduced him to a larger western audience, The Yakuza. Ruriko Asaoka shines briefly as Oishi's wife. What I really liked were shots that some might consider extraneous to the narrative - a bamboo forest, branches of cherry blossom trees in different seasons, the colors and textures of stone walls.

The 47 Ronin represented a late period resurgence for Kon Ichikawa, 79 years old, and still active as a filmmaker for a dozen more years. The film earned eleven nominations for Japan's film academy, winning four, including one for supporting actor Kiichi Nakai as Irobe. Those especially unfamiliar with the story would benefit from the DVD extras which AnimEigo has excelled at, including the historical background of the story, some history about the various film versions, as well as explanations regarding various aspects of Japanese culture specific to the 18th Century.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM

December 24, 2013

The Berlin File

Bereullin;
Ryoo Seung-wan - 2013
CJ Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Throughout much of The Berlin File, Ryoo employs the two shot in filming his characters. For those unfamiliar with the term, the two shot is the shot of two characters within the same frame. The use of this visual motif underlines two aspects of the characters. Virtually all of the characters have, or appear to have, double existences, both professionally and personally. Also, each character is paired with someone else, sometimes, very briefly working together, but more often in opposition. Everyone here is a spy, but it's never clear whose side they are on.

Duality is indirectly referred to also in setting the film in Berlin, the once divided city, where those on the eastern side reputedly spied on each other in the name of loyalty to the Communist regime. Ryoo doesn't spend any time providing the kind of tourist's eye view that is often employed in films using a foreign location, but one can spot the Brandenburg Gate in the background during a scene of two secret agents fighting it out on a rooftop.

What begins as North Koreans and South Koreans spying on each other in Berlin, gets murkier with involvement by the C.I.A., the Mossad, and an Arab terrorist organization. Adding to this are the conflicts within each organization, adding to the tension, and the concept of duality. Jong-seong, the North Korean "ghost" agent is under suspicion for his part in a failed illegal agreement with a notorious Russian arms dealer that ends up with a gunfight, and the sudden appearance of Mossad agents. Jong-seong's wife is not only suspected of trying to defect by others within the North Korean embassy in Berlin, but suspected by her husband as well. The unseen hand that determines much of the action is that of "the party", the North Korean elite best connected to Kim Jong-un.

Certainly, what makes the DVD release so timely is the recent news from North Korea. That the loyalties of the North Korean characters are constantly questioned by each other, where political expediency trumps any other kind of relationship, is less abstract in light current events. The Berlin File would suggest that what took place in Pyongyang plays out on a smaller, private scale, between people with their own political and personal stakes, all in the name of "The Republic".

The DVD comes with a "Making of , , ," supplement. One of the more informative bits of information that would be lost on those, like myself, who don't speak Korean, or watch the English dubbed version, is that there are a variety of North Korean accents. Not that not knowing this should in any way get in the way of enjoying the action, but it is a reminder of how some cultural details get lost. Ryoo also explains how martial arts specific to North Korea was employed in the scenes of hand to hand fighting.

While The Berlin File is mostly serious viewing, there is fun is discovering who the spies are. And just when you think you have things figured out, Ryoo finds another way to pull the rug out from under the trusting audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:57 AM

December 17, 2013

Toad Road

Jason Banker - 2012
Artsploitation Films All Region DVD

Even reading about Toad Road after seeing the film has not made it easier to process. What we have is really an unclassifiable hybrid. To call this a horror movie sets things up for unmet genre expectations. This is not like Abel Ferrara's The Addiction which clearly made the connections between drug dependency and vampirism. And an abundance of drugs are consumed in Toad Road. On a personal note, I have had, in a past long gone, had my own experiences that have some resemblance to the gatherings of the kids in Toad Road. An incident that I found amusing is that I had a friend who was strict about keeping kosher, but had no problem purchasing LSD from a stranger in New York City's Central Park.

The story is about a group of college aged friends who get together at a house for the sole purpose of not simply getting high, but totally wasted. Two of the friends, James and Sara, go for a walk in the woods, exploring for themselves what is suppose to be an urban legend, a path that leads to the seven gates of Hell. The path is Toad Road, somewhere near York, Pennsylvania. The gates may or may not really be there. The two share some kind of hallucinatory substance passed from Sara's tongue to James. At a certain point, Sara seems to have wandered away. James wakes up in the snow, unaware of how much time has passed.

Getting lost seems to be the operative metaphor here. James talks about having a normal life, although we, and probably he, don't have any specifics other than vague talk about going to college. Even when James is found wandering in a nearby town, he is completely unmoored. His friends have all left, and without any place to go. There is a suggestion of what happened during James' missing time in the woods, but Banker keeps the viewer guessing.

The opening and closing scenes bookend a scrambled chronology of events that may or may not have happened. There is a beautiful shot taken of a young woman's reflection on water, in a lake in the woods. There is also some gorgeous gamelan music. But also there are static sounds, and extremely brief flashes of abstract images. That the actors play characters with their own names also blurs the lines between fictional narrative and a staged documentary. An early scene is of the kids getting high, playing around, with James so fucked up to even keep his pants on. The scene runs too long, but could well be deliberate. James is last seen lashing out destructively. There are questions but no answers. As such, Toad Road might serve as a denial of William Blake's notice that, "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:36 AM

December 13, 2013

The Big Gundown

La Resa dei Conti
Sergio Sollima - 1966
Grindhouse Releasing Blu-ray Regions ABC / DVD Region 0 set

There is a remarkable scene only available on the Blu-ray disc of La Resa dei Conti, the 1966 Italian western that was recut and released as The Big Gundown in the U.S. two years later. The original title roughly translates as "The Settling of Scores". Three outlaws from Texas think they have succeeded in completing their rendezvous with an outlaw they only know by name in Colorado. As it turns out, it's the bounty hunter who is waiting for them. One of the trio explains that they have run out of bullets. In a beautifully composed shot, we see the bounty hunter place three bullets on a log, one in front of each man, the three men and their respective bullets all within a single frame. One of the reasons why anyone would want to see Sergio Sollima's original version is to see how the characterizations are better fleshed out, especially in establishing the sense of fair play on the part of the bounty hunter, played by Lee Van Cleef.

Another shot that is shortened takes place presumably during "Day of the Dead" celebrations, with children watching marionette skeletons. It works as part of a visual motif. In the aforementioned opening scene, the camera pans just enough to the viewer's right of the outlaw trio to see the outlaw they were planning to meet hung from a tree. Later, Tomas Milian is tied in such a way that he is pulled in several directions at once. While some may gripe at hearing Van Cleef dubbed in Italian, with subtitles, La Resa dei Conti is the richer film.

Not only is the dialogue subtitled in this version, but so is the music. Not only can you see the film with an isolated music track by Ennio Morricone, but there are subtitles that discuss the music queues. Not that all of the music is by Morricone, as his is aided by a couple of guys named Mendelsson and Beethoven. Mendelsson's "Wedding March" is played at the marriage of a magnate's daughter, suddenly morphing into a square dance. Beethoven's "Fur Elise" is first heard on piano, played by an Austrian baron who serves as the magnate's hired gun. Later, Morricone takes the opening notes, replayed as part of the soundtrack, poignantly integrated with a Spanish guitar theme.

As for the film itself, the fun is primarily watching the twists and turn of Van Cleef in his pursuit of Milian. Although seen later in the U.S., this was Van Cleef's first top billed performance following his career changing role as Colonel Mortimer in For a Few Dollars More. Van Cleef looks like a predatory bird with his thin face and pronounced nose. When he smiles, Van Cleef looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. In contrast to the usually cool and measured Van Cleef, is Milian's manic thief. There are times when Milian appears act like a simpleton or a slack-jawed idiot, disguising his own smart ways of taking advantage of every situation where he appears to have been caught. This was Milian's second western, also a career changer, where he became a staple in Italian westerns and later, in crime thrillers.

In one of the many supplements, Sergio Sollima talks about a love for westerns that he's had since childhood. I would venture that this love persisted into adulthood. Was Sollima thinking about My Darling Clementine with the shot of the sheriff leaning back in his chair, feet on the railing? Could the inclusion of a traveling Mormons be inspired by The Wagonmaster? While Sollima cites Akira Kurosawa with helping create the genre most associated with Sergio Leone, this film shows also a tip of the sombrero to John Ford.

Others interviewed as supplements to The Big Gundown are Tomas Milian, who also discusses his long acting career, and screenwriter Sergio Donati, a name associated with several Leone films as well. The commentary track by C. Courtney Joyner and Henry C. Parke, described as western experts, is generally entertaining and informative. A twenty-two page booklet provides more information. There's also a soundtrack CD for those who want to simple enjoy Ennio Morricone's music by itself. And if that wasn't enough, there's even a DVD-ROM of listing of Columbia Picture's edits! In short, the words "ultimate" and "collector's edition" on the cover box really mean something here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 AM

December 11, 2013

The Snake God

Il dio serpente
Piero Vivarelli - 1970
Mondo Macabro Region 1 DVD

By the standards of Mondo Macabro's previous releases, The Snake God is a relatively conventional movie. There a handful of zombies, or maybe they are extremely gaunt men with white make-up, some nudity, voodoo rituals, and interracial sex, the obligatory product placement of J & B scotch found in many Italian movies of the time, and the titular snake god who shows up in human form. What's missing is the kind of stuff that gets the description of "batshit crazy".

For myself, the best part of the DVD was the interview with writer-director Piero Vivarelli, apparently filmed shortly before his death in 2010. There are stories about his days as a dedicated smoker of an illegal herbal substance, and his commitment to communism including friendship with Fidel Castro. Better, are the clips from films he had a hand in, either as a writer or as director. There are a couple of clips from musicals directed by Lucio Fulci, yes, that Lucio Fulci, remembered chiefly for his horror movies where eyes routinely get gouged. One of those films has the odd English title of Howlers of the Dock, and features Chet Baker. There are other films with various Italian rock stars of the early Sixties, written and directed by Vivarelli. And I'd really love to see those films lovingly restored on DVD with English subtitles. As a writer, Vivarelli also had a hand in the original Django.

As for The Snake God, it doesn't quite work as either an exploitation film or social critique. Young Paolo shows up with her older husband, Bernard, to live on his massive Caribbean plantation. On a boating excursion, Paolo spies upon Stella, running with her boyfriend, on a beach. She learns that Stella use to be Bernard's secretary. The two women become friends, with Stella introducing Paola to the traditional beliefs, with a meeting with a voodoo priest and participation in ritual ceremonies. Paola also seems to be searching for love that is not being fulfilled by her husband. According to Stella, the big, brown snake that Paola encounters on a beach is actually a god that was seeking her.

Vivarelli's attempt to provide some intellectual weight includes a brief discussion between Stella and Paola's former boyfriend, Tony. Standing in front of an old building, Stella reminds Tony that what is a well preserved example of colonial architecture is also the place where the Spanish inquisition took place. We see an example of how Catholicism has been allowed to mutate when a doll representing baby Jesus is passed around by believers. There is also a striking scene of Bernard's funeral, celebrated with some vigorous dancing.

It is a previous scene of dancing that comes off as pure exploitation. Paola is invited by Stella to witness her first "native" ritual. Everyone is taken by the rhythm. Stella and Paola are writhing on the ground. Shirts are ripped open. One of the other women rips off her panties, allowing for a brief crotch shot.

Better are some of the moments creating a sense of unease, the cry of birds on a forbidden beach, and the sound of wind. Very briefly, Vivarelli seems to hint at aspirations of making an updated version of I Walked with a Zombie, albeit a sexed up version. Those moments are too few.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:58 AM

December 09, 2013

The Rooftop

Tian tai ai qing
Jay Chou - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A genre I admittedly enjoy is the musical. Not the big, overproduced kind based on Broadway musicals, with the exception of the first part of West Side Story, the part directed by Jerome Robbins. My taste is more towards MGM, when musicals were still viable, and there were modest budget productions like The Affairs of Dobie Gillis and Give a Girl a Break in between the most sumptuous work from Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen. Maybe my preference is simply because those films were made specifically for a film audience rather than trying to reshape a work that originated on stage.

Stateside, he's known, if at all, as the man who would be Kato. In Asia, Jay Chou is big, big star. For The Rooftop, he created the story, directed the film, and wrote the music and has a hand in the eleven songs. And he's also the star of his own film, acting and singing. The only other person I can think of who would have had that many credits would be Charles Chaplin, except that Chaplin never sang.

If there was ever a movie that could have used a "making of . . ." supplement, this is it. There seem to be a variety of influences at work here - a bit of Bollywood, as well as the sometimes tragic Shaw Brothers produced musicals directed by Umetsugu Inoue. Consciously on Chou's part or not, there is also the influence of Minnelli. The action takes place in an imagined city, Galilee, in an unspecified time somewhere near the middle of the 20th Century. The rooftop itself, a collection of various apartments, features a huge victrola, one of those original record players where music come out of a horn. Bread's 1971 hit, If is still beloved by the residents. Until the last scenes, which give way to dark realism, The Rooftop fully embraces filmmaking fakery.

It seems almost mandatory that such a film would have a show biz related story. In this case, it's a guy named Wax and his three buddies, who live in a ramshackle neighborhood built on top of other buildings, known as The Rooftop. They get by with odd jobs for a snake oil doctor who puts on a show before selling his goods. The four buddies have a ritual of greeting the girl on the giant billboard by their home. Following an accidental meeting with the girl, Starling, Wax finds himself temporarily with a job as a stunt double for his romantic rival, a movie star named William. There's also a subplot with the four buddies temporarily working on behalf of a rent collecting gangster with an out of control protege.

In terms of what might be expected within the genre, the musical numbers are unusually short. Some of the musical moments are diegetic, as when Starling records a song. Likewise, the scenes involving dancing are brief. It could well be that with the classic musical as many of us have known it virtually extinct, that Chou and company felt that anything longer and more fully developed might be rejected by an audience unfamiliar with Gene Kelly or Linda Lin Dai for that matter. Whether a "show stopper" whether in song or dance, or in combination, would be dismissed by Jay Chou's fans, we'll never know. One would hope that should Chou make another musical, he might find inspiration at allowing an extended flight of fancy as seen still by Bollywood filmmakers as well as the tribute to Fred Astaire with the dazzling single take song and dance in Step Up 3D.

Those familiar with Jay Chou will be the least surprised that one of the fight scenes plays out like a musical number. Other highlight include the opening scene with Eric Tsang as the questionable doctor, with male patients leaving their wheel chairs to dance with lasciviously‎ dressed nurses. There is also a too short dance number in a bowling alley involving several identically dressed women, with the same bouffant hairstyle and glasses. The biggest misstep was to cast Hsin-ai Lee as the woman on the billboard. Pretty? Yes. But I'm going with the Viva Las Vegas rule where the leading man's best asset is an equally compelling leading lady. Lee's screen presence is sadly as weak as her singing.

The DVD itself is kind of cool, being made to resemble an old 45 rpm record.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:51 AM

December 05, 2013

Saving General Yang

Zhong Lie Yang Jia Jiang
Ronny Yu - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There's a scene in Saving General Yang in which the enemy general, Yelu Yuan, is being second-guessed by the advisor to the Khitan empress. Ronny Yu cuts from a shot of Yelu and the advisor, on horseback, facing the camera, to a lateral tracking shot of a wall, with their voices heard on the soundtrack. We then see the decapitated head of the advisor flying above the top of the wall. For myself, it was reassuring to know that Ronny Yu had lost none of the brand of humor displayed most famously in Bride of Chucky and Freddie vs. Jason.

Most of the time though, Saving General Yang plays like Yu's Lawrence of Arabia, only with a shorter running time and better action sequences. The basic story, taking place in 10th Century China, is about armies led by the patriarchs of two rival families, the Pans and the Yangs, set to defend the Song dynasty against the invading Khitans. The Khitans are led by the previously mentioned Yelu Yuan, whose father was killed by General Yuan. In the course of battle, General Pan allows General Yang to be ambushed by the Khitans. Yelu uses the ambush to lure the seven sons of the general, in order to take revenge for the death of his father.

There's no denying that Yu has a sense of spectacle. The many battle sequences convey the sense of the constant shifting action. There is one battle with the outnumbered Yang brothers army fighting the Khitans with what look like leather bags tossed into the air, which when shot by Khitan arrows, turn into flammable bombs. Later, the Khitans retaliate by attacking the Yangs with huge boulders, hurled into the air by outsized catapults. Yu shows that war has its price with a shot of defeated Song soldiers on the battlefield, several with their bodies impaled by upright spears, amidst pools of bloody and muddy water. Cuts are cauterized with the hot blades of knives. Bodies succumb to the poison of arrows, if not just the weariness from battle.

Yu also shows a penchant of overhead shots of which there are many. That Lawrence of Arabia reference? There are images of the Yang brothers dwarfed by the vastness of the desert. In another scene, one of the brothers plays cat and mouse against a Khitan archer where visibility to each other is mostly hidden within a field of high wheat.

Even though the film is suppose to be about General Yang and his sons, the most interesting character is Yelu. In this pan-Chinese cast, Shao Bing almost steals the film from everyone else, with his craftiness and colorful costumes. Even if Saving General Yang can't top Ronny Yu's best film, The Bride with White Hair, it is full of moments which I am certain would be spectacular had they been seen on the biggest of movie screens.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:58 AM

December 03, 2013

Enjo

Kon Ichikawa - 1958
Daiei Video DVD

My interest here is based wanting to see as many films as I can by Kon Ichikawa. I have some respect for Yukio Mishima as a writer, but do not revere him. It's been many years since I read Mishima's novel, The Temple of the Golden Pavillion. Ichikawa's adaptation is faithful to the spirit, if not the letter of Mishima's novel about a young Buddhist priest disturbed by the gap between his ideals and uncomfortable realities.

The film also provides very different performances by two actors who would become more famous primarily in samurai films in the Sixties. Raizo Ichikawa plays the young stuttering priest who burns down the temple rather than see it defiled as a tourist attraction. Tatsuya Nakadai is a fellow novice, physically limited by a clubfoot. Both actors were about the same age, although Nakadai looks more mature than the still boyish Ichikawa, who was twenty-seven at the time he made this film. Although Nakadai's role here anticipates the kind of manipulative characters he would play for Hideo Gosha, I don't think anyone watching Ichikawa would expect him to star in a series of films about a sometimes ruthless ronin.

As in The Burmese Harp and An Actor's Revenge, what probably attracted Kon Ichikawa here was again exploring the difference between truth and appearances. In The Burmese Harp, appearance becomes reality as the Japanese soldier, by dint of his actions, becomes a priest. In An Actor's Revenge, the female impersonator can not escape his roles either in social caste or as a female character off stage. The novice priest, Goichi, is in a conundrum where his stuttering makes him an outcast. Simultaneously, Goichi's inability to verbalize causes greater problems when manifested in physical actions, such as pushing down a young woman, rather than allowing her to enter the venerated temple. Goichi also finds himself torn between wanting to act in the manner of a priest, and an inarticulated attraction to more earthly pursuits.

In an interview with Joan Mellen, Kon Ichikawa discussed his own change to the source novel, by making a connection between economic poverty and what he describes as spiritual poverty. References to Goichi's father, also a priest, frequently refer to his being poor. Goichi's mother comes to the temple where Goichi now lives, to work work, reminding Goichi that she has to eat. The temple serves as a tourist attraction, its revenue often coming from American G.I.s, rather than donations from believers. For contemporary western viewers, one may need reminding that as the film takes place a few years following the end of World War II, the defeat of Japan undermined core cultural beliefs in addition to the economic turmoil. For Goichi, what the temple represents in his mind is mocked by the reality of contemporary Japan and materialism of the priests. And unlike the pre-war Japan that would make suicide a noble act, Goichi's death is his final, meaningless, act of rebellion.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM

November 28, 2013

Oui, Girls

Fred J. Lincoln - 1982
Impulse Pictures All Region DVD

Happy Thanksgiving. As you probably know, Abraham Lincoln was responsible for making Thanksgiving a national holiday. For many people, it's a time to stuff your face with legs and breasts from turkeys, with a lot of eating going on. Aside from having the same last name, Fred J. Lincoln's movie involves legs and breast and lots of eating. The similarity pretty much ends there.

Tiffany Clark is the MVP here, not only performing on screen, but serving in various production capacities, plus singing the title song. Let's just say that as far as singing goes, Tiffany Clark is no Andrea True.

I'm not sure about the meaning of the title. Some of us remember Oui magazine, once the more provocative younger sibling to Playboy. Anyways, this example of 1980s hard core erotica is about a mystery that turns out not to be much of a mystery, at a gathering of swingers. There are lots of close up of body parts in various kinds of couplings, with the question always of how did they get the camera (and cameraman) there?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

November 26, 2013

Sister Long Legs

Chang tui jie jie
Tang Huang - 1960
Panorama Region 3 DVD

I decided I needed to see something on the light side. I also happen to like movies movies that make a point of featuring the legs of female star, be it the traveling shot of Betty Grable's legs in A Yank in the R.A.F or the introductory shot of Angie Dickinson in China Gate. I don't know how tall Julie Yeh is, but she towers over almost everyone else in Sister Long Legs with the exception of Cathay Studios' matinee idol Roy Chiao. The opening shot, seen above is of those titular legs.

Yeh plays the part of a young teacher, Tingting, unmarried at age 24 to the chagrin of her parents. The other sister, Binbin, is a bit tomboyish with her short hair and her aggressive manner. Much of the film's humor as well as plot are dependent on appearances, be they physical, several fat jokes here, or of financial status. In some ways, the plot and the execution are a reminder of screwball comedies from the Thirties, where the son or daughter of a plutocrat learns about life and love from a boy or girl with a more humble existence.

There are several shots of legs, not only Julie Yeh's but that of the teen sister played by Jeanette Lin (in real life, a year older than Feh). A scene at a dance party shows off the two actresses gams underneath the layers of petticoats, while the young people jitterbug to a jazzed up version of "Get Happy". There is also a terrific shot, seen below, of Lin's legs framing Tien Ching, the latter as a hapless, would-be suitor. Lin almost steals the film from Yeh with her comic mugging as well as vigorous dance which ends with her flipping one young man over her shoulder.

That same dance scene also has Yeh with a dance partner much too short. Some of the leg shots are of Yeh keeping her feet from being stepped on. Getting twirled around by a short guy also is a problem. There is a bit of humor that touches on culture, popular or otherwise, of the time. Learning that Tingting is a teacher, a young demonstrates his literary ignorance in name dropping Ernest Hemingway and Oscar Wilde. When Bingin eagerly talks about movies she loves, her favorite non-Chinese actress is Audrey Hepburn, while her favorite Chinese actress is Jeanette Lin. Maybe not quite as funny as the moment in His Girl Friday when Cary Grant mentions Archibald Leach, but worthy of a chuckle.

I seem to have been a little late in "discovering" Julie Yeh. Almost all of her Cathay Studios films on DVD are out of print. At some point, I will have to check to see what there is from her time at the Shaw Brothers. Cathay Studios films were never quite as polished as the Shaw Brothers releases, but I find an undeniable sense of energy that makes these films from this era fun to watch.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:27 AM

November 21, 2013

Animals

Marcal Fores - 2012
Artsploitation Films All Region DVD

There is a circularity to Animals. The film begins with a scene of a young woman jumping into the water, submerged for several minutes. It's not clear whether she has attempted suicide or simply has created the appearance of trying to kill herself, and the young woman, Clara, makes no attempt to explain herself. Animals might be understood in part as a look at the adolescent romance with death and suicide or at least how it is represented. How that romance is manifested is subject to change, but one might make a connection to pop culture of fifty years ago when there was a spate of songs involving a lover or lovers, a motorized vehicle, and a date with death.

For that matter, we might as well go back to The Sorrows of Young Werther. In the commentary, a discussion of the film by Fores with Artsploitation's Travis Crawford, Fores mentions how the audience reaction. Unsurprisingly, the most enthusiastic viewers are young and female. Admittedly, as I shuffle on to impending geezeerhood, I found myself disconnected from this film. Certainly the introductory images of swimming and drowning make for some convenient symbolism, as several of the main characters can be said to be drowning in their own self-absorption.

The main character is a high school student named Pol, which rhymes with pall. His best friend is a small yellow teddy bear. Even though Pol is Spanish, the teddy bear, named Deerfoot, which comes alive for Pol, speaks English. Except for a scene of exuberant rock with Pol on guitar and Deerfoot on drums, any thought that this will be a romp along the lines of Ted are quickly dashed. Pol lives with his brother, a policeman, basically drifting through school and friendship with a girl, Laia, based more out of convenience than any sense of attraction. Pol may, or may not, be gay, but he briefly gets involved with the new kid, Ikari, who has more self-inflicted knife scars than an Eagle scout has merit badges.

The final scene consists of juxtapositions of real and imagined horror taking place during a school celebration of Halloween. Amidst the students in costume is a bear with a gun who shoots a fellow student, causing panic among the students. Pol cuts himself deeply, walking out of the school bleeding. Clara, who may or may not have committed suicide, mysteriously reappears. I think I have a fair idea of what is attempted to be said here, but it doesn't quite work for me.

Other critics have praised Animals. I'm not saying they're wrong. Maybe it is various factors that have me resistant to this film following two viewings. I'm trying to be fair, but Animals didn't talk to me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

November 19, 2013

Sanguivorous

Kyuketsu
Naoki Yoshimoto - 2011
Tidepoint Pictures All Region DVD

Sanguivorous is an unusual hybrid. Running less than an hour, mostly, but not entirely, a silent movie, made in Japan, a country that did not produce a vampire movie until 1959, the film goes against several idea of conventional filmmaking. On the other hand, if you have no problem with films that stray from traditions, you may find Naoki Yoshimoto's work to be of interest.

The bare bones of the story follow a young woman who is half vampire. Her boyfriend wants to take their relationship further. She runs away, ostensibly to protect her virginity, but in reality to protect her boyfriend from also joining the undead. The young man follow her to a mysterious place where he awakes bound to a chair. The young man is fought over by his girlfriend and an older female vampire. Even getting his blood partial sucked out does not save the young man from becoming the victim of the older male vampire. In other words, this is a love story where almost everybody dies.

The narrative aspects are almost besides the point. It's the telling of the tale that makes Sanguivorous of interest. Visually there are reminders of the two great silent vampire movies, Nosferatu and Vampyr, as well as imagery that reminded me of the so-called experimental filmmakers of the Fifties and Sixties that were directly or indirectly influenced by Maya Deren. To some extent, one might argue that the contemporary filmmaker Yoshimoto might have most in common with is Guy Maddin, who combines a visual style that mimics an archaic mode of filmmaking with more contemporary sensibilities.

Yoshimoto isn't interested in retelling a traditional type of vampire story. While some elements are used, others are ignored. Some might be alarmed that the half-vampire girl walks around in daylight. Others will surely notice the extensive use of reflections. The two of the most dramatic images involve reflections as when the girl examines herself in the mirror, hands on the glass as if trying to grasp at herself. Later, after the head vampire takes a shower of his victim's blood, a nod to the Bathory legend, we see him splayed over a pool of blood, his face in reflection as he laps at his source for rejuvenation. What is most intriguing of all is the opening scene, with the girl apparently coughing up a small crucifix held in her bloody palm. While the film also is primarily in black and white, there is a judicious use of color, primarily red.

Dramatically, the film is anchored by Ayumi Kakizawa as reluctant vampire, as much a victim as her boyfriend. Top butoh dancer Ko Murobushi plays the lead vampire. Where Murobushi's dance training is displayed here is after his shower of blood, a solo performance with a series of convulsive, spastic movements.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:43 AM

November 13, 2013

Starz Denver Film Festival 2013 - House with a Turret

Dom s bashenkoy
Eva Neymann - 2012
Eye On Films

The film is filmed in black and white, Russian, takes place in the Soviet Union of World War II, and is rather austere. The source novel was written by Fridrikh Gorenshtein, whom among other credits, had a hand in Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. Even though Ukrainian filmmaker Eva Neymann made her second feature last year, if one just walked in cold, one could easily mistake this for a film made forty or fifty years ago.

Taken from Gorenshtein's autobiographical writings, the main character is an unnamed boy. First seen traveling by train in a freight car, his mother is extremely ill. The two stop off in a small town, where the mother is eventually taken to the town's only hospital. The boy wanders between the hospital, and the town, where he sends a telegraph to his grandfather. Left on his own, his encounters with adults is either that of indifference or of assistance given grudgingly. When the boy's mother dies, the only thought the boy has is to keep moving.

The house in question is in the center of the town. The turret is fractured. The house seems to be the home of a man and a young girl who appear to be faring better than most. The young girl shows the boy her tin whistle. There is a scene where the girl, outside in the snow, pretends to be pouring tea and serving a meal of potatoes. Even during wartime, when food staples are scarce, there is something almost eternal and universal about little girls pretending to serve tea.

The boy tries to remain stoic. He sums up the death of his mother with the words. "That's it". It is only on the train ride to his grandfather that he attempts to come to terms with a grief that he can not articulate.

While only seen onscreen for a short amount of time, House with a Turret features the last performance by Yekaterina Golubeva.

There seems to have been a small resurgence in films shot in black and white. And House with a Turret may seem to some even more archaic using 35 mm film. The same material that Neymann's professed inspirations Tarkovsky, Dreyer and Kurosawa used. There are dark hallways that lead into unknown places, snow flurries, crumbling buildings. Most of the film was shot in Odessa. The music used is all diegetic, although there is one scene in the hospital that might be the exception. I wish there was a complete list to the music used - which includes Erik Satie and contemporary composer Jurgen Grozinger. I am admittedly a sucker for contemporary movies that look like something from a classic era of filmmaking, but this is definitely one film to seek out.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:54 AM

November 06, 2013

Schoolgirl Report Volume #11: Trying Beats Studying

Schulmädchen-Report 11. Teil - Probieren geht uber Studieren / Blue Dreams
Ernst Hofbauer - 1977
Impulse Pictures Region 0 DVD

Trying beats studying? I have no idea what that's suppose to mean.

There is some peculiar stuff involving animals as witnesses to the sexual initiations of a couple of high school girls. In one scene, there's the tutor's very large dog, a bullmastiff, the kind with very big teeth, and a loud bark. In a later episode, there is sex in a barn, with a small horse observing young love in action. And in a film with a generous offering of female full frontal nudity, the only male member to get a screen shot is that horse, hung like a, well, nevermind.

Like the rest of the Schoolgirl Report series, this is a series of vaguely related vignettes. The stories are related by a quartet of alleged adult experts at a radio show discussing how the law protects these high school girls, or something like that, although most of the stories are about girls losing their virginity. Somehow the film concludes that these young women who we've seen in various states of undress will become the outstanding wives and mothers of Germany in the years ahead.

I wouldn't even call the sex here vanilla, because vanilla is a spice, and there's not a whole lot that's spicy here. The girls are reasonably attractive, but I find myself longing for the all in fun sluttiness of the students at St. Trinians. British girls from a series of films made in the Fifties are much saucier than these girls in the more liberated 1970s. OK, so the Schoolgirl series is suppose to be taken from "real life", but, gee, not even a lesbian scene, or somebody showing up in a leather catsuit, something a bit more erotic.

There is one mildly funny bit where one of the girls has determined that here friend needs to lose her virginity. The girl in question is locked in a room with a young man, supposedly a high school Casanova. As it turns out, the young man's reputation is a fiction that has a life of its own. The two pretend to make love, while a gang of girls hears, but can not see, what is going on. The sound of love is the nibbling of chocolates and bouncing on a bed fully clothed.

There is also a biker terrorizing one of the girls, following a setup in a park. With his mustache and black leather jacket, he looks like a slimmer Rainer Fassbinder. Of course there's much more sexual variety in a Fassbinder film. I wouldn't go so far as to say that Ernst Hofbauer has a visual style, but he does find opportunities for low angle shots. There is also an extreme close up of an eye, and the reflection of the lover coming into focus. I don't know much about Hofbauer, except that one of his earlier gigs was as an assistant director on an international coproduction, As the Sea Rages, with Cliff Robertson and Maria Schell. I suspect that from some of the interesting touches in this Schoolgirl Report, that Hofbauer had some artistic ambitions at the beginning of his filmmaking career that have found their way in the midst of more financially dependable journeyman work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:36 AM

November 04, 2013

Ip Man: The Final Fight

Yip Man: Jung gik yat jin
Herman Yau - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

For those following Hong Kong cinema, the number of films about Ip Man is a bit overwhelming. By now, a fair number of people already had at least read about the martial arts master, whose most famous student was Bruce Lee. What Herman Yau's film can boast of is a few seconds of actual footage of Ip practicing Wing Chun.

Documentary footage aside, Yau's film, like the others, is a fictionalized version of Ip's life. And as a film, I wish it was better. Wong Kar-Wai's film, like other Wong films, was a meditation on love and loss, with a few balletic fight scenes thrown in. Wilson Yip's films have the advantage of Donnie Yen staging his own fight scenes. Even though the age difference is two years, Anthony Wong looks much older than Yen or Tony Leung, and comes closer to resembling the real Ip. Still, the best way to enjoy this film is to ignore any concept of historical veracity.

Instead, there is a chance to marvel at a fight scene between Anthony Wong and Eric Tsang. According to one of the DVD supplements, Tsang has a background in martial arts. The guy is older, and chubbier, and neither he nor Wong used stunt doubles. As rival martial arts masters, the two go behind closed doors for a friendly fight. There's fun in seeing two of the least likely combatants in Hong Kong cinema go against each other using their fists instead of guns.

There is also the love story between Ip and a cabaret singer named Jenny. Ip stands up for Jenny after she is pawed by another man. Things escalate into a huge fight between two martial arts schools. Later, Jenny starts showing up at Ip's place, bringing him food. Others disapprove of Jenny because she rocks a cheongsam dress like nobody else in this movie. Was there really a Jenny or someone like her? I don't know. Hopefully some smart filmmaker will know how to make the most of actress Zhou Chuchu's undeniable presence.

Bruce Lee is a minor character, showing up in Ip's life again after establishing himself as Hong Kong's first international star. I wouldn't be able to judge the accuracy of this portrayal of Lee as man flaunting his fame and wealth, seen at a restaurant with a specially reserved table, a posse in tow, and a Rolls-Royce following him as he takes a short walk with Ip. As much as Herman Yau might want to be reverential towards Ip Man, I would question taking swipes at the one man who made him famous in the first place.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:54 AM

October 30, 2013

Confessions of an Opium Eater

Albert Zugsmith - 1962
Warner Archives DVD

Not a horror film, but this film does star Vincent Price, and there is a nightmare scene where bats and skulls appear.

While I had vague memories of the film passing through one of my neighborhood theaters in Evanston, Illinois, my interest was piqued when it was mentioned in Raymond Durgnat's monograph on Georges Franju. This was some time in the early Seventies, when I was studying cinema at New York University. I wrote a letter to Albert Zugsmith that eventually found its way to him. Astonishingly, Zugsmith wrote back to me. Sadly, I have long misplaced that letter.

Even when he was solely the producer, the films associated with Albert Zugsmith have either taken place in fantasy realms or have teetered in a nightmare reality. There is thematic continuity to be found in The Incredible Shrinking Man, Written on the Wind, Tarnished Angels and Touch of Evil with their trapped protagonists who often find that it's better to embrace rather than fight one's fate. While Confessions of an Opium Eater doesn't have anywhere near the kind of critical standing as Zugsmith's films as a producer, there are astonishing moments to be found. The film is inspired by the 1822 book, Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey, but takes place in an imagined early Twentieth century San Francisco.

Opium isn't eaten. As Gilbert De Quincey, descendent of Thomas De Quincey, Vincent Price takes a couple of puffs before finding himself in dreamland. For a low budget Hollywood film, Confessions is more experimental than most, veering from a straight narrative, with Price caught in a slow motion chase through a depopulated street, with only a few sound effects and no dialogue. The entire film is almost like Alice in Wonderland where Price finds himself stepping though a variety of hidden rooms, elevators and sewers, a Chinatown maze where the only escape seems to be death. Aided by frequent Robert Aldrich collaborator Joseph Biroc as cinematographer, and Jean Renoir associate Eugene Lourie doing the set designs, Confession looks as good as possible. Fog also helps when you have to disguise that there's not much of a set.

The film may have played on then popular notions about the Chinese and Chinatown, although in some ways Zugsmith's film isn't too much different from John Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China. There are anachronisms, especially when the slave girls who are to be auctioned as wives perform dances belonging to early Sixties Las Vegas. Too Zugsmith's credit, the bulk of supporting roles were taken by Asian-American actors, with Richard Loo and Philip Ahn as the most recognizable of names. The one significant performance in "yellow face" is by Yvonne Moray, a former munchkin, quite delightful here as a former wife found caged by Price, who acts as his more informative and energetic ally.

Even when discussions about the thin line between love and hate, and dreams and reality may seem hackneyed, what is hardly a cliche is to see Vincent Price as some kind of action hero. The pretentious first person narration, a reminder of the film's literary roots, adds to the goofy charm.

Confessions can now be seen more easily with the recent DVD release. For a deeper look, there are pieces by C. Jerry Kutner and Sean Nortz.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:39 AM

October 28, 2013

Long Weekend

Thai teaser poster

Thongsook 13
Taweewat Wantha - 2013
Vicol Entertainment Region 3 DVD

For those who've been following this blog since my time in Chiang Mai, you know that Taweewat is one of my favorite Thai filmmakers. I was convinced by one of the guys working at my favorite legal DVD store to check out SARS War, a zombie horror-comedy that threw in a gigantic man eating snake, a flying vampire baby, while chucking out any sense of propriety or good taste. It's the only film by Taweewat available as a Region 1 DVD, and film I wrote about for someone else's website. I was able to see Taweewat's second film, the equally hilarious The Sperm, on the big screen in Chiang Mai, where I was the only one in the audience.

Thongsook, a young boy, and Nam. a young girl, are two elementary school kids who meet in the infirmary. Thongsook is recovering from a bloody nose from a fight. Nam has an unnamed illness. Thongsook overhears that it is Nam's birthday. Nam won't have any birthday party, but will be watching a television show devoted to the paranormal. Shows like that frighten Thongsook. Proving he's not chicken, he asks his new friend if she would like to see a real ghost. Of course she would. Thongsook removes the special Buddhist amulet he wears, and Nam gets the fright of her life.

The two remain friends growing up. Nam's other friends just see a guy who is socially inept, and full of nervous tics. Nam's friends decide to spend a night at a house in a remote, uninhabited island. Thongsook finds the way through a carelessly tossed aside map. As it turns out, the island was a place where a ceremony for the Devouring Spirits has been held. The last time the ceremony was held, the spirits filled their bellies. Annoyed that Thongsook has chosen to tag along, mostly to be with Nam, two of the boys lock Thongsook up in a metal cell, the site of the ceremony. With his amulet ripped from his neck, Thongsook finds himself alone and unprotected. Friday the 13th is only a couple of days away . . .

It's not like Taweewat has reinvented the Thai ghost story as much as he gives some familiar tropes some fresh energy and a sense of visual panache. The island is made up of twisted, bare trees, some with various religious beads dangling from the branches. The only life on the island seems to be that of the feral black cats observing the human invaders. The film is beautifully photographed, with a lot of emphasis on shadows and partial visibility. When Taweewat chooses to amp up his pyrotechnical side, there is an abundance of flash cutting, used only for some very specific moments. Visually, this is the equivalent to the kind of rock guitar player who can dazzle with some very quick fingered picking, but also knows when strumming the chords is the most effective way to play.

Admittedly, on the surface, Long Weekend is not the kind of film that would garner any kind of critical respect. The plot doesn't seem to far removed from something like Uwe Boll's House of the Dead. Genre conventions are respected. There is neither parody nor an attempt at deconstruction. There is some humor, and Taweewat and his scriptwriting team play with parts of the narrative, so that the viewer is not entirely sure if what is seen is simply within the mind of Nam. My own feeling is that so many Thai ghost stories are casually dismissed by critics and audience who are unfamiliar with Thai culture. The excellent English language subtitles are by Bangkok Post film critic, Kong Rithdee, by the way. Taweewat may be too idiosyncratic to ever get the kind of commercial success he deserves, but one his own terms, he remains a rewarding filmmaker to watch.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:12 AM

October 24, 2013

The Italian Horror Blogathon: Slaughter Hotel

La bestia uccide a sangue freddo / Cold Blooded Beast
Fernando Di Leo - 1971
Shriek Show Region 1 DVD

"This is the work of a psychopathic killer!". Amazingly, this pronouncement comes from the chief shrink at the psychiatric ward where the film takes place. There are some crazy things that happen, first being that a misleading English title was slapped on a story that takes place in a "rest home" for depressed or suicidal woman who just also happen to be wealthy and beautiful. Even crazier is that the people who run this joint allow the patients easy access to a collection of medieval devices such as swords, a crossbow and an iron maiden.

Slaughter Hotel might be charitably described as a giallo for people who don't like getting scared. There's a black cloaked killer wandering around this large chateau, checking out potential victims in their respective bedrooms. There isn't that much suspense. Di Leo's reputation largely rests on his series of police thrillers, and the best scene is when the cops shoot the killer at the end of the film. A white wall is splattered with drops of blood, while the killer is punctured with bullet holes. Di Leo cuts between close ups of the smoking guns and the smoked body. Some filmmakers are at their best treading familiar territory.

Of course there are expectations when a movie stars Jess Franco repertory players Klaus Kinski and Margaret Lee. Di Leo almost gives Franco a run for his money with the abundant nudity here. The best excuse to see Slaughter Hotel is to bask in the glory that is Rosalba Neri. Whether trying to seduce the gardner, or writhing around naked on her bed, this is the film that should answer the questions pertaining to her most intimate body parts.

Coming up close is Monica Strebel as a nurse with a bedside manner, providing hands on therapy for patient Jane Garrett. Again, I got the feeling that Di Leo and his actresses were awkwardly trying to mimic the kind of action that seems to come naturally in a film by Franco. The pair do a little dance scene together. It's probably just as well that Di Leo never attempted to make a musical.

Slaughter Hotel would probably best be appreciated by Di Leo completists more than giallo fans. The DVD includes a short interview where Di Leo even admits that this was not one of his favorite films or that he can make any claim about originality. He does, however, have very kind words about Klaus Kinski. For myself, I doubt I'll ever forget that close up of Rosalba Neri's beautiful, well rounded ass.

There's always room for giallo, and more Italian horror, hosted by Kevin Olson at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:31 AM

October 17, 2013

Oka!

Lavinia Currier - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I had forgotten that I had seen Lavinia Currier's previous film, Passion in the Desert, about sixteen years ago. I guess I can describe the film as a love story between a Napoleonic era soldier and a leopard. Oka! might be best described as a love story between an American ethnomusicologist and a pygmy tribe in central Africa. Aside from both films centered on white men in Africa, both share a premise where the men "find themselves" by getting lost. One of these days, I would hope Currier would make an autobiographical film. Consider this brief description from her own life, from a story in the Washington Post: "In one of her more outlandish acts - but certainly not the only one - she hacked off her blond hair with a penknife on the banks of the Nile after catching a river fever, and then wandered the Sahara alone in this afflicted condition - 'feeling quite sick in an otherworldly kind of way,' she says - until she arrived months later, barefoot and in rags, at the Tunisian palace of her scandalized great aunt, the Baroness D'Erlanger.".

While Currier's film is based on the life of Louis Sarno, it really can't be described as biographical in the usual sense. There are several moments of what I can only describe as the cinematic equivalent to magic realism. In an early scene, the character based on Sarno, Larry, hears the call of a tribesman, thought the two men are separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Soon afterward, a burst of butterflies fills Larry's room. In spite of ill health, Larry travels back to Africa to complete his recordings of the music of the Bayaka tribe, in hopes of capturing the sounds of an elusive, and perhaps mythical, instrument.

Larry's life with the Bayaka, and his efforts to record the sounds and music of the tribal area, are cross-cut against a narrative of tribal rivalries, with a member of the Buntu tribe, known as The Mayor, acting as the government strongman. A sub-plot involves a businessman representing a Chinese corporation, and their interests in taking over traditional hunting grounds for in order to harvest timber in the area. The village is home to a lumber mill, representing the industrial exploitation of the area and its people. The ecological and cultural concerns are clearly presented through the images. What might be considered heavy handed is that the Sarno proxy's last name is Whitman.

The title is the pygmy word for listen. Larry's nickname is "Big Ears". Using Sarno's own words, Larry considers the tribal music to be the equivalent to Beethoven. As best as I can tell, the music is genuine. The film's attitude is best expressed when the tribe has a celebratory dance. Another tribe member steps in with a portable tape player. The music from the tape player temporarily dominates the live music of the tribe, until a village elder takes a spear to end what he considers noise. Currier does make a concession to fans of "world music" with a score by Chris Berry.

On the film's website, Sarno emphasizes the fictionalization of his life. In some ways, Oka! seems like a throwback to the days when the only way one could travel to a remote part of the world was through the movies. What is different is the change of attitude from that of older films about white men in Africa. The use of dreams and images of the forest and its animals also recalled for me the art of Henri Rousseau.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

October 15, 2013

Horror Stories

Museoun Iyagi
Min Kyu-dong, Jung Bum-sik, Im Dae-woong, Hong Ji-young, Kim Gok and Kim Sun - 2012
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

A high school girl finds herself bound and gagged. Her kidnapper, a young man not much older than her puts off whatever plan he has made, due to her showing some compliance towards him. Informing her that her telling him the scariest story possible will put him in the mood for some solid sleep, the young woman does her best. The set-up is a variation on Scheherazade, although this framing story take place over the course of one night rather than the fabled one thousand and one. As might be expected from an omnibus film with several directors, the results are not entirely consistent, but the two best episodes have some of the feeling of modern fairy tales.

I wasn't sure what to expect from "Don't Open the Door". Not because of the English language title which will remind some of a slew of movies with titles that began with "Don't", plus that parody trailer in Grindhouse, but because this was the solo work of one of the Jung brothers. Exquisite might not be the kind of word to describe a horror film, but the brothers' Epitaph has moments that are visually as beautiful as might be expected from the more traditionally admired masters. Parents who watch this short might be freaked out by the sight of a teacher who scares her elementary school students with a scary image, which is followed by a musical number in a school bus with the teacher's all too friendly voice suddenly dropping to something lower, possibly malevolent. Even worse, two young children are left alone in an apartment, while mom is out. Fairy tales often seem to involve young children facing, whether witch, wolf or human, some kind of serial killer.

Based on "Secret Recipe", I hope to see more films by Hong Ji-young. The story is about the rivalry between two sisters, one who is to marry an extremely wealthy man. While the basic plot is reportedly based on a classic Korean folk tale, western viewers will also recognize a variation on story of Bluebeard. The sisters are so dazzled by wealth that no one questions why the groom would have five previous wives. There is a moment when one of the sisters finds herself in a room full of headless mannequins all in wedding dresses. Standing behind one of the mannequins, her head appears disconnected from her body. Was it intentional that this scene also reminded me of one similar in Mario Bava's A Hatchet for the Honeymoon?

The Kim brothers' "Ambulance on the Death Zone" treads some familiar territory. A mother and daughter are taken by ambulance following a car accident. Except that the story takes place during some kind of of zombie apocalypse where the infected have been bitten by rats. The daughter, comatose, has a wound that looks like a bite. The mother is adamant that her daughter is not infected, but the ambulance doctor thinks otherwise. Most of this segment takes place within the confines of the ambulance with tensions mounting between the mother, the doctor, a nurse, and the ambulance driver. As with their feature, White, the Kim brothers are visually inventive even when the story might be short on originality.

The weakest segment is "Endless Flight" by Im Dae-woong. A handcuffed serial killer apparently wasn't checked thoroughly if he's able to sneak a knife on board and kill his two police escorts, three stewardesses, the pilot and the co-pilot. Not only endless, but pointless.

While the movie is the type that would have been presented on the Tartan Asia Extreme label years ago, the presentation is classier. Giving Horror Stories a bit of serious context is an overview of omnibus horror films from Artsploitation's Travis Crawford, an essay by University of California Professor Kyu Hyun Kim, and an interview with Jung Bum-sik.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 AM

October 10, 2013

Slice

Cheun
Kongkiat Komesiri - 2009
MVD Visual Region 1 DVD

It took a while for Slice to appear as an English subtitled DVD. It took a little while longer before I was able to verify that this was the complete version, 99 minutes long, when several listings suggested a shorter, ahem, cut. For those following Thai cinema in all its forms, this was not only critical success, but also one of the more prominent releases of 2009. The top nominee for the 2010 Subhanahongsa Awards, the Thai equivalent to the Oscars, in fourteen out of sixteen categories, Slice won for Best Director, Score and Make-up. Since the bottom fell out of the "Asian Extreme" market, it's good to know that the film found its way stateside on a very obscure DVD label.

In some ways, I'm not surprised that Kongkiat's film might have have trouble finding an audience. The film is by turns perhaps too arty for the gorehounds, while the some of the art house crowd would undoubtedly be disturbed by some very graphic violence. The story is by Wisit Sasanatieng, best known for his Tears of the Black Tiger. Unlike that film or Citizen Dog which played on imagery from classic Thai movies, Slice has moments recalling Dario Argento and Gaspar Noe. Reversing their roles from The Unseeable which Kongkiat wrote, and Wisit directed, both that film and Slice share a common theme about the inability to escape one's past.

Tai is a prisoner, later revealed to be a former cop who has worked for a detective, Chin. Chin has been investigating a series of murders. The victims have been men, with their penises removed. Tai thinks there might be a connection between his recurring nightmare involving a large red suitcase, and the discovery of one of the bodies. The son of a top politician is one of the victims. Tai is released from prison to hunt for the killer, with clues suggesting the person was a childhood friend, one the condition that he solves the mystery by a specific date.

The narrative alternates between the present day hunt for the serial killer and Tai's memories of growing up in a small rural town, kicked off when he returns in search of the friend in question. The memories are primarily centered on adolescence, when hormones kick in, and boys attempt to deal with their budding sexuality. There is homosexuality, both real and perceived, with Tai coming to grips with his friendship with Nut, a smaller boy tauntingly addressed as "faggot". Joining with a quartet of boys who beat up Nut, Tai eventually foregoes being part of the gang. Tai and Nut run away from their small village after killing Nut's abusive father, only to be caught up with some sleazeballs in the notorious Walking Street area of Pattaya.

There is the recurring use of red throughout the film. The opening shot seems like nothing special, a simple shot horizontally divided between sea and sky, until you not a small dot of red in the ocean, what is revealed to be a large, red suitcase. The killer wears a red hooded cloak. There are also red boots, windows, reflecting light. The red cloak of the killer appears iridescent, especially in a scene of mass murder in a sex club. While red is associated with the devil, the killer is seen standing in front of a large, illuminated ferris wheel, almost like a halo, with the cloak spread out suggesting that the mystery person might be more of an avenging angel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:16 AM

October 08, 2013

Drug War

Du zhan
Johnny To - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There is a seriousness in Drug War that I haven't seen previously from Johnny To. Maybe it is in response to the laws of mainland China, where this film was shot. While the film was made with some of To's usual collaborators like screenwriter Wai Ka-Fai and editior David Richardson behind the camera, and Louis Koo and To mascot Lam Suet in the cast, the playfulness seen in the Hong Kong films is absent. Even when the usually no nonsense cop, Zhang, played by Sun Honglei impersonates a top drug smuggler named Haha due to his constant chortle, there is no reason to laugh.

With his baritone voice, almost deadpan in expression, there's the immediate sense that Zhang is not a guy you want to fuck around with. Yet that's what captured drug dealer Timmy tries to do. As Timmy, we first see Timmy frothing from the mouth, driving erratically until he crashes into a restaurant. At about the same time, a bus carrying several people serving as drug mules are caught. There is also a truck filled with the stuff needed to manufacture meth, driven by a drug addled pair. Timmy attempts to spare himself a certain death sentence by providing Zhang with information on the top drug dealers in northeastern China. Part of the sting operation in place involves Zhang impersonating the smuggler Haha, with the equally serious policewoman, Yang Xiaobei, playing his wife.

Much of the first hour and a half is of culling information through observation. Images from traffic surveillance cameras, tiny video cameras, and binoculars are used. Both sides use hidden radio communications. For Zhang and Timmy, their lives depend on subterfuge - Zhang's pretending to be a high level gangster, and Timmy's new identity as police informant.

There is a culturally specific scene worth noting. Timmy gets together with two deaf-mute brothers who operate one of his two drug factories. He mentions how his wife and her brothers had been killed in an explosion in the other factory. Realizing that they do not have incense to burn in an impromptu memorial ceremony, money is burned instead.

One of the more intense scenes is of Zhang as Haha, goaded into snorting cocaine in order to get in the good graces of a leading crime boss. The real Haha has been seen boasting that while he sells drugs, he never indulges himself of the product. Zhang, as Haha, repeats his words verbatim, only to find that he cannot progress unless he takes a line, which becomes two lines, of the drug. What makes the scene interesting is how Zhang is first seen sniffing at a passed out Timmy in the beginning of the film, as well as covering his nose when he inspects Timmy's meth factory following the explosion. Part of Zhang's detection is through his sense of smell.

The cat and mouse games give way to a climatic shoot out. While it is as bloody as anything seen in previous To films, there isn't the sense of bravura, such as might be seen in Exiled. This is more straightforward as cops and criminals shoot each other. Without giving too much away, there is an incredible image when Timmy finds that there is no way he can escape Zhang. Timmy desperately clings to the illusion that he will be granted freedom, even at the moment of his inevitable fate.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:52 AM

October 03, 2013

Corruption

Robert Hartford-Davis - 1968
Grindhouse Releasing BD Regions ABC/DVD Region 0 Combo

I'm glad I chose to see Corruption with the commentary track. David Miller, biographer of Peter Cushing, and Jonathan Rigby, author of several books about horror films, discuss the making of the film, along with anecdotes about the actors. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who thinks of Robert Hartford-Davis' film as something of a blend of Eyes without a Face and Blow-Up. The connection of these two films was also perceived by some critics at the time of the initial release. Franju's film inspired several films about doctors trying to save the face of a beautiful, beloved female, at the expense of sacrificing several other beautiful females. Part of Corruption takes place at the party hosted by a fashion photographer in "Swinging" London, at that time the cultural center of the world, or so it appeared to many of us at that time.

At the behest of his model fiancee, Lynn, the much older surgeon, Sir John Rowan, agrees to come to a party hosted by photographer, Mike Orme. As the surgeon, Peter Cushing tries to be amiable, but looks out of place, and is clearly uncomfortable amid the loud music and louder people. And I could be reading something unintended here but I felt that Cushing was reflecting some of the feelings of Hartford-Davis and his screenwriters, brothers Donald and Derek Ford. The director, 44 years old at the time, and the writers, no more than ten years younger, began their filmmaking careers together just four years previously, making contemporary stories that at the time pushed the envelope regarding depictions of sex and sexuality. What Rigby and Miller don't mention is that Corruption was filmed at the time when The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album was the soundtrack for that summer. The filmmaking team may well have cast a jaundiced eye at a time when film, fashion and music from just a couple of years previously had suddenly become old and out of date.

Certainly, two of the hippie thugs that terrorize Lynn and John look like Sgt. Pepper extras - Phillip Manikum, dandyish with his black cape and white "Nehru" suit, and David Lodge in his all purpose uniform. In his interview, Billy Murray explains that he insisted on wearing his own clothes, so you have one guy who actually dresses like a lot of young men in the late Sixties.

That the hippies prove to be as venal as everyone else is indicative of this caustic view of the "Summer of Love". Almost everyone in Corruption is revealed to be out for themselves. Even Sir John's initial altruism in saving the face he may have accidentally burned, turns into moral quicksand with murder to satisfy Lynn's vanity. Lynn's demand for more injections of the serum created from women's pituitary glands may temporarily restore the damaged portion of her face, yet she remains oblivious to notion that her time as a top model has passed. The film's original ending, fittingly nihilistic, was an appropriate way to end a story where everyone is out of control.

In his New York Times review, Vincent Canby remarked on how Peter Cushing "brings a certain seedy grandeur " as the doctor. Most of the reviews of Corruption were generally dismissive. And while Corruption might not get the kind of critical reevaluation afforded Michael Powell, the Grindhouse Releasing treatment, with the two different versions of the film, commentary track, and loads of extras, almost made me feel like I was watching the Peeping Tom of 1968. This comparison with Powell is from a critical standpoint, as Hartford-Davis could at least boast of commercial vindication. Certainly no one at that time would have thought that Robert Hartford-Davis would be the subject of an academic paper.

The Blu-ray has both the version of Corruption released in English speaking countries, and the "international" version which contains a different version of the first murder of a prostitute, as well as a brief shot included in another murder scene set on a train. The violence is more explicit, with the scene of the prostitute features her topless before becoming headless. Rowan's tentativeness about what he is about to do as presented in the English version is replaced by a situation where it is kill or be killed. It should be noted that Corruption could well be Hartford-Davis' most personal film, having created the story that the Ford brothers turned into a screenplay, and personally financing the production with producer-cinematographer Peter Newbrook prior to securing a distribution deal. I can only add that as the story and characters became more unhinged, I was laughing my head off.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:45 AM

October 01, 2013

Adam Chaplin

Emanuele De Santi - 2011
Autonomy Pictures Region 0 DVD

In some ways, Adam Chaplin is close in spirit to films like the original Robocop or Darkman both thematically and visually. These are films about men who should have been left for dead, but re-emerge as physically modified, and not quite human. The three films cited here also take on a comic book aesthetic that is usually not seen in movies adapted from comic books.

As a work of dystopian horror, there may have been many sources of inspiration - possibly Chris Marker's La Jetee, as well as splatter masters like Stuart Gordon, Peter Jackson, David Cronenberg, the Sushi Typhoon band of Japanese filmmakers, and even Nick Zedd. My point is not not merely name drop, but to try and locate this film within a certain kind of tradition of transgressive film that operates at least in part with artistic motivation, and not only to gross out the viewer.

The story, as such, is about the title character seeking to kill the men who killed his wife. We see her death at the hands of a man whose black mask partially obscures what is certain to be a maimed face. The wife is burned to death for not paying money owed. Adam Chaplin walks through wreckage of a city called Heaven Valley. With incredibly rapid fists, Chaplin pummels the faces of his enemies. Egging him on his quest is some strange growth, an extra head that pops out to command him. The chief villain, the guy with the mask, keeps himself alive with a drug called Necrocril 3, a drug that also causes his body to be a distorted mass of nerves and muscles. There is some kind of symbolism involved with an upside cross, but it's explained or in any way dwelled upon.

Sure, there is going to be audience for a film featuring extreme violence, one that advertises the sheer bloodiness of this project. Again, what is most interesting to me is the effort De Santi put into trying to make a film that looks like the live action version of a comic book. One of the more interesting supplements is about the fake blood created for the film. De Santi not only wrote and directed, but played the title role, and composed the soundtrack. Giulio De Santi served as producer and also acted in this film, virtually no budget save for the what was put in to create the special effects. That Adam Chaplin somehow burst from local sales out of Italy to a number of international distribution deals has allowed Giulio De Santis to make a new film, with a bigger budget, and in English, Taeter City, released last year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

September 30, 2013

How to Seduce a Virgin

Plaisir a trois
Jess Franco - 1973
Mondo Macabro Region 1 DVD

Signed with the pseudonym of Clifford Brown, this is a Franco film probably best appreciated by Franco completists. Inspired by the writings of De Sade, the emphasis here is more on eroticism than horror, although there are some elements of horror to be found. The noodling jazz on the soundtrack and the almost conventional and often leisurely, at least for Franco, narrative, belie the fact that the film was shot in a matter of days and with a tiny production budget.

We're not exactly sure what Martine did to get institutionalized, but we know it had something to do with cutting a naked man with a straight razor. A visit the the basement of her mansion is enough to let us know that whatever treatment Martine had gone through for the past half year hadn't done anything to cure her of certain obsessions. Reunited with her husband, Charles, the two make plans to seduce a young woman, Cecile, into their particular world of pain and pleasure. As things progress, there is the question of whom is the seducer, and whom is being seduced? The French title, by the way, translates as "happy three".

While her parents take off for a trip, Martine and Charles promise to take care of Cecile as if she were their own daughter. Eeeek! And sure, the hosting couple are handsome, but what about the creepy chauffeur, the creepier gardner, or the young woman who is more like a family pet, giggling, mewling, never speaking? Voyeurism and various couplings, and some group groping ensue.

It is almost hard to imagine that about forty years ago, neighborhood theaters would show movies that were relatively sexually explicit following the success of Last Tango in Paris. Less surprising is that most of these films were European. Alice Arno, Tania Busselier and Lina Romay will never be accused of being camera shy. This film is notable for being Romay first significant role for Franco on her way to becoming his longtime muse. Franco team player Howard Vernon doesn't do much except look faintly menacing, which is all he needs to do.

Helping put this film into some critical context is horror film historian Stephen Thrower, who discusses the making of How to Seduce a Virgin from its original written screenplay to final production. There is also an interview with screenwriter Alain Petit, who first encountered Franco as an enthused film critic. There are also production notes, as well as biographies of the actors. The folks at Mondo Macabro have done their best to give this less known Franco film a DVD rescue. After the generous displays of female nudity, what it most memorable here is Alfred Baillou's performance as the seemingly mad, hunchbacked gardner, and the very wide eyes of Lina Romay.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

September 26, 2013

Countdown

Nattawut Poonpiriya - 2012
Cai Chang International Region 3 DVD

Normally, my coverage of anything related to the Academy Awards is minimal. That's not going to change. I was planning on writing about Countdown around New Year's Eve, when this film takes place, but with the news that this film will be Thailand's entry for Foreign Language Film, I decided that coverage should be sooner rather than later.

What's surprising is that this film is Thailand's entry. Instead of a costume drama taking place in the past, or something arty, we have a contemporary horror movie. It isn't even a ghost movie, or at least in any way that connects with traditions in Thai horror films, although some of what happens can be described as uncanny. Countdown doesn't even take place in Thailand, but mostly inside an apartment in New York City.

Three young Thais, Jack, Bee and Pam, who share the aforementioned apartment, want to score some marijuana for New Year's Eve. Their regular connection has gone straight, but has a card for a dealer named Jesus. Showing up at the appointed hour, Jesus (pronounced Hey-zoos) is a bit too friendly and a bit too curious about the three friends. Stories are told about killing a fat girl who bursts out of a closet, wearing a bikini, and disciplining a dog by removing his teach with a pair of pliers. The stories are outlandish, and couldn't possibly be real. And then all hell breaks loose.

There is a curious mix of discussions of Buddhism with Christian imagery, not the least of which is in the name and physical appearance of this film's Jesus. There is also a scene in a church, where Bee sits in a confessional to escape the wind. I am not quite sure of what Nattawut's message is, other than it has to do with Buddhist mindfulness, filial piety and not spending money wastefully. Maybe all of the theological concerns are just so much window dressing for a rant about spoiled college aged kids from wealthy families. There are some exterior shots that were filmed on location, although English is the second language of all of the actors with speaking parts, creating an extra layer of cultural distance.

Genre fans may enjoy the scenes of Jesus terrorizing the three friends, often just by being an intimidating presence in their lives. There is one superb moment when Bee tries to escape from Jesus. Fleeing to the elevator, a button falls out, and the elevator stops with the door refusing to open. From the hole that held the button, a cockroach appears, and then another, and more, until Bee finds herself screaming in that small, enclosed space, with hundreds of roaches.

Countdown was one of the five films nominated for Thailand National Film Association Awards, Thailand's equivalent to the Oscars. The film won awards for Best Actor - David Asavanond, who played Jesus, Panayu Khunwallee for editing, and Nattawut for his screenplay. Nattawut was also nominated for Best Director, while Thanawutthi Busamsai was nominated for make-up. Jarinporn Joonkiat deservedly was nominated for Best Actress for her performance as Bee. Mostly because of genre prejudices as well as the fact that this is in no way a "lovable" movie, I doubt Countdown will get through the first round of voting by Academy members. The film will be available on Region 1 DVD sometime next year. Even as a violent thriller, Countdown is not in the same league as a film like Silence of the Lambs. Be that as it may, the Thai Film Association periodically makes some baffling choices, so I do appreciate that this year's Oscar entry is both a critical and commercial hit.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

September 24, 2013

Running in Madness, Dying in Love

Kyoso joshi-ko
Koji Wakamatsu - 1969

Watching Japanese "Pink Films" when their reason for being was mostly about the sex, I felt the need to see something older, something with higher aspirations. Koji Wakamatsu could be counted on for busting taboos. Running in Madness has its fair share of sex and nudity, yet doesn't feel like an exploitation film as none of it is particularly erotic.

There is a lot of running, though. A student activist, Sahei, is running from the police following a student protest and riot, taken from documentary footage shot by Wakamatsu. In the small apartment of his brother, a policeman, the two men get into a violent argument where the politics are personal. The sister-in-law, Yuri, attempts to stop the brothers from fighting. While the three are tangled together, a gun goes off. Did Yuri shoot her husband with the gun he was wearing, intentionally or accidentally? Neither Sahei nor Yuri knows for certain. The two leave Tokyo for a journey through northern Japan.

Primarily a two person film, what Wakamatsu is more interested in here is a criticism of Japanese society. As Sahei and Yuri venture further north, the landscape becomes more desolate and colder. Life is to be understood as following specific rules. In one small village, a young woman is punished for falling in love with a stranger. The two lovers are subject to ritualized punishment in the name of preserving the village. Sahei and Yuri go against the grain with their relationship, even with Sahei addressing Yuri by her given name, rather than using the honorific title of sister-in-law.

Jasper Sharp's book, Behind the Pink Curtain is quite helpful concerning the production of this film. Wakamatsu and screenwriter Masao Adachi became informally associated with Nagisa Oshima during this time, with Wakamatsu and his crew making their film while following Oshima who was making Boy, traveling north to Hokkaido. At a time when several filmmakers internationally, most famously, Jean-Luc Godard, were discussing making films based on intellectual theories, Oshima influenced Adachi, who created his "landscape theory" of filmmaking. As Sharp explains, "Landscape Theory drew attention to the political implications of fixing a landscape on film: how environment shaped personal and political identity; how State power was embedded in everyday landscape and came to yield its force over the individual; and how it should be represented by filmmakers."

The treatment of women is certainly subject for debate. I think Wakamatsu is criticizing how women fare in traditionally minded Japan, with both Yuri and the village woman shown beaten by men, including Sahei. At the same time, the use of nudity might be seen as self-contradictory. While there is a love scene with both Yuri and Sahei nude, that scene is followed by the village scene, with the nude woman running in the snow, pursued by men fully dressed for winter. The debate is at least as old as when the MPAA rules changed with the then new rating system, introduced in part due to the challenge of what was depicted in European 'art" movies, which in turn caused a liberalization of what was shown in films internationally. I am reasonably certain that the audience that came to see Running in Madness in search of titillation, probably left the theater confused or disappointed. In a snowy landscape lies the suggestion of vast emptiness, a blank page. In the end, there is only nihilism.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 AM

September 19, 2013

Fighting Fish

Julaluck Ismalone - 2012
PMP Entertainment Region 0 DVD

A subject that might be worth exploration is of female filmmakers, and masculine environments. Among the films that come to mind would be Ida Lupino and The Hitch-Hiker, Kathryn Bigelow with Point Break and The Hurt Locker, and Lexi Alexander and The Green Street Hooligans. There are probably other films that I have overlooked or are unknown to me at this time. Thai filmmaker Julaluck Ismalone might be worthy of at least a footnote in this regard.

The former model turned actress, also known as Ying, wrote and directed here. Ying also appeared in Bangkok Revenge, a film I wrote about a while back. The story is by her husband, David Ismalone, a filmmaker whose main credits are for stunt work and action choreography, including Ong-Bak and Beautiful Boxer. This film was made primarily for the niche market of films centered on martial arts, more specifically of the kind of fights where there are no rules.

One thing that Ying gets absolutely right is the occasional craziness of riding around in a tuk-tuk. For those unfamiliar, a tuk-tuk is described as a motorized rickshaw. Depending on the driver, the ride can be quite hair-raising. Plus there is the challenge that the driver will understand your mangling of Thai in telling him where you want to go, and that he actually knows how to get there. And there was the one time a driver picked me up, only to answer his cell phone, and drop me off a short distance because something came up that was more important than getting me to my destination. Fighting Fish begins with two tuk-tuk rides. One with a driver who whizzes around Bangkok, and at one point falls asleep at a stop sign, before dropping the visiting farang (foreigner), Mike, to the Muay Thai boxing stadium. After watching the fights, Mike is given a ride by another tuk-tuk driver who takes him to a dark alley where he gets beat up by a bunch of guys, but not before Mike shows that he can take them on.

Mike's luck seems to take a turn for the worse when his money is taken by a street hustler, whose shell game is disrupted by the police. Mike chases down the guy through the streets, a huge warehouse, and Buddhist temple grounds, where a fight turns into friendship. The guy, Yo, lives with his wheelchair bound wife, Katoon, and they invite Mike to their home. Unknown to Katoon, part of how Yo earns money is through an underground fight club. There are fighters, and then there are the Fighting Fish, a select group of fighters who face the reigning champion, a fierce little guy named Maddog. Those who lose against Maddog also lose their life. Mike, a former boxer from an unnamed country, thinks he has the stuff to take on Maddog, and make the kind of money needed for Katoon's surgery.

The story is hardly original. The action scenes, especially in the early part of the film, show talent in action choreography. There is also one funny bit in a pawn shop run by identical twin brothers. What I find most interesting about Fighting Fish is that it serves as an example of why it is not a good idea to stereotype female filmmakers. Maybe that's enough of a reason to give a film like this, some consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

September 17, 2013

The Last Tycoon

Da Shanghai
Wong Jing - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

This is suppose to be a movie about big set pieces and big emotions. And there is some good stuff here. My problem with The Last Tycoon is that there are at least three moments which struck me as derivative of other, better, films. I would have expected a greater attempt at originality from producer Andrew Lau, if not from the commercially successful, if often critical maligned, director and co-writer Wong Jing. There's a scene involving would be killers in the rain, with some overhead photography, that made me think of Sparrow, by the current king of Hong Kong action movies, Johnny To. Then we hae a shoot out in a church, with a bunch of gun toting priests. Maybe this scene was to remind the younger viewers that Chow Yun-Fat first gained attention in another film with a church shootout, The Killers. Lau and Wong restrained themselves from including any doves. Later, Chow, big hearted guy that he is, sees to it that the love of his life flies to safety with her husband, while the hated Japanese take over Shanghai. That scene played better in a movie you might have heard of called Casablanca. And it might seem odd that I have a problem with this, as I have gone on record praising films that have quoted other films and filmmakers. The overall effect is of something forced, as if Lau and Wong decided that that the only way they could get serious critical attention was by showing off their own cinephilia.

The film centers on Cheng, a young man who gets framed for murder, and escapes with the help of a professional killer turned warlord. The scenes of Cheng's youth take place during 1913 through 1915, while the adult Cheng's scenes are set during 1937 through 1940. Cheng leads a street gang in Shanghai, and after demonstrating his fighting skills in one very large rumble, is adopted by Hong, the top gangster in Shanghai. In the meantime, Cheng's childhood love, Zhiqui, makes a name for herself in Chinese opera. Cheng rises to the near top in Shanghai based on his business savvy, and ability to form alliances with those who might otherwise be enemies. Cheng maneuvers his way between various forces, both Chinese and Japanese in the years leading up to the fall of Shanghai.

Even though the narrative is in part about Cheng's love for both Zhiqui and his wife, Bao, what comes across in the film is the emotional bond between Cheng and Hong's wife, Ling Husheng. It is Ling who encourages Hong to first take on Cheng as an "apprentice". Ling and Cheng have several moments of private conversation. Maybe it's the chemistry between Chow and actress Yuan Li, but the bond between the two is more easily perceptible, while totally unspoken. As Zhiqui, the spunky Joyce Feng grows up to be the less resilient Quan Yuan, whose best attribute might be a slight resemblance to Audrey Hepburn. The young woman who begins her career as a street performer somehow evolves into an emotionally fragile person offstage. Quan does shine near the end of the film when she puts of the performance of her life as part of a special staged show. Monica Mok lets her dresses and make-up do most of the acting for her, but also has a powerful final scene.

In addition to Chow, there is also Sammo Hung as Hong, and Francis Ng as Mao Zai, the warlord who draws young Cheng to seek of life of adventure in Shanghai. For all of the money spent on huge sets, special effects, and big name stars, the emotional hook is missing. Chow's legendary charisma is more evident in the "Making of" segments. The Well Go USA DVD is the complete theatrical release running a little under two hours, and not the shorter release version that played in mainland China.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

September 12, 2013

Hidden in the Woods

En las afueras de la ciudad
Patricio Valladares - 2012
Artsploitation Films All Region DVD

It's no surprise that Patricio Valladares is remaking his own film in an English language version. If he wasn't making that film, somebody else would. What is so initially striking about Hidden in the Woods is that I got the sense that if the story wasn't filmed in a less travelled part of Chile, it could easily be transposed with little change to some dusty spot in Oklahoma or Kansas. You could even have the small bar where some of the action takes place, a dive called "Tiajuana", and it really would not seem out of place.

Maybe my own sense of judgment will be questioned, but I can't really say wether this is a good or bad film based on conventional critical criteria (how's that for alliteration?). What I can say is that I did keep watching the mayhem because I never was quite sure what would happen next. What I can say is that I didn't feel the sense of moral outrage that this film brought out of some critics. There is a definite query in place regarding a small group of people who act in a predatory fashion, either by choice or as a mean of survival. I can also see Valladares' point of describing the film as a "comedy", although that might not be the most accurate word - certainly the scene revealing the well-scrubbed and comfortable wife and daughters of the baddest of the bad guys makes for a remarkable contrast, and a kind of parody, of the family that are the film's main protagonists, a family that only knows a hard-scrabble existence.

One might be able to argue that the film is essentially an argument against the concept of male privilege. Even the two hikers who might be the closest to being identifiably like the film's core audience are revealed to be ready to take advantage of a young woman discovered to be in the process of cleaning herself. The local gangster is known as "Uncle", lording over his underlings and anyone perceived to be weaker than him. Felipe, whose livelihood is based on hiding drugs on behalf of this less than kindly uncle, uses his bulk to control is two daughters and son. Felipe's children are caught in a situation where any sense of humanity may need to be sacrificed in favor of an animal-like existence not too philosophically different from their pursuers. As the film progressed, and as I thought about it further, it seems that intentionally or not, Hidden in the Woods does lend itself to a Buddhist reading based on the concept of life conditions. While the idea of "Animality" is usually expressed in the action of the stronger preying on those weaker, it also has a more literal representation here. But also, while not fully articulated, the elder daughter strives to live a more tranquil, human existence.

The burly Felipe survives being knifed and shot to seek revenge against the crime boss. When we have seen how he has treated his wife and children, it is both comic and rancid that Felipe would want to reclaim his family. The film was inspired by a true story, but I'm not sure if that really important. Valladares doesn't shy away from the blood, and at first I thought the film could become the "Chilean Chainsaw Massacre". The ending does provide catharses when the sisters and brother finally find their escape to the beach, wandering into the water, to let the ocean wash away their blood, and hopefully, their past.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

September 10, 2013

An American Hippie in Israel

Ha-Temprist / The Hitchhiker
Amos Sefer - 1972
Grindhouse Releasing Region 0 DVD / BD Region ABC

The story of the making of An American Hippie in Israel is a sobering reminder that for every film festival discovery or cult auteur, there are at least a dozen failed filmmakers, and movies that remain virtually unseen. I know of one local filmmaker who put herself on the financial line. I also recall a story in the New York Times about a filmmaker whose efforts resulted in nothing more than a collection of rejection letters from film festivals. It may be easy to get smug and snarky about a film like An American Hippie in Israel, but I'm at a point in my life where I don't see the point of pissing on some else's dream.

The story is about a disillusioned Vietnam war vet, Mike, traveling throughout Europe, who decides to leave Rome for Tel Aviv. Hitchhiking to the city proves a problem, probably because Mike looks too much like Charles Manson. He gets picked up by a young actress driving a huge white boat of a car. The two get in on quickly, skip into town, and hang out with a bunch of hippies in a some kind of warehouse-art studio. The gang is entertained by a duo, two young women with great voices, and a protest song that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I've never heard the words, "I hate you", sung so lovingly. The hippies are all slaughtered by a pair of gun toting, white faced, gangsters. Maybe they belong to the mime mafia. They pop up out of no where, chasing after Mike. Mike, his new girl friend, and another couple, go off to a tiny island. Mike is looking for a place with no people to create his own kind of utopia, and is told about this desolate island. It never seems to occur to anyone that the place is desolate for a reason. Due to someone not thinking about moving their rubber raft fully away from the shore, the quartet finds themselves on this small, rocky island with no food. Mike's plan to swim ashore are foiled by the discovery of two sharks. Unexplained is why the sharks weren't around when the four were skinny dipping, and how come they're around when there don't seem to be any fish to snack on. Mike and the other man, Komo, and the two women, all start attacking each other. The men devolve quickly into grunting beasts. Things go badly for everyone.

One can argue that Sefer's film is an unintended self-commentary. Neither the film, nor Mike's ideas about freedom, are well thought out. Setting aside the topical elements, there is at least one glaring plot hole that demanded an explanation. If the two machine gun wielding guys symbolize death that Mike has thus far eluded, it doesn't make sense that everyone else can see them. Just as Mike's dreams of a hippie utopia prove unsustainable, so to was Sefer's dreams of cinematic glory. A primarily English language film would not get support in Israel. The film received a U.S. release from the grindhouse distributor, Box Office Spectaculars, a company better known for for its association with gore-meister Herschell Gordon Lewis.

The BD/DVD discs include interviews with the two stars, Asher Tzarfati and Schmuel Wolf. There is also a DVD of the earlier cut of the film, The Hitchhiker, which includes English subtitles for the Hebrew dialogue that is not subtitled for An American Hippie. Tzarfati has had a long acting career, including a supporting role in Tsui Hark's Double Team. Schmuel Wolf may not have had the advantage of speaking English, but he is still active in Israeli productions. There is no information on the two actresses, Lily Avidan or Tzila Karney. Maybe this film's only value is as an artifact cemented to its time. For work done on a very limited budget, it is technically competent. The symbolism, like the flowers crushed by the tractor during the opening credit, can be heavy-handed. I have to concede that Amos Sefer's heart was in the right place, even while his art is subject to question.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:05 AM

September 05, 2013

The Nikkatsu Erotic Films Collection - 17 and 18

Story of White Coat: Indecent Acts / Hakui monogatari: Midasu!
Hidehiro Ito - 1984

Horny Diver: Tight Shellfish / Zetsurin ama: Shimari-gai
Atsushi Fujiura - 1985
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

For those who have read Jasper Sharp's monumental book on "Pink Cinema", he even admits that many of the films were made simply to have product in the theaters. Neither of these new entries in Impulse Pictures presentation of this series of films have the kinds of ambitions that would mark something like Fairy in a Cage, which criticized Japan in World War II, or the politically subversive Sex Hunter: Wet Target. Of this new released pair, Story of White Coat may have been perfect for a salaryman's lunch hour diversion, with a running time of less than an hour. Horny Divers has a more developed narrative and has the kind of moments that evoke a critical response of, "What the fuck did I just see?". Arguably, the pairing of these films is appropriate in a manner of speaking, as sexual focus of Story of White Coat is outward, while Horny Divers looks inward.

Story of White Coat is priapic, with one of the main characters, a guy known as Junior, who is so well hung that in the beginning of the film, he is stuck inside one of his conquests. Brought to the hospital where his father makes major financial contributions, Junior chases after a nurse, a self-proclaimed 27 year old virgin. Another nurse throws herself on top of Junior, giving him crabs, and not the kind that the Horny Divers swim for underwater. Junior's chauffeur also has his heart set on the nurse. Junior and the chauffeur liken themselves to a one-hundred dollar bill versus a nickel, and the comparison also extends, as it were, to the size of their respective cocks. There are a couple of scenes involving the shaving of pubic hair, both male and female, with a straight razor. There's also a group of nurse in pink uniforms who are simply extras, but provide some goofy facial expressions, giving this film a few genuine chuckles. Overall, this is a disappointment considering how much more erotic and visually interesting Ito was with his film, Debauchery.

Horny Divers was undoubtedly inspired by the "Girl Divers" movies from the Fifties. In those films, simply having attractive young women in bikinis or having a flash of breasts was enough. There was also some underwater photography that took advantage of erotic possibilities for imagery that could not have been done otherwise. Of course, the secondary title, Tight Shellfish pretty much spells things out for the audience. There is a lot of diving here, if you know what I mean, and anybody reading this probably doesn't need my help. This reminds me that there was a grindhouse flick titled, Tale of the Bearded Clam.

Horny Divers is about a real estate developer swooping down to buy out a small fishing village. Sex is the bait for monetary favors. The fishing chief and the real estate mogul share the same temptress. There are also a couple of sub-plots involving family secrets and newly discovered relationships. Sure, there are topless and sometimes bottomless women on the beach, but the really action takes place in a bar, yes, I'll say it, a dive. One of the bar's featured performers is a young woman who inserts a straw and draws in liquids, several kinds in fact. Nothing goes to waste, as the mixed drinks are imbibed by some lucky (?) guys. Another bar girl takes a tiny octopus inside her, the kind of scene that could well have made Ian Fleming rethink having the title Octopussy. One of the bar patron's decides that the little critter needs company and inserts an electric eel. Add to this, the incongruous use of "She'll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain" on the soundtrack at the end of the film. If you're curious, see this movie with your best chum.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

September 03, 2013

The Odd Angry Shot

Tom Jeffrey - 1979
Synapse Films BD Region A

Prior to seeing The Odd Angry Shot, I had some knowledge that Australia had troops in Vietnam. It's probably not so coincidental that the one film previously seen that tangentially was about Australians in Vietnam also starred Bryan Brown. That 1982 film, Far East was about a former soldier who stuck around to run a bar primarily for ex-patriates who chose to live in Southeast Asia. The Odd Angry Shot was released three years earlier, before Brown became a top Australian star.

Jeffrey's film makes an interesting contrast with Hollywood films about Vietnam. It's not simply a change in the nationality of the troops that occurs here. There are only a couple of battle scenes, and both are small scale. What I found out later in doing a little bit of research is that the film is fairly accurate in showing the fighting style of the Australians - slow, methodical treks through the jungle, only fighting the identifiable Viet Cong. Much of the film is devoted to time at the base camp - playing cards, downing what appears to be an endless supply of Foster's beer, and simply fighting off boredom. There is some discussion of the meaning of the war, and who benefits from the Australian presence, but Jeffrey is mostly interested in simply showing the experience of war from the point of view of a group of ground troops.

There is the question as to why Synapse has chosen to give this film a DVD/Blu-ray release as it seems to fall outside of their usual offerings. As far as Australian films, and even Australian war films go, The Odd Angry Shot hovers in a space somewhere between Peter Weir's high-minded Gallipoli and Brian Trenchard-Smith's more viscerally oriented Siege of Firebase Gloria. Jeffrey's other films, based on the descriptions, would also place him as being more serious than those filmmakers associated with "Ozploitation", while perhaps not serious enough to include with those filmmakers like Bruce Beresford, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong, who brought critical attention to Australian cinema in the late Seventies. Most of Jeffrey's work as been with television. If The Odd Angry Shot does bring renewed attention to Jeffrey, I would hope to see his first feature, The Removalists from 1975, featuring a young Jacki Weaver.

The DVD/Blu-ray also includes a commentary track by Jeffrey with producer Sue Milliken and actor Graeme Blundell. Milliken produced several films for Bruce Beresford, and has been a significant part of the Australian film industry. There is discussion not only of the logistics of making a war film with a limited budget, but also about the differing acting styles, with a supporting cast that included many non-professionals. Cinematographer Don McAlpine and camera operator John Seale would go on to become Oscar nominated, and in Seale's case, Oscar winning, for their work behind the camera. The disc also included a brief interview with stunt coordinator Buddy Joe Hooker, whose expertise in staging fights was called upon when Milliken and Jeffrey found that there was no one qualified in the Australian film industry at that time. This release of The Odd Angry Shot might be best appreciated for its historical value, part of transition from a time between when Australian cinema rarely merited critical discussion and the the emergence as a world cinema powerhouse.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:35 AM

August 29, 2013

Schoolgirl Report Volume 10: Every Girl Starts Sometime

Schulmadchen-Report 10. Teil - Irgendwann fangt jede an / Sexy Schoolwork / Smartie Pants
Walter Boos - 1976
Impulse Pictures All Regions DVD

In the truth is stranger than fiction department was recent news about a Chinese man who convinced a woman that her vagina was haunted. Of course this man had the tool to get rid of those ghosts. In the one vignette that is dumb but sort of funny, a couple take their cues from The Exorcist. Sefie just can't find a way to be alone with her boyfriend. He comes up with the idea that she pretend to be possessed. He poses as the friendly, visiting exorcist. Alexandra Bogojevic gives it her all, contorting her face, flashing her panties and breasts, among other body parts. Miss Bogojevic was game enough to previously appear in Salon Kitty and the humorously titled, Has Anybody Seen My Pants?. Not surprisingly, she actually had a substantial acting career with a different name. If anyone involved in the making of this film had read about that Chinese guy, they could well be thinking that nothing in the Schoolgirl series was ever that ridiculous.

The various stories are held together by a classroom discussion about "legislation and morals". And while I know that the whole point of this enterprise is to make money by showing young women in various states of undress, with a pious pronouncement at the end of encouraging said women to make their mark in the future, the setup begs for a different movie. We have a group of baby boomers, the first generation of German born after World War II, and they aren't talking about what really should have been on the table if you are going to talk about the thornier questions regarding legislation and morality.

I looked at the older actors and wondered how many of them were Nazis, and how many would admit their support of Hitler. One character, the father of one of the students, describes his bad leg as "a gift from Adolf", so it's not like the subject is entirely avoided. I guess the film I'm looking for is the Schoolgirl Report by R. W. Fassbinder or Michael Verhoeven.

It is telling that three of the stories are about the schoolgirls involved with men old enough to be their fathers. Not that I'm going to begrudge any guy who's able to score with a young hottie, but middle aged guys were probably the target audience for these movies, and they weren't looking to be reminded of what they were doing thirty or so years ago.

OK, I'll back off. Anyways, while the goof on The Exorcist will elicit a few chuckles, some might gasp in horror at the sight of a young woman with unshaven underarms. I can imagine a bunch of guys getting together with at least one six-pack for each of them, watching this film, and commenting on the grooming of these girls. One scene invites this kind of discussion as one of the girls, shall we say, picks at her carpet as a prelude to a personal moment of ecstasy.

Anyways, enjoy the specially chosen screencaps. You're welcome.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:19 AM

August 27, 2013

A Company Man

Hoi-sa-wan
Lim Sang-yun - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I'm not giving anything away here in describing the basic plot. A contract killer begins to have second thoughts about his choice of work. Unfortunately for him, the company he works for does not have any plans to let him quit, or leave the company alive. What is interesting about the way Lim Sang-yun tells what is essentially a familiar story is how the ordinary is emphasized. The characters all describe what they do as "just work". There are bravura moments in the shoot outs that bookend A Company Man, but otherwise there is nothing that appears glamorous in the locations or in how characters dress.

There is a familiarity to seeing men and women in blue suits, required to have badges that are electronically scanned for entrance to the workplace. The company, one that specializes in metal fabrications, might be a front, but as one cop puts it, it is an ordinary company, at least in appearance. For all anyone can tell, the business here could be insurance. There is the hidden entrance leading to a labyrinthian path to a darker office, where you are met by own older woman, tending to her knitting when she's not cleaning recently used guns. As for the front company, even the receptionist is packing heat.

Unlike some of the recent Korean films that show off the glitzier side of Seoul, the street view here is of run down buildings, small shops and restaurants, people just getting by. The hitman, Hyung-do, walks by a street covered many times over with old, torn posters. A twenty year old poster is spotted of a former teen idol, now a single mother with two children in her late teens. There are personal implications to this scene, but in the larger view, that contrary to surface appearances, all life and work is transitory.

Lim's ability to portray a recognizable mundane environment helps make the action scenes stand out. This makes the final shoot out, in the office, more extraordinary. Even with the knowledge that he knows all will be trying to kill him, Hyung-do shows up, confronting his co-workers. One arm hidden behind their respective backs, and an exchange of courteous words, does not hide that these formally dressed office workers all have guns, and are ready to kill Hyung-do. Beyond the bullets, knives and other implements to maim and murder, is a critique of an almost universal culture that places loyalty to the work place above anything else.

The former teen idol seen in the poster, Mi-yeon, is a pivotal character in the story. At a couple of points, songs performed by her character are on the soundtrack. It would have been better had, the songs also been subtitled as they would have presumably added a commentary to the action. Yes, I know that translations of songs aren't easy, between choosing the best words, or keeping lyrics that rhyme. Maybe I'm the only one of the non-Korean speaking viewers who feels like he's missing something here. Untranslated song lyrics aside, this is a fairly solid debut from writer-director Lim.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

August 20, 2013

Floating City

Fu cheng
Yim Ho - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

At the very least, I would recommend Floating City as a reminder that there is more to Chinese language cinema than genre films. Well Go USA also deserves kudos for providing a US release. For a good number of viewers, the film will also serve as something of a history lesson about the last decades of Hong Kong as a British colony. That the film also is from the point of view of a Chinese man growing up in those years also serves as a counter-balance to such films viewing Hong Kong from western eyes such as Love is a Many Splendored Thing or The World of Suzie Wong.

Yim's story is taken from from those who lived during that era, a fictionalized account of race, class and national identity. Chun, as a baby, is sold by his mother, who has lost everything else sailing alone to Hong Kong. Adopted by a fishing family, Chun lives on a small boat. The docking area is packed with other small boats owned by other fishing families. They are considered a marginalized class in Hong Kong, with only a few leaving the boats to work and live on land. After a failed attempt to learn how to read in a church school, the illiterate Chun bluffs his way into being an errand boy for a large British firm. Chun eventually rises within the company, gaining a formal education, finally becoming the Chinese face of the company following the handover of Hong Kong.

The film begins and ends on water. Chun shares with his adoptive mother how to write the ideogram for sea. Water serves as the source of life and the cause of death for people whose livelihood depends on catching fish. Historically, Hong Kong developed its importance when international trade was done by sea. Chun's family is Christian, and there is also a scene of baptism.

Racism comes from both sides as the half-Caucasian Chun is called "Mixed" by some of the members of his own family, and "Half Breed" by a British boss. Aaron Kwok's hair is given a reddish tint in the lead role. Even as he rises within company ranks, including invitation to an exclusive British club, Chun feels like he's an outsider. Sometimes his outsider status is forced on him as when he learns that he is considered an alien, even when in possession of a British passport.

One of the best scenes, though, is of Chun's wife, Tai, also a former boat person. Invited to a Christmas party, Tai hides her deafness by removing her hearing aid. Escorted by the socially adept Fion, Tai awkwardly smiles as the other wives compare Chun with their husbands. When a maid comes in with tea, it is Tai who takes the pot and serves the other wives, revealing that even with even with the outward appearance of upward mobility, there is an ingrained sense of social inferiority.

The scene is also one that makes me wish that there was more of Charlie Young as Tai. As the British boss who both helps and hinders Chun's entry into the world of business, David Peatfield comes off as thuggish, and the comments about his character's name, Dick, are equally unsubtle. There are also times when Chun's ascent is too elliptical, in need of some explanation. There is also the wonderful scene showing Chun and his British business mentor in a car accident, revealing all there needs to know about how class and race worked in colonial Hong Kong. Yim also includes documentary footage from the various points in the story, the best of which show the various tensions between the British and Chinese.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:38 AM

August 15, 2013

Samurai Pirate

Dai tozoku / The Great Bandit / The Lost World of Sinbad
Senkichi Taniguchi - 1963

I confess - the English language title grabbed me. It's a great title full of promise of action and sword fighting. The movie isn't quite what I imagined, but it's still pretty good. Mifune is neither a samurai nor a pirate, as much as he is an adventurer. Accused of piracy, Sukeza, escapes execution and decides that, OK, he'll be a pirate. He's got a ship and a crew, but not much luck. A storm destroys his ship, and drowns most of the crew. The scourge of the Pacific, The Black Pirate sails by and snatches the treasure chest Sukeza vainly attempts to hold onto. Washed ashore, Sukeza finds himself in a strange country entangled with intrigue at the palace, and catches the attention of the beautiful princess.

As it turns out, Samurai Pirate doesn't resemble either samurai movie or a pirate movie. Between the plot, and the costumes, this is the Toho Studios attempt to make something like an Arabian Nights fantasy, the kind of film that was a staple of Universal Pictures in the Forties and Fifties. Aside from taking place in some kind of mythical pan-Asian country, there is the rivalry between a good wizard and a bad witch. The good wizard isn't entirely pure hearted, easily distracted as he is by a woman's well rounded breasts. The bad witch, known as Granny, is hardly someone you'd want for an elderly relative, with her concoctions of poisons, and ability to stare at people, turning them into stone. There's also the court advisor who schemes to take over the throne, and dozens of attractive young women kidnapped to become dancing slaves.

Director Senkichi Taniguchi is not a filmmaker with the kind of reputation of Toho best buds Akira Kurosawa or Ishiro Honda. Maybe turning down the chance to direct the original Godzilla wasn't a great career movie. What seemed funny at the time, was the recutting and dubbing of a spy film by Woody Allen, transformed to the better known What's Up, Tiger Lily?. From what little I've been able to read, Taniguchi's original Key of Keys is pretty entertaining on its own, but any subtitled viewing is unavailable at this time. Even the website Toho Kingdom doesn't give Taniguchi the kind of love it has for, say, Jun Fukuda.

1963 was a typical year for Toshiro Mifune, with four films released, most famously Kurosawa's High and Low. Frequent Kurosawa co-star Takashi Shimura is also in Samurai Pirate, barely seen in the last few minutes as the king slowly dying of poison. It's worth mentioning that Shimura and Mifune were together in Snow Trail, Taniguchi's film from 1947 that established Mifune as a star in Japan. Samurai Pirate is also notable for the first teaming of future Bond girls Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi. Hama plays the most appropriately named Princess Yaya. It is Kumi Mizuno who almost steals the movie from Mifune and company as Miwa, the female rebel leader, willing to take up the sword to fight with Sukuza.

Other than that it was retitled and dubbed into English, I don't know much about the American release version. I'm assuming some of the bawdier bits involving the breast fixated wizard were trimmed. Judging from the subtitles, the dialogue was not quite so earthy. I'm pretty certain that fifty years ago, when Mifune takes off on a giant kite to invade a castle, the youth of America didn't hear one of the characters express concern if our hero took a leak before taking flight.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:34 AM

August 13, 2013

Wither

Sonny Laguna & Tommy Wicklund - 2012
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

Is it acceptable to punch a woman in the face? Does it matter how hard? I guess the rules of etiquette and general good manners are immediately dropped when the woman in question is a ravenous zombie. And maybe the guys who made Wither aren't necessarily misogynists, but it seems to me that the women in this film get the worst of it - decapitation, a large screw through the head, brains bashed in with a rock, or the indignity of getting slammed in the kisser with a shovel and getting buried alive.

Maybe I'm just disappointed that a movie that features four reasonable attractive young Swedish babes is totally lacking in nudity, gratuitous or otherwise. There is blood and guts. Lots of blood and guts. Actually, I was kind of glad when the girl with the lip ring had her upper lip bitten off. Not that it improved her looks, but I Just don't find lip rings all that attractive. I found that lip ring to be almost as annoying as that New York Yankees baseball hat worn by one of the guys, neither forward nor backwards, but at a tilt to the side. These are kids who are nowhere near as hip as they think they are. Turning into flesh eating zombies who kill each other was the best thing that could happen to these young men and women, although I did feel some affection for the tall blonde.

I'm not a fan of these "cabin in the woods" movies, and that includes Cabin in the Woods, although I can appreciate the Lovecraftian spin attempted there. For myself, there's Evil Dead II, and then there's everything else. I just can't suspend disbelief in a genre that is predicated on people being stupid. That includes having a weekend party at an abandoned house in a remote woods, or going into the basement alone in said house. The main couple of this film, when faced with the choice of running for their lives on a dark, rainy night, through the woods, or staying dry inside the house with their friend who is planning to make at least one of them his midnight snack, choose to stay indoors.

Sonny Laguna and Tommy Wicklund have gone on record to proclaim their love for Sam Raimi's first Evil Dead. There's a visual tribute to Raimi in the form of shots of gun blasts through the head or other body parts, the camera peering through those gaping holes. Laguna and Wicklund should be credited for not making the story unnecessarily elaborate or self-referential. Wither is the kind of film best appreciated by genre fans, and I have no problem with that. I'm just a guy who likes having different kinds of films thrown my way, keep tabs on different kinds of films and filmmakers. One of the seemingly ingrained cliches of the genre is reversed - the characters are in cell phone range. Having a working cell phone doesn't seem to improve anyone's chances for survival as the undead are a persistent lot, and it's hard to resist being a zombie's happy meal when those voracious creatures used to be your best friends.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 AM

August 08, 2013

The Grandmaster

Yi dai zong shi
Wong Kar-wai - 2013
Mei Ah Entertainment Region 0 DVD

It wasn't so much that I was impatient to see Wong Kar-wai's newest film, as much I only want to see the most complete versions of his films. That The Grandmaster has been shortened for a North American audience is indicative of a misunderstanding regarding both the film, and the audience that appreciates Wong's work. Sure, there are several fight scenes, beautifully choreographed by Yuen Woo-ping, and that should come as no surprise to anyone fleetingly familiar with that name. But above all, this is Wong's movie, and martial arts takes a back seat to meditations on the more abstract ideals of love and honor.

It would have been arch to title this film, "In the Mood for Kung-Fu", but like Wong's most acclaimed film, he revisits the themes of unrealized love and nostalgia for an idealized past. The Grandmaster is less a biographical film about Ip Man, as much as it is also about the violent history of China in the first half of the Twentieth Century, and Ip's relationships with several other martial arts masters. One of the most important relationships is with Gong Er, the daughter of a nationally recognized master. Ip's story is in part set aside for Gong Er's quest to preserve her father's legacy, especially when a top disciple takes a post on behalf of Japan during World War II.

Lest I take too much for granted here, Ip Man known remembered primarily for being the one to teach a young Bruce Lee martial arts, as well as introducing the Wing Chun school of fighting to Hong Kong. Ip has also been the subject of a series of films by Wilson Yip and Herman Yau, more traditionally narrative and biographical, although all of the films are fictionalized to various degrees. It should be noted that Ip's son, Ip Chun served as a consultant here as he has done on other films about his father.

As far as the fighting goes, there are close-ups of that well positioned fist, or the fabric torn out by a knife. There are also the feet in kung-fu slippers, sliding in the snow, the coil of burning incense, and the rain drops bouncing from Ip Man's white hat. The Grandmaster is often exquisitely, even breathtakingly filmed. Frequently, the dominant colors are burnished brown, black, white and a hazy grayish blue. Tony Leung might be nominally be the star, but it's Zhang Ziyi who is lovingly photographed here. In extreme close-ups, the stories are told between Leung's eyes which seem to only know sadness, and Zhang's beautifully curved lips.

Wong Kar-wai may look the part of the hipster with his ever present sunglasses, but his films are about looking at the past. In one of the voiceovers, Gong Er frames her addiction to opium as bringing her back to a time when she was happiest. It's one of several moments that recalls the policeman in the first part of Chunking Express wondering if love has an expiration date. On a greater scale, what Wong is looking at here is how people survive and adapt with great historical shifts, whether it's a former royal executioner who becomes the bodyguard to a martial arts master's daughter, or an older man from southern China who literally fights his way to establish his school in Hong Kong.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:25 AM

August 06, 2013

The Guillotines

Xue di zi
Andrew Lau - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A generous budget and computer generated imaging, plus the inclusion of Jimmy Wang Yu, don't make up for the charm of the Shaw Brothers martial arts movies with their often rickety special effects. The film is also something of a tribute to Lau's roots, beginning his career for the Shaws thirty years earlier. This is certainly a handsome film, but I wish I could say it was more exciting.

The idea of the guillotines is certainly eye catching. Metal devices that look almost like flying sickles, are hurled towards a person, wrapping around the neck completely like dog collars from hell, with internal blades that decapitate the unlucky victim. Then there is the fraternity known as the Guillotines, an elite squad working on behalf of the emperor. The film takes place a short time after 1735, the era of the Qianlong Emperor. The Guillotines are considered expendable by the new emperor, in favor of using western means to enforce his rule - guns and cannons. The one female Guillotine, Musen, is kidnapped by a rebel gang known as the Herders, led by a man known as Wolf. The Guillotines are led by Haidu and Leng, two childhood friends who are also lifelong friends of the young emperor. When Musen is considered a traitor, the loyalties of Haidu and Leng are tested.

Wolf kidnaps Musen in response to the death of his own love, a woman warrior, Bailan. The two actresses, Li Yuchun as Musen, and Vivien Li as Bailan, visually make the greatest impression. Thematically, there is a sense of connection to the Infernal Affairs trilogy, with stories hinging on male camaraderie and loyalty. There is frequent discussion about the sense of brotherhood. Haidu and Leng are shown as children as part of several flashbacks, showing how they were chosen for their court positions, with the now adult men discussing how their lives might have been different had each been given the other's role. The ethnic conflict between the Manchu court and Han Chinese might be perplexing to those unfamiliar with Chinese history.

Even while the story is not always compelling, there is something impressive about the Shanxi locations, a mountainous region in mainland China. Although there are thematic elements that The Guillotines shares with past films by Andrew Lau, he came to the production replacing Teddy Chen. The cast is mostly newer, lesser known pan-Chinese actors from the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Li Yuchun is the one to watch, having made her mark with three action films, previously appearing in Tsui Hark's Flying Swords of Dragon Gate. Li is also heard on the soundtrack with a Hong Kong Film Awards nominated song, and is definitely one to watch.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

August 01, 2013

The King of the Streets

Jie Tou Zhi Wang
Yue Song & Zhong Lei - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Sometimes relying on an old-fashioned story is fine. In the case of The King of the Streets, the story is frankly a pastiche of familiarity, with the prodigal son winning back the approval of his father, saving the orphanage, and facing off against his best friend who is now with the bad guys. There's enough here for a film set in contemporary Beijing to recall older Hollywood movies where a wrestler or boxer gets back in the ring and redeems himself following the disgrace of killing an opponent. The audience that will probably most enjoy this film may not be too concerned with originality. And that's OK.

Feng emerges from prison, eight years after killing a boy. The boy, who had a knife, was one of about two dozen guys who attempt to kill, or at least beat up, the unarmed Feng. After saving a young woman, Yi, from a gang of thugs, Feng helps out at the orphanage where she works. The orphanage is on land coveted by a developer. The developer's son, who squandered funds gambling, is attempting to intimidate the orphanage's owner with hired goons. Feng discovers that his former best friend is now working for the son. Feng also looks out for the grandmother of the boy he killed, and tries to reunite with his father, a taxi driver. Yi demonstrates that she can do a few hard hitting moves herself, but for the most part leaves it to Feng to handle the assortment of badasses who threaten the orphanage.

Martial artist Yue Song made the film to showcase his talents, which include having a hand in the direction, and the screenplay, as well as playing the title role. How much of the film should be credited to Yue or to co-director Zhong Lei, I wouldn't be able to say. There are some nice visual touches which should be acknowledged. There is noticeable use of lateral tracking shots. One nicely done scene is of Feng having dinner in the small restaurant run by an old friend. The camera tracks left as the friend goes to the back to talk to his wife, persuading her to let Feng stay with them briefly. The camera tracks back to the right to see that Feng has left the table. The main strength of the filmmakers is when they are able to tell their story visually.

Bruce Lee is mentioned a couple of times in comparison to Feng. Yue is probably hoping to the kind of martial artist who becomes an international star. The fight scenes are too frenetically cut for my tastes much of the time, and I really can't distinguish one style of fighting from another. Almost counter-intuitively, where Yue and his filmmaking team really shine is in expressing a sense of loneliness amidst the bright lights of Beijing. While Yue's attempt at giving the character Feng some mythical attributes at the end of the film is a misstep, the main narrative works as a kind of parable about contemporary China, where the quest for fame and money have pushed aside Confucian values.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

July 30, 2013

Robert Williams: Mr. Bitchin'

Mary C. Reese - 2010
Cinema Libre Studios All Region DVD

When the opportunity presents itself to see or write about a documentary, my choice usually involves art of some kind. Maybe not the biggest stretch personally as I've always had some kind of connection with art for most of my life. I also feel you have no business writing about film if you known nothing about any of the other arts.

As for the subject of this film, I was vaguely familiar with Robert Williams from his work in the mid to late Sixties. Initially this was from some of his posters for the "psychedelic ballrooms" of San Francisco, followed a couple of years later by my introduction to Zap Comix. I may have been exposed to Williams' work a bit earlier without knowing it, through the models of customized hot rods of Ed "Big Daddy" Roth. (And all this time, I thought that Roth did his own artwork.)

Williams' own story is about a young man, interested in art, who moves to California at about the same time that Californian youth culture started rumbling across the rest of the U.S. It's also about how a perpetual outsider to the art world eventually gained serious recognition for his work. I'm not an expert on these kinds of things, but in Williams' paintings there is a connection to be found, I think, with Hieronymus Bosch, with both the narrative subject matter and the presentation with the many tiny details that add to the story. The main difference is that Williams uses vernacular iconography and and visual style usually associated with popular culture.

Williams' story is also a narrative about the conflict between the art found in museums and the elite galleries, and art as expressed in comics, on customized cars and even tattoos. Near the end of the film, Williams is described as being to the art world what The Beatles were for music and popular culture. In a way this is appropriate as, just as several artists gained recognition for their work seen on Beatles' albums, Williams' most widely seen painting is the one done for the Guns N' Roses album, "Appetite for Destruction".

Members of Guns N' Roses speak about Williams, as does Debby Harry, Ed Roth and others. What's more interesting is seeing Williams talk about his work as well as showing some of it in progress. Williams' wife and occasional muse, Suzanne, also an artist, appears, discussing their life together based on shared passions for art and hot rods, as well as playing around with unicycles and and sting ray bicycles. There is also the artwork, some seen in a too short gallery. To enjoy some of Williams' art, keep a finger near the freeze frame button.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM

July 24, 2013

The Gangster

Antapal
Kongkiat Khomsiri - 2012
Magnolia / Magnet Region 1 DVD

Ghosts still figure in Kongkiat Khomsiri's films. Best known for this contributions to the latter two films in the Art of the Devil series, Kongkiat's characters here are at least initially guided by the sprits of Elvis Presley and James Dean, not literally, but in their choice of music and movies. The criminal gang is even referred to as rock and roll gangsters. The main characters here, Jod, is occasionally haunted by the ghost of a young woman he has shot accidentally, the result of using a defective gun.

Kongkiat's film covers some of the same ground as Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters, which I wrote about previously. Rendered as Daeng in this new film, he is a supporting character killed off after the first third of the story. Jod and Daeng are not exactly the Robin Hoods of Bangkok in the 1950s, but are presented as principled gangsters, looking out for those who live on the margins. The two get caught up in gang rivalries, as well as a military crackdown enforced by a zealous captain.

What may be baffling for some viewers is Kongkiat's choice to disregard historical accuracy. There is a comment about meeting James Dean in the U.S., even though previous scenes would indicate that he was dead at this time. The kids gather at a movie theater to see the 1960 Elvis movie, G. I. Blues, with live dubbing, a common practice for Thai movies at the time, with dialogue referring to World War II. At the same time, Kongkiat cuts to appearances of people offering their recollections of that era, a reminder that the film is based on real life characters.

Jod's story is also about how gangs switched from knives to guns as the weapon of choice. The ending is some kind of tour-de-force which reminded me of the climatic shoot out in The Wild Bunch. That's probably deliberate. Jod's code of honor reminded me of Ernest Borgnine's great line, "At least we don't hang people". Rival gangs give it everything they've got, on the streets and even a rooftop chase. Peckinpah's film is also recalled with the use of slow motion. On a thematic level, one can also see parallels in that both films explore the limits of male camaraderie. Knives are brought back when a bulletless Jod faces off against his sworn enemy.

Kongkiat doesn't shy away from onscreen violence, for those who have seen his previous films, this will be no surprise. There are a couple of brutal killings, with splattering of blood, even on the camera in one scene. Certainly both hilarious and horrifying is a killing in a restaurant. Who would have expected that a crab leg stuck in some guy's neck would prove to be an effective lethal weapon?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 PM

July 22, 2013

Vanishing Waves

Kristina Buozyte - 2012
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

There is a scene in Vanishing Waves that serves as a metaphor for the film. The two main characters, Lukas and Aurora, are sitting opposite each other at a beautifully arranged table, with what appears to be a specially prepared epicurean feast. At first the two eat proper bites. This is soon followed by gorging, as well as spitting out food, splashing liquids on each other, as well as passing food to each other mouth to mouth. I'm not the only one to comment on how this film is reminiscent of the films from the late Sixties or early Seventies. The effect is not exactly a blend as much as a not fully digested mix of influences. It's a mix that I like.

Lukas is a young scientist who acts as a human guinea pig, enlisted to receive the brain waves of the comatose accident victim, Aurora. Admonished act only as an observer, Lukas and Aurora act out a tragic romance in the virtually reality of Aurora's mind. Lukas not only falls in love with this imagined Aurora, but also believes he can bring her back to consciousness.

While Lithuanian filmmaker Kristina Buozyte may mention Antonioni as an influence, I felt connections to other films, some that Buozyte and collaborator Bruno Samper might not have even seen. While I assume the two have some familiarity with Alain Resnais' early films, I kept on thinking about the lesser known Je t'aime, Je t'aime. That 1968 film was centered on a scientific experiment with a man returning to his memories of a woman he loved. While the virtual reality in Buoyzte's film is generally in chronological order, the two films are meditations on love, loss and memory within a science fiction framework. In both films, the male protagonist knowingly puts his life in danger for an idealized love. The first glimpses of Aurora''s world combined some of the abstract computer animation of pioneer John Whitney with a dash of the hypnogogic visions of Stan Brakhage. There is also an orgy where flesh becomes more plastic, the kind of image found in something by David Cronenberg. There are also the scene of two people, maybe the only to people in the world, or at least isolated from others, as in Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Am I seeing something that isn't necessarily there or unintended? Could be. I'm fine with that.

I think the response of festival viewers to Vanishing Waves is that it is a reminder of a time when even mainstream films allowed for some degree of experimentation, and when the designation of "art movie" really meant something.

The two disc set here also comes with Buozyte's first feature, The Collectress, also written with Samper. What really distinguishes Buozyte here is that she is unafraid to make a film centered on an unlikeable woman. Made in 2008 for her Master's degree, the film is about a children's speech therapist, Gaile, who stages herself in filmed activities that are deliberately alienating herself from friends and family. With some of the recent chatter about female filmmakers, what they are doing, and what some critics thinks they should doing, this set is another reminder of why some of the most interesting work in film is done outside of Hollywood. Just how fearless is Kristina Buozyte? I'll only say that there is one scene with a dog in The Collectress that might have made W. C. Fields wince.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

July 18, 2013

Hands of the Ripper

Peter Sasdy - 1971
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD / Region A BD

For the first time since I got my Blu-ray player about a year ago, I've watched both versions of a film on a combo pack. The Blu-ray disc is the only way to see Hands of the Ripper with only a music and sound effect track. What I like about watching dialogue free versions of films is that it makes it easier to concentrate more on the visual aspects of a film. (My screencaps are from the DVD, by the way.)

The film takes place in London, about 1903, fifteen years after the death of Jack the Ripper. In this story, Jack's daughter has a traumatic vision of her father. The little girl seen in the beginning of the film grows into a young woman who is taken over by the spirit of her father, caused by a combination of reflecting light and a kiss meant to be comforting. Anna is taken in by a doctor spouting new fangled ideas from Sigmund Freud. The doctor, who's interest in Anna is eventually revealed to be not totally philanthropic, should have heeded the advice of the man who has a better sense of things, "You can't cure Jack the Ripper."

I'm not certain who was responsible for the color schemes used here, but there seems to have been the influence of Rembrandt. While most of the color usage is naturalistic, and doesn't point to itself as in some films, there is a very judicious use of red. In many of the scenes, the predominant colors are black, brown and gray. The first glimpse of red is on the hat of a doll, seen briefly as part of seance held by a fake medium. Within a circular pan around the table, most of the film's main characters are introduced. Red is also very striking as part of the trimming of a police paddy wagon, and as the coloring of the wheels' spokes. Wear red really stands out it is in the costume of an overripe, aging prostitute, known as Long Liz.

I would also apply the adjective of painterly to the way some of the shots are lit. I especially like the shot of Anna, discovered by her would-be benefactor, Dr. Pritchard, at the foot of a staircase, pretty in pink save for her bloody hands. In the supplemental featurette, there is discussion about dissatisfaction with the screenplay. And there are, at the very least, certain factors that fall apart upon close examination. Peter Sasdy doesn't exactly transcend any the weaknesses in the screenplay, but the film is worth seeing for its application of visual intelligence.

One of the other interesting choices here is in how the character of Laura, Dr. Pritchard's future daughter-in-law, is introduced. Something seems a bit off when in conversation with her fiance, she is not always looking at him. It is not until her second scene, when she steps into Dr. Pritchard's house that it is made clear by both her actions and by the dialogue, that Laura is blind.

As the supplement that primarily covers the making of Hands of the Ripper mentions, the other time that Hammer had recently made a film connected to the legend of Jack the Ripper was with Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde. Also released in 1971, Roy Ward Baker's film gives Robert Louis Stevenson's story a transgender twist, in combination with the Jack the Ripper story. I don't know if there was coincidence at work here, with the concept of a female ripper at the heart of both films. The difference is that Baker's protagonist is a mild mannered man, while Sasdy's Anna is introduced as a meek, frequently withdrawn, female.

The supplement also discusses how Sasdy and producer Aida Young worked around a modest budget. The sets of the Whitechapel section of London were originally for use in Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. There is a bit of unintended irony here in that Sasdy and Young made a point of making a film mostly with actors and a crew not normally associated with Hammer films. One of the featured actors in Wilder's film was that Hammer mainstay, Christopher Lee.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:49 AM

July 17, 2013

Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger

Kangofu nikki: Itazurana yubi
Shin'ichi Shiratori - 1979
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

There's a gag in Nurse Diary: Wicked Finger which I would have thought would appear in a Farrelly brothers movie. A college student discovers that a pretty young nurse has moved across from the way from him, and he can observe her from his window. His sense of passion is aroused at the same moment that the landlady comes to tell the young man to clean his room. The young man takes matters into his own hands, so to speak, and the vacuum clean is used to hoover himself. When a pal comes by, the young man finds himself in a predicament resolved by a visit to the hospital where the nurse happens to work. While this is nowhere near as funny as Ben Stiller's accident with his zipper in There;s Something about Mary, there is a similar sensibility at work here.

Sad to say, this is the high point here. While I appreciate the historical value of getting these Nikkatsu Roman Porno films on DVD, I wish this was a better movie. Most of the flesh on display is from Asumi Ogawa as the gaudily dressed cabaret performer, frequently showing up for impromptu physical examinations. Star Etsuko Hara shows her flexible side doing some yoga exercises, but as the object of affection in the title role, seems underused. This film is probably of greater interest to the completist. It has to be understood that not every film from Nikkatsu was made with any greater aspiration than to get product out in time to fill a theater date. My hope is that some more of the earlier Nikkatsu films get DVD release since they are usually of greater interest both cinematically and in subject matter.

For me, the first rule of this kind of filmmaking is to find any kind of excuse to get the leading lady scantily clad if not outright naked. I think the scene of Etsuko Hara demonstrating her physical agility would have been hot had she not been in blue tights, but wearing a lot less, like a pair of panties. Such a scene would have allowed some of us to also crack attrocious puns about yoga bare.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

July 15, 2013

Horny Working Girl: From 5 to 9

Onna shinnyu-shain: 5-ji kara 9-ji made
Katsuhiko Fujii - 1982
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Both sleazy and silly, there is one scene in Horny Working Girl that I found remarkable. For those who are familiar with certain laws pertaining to the depiction of sex in Japan, there is the prohibition against showing any pubic hair. Certainly, anyone who has viewed any of the previous Impulse Pictures Nikkatsu series would be familiar with this law, with filmmakers skirting the law usually with strategically placed objects or simply blurring parts of the onscreen image.

Somebody at Nikkatsu was clever enough to get around the law. In one scene, an older man is looking eye to eye as it were with a blonde, or at least what appears to be a woman with blonde pubic hair. We hear lots of moaning, and see an extreme close-up of a woman's nether region, which got me to wondering, how did they get away with this. Only it turns out that what we see is part of a life sized doll. There is also a shot of a businessman, during a dream of sexual ecstasy, licking his hairy underarm. While that image is not in itself erotic, it's the idea behind that shot that shows how a bit of spunk on the part of Nikkatsu.

The film follows the sexual misadventures of an "Office Lady", Chieko, played by Junko Asahina. Chieko is lured to a company based on her ability to snag a big client. Her boss is a horn dog who also finds time for his secretary. The wife finds out, and the three get together, and momentarily really get together, before hatching a plot of stiff revenge involving priapism and the threat of the most unkindest cut of all.

For myself, Asahina was seen to better advantage previously in I Love it from Behind!. The usual sexual shenanigans are here, although given the possibilities, this film is softer on the sapphic situations. There is a scene of misuse of a xerox machine, one of the few moments that would still be contemporary in an office full of huge selectric typewriters. The thudding disco music on the soundtrack is an audio blast that I'm glad is past.

One other moment worth mentioning involves a male acquaintance pursuing Chieko out onto the street. The scene itself is not significant. What is of interest is that the scene was shot on a very crowded Tokyo street, and one can see some of the pedestrians stopping in their tracks to take a look at the actors and film crew. Unlike a lot of films where the crowds are paid extras arranged to mill around the actors, there is no attempt to block off the gawkers. I don't know if any of those passing by the camera knew or cared they were in a soft core film. Even though Horny Working Girl: From 5 to 9 is not one of the better entries in the Nikkatsu Roman Porno series, I have to admire those moments of fearlessness from the filmmakers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 AM

July 11, 2013

The Wicked Lady

Leslie Arliss - 1945
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

I had read about The Wicked Lady about thirty years ago, when Michael Winner's remake was released. I never bothered to see that version, but something about the plot, about a woman disguised as a highwayman intrigued me. And while I can't really explain it, I like to watch movies that take place in the centuries between Columbus sailing to parts unknown, through the years when France was ruled by some guys all named Napoleon.

The name in the credits that will still be meaningful to contemporary audiences is that of the editor, Terence Fisher. This was his second to last assignment as a cutter before taking up the director's chair. And in the cast is Martita Hunt, a character actress who was memorable as the well meaning Baroness Meinster in what may be Fisher's best film, The Brides of Dracula. I might be stretching things a bit here in thinking that Fisher's association with The Wicked Lady was a major influence on things to come. One of the attractions of the Hammer horror films were those comely women with their display, within the acceptable bounds of the time, of ample cleavage. The French have a word for it, decolletage, and Margaret Lockwood let's us know she's got, and knows how to use it. Thankfully, the filmmakers are historically accurate regarding women's fashions from 1683.

It's not like I hadn't seen Margaret Lockwood before, most notably with several viewing of The Lady Vanishes. And in this film, her goody-goody rival, played be Patricia Roc, also has some low cut gowns, but it's not quite the same. The Eclipse notes mention how The Wicked Lady was reshot for American audiences, showing less of Lockwood's attributes. I'm almost certain that had stateside viewers taken a gander at Lockwood as she appears in the British release, she could possibly have given Jane Russell some stiff competition.

The other orbs of prominence are Margaret Lockwood's eyes. Just by the way she glances, you can tell she's up to no good. Faking a horseback riding accident in order to seduce and marry her best friend's fiance, to pretending to be a highwayman in order to snatch back the jewels lost in a card game, are just the beginning. Lockwood's Lady Barbara poisons and then suffocates the family's long time servant, joins forces with the real neighborhood highwayman, played by James Mason, bedding and betraying him, and mostly has a good, good time being a bad, bad girl.

Just as Lady Barbara is cheerfully amoral, the dialogue is full of brazen, for its time, double entendres. For some contemporary audiences, said dialogue might be considered too literate, but when James Mason talks about the ability to "drive a hard bargain" during his first close encounter with Lockwood, it's not difficult to figure out what he really means. According to Criterion Cast notes about the making of the film, some of the cast members did not think highly of the screenplay by director Arliss. It might not exactly be art or poetry, but there aren't too many films in which the English language is quite as colorful.

And before I forget, Margaret Lockwood flashes some leg for good measure.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

July 09, 2013

New World

Sinsegye
Park Hoon-Jung - 2013
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

While New World follows a classic template about gangsters as members of an organization, run along similar lines as big business, there is an added emphasis on formality and protocol. Park Hoon-jung has several shots of arranged seating based on rank, whether in a board room or a hospital waiting room. The gang members are all in dark suits, with white shirts and dark ties. When four gangsters from the Yanbian Prefecture of China show up, with their garish clothing and lack of grooming, they look out of place, their comic presence quickly undercut by their deadly actions.

When the boss of a major criminal organization is killed in an apparent traffic accident, several rivals emerge. Police detective Kang has an undercover operative, Ja-sung, who in eight years, has climbed up the ranks as respected gangster boss. Ja-sung wants out, but Kang insists that he stay in while the ranking crime bosses fight it out as to who will be the new boss. Kang insists that he is powerless to make any change on Ja-sung's behalf. What emerges is a story of secret connections between cops and criminals.

One of people Ja-sung reports to has a Go (the Chinese chess game) table in her living room. The game serves as an appropriate symbol for a film that is as much about strategy. The characters, like Go pieces, move around, sometimes finding themselves captured and surrounded, with the winner controlling the greatest part of the board and having the larger number of stones. Park has his characters keep their moves secret so that much of what follows in the film is unexpected.

The protocol of gangsters is repeatedly shown with kowtowing to the upper echelons, while underlings are frequently berated. Similar to American gangster movies are two scenes of funerals, but as Buddhist ceremonies. A bribe is offered in the form of money baked into a large box mooncakes, the Chinese holiday treat. Ja-sung is often called "bro" by top boss, Jung, but the only family connections seen are those based on professional ties, as police or criminal.

Jo Yeong-wook has an elegiac score that emphasizes the fatalism that pervades the story. At several points, characters think a situation is in control, a moment that is transient at best. All victories are temporary and contain the seeds of loss and destruction. A Hollywood remake is already in the works for this film that has been a commercial and critical hit in South Korea. While the story might be duplicated, I'm not counting on seeing a repeat of the scene where two large rival gangs of well-dress gangsters bring out the swords and baseball bats for a bloody rumble.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

July 04, 2013

When a Wolf Falls in Love with a Sheep

Nan fang xiao yang mu chang
Hou Chi-jan - 2012
IVL Region 3 DVD

Sometimes the sheep is a bit aggressive, while the wolf might be the one hunted. I'm not sure is calling this Taiwanese film a romantic comedy is quite right either as the mood shifts from lightly comic to an equally light melancholia. I'm not even sure if the wolf and sheep fall in love at the end. It's more like they fulfill some kind of emotional need, taking up the void created when their respective past loves left them.

This is a souffle of a movie, and for the most part Hou Chi-jan keeps it light. Some aspects are very culturally specific, such as having much of the film take place in a "cram school" on a street dotted with small shops run by one or two people, and street noodle vendors. Hou also makes use of puns that are untranslatable. There is still more than enough for those unfamiliar with the culture to enjoy. The location, Nanyang Street, is a famed location in Taipei, known for its cram schools. Hou makes use of animated cartoons and stop-motion animation along the way in this story about love lost and found, recycling, and the advantage of a good disguise.

A young man, Tung, wakes up to find that his girlfriend, Ying, as left him. The post-it note left on his forehead states that she has gone to cram school. Eventually Tung realizes that Ying has gone for good. Literally stumbling into a job at a photocopy shop in Nanyang Street, where cram school exams are printed, Tung meets Yang at the school where she works as a teaching assistant. Yang's drawings of a cartoon sheep are eventually enlivened by the encounter of Tung's cartoon Big Bad Wolf.

Unlike the more conventionally attractive Ying, played by model-actress Nikki Hsieh, Yang (Chien Man-shu) , with her boyishly short hair and big eyes, gets into Tung's life mostly by frequently showing up. Part of their time spent is with indirect negotiations about what kind of relationship they want, especially in view of the disappointments that life has thrown at them. Dogs are lost while cats are found. Obsolete electronics are given new life. Much like his characters, Hou takes an indirect route in his story, taking time to enjoy rainfall in Taipei accompanied by an instrumental rendering the 1962 pop hit, "Rhythm of the Rain".

When a Wolf Falls in Love with a Sheep has played at the Udine Far East Film Festival and the New York Asian Film Festival. The special effects, which include clouds that appear as numbers, were nominated in the recent Asian Film Awards, as was Chien Man-shu as Best Newcomer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:07 PM

July 02, 2013

Blood for Irina

Chris Alexander - 2012
Autonomy Pictures Regions ABC BD

The best preparation for viewing Blood for Irina might be to know that it is not a vampire movie in any traditional sense. While there is something of a story, it's more of an extended mood piece. If you're looking for a more traditional narrative film, this isn't it. Irina doesn't conform to some of the more common notions of a vampire, certainly with one scene from her past when she claims her victim in broad daylight.

The film might be better described as a series of dream images, of the title character wandering though a depopulated city at night, luring her male victims to their doom at the decrepit, possibly abandoned, motel that's her home. Sleep is in a blue bath tub. There appears to be an inner conflict. In one of the few voice-over comments from Irina, she says, "I drink blood. I breathe blood.", yet there are several scenes of her spitting blood in a sink, a suggestion that her body is in rebellion with her spirit.

What also characterizes Blood for Irina as being removed from traditional narrative films is that it is dialogue free. There are a few moments of voice-over comments, so few that had the film been made about ninety years ago or so, there would be very little difference with the inclusion of title cards. There is much use of sound, whether from nature, such as the waves of a nearby beach, wind through the trees, and breathing, as well as a soundtrack that ranges from electronica to classical music. Some of the harsher electronic sounds help emphasize the sense of alienation, the pervasive disconnectedness of the film's few characters.

Chris Alexander, better known as the Editor in Chief of Fangoria magazine has spoken of his influences elsewhere. In the title role, Shauna Henry might remind some of the languid vampires that wander around in Jean Rollin's films. Alexander's biggest strength is his sense of imagery, he was one of the two cinematographers. To be sure, the sight of a female blood sucker walking the night with a pair of sunglasses is a cliche, though it works here, perhaps because Shauna Henry is not conventionally attractive, and her gaze is suggestive of a junkie rather than a vampire.

This is a good looking effort for "no-budget" filmmaking. For myself, this is preferable to the wave of "found footage" movies of youngsters lost in the woods, an insane killer on the loose, and . . . you can guess the rest. The Blu-ray (and there is only a Blu-ray disc version) comes with director's commentary, deleted scenes, and a short bit documenting the destruction of the Riviera Motel, where much of the film was shot.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

June 27, 2013

White Frog

Quentin Lee - 2012
Wolfe Video Region 1 DVD

It's a sign of the times that a film like White Frog is a modestly budgeted independent film rather than a studio production. Even something like Ordinary People would probably not get the green light these days. That the film is available through a niche distributor, Wolfe Video, means that while the coming out story of a gay young man will primarily play for the GLBT audience, there are aspects to the film that might be overlooked.

Not to equate Quentin Lee with Douglas Sirk, at least not yet, but the film shares a view of family life that is similar to be found in films like Imitation of Life and Written on the Wind in which family members are cocooned from life and often each other by money. The title comes from a story about a tadpole stored inside a coconut, growing to become a very edible frog for eating. The analogy is of letting people grow in an open environment, rather than in one of familial or social constraints. While the elder son Chaz can hide his sexual identity, the younger son, Nick, as Asberger's Syndrome, and as such, is unfiltered in how he expresses himself. Both sons have a sense of disconnection from their parents in affluent surroundings. Where Chaz appears to be the perfect son, fulfilling the dreams of his parents, Nick undoes the pair, particularly his father. The parents are wrapped in the illusion of an idealized sense of normality including a picture perfect house that doesn't looked lived in, and social connections that are solely church based. When the parents find out that Chaz was gay, and that he donated time and money to an urban center for GLBT youth, it's not quite like Lana Turner's last reel revelations during Juanita Moore's elaborate funeral, but there's a similar spirit at work here.

While the film touches on divisions based on sexual identity, and to a lesser extent, economic class, race is never an issue. Though never discussed, it is significant that the Asian-American family name is the possibly Anglicized Young. The one time the family is presented eating a dinner with chopsticks, it doesn't take a sharp eye to note that it is of the home delivery kind. One might argue that Lee, and the mother-daughter screenplay authors, Fabienne Wen and Ellie Wen, chose to play down the Asian identity of the characters, although it might also be seen as part of the way the characters would see themselves. While Chaz's identity as gay almost causes a schism between his poker buddies, that one is Jewish, one African-American, and one is of South Asian descent is never remarked upon.

If I am stressing the concept of identity, it is at the core of Quentin Lee's films. The documentary, 0506HK was Lee's look at himself, friends and family members, all of whom have been affected in one way or another as former or current residents of Hong Kong. For someone of Lee's generation, even the country of their birth changed identity from a British colony to part of China, though in a limited sense, independent of the mainland until 2046.

Playwright David Henry Hwang plays a supporting role as the Young's family pastor, and had a hand in shaping the screenplay as script consultant. Where the film is weak is in the casting. As much as it is great that several Asian-American actors have lead roles, only Booboo Stewart and Harry Shum, Jr. as brothers, as Nick and Chaz respectively, were effectively cast. I love Joan Chen and have so since The Last Emperor, but it was hard to see her as married to BD Wong, who always was eclipsed whenever Miss Chen was onscreen. Kelly Hu is quite funny in a brief turn as Chen's sister, reminding Chen that even for relatives, she charges an hourly rate when working on their behalf.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM | Comments (2)

June 25, 2013

The Big Circus

Joseph Newman - 1959
Warner Archives DVD

"They're on the brink of disaster,
hearts beat faster,
when they're through."

The lyrics teeter on the edge of self-parody. Considering that the title song for The Big Circus was written by Sammy Fain and Paul Ferris Webster, I have to put it in perspective of their two Oscar winning songs, "Love is a Many Splendored Thing" with its big chorus can in no way be considered understated, while "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane left a door open for other interpretations to the lyrics. The song is no classic, and neither is the movie, not that either get in the way of the fun.

Released seven years after Cecil B. DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth, and barely disguising any similarity to that film, Joseph Newman's film is actually an improvement. Sure, the budget was smaller, and the stars were culled from the B list, but unlike DeMille's two and half hour slog, this show is lighter by about forty-five minutes. I don't know how much the film cost to produce, but it was successful enough to get producer Irwin Allen back onto the lot of the 20th Century-Fox for the next decade, while Newman closed out his career in theatrical films as house auteur at Allied Artists, for whom this film was made.

This is another case of a DVD rescue allowing me to see a film that I was aware of, but had never seen, from childhood. I have a memory of constant television commercials for The Big Circus. I would have been seven years old at the time. Summer of 1959 at my grandparents house in Detroit. If there was any name among the stars that had any meaning, it would have possibly been Red Buttons. What I do recall is the announcer pronouncing the name of the top billed actor as "Victor Mat-yooooor!".

Anyways, Vic is running a circus that's on the verge of bankruptcy. Red Buttons is the bank's guy who makes sure that their investment in the circus pays off. Red brings along Rhonda Fleming as press agent who challenges Vic's ideas on suitable jobs for women. There's also someone who's trying to sabotage the circus. I won't tell you who, except that it is revealed that prior to joining the circus, he had spent six years in "an institution for the criminally insane". I would guess there was a time when job references weren't always a key to some forms of employment. Best of all is Peter Lorre as Skeeter. Lorre takes on the James Stewart role from The Greatest Show on Earth in the role of an actor who can be easily recognized, even with clown make up. Lorre is the best part of this film, whether dressed as a clown or not, providing wise cracking commentary for most of the action.

Being an Allied Artists' production, the film was shot with an economic visual style of mostly full shots and some medium shots. It's not like Joseph Newman wouldn't have known how to film it any other way, but he uses his budgetary constraints to his advantage. The without using the kind of positioning of actors that might be found in the wide screen works of Nicholas Ray or John Sturges, many of the shots are composed in such a way to see the actors speak or react to each other, without looking "stagy". The result is that the viewer can glance from the banter of Victor Mature and Rhonda Fleming, to the comical poses of Peter Lorre within the frame, rather than cutting between the actors and their particular bits of business. As a former Assistant Director, Joseph Newman would be conscientious of keeping any film production on time and on budget.

The film story was by Irwin Allen, not above plugging one of his earlier productions, when Victor Mature passes a theater marquee showing Allen's documentary, The Sea Around Us. Also credited for the screenplay are Charles Bennett, best known for his writing collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock, and Irving Wallace, his last screenplay before embarking on a career of literary potboilers like The Chapman Report. As the title song suggests, there is a sense throughout the film that everyone knows not to take anything too seriously, all of which adds to the fun.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:55 AM

June 20, 2013

Tai Chi Hero

Stephen Fung - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In between the time I saw Tai Chi Zero and the newly released sequel, I did a little bit of "homework", and caught Stephen Fung's 2005 film, House of Fury. Ideally, I would have seen that film earlier, because it combines martial arts with a whimsical premise on a smaller scale. Anthony Wong plays the practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine, and the source of embarrassment to his image conscious teenage daughter. It turns out Wong is a former government hit man, and the walls and floors of his modest home hide some very elaborate and high tech rooms.

Martial arts and technology are very much at the forefront of Tai Chi Hero. Fung has had the good sense to substantially tone down some of the gimmickry of the first film, though superimposed titles to introduce various guest stars is repeated. The gimmicks here are what have given the series the description as steampunk, in particular the creation of a single manned airplane called Heaven's Wing. There are also a fight scenes and lots of wire work, primarily the work of Sammo Hung, working here as the action director.

The main characters from Tai Chi Zero are back. And this film, like the last, can be interpreted as something of a parable about the westernization of China, and its role on the world stage. Western interests are personified by Peter Stormare as an unscrupulous industrialist named Duke Fleming, with what seems like an unlimited fortune.

The town of Chen is a proxy for the China that barricaded itself from outsiders and outside interests. Lu Chan, the zero turned hero, is still unable to be accepted, even after marriage to the Grandmaster's daughter, Yu Niang. The prodigal son of the Grandmaster, Zai's value is initially based on his martial arts prowess or lack thereof, until he is able to demonstrate what can be done with his interests in mechanical devices. The happy ending gives way to a hint of more to come with Duke Fleming entering a fortress with a skull-like entrance.

Maybe she's be seen more decisively in the third part of this trilogy, but Nikki Hsieh's character should have been more developed. As the deaf-mute wife of Zai, Hsieh appears as nothing more than the pretty wife who stays in the background. There's more than meets the eye when she briefly engages in a rooftop fight with Tony Leung Ka Fai. Hsieh disappears from the film soon after that scene. While it's nice that Stephen Fung has a large budget at his disposal, the best special effect in movies is still an intriguing character on the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:13 AM

June 13, 2013

Kahaani

Sujoy Ghosh - 2012
Viacom 18 All Region DVD

I first was aware of Kahaani when I was doing some online research into films outside of Hollywood or Europe that displayed the influence of Alfred Hitchcock. To apply the adjective of "Hitchcockian" to Kahaani would be inaccurate, not the least reason being that it would set up certain unfulfilled expectations. But this is still one very good thriller just the same.

A very pregnant woman, Vidya, flies from London to Kolkata, with a police station as her first stop in that city. Her husband as disappeared, and there are no records of anyone knowing anything about him. A very helpful policeman, known by all as Rana, may have dropped a clue when he mentions that many people is this region of India have two names, their family name, and a "pet" name. A connection is found between Vidya's husband and a man said to be connected with the death by gas of passengers in a subway two years earlier, an incident that seems inspired by the Sarin gas attack in Tokyo in 1995. Government agents get involved as there seems to be much more than a missing husband at stake.

The film pointedly takes place during Durga Puja, allowing both for extra color during the street scenes. More significantly, Vidya is the mother who comes to contemporary Kolkata to uncover and eliminate evil. Also, Vidya proves herself formidable in pursuing the truth about her husband in the face of entirely male opposition.

Duality is emphasized throughout the film. On the lighter side, Vidya is frequently called Bidya. There is also a very courteous hitman, whose daytime job is as Kolkota's worse life insurance salesman. There are also the questions surrounding the identity of Vidya's husband.

Kolkota is something of a major character as well. Sujoy Ghosh breaks away to show street scenes with sidewalk tea cafes and food vendors, a warehouse full of Hindu deities, narrow alleys, and a crowd of women all dressed in red and white saris. Unlike the polished Mumbai of Bollywood films, there's no effort to disguise what appears to be the essential grubbiness of Kolkota, or at least those parts of the city where the film takes place. Contrast is made to the gleaming white, palatial Victoria Monument, seen in the distance. Ghosh's film style is markedly western, with some fast cutting and use of digital effects, as well as incorporating the music as part of the background, yet, unlike some Indian filmmakers, everything is in the service of a very involving story with its share of unexpected twists and turns. The title, in its literal translation means "story", but is without a true English language equivalent, and is suggestive of an Indian narrative tradition of stories within stories.

Made for a relatively low budget, Kahaani was one of Indian cinema's biggest commercial and critical hits of 2012. Aside from star Vidya Balan as the woman in peril, the rest of the cast is of Bengali actors. That it portrays the type of woman uncharacteristic of much of Indian culture can be attributed to Ghosh's collaboration with writer Advaita Kala.

Some thoughts on Kahaani from Girish, as someone who personally knows Kokata.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:43 AM

June 06, 2013

Clip

Klip
Maja Milos - 2012
Artsploitation Films All Region DVD

I will try my best here, but if I had my choice, I'd wish that Susan Sontag was writing about Clip. Sontag's long essay, "On Photography" helped me articulate different aspects of photography both in terms of artistic expression as a form of documentation. How this fits in with Clip is that teenage Jasna is constantly filming her life with her cell phone camera, often what might be considered those parts of one's life too personal to be sharing. There is a scene in which Jasna's mother and Jasna's grandparents are looking at old photographs. Photography functions in a more conventional, traditional way, as a visual document of family members and as a means of invoking nostalgia among those who are part of that family. Jasna walks away, wondering why there would be interest in dead people.

The clip referred to in the title is one Jasna made, filming her just shaved vaginal area. The older by a couple of year boy that she pursues, chooses to jerk himself off while watching the clip, while Jasna lies still below him. Throughout the film, emotional connections are filtered through technology, whether by the constant filming of various activities, cell phone conversations, or singing along to pop records. That use of technology is an added twist to the classic elements of teen rebellion and angst: bullying, spontaneous fist fights, drugs and alcohol, trashing school, and exploring sexuality.

Maja Milos cuts between the observational camera and the footage filmed Jasna's cell phone camera. The value placed on cell phone documentation comes to a head when Jasna visits a facility for abandoned elementary school aged children. Instantly "adopted" by Stana, Stana insists that Jasna film her. The little girl mimics the poses of models and proudly shows off her few possessions. In her own way, Stana acts as both a parody of Jasna as well as a hint of a future dominated by self-absorption and the need to appear on a cell phone camera.

Maja Milos was an assistant director for Life and Death of a Porno Gang, which was reviewed last year. If the more notorious films are any indication, there is a freedom as well as energy expressed by Serbian filmmakers. It might also be worth considering that the country as it currently stands is still young, and that the youth in Milos' film have no personal knowledge of the Yugoslavia of their parents and grandparents.

The Serbian pop and rock songs on the soundtrack emphasize this current era of frankness and open sexuality. One of the nice parts about the subtitling here is that it includes translations of the song lyrics, a practice I wish was to be found on all movies. As such, Clip also serves as an introduction for many viewers to the music known as Turbo Folk. The DVD also includes an interview with Milos discussing the making of the film, and some thoughts on her favorite filmmakers. There is also more in depth analysis in the enclosed booklet, plus an interview with star Isadora Simijonovic, fourteen years old at the time Clip began production.

Maja Milos

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

June 04, 2013

Valerie

Gerd Oswald - 1957
MGM Limited Edition DVD

I first became aware of Valerie from the notes on Gerd Oswald in The American Cinema. Andrew Sarris described the film as a "frontier Roshomon". The main differences that such a description does not address is that while the film takes place in and near a fictional town called Limerock not too long after the Civil War, in spite of the film's setting, the film can not truly be considered a western. And unlike Akira Kurosawa's film which centered on one incident seen from the point of view of several people, Oswald's film recounts a series of incidents from the point of view of three people. Setting aside the era in which the film takes place, and the physical setting, Valerie does fit in visually and thematically with Oswald's other film noir work, and is not too removed from his later assignments on the "Perry Mason" television series.

What impresses me most about Valerie is how much information Oswald is able to contain in a single shot, whether it's to convey the relationship between people or even to establish the location of a scene. The mystery of Valerie is first established with a group shot of three men. Two enter a small house. We hear, but do not see, shooting. Only one man emerges from the house. The remainder of the film takes place during the trial of that man, John Garth. The main witnesses are Garth, the town's preacher, Reverend Blake, and Garth's wife, Valerie. Each describe the events that preceded the shooting. Each also gives somewhat different descriptions not only of the events, but of each other. The film might also be read lightly as political allegory as Garth is the home town hero, while Blake and Valerie are both outsiders, both from outside the United States, with Valerie and her parents cited as "foreigners" from an unnamed country.

Oswald will shoot two different versions of the same incident in the same way. During the night of Garth's honeymoon with Valerie, the camera is facing the towards Valerie's bedroom. In one flashback, we see Garth helplessly standing outside the bedroom, locked out by his bride. In a similarly filmed flashback of that same night, we see Garth swooping up Valerie against her will, carrying her to the bedroom. In one flashback, Garth holds a gun to Blake, while another version shows no threat of violence by Garth. In other scenes, the dialogue is repeated but in a somewhat different situation than what was seen previously.

How Oswald was chosen to direct Valerie, I do not know. His economical, and visually loaded use of a single shot is also examined by C. Jerry Kutner discussing Screaming Mimi, another film based on personal perceptions and interpretations of past events. What is clear is that even as an assignment, Valerie is not dissimilar to Oswald's other credits beginning with A Kiss Before Dying through Screaming Mimi, with narratives about murder, manipulation of the truth, and the difference between facts and perceptions.

The screenplay is by Leonard Heideman and Emmett Murphy. Certain aspects of Heideman's life read like the plots of Oswald's Fifties movies. Additionally, Heideman's life gives Valerie autobiographical weight regarding the relationship between Garth and Valerie, as if parts of the writer's personal life were played out on the big screen. There is some irony to consider that the part of Garth, who might be considered a proxy for Heideman, was played by the physically imposing Sterling Hayden, while Heideman saw himself in his nightmares as a dwarf. What is certain is that Valerie, along with Gerd Oswald's other films from the Fifties, is worthy of much deeper consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:46 AM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2013

Sadako

Tsutomu Hanabusa - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Even though there is reference to the set-up of the first film, seeing the original Japanese version from 1998 nor the 2002 Hollywood remake is necessary to enjoy the continuing story of the long haired girl who lived in a well, who kicked off the boom in Japanese horror movies. Watching a 2D version of a film originally shown in 3D, I can only imagine what it might have been like to see that long hair spilling out, or that bony arm stretching towards the camera. Even if Sadako doesn't approach the kind of of artistry or pervasive spookiness found in Shock Labyrinth or Tormented, it offers a few visual pleasures. The story, by the way, is by Koji Suzuki, the author of the source novel and several sequels.

The biggest stumbling block is, if you knew that watching a certain video is connected to a history of people committing suicide, why are you watching it? Apparently curiosity does get the better of several people. An artist accused of plagiarism decides to make his suicide a live online event, and at the same time offer his life to the revival of Sadako, the girl in the well. His aim is to eliminate all human life, a disproportionately extreme reaction to some online criticism. Those dumb enough to look for the "cursed video clip" find Sadako emerging from their video screen to take them to their respective deaths. Sadako is in search of the perfect body to take over, which happens to belong to the young and pretty teacher, Akane.

There is some humor as the middle aged lead detective, Koiso, investigating the rash of suicides, finds himself over his head regarding the language of contemporary technology. Sadako frequently haunts Akane, appearing on computer screens as well as the larger screens that appear on buildings, and even the side of a truck. Koiso remains unconvinced until his junior partner investigates the video, and more clues are revealed in the artist's studio.

Aside from hands and hair popping out of screens, there is lots of shattered glass flying around. There are also lots of flying insects, they look like butterflies, or more precisely, the basic shape of butterflies, white and black, but not detailed. What I like about 3D movies is when strange or scary stuff seems to come toward the viewer. And for those more sensitive viewers, most of what goes on here is more strange than scary.

The biggest mystery is: who is the landlady who rented out the artist's studio. While the two detectives are checking out the basement pad, she comments on how everything in life is artificial. She pops up again, incongruously, near the end of the film. Is she a part of the sequel that is currently in the works? And for that matter, who is the actress in that role?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:32 AM

May 28, 2013

The ABCs of Death

"F is for Fart"

Multiple directors - 2012
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I'm not entirely sure if there is any way to approach The ABCs of Death in more than a general way. While the portmanteau horror film has been a well established staple of the genre, it's a bit easier to critically assess a film with three different directors, such as Spirits of the Dead, or four, such as the Thai 4bia, or even five as in the classic of the bunch, Dead of Night. What we have here is a much broader mix, with twenty-six filmmakers, one per letter, with a variety of styles, including a couple of animated films. What unifies most of the work here is a penchant for very black humor. As the filmmakers were given total freedom to within the constraints of making a story related to a letter, and keeping within a very short running time for each film, there was also a tendency towards, shall we call it, bathroom humor (and horror), of the most anal kind.

My own favorite episode was "O is for Orgasm", what the French refer to as "the little death". Bruno Forzani and Helene Cattet's style was already recognizable from their debut feature, Amer. It's mostly close-ups of a woman's face, bubbles emerging from her mouth, and various sounds associated with sex. It's also the most abstract film, using a film language more frequently employed by "experimental movies" from the Sixties, which might also explain why I liked it the best.

"O is for Orgasm"

Usually known for his stories about people with weapons replacing body parts, Noboru Iguchi's "F is for Fart" is about the aroma of love. A flatulence prone high school girl finds a kindred spirit in her youthful teacher, Miss Yumi. Love is a gas that absorbs the two women in an intestinal embrace some might find hard to digest.

"S is for Speed" is effective enough in its subject matter. The kind of speed focused on here is obvious enough that I'd rather not be a spoiler here. What I can say is that Jake West did a nice turn here with a small nod to Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal, with death making a visit in the scrub desert.

Thomas Malling's "H is for Hydro-Electric Diffusion" tries to be the live action version of a Tex Avery World War II era cartoon, with an actor dressed as a Bulldog soldier entertained by a showgirl fox who reveals herself to be a Nazi. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

Xavier Gens' "X is for XXL" is the most serious of the films in dealing with female body image. An overweight woman, subjected to verbal abuse from those passing her on the street, as well as the constant stream of advertising, takes a very radical step in reducing her fat. This short may well serve as a wake up call to those who put a premium on being young and thin.

I'm not going to do a run down on all twenty-six films here. As can be imagined, the overall work is uneven, with some films markedly better than others. The responses of viewers will also vary. What is praiseworthy is that there is some sense of inclusiveness with a global mix of filmmakers, and the participation of two women, the previously mentioned Helene Cattet, and Angela Bettis. As far as people learning their ABCs, viewers will have the opportunity for more study as a sequel is already in the works.

"S is for Speed"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

May 24, 2013

This Girl is Badass

Jukkalan
Petchtai Wongkamlao - 2011
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

One of the more fun films I saw in Thailand was Bodyguard 2, written, directed and starring Petchtai Wongkamlao, better known as Mum Jokmok by his Thai fans. I'm not sure how well Mum's new film is going to play for most North American viewers, but I had a good time here. Hollywood could probably learn something here, with some imaginative action scenes, truly tasteless and simultaneously hilarious jokes, and kickboxing midgets, all in one modestly budgeted movie! And who needs special effects when you have a crew of gifted stuntmen and women riding bicycles, leaping about, and taking and receiving body blows.

And then there's Jeeja. Don't bother telling me about the Hollywood actress of the day who took a few months to train for an action role. Jeeja Yanin trained for years before her debut in Chocolate. Mum crafted the film especially for her, so Jeeja has the opportunity to have a leading role. The original Thai title is the name of Jeeja's character. If you've seen Jeeja previously, you know what she's capable of as a martial artist. Here she does stunts with a bicycle including using it as a weapon against a gang of bad guys.

There is some kind of story here, with Jeeja as a bicycle courier, doing deliveries for two rival gangs. She lives with her "uncle", played by Mum, and has a crush on the handsome musician next door. All of this is besides the point, which is to allow a series of goofy situations with even goofier characters. There's one gangster who sings his own theme song upon entering a room, the sartorially challenged owner of the bicycle courier service, and a would-be suitor who, as one joker would put it, has a face for radio; Almost nothing is sacred here with the exception of Mum's character, a video store owner, pointing out that everything in his store is legal. And if you think the boast of the guy who proclaims that he'll be selling DVDs of movies released in theaters earlier in the day is some kind of exaggeration, I can tell you about seeing DVDs of Hollywood movies even before they hit U.S. theaters. Some of the humor here is aimed at cliches about life in Thailand.

That suitor gets the worst of Mum's verbal barbs, being called "Dog phlegm", among other niceties. There are even a couple inquiries as to whether he's the placenta and the actual baby is somewhere else. Yes, Mum's sense of humor is unfiltered, and some of us like it that way. One of the funnier sight gags involves a hood pulling a knife out of his leg, flinging it away, only to have it ricochet against a warehouse pillar and plunge into his arm. Yeah, it's rude and crude, but also truly entertaining.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:55 AM

May 16, 2013

Nightfall

Daai deoi bou
Chow Hin Yeung - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

You'll have to really pay attention to catch quick glances of movie posters at the female detective's apartment. I spotted posters for Vertigo and The Long Goodbye. Add to that an English language title shared with Jacques Tourneur's film from 1957. What connects Chow's film with these past works is the attention to the psychology of the characters. There is also some high tech electronic stalking reminiscent of Coppola's tangentially noir The Conversation. Like classic film noir, this is a film that's less interested in crime than in slowly peeling away family secrets.

Nick Cheung puts in a forceful performance as Wong, a man just released after serving twenty years in prison for rape and murder. Cheung doesn't speak at all, and it isn't until about the forty-five minute mark, when undergoing interrogation from a grizzled Simon Yam, that you realize that he can't speak. On his first night out of prison, Wong is eating an ice cream cone, while observing young women, pretty with short dresses, enjoying Hong Kong night life. There is a ravenous look on Wong's face that is clearly hungry for more than ice cream.

There is a murder of of a prominent musician that appears to be an act of revenge by Wong. Detective Lam, interested in reopening closed cases sees connections that others miss. But the real heart of this film is about prisons, real or psychological, imposed by others, and the fragile nature of relationships between fathers and daughters. Vertigo is probably the most famous example, but part of the story here is built on two identical looking women.

Some viewers may get vertigo from Nightfall's outstanding set-piece. Lam and Wong go to Lantau Island, a tourist attraction that Wong visited in the past. The two are in one of the cable cars, high above ground. These cable cars have clear glass floors. Lam and Wong get into a fight in this very enclosed space, with gun shots piercing the windows and floor. A glass floor with cracks and bullet holes does not engender much confidence in a safe ride when you're suspended several hundred feet above a forest.

A film that is in part about musicians, the score by Shigeru Umebayashi is especially unusual for a mainstream Hong Kong film, with one of the major themes played by a dissonant violin. This is the second film for both Chow and his screenwriter Christine To. An added bonus is a brief appearance by Gordon Liu. In seriously bad health for over a year now, as far as I'm concerned, even a cameo by Liu is pure gold. Some of the brutality in the opening scene, a fight among prisoners in a shower, might put off some viewers. There are moments in Nightfall that play more like a horror movie than a crime thriller. Then again, the director of the older Nightfall worked famously in both genres. I'd prefer to think that this is more than coincidence.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:12 AM

May 14, 2013

A New Kind of Love

Melville Shavelson - 1963
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

If you haven't seen the poster for this year's edition of the Cannes Film Festival, I'm including it here at the bottom of this post. It was a publicity shot of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward shot during the production of A New Kind of Love. A similar image was used for the movie's poster, also included here, probably using that photo as a guide. It's a great photo. It's also one of those rare images still looks fresh. If you didn't know who was in the photo, it might be hard to guess that it was photographed fifty years ago. It's also an image that's not in the movie.

You want to see a hip movie with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in Paris? That would be Paris Blues with Newman and Sidney Poitier as expatriate jazzbos, under the direction of Martin Ritt. Even the New York Times' Bosley Crowthers concluded, "Mr. Shavelson and his hardworking troupe and cameraman have strained mightily but their New Kind of Love is hardly new and only fitfully funny or farcial." And time has not made this film look any better than it did in 1963.

The bright spot is Joanne Woodward in the first half of the film. As the "designer" of knock-off couture for a New York City department store, Woodward with her short hair, masculine suits, cap and sunglasses rocks the androgynous look so well that Tilda Swinton should watch this movie, and take a few notes. Woodward is much sexier here than when she finally succumbs to appearing more traditionally feminine as a means of turning around her life as a "semi-virgin". And if some of the comedy here doesn't make you groan, there's the premise that a successful professional life notwithstanding, it's every woman's goal to get married.

The rest of A New Kind of Love offers a tourist's view of Paris and French culture. Having Maurice Chevalier appear to sing and dance excerpts of his greatest hits solidifies this as a Hollywood version of France. Character actor Marvin Kaplan, as a Paris based American Journalist, offers some genuinely amusing moments. Otherwise, much of what passes for humor is often smarmy. It doesn't help that as keeping with the production code of the time, there are a couple of scenes in a strip club which reveal no more skin than can be seen in a movie like Bikini Beach. There is the brief exception with a strip tease involving an umbrella that glows in the dark. The topical humor is so dated that I'm certain anyone under the age of fifty will be asking, "Who's Huntley Brinkley?".

With all the stories about the Cannes poster, I have yet to see anyone mention the name of the original photographer. Sure, the image was redone for the festival, but the guy who was on Paramount's payroll should get his due. I don't know of anyone who has seen the poster who doesn't love it. If anything, this is a reminder about why film scholarship is more than trivial pursuit - even a forgettable movie can be the source for one unforgettable image.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

May 09, 2013

Back to 1942

Yi Jiu Si Er
Feng Xiaogang - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The history lessons in Back to 1942 are not exclusive to a specific place or time. While the subject is about a major famine in Henen Province, China during World War II, the human and political aspects have more universal resonance. To watch this film and think "it can't happen here" would be to miss the point, given recent history in the U.S. in the wake of hurricanes and other disasters.

This is not an easy film to watch. Feng attempts to work out a balance between the more personal story of the ill-fated journey of a Henen family with the various historical forces at work. At almost every turn, people make hard choices. Feng shows a degree of sympathy for Chiang Kai-shek, who might have been able to step in earlier had he been better informed about the situation. On the large scale, there is the conflict between military and humanitarian needs, feeding an army fighting the Japanese or taking care of a civilian population of thirty million. On a more intimate level, people argue over small amounts of grain, women are sold into prostitution to help feed other family members and as a way of survival, and refugees are caught between various governmental agencies that can't or won't help.

This is the third of Feng's big budget films concerning 20th Century Chinese history, following Assembly and Aftershock. The two familiar star names here, Tim Robbins and Adrian Brody essentially have supporting roles. Robbins plays the part of Bishop Thomas Magen, who had a Catholic mission. Brody's is the more significant, as journalist Theodore White, who covered China for Time magazine during World War II, and wrote a book about the Henen famine. Even the casting of two Oscar winners cannot overcome the indifference towards Chinese films by most U.S. moviegoers. While Brody does bring sincere earnestness to his role, Robbins adds very little here.

The real star here is Zhang Guoli as Master Fan. The film follows Fan's odyssey from prosperous landowner and patriarch to lone refugee, last seen adopting an orphan girl he finds on the road. Fan's story is one of loss of family members and material possessions until there is nothing left but to go back to what's left of home. The film is from a novel by Liu Zhenyun. A New York Times essay by Liu explains why he wrote about Henen. While Feng's films such as A World without Thieves or If You are the One are more easily embraceable, he should get some credit for using his commercial success to take a look at some parts of Chinese history that many of his contemporaries would choose to ignore.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:26 AM

May 07, 2013

She Cat

Meneko
Shingo Yamashiro - 1983
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Between the shootings and the general sense of nihilism, She Cat strikes me as being closer in spirit to the kind of movies Japan's Nikkatsu company produced in the late Fifties and early Sixties. With the exception of one of the minor characters, there's a bleak ending for everyone involved here. At the same time that the film may seem to look to the past with its story involving gangsters and corruption among the corporate elite, the sexual elements are relatively more adventurous than what is found on most Roman Porno.

There are scenes of lesbian sex involving the three female doctors, two of whom are a couple running an Ob/Gyn clinic. The opening scene is of a man bringing his female impersonating wife, Tomiko, to the clinic to verify her pregnancy. The happy couple invites Dr. "Cat" Kagami to Tomiko's birthday party. Things take a turn for the worse for everyone when shots are fired into the crowded party, and the birthday girl is killed.

How much Shingo Yamashino and his writers Chiho Katsura and Makoto Naito deliberately cribbed from other outre filmmakers is unknown, but I just can't dismiss some things as coincidence. The sapphic scenes as well as uses of quick flashbacks made me think of Radley Metzger at his most self-consciously arty, while Tomiko's birthday party seemed like a nod to Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. There's even a vaginal point of view shot, something that I associate with Jess Franco. There's also some conventional heterosexual coupling for those who get off on that sort of thing.

What also makes She Cat unusual is that, with the exception of a Cat's friend in need, Charlie, the straight guys here are scum or just plain sleazeballs. Even without the rape and murder, these men are one unsavory bunch. The various strands of perversity make for one of the more unique films in Nakkatsu's Roman Porno series. Perhaps I am reading more than intended, but it could well be that in its idiosyncratic way, the film might be understood as criticism of the worst excesses of self-entitled male heterosexual privilege.

The only real misstep here is a synth driven score so cheesy I was afraid my lactose intolerance would flare up again. The worst of it is during a chase scene in Yokohama's Chinatown district with music more fitting for a no-budget kung fu movie by some fly by night company.

Ai Saotome displays her ample breasts, but for me is more electrifyingly sexy wearing a fur coat when out for revenge. Seeing her handle a gun or a scalpel, it's no surprise that Saotome was often cast as a villain. Writer Chiho Katsura's most famous credit is probably that masterpiece of nuttiness, House. Shingo Yamashiro directed a handful of films, but spent most of his forty-plus year career in front of the camera with roles in Thirteen Assassins and Graveyard of Honor among his more notable credits.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

May 02, 2013

Female Teacher Hunting

Onna kyoshi-gari
Junichi Suzuki - 1982
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

During a moment of sex with her married lover, Shimako tells him, "Let's get nasty." Nasty might be a good operative word for much of this film. The narrative caters for that particular male audience which enjoys depictions of rape. The sex in this film is mostly furtive and joyless. As one of the latter Nikkatsu Roman Porno productions, it appears that production money was tightening with the use of grainier film stock, adding to the tonal darkness here.

The story hinges on a nasty rumor of a student raping a female classmate. Rather than clearing up the accusation, the student drops out of school, winding up in a small coastal town where he lives and works with a owner of a small restaurant and his openly available wife. Shimako also shows up at the town, attempting to continue her relationship with her lover.

There are times when one watches a movie that seems less than promising in the hopes that there is something that provides a payoff, at the very least a small moment of redemption. I don't know if it was deliberate, but there is one near perfect shot of Shimako and her lover sitting together in a car. There are hints that the relationship is not going well. The couple are seen sharing the same space within the car, underneath a bridge. Looking at the two through the front window, the reflection of light creates a jagged division between the two. The light shines on Shimako, while the lover is in a darker space. The visual qualities in this one shot reveal all that needs to be said about this couple in the kind of shot that would more likely be remarked upon in a film by a more seriously considered filmmaker.

Water also plays an important part in the narrative. The film begins and ends with nude swimming in the school's outdoor pool. Shimako encounters her lover with his family during a stroll on the beach. The cleansing power of water is literally shown with Shimako taking a shower. There are also some metaphorical implications with the restaurant owner keeping some guppies found swimming in dirty street water. The suggestion here is that sometimes one has to swim through dirty water and find ways to be adaptable to survive. That the baby guppies have to be separated from the parents to keep from being eaten reenforces the notion of social Darwinism at work.

As noted in his own website Junichi Suzuki was nominated as a best new director for Female Teacher Hunting. It could well be that culture and context play a part here, although Suzuki's post Roman Porno career is certainly impressive. Likewise, star Yuki Kazamatsuri has had a long career, most notably with an appearance in Kill Bill, Vol. 1.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

April 30, 2013

The Assassin's Blade

Mo hup leung juk / The Butterfly Lovers
Jingle Ma - 2008
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Cutie pie Charlene Choi makes one very unconvincing guy. That never gets in the way of enjoying this often delightful retelling of a classic Chinese love story. I wrote about an earlier film version from the Shaw Brothers, Love Eterne, a couple of years ago. The Assassin's Blade might sell a few more DVDs than The Butterfly Lovers, but the second title is more accurate. There is sword fighting and displays of martial arts prowess, but its secondary to the romance which is the heart of this film.

An early scene, with different groups fighting it out on the streets, with Chinese opera styled music on the soundtrack, may well be Jingle Ma's tip of the hat to the older Shaw Brothers productions from the Sixties and early Seventies. It's a scene with broad humor and high kicks while Choi, as the young man, Yanzhi, cowers against a wall. Yanzhi is on his/her way to train in martial arts in a school that only has male students. Even when "Big Brother" Liang is in on the secret, he remains discrete in spite of his feelings for the disguised girl.

Tsui Hark also filmed this story with the English language title of The Lovers. Jingle Ma's version is also a reaction to that film.

As can be expected, some of the humor comes from Yanzhi trying to avoid situations where her secret might be exposed, such as when, as part of a school initiation, she's tossed into a lake. The five foot, five inch Choi is dwarfed by all of the men here. When trying to show off her martial arts skill, she barely can move any of the large weapons, and is further humiliated by being assigned to study with the children's group. Yanzhi's feminine skills are put to good use when after being praised for repairing a shirt, he/she teaches a group of young men how to saw, with one remarking that it's harder than kung fu.

Most of the potential homoeroticism is sidestepped here. There is a subplot involving political intrigue. Liang and a romantic rival engage in sword fighting. Tony Ching was responsible for staging the action scenes. Still, most people don't see Romeo and Juliet for the brawling of the Montagues and Capulets, and this story, preceding Shakespeare by about six centuries, is no different.

I've seen only a handful of Jingle Ma's films, with this being the best. What stands out for me is the use of color. Liang takes Yanzhi to a valley of butterflies, where the butterflies and the surrounding plant life are hyper intensive pastels. There is also a wonderful use of red, the wedding costumes worn by Yanzhi and her fiance, Ma, the lanterns, as well as the tinting of Liang's sword, in one of the later scenes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:38 AM

April 23, 2013

Electric Button

Tsuki to Cherry / Moon & Cherry
Yuki Tanada - 2004
Tidepoint Pictures Region 1 DVD

The young woman known by her family name of Mayama has, if not exactly a super power, the keen ability to look through a guy in just a few seconds. Introduced as the lone female in a club of university students who gather to write erotic literature, she immediately blasts through the pretenses of newbie Tadokoro, identifying him as a virgin.

"Electric Button" is the group's slang term used to refer to a female genitalia. It's the emotional buttons of Tadokoro that keep on being pushed as Mayama initiates him into a sexual relationship primarily to be used as material for her popular serial. Any description of the plot might make one think Yuki Tanada's debut feature might be a feminine take on the pink film if not the more sentimental coming of age stories. Even though Tanada is a fan of the Farrelly brothers, the banter between Mayama and Tadokoro reminded me more of some Hollywood comedies from an earlier era.

Between Mayama's take charge attitude, and Tadokoro's bewilderment in finding himself in situations he is totally for which he is totally unprepared, I thought of such volatile pairings such as Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper in Ball of Fire, or Stanwyck and Henry Fonda in The Lady Eve, as well as Katherine Hepburn humiliating Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby. Returning to complain about being tricked into an encounter with a dominatrix, Tadokoro complains about the various indignities he's experienced while Mayama hastily scribbles notes. Mayama reminds Tadokoro's of his declaration of having stamina, to which the young man can only sputter, "That's not the point". It's a scene that doesn't seem all to removed from Cary Grant having a temper tantrum while wearing Katherine Hepburn's nightgown.

As if taking its queues from classic Hollywood, Tadokoro engages in a relationship with the more traditionally feminine Akane, small, cute, and cheerful. And like older films, the male protagonist feels a sense of dissatisfaction, longing for the more independent and willful female. Akane's is no pushover either, with the two parting on her terms.

This is Yuki Tanada's only film at this time to get a U.S. DVD release. I wrote about her One Million Yen Girl almost three years ago. Like that film, Electric Button falls outside the more easily identifiable genre classifications used nowadays to market Asian cinema. This is a low key mostly comic film, which briefly touches on some serious points suggesting that still in Japan, there are certain expectations made of female artists.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:24 AM

April 18, 2013

The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg

Aviva Kempner - 2000
The Ciesla Foundation All Region DVD

So we're into baseball season, but also it might be considered less than coincidental that this new DVD version of Aviva Kempner's documentary is released almost at the same time as the theatrical release of the new movie about Jackie Robinson, 42. While Hank Greenberg was not the first Jewish major league player, he was the first one to be a national celebrity. Retired from the field, and as part of the front office of the Cleveland Indians, Greenberg did his part to make baseball racially integrated. Additionally, during his last year as a player, although playing on opposing teams, Greenberg was one of the first to be openly supportive of Robinson, as well as establish a personal friendship.

I had seen this film during its original theatrical release. If you haven't seen it any format, get to it!

The original film includes a commentary by Kempner who discusses the thirteen years it took to make her movie. In additional to archival footage and photographs of Greenberg and other players, there are clips from several classic baseball movies. Near the end, there is also the inclusion of one of the high points from the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera, where the orchestra plays "Take Me Out to the Ballgame", with ball tossing between Chico and Harpo, while Groucho hawks the "peanuts and Crackerjacks". The film begins with "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" sung in Yiddish, which sets the stage for the main thesis, about is almost as much about Jewish life in America as it is about Hank Greenberg.

The main reason that this new DVD release replaces the previous version is because of the second disc. At over two hours, it's virtually a whole second movie. In addition to deleted segments of interviews with celebrity fans like Walter Matthau and Alan Dershowitz, there's a further investigation into the history of baseball. We're not talking simply about who played and when, but also how the game was played. Part of this history is of how Babe Ruth changed the game, with the support of fans, to one of power hitting and home runs. Also, how many of the early major league players were from the rural south, citing Dizzy Dean as a prime example. The additional footage may also put to rest any debate as to whether Greenberg was robbed of the opportunity to meet or beat Babe Ruth's record of home runs in a single season. One of the other bonuses of this second disc is the inclusion of a telephone interview Kempner made with baseball great Ted Williams.

When it comes to baseball, I am admittedly a casual fan. Still, after a little more than ten years, I was excited about seeing this documentary again. And for the more die hard baseball fan, this is a great way to spend the time when the game you planned to watch is blacked out or rained out, or worse, locked out.

This new edition of The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg can be ordered here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:14 AM | Comments (2)

April 16, 2013

Dragon

Wu Xia
Peter Chan - 2011
Radius / TWC BD Region A

While Peter Chan and Donnie Yen acknowledge a debt to the classic Shaw Brothers martial arts movies, I think some credit should be given to Victor Hugo. The characters played by Yen and Takeshi Kaneshiro are lifted from the archetypes first established in Les Miserables. Yen is first seen as a quiet family man who runs a rural paper mill. Yen, as Jin-xi, just happens to be in a small shop when two thugs show up demanding money from the older couple who run the store. A fight ensues with lots of punches, an ear lopped off, and the two strangers dead. The modest Jin-xi is hailed as a hero, yet the visiting detective, Bai-jiu, has questions about the fight, who really had the upper hand, as well as questions about Jin-xi. Like Jean Valjean, Jin-xi reveals more about himself when his physical abilities are put to the test, while Bai-jiu is like Javert, setting aside any sense of humanism in the name of enforcing the law.

For some, the biggest mystery to Dragon is why someone thought the original title, Wu Xia needed to be changed, especially as it is used in both the film and the extras. I'm not even sure why the film was titled Wu Xia in the first place as such a title suggests a film more along the lines of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin. (On a somewhat related note, Gordan Liu's original Chinese personal name in Jin-xi.) And with all the extras, it doesn't make sense that the DVD/Blu-ray version does not include what was edited out of the U.S. release, either as extras or of Peter Chan's original cut.

Those quibbles aside, Dragon is intriguing to watch, primarily for the gamesmanship between Yen and Kaneshiro. For the fan of classic martial arts films, there are two set pieces featuring Shaw Brothers veterans. The first, with Kara Hui, looking great for what what the French would describe as being a "woman of a certain age", involves a rooftop chase, and a fight inside a very small barn with some very large water buffalos, that happens to be built over a waterfall. The second big fight scene is a face off between Yen and Jimmy Wang Yu. Brought back from retirement, and well into his Sixties as the time the film was made, Wang is still very formidable. Older and heavier, he still looks like he can kick your ass without little effort (definitely mine). Lots of punches and slashing of swords left me catching my breath when this fight was over.

Titles inform the viewer that the film takes place in 1917. If it weren't for the then contemporary hat and glasses worn by Kaneshiro, or the the uniforms of several policemen, it would be impossible to guess that Dragon takes place in the early part of the 20th Century. I would guess this establishment of time is used as a reminder of what Chinese life was like outside of the major urban centers, with a plot predicated on the kind of existence where people rarely left their home villages, and sons were expected to carry on the trade of their fathers. Traditional notions of filial piety are touched upon several times here.

After The Warlords and Perhaps Love, Peter Chan appears to have wanted to work on something not quite elaborate as those previous films. It is not surprising, based on his earlier work, that some of the nicest scenes are those of family life with Tang Wei as Jin-xi's wife, Ayu, and the two boys as their sons. Donnie Yen staged the action scenes, and in the supplements explains the challenges for both himself, the other actors and the crew. Almost fifty, I would not expect to see Yen in many more films showing off his martial arts skills, though he remains a charismatic screen presence, and with Ballistic Kiss, is also quite capable as a film director.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:28 PM

April 11, 2013

At the Gate of the Ghost

U Mong Pa Meung
Bhandevanop Devakula - 2011
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I do consider it something of a small miracle that when a new Thai movie gets any kind of U.S. release, it is neither focussed on ghosts or kickboxing. Even if one has seen Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, it should be of interest to see a new interpretation of the stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa that provided the original basis for that film. Kurosawa's film also provided the inspiration for the Thai play by Kukrit Pramoj from 1973, one of at least three different theatrical productions noted. Further complicating things here is that the original English language title for the Thai film is The Outrage, which was the title use for the Hollywood remake from 1964, a western with Paul Newman in the Toshiro Mifune role. Not only did Martin Ritt's film acknowledge it's debt to Akutagawa and Kurosawa, but Ritt's screenplay was by Michael Kanin, who with Fay Kanin, wrote their own theatrical version produced in 1959. It's almost a self-commentary that there would be several versions of Rashomon.

Bhandevanop "Mom Noi" Devakula places the story in 16th Century Siam. The framing story is of a young Buddhist monk, considering leaving the priesthood, stopping for shelter in the rain in a tunnel that appears to have served as a temple. He is with a woodsman. Both have acted as witnesses for the murder trial of the bandit accused of murdering a warlord. While there is the same acknowledgment that perhaps no one is telling the truth about rape of wife, or the death of the husband, from a Buddhist perspective there is also a sense of forgiveness for human frailty.

Visually, Mom Noi takes hints from Thai painting, dance and drama. One of the most striking scenes is of the medium who relays the dead warlord's story. With white make-up, blacked out teeth, and exaggerated movements, singer Radklao Amartisha personifies the most extreme stylization in the film. Whether such a character is historically accurate or not doesn't matter. Within the context of this film, it works.

For those familiar with current Thai cinema, Mom Noi has assembled several big names, notably Mario Maurer as the monk and Ananda Everingham as the warlord. Most surprising is the inclusion of popular comic star Petthai Wongkamlao as the woodsman. Anyone who has seen either of the Thai Bodyguard movies or recalls his supporting roles with Tony Jaa will understand what a shift this is for the performer best known for his rude, and very funny, comedy. Chermarn Boonyasak, one of the few steadily working Thai actresses, plays the warlord's wife. Dom Hetrakul, best known primarily for supporting roles, most recently in Bangkok Revenge which I covered a few weeks ago, plays the bandit, that is to say, the Toshiro Mifune part.

The Thai title translates as "Tunnel in the Cliff". The location shooting was done in northern Thailand. with much of the action near a sensuous waterfall. At the Gate of the Ghost might not have the kind of impact that Rashomon had when it was released over sixty years ago, but more than many remakes, is worth investigating for the reworking of a now classic story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:53 AM | Comments (2)

April 09, 2013

The Sorcerer and the White Snake

Bai she chuan shuo
Tony Ching - 2011
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

One of my favorite Buddhist parables about the Dragon King's daughter. In its essence, the lesson is that anyone can be a Buddha, that it's not confined to human males. Even non-human females could be enlightened in their present form. As there are many forms of Buddhist practice, this isn't the Buddhism of Jet Li and his disciples in The Sorcerer and the White Snake. Had it been otherwise, we might have seen, if not happy ending, at least a happier ending to this classic story.

Tony Ching's film is the newest version of "The Legend of the White Snake". The only previous film version I am familiar with is Tsui Hark's Green Snake, with the always charming Maggie Cheung in the title role. This new version takes advantage of CGI special effects, and for those who were able to see the film theatrically, 3D. Tony Ching has been down this road of impossible, supernatural love, before, with what is still his best work, A Chinese Ghost Story, with Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong, from 1987, produced by Tsui. It was Joey Wong who played White Snake in Tsui Hark's film, perhaps not coincidentally.

The snake sisters here are Eva Huang as White Snake and Charlene Choi as Green Snake. Huang isn't as well known stateside, but is a major name as an actress and singer, as well as being part of the production company for this film. The bulk of the film concentrates on the love story between White Snake and the young herbalist, Xu Xian, played by Raymond Lam. White Snake takes on human form, falling in love with Xian. Because she is actually a demon, the relationship between the two is forbidden. Huang and Lam are also the vocalists on the film's theme song played during the closing credits.

Even though Jet Li gets top billing, his is more of a supporting role as the Buddhist monk Fahai. In the early scenes, Li is seen with Wen Zhang as Neng Ren, a well-meaning, but bumbling disciple, as well as the film's comic foil. While we see Li doing some sword fighting and flying around with duels with the Ice Harpy, as well as the snake sisters, his best and funniest scene is maintaining total poise while surrounded by the gorgeous Fox Demons. Foxy ladies, indeed. There are also the Bat Demons who take on Neng Ren, who is able to destroy most of them with a pair of cymbals, until he is bitten himself. If that's not enough, there are also some talking animals, also friendly demons, including a tortoise and one very chubby mouse.

For all of the special effects and wire work, it is Charlene Choi playing against Wen Zhang that is the best part of this film. One of the funnier scenes is of Green Snake trying to teach the transitioning Neng Ren on how to be a demon, including hanging him upside down like a bat. It's scenes such as this that are a reminder that the best parts of many movies involve good dialogue and a sense of humor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

April 08, 2013

Tormented

Rabitto Hora 3D
Takashi Shimizu - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

While one can probably enjoy Tormented without seeing Takashi Shimizu's previous excursion into 3D, Shock Labyrinth, the two films are connected in several ways that I would advise seeing the earlier film first, if possible. This connection is made clear in an audacious use of self-reference. A young woman, Kiriko, and her younger brother, Daigo, go to the movies. Not just any movie, but Shock Labyrinth. One of the recurring motifs in that film involves a stuffed toy rabbit. While watching the movie, in 3D of course, the toy rabbit flies out of the screen and into the hands of Daigo. During this scene, Shimizu gets to employ a terrific sight gag involving the "realism" of 3D movies, while the toy rabbit continues as a significant part of Tormented.

Like Shock Labyrinth, Shimizu again explores an interweaving of dreams, nightmares and memories. The story is told as a modern day fairy tale about a mute librarian who witnesses her young brother killing a rabbit with a large stone. Was the killing an act of mercy or pure sadism. The sister and brother live with their father, indifferent to them, involved in creating a pop-up book version of The Little Mermaid. Simultaneously, this film refers to the violence found in classic fairy tales and children's stories, as well as the artistic recreation of three dimensional illusions. One might also recall the delight some young children have regarding telling stories involving death and gore, trying to gross each other out.

In other ways, Tormented would be a reworking of narrative and visual elements in Shock Labyrinth. There is the hospital, where the medical staff appears as physically broken as the patients. There is also a return of that spiral staircase, similar use of color. Working with legendary cinematographer Christopher Doyle, there is more play here in the use of film grain and color. A nightmare sequence at an amusement part Merry-Go-Round indicates familiarity with Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train with the shots of the horses' heads.

There may be some disappointment from those expecting the same kind of shocks presented in Ju-on or even the American The Grudge. Not that Tormented is entirely bloodless, but the emphasis is on psychological horror. What I liked was the shifting narratives, from the points of view of Kiriko and her father. Again I refer to Alfred Hitchcock, who played with the notion that the audience trusts what they are seeing, where the long flashback from the point of view of Marlene Dietrich in Stage Fright turns out to be a lie. Shimizu does Hitchcock better so that nothing seen by the film viewer is to be trusted as truthful. Much of Tormented is visually told from a child's point of view, with one wonderful shot of the amusement park illuminated during the early evening, conveying a sense of wonderment, just prior to the inescapable nightmares to come.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:36 AM

April 06, 2013

Woochi

Choi Dong-hoon - 2009
Shout! Factory BD Region A

Within the space of a few months, I've now seen three of Choi Dong-hoon's films. Choi may not yet be as familiar a name as several other South Korean filmmakers, but all four of his films have been popular, as well as critical, successes, and for good reason - the guy knows how to make an entertaining film. Three of Choi's films involve criminals with elaborate schemes, and are worthy of someone who admires classic genre films. Woochi is a fantasy film with magical tricksters.

Woochi is a lowly Taoist wizard in 16th Century Korea, whose pranks include impersonating royalty so that the poor in an outlying area get food and money. There's a plot involving escaped monsters and a group of characters finding themselves all in 2009 Seoul, and a flute broke in half that can control the monsters. Woochi runs around with an assistant, a dog transformed to human form, though not entirely free of dog-like traits. Even with the elaborate set-up, with about forty-five minutes devoted to establishing the characters in their past setting, the story is of less interest than some of the set pieces.

South Korea doesn't have much of a history regarding musicals, but there are hints that this is another genre in which Choi might be successful. Indication is first seen early on, when Woochi, impersonating royalty, walks past a large ensemble of musicians, having them change their rhythm while a courtier kowtows to him. The second time is in contemporary Seoul, with the music from a record player in front of a store provides the soundtrack to one of the scenes of magical martial arts.

This is a film in which portals to other worlds, or simply other parts of Korea, are all over the place. Characters jump in and out of paintings, television screens, mirrors, walls and waterfalls. In a scene taking place in the past, Woochi transforms part of a hilly area to an ocean beach, showing off to a young woman. That same beach is revisited when Woochi rediscovers the woman, In-Kyong, now working as an assistant to a movie star. That nothing is ever what it seems is especially brought up when Woochi stumbles upon, and demolishes, a movie set.

I don't think it's mere coincidence that the movie we see in production is about Koreans during the time of Japanese occupation. Considering that this was a time when Koreans often took Japanese names and a sense of identity as Japanese, this plays well with the characters from the past taking on contemporary identities, or at least contemporary clothing. The monsters being pursued by Woochi are disguised as humans, when they are actually a giant rat and menacing rabbit. For someone who was in suspended animation for about 500 years, Woochi has little trouble adjusting to the contemporary world, finding out for himself that in some ways things haven't really changed, and people remain as foolish as they ever were.

The DVD/Blu-ray release is chock full of extras - interviews with cast and crew, deleted scenes, and looks at various aspects of the production. And while some of the action scenes are dazzling, the best part of Woochi will be its sly humor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:43 PM

April 04, 2013

The Four

Si da ming bu
Gordon Chan and Janet Chun - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There's a lightness of touch that makes The Four more enjoyable than anticipated. There is the period setting, and loads of wire work and special effects, get none it weighs down this film, perhaps because Gordon Chan and Janet Chun keep any sense of self-importance in check.

The first film of an announced trilogy, the basis is from the writings of Wun Ruian. Some liberties were taken, and some resemblances to some comic book superheroes may be more than coincidental. The four are three men and a woman with special powers, led by a self-described "useless old man", members of the special Divine Constabulary. The woman, Emotionless, is something like a distaff Magneto, but much prettier. Cold Hands is a far less hirsute than Wolverine. Maybe the reason why the film works well for me is because the filmmakers don't spend time trying to impress the viewers with either the special powers or the special effects, but choose to move the action along, because really, there's nothing extraordinary about a villain bringing dead people to life, or being able to leap across rooftops in pursuit of the bad guys.

The main story is of the Divine Constabulary working both with and against an elite District Six unit which has just added six females to the staff. Cold Hands has been officially dismissed from District Six, and has been invited to join the Divine Constabulary. Not only are his loyalties divided between these two groups, but he is torn between attraction to Emotionless and District Six's Yaohua. Both groups are trying to find out who is responsible for minting counterfeit coins, potentially undermining the royal government.

What did impress me was the opening shot, a bird's eye view of the city where the action takes place. The "Making of" supplement explains how the shot was done by a combination of cranes with a camera on a series of wires. The bird is a character in the story, the mobile observer for the wheel chair bound Emotionless. There are also a couple of scenes of the female District Six officers bathing, pushing the envelope regarding nudity in a big budget, mainland Chinese film.

The main attraction for myself was seeing another film with Liu Yifei. Most of the time seen in a wheel chair, Liu gets in on the action with some sword fighting and telepathically controlled ninja stars. Frequent Gordon Chan collaborators Anthony Wong and Ronald Cheng appear as the mentor to the four, and the comic Life Snatcher, respectively. Wu Xiobo appears as the villain, An, whose best super power is to crack jokes at seemingly unlikely moments.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 AM

April 01, 2013

Sexcula

Bob Hollowich - 1974
Impulse Pictures Region 0 DVD

For April Fool's Day, one very appropriate movie.

The history of Sexcula may or may not be apocryphal, but it's a lot more entertaining than what actually appears on screen. Canadian filmmaker Bob Hollowich intended to make an erotic spoof of horror movies, but not simply erotic, but with hard core sex. The two most glaring problems were that in 1974, hard core films were not given theatrical release at the time, and those who did see the film at a one time private screening were duly appalled by what they saw. Life and art came together as the story is about Dr. Fallatingstien (that's how the credits read) and her impotent lover, Frank. Apparently, the only thing stiff about the actor portraying Frank was his acting ability. The doctor's cousin, Sexcula, is called to help. There's also a hunchback named Orgie, a gorilla, and an assortment of scantily clad or naked women. Somewhere along the line, the narrative gets lost to a story about the making of a porno movie that climaxes with four way sex in a church where they all, ahem, kiss the bride.

According to the supplemental notes of "Porn Archaeogist" Dimitrious Otis, a print of Sexcula was deposited at the National Archives of Canada. The film became something of a legend, I would think mostly because almost no one had seen it. And some may also argue that Sexcula is proof that some "lost" movies should remain lost.

Rather than complain that the glass is half empty, and the water is probably from a questionable tap, let us look at why appreciation should be made to the folks at Impulse Pictures for releasing this movie on DVD.

First, Sexcula is every bit as awkward as its title. The actors aren't that good looking and what passes for humor is just plain stupid. Add to this more than enough shots of bare thrusting male and female buttocks. There is also a scene where the gorilla makes out with the hunchback but I can't be sure because the action takes place in a large, black shadow. Anyways, what I did see makes me appreciate the craft of those journeymen makers of porn whose films are at least well lit, with tenuous semblances of a story.

Second, more proof that Ed Wood, Jr. was never the world's worst filmmaker, and that Plan Nine from Outer Space is not the worst film ever made. Sure, Eddie was a sloppy filmmaker, but most of his films are truly entertaining. Until I saw Sexcula I never thought I would miss the thespian talents of Dudley Manlove. I'm also pretty sure that any of those snobs who sneer at the likes of Jesus Franco or Jean Rollin will revise their opinions in short order. And Pierre Chevalier, where ever the hell you may be, I take back my snide comments about Orloff and the Invisible Man.

Third, the recovery of any "lost" movie always gives the serous cinephile hope. In the past few years, more footage of Fritz Lang's Metropolis was discovered. There were also a slew of silent movies found in New Zealand. The surviving first half of Alfred Hitchock's first major screen credit was made available for online viewing. Who knows, maybe there still is a print of Orson Welles' cut of The Magnificent Ambersons somewhere? Some film scholars are hoping for the eight hour version of Greed. Me, I'd love to see the Dutch thriller, Obsessions from 1969, music by Bernard Herrmann, and a screenplay by some guy named Martin Scorsese.

One is also reminded of the old gag applied to several better works: "This movie wasn't released. It escaped."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:44 AM

March 26, 2013

GLOW: The Story of the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

Hollywood

Brett Whitcomb - 2012
New Video / Docurama Films Region 1 DVD

Way, way back in the 1950s, when my age was still in the single digits, I watched professional wrestling a few times when in was a staple on broadcast television. I only have the vaguest memory of what I actually watched, but the name of "Haystacks" Calhoun is permanently seared in my brain. There was a time, almost twenty years later, when the buzzword was "semiotics", and I discovered Roland Barthes' delightful essay on wrestling in Mythologies. Later, professional wrestling seemed to be on cultural upswing in the Eighties, with fans to be found among puck rockers and new wave musicians, most notably with the collaborations of Cindi Lauper and "Captain Lou" Albano. Yet I was not prepared for what I saw while channel surfing on a Saturday night in 1986.

It wasn't just a matter of seeing a show devoted solely to wrestling women. It was those rap musical interludes that made me wonder what I had stumbled on. And yes, the novelty did eventually wear off, but for a while there I was hooked. Whatever it was that I was watching, there was nothing else like it, and no way to adequately describe what seemed like a show broadcast from another planet.

Lorilyn Palmer

What this documentary does best is to reveal the women behind the often outlandish make-up and costumes, as well as some of the men behind the scenes. G.L.O.W. as a television show only last four years. While the plug was pulled unexpectedly, after learning about the physical toll it took on some of the performers, I'm glad not more women were injured. Seeing Susie Spirit's broken arm is a reminder of the reality of professional wrestling.

Part of the story of GLOW is that it was originally conceived by producer David McLane at a time when women's wrestling was a side attraction to the regular bouts between men. It was director Matt Cimber who came up with many of the pseudonyms for the performers, as well as the story lines. The same sensibility that made that Pia Zadora spectacle, Butterfly the subject of extreme critical derision paid off in a show where a lack of taste or subtlety were the main selling points. It was Butterfly producer Meshulam Riklis who financed the show, as well as providing the stage of the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas. Wrestler Mando Guerrero discusses training in fine art of body flips and writhing in agony. David Blance tells about starting as a staff comedy writer before becoming a part of the cast.

The main story is about the women. Emily Dole, known as Mountain Fiji, was an Olympian shot putter before stepping into the ring. Lisa Moreti, began as Tina Ferrari with GLOW, later becoming Ivory with World Wrestling Entertainment. Before and after she became Matilda the Hun, Dee Booher established herself as one of the top professional female wrestlers. One of the funnier stories, is that due to established rules for women wrestlers, Booher was not allowed to wrestle a man, but did get in the ring with a 750 pound bear. Others, such as Jeanne Basone, appropriately named Hollywood, were among the aspiring actresses who auditioned for what they thought was simply another television show. Almost as hair raising as some the physical abuse from being in the ring, are the stories of the women being required to live in character, with enforced rules of behavior, during their time with GLOW.

Excerpts from the original broadcast, and appearances on daytime talk shows of the day, are cut between the interviews of cast and crew. There are poignant moments, such as the reunion of many of the cast and crew members almost twenty years after that final GLOW broadcast. Best of all are the genuine laughs provoked by some of the memories of being part of a show where what passed for humor would elicit a groan as much as a chuckle.

David Blance as the referee

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:49 AM

March 21, 2013

Bangkok Revenge

Jean-Marc Mineo - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The title evokes images of Muay Thai fighting, and there's some to be found here. That said, this film reminded in some ways of the kind of Hollywood B movies produced in the Fifties, particularly in some of the smart ass dialogue mostly found in the latter half. An example is when the son, Manit, out to revenge the death of his parents, is kidnapped by a gang, and driven to some desolate location. Told that this is the place where he will die, Manit asks to go somewhere nicer. One of the several fights scenes taking place in a confined space, Manit beats the shit out what he calls "the most tasteless gang in Bangkok". OK. Maybe you have to watch the movie to really enjoy the humor.

The debut feature by Jean-Marc Mineo, French actor turned writer-director, Bangkok Revenge is better written than directed. The textbook on how to film action scenes in small spaces is to be found in the first Transporter film. The reliance of quick shots and hyperkinetic editing doesn't work as well, although it is still better than what passes for action in some big budget Hollywood films. One of the better ideas was to film an early fight as giant shadows against a wall. Still, the film's strong suit is the exchange of low brow sarcasm.

Manit is the son of a policeman who was investigating police corruption. As a young boy, he witnesses the murder of his parents, and is himself almost killed. Surviving a bullet to the head, Manit is taken to a small village to heal. The wound leaves him feeling no physical pain or sense of emotion, but doesn't get in the way of learning martial arts or fluent English. The dialogue alternates between Thai and sometimes heavily accented English, so full subtitles help. A running gag regards people asking how Manit speaks fluent English, with his response being, "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

Like a lot of classic crime movies, Mineo shoots on the streets of Bangkok, capturing the the congestion of people and traffic. No soi (alley) is too dark, no location too decrepit. The artist cover of one of the villains made me think of Sam Fuller's films with evil disguised by wealth and social position. Adding to the mix of corrupt cops is a female gang, The Hyenas, with one nasty little kick boxing girl, and one obvious ladyboy.

The British Jon Foo may not make the world forget Bruce Lee or Tony Jaa, but he's a good looking guy, and as English is his native language, that is certainly an advantage to the international market. The best known supporting players are two French actors, Caroline Ducey, the lead in Catherine Breillat's Romance, and Michael Cohen, best known for Shall We Kiss?. Veteran Thai actor Winai Kraibutr, who appeared as King Naresuan in the recently reviewed Muay Thai Warrior, briefly is seen as Minat's father.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

March 19, 2013

Hemel

Sacha Polak - 2012
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

For myself, the best parts of Hemel did nothing to propel the narrative, where director Sacha Polak simply let the camera meditate on the face of Hannah Hoekstra. It's not simply a matter of Hoekstra being an attractive young woman. Lots of movies are full of attractive young women. But there is something about the opening shot, looking at her face, taking what seemed like minutes before I realized there was a man, out of focus, besides her. Some of the best moments were watching Hoekstra's long hair whipping around in the wind, as in a scene when she's walking around coast on a cold day. Even Hoekstra's hair has its own character, changing in color from reddish blonde to dark brown, almost black. You don't find that many actors who have the kind of face that the camera loves, at least not recently. The more abstract moments of Hemel were so visually pleasurable that the narrative portions of the film seemed like interruptions.

Hemel, her name is the Dutch word for Heaven, is a young woman going through affairs and one night stands, anchored by father who's known for his series of lovers. The relationship between father and daughter is the most intense of all. The men we see Hemel choose for herself are to greater or lesser degree older. Two of the men are involved with other women, while two have ideas of intimacy that Hemel finds alienating. One of the men insists on chocking Hemel while essentially raping her. Following that scene of rough sex, Hemel visits her step-brother and his fiancee, put off by their choosing celibacy before marriage. The only kinds of relationships Hemel seems to understand are transitory and sexually based.

Sacha Polak's debut film, written by Helena van der Meulen, also explores in part how men and women thinks of their own, and each other's, bodies. In the first scene, Hemel has her vaginal area shaved to please a man who declares female pubic hair unhygienic. Hemel is first seen swallowing the man's spit. For Hemel, her response is that the sexual act is unhygienic. This suggests that the "dirtiness" of sex is part of the attraction to Hemel's compulsions. Later, she tells her father that she wants silicon injections in her lips because men find that attractive. Her father sensibly advises Hemel that any man who wants her based on altering the body she was born with is not worthy of her.

While it is not stated as such, Hemel might be said to be at war with her body, or at least the expectations of being born female. The first indication is a shot of Hemel peeing in a toilet standing up. At a nightclub, Hemel states her intentions clearly to a man with whom she wants to have sex. That she demands to be the one in control over her hookups and relishes the idea of having many lovers are traits that traditionally have been deemed as being masculine, and as such have often been the subject of art celebrating male prowess. Hemel's actions are not consciously feminist, nor does the film have an agenda in that regard. The film is non-judgmental of its characters, even when, in the most conventional sense, they behave badly.

Maybe I'm alone here, but I would have been mesmerized by a film just of Hannah Hoeksta. My favorite images from the film are of Hoekstra alone, standing on the beach, riding on the back of truck, or walking along a blue wall. The DVD comes with brief interviews with Hoeksta and Polak, with more in depth discussion with the supplemental booklet. Symbiotic is the operative word here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:35 AM

March 14, 2013

The Great Magician

Daai mo seut si
Derek Yee - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There is much to enjoy in Derek Yee's The Great Magician. In a movie about illusions, my favorite scene is of that most trusting of audiences, a group of children. The warlord known as Bully Lei has invited a slew of young children into the theater to watch a performance by the legendary magician, Chang Hsien. For the day's performance, Chang presents an Arabian Nights fantasy with Chang making an entrance on a flying carpet. As part of the performance, a group of female dancers appear in costumes with bare midriffs. Lei is temporarily mesmerized by the women until he turns around to command the children to cover their eyes. Yee cuts to a shot of some of the children obeying the orders, while some of the boys are seen gleefully peeking between their fingers. While much of the story is played for laughs, this one seen is especially joyful.

The illusions, of course, are not limited to the stage. It's little surprise that not everyone is what they appear to be. Chang hopes to reunite with his former fiancee, Yin, now the seventh wife of Lei. The film takes place at an unspecified time in the 1910s, with various warlords fighting with and against each other, while Japan is working to reinstall the monarchy as a puppet government. While rival magicians work sleight of hand, the real illusions are those involving love and power.

The biggest illusion is the romantic rivalry. Both Chang and Lei believe that only they know the way to Yin's heart, and can offer true happiness. Yin remains firmly ambivalent about both men, guided by pragmatism rather than romance. With her high collared dresses as Yin, Zhou Xun plays the often aloof foil to the showier turns of Lau Ching-wan as Lei and Tony Leung Chiu-wai in the title role.

The first scene is of a crowd of prisoners, induced to joining Lei's army with magic tricks that include showers of coins and bread, as well as promises of a better life. Another kind of hunger is on display when Chang performs a trick in which one of Lei's wives is presented with jewelry. Immediately, the other wives clamor to have Chang perform with them, with the last wife presented with a giant sapphire ring.

Illusion is also played with regarding screen images. Lei begins a movie making venture with some Japanese businessmen. In addition to a couple of scenes of audiences watching movies for the first time, a scene that is certainly the fantasy of many studio executives has producer Lei shooting his director. There's even a satirical wink at 3-D. One of Chang's acts involves telling a story with paintings that change as he moves the frame around, ending with what appears to be a real tear coming from the eye of the woman in the portrait. Chang and Lei also appear to fight, seen in shadow against a stage curtain.

For Derek Yee, this is an uncharacteristically light film, with most of the story played for laughs, and something resembling a happy ending. Adding to the fun are Lam Suet, always a joy to see, as the theater owner, and Tsui Hark as a fierce, hook-handed general. The extensive "Making of" supplements discuss the presence of a professional magician who advised Tony Leung's performance and taught him how to do some of the tricks seen in the film. How much of the magic is CGI, traditional cinematic tricks, or actual prestidigitation, I can't say for certain. The best trick in The Great Magician is convincing the viewer that all things are possible.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

March 12, 2013

Death Penalty.com / Death Penalty.com: A New Beginning

Ryota Sakamaki - 2011
TLA Releasing/Danger After Dark Region 1 DVD

I recall one time reading a typical curmudgeonly piece by Herman G. Weinberg, complaining about the apparent decline in Japanese cinema. Where once was Street of Shame was now Street of Joy. Since that time, Seijun Suzuki has become almost as revered as Kenji Mizoguchi.

I don't mean to be obtuse, but sometimes one has to recognize that some films are going to be meaningful to a certain generation or culture. And sometimes the filmmakers are exactly aspiring to make an artistic statement, but simply a statement, to "their" audience. And as someone not part of that audience, I can choose to rant and rave that the current state of cinema, or I can try to figure out what's important here, and why such films might be worth investigating.

What these two films tap into is a sense of hopelessness in Japanese young people. Simultaneously, there is also a disproportionate sense of self when one wants to kill someone else for what many might find trivial reasons. And the idea of getting away with murder has always had some universal appeal. The second film strives to be taken seriously as the game playing is set up as a misguided way for students to take revenge on those who bullied them in the past.

The first film has a interesting premise, with a young man, Ryuta,joining an online group of disgruntled people all in disguise, all using pseudonyms, committing murder for each other. Things get out of hand when Ryuta, known to the group only as "R", has been designated as the next victim by another group member, and is essentially appointed to murder himself. While one might be sympathetic to someone wanting to murder a boss or former spouse, you have to wonder about a girl who seeks revenge over a thoughtlessly destroyed stuffed animal.

Some of the seriousness is undercut in the second film, in which some video programmers get together purportedly to test out a new game version of Death Penalty.com. One of the characters, a young man, wants to kill a young woman, some kind of internet celebrity. The woman in question seems to take on virginal young men for sexual pleasure, with absolutely no interest in anything more than serial single dates. Another guy blames his failure at exam time on another student who played his music too loud. Are Japanese guys that emotionally fragile?

Ryota Sakamaki keeps most of the brutality off screen, although we do see the victims after the mayhem has been committed. Because of the ages of most of the characters and the relatively restrained violence, I have to assume that these films were made primarily for an audience of older teens and younger adults. Setting aside the internet game premise, Sakamaki appears to be addressing the same kind of themes done better in films like Sion Sono's Himizu or Tetsuya Nakashima's Confessions. Sakamaki's films may be more accessible for a certain audience, and for that reason, I have given these films some consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:25 PM

March 07, 2013

Female Teacher: In Front of the Students

Onna kyoshi: Seito no me no maede
Yasuro Uegaki - 1982
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

How problematic is Female Teacher: In Front of the Students? Let me put it to the reader this way - like all of the Impulse Pictures DVDs, this one comes with a two page essay by Jasper Sharp, informative author of Behind the Pink Curtain, about Roman Porno films and filmmakers. Only two paragraphs are actually devoted to this film, and it's easy to understand why;

We're clearly in old school, as it were, male fantasy land here. There the time honored dream of the young male student making it with the attractive teacher. More questionable is the premise, as stated by one of the female teachers, that it is every woman's desire to get raped. I suppose one could get outraged about anybody thinking thinking that the depiction of rape would be a salaryman's entertainment. Maybe I'm taking the easy way out here by classifying Female Teacher: In Front of the Students with the real or perceived racism of Birth of a Nation, or the any number of films as simply the product of a certain time, generation and culture.

The basic premise here is that young, sort of attractive, teacher Reiko gets raped in the shower by a guy wearing a light blue track suit, disguised with a stocking over his face. Is the assailant the boyfriend of best friend Shoko, is it the baddest of bad boy students, or possible the class nerd? Even more troubling is what is everyone reading, with very thick accents, in that English class? I'm guessing by a couple of sentences that it's Jonathan Livingston Seagull, which is scarier than anything seen on the screen here. Anyways, Reiko is left in the shower, with a clue, a piece from a puzzle. I can't totally dislike a film that is unafraid of the most literal minded symbolism.

From what I gather from Jasper Sharp, Yasuro Uegaki had a fairly undistinguished career. Some of the scenes hint that there may have been some slightly higher filmmaking aspirations on Uegaki's part in some of the transitional moments. There are several shots of actress Rushia Santo walking alone, either in school corridors or along the street, alone. The shots are composed so that the viewer is looking ahead at a long, dark pathway. There is also a nicely uneasy scene of Santo alone in her apartment, getting a disturbing phone call. One might also consider the contrast between Reiko's small, cramped apartment and the spacious, opulent home of a student as a comment on class and sexual inequality in Japan.

For the less critical audience, there Reiko's half hearted objections to lesbian sex in the shower with a student, or Reiko's involvement as part of a threesome in front of a huge American flag. The fogging used to cover parts of a scene of bathtub sex could almost be confused with actual steam. There is little information of Rushia Santo, other than that she made four films for Nikkatsu between 1982 and 1986, one directed by the now highly respected Yoichi Sai. Of the Roman Porno films now out on DVD, I would hardly call Female Teacher: In Front of the Students essential viewing, but something more for the more curious students of the genre.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:36 AM

March 05, 2013

Fairy in a Cage

Ori no naka no yosei
Koyu Ohara - 1977
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

If there was ever a movie that could be compared to a double sided razor, this is it. Fairy in a Cage is best approached carefully. Among the Nikkatsu series of Roman Porno films, extremes are pushed in ways that understandably startled the Japanese male audience of a certain age. Using the Roman Porno framework as a vehicle to attack or at least question certain aspects of Japanese life is not unusual, as has been pointed out previously. What makes Fairy in a Cage notable is that it is simultaneously an exploitation movie centered on sadomasochism and bondage, while also functioning as a harsh critic of the excesses Japanese government and the military during World War II.

Taking place in April, 1941, the film opens on a gathering of various dignitaries and upper level Japanese at an outdoor gathering, with the music of Beethoven playing in the background. A judge, Murayama, casts his eye on one of the guests, the socially prominent Namiji Kikushima. The judge has a taste for ties that bind. With the support of a military officer, some very coincidental evidence is used to imprison Namiji and kabuki actor. While my interest in rope tricks is strictly academic here, it is clear why Naomi Tani was such a popular star in this rough genre.

What has become evident to me is that just as I have been reading Edogawa Rampo to get a clearer understanding of his influence on Japanese horror and fantasy films, so I may need to add Oniroku Dan to my reading list. Even if the films I cover in this series are not directly based on Dan's writings, it would appear that his influence permeates many of these films. While the handful of films I've seen based on Dan's writings are primarily about women held as prisoners by men, Fairy in a Cage includes role reversal. Murayama's mistress and playmate, Kayo, takes advantage of the kabuki actor, a female impersonator on stage, an involuntary stud behind bars. There are also scenes of an officer whose fantasies about Namiji eventually take their toll.

On the politically volatile side is a plot based on characters who questioned or in some way challenged Japanese authority during World War II. In the name of national security, Namiji is imprisoned based on her alleged financing of politically subversive leaflets. The young, idealistic officer who witnesses the punishment of a deserter finds himself questioning his previous sense of loyalty. The film concludes with an indictment of the Japanese military which has reverberations with continued denials of acts that can only be described as criminal.

I had written a bit about Naomi Tani a few years, in the film Madame O. While bondage and S/M are not my cup of chai, Tani seems to have racked up a few credits that are notable for the imagination of the filmmakers. Hopefully, the folks at Impulse Pictures will bring more films starring Ms. Tani in the future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

February 28, 2013

Muay Thai Warrior

Samurai Ayothaya
Nopporn Watin - 2010
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Hopefully the generic English language title given to this film won't be too big an obstacle. Yes, there is Muay Thai fighting, and even a few elephants, but you won't find Tony Jaa here, nor is the film from the same studio. While there is a fair share of boxing and sword fighting, Muay Thai Warrior is more of a historical action film, similar to such Thai films as Chatrichalerm Yukol's series of films about King Naresuan, or Tanit Jitnukul's two Bang Rajan films. Nopporn's film can also be viewed as something of a compliment to Prince Chatri's films with King Naresuan here in a small, but vital role.

The film is inspired by the life of Yamada Nagamasa. The factual aspects of the film seem to begin and end there, with the story being no more historically accurate than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. No matter. It seems that a group of Japanese are out to create disorder in Siam, disguised as the hated Hongsawadee, people of present day Myanmar. A member of a voluntary group of mercenaries sworn to protect King Naresuan, Yamada is almost killed uncovering the identity of the Japanese. Rescued, and taken to a small village, Yamada learns Muay Thai boxing, and eventually becomes a member of King Naresuan's personal army.

For western audiences, the main points of interest will be the martial arts. Yamada attempts to show off his samurai skills once he's recovered from his wounds, only to be immediately knocked out. The village's resident Buddhist monk, Phra Khru, teaches the Japanese Yamada Muay Thai boxing with the wish that Yamada combine the best of his skills from both countries. The second half of the film has the action set pieces with Yamada fighting the Hongsawadee, and later, an army of masked Japanese ninja. Blood spurts, sprays and gushes throughout.

What struck me was how much Muay Thai Warrior is a Thai film for Thai audiences. Not that non-Thai could not find things to enjoy, but there is much emphasis on nationalist values of loyalty to King, country and Buddha. Some of the attitudes of characters are understood best within the cultural context of the film.

The Japanese actor, Seigi Ozeki, plays Yamada, doing some first person narration in Japanese, but also speaking Thai. For those who know Thai cinema, the real star is Sorapong Chatree as the Buddhist monk. There might even be a law requiring Sarapong to star in at least one movie a year, preferably something historical, with big action scenes. The baddest of bad guys are bald, while the good guys have some very ornate hair styles.

This is a handsomely produced film. Nopporn loves to film people and buildings in silhouette. Statues of Buddha also figure prominently here. The martial arts scenes are filmed well enough to follow the action, without excessive editing or emphasis on slow motion. The most visually satisfying scenes are those of Thai culture, preparation of food, a dance performance, and a scene of Yamada relaxing, playing his flute with an elephant by his side.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM | Comments (1)

February 21, 2013

A Simple Life

Tao jie
Ann Hui - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A Simple Life is the work of a filmmaker so confident in her actors and material that she allows herself to step back as an almost casual observer. I wouldn't call the filmmaking austere, as much as stripped down to the essentials. It could well be that A Simple Life gained another Best Director win, her fourth, for Ann Hui because she eschewed anything that smacked of obvious style or technique. The deceptively casual cinematography is by Nelson Yu, his third collaboration with Hui.

Although the story is from producer Roger Lee's own life, and his relationship with his long-time family maid, elements are similar to an earlier Hui film, Summer Snow from 1995, in which a woman cares for her father-in-law, suffering from Alzheimer's disease. While Ann Hui did not originate the film, and was brought in by producer-star Andy Lau, it still can be considered a personal film for its thematic concerns. In an additional case of serendipity, A Simple Life and Summer Snow both won the Hong Kong Film Awards for film, director, actor and actress.

The story goes against the grain of what seems to be demanded nowadays. A family maid gets a stroke, spends the rest of her days in a nursing home, and is looked after by the movie producer who she helped raise. What is observed is that in the beginning, the producer, Roger, is rather oblivious while Ah Tao prepares and serves his meal and tends to his apartment. Several minutes are devoted to shots of a traditional dinner being prepared with the camera focused on the large frying pan. A scene near the end, which a Hollywood director would probably overlay with a loud, schmalzy score, is played out in silence with Roger, tending to Ah Tao for the last time, straightens out the socks she wear to stay warm.

Which is not to say that A Simple Life is devoid of humor. There is the banter between Roger and Ah Tao, teasing each other about being too picky to have gotten married. There's also a production meeting with Tsui Hark playing himself, yelling at Roger, "I was making movies when you were in short pants!". Roger takes Ah Tao to the premiere of his latest production, sparked by cameo appearances by producer Raymond Chow, director Stanley Kwan, and actress Angela Baby, among others. There is also a running joke about Roger's every day outfit of a blue jacket and shirt which cause him to be confused with an air-conditioner repairman and a cabbie.

One of the more interesting choices is that most of the film takes place in the Sham Shui Po district of Hong Kong. It's an area of old apartment buildings with aging air conditioners sticking out of the walls, and inexpensive restaurants. Hui's love of Hong Kong and interest in the more marginalized residents was explored in two previous films taking place in relatively remote Tin Shui Wai district, most notably in The Way We Are.

After an absence from acting for almost ten years, Deanie Ip's performance as Ah Tao brought several awards, beginning with Best Actress at Venice, in September 2011. After a career of primarily comic supporting roles, Ip played a woman about ten years older than her real age, who tries to assert as much independence as possible in the face of failing health. This is the kind of role that a lesser actor would play for easy sentimentality or cheap laughs. A Simple Life is about difficult choices, compromises, and loving someone as much for their faults, rather than in spite of them.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM

February 19, 2013

Bullet Collector

Sobiratel pul
Aleksandr Vartanov - 2011
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

While Russian filmmaker Aleksandr Vartanov acknowledges the influence of Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows, and Artsploitation's Travis Crawford sees the influence of Lindsay Anderson's If . . , what I also saw was the studied experimentation of Ingmar Bergman's Persona with elements of opening montage of that film, some of the framing of shots (through a glass darkly, indeed), as well as some the elliptical narrative passages. That the film is also in black and white also makes the work appear closer to the kind of work that appeared from European filmmakers in the the Sixties.

I wish there were English language credits to the soundtrack, a mix of composers and types of music, parts which also recalls the kind of music used in films during that era, breaking away from the more classical influences. This would be music that was frequently atonal. This is the kind of music associated with modernist composers like Krzysztof Penderecki or Ingmar Bergman collaborator, Lars Johan Werle.

Bullet Collector is also much more brutal than its forebears. The fourteen year old boy at the center of the film, nameless, is immediately linked to blood, his own and of others. He is first seen cutting himself, he gets spontaneous bloody noses, and daubs himself as a kind of war paint. Not very big or strong, with an almost girlish face, he gets beat up by a bigger kid in school for money, and in turn beats up an even smaller, younger boy, He may, or may not, be part of a gang of thugs, the Bullet Collectors, who have a rivalry with the Wood Borers. Even when the boy tries to do something seemingly decent, like intervening when he sees a larger man (a pimp? a john?) pummeling a woman (a prostitute?) on the streets, the woman strikes back at the boy for interfering with "her business".

Unlike the teen rebels of the earlier films, the boy of Bullet Collector is completely adrift, with only the most tenuous connections to his family and other people, with no interests other than to collect bullets, tokens of death that might be real but are more likely imagined. Where the bullets are very much real is in the reformatory, pegged correctly by the boy as a prison with machine gun carrying guards. The boy, with two smaller and weaker boys, attempt an escape from a hell with a hierarchy even worse than parents, teachers and other schoolboys.

Mention should be made that the DVD includes a deleted scene of the boy, alone, wandering through what I assume is a part of Moscow. There is also a booklet that includes an analysis of the film by Travis Crawford, as well as his interview with Vartanov. I would hesitate to use words like "retro" or "throwback", but Bullet Collector kept reminding me of the time when filmmakers made movies about angry (very) young men, and there was as much rebellion on the screens as in the streets.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

February 14, 2013

Boat People

Tau ban no hoi
Ann Hui - 1982
Edko Films Region 3 DVD

A little more than thirty years after its initial release, is it possible for Boat People to be considered objectively? This question is raised because a variety of political aspects to the film, a reading or misreading of the film and of Ann Hui's intentions, may have derailed the anticipated commercial and critical viability outside of Asia, in turn causing Hui to be less known or even unknown by those claiming to champion female filmmakers.

This is a film that in 2005 was considered by the Hong Kong Film Association to be the eighth best Chinese language movie in the past one hundred years. At the time of its initial release, this was the film that brought Hui her first awards as a director. In the west, Boat People was pulled from competition at Cannes, and reviewed negatively by Andrew Sarris and J. Hoberman in the Village Voice when the film played at the New York Film Festival. An explanation for the controversy was presented by Harlan Kennedy in Film Comment, in October 1983. Kennedy's optimism regarding Ann Hui's career turned out to be unrealized as only a small number of films would receive even a DVD release outside of Asia. Even the award winning and critically acclaimed A Simple Life was given only a token theatrical release. With the changes in the Hong Kong film industry, Hui has experienced moments of uncertainty regarding the viability of her career.

The original title translates as "Run towards the angry sea". I would assume that there is something of Hui in the main character, a Japanese photojournalist, Akutagawa, in Vietnam, 1978, as Hui's own filmmaking career began as a documentarian. Janet Maslin wrote about the "manipulation of material" by Hui, but manipulation is also the subject of the film. Akutagawa is used to provide the world with the image of Vietnam that the government wants to present. Getting involved with a family that lives on the margins of Danang, Akutagawa uses his contacts to attempt to provide a more truthful documentation of life in Vietnam. One of Akutagawa's connections is a woman who served as a mistress to men in power in Vietnam - French, American and Vietnamese. Hui would be able to attest to how documentaries would be no more or less objective or truthful than commercial narrative films.

Setting aside the politics and historical context, what Boat People is more concerned with is the question of the role of the professional observer. Akutagawa's dilemma is more heightened by his particular circumstance, where any pretense of objectivity evaporates as he becomes more involved in the lives of Cam Nuong and her family. And while the origins of the film are to be found in Ann Hui's very real interest in the lives of her characters, there is also the more universal question of a journalist's choices, both professional and personal, in situations where, let's call it human decency, call for intervention in the lives of others. What makes Boat People remain intriguing is that there are no easy answers, nor do the characters have any choices that are free of compromise.

Boat People has also gained interest as being the film that kickstarted Andy Lau's career. At the time, Lau was an unknown actor in his second film, brought to the attention of Ann Hui by Boat People star George Lam and Chow Yun-Fat. It was Chow who Hui wanted to cast in the role of small time thief To Minh. Lau character is also the secret lover to the mistress, played by Cora Miao. Chow would work with Ann Hui in her following film, Love in a Fallen City, opposite Miao. Boat People star George Lam would reunite with Cora Miao in Sylvia Chang's film, Passion. As an actress, Chang starred in Ann Hui's debut feature, The Secret.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 AM

February 12, 2013

Jealousy is My Middle Name

Jiltuneun naui him
Park Chanok - 2002
Myung Films DVD

The photographer caught in the middle of the affections between her editor and a young writer, Seongkun, looks like she barely brushes her hair. When she wakes up from a night of heavy drinking, her hair is in even greater disarray. One evening spent embracing her would-be suitor, the young Wonsang, on a couch in her apartment, the floor in front of them is strewn with beer bottles. Messiness is one of the operative words here to describe the state of relationships and peoples lives in Park Chanok's film.

The main narrative is about Wonsang working on overcoming a broken relationship, dealing with his feelings for Seongkun, and trying to maintain his distance with Hye-ok,the flirtatious daughter of his landlord. Wonsang also finds himself emotionally seduced by his editor, Yunshik, acting as chauffeur or drinking buddy as the moment requires. The three work at a small literary magazine, where Wonsang's choice of authors is occasionally questioned in front of the rest of the staff by Yunshik. (Saul Bellow and Marquerite Duras are mentioned in this context.) In addition to this main triangle, is Yunshik discovered with Seongkun at a hotel lobby by his father-in-law.

Wonsang attempts to cover up for Yunshik's infidelity. Again there's messiness of relationships, which is harder to clean than the floor of Wonsang's spartan apartment, or a few drops of urine that miss the toilet bowl.

Martin Scorsese mentions Jealousy is My Middle Name in his preface to the book, Virtual Hallyu, about recent Korean cinema. He describes the film as, "subtle and emotionally complex". What may be somewhat unusual a choice for a female filmmaker is to make a film about relationships primarily from the point of view of a male character. Wonsang is in a transitional state, not yet graduated from university, a life that seems in suspension between various possibilities. Seongkun makes the transition from veterinarian to photographer as easily as one might change coats, the only constant being a sense of maintaining emotional independence. For Yunshik, being the editor of a literary magazine is provides little consolation for an unrealized life as a writer, instead serving as justification for constant womanizing. At various junctures, these three betray each other and undermine themselves.

Park's film somewhat resembles those made by Hong Sang-soo, especially with the constant bonding over drinks, and various infidelities that take place. Park worked as an assistant to Hong on The Virgin Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors. The character of Yunshik has been noted as being modeled after Hong. An interview with Hong suggests that the relationship between the two filmmakers may have spilled over from being professional colleagues.

The title translates as "Jealousy empowers me". I'm not certain if anyone is actually empowered as much as that jealousy acts as misguided motivation for some of the actions taken. Unlike a Hong film where there is the suggestion that the couplings could be viable if the guys would just settle down, the relationships in Park's film seem based solely on immediate needs and convenience. Seongkun looks even older than her claimed five year seniority over Wonsang. Hye-ok's intellectual and physical world is limited to looking after her father and brother, and her small knitting shop. When she steps into Wonsang's apartment, which is essentially a second floor addition to Hye-ok's house, she asks why Wonsang has so many books. Every family portrayed is dysfunctional in some degree. Even when there is enough self-knowledge to inform the best course of action, Park's characters choose the comfort of failing themselves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

February 07, 2013

The Thieves

Dodookdeul
Choi Dong-hoon - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Who doesn't like caper movies, especially when they are done well? The Thieves confidently takes from past films with the theft of a diamond from a casino, with the added perks of some of the latest technology plus a couple of old school scams, adding the undercover cop to the mix. This is somewhat familiar territory to anyone who's seen Bob le Flambeur, which arguably set the scene for this kind of story, as well as the two versions of Ocean's Eleven. What Choi also adds is a pan-Asian cast, that is also a mixed gendered team, where the women do more than provide eye candy.

The film hops between Korea, Hong Kong and Macau, where the grand theft takes place. The Korean gang has their own inner tensions, with two formal partners, now rivals, getting together with a Chinese gang. Cultural animosity is set aside, but the newly formed confederacy finds themselves caught between an unknown criminal mastermind as well as the police. Even after the heist, which takes place about midway, are a series of unexpected twists and turns.

There's even some time for a cross cultural romance between the two oldest members of the team, played by Simon Yam and Kim Hae-suk. The two seem weary of their lives of crime. The two pretend to be a married couple with a taste for high stakes gambling, but it is the gamble they take on each other that is unexpectedly affecting.

Even though the film is suppose to be an ensemble piece, it belongs mostly to two actresses, Gianna Jun and Kim Hye-su. Both actresses, like the rest of the cast, did their own stunts, but Jun and Kim had among the most physically demanding roles. Jun is the thief Yenicall, known for her skills breaking and entering while suspended from wires. Jun is also seen in the shortest skirts, and body fitting outfits. In one of the film's several comic scenes, Yenicall finds being the sexiest team member can only get her so far when a man targeted for seduction turns out to be gay. Kim plays Pepsee, a recently paroled safe cracker who's been involved with the two rival Korean gang leaders. A heist gone wrong, with Pepsee caught in the middle is played out in flashbacks.

The film threatens to sprawl out of control with one of the several sub-plots during the second half, only to wrap things up in a not quite neat circle. The Korean title more accurately translates as "The Professionals". One action set piece follows another that during the few moments when the characters have to stop to catch a breath, it's also welcome relief for the viewer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:44 AM

February 05, 2013

Dangerous Liaisons

Hur Jin-Ho - 2012
Well Go Entertainment USA BD A

I'm certain that Asian audiences and those who follow celebrity news may have found it less than coincidental that a film about sexual intrigue and scandal would star Cecilia Cheung and Zhang Ziyi. Be that as it may, Cheung is luminous while Zhang is markedly subdued in this new variation based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos. 18th Century France is replaced by 1931 Shanghai, so that there is constant pushing and pulling between Shanghai's status as an international, and cosmopolitan city, but also a Chinese city where certain traditions and cultural values hold sway. Also, politically, Shanghai is now controlled by Japan, where acts of nationalism disrupt the cause suspicion between people.

Most interesting to me is how flexible the essential story is for adaptation to film, both in when and where the story takes place. This isn't even the first Asian adaptation. I would recommend E J-Young's The Untold Scandal, from 2003, which takes place in 18th Century Korea. Rather than royalty, we have a wealthy playboy, Yifan, and two youngish widows, the business woman, Jieyu, and the virtuous, philanthropic Fenyu. Gamesmanship and seduction are played out, with the hint of a possible happy ending for the two most innocent characters. The name may have a Chinese meaning I am unaware of, but I am certain that screenwriter Yan Geling intended a phonetic joke by having the young girl named Beibei.

In the supplemental "Making of , , ,", one of the producers mentions that Leslie Cheung was the original choice to play Yifan. One can only imagine how well that might have worked. Jang Dong-gun goes against type here, playing a mustached man of fashion, and in no way heroic. The extent of his charm is in the opening scene where Yifan is woken by a mistress who come to his house. The woman finds another woman in Yifan's bed. The two woman fight it out about their claims on Yifan, while he nonchalantly sips his morning coffee.

I wish there had been more supplementary footage devoted to Lisa Lu. In a supporting role as Yifan's grandmother, Lu is quite spry, and still active at age 86. I couldn't watch her without thinking about the history she carries with her of a career that began in Hollywood, mostly in television series guest shots, in 1958. It's also with her history that in her performance, it is fitting that Lu plays a matriarch who's probably seen and done almost everything in life, and can anticipate what those around her will do, even before they know themselves.

Hur Jin-ho is a curious choice to have directed this Chinese-Korean production. Hur's best known film, Christmas in August is a sweet story about unrealized love between a young parking attendant and a single middle aged man who keeps his terminal illness a secret. Maybe because Dangerous Liaisons is a much bigger production, it's harder to have a similar sense of passion or intimacy. Much of the drama is carried by the spectacular costumes and set designs. There are moments when everything comes together as near the end, with Jieyu receiving and wearing a posthumous gift, a white dress from Yifan, white in Chinese culture being the color associated with death.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:52 AM

January 31, 2013

Lincoln

Serena: An Adult Fairy Tale
Fred Lincoln - 1979

Same Time, Every Year
F. J. Lincoln - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

No, not THAT Lincoln, but the filmmaker and actor born Fred Perna, professionally known as Fred Lincoln, Fred J. Lincoln or F. J. Lincoln. There is, however, a guy with a stovepipe hat, in Serena: An Adult Fairy Tale.

What I learned from roughly forty years of my own film history studies is that every movie ever made is important. The importance of that film may change, or may not be apparent at the time the film was made, and might reveal itself in unexpected ways. What was once considered ephemera is in some cases now lost treasure. Back in 1960, who would have predicted that Roger Corman would get retrospectives from the British Film Institute or the Museum of Modern Art. For that matter, it was at MoMA that I saw my first Radley Metzger film, Camille 2000.

As for the harder stuff, I saw a few of the hard core films when they were relatively current, but I claim only a casual interest in the genre. My only reason for seeing Deep Throat was because I was invited to a special screening prior to that film's engagement in Portland, Oregon. I was associated with the Northwest Film Study Center at the time, and I guess someone thought that if the film was deemed obscene by local authorities, I could be of some help in arguing on its behalf. I did see The Devil and Miss Jones because critics went gaga over the ending, a reworking of Sartre's No Exit, where not only is Hell other people, but in this case, a guy who won't get it up for an insatiable nymphomaniac. I also checked out what Radley Metzger was doing under the name of Henry Paris, making harder core movies with greater professional polish.

As for these two films directed by Mr. Lincoln, there is an audience for these films, but it doesn't include me. These movies were made at a time when everyone had pubic hair, guys had chest hair, breast implants were optional, and no one worried about sexually transmitted diseases. The only rubber I noticed were the gloves Serena was wearing while washing dishes. These films were both shot on film, back in the days when people saw such work in real movie theaters, theaters that once showed mainstream theatrical films. The DVDs were made from prints that have scratches and minor glitches here and there, which as far as I'm concerned is great, as it helps create the grindhouse experience. As to why there is interest in thirty year old porn movies, I'm personally at a loss. It's not I'm against the graphic depiction of sex, as much as I get bored when that's all there is. But there is an enthusiastic audience for these films, and I'm not going to begrudge them their pleasure any more than I would accept a critical eye towards what appears to some others as my inexplicable love of Thai horror movies.

Serena is a parody of Cinderella. The titular star washes, irons, mops, and occasionally participates in three way sex until she gets unceremoniously dumped. Clearly, the actors were not cast based on their ability to read their lines. Whatever Fred Lincoln did as a director, his job did not extend to getting China Leigh's speaking voice to be other than a dull monotone, absent of any inflections. There is a moment when one of the girls offer the Prince a specially prepared cigar, and I had to wonder if that inveterate horndog, William Jefferson Clinton, had seen Serena and was inspired in his encounters with Monica Lewinsky.

The spoof title of Same Time, Every Year will be lost on all but the few people who recall the play and film, Same Time, Next Year. A trio of husbands claim to be going to a convention. The film focuses on the wives seeking pleasure with various men, or in one case, each other. Loni Sanders, first seen intimately with real life husband, Mike Ranger, is noteworthy for her expressive face. There is a dinner scene that may well have been inspired by Tony Richardson's Tom Jones featuring cream filled pastry and an actress known as Isolde with a banana. More often than not, during the extreme close ups of penetration, I kept wonder more about the contortions of the cameraman rather than the couples on screen, and the, to say the least, unusual positions of the camera.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 AM | Comments (1)

January 29, 2013

Sleepy Eyes of Death - Collector's Set Volume 3

Sleepy Eyes of Death 9: A Trail of Traps/Nemuri Kyoshiro Burai-Hikae masho no hada
Kazuo Ikehiro - 1967

Sleepy Eyes of Death 10: Hell is a Woman/Nemuri Kyoshiro Onna jigoku
Tokuzo Tanaka - 1968

Sleepy Eyes of Death 11: In the Spider's Lair/Nemuri Kyoshiro Hito hada kumo
Kimiyoshi Yasuda - 1968

Sleepy Eyes of Death 12: Castle Menagerie/Nemuri Kyoshiro Akujo-gari
Kazuo Ikehiro - 1969
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The ninth episode in this series begins with a short review of the origins of Kyoshiro Nemuri. The son of a renegade Catholic priest and a Japanese woman, the result of a sexual devil worshipping rite, Kyoshiro is an outcast at birth. The sound of a crying baby awakens memories best forgotten. A Trail of Traps begins and continues as a Freudian nightmare.

Kyoshiro is hired to protect a small golden statue of the Virgin Mary. A seemingly simple setup is loaded, sexually and philosophically. While the character of Kyoshiro is in keeping with the general embrace of the anti-hero in movies in the Sixties, his nihilism may give some viewers pause. Trying to grab the statue for their own purposes is a devil worshipping gang, the Black Finger Group, led by a heretical Catholic priest. To put this film in some historical context, it takes place when there was active suppression of Christianity in Japan. As for Kyoshiro, there is disdain for all religion.

The depiction of Kyoshiro's birth serves as a kind of parody in a story where Catholic belief is twisted around. Certainly, the women who throw themselves at Kyoshiro are not saintly. Kyoshiro's price for acting as escort for the statue is to claim the virginity of a nobleman's daughter. What makes the Kyoshiro Nemuri interesting is that his stated nihilism and apparent sexual chauvinism mask his own idealism. This is also one of the sexier entries to the series, with generous glimpses of breasts and thighs of the several temptresses who get encounter Kyoshiro. But as the opening scene indicates, Kyoshiro has, as some might say, issues regarding women, beginning with his mother.

It should be mentioned that the director of Hell is a Woman, Tokuzo Tanaka, has a truly impressive resume from his time as an Assistant Director. Roshomon, Ugetsu, Sansho the Bailiff, The Crucified Lovers, and Conflagration. I assume there are more films, but this is what IMDb has listed. The last film is significant for elevating Raizo Ichikawa to award winning actor, prior to his starring as a samurai era action hero. But Tanaka seems to have incorporated some of the visual style of both Akira Kurosawa and Kenjii Mizoguchi in the big action scenes.

Reminiscent of the tracking shots in the woods in Throne of Blood, Hell is a Woman begins with a lone horseman attacking several men, with the action partially obscured by bare branches. More akin to Mizoguchi is the use of fog, in this case created by a bomb that destroys a small house in the woods, making it a challenge for the temporarily vision impaired Kyoshiro and his attackers. The final sword fight takes place during a progressively heavy snow storm.

The story might be considered as a variation of Yojimbo. Unlike the Kurosawa film where Toshiro Mifune switches sides, in Hell is a Woman, Kyoshiro does his best not to take anyone's side in a dispute between two rival retainers laying claim on a dying lord's fief. The recurring motif of partially seen action serves as a visual correlative to the characters with hidden motives, never who they first appear to be.

And just when you think things can't get any more perverse, there's In the Spider's Lair. Kyoshiro returns to the small village where he grew up. The remote area is now ruled by a brother and sister, a prince and princess, who love murder, torture and each other. The shogun was hoping exile might make this pair see the error of their ways, but the Shogun's Inspector decides the two are such an embarrassment that death is the order of the day, and Kyoshiro is the perfect guy for the deed. Kyoshiro wants nothing to do with this, but is dragged in when the young ward of a family friend is abducted to be a sex slave to the princess.

The princess also finds herself lusting for Kyoshiro's stud services almost as much as she lusts to kill him. Killing Kyoshiro becomes a point of sibling rivalry between the prince and princess. What gives the eleventh episode a bit of unintended gravity is the frequent talk of the imminence of death. At what point was Raizo Ichikawa aware that he would soon die of cancer? While Kyoshiro speaks of death in a matter of fact manner, I had to wonder what was going on in the mind of the actor who displayed a sense of detachment to thoughts of mortality.

I also had to wonder what would have happened if Raizo Ichikawa had lived, how many more movies there would have been about Kyoshiro Nemuri. In some respects the series was to often repeating story lines about hidden Christians, and sons of renegade European priests who seduced Japanese maidens. Castle Menagerie revolves around the mistress who controls the Shogun's harem, and the attempt to determine which woman will give birth a boy, the Shogun's heir. There is also someone impersonating Kyoshiro, killing men, raping women, and even worse, using Kyoshiro's patented Full Moon sword fighting technique.

The palace intrigue is goosed up a bit with a scene of lesbianism between two of the concubines. What really makes this episode stand out is a scene of ninja dressed in bird costumes and Noh masks. The bird ninjas first are seen leaping down from a wall in slow motion, and with a shot of them superimposed over a sleeping Kyoshiro, creates a dream like quality to the scene. The theatricality is heightened with the scene continuing in a virtually bare, black room, where the masks seem to be floating on their own. While Castle Menagerie was probably not intended to be the last film in the Kyoshiro Nemuri series, there is still a satisfying sense of closure with the final shot of Raizo Ichikawa, back turned to the camera, walking into the distance.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:10 AM | Comments (1)

January 24, 2013

Hard Romanticker

Hado romanchikka
Gu Seyeon - 2011
Artsploitation Films Region 1 DVD

Hard Romanticker begins with the logo of the Japanese studio, Toei. Even without reading the supplemental booklet that comes with the DVD, I was associating this new film with the kind of work Toei was known for forty years ago. I was able to see a couple of yakuza movies, now considered genre classics, through a presentation Paul Schrader made at the Museum of Modern Art, coinciding with the imminent release of the film he co-wrote, The Yakuza. And while the supplemental notes stress a connection between Gu Suyeon's film, and the work of Kinji Fukasaku or Tai Kato, I contend that Hard Romanticker also has a connection with Toei concurrent series of films about juvenile delinquents. But to totally look at Hard Romanticker as a genre film, with the expectations that entails, is a mistake.

An interview at AsianWiki provides some explanation regarding the title, as well as the autobiographical elements. Having a main character with the same name as the filmmaker is cause for speculation. Gu Suyeon frequently employs distance as a means of minimizing the kind of emotional involvement one might have in a traditional genre film. This distance provides a kind of objective stance making the character of Gu, a small time yakuza thug, totally unheroic.

It may not be intentional, but Gu sets off a chain of events that not only exasperates existing gang rivalries, but also causes several gangs to be in pursuit of Gu. It doesn't help that Gu is suppose to be the member of one gang, while serving as a nightclub manager for another gangster, and sees no problem in that situation. While Gu seems to hide in plain sight from the young motorbike riding gang members, his grandmother has no problem finding him. Gu also allows himself to be deluded in his infatuation with a high school girl, encouraging her in her studies, until he discovers she is not the virgin he has imagined. Already an outsider in Japanese society as a Japanese of Korean descent, Gu becomes totally disconnected with what remains of his biological and social families.

While Hard Romanticker is a film about the yakuza, it is not a "yakuza movie" in the way that violence is portrayed. Unlike those films that may depict violent situations as emotionally involving or cathartic, the violence seen here is often simply brutal. Frequently, Gu Suyeon chooses not to show the violence but the after effects, such as the close up of a young woman's face after being beaten by one young gangster, or Mieko, Gu's would-be girl friend, with her clothes torn, and body bruised following rape by Gu. The guys fare marginally better with two of Gu's rivals, also with peroxide blond hair, seen with a bandaged eye and bandaged nose respectively.

Gu Suyeon's visual style is usually of action taking place within an immobile camera frame, usually long or medium shots. One of the few times the film employs more traditional filmmaking technique is in a somewhat comic scene of Gu, revealed to interrupted while receiving a blow job, forced into a rooftop chase by a pursuing gang, wearing nothing but his underpants. For most of the film, as in the life of the characters, life is hard, and hardly romantic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM

January 22, 2013

Tai Chi Zero

Stephen Fung - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I assume that most readers here have at least heard of this film. The concise description making the rounds is a mix of martial arts and steampunk. Even as the film has the unusual blend of a couple of genres, Tai Chi Zero has also been one of the more divisive movies, with critics loving or loathing this film. And I will admit there are some things that I did not like here, but there was more that finally won me over.

I guess someone thought it would be amusing to have superimposed titles for everything, and I mean every building, cave, and even a side door. Even more annoying were the titles that introduced much of the cast: "Look! It's Shu Qi". I mean, it's cool that director Andrew Lau took time for a cameo role as the father of the hero, but it got to a point where it seemed like this who's who in the cast was getting in the way of an actual movie. There are also animated diagrams of the various martial arts moves, as well as bits of narrative that are animated. The effect might be described as Chinese filmmakers creating a Chinese genre movie through the filter of Quentin Tarantino's hommages to classic films.

Even one of the basic plot elements is one of the most overused in westerns, about the railroad coming to town. The town is a small, remote, mountain village. The guy bringing in the railroad is a son of the village, now western educated, and introducing people to electricity and recorded music. And the railroad is not just coming to town, but it's coming in the form of a giant steam engine contraption that not only lays tracks, but also has the ability to tear down buildings as a powerful steam shovel. One of the more interesting aspects to Tai Chi Zero is not simply the inclusion of the train, and a large, steam propelled automobile, but that the machines are inspired by designs by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The Tai Chi comes in the main narrative of a young man, Lu Chan, with a strange protuberance on his forehead, one that enables him to be quite powerful with his kung-fu, but not without deadly consequences. One blow to the head too many, and Lu Chan is encouraged to go the the mountain town of Chen to learn something called internal kung fu. As an outsider, Lu Chan fights several people including the martial arts master's daughter, a little girl, and a guy holding a block of tofu, in order to prove himself worthy. The real kung fu master here is action choreographer Sammo Hung.

The real tension belongs to the conflict between unbending Chinese tradition and the unthinking cultural and political imperialism of the west. While no country is identified, the film's villains are the western educated young man, dressed with a top hat and western clothing while still sporting the Manchu hair queue, and a Eurasian woman, first seen in a military style uniform. The pair are supported by caucasian soldiers, with the endorsement of a Chinese governor.

As much as Tai Chi Zero may be sold as a martial arts fantasy, the film can also be understood as also being about the tensions of contemporary China, holding on to defining traditions, get also getting increasingly westernized. It's also a film primarily made for a younger, more western style Chinese audience that would rather listen to hip hop in any language, rather than the stylings of, say, Teresa Teng. And yeah, there's a sequel, clips of which can be seen during the final credits. I want to see that Da Vinci inspired flying machine.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:37 AM

January 15, 2013

I am Bruce Lee

Pete McCormack - 2011
Shout! Factory Region A BD

This was the first time that I was aware that Bruce Lee had some German relatives. It's an aspect of Lee's life that is explored to some extent in this documentary, and something that seems to have served as something of a theme in Lee's life. It is this Eurasian heritage that caused Lee to be something of a perpetual outsider no matter where he was, as well as the person who fused Asian and western martial arts, as well as being a globally idolized movie star for a very brief period.

That German heritage dogged Lee as being ineligible to be a martial arts student in Hong Kong, as he was not "pure" Chinese. Lee was also attacked by the Chinese community in San Francisco for teaching Chinese martial arts to caucasians. It is also this mixed heritage that probably plays a part in Lee thinking of himself as a global citizen.

The film that we have here, though, is produced in part by Spike TV so the emphasis here is on Lee's evolution as a martial artist. A lot of talking heads, including daughter Shannon Lee, who is one of the credited producers, wife Linda Lee Cadwell, a few former associates, and celebrity fans like Mickey Rourke and Kobe Bryant. Way too much time spent on the paternity of Mixed Martial Arts. Way too much time on Mixed Martial Arts fighters. The evolution of Lee's martial arts, from classical Wing Chun to Lee's hybrid dubbed Jeet Kune Do, is of interest. Whether Jeet Kune Do inspired caged matches in Las Vegas seems a bit beyond the point.

Another one of those talking heads is Gina Carano. Yeah, she's attractive, and she can probably kick my ass with minimum sweat. But what I would have like to have seen would be a few minutes of Bruce Lee, the Hong Kong child movie star. And for that matter, what was the artistic influence of father Lee Hoi-chuen, an actor with a considerable filmography of his own? Martial arts may have been what Bruce Lee may have used to define himself, but Lee is remembered primarily by his movies.

As long as it wasn't couched heavily in academia, I would have liked to have seen a film using Paul Bowman's book, Theorizing Bruce Lee as a starting point. Bowman, does offer a little bit of cultural heft to I am Bruce Lee. It is Bowman who discusses some of the cultural influences on Lee's life, as well as the political aspects to Lee's first two starring Hong Kong films in regards to the British and Japanese characters. For myself, Bruce Lee's legacy is primarily cinematic, one that first opened the doors to the world for martial arts movies from Hong Kong, which in turn paved the way for a younger generation of western educated filmmakers, including some with greater artistic aspirations. Without Bruce Lee, it is doubtful that there would be world wide interest in Hong Kong filmmaker, Wong Kar-wai, or that Wong would be making a movie about Lee's teacher in Wing Chun, Ip Man.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2013

Lapland Odyssey

Napapiirin sankarit
Dome Karukoski - 2010
Artsploitation Film Region 1 DVD

There's a shot in Lapland Odyssey that perfectly encapsulates the relationship the main character, Janne, has with money. Bluffing his way into breaking the frozen ice on behalf of a female underwater rugby team, Janne is thrown into a swimming pool by one of the young women. His payment of a Fifty Euro bill escapes from his clothing. Janne is underwater, desperately trying to grasp the bill, as out of reach as a slippery fish. For Janne, money seems to come and go, but is never held onto for very long, especially when it really needed.

The first few minutes are an introduction to Lapland, a part of Finland with bitter cold winters, and high unemployment. The history of Janne's small town is one of men who's dreams of success end in the worse kind of failure, followed by suicide by hanging one's self from an infamous dead tree. Not only is Janne unemployed, but he can't even fulfill the single task of his day, assigned by his wife, Inari, which is to buy a digibox by 5 p.m.

His nine year relationship with Inari now is pending on his ability to go out on a freezing Friday night and somehow return with a digibox by Saturday morning. The odyssey is the road trip Janne takes with his two best friends, where even when something goes right, the trio find a way to screw things up, as the old joke goes, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

The 125 mile trip in zero degree weather is one of desperate measures, and the rug pulled out from under Janne mostly by his own foolishness. I was frequently reminded of Nicolas Cage's character in Raising Arizona and his pursuit of Huggies diapers. Lapland Odyssey has something of the vibe of an early Coen brothers film, with its men too easily dismissed as losers, and its streak of pitch black comedy where death takes a pratfall. Nothing shows self-delusion quite like the scene where Janne stands at an empty city streetlight during a very early morning hour, with a bucket and squeegee in hand, with the certainty that he can make a couple of Euros wiping the window of the next car to stop at the otherwise idle intersection.

There might be something in the reindeer meat, as one of Lapland Odyssey's competitors for the Jussi award, the Finnish equivalent to the Oscars, was Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. Both films are diabolically funny, sometimes quite irreverent. As it turned out, the movie with the naked Russian with the paintball gun won over the movie with roundup of old, naked Santas, with Lapland Oddysey winning for Best Film, Direction and Screenplay for writer Pekko Pesonen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 AM

January 08, 2013

The Assassins

Tong que tai
Zhao Linshan - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There is something charmingly old fashioned about how transitions from the two centers of action are handled in The Assassins. A map is shown with with a some basic drawings and titles to indicate General Cao's estate. The camera pulls back, travels a bit, and closes in on the castle of the emperor. It's a hokey device straight out of classic Hollywood.

The marquee name here belongs to Chow Yun-Fat as the aforementioned General Cao. If that name has any familiarity, Cao is one of the main true life characters from China's Three Kingdoms period, around 200 A.D. Films about that period comprise a genre of their own as far as Chinese language cinema is concerned, almost the equivalent to the multiple accounts on Hollywood films about Wyatt Earp, Jesse James or Billy the Kid. Seeing a film like this brings to mind how Andrew Sarris discussed how while films like Statecoach or The Searchers were considered classic westerns, they were appreciated best by those who loved the genre. Likewise, in these Chinese period movies, John Woo's Red Cliff is arguably the best of this particular genre, yet in the films that have followed, the better films have more than sumptuous costumes and spectacular battle sequences against a backdrop of palace intrigue.

This movie really belongs to Liu Yifei, a young actress who is the true center of the action. As Ling Ju, Liu plays a girl kidnapped and placed in grueling conditions to be trained as an assassin. Her target is General Cao. Ling Ju is positioned by unknown people in power to be Cao's mistress. The film becomes a story of impossible love as Ling Ju finds herself with conflicting feelings about Cao, and her longtime love for Mu Shun, her childhood friend, kidnapped as she was, also trained to kill Cao, but now living as a court eunuch. Things turn out badly for everyone, especially for those with the most noble of intentions.

The scene where Ling Ju first encounters Cao is almost magical, with Ling Ju standing in front of the palace, with snow swirling around her. In both this scene and near the end, Ling Ju is dressed in red, the only character to dress in such a visually striking manner. And really, there is little reason to look anywhere else when Liu is onscreen. And while it's not not the same as when Kirk Douglas carries Lana Turner in his arms, and dumps her in the pool, but there's a visually similar moment with Chow carrying Liu, only to unceremoniously dump her on the bed.

One might argue that The Assassins is almost like a show biz saga, where everyone has a part to play. Not only are the two assassins disguised as members of the royal court, but others disguise their true feelings and functions. Even the emperor would rather spend his time in song. The analogy presented here is displayed best by a scene in which the emperor is seen singing behind a screen, as a large, projected shadow. Masks are used in a couple of scenes, most notable during the final battle worn by the emperor and soldiers.

The title translates as "Bronze Sparrow Terrace", a tall building constructed by Cao as a way of displaying his power. While Zhao Linshan may have overdone the use overhead shots in the beginning of the film, the assured visuals in his feature debut come from ten years of making commercials. Relying less on gimmicks and wire work, the screenplay is by Wang Bin, a solo credit following his hand writing two films for Zhang Yimou - Hero and House of Flying Daggers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:25 AM

January 03, 2013

Long Arm of the Law

Sheng gang qi bing
Johnny Mak - 1984
Fortune Star All Region DVD

In 2005, the Hong Kong Film Awards presented a list of the 100 best Chinese films. Long Arm of the Law came in at sixth place, above King Hu's Dragon Inn, and below A City of Sadness by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Johnny Mak's film also was recently included in a series of Hong Kong noir films curated last year by Johnny To in Hong Kong. At the time the film was originally released, it was nominated for seven Hong Kong film awards, including Best Picture, winning awards for editing and the supporting performance of Shum Wai.

The kind of crime film that's recalled here is closer to some of the American crime films of the Forties, influenced by Italian neo-realism and the greater immediacy of bringing cameras out of the studios and into the streets. Some of the footage of this gang of mainland crooks trying to hit the big time in a Hong Kong heist looks more like a documentary than something staged for a narrative film. The idea of the camera as a tool for documentation is echoed by shots of surveillance cameras and monitor screens. In one of the flashier scenes, someone is seen with a small Super 8 camera, filming a murder taking place in a shopping mall.

The film takes place at the time when mainland Chinese, legally or not, would go to Hong Kong to make the kind of money impossible to earn at home. The quintet here is a team of former soldiers, led by Tung, who has established himself in a derelict section of Kowloon. The amount of money anticipated is relatively modest after the five way split, but enough for support the kind of life the four mainlanders have known. Things go wrong from the start when one of the gang is killed trying to cross the border.

One of the gang members reflects on his girlfriend, now a nightclub hostess, with scenes that present village life in China as idyllic. Indeed, the four mainlanders find themselves overwhelmed by a Hong Kong that offers so many possibilities, and requires constant negotiation, especially as the planned heist can not be carried out, and they are immediately spotted by the police. Making things more treacherous is that the local crime boss they work with is himself caught between the mainland gang and the police as a known informer.

When the mainland gang does a hit in order to get some immediate cash, Mak creates an audacious scene. The policeman known as Fatso is shot on a mall balcony, overlooking an ice skating rink below. Fatso's fall is broken up into several shots. Once he falls on the ice, populated with skaters, the camera follows Fatso as he slides around the ice rink. An overhead shot reveals a design of red stripes made from his blood.

Another scene may have influenced John Woo just a couple of years later. Tung and three gang members argue about another gang member who needs to go to a hospital for a life saving operation. The argument escalates into a four way "Mexican standoff" as each of the four holds a gun against the head of another.

There are several notable action set pieces, made at a time when scant attention was paid to Hong Kong cinema. What one is left with, though, is a parable about the illusion of money buying happiness. As the mainlanders learn, everything comes with a price, and usually that price is more than imagined. Even worse, when the surviving gang members are trapped with no where to go, they are given away by one very real rat.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM | Comments (1)

January 01, 2013

Buddha

Shaka
Kenji Misumi - 1961

One of the funniest reviews of a film is Dwight MacDonald's lacerating look at The Greatest Story Every Told. While anybody could get a couple of laughs from mentioning the stunt casting of Shelley Winters and John Wayne in cameo appearances, there was also the more serious question about how one portrays Jesus on film, as well as presenting the concept Christianity in a way that is both theologically sound as well as good cinema. Watching Buddha made me think of MacDonald, as well as Paul Schrader's essays on religion in film.

Buddha is probably most famous for being the first Japanese movie produced in a 70 mm process, in this case Technirama, which meant taking enlarging film shot in 35mm. Clearly taking cues from Hollywood, this is a big religious epic that wrongheadedly mimics what makes films like The Ten Commandments so questionable regarding matters of faith while being so entertaining in their sincere silliness. On the downside, it may have been the size of this project that kept Kenji Misumi from being able to employ his usual style as seen in the Zatoichi series. That the DVD appears to be taken from a video tape, from the English dubbed version using B movie voices, adds to the fun.

If one was unfamiliar with Buddhism, one might think from this film that Buddha was the Jesus of India. While the film loosely relays the familiar story of young Siddhartha discovering the sufferings of life, and meditating for several years in the woods, the characters keep on mentioning the Buddha as the savior of the world. The film gets it right in the short hand explanation of Buddhism regarding the equality of all people, regardless of class or gender. Still, the way the story is told is pure Cecil B. DeMille.

Much of the film is devoted to the rivalry between Siddhartha and Devadatta, that is to say that Devadatta is always in competition in matters of love and faith. Both men are princes, but Devadatta gets confused with the Prince of Darkness, carrying a trident, and generally stirring up shit wherever he goes. While Siddhartha is off meditating, Devadatta rapes his wife, before initiating a campaign to discredit Buddhism. The most obvious nod to De Mille is seen in the very large temple Devadatta constructs using accident prone slave labor. One of the more zany scenes of Siddhartha involves the attempt by a gang of ghostly maidens dressed in diaphanous saris to seduce the not yet enlightened Buddha, followed by a gang of Daiei studio's lesser monsters hoping to chase Siddhartha from the forest. Once Siddhartha is enlightened, we no longer actually see actor Kojiro Hongo, but instead the shadow of a man, or the Buddha from an extreme distance. I'm not sure whether this is out of respect to certain Buddhist sects that disapprove of any art work depicting Buddha, or if it's simply the influence of a film like Ben-Hur, where Jesus is heard but not clearly seen.

Some may find it odd to watch Japanese actors, dubbed in English, as Indians. The experience might be considered analogous to watching Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie running around as Persian royalty. While the cast is not overly star heavy, we have Raizo Ichikawa, Machiko Kyo, along with future Zatoichi star, Shintaro Katsu as Devadatta. There is a passage that reads, "The voice does the Buddha's work". For this English language version of a Japanese movie, the recognizable voice of Buddha belongs to Peter Fernandez.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:57 AM

December 27, 2012

Sexy Line

Sekushî chitai
Teruo Ishii - 1961
Beam Entertainment DVD

The last Line movie by Teruo Ishii begins quite promisingly with a jazzy score and a title sequence made up of collages with pictures that appear to be ripped from the so-called men's magazines. One can call this film noir, but there;s also the spirit of screwball comedy mixed in.

A guy named Tetsu runs into a female pickpocket, Mayumi. She's snatched his wallet, while he's the one caught by the police for being her accomplice. Tetsu's troubles only worsen when he's ordered to transfer to the Osaka branch the following Monday, and it turns out that his fiancee, Reiko, not only worked secretly as a prostitute, but got murdered for trying to go free-lance. Tetsu gets framed for his fiancee's death, probably making his wish that he was stuck in the poky for another day. Tetsu runs into Mayumi, and the two spend the weekend trying to clear his name.

The "sexy" comes from a couple of suggestive shots of Reiko entertaining a couple of her customers, as well as the scenes taking place in the "sketching club", where men gather around nude women, with paper and pencil in hand. The nudity is mostly suggested, with the camera frame just below the shoulders, or cloth carefully draped. One of the more imaginative shots has the back of one of the women obscured by a tactfully positioned electric fan blades. For those men with the interest and money, the models are available for more personal services.

Ishii takes his camera to the streets of Tokyo, in the Ginza and Asakusa districts. Even at night, the bright lights of the city can be very bright. But there is also a nice scene of Tetsu seeking a bar in one of the very narrow alleys of Tokyo, where often tiny bars are crammed next door to each other in claustrophobic spaces. The hand held camera work gives Sexy Line a documentary feel.

Yoko Mihara, appears here as the pickpocket Mayumi. A fixture during the last years of Shintoho, Mihara especially works her goofy charm when she blames her troubles on a finger that can't help but finding its way into other people's pockets. It's rare when an actress can mug for the camera, and her facial expressions become more ingratiating than annoying. This is a film with several small visual pleasures, and enough sense of humor about itself to allow for an improbable police rescue as the result of a note written on a paper airplane, and Mayumi, about to be a gangster's victim, carefully explaining why it would be in the criminal's best interest to postpone her death until a time when gunshots would be less conspicuous.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

December 20, 2012

Yellow Line

Osen Chitai
Teruo Ishii - 1960
Beam Entertainment DVD

Some might gripe about the various plot threads being too neatly coincidental, parallel lines that eventually get tied in one neat ending. For myself, Yellow Line is a nifty little thriller that goes in unexpected places visually.

The basic story is of a hitman who's cheated out of his payment. Spotting a woman in a phone booth, he pretends to be with her while being pursued by the Tokyo cops. The hitman more or less kidnaps the woman, Emi, by taking her with him to Kobe, except that she was planning on going there anyways, for a dance gig. The Emi's boyfriend, a reporter, Toshio, thinks there's something fishy about the fly by night company that hired his girlfriend, and talks his boss into checking out their main office, possibly a front for a prostitution ring, which is in Kobe, also home of the hitman's victim.

Teruo Ishii's narrative is the stuff of B movies. The action mostly seems to take place during a perpetual twilight. I have to assume there was a conscious decision here in the use of the color red. There is a close-up of Emi's shoes, bright red. She "accidentally" kicks one shoe off just before the train to Kobe departs, providing a clue to her whereabouts. Emi stands out with her red dress and hat. There are also bursts of red with flowers and blood.

The other use of color is of the type to raise the eyebrows of a western audience. One of the characters, a prostitute called "The Moor" is the least convincing caucasian in blackface. Only another "Moor", Laurence Olivier as Othello would be strike me as worse, as I kept on expecting him to break out and sing, "Mammy" and other hits from the Al Jolson songbook. There is also a nightclub scene with several Japanese men, also in blackface, part of some kind of jungle number, with Emi as the featured performer. This is the kind of stuff that needs to be accepted with a grain of salt, or maybe a full shaker.

Ishii wouldn't be the only Japanese filmmaker with an interest in French movies. Much of the action takes place in a part of Kobe called "The Casbah", a direct reference to Pepe Le Moko. In this instance, we're in a maze of narrow streets, full of cheap bars, convenient hotels, pimps, prostitutes, and peddlers of various illegal goods. This "Casbah" pointedly caters to gangsters, assorted low-lifes, and foreigners. The French influence also includes a bar called "Mon Ami" and "Printemps". Even when she seems to protest what is going on, Emi seems to be willingly going along with the hitman. It would be like The Thirty-nine Steps without handcuffs, and Madeleine Carroll sticking with Robert Donat out of a sense of fun and adventure. In best film noir tradition, the hitman, who is never named, shows more honor than the guys that set him up.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:47 AM

December 18, 2012

Black Line

Kurosen chitai
Teruo Ishii - 1960
Beam Entertainment Region 0 DVD

'Tis the season for big studio releases, best of the year lists, and holiday cheer. As is my habit, I'm taking an alternate route. Not that I will be covering all of them, but I was able to come across subtitled DVDs of Teruo Ishii's "Line" series. Among the last films from the modest budget, and quirky, Shin Toho studios, this is a early Sixties Japanese film noir. Unlike something from about the same time, for example, Akira Kurosawa's High and Low, these films are unashamedly pulpy, without pretense to being strolls into Tokyo's wilder side and dark corners.

A woman is running through the streets and up and down the subway staircases. She evades the man pursuing her, somewhere in the vicinity of a Shinjuku movie theater. Across from the movie theater, a fortune teller get the attention of the man, purportedly to tell him his future. This seemingly psychic woman points the man towards another clue. The man meets a pimp over drinks. The man realizes too late that he's been drugged, only to wake up next to the woman he's been chasing, a woman now dead.

The basic setup for Black Line is hardly original, but really, who cares? Part of it is the novelty of a different time and place that helps carry things along. Also, one might argue that part of the charm of genre films is their familiarity, that they serve as comfort food for cinephiles. In this case, we have free lance reporter "Scoop" Machida trying to get the goods on a criminal gang that runs a prostitution racket, the "Black Line".

And aside from trying to find out who's out to frame him, and who did the actual murder, Machida discovers more than he bargained for. There's also the school for doll making, where the dolls have drugs hidden inside, and the girls are forced into prostitution. There's even a visit to a transvestite night club, where the "girls" make it clear who they are, and whose pleasure is being served. Along the way, Machida literally stumbles upon a female gambler, Maya, the good bad girl, who helps him solve the mystery. There's also the rival reporter, who may have an agenda of his own.

There's some off-screen narration from "Scoop". Befitting his name, you get the feeling that he's the kind of guy who's scruples are flexible when it comes to getting a story. When "Scoop" demonstrates a trick of unlocking a door using gum and a toothpick, it virtually confirms that he's maybe a notch or two above the riff-raff, thugs, sleazeballs, hookers and strippers that populate this movie. That his mode of transportation is a black Volkswagen Beetle is another indication of modest means.

Visually, Black Line looks like classic film noir with the deep shadows, claustrophobic interiors, and desolate exteriors, aided by a jazzy music score. Teruo Ishii and his films were for the most part unknown outside of Japan during his lifetime. I would doubt that a film like this would have been imported as its presentation of Tokyo and Yokohama is almost akin to walking into a familiar room, turning on the lights, and discovering previously unseen cockroaches scurrying across the floor. The end of the film includes a slight tip of the hat towards The Maltese Falcon as "Scoop" suggests he'll bide his time while Maya serves her jail sentence. In it's idiosyncratic way, Black Line also has the stuff dreams are made of.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:06 AM | Comments (1)

December 13, 2012

Sex Hunter: Wet Target

Sekkusa Hanta: Nureta hyoteki
Yukihiro Sawada - 1972
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Jasper Sharp says so in his notes that accompany this DVD, and I would agree, this is a film worth seeing, especially if you look beyond the title. Without the sex scenes and the nudity, this would be a fairly conventional film, the story of an ex-con seeking revenge against the men who raped his sister, a young woman so traumatized that she hangs herself. But while the sex and nudity are what classify this film as Roman Porno, it's the political aspects to this story that are loaded and worth examining.

As was common, especially in the earliest years of "Pink" movies, as long as certain requirements were maintained in terms of any depictions of sex, the filmmakers pretty much had free reign in their content. Sex Hunter: Wet Target takes on both American and Japanese racism, as well as attacking the special legal status of American forces in Japan. Without understand the historical context, some viewers might misinterpret this film as simply being anti-American. The two gang rape scenes involve American soldiers with Japanese women, with the one interior scene taking place in a room with a giant picture of the Statue of Liberty and uniforms hung against the walls. Such scenes have their inspiration in real life events.

The ex-con, Okamoto, is half African-American. Eyes are raised as his sister is full Japanese. Seeking the men who raped his sister, Natsuko, Okamoto seeks out Etsuko, Natsuko's friend, and finds himself in a world of gangsters with ties to the U.S. military. Okamoto also gets a job at a topless bar, where the dancers put on private sex shows. Okamoto's mixed race is cause for both attraction and revulsion, as it is the source for his becoming a sex show star, while also giving excuse to be called "Darkie".

Sex Hunter: Wet Target is another example of how the earliest Nikkatsu Roman Porno films tried to look as much as possible like mainstream films, within certain budget constraints. There is exceptional care in the lighting of many scenes, as well as several artistic touches. The opening rape scene takes place in totally black environment, while a flashback imagined by Okamoto takes place in a totally white environment. It is as if this event which horrifies Okamoto, takes place out of conventional space and time. A further sense of dislocation is created with the use of extreme close ups of a woman's lips, or a tongue exploring that same woman's ear, during the sex scenes, making such scenes of intimacy abstract.

The revenge story has its own unique twist as Okamoto is robbed of his opportunity to strike back at the rapists. At one point, newsreel footage from Vietnam is on a television, adding to the questioning of the American military's presence in Asia. I would also contend that the film questions the how "the other", be it based on race or culture, is made into a subject of erotic fantasy. The screenplay is by Atsushi Yamatoya, most famous for contributing to Suzuki Seijun's career buster, Branded to Kill. Like that more famous film, Sex Hunter: Wet Target is the work of filmmakers looking to break the rules of subject matter and narrative presentation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

December 11, 2012

I Love it from Behind!

Bakku ga daisuki!
Koyu Ohara - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

For those who've been watching Impulse Pictures' Nikkatsu Roman Porno series, here's the answer to the question of that music played during the opening collection of film clips. Hachiro Kai's jaunty, MOR jazz score might bring a smile on the face of viewers, both for its familiarity and to hear it in its original context.

Some readers may recall the existence of the Plaster Casters. There's also a 1970 documentary that featured the girls at work titled Groupies. A very memorable sight was a lineup of the girls', um, artwork, with a row of plaster casts made from the penises of various British rockers, towered over by a plaster cast of Jimi Hendrix. I'm not sure if the Plaster Casters provided inspiration for a plot point in I Love it from Behind!, or if there is, or was, similar activity creating ink blots that require no psychoanalytical interpretations.

Please be advised that the title is both attention grabbing, and has little to do with what actually happens onscreen. The main character, Mimei, comes from Sapporo to Tokyo for a month to achieve her ambition of one hundred such ink blots prior to getting married. Mimei stays with a friend from college, Rei, currently having a lesbian relationship with the otherwise virginal Masumi.

Rei's aversion to men stems from a harrowing experience with an office coworker with a taste for sadomasochism that involves rope play, and a very close shave, with the insertion of a dildo in the end. Here's where the may get problematic for contemporary viewers. Following a mild scene of sapphic love between Masumi and Rei, Mimei discovers the two, pronounces their love as abnormal, and initiates a plan to, um, straighten out her friends. Rei and Mimei hang out at a pickup bar run by Bunta, who appears extremely femme, allegedly for business. Mimei's idea for curing Rei is for the pair to turn the table on various guys, drugging them, tying them up, shaving their pubic hair, and jamming dildos with large dollops of butter. Supposedly this last bit is suppose to turn these guys gay. It should be mentioned that the shaving is all done with straight razors, no pun intended, and to put this in a greater cultural context, when it's the woman with the razor, I'm certain that this was intended to invoke memories of Sada Abe, famous for severing her lover's penis, and the subject of several then recent movies, most infamously, Nagisa Oshima's In the Realm of the Senses.

On the lighter side, Mimei meets the studliest man in Tokyo, with the pair setting out to beat a record time of fifty-five hours of almost non-stop sex. While several of the sex scenes use pixelation to hide any bits forbidden by Japanese law, Ohara also manages to keep things within the required limits using bunched up sheets, and plates of food. Also noteworthy is that star Junko Asahina career lasted significantly longer than that of many Roman Porno and "Pink" actresses.

While some might groan at the less than enlightened view of LGBT sex, and a final scene that hints at more perversion to come, I Love it from Behind! is a reasonably entertaining sixty-five minutes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

December 07, 2012

Doomsday Book

In lyoo myeol mang bo go seo
Yim Pil-sung and Kim Jee-woon - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There is a bit more optimism here than the English language title would indicate. Even the loosely translated title, "The Fall of Humanity" isn't quite right either, although each of the three stories here can be described in one degree or another as dystopian fables. The first and third sections are by Yim Pil-sung with the center section by Kim Jee-woon.

Yim should be known better. His Hansel and Gretel is a dark fantasy that suggests a horror movie begun by Wes Anderson, with the child's eye view of the world, morphing into a nightmare by David Lynch. Kim is the better known filmmaker here with I Saw the Devil and The Good, the Bad, the Weird. Surprisingly, Kim's film is the most optimistic in this trilogy, while Yim has two apocalyptic visions.

"A Brave New World" manages to cram a story about pandemics, mad cow disease, zombies, and a parody of Adam and Eve all in less than forty minutes. As in the Bible, all it takes is an apple, in this case one very bad apple. As if to illustrate the old adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the culprit here is the recycling of food. This is the kind of story that may convert a few meat eaters into vegetarians.

Kim's "A Heaven Creature" is provides food for thought. The film takes place in a future with advanced robotics, taking on human tasks, or with the existence of artificial animals as pets. Going beyond the standard examinations of artificial intelligence, this is a story about a robot assigned to work at a Buddhist monastery. The robot is considered by the chief monk to have achieved enlightenment. The company the produces the robot considers the robot defective, to be destroyed as a threat to humanity. And as a Buddhist, I have participated in discussions about how Buddhism is defined and what it means to say that Buddhism exists in all living things, as well as the concept of how one expresses one's enlightenment. Kim's story could also be understood to be a reworking of some of the basic themes about robots established by author Karel Capek. As some of the ideas about robots have been interpreted as having their origins in the Jewish concept of the Golem, Kim's setting would reflect an appropriate, and not unrelated, cultural shift. For those simply concerned with a story, without getting too deep into philosophical concerns, "A Heavenly Creature" has a nice twist ending.

Yim closes out the trilogy with "Birthday", about a young girl who orders a special 8-ball for her father from a mysterious website. As it turns out, this is no ordinary pool ball, but an asteroid hurtling towards earth. One of Yim's targets here, as in "A Brave New World" is television news, as journalists set aside any needed public information to air their personal grievances. There are also some grim laughs to be had at the sight of a commercial for tiny, personal survival shelters, each about the size of a bathtub, with Yim including another, ahem, gag, about recycling. The young girl and her family hide in a bomb shelter, waiting for the world to end. Yim's goofy story actually has a happy ending of sorts, plus the bonus of a brief appearance by Bae Doona bringing additional sunshine.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

December 05, 2012

Chiller

Lawrence Gordon Clark, Bob Mahoney and Rob Walker - 1995
Synapse Film Region 1 DVD (Two discs)

Not to be confused with any television series with the name, Thriller, this was a limited, five episode British series. Unlike Hammer House of Horror, which I reviewed three months ago, there is neither the cachet of the Hammer name, nor the curiosity of seeing a handful of past and future stars in action. I'm not certain that having a series filmed in Yorkshire would mean much to stateside viewers.

These might be best described as psychological horror stories, but I suspect that the producers just wanted to cut corners by limiting the special effects budget. There's also a bit of repetition going on, with people hit by cars, automobile accidents, and flashes of nudity with two women in different episodes, although to be fair, one is in the shower, and the other is in the tub. The music in one episode sounds like a fair approximation of Bernard Herrmann's Psycho score, while another episode clearly has a death scene unmistakably lifted from Suspiria. Am I assuming too much that the name of one of the characters, Peter Walker, was meant as a kind of in-joke?

Actually, that episode with its references to some of the more extreme examples of horror movies in the Seventies, "The Man who didn't Believe in Ghosts", is the best of the five. The story of a writer whose career is to debunk the existence of the paranormal has just enough intrigue, as the writer literally stakes his life to prove that what ever is happening in his own house has a rational explanation. The first episode, "Prophesy", about a seance that revives the spirit of a 17th Century Satanist, causing death and disaster to the participants, is also of interest. On the other hand, "Toby" might only be notable for the sight of a woman breast feeding her invisible ghost baby. There is an episode of a creepy guy who lives in an abandoned old church, goaded to do very bad things by a friend who may, or may not, be real. The final episode, about ritual deaths of kidnapped children, and references the historical, and horrific origins, of nursery rhymes, is more interesting in conception than in, ahem, execution.

The biggest mystery concerning Chiller is where are the opening credits? Without checking IMDb, there's no way to know who wrote or directed any of the episodes. It's strange that the main credits are missing, and that Synapse would release the DVDs in this fashion. A written supplement with those credits, and maybe a few notes explaining why this series might be considered important, would have been helpful.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

December 03, 2012

X Game

X gemu
Yohei Fukuda - 2010
Danger After Dark Region 1 DVD

I don't know if anyone reading recalls a story in the news about a an altercation at a high school reunion. One guy took out his anger at another guy decades after they had been in school together. As I recall, the guy doing the beating was the one previously bullied. Better known is the recounting of a high school Mitt Romney leading his friends in holding down a student who went against the grain simply by choosing to wear his hair a little longer, bleached blond. The other students remember Romney chopping off the students hair with scissors, and the sense of humiliation that followed. Romney claimed not to remember the incident. There may be some with nostalgia regarding their school days. For others, school was a way of marking time at best, or with painful memories that never go away.

X Game is a violent fantasy film about a bullied sixth grade girl's revenge on those who tormenter her the most. Those guilty include a teacher who indirectly condones the activity, and a boy who has appeared to try to stop the bullying. Four students, now older high school students, find themselves in a room made to look like their old classroom. The X Game consists of thirteen forms of punishment, written on red paper, pulled out of a special box by the victim. The four students receive heightened forms of punishment, more painful variations of the kind of torture done when younger. Revenge is less than sweet, and goes beyond the classroom.

The film is adapted from a novel by popular novelist YusukeYamada. I am assuming the film was made for the same audience as those who read the books, making this a sharp contrast to English language movies about teen wizards and vampires. Yamada is not too much older than his readers, 31, and to the best of my knowledge has no books available in English.

As for director Yohei Fukuda, this film represents a big leap over the film that first brought him attention, Chanbara Beauty. What ever that film had or didn't have in terms of story or style was more than made up for in the endearing image of Eri Otoguro wearing a costume of a cowboy hat, boots, and a bikini. The filming here is more polished, with punctuations of low tech video, and extremely rapid flashes of images. Fukuda also finds ways of incorporating images of Xs throughout the film. Yamada has been adapted to film again by Fukuda in another game themed horror film, Bingo.

I normally don't discuss screenplay writers much, but the film was written by Yoichi Minamikawa in a second collaboration with Mari Asato. I've written about Mari Asato previously. For me this is worth noting as Asato is the only Japanese writer-director who I know of working consistently in the horror genre, with films generally aimed towards an older teen and young adult audience.

There are some ideas, both thoughtful and provocative, worth considering, that are hopefully not entirely subsumed within the rubric of "extreme cinema".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

November 27, 2012

Kill 'Em All

Raimund Huber - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Nothing says holiday entertainment quite like a movie where the characters pummel each other to death when guns and knives aren't available.

While the set-up, a bunch of hired assassins locked in a room are pitted against each other, is hardly original, it doesn't keep Kill 'Em All from being eminently watchable. Yeah, sure, there's not much of a plot here, strangers forced into duels that end in death for one, pawns for the entertainment of a mystery person or persons. I haven't had the opportunity to see Raimund Huber's previous film, Bangkok Adrenaline, although this film takes place in Bangkok and is fueled by adrenaline.

But I'll also give you a two word reason why you might want to find time for this film: Gordon Liu. The icon of Hong Kong bad assery is now confined to a nursing home and in ill health. Frankly, it was heartbreaking to see a photo of Liu in a wheelchair. His role in Kill 'Em All is not that big, and I suspect his action scenes were designed to minimize physical exertion. Still, those last fifteen minutes or so of Gordon Liu in action is justification enough for any movie.

There's a sense of self-awareness when the unseen voice tells the surviving assassins that they've made it to "the next level", and one of the characters talks about feeling like he's performing in someone's video game. There's not much more deeper than that, and that's OK. Sometimes a film can be made and enjoyed for the surface visceral enjoyment.

Filmed in Bangkok, and primarily in English, and made for an international audience, the cast is primarily pan-Asian with a few western actors. The best known name here is Gordon Liu. The name that should be better known is Tim Man, a stunt performer who was responsible for the action choreography here, as well as showing off his own martial arts skills as The Kid. The eye candy as such is supplied by Thai actress Ammara Siripong, last seen in Chocolate as the mother to JeeJa. Johnny Messner appears as an opera loving hitman who sneers at anything related to ninjas, and otherwise might be a bit too sensitive for his own good.

Huber wastes little time getting started, introducing his eight assassins doing what they do best, followed by getting getting tricked into waking up in the killing chamber. Giving the film that video game vibe are scenes where scores of ninjas and "freaks" pour out of various stairways in pursuit of the renegade Siripong, Messner and Man. At one point, Siripong has to go one on one against a hulk of a man who seems entirely impervious to every kick and punch that Siripong can dole out. And sometimes it's just enough to watch an hour and a half of martial arts action where the (relatively) good guys win and the bad guys lose.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:52 AM

November 20, 2012

Schoolgirl Report Volume #9: Mature before Graduation

Schulmadchen-Report 9: Reifeprufung vor dem Abitur
Walter Boos - 1975
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

I'm not going to beat around the bush here. To describe this edition of the Schoolgirl Report series as a soft core sex comedy might raise unwarranted expectations. Not that these films were made for any deep explorations or understandings regarding the subject matter, but both the sex and the comedy are flaccid. For those who deign to snatch a look, the best moment in this film belongs to the fully dressed comic Jurgen Feindt.

For those who read German, or want trust an online translation, Feindt was famous enough to have a Wikipedia entry. I also caught a Youtube line of a comic dance performance. Here, Feindt and Elizabeth Welz portray the parents of one of the girls, the father intent on showing that he can be as hip as any young person. Feindt begins by reading from a book that supposedly has the most up to date slang, before springing into a manic dance, both solo and with Miss Welz who does her best to keep up with him. Feindt's physical comic stylings may remind some of Jerry Lewis, and I mean this as a compliment. The pratfalls are both corny and expressively hilarious. Feindt and Welz later greet their daughter and her boyfriend with big hair wigs and garishly trendy outfits. The scene is a comic gem in a movie that mostly dribbles away much of its comic potential.

The narrative is built around the stories of several schoolgirls, all involved in an accident involving two fast cars, and the copious consumption of schnapps. Two policemen discuss how the children of good families could find themselves in their current predicament. Among the situations are a student who marries and divorces at age 18, finding that marriage gets in the way of sex, a girl whose frigidity was triggered by the sight of a flasher displaying an oversized dildo, and an amorous stepfather who impregnates his lesbian stepdaughter. I'm not sure who would find the misadventures of these overaged schoolgirls titillating. There may be some nostalgic value to the Schoolgirl Report series that I have yet to uncover.

Again, IMDb comes through with a reasonably thorough cast list of the supposedly real life characters. An offscreen narrator intones a few words of serious intent at the conclusion, blaming the lapses of judgment on these changing times. Such moralizing is the equivalent to extolling the nutritional values of a creampuff.

I would have to give Walter Boos and company credit for a cute little visual pun. This involves a man and a woman, each with a single, twitching cheek.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

November 15, 2012

Asylum

Olivier Chateau - 2008
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

Also known as I Want to be a Gangster, Olivier Chateau's debut feature should be mandatory viewing for any would-be filmmakers. Not that the film is in the same critical league as, say, Citizen Kane, but more fundamentally, Chateau demonstrates what you can do with extremely limited financial resources, and a little bit of imagination. Also, some kudos to the gang at Synapse Films for providing a U.S. DVD release outside their usual scope.

Essentially, a small time hood, Jack, goofs up, holding on to a big bag of drugs that belongs to gangster with serious muscle. Jack thinks he's got it made when he works his way into the gang, only to have things get worse when the nephew of the top boss, the kind of guy who looks like a young banker, accidentally shoots himself under Jack's watch. As punishment, Jack is kidnapped and chained to a tree, left to die, in a large, remote forest. As it turns out, Jack has very strong survival instincts.

Chateau ratchets the tension at the very beginning. Three guys are laying cash on the table, while a gun is handed between them. What we see is a variation of Russian roulette, only with the gun aiming at the knee. It's a game of verve and bluff, and even if we don't see what happens to one foolish player, the pain is easy to imagine.

Jack talks about wanting to be a gangster from watching movies. His punishment of being chained to the tree destroys any lingering romantic notions. Even before then is the understanding of strict rules and hierarchies, especially after his interview with the top gangster. Chateau cast Jean-Pierre Kalfon as the criminal boss, giving his film a tangential nouvelle vague connection. In Kalfon's debut film, Claude Lelouch's Une Fille et des Fusils from 1964, he played a novice criminal.

The DVD includes one of Chateau's early shorts, Homer, about an uncaged rabbit doing maximum damage to one apartment. The "Making of" extra is partially devoted to Chateau discussing making a movie on a budget of 7000 Euros, as well as some of the casting decisions. One of the top thugs is played by Jacques Frantz, who in addition to his continued supporting work in French films, also is the dubbing voice for Robert De Niro and Nick Nolte. Chateau also discusses his use of desaturated color, creating a not quite black and white look. Robert Rodriguez is mentioned for his debut, El Mariachi, a tiny budget debut feature. While Chateau's film does not have stylized action scenes, there are moments given to the kind of disorientation found in the so-called experimental films from the Sixties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

November 13, 2012

The Definitive Document of the Dead

Roy Frumkes - 2012
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

My own relationship with George Romero's films began when Night of the Living Dead had been kicking around for three years. I saw the film while going to school in Berkeley, the summer of 1971. I didn't know too much about the film other than that it was low budget, and pushed the then acceptable boundaries of onscreen horror. And what I saw was scarier than any horror movie I had seen previously, although the biggest shock would be the death of Duane Jones after he survives all that happened that night.

Roy Frumkes' touches on aspects of Romero's career and the impact of the Dead movies, without being very analytical. I have to at least admire Frumkes' tenacity in starting with his original 1979 documentary on Romero, and following up with showing up at the set of several films over a period of about thirty years. What keeps this document from being definitive for me is that too many questions remained unanswered.

Although it took several decades following the original release of Night of the Living Dead, the film can be considered the turning point from when zombies were minor threats of horror movie terrors, to fixtures of popular culture, a phenomena in need of some explanation here. Romero has made some films that were outside the horror genre, not mentioned, nor is it discussed to what extent Romero's continuing with the Dead franchise is purely commercial or artistic in motivation.

There are excerpts from Martin and Monkey Shines. Missing is any reference to one of Romero's most intriguing films, the little seen Bruiser or the very atypical Knightriders. From the original documentary is some discussion of the film that most influenced Romero, Howard Hawks' The Thing, which Romero would have seen when he was ten or eleven years old. We also get to see one of Romero's commercials, a thirty second spot for Calgon Water Conditioner that is also a parody of Fantastic Voyage and that film's microscopic submarine. There are also parodies of Romero, with a car audio ad for "Night of the Living Deals", and topless female zombies running amuck in Night of the Giving Head.

As much as I like Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later, appearances by Simon Pegg and Danny Boyle are wasted opportunities for the filmmakers to discuss what they've taken from Romero. And while Romero is generous in his praise for Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead, without mentioning the irony that the remake was Snyder's feature directorial debut, working with a budget almost twice that of Romero's most expensive film, Land of the Dead.

The original 1979 documentary offers the strongest portions of this revised look at Romero over the years. The only way to see that version is directly from Synapse Films, assuming there are any copies still available of the limited edition Blu-ray. No matter how much a filmmaker thinks he can improve things, movies are often like movie monsters, better when left in their original state of being.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM

November 09, 2012

Fate is the Hunter

Ralph Nelson - 1964
Twilight Time Region 1 DVD

Nancy Kwan and Suzanne Pleshette in the same movie - the kind of combination that piques my interest. Most of the weight is carried by that axiom of cinema, Glenn Ford. Almost fifty years since the making of this film, it may be hard for more contemporary viewers to fathom that Glenn Ford name was enough to greenlight a movie. Fate is the Hunter is the kind of film that is more correctly designated as an old movie, rather than a classic. I don't know who was clamoring for the Twilight Time DVD rescue. What is of interest is that the movie serves as a nicely preserved example of mid-Sixties entertainment, neither a top line prestige film, nor a low budget programmer, but the kind of medium budget production that normally played in movie theaters.

For Ralph Nelson, the assignment meant a step up, working for 20th Century-Fox, following three critically acclaimed, if smaller budget films, notably Lilies of the Field. Nelson is virtually forgotten nowadays. Even during his peak, he didn't get even a paragraph in Sarris's The American Cinema. For the most part of his career, Nelson has been thematically consistent with his gallery of outsiders seeking to validate themselves.

In this case, airplane executive Ford finds himself on the outs with everyone else in investigating an airplane crash. For lack of any other evidence, the company wants to peg the blame on swinging bachelor pilot Rod Taylor. Pals who served together in the Pacific during World War II, Ford seeks the truth. That Taylor tricked Ford out of a date with USO performer Jane Russell twenty years ago, or that Taylor makes it a habit of badly singing "Blue Moon", doesn't matter. The structure of the film, with the multiple flashbacks of Rod Taylor, resemble that of a murder mystery, with Ford as the straight, sober, and virtually humorless detective in dogged pursuit of answers that will clear his friend's name.

That the film was made at all was probably due to the memory of two films from books by Ernest Gann having been big hits a decade ago. Those two films were Island in the Sky and The High and the Mighty. The only connection Nelson's film has with Gann's book is the title, and the scenes of hair raising flight. It's not that Fate is the Hunter is a bad film, just not a film as compelling as suggested by its premise. The careers of the stars had pretty much plateaued by this point, and the films commercial prospects weren't helped coming in between My Fair Lady and Roustabout. Ralph Nelson was able to bounce back commercially just a couple months later with Cary Grant as another outsider in the gently comic Father Goose.

There are a few modest pleasures to be found here. I'm a sucker for the Black and White CinemaScope format. There's a big, inky black sky. Some of the shots have a film noir quality. It's notable that Milton Krasner had been the cinematographer for several movies starring Glenn Ford during this time, including the two films Ford made with Vincente Minnelli. Suzanne Pleshette is the reliable supporting player here, the stewardess who is the lone survivor of the crash. Nancy Kwan plays an oceanographer, Rod Taylor's last love. Even with second billing, Kwan's only onscreen a fairly short time, in a role that doesn't make much use of her talents. Constance Towers looks nice, but also is given little to do following more notable work with John Ford and especially Sam Fuller. Dorothy Malone had segued to television guest appearance, and has an uncredited role as high society girl that Taylor was suppose to marry. Malone is a good bad girl here, making the most of her few minutes of screen time, a star that shines with its own incandescence.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:07 AM

November 07, 2012

Painted Skin: The Resurrection

Hua Pi Er
Wuershan - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region A BD

Sometimes the best thing to do is to give in to the spectacle.

A movie I've enjoyed revisiting is The Thief of Bagdad, the 1940 version, partially directed by Michael Powell. And let's face it, what anyone remembers best is not the romance between June Duprez and John Justin, but young Sabu turning into a small, stray dog, and Rex Ingram, a giant genie with an equally huge laugh. There was a time, during the 1940s and 50s, when Arabian fantasies were a Hollywood staple. It takes a certain amount of disbelief to accept Tony Curtis as The Son of Ali Baba or Piper Laurie as a Persian princess, but these films were often entertaining equally because of as well as in spite of the goofiness of the film's premise.

While the Painted Skin series doesn't have the kind of casting that might cause viewers' eyes to roll, the stories are not too far removed from Hollywood fantasies about exotic lands, where fates of lovers is often determined by magic. Here we have a bumbling demon hunter, the descendant of generations of demon hunters, who encounters a lovely demon, and has to be convinced by her that she is in fact a bird temporarily in human form. The main story is of a fox demon who trades her body with a princess in order to know human love. The princess has a scarred face, partially hidden by a mask, kind of like the Phantom of the Opera. She's in love with a guard, who hides his feelings due to his not being of royalty. In Painted Skin: The Resurrection, love is impossible because each would-be lover needs what their object of affection has, be it a heart, immortality, or beauty.

I haven't seen Gordan Chan's 2008 version of Painted Skin, yet that doesn't seem entirely necessary as the new film doesn't depend on knowledge of that film. I do highly recommend King Hu's frequently daffy 1993 version of Painted Skin. There is also a 1966 film of this retold story. Zhou Xun appears in both Chan's film and here as Xiaowei, the fox demon. Vickie Zhao Wei, also from the first film, appears as the scarred princess. Yang Mi almost flies away with the film as the bird demon. Slender, with a high pitched voice, Yang helps keep the enterprise from becoming to serious. To what extent it smuggles into this film, a huge commercial success in China, is the idea that it is the women who are usually in control, while the men tend to bungle things up, not recognizing their own limitations. Painted Skin: The Resurrection is advertised as a story of true love, but often the real love is between the women.

Wuershan previously made some impact with The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman a couple of years ago. The overuse of digital coloring, special effects, and over-editing from that film have been toned down. I'm certain that the two hour plus running time could have been shortened had Wuershan not been so enamored of slow motion. While I'm not against using the newest technology, there is a tipping point when it becomes too much, to the detriment of the film. As far as I'm concerned, the most magical aspect to Painted Skin: The Resurrection is the presence of Zhou Xun and Zhao Wei sharing the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

October 31, 2012

Evil of Dracula

Chi o suu bara
Michio Yamamoto - 1974
Shadow Warrior All Region DVD

Dracula's not in this film. Then again, he's not named in the Japanese title which translates as "Bloodthirsty Roses". And there are a few gaps that the more discerning viewer will puzzle over. One the other hand, the third of Michio Yamamoto's vampire trilogy can be enjoyed for being more ambitious, even if those ambitions are largely half-baked.

Like the previous two films that seemed inspired by ten year old Hammer productions, this film seems to get some of its inspiration from Roger Corman's Poe series. The film takes place at a girls' boarding school, somewhere in a remote part of northern Japan. The principal lives in a large, Gothic style mansion. Inside are lots of paintings of men and women previously connected with the school. They resemble the kinds of paintings that are often seen in Corman's films of the main character's mad relatives, one of the recurring elements in those films. Also, one of the teachers in Yamamoto's film goes about quoting the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, adding a bit of literary weight.

Yamamoto also addresses the competition from the other studios. While rival studio Nikkatsu was devoted to Roman Porno, and Toei remained commercially viable with their Pinky Violence films, Toho shied away from the more exploitive side of cinema. In Evil of Dracula there are a couple of big, bold close ups of single breasts, one with the puncture marks of a vampire's fangs, as well as a partially masked display of female nudity. Pretty racy stuff by Toho standards.

When the psychology teacher, Shiraki, first arrives at school, he finds that the principal's wife was just killed in an auto accident. The wife also happens to be in a coffin in the basement of the principal's house. Of course Shiraki goes to the basement to check things out for himself. What is interesting is that the wife is to be in the coffin for seven days before burial, a custom more common in China and Thailand, than in Japan. It's one of the couple of times that non-Japanese culture is used in the story. The other reference to foreign culture is the explanation of how vampires first came to exist in the part of Japan where the film takes place. The school's doctor relays a story about a caucasian survivor of a shipwreck, two hundred years previously, who was tortured for being Christian. Somehow, his denouncing Christianity did nothing to endear himself to the local populace. Wandering in the desert, this person with no name drank some of his own blood to quench is thirst, later coming across a young girl whom he also turned into a vampire. Again, as in Yamamoto's previous vampire film, one might interpret the presence of vampires as symbolic of the ills of contemporary Japan caused by outsiders.

Even if one doesn't care to consider whether there's any symbolic meaning to the story, there are a few visual pleasures to enjoy for their own sake. The trio of school girls that fight each other for the attention of Shiraki, also have the habit of pricking themselves with thorns from a white rose thoughtfully provided by the vampire principal. At one point, we see the white rose turn red. Also in Shiraki's class, during a slide show of the Rorschach test, one of the ink blots appears to be covered in blood. There is also the student body to consider, several young women with resumes of maybe three films, cute young hopefuls on the Toho lot. They may have fangs, or wield sharp instruments designed for a truly bloody death, but they are also pretty darn cute. There is also some poignancy in seeing Mr. and Mrs. Vampire, in simultaneous death throes, reaching out to each other one last time before disintegrating into a pair of steaming skeletons.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

October 29, 2012

Eleven Samurai

Ju-ichinin no samurai
Eiichi Kudo - 1967
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

There is a remarkable shot in Eleven Samurai, one that clearly delineates the difference between classic filmmaking, and the kind of visual laziness that happens too often in contemporary films. The camera focuses on a forest road. Fog obscures the road. The shot is held for several seconds. Nothing seems to happen although one eventually hears the galloping of horses getting louder. Samurai on horseback faintly, and then more clearly emerge, in and then through the fog. The camera zooms back to provide a perspective of the samurai who are staging an ambush. It's the kind of filmmaking that is almost forgotten, where the filmmaker demands that the audience pay attention to what is happening on the screen, and done with a single take.

The story is inspired by a true incident that took place in 1839. While hunting, the younger brother of the Shogun crosses into the land belonging to a clan without permission. Shooting a farmer for being in his way, the vassals of that clan ask that the brother and his entourage turn back. The brother, seeing his status challenged, kills the clan's vassal. Even though the members of the Shogunate are aware of the crimes of the brother, it is the other clan which is to be punished with abolishment. A secret plan is hatched to take revenge.

The third film of Kudo's samurai trilogy, there is some similarity in the setup and even the story to the two previous films. What is different is that a good portion of the film is devoted to the relationship between the leader of the samurai gang, Hayato, and his wife, Orie. The scenes of tenderness between the two, played respectively by Isao Natsuyagi and Junko Miyazono, are not often found in jidaigeki films. Hayato and Orie are not just spouses, but lovers in the truest sense, as Kudo cuts to extreme close-ups of hands caressing each other.

As in his other films, Kudo has extraordinary use of wide screen black and white imagery. Another forest shot could well have been inspired by Ansel Adams, with the various shadings, and the shafts of sunlight striking through the trees. Not one to make it easy for himself, his crew or the cast, Kudo places the final, extended fight sequence in the rain, in a muddy field. As in his previous films, Kudo also finds ways to film his characters in silhouette.

The music is by Akira Ifukube, best known for his score for Godzilla. Much of the music here is minor chord, and elegiac. Ifukube's music here is as recognizably his work in much the same way as one identifies the film scores of Ennio Morricone.

I unapologetically love wide screen black and white movies, which may partially explain why I usually enjoy Japanese movies from the late Fifties through the Sixties that used that format. There are Hollywood movies as well, notably Sam Fuller's Forty Guns and Jack Cardiff's Sons and Lovers. I bring this up because even though Eiichi Kudo is now being discovered by western viewers for his samurai films, he also needs to be acknowledged as a master of light and shadow.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:05 AM

October 25, 2012

The Italian Horror Blogathon: Autopsy

Macchie solari
Armando Crispino - 1975
Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

Autopsy is over the top within its first few minutes, and as such, is something of a masterpiece of excess and dubious taste. The only part of the film where Armando Crispino shows some restraint is in the gore, but that's almost like describing an overcooked meal that spilled out of the pot and onto the stove and part of the floor, but at least didn't splatter the entire kitchen. What may make some viewers nostalgic is that Autopsy was made during an era when everybody got naked on screen, not just those corpses that poor Mimsy Farmer is examining, but Mimsy in all her skinny glory, as well as Barry Primus and Ray Lovelock.

Farmer is an intern at a Rome hospital, doing a thesis comparing real suicides with those those deaths that are made to appear like suicides. It's summertime, and apparently the sun is driving a lot of people crazy, so crazy that they kill themselves rather than spend a few bucks on a decent fan. Dr. Mimsy has her hands full checking those who've checked themselves out. In those days when sexual harassment was dismissed as "boys being boys", Dr. Mimsy also has to fight off the advances of a goofy looking associate. Even worse, Dr. Mimsy thinks she sees the dead come alive, and at least a couple of those reanimated corpses have the hots for each other. Some of these characters are both the naked and the dead.

Even getting together with stud muffin photographer/race car driver Ray Lovelock offers little relief, when she starts seeing dead people, leaving poor Ray a bit frustrated. A young lady, Betty, appears at Dr. Mimsy's door very late, an acquaintance of her philandering father. Betty is next seen on a beach chair, barely recognizable from shooting off part of her face. It turns out that Betty's brother is a priest, played by Barry Primus. Father Barry is a hot headed, epileptic, former race car driver. Even when Father Barry's spirituality is questionable, the way he whips Dr. Mimsy's car through the streets of Rome makes the locals look like Sunday drivers.

Armando Crispino isn't the stylist like Dario Argento or even someone like Sergio Martino, but the movie moves along at such a nice clip that any plot holes are easily ignored. The most discomforting scene takes place in a place described as a criminal museum, full of statues of various malefactors, and giant images of distorted and mutilated bodies. There is also the wonderfully nutty scene of Dr. Mimsy defending herself against the harasser with nothing but a dinner fork conveniently left in the autopsy room. In a scene where Crispino wants to remind viewers that he has the female star of Four Flies on Grey Velvet, there's a weird science moment when Mimsy's paralyzed father wears a pair of goggles attached to some electronic device, and blinks a partial clue.

Because it was the law at that time, the music is by Ennio Morricone. The beginning part is very uncharacteristic, the kind of music that might have been called experimental, very similar to the atonal compositions by Gyorgy Ligeti. There is also a theme more expected from Morricone, a plaintive oboe based melody. The literal title of the film is "sun spots". Crispino begins, ends, and periodically cut away to solarized shots of the sun. My only familiarity with Armando Crispino is with a war movie, Commandos starring Lee Van Cleef and former "Maverick" television star, Jack Kelly. Like several of Crispino's other films, this was cowritten by Lucio Battistrada. More significantly, another writer on this 1968 film was a young guy named Dario Argento.

For a gialli time, Kevin Olson is hosting the Italian Horror Blogathon at Hugo Stiglitz Makes Movies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:06 AM | Comments (2)

October 18, 2012

Lake of Dracula

Noroi no yakata: Chi o su me
Michio Yamamoto - 1971
Shadow Warrior All Region DVD

The lake in the film is part of the background. And except for references by name, Dracula doesn't make an appearance here, either. Then again, in the Hammer classic, Brides of Dracula, there are no brides and no Dracula, so I'll allow some leeway here.

In other ways, Michio Yamamoto's second vampire film makes more effort to transpose Hammer horror to a contemporary Japanese setting. Vampire purists might have trouble accepting the selectivity of vampire lore used here. Others might be scratching their heads at some very big plot holes and lapses of logic. Even though the film was made when Hammer was taking advantage of new screen freedoms to up the ante in sex and violence, Yamamoto's film could well have been made about ten years earlier.

The opening scene is of a young girl, five years old, sitting by a beach with her small dog. The dog runs away, and the girl chases after him. Running into a cave, the two discover a large western style on the other side. The dog runs into the house. The girl doesn't find her dog, but sees a very pale woman, sitting at a piano. The pale woman falls down, apparently dead. The girl looks up to see a man dressed in black, with very strange, orange eyes.

Flash forward to the present day, where Akiko is vacationing with her sister, Natsuko. Akiko has been working on a painting of a pair of orange eyes, staring from a forest. As far as Akiko and everyone else is concerned, the painting is inspired by a childhood nightmare that refuses to be forgotten. For unexplained reasons, a coffin is delivered to the small lakeside resort where the sisters are staying. Not long after the appearance of the coffin, strange deaths occur, with the victims marked by mysterious punctures along the neck.

Again, as in The Bloodthirsty Doll, the main point of interest is seeing how the vampire genre is used in a non-Christian environment. Akiko's boyfriend, Saeki, explains that the vampire is killed with a stake and then burned. None of the other trappings of classic vampire films are used or mentioned, so no crosses or garlic or holy water. The main vampire, who is never named, has no reflection on a mirror, but doesn't have the ability to change into a bat. Recalling Hammer films, especially Brides of Dracula, the female vampires are a handful of cuties from the Toho lot, although unlike Hammer films, there is no emphasis on cleavage. One pretty vampire does display her legs underneath her short nightie.

I'm not sure if greater care in the screenplay would have made a significant improvement, but the sibling rivalry between Akiko and Natsuko is neither fully explained nor explored. Also, as the presence of the vampire is explained as being a descendant of "a foreigner", one might consider as indirectly providing a political critique of contemporary Japan. Whatever faults or weakness are in Lake of Dracula, the film does contain some undeniably delicious imagery, especially of when the female vampire, played by Sanae Emi, smiles and flashes her fangs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

October 16, 2012

Legendary Amazons

Yeung Moon Nui Jeung ji Gwun Ling Yu San
Frankie Chan - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Does anybody know what Frankie Chan was doing for the past decade? I have to admit that his filmography is impressive, with a career that began as a composer of movie scores. I was unable to find anything that explained what Chan had been doing between 2002, when he made his previous film, and his return to filmmaking. I also have to wonder if Chan was paying attention to what other filmmakers were doing during the past decade as the biggest problem with Legendary Amazons is what also plagued several films that came after Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, with the over-reliance on wire work and computer generated special effects.

The film is a remake of the Shaw Brothers production, 14 Amazons, from 1972. The original production features Betty Ting, Ivy Ling, Lily Ho and the still active octogenarian Lisa Lu. Chan and Cheng Pei-pei comprise the new film's Shaw Brothers connections. The two share credits on the 1971 movie, Lady Hermit, one of several action movies starring Cheng, one of the pioneer female martial arts stars, with a score by Chan. I haven't seen 14 Amazons so I can't make any comparisons, but having seen other Shaw Brothers movies from the same era, there's a charm to the older movies that is missed here.

A general, Yang Zangbao, is assumed to have died in battle. His son, by order of the emperor, has been enlisted to lead 10,000 soldiers into battle against an army of 100,000. The remaining members of the Yang family, all women, led by the family matriarch, have decided to go to battle as well. In the opening credits, their various martial arts skills are established. Additional troops are to meet up with the Yang army, but their support is held up by a rival general who would rather undermine the Yang family in the name of military law rather than fight their common enemy.

Lisa Lu was a mere 45 when she played the part of the great grandmother in 14 Amazons. At age 84, she would have been perfectly cast and perfectly legendary in the new film. While it's great to see 65 year old Cheng Pei-pei in action as the family matriarch, what distracts from Legendary Amazons also is that it is not clear we are seeing three generations of women. While not every actor has to be the age of the character they are playing, it gets confusing when there is little difference in appearance. For all of the attention spent on a series of elaborate action sequences, it didn't seem important to put in any effort in making Cecilia Cheung look like the mother of an eighteen year old son. Even worse is that Richie Ren looks almost as old as the actress who plays his mother. One might conversely argue that the two grandmothers, played by Liu Xiaoqing and Yukari Oshima are both extremely youthful in appearance.

The best moments have nothing to do with big battles. The first few minutes when Richie Ren is challenged to a duel by Cecilia Cheung make for fun viewing. There is also the scene when their son, played by young Xiao Ming-Yu, discovered seemingly dead in a tree, is rescued by the ragamuffin known as Little Douzi (Little Bean), part of a gang of scavengers. What too many current filmmakers forget is that special effects are not so special anymore when used as a substitute for old fashioned story telling. It's not enough to dazzle the eye if you fail to touch the heart.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

October 11, 2012

The Screen at Kamchanod

Pee Chang Nang
Songsak Mongkolthong - 2007
Welcome International All Region DVD

I'm not sure of the incident that inspired the film is true or not, but the legend of a screening at an outdoor theater has certainly taken hold in the Udon Thani region of Thailand. And while Songsak does include a bit of what the audience might expect or even demand from a ghost story, the film can also be seen as something of a love letter to the act of watching movies as was done in the the past, whether in the mobile, outdoor cinemas in the rural parts of Thailand, or in the large, now abandoned single screen palaces of Bangkok. At one point, the researcher stumbles upon an outdoor theater on a city street showing Wisit Sasanatieng's The Unseeable.

Songsak is not interested in a literal, straightforward narrative. What there is of a story might be perhaps too elliptical. Essentially the story is of a researcher in paranormal activity trying to duplicate the same situation as in 1987, where a group of ghosts might have shown up to watch a movie that otherwise had no living audience, save for the two guys operating the projector. Even before the researcher and his friends see the recovered movie in an old theater, ghosts seem to be drifting in and out of their lives. While watching the movie, the ghosts seem to be awakened, causing havoc well before the scheduled screening in contemporary Kamchonod, in the same location.

One of the early scenes is of a woman observed at a commuter train station. Walking parallel to the tracks, the woman briefly disappears and reappears. The shot is done in such a way that the viewer isn't sure if the woman dematerialized, or simply was hidden in the shadow of the station. There are a couple of appearances by ghosts that are more in keeping with the more traditional Thai ghost movies, but those appearances are so brief, designed to make the viewer uncertain about what was seen and heard.

The ghostly aspects of the film are steeped in Thai culture. At one point, a Buddhist monk is visited as the incident of 1987 took place near a temple. The monk explains about ghosts not always crossing over to the "other side", reaffirming the belief of the researcher that the two worlds of the living and the dead overlap. The idea of the two separate worlds is nicely illustrated by by an overhead shot showing the division between the abandoned temple grounds, and the road where the researcher has parked his car. The temple grounds appear to be gray-brown, void of color, while the road appears normal in appearance. That the monk does not appear in the rear view mirror of the car suggests that he may also be a ghost.

Especially in the early part of the film, Songsak has several shots just of the legs of his characters walking, as well as many shots using shadows, sometimes in combination. The shadows are seen on walls or floors, as well as on the movie screen. One moment would have been more effective to have been seen in a theater that projects celluloid film, giving The Screen at Kamchanod an unplanned nostalgic twist as cinema is pushed into the digital age.

Also at several points, it appears as if ghosts are trying to push their way from behind the screen. It's moments like that which make me wish I had seen this film in a theater with a Thai audience, screaming followed by some quick laughter, and perhaps a quick glance to make sure that the person in the nearby seat is not a film loving ghost.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM

October 09, 2012

Basket Case 3: The Progeny

Frank Henenlotter - 1991
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

In time for the (Halloween) festivities, a new DVD edition of Frank Henenlotter's movie, part of the cult series. For anyone who is unaware of Basket Case, it's the story of a young man, Duane, and his formerly conjoined twin, Belial. Basically an extreme upper torso with arms, sharp teeth, and psychic powers over the often dim-witted Duane, Belial is kept in a basket, hence the title. Those who allow their curiosity to get the better of them find themselves with their faces chewed off by the often belligerent Belial.

The third film begins with footage from the second film, taking place in Granny Ruth's sanctuary for freaks. Belial is having monster sex with Eve. True love doesn't work for Duane as he accidentally kills the woman of his dreams when it turns out she's as much a freak as anyone else in the house. Flashback over, Duane is in a straightjacket, and Belial refuses to talk to him. The freaks go on a road trip to Georgia, to the only doctor who can tend to pregnant Eve.

Enjoyment of this film will vary upon the individual viewer. Henenlotter was probably inspired by Tod Browning's Freaks, although the "unique individuals" in this film are much more fanciful. Underneath the gore and black humor is a story about family ties, both biological and those based on shared identities. Not that anything is meant to be taken too seriously, but Henenlotter loves his freaks as much as Granny Ruth does, even though they have the attention span and coordination of excitable four year olds. There's splashing of blood, guts, and ripped off heads, all in the spirit of kids trying to top each other with the exchange of gross out jokes.

That legendary jazz singer Annie Ross appeared in the last two films in this series would have to be a testament to her own sense of humor. Taking advantage of her presence here, Ross gets to sing a little bit here. Mention should also be made of Jim O'Doherty as the inappropriately named "Little Hal", giving a glimpse of his stand-up delivery, offering several truly funny moments.

I wouldn't be surprised if the DVD looks far better than when the movie played at second run houses and drive-ins back in 1991. Just as audiophiles sometimes miss the hiss and crackle of vinyl records, with a movie like Basket Case 3, it somehow doesn't seem quite right without a couple yellow scratches in the middle of the frame, or the jump due to torn sprocket holes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

October 04, 2012

Bedevilled

Kim Bok-nam salinsageonui jeonmal
Jang Chul-soo - 2010
Well Go USA Entertainment Region A BD

What is interesting to me about Bedevilled is how the film works as a social critique on the victimization of women, mostly by men. But also that victimization is at the hands of other women, both actively and passively, usually on behalf of men. Several examples are presented within the first few minutes as we see a young woman being beat up by a couple of thugs on the streets of Seoul. It turns out that a woman, Hae-won, is the only witness. Hae-won feels intimidated by the two men in the line-up, and again outside the police station, feeling it best not to speak up. In her position as a loan officer, she denies a loan to an older woman, living on her own, due to bank rules. When another banker is able to resolve things in Hae-won's absence, a series of misunderstandings causes Hae-won to be told to take a vacation after striking her coworker.

Hae-won goes to a remote island where her grandparents use to live, her first time in fifteen years. During that time away, she received letters from a childhood friend, Bok-nam. The notion that this island would provide an idyllic retreat is quickly dissolved. Hae-won observes Bok-nam abused by her husband, brother-in-law, and the quartet of older women, the handful of people who still live on the island. Bok-nam hopes that somehow Hae-won can rescue her, or at least her young daughter, from life on the island. By the end of the week of Hae-won's visit, several events push Bok-nam to take matters in her own hands.

The relationship between Bok-nam and Hae-won is played against some flashbacks of when they were younger. The scenes give indication of the lives the two women would have as adults, with Bok-nam a victim of abuse, and Hae-won, the silent witness.

Bedevilled is the directorial debut of Jang Chul-soo. While chiefly known for his association with Kim Ki-duk, what Jang shares, if this film can be considered indication, is an interest in the most marginalized people in Korean society. The people of the island, Moo-do, live in an enclosed society with their own rules. What also makes this particular group unusual is that it is dominated by a matriarch, the mother of Bok-nam's husband and brother-in-law. The two men are prized as they are the only two men capable of work, the third man on the island being a drug addled elder. In its very basic outline, Bedevilled shares some of the same framework as Straw Dogs, about a big city outsider coming to a small, entrenched community in a supposedly bucolic setting, setting off a chain of events that culminate in violence.

While Jang does not have the same overriding formal concerns as Kim Ki-duk, there are some visual moments to savor. There is an eerie beauty to a shot of the matriarch hiding at night in a bamboo forest, evading Bok-nam who has gained the upper hand on her tormentors. There is also a nice dissolve between a shot of Hae-won, lying on the floor of her apartment, with a long shot of the island.

The title translates as the clinical "The Whole Story of the Kim Bok-nam Murder Case". Maybe not the most enticing title, but the English language title sets up expectations for a horror film. And while Bedevilled does get bloody and violent, there is also serious intent as indicated by the methodical buildup during the first hour and a half. Seo Yeong-hee has rightly won several awards for her performance as Bok-nam. Seo was previously in another controversial Korean film, The Chaser. For some, Bedevilled may not be an easy film to watch, but it is a film worth the challenge presented to the viewer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:47 AM

October 02, 2012

Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

Long men fei jia
Tsui Hark - 2011
Indomina Region 1 DVD

It's appropriate that Flying Swords of Dragon Gate begins with Shang Yi old school fanfare, the kind of music associated with Chinese opera or some of the older martial arts movies from Hong Kong. The supplemental interviews reenforced what I had sensed while watching this film, that it was a continuation of Tsui's Dragon Inn from 1992, as well as that film's inspiration, the original Dragon Inn made by King Hu in 1967. Not that knowing either of these two older films is a requirement to enjoy Tsui's newest work, but it may provide an extra level of enjoyment.

At around the same time that Tsui produced his version of Dragon Inn, he was also in the midst of making his series of Once Upon a Time in China series, the films that helped establish Jet Li as a top martial arts movie star. As such, Flying Swords represents the opportunity to revisit wuxia filmmaking with the kind of budget and means that were unavailable twenty years ago. What hasn't changed for Tsui is his penchant for having women disguised as men, although nothing here rivals the flirting between Maggie Chueng posing as a young man, with Brigitte Lin, in Dragon Inn. Tsui also has a running joke regarding a password, a plot device from Peking Opera Blues. As in many of Tsui's films, it is the women who are the more interesting characters.

Without getting too involved here, we have Jet Li, an independent fighter for justice, pursued by an ambitious eunuch's soldiers. The eunuch is also chasing after a pregnant maid to prevent an unwanted heir to the throne. The "knight" who is following Li from a distance, acts as the protector of the maid, using Li's identity. Gathering at the Dragon Inn are also a gang of Tarters, looking for buried treasure reputed to be nearby. These various rivals are virtually trapped at the Dragon Inn due to the imminent mother of a sand storms.

Even with the bigger production staff and several teams of special effects artists, Tsui uses what he has judiciously in support of his story. There's more than just special effects, be it the wire work with Li and company seeming to fly around, or when one sword seems to multiply during a duel. Tsui still relies on old fashion virtues like filming the action in a way that stays consistent with where the characters are within a given space, and using dramatic and precise framing. One of the best visual moments is an overhead shot following a sandstorm, a visual joke, with the camera filming the characters far enough overhead, that they appear like ants emerging from a hole in the sand. Those with 3D Blu-ray sets can get a fuller visual experience, especially during the fight sequences.

While Jet Li gets top billing, the film is more of an ensemble effort. Gordon Liu, whose presence links this film to those produced by the Shaw Brothers, has a small role here as well. Most of the dramatic weight is carried by two younger actresses with more recent association with Tsui, Zhou Xun and Kwai Lunmei. Both actresses have been awarded for their performances, Zhou as the Lady Knight, and Kwai in a frequently funny performance, in Mongolian, as the leader of the Tarter gang.

The DVD comes with "Making of" and "Behind the Scenes" supplements, as well as the interviews. For those unfamiliar with the actors, it would have helped to have onscreen identification. That woman with the short hair talking about Tsui Hark's intentions? She's Nansun Shi. Not only is she one of the producers, but she's also Tsui Hark's wife.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

October 01, 2012

The Bloodthirsty Doll

Chi wo su ningyo: Yurei yashiki no kyofu / Fear of the Ghost House: Bloodsucking Doll
Michio Yamamoto - 1970
Shadow Warrior All Region DVD

I must say that the transfer of this movie is so dark that some scenes are heard but barely visible, unintentionally making me think of Val Lewton's productions, that suggested various unseen horrors.

Nonetheless, The Bloodthirsty Doll should be of interest in the transfer of the vampire genre to Japan. It is worth noting that the film was from Toho, the biggest and most conservative of Japanese studios, from a time when the studio system was collapsing. One could also consider this film as one that helped pave the way for Obayashi's House, seven years later. The film is a curious hybrid of mixed cultures.

The basic story is of a young man, Kazuhiko, who drives to a remote, western style mansion to reunite with his girlfriend, Yuko, after being abroad for six months. He finds out from Yuko's mother that he is two weeks to late, and that his beloved died in a landslide. Spending the night, he hears strange sounds, and sees what looks like Yuko, alive, and later follows her to a wooded area. Yuko softly begs to be killed. The Kazuhiko's sister, Keiko, alarmed at no contact for over a week, shows up with her boyfriend to find out what happened to her brother. Keiko finds out things she probably didn't want to know.

The film mostly takes place in a mansion that is pointedly very western in design, with lots of stairs, a creepy cellar, and creaky doors. One of the characters is a deaf-mute servant, Genzo, a variation of the stock characters found in many Hollywood and European horror films. What might throw off some western viewers is a small plot twist, when it is revealed that Yuko was buried rather than cremated, cremation being the standard treatment for the dead in Asia. Also, Yuko is not your standard blood sucking vampire, slashing the blood from her victims. Not entirely successful is the use of a harpsichord based music score, adding more western flavor.

There is little in English on director Michio Yamamoto. While an early stint as Assistant Director was for Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, Yamamoto seems to have primarily worked under Kihachi Okamoto before ascending to his own directorial assignments in 1969, at age 36. That Yamamoto was a bit older when making his directorial debut indicates how Toho was unlike several of the rival studios that made a point of courting a younger audience, with filmmakers of about the same age like Nagisa Oshima and Masahiro Shinoda already with several features behind them. Ei Ogawa was one of several writers to have a hand in Okamoto's Age of Assasins. His best known solo credit is Space Amoeba.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 AM

September 27, 2012

Sector 7

7 gwanggu
Kim Ji-hoon - 2011
Shout! Factory Region A BD

The movie might be dismissed as a Korean creature feature, Alien on a remote oil rig. And the monster, a combination of giant catfish, saber tooth tiger, and other ugly body parts, is not going to be the cause of too many nightmares. And yet, I kept thinking how much this movie made me think of Howard Hawks, not only with his version of The Thing, but how Sector 7 might be appreciated as an updating of the "Hawksian woman".

Admittedly, none of this may be deliberate on the part of the filmmakers, although Hawks' films have created templates used by others. The connection to The Thing begins with the setting, an oil rig somewhere off the Korean coast, populated by a small group of men and two women. This setup also recalls Only Angels have Wings. In Hawks films, these groups are marked by professionalism, as well as their ability to take on risky tasks. Just as the title character in The Thing, the so-called "intellectual carrot", while an unknown and threatening being, is relatively simple, and is dispatched with with relative ease, the demands of the genre sixty years later demand a smarter, more sophisticated creature. It takes greater effort, but the creature in Sector 7 is defeated with even greater mechanical brutality than Hawks might have considered.

The character of Hae-jun, played by Ha Ji-won, strikes me as Hawksian from the get go. Not only is Hae-jun one of the crew leaders, but in her introductory scene she is shown as a woman of action. When there is a problem with the main pipe, Hae-jun wisks from the high end of the rig on a rope, down to the base, joins the men in wrestling the pipe back in place, and dashes over to turn the pressure valves. With her relatively short hair, and white tank top, Hae-jun has something of the appearance of one of the boys, remarked upon by the rig's medic. There is also a scene of Hae-jun demonstrating her motorcycle riding skills which recalls the a scene in Hawks' Red Line 7000. In the Hawks film, the character of Julie is first mistaken for a man because of the way she rides to the motel where race car drivers are staying, as she is disguised by her helmet. Even with the helmet removed, Julie's identity as a woman is still questioned by one of the racers. Hae-jun is not the most feminine of women, with the guys at the rig providing the nickname of "Hard-ass". In a scene of group bonding, the crew member display their most distinctive scars, with Hae-jun showing the broken skin on her back. Putting to doubt any questions about sexuality, it is established early on that Hae-jun is in a relationship with the ruggedly handsome Dong-su. Near the end, there is a brief moment of reversal of traditional roles as it is Hae-jun who fights the monster to save Dong-su.

One might argue that Hae-jun's equality, if not superiority, to the men on the rig reflects societal changes regarding the role of women. To a certain extent this is true. What makes Hae-jun Hawksian is both her role within a primarily male group, and that she is never passive in spite of the everything seeming to go wrong, almost constantly in motion. In comparison, it is the clearly more feminine crew member, a scientist, who finds herself in a situation she can not get out of, victimized by one of the men.

Simply on its own terms, Sector 7 was made to take advantage of new 3D technology, with even the Blu-ray in 3D. That it is about a giant monster can be attributed to the popularity of The Host, at the time of this writing, Korea's biggest hit. There is some serious intent on man versus nature, and the exploitation of the natural world on behalf of business interests that probably aren't altruistic. Some of the special effects are decidedly not that special, but I did like the tiny incandescent sea creatures that become more significant to the story. Especially when heroic characters in movies are seemingly inconceivable unless part of a comic book franchise, Sector 7 should be appreciated for having a woman of action who wears nothing more than a blue collar uniform.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

September 25, 2012

Headshot

Fon Tok Kuen Fah
Pen-Ek Ratanaruang - 2011
Kino Lorber Region 1 DVD

I feel a little bit of a loss at not seeing Pen-Ek Ratanaruang last two films, Nymph and Ploy. Previous to those to films was Invisible Waves, which I wrote about a little over four years ago, when that 2006 film was made available as an English subtitled DVD. Invisible Waves marked Pen-Ek's drift away from conventional narrative. That Headshot is perhaps incorrectly acclaimed as a return is more due to the framework of familiarity provided by certain genre trappings. As much as Pen-Ek's previous films, Headshot is about a character trying to find his bearings in unfamiliar territory.

The source novel's title, by Win Lyovarin, Fon Tok Kuen Fa, translates as "Rain Falling Up the Sky". It refers to the way Tul sees the world after being shot in the head, upside down. That Tul sees the world in this way also fits as a metaphor for his own life, a former cop turned "assassination expert", turned fugitive on the run. There are just enough point of view shots to let the viewer see how things look through Tul's eyes. That Tul is initially disoriented is shown when he staggers through his own apartment, holding on to a table, before seating himself.

Doubling also plays a part in the story. Tul both pretends to be a Buddhist monk, and becomes a real monk. Tul also is imprisoned for two murders, one staged as part of a blackmail plot. The doubling also involves Tul's prostitute girlfriend, Tiwa, professionally known as Joy, and Tul's doctor who goes by the pseudonym of "Dr. Demon". The doctor first comes to the attention of Tul based on his thesis that people are genetically disposed to commit evil. With only the briefest exchange of words, Tul attempts to wind his way between free will and fate or karma.

The expression of internal dichotomies is also culturally specific to Thailand with clothing as a signifier. Whether as a disguise or as a real monk, Tul's head is completely shaved, and he wears the orange robe. The woman who introduces herself as Joy, wears mini-dress designed to be sexually alluring. As Tiwa, she is seen wearing a blouse and jeans, visual shorthand for being a "good girl" most significantly used as part of the closing shot in Chatrichalerm Yukol's Angel from 1974, about a Bangkok prostitute who reformed at the end of the film, shucks her dress in the trash.

Win's novel is not available in English. How much of the film is directly from the novel is unknown to me, yet, Tul's first person voice overs suggest that Win has some familiarity with the connection between crime novelists and existentialists, especially Albert Camus' The Stranger and the novels of James Cain, Camus' stated source of inspiration. To what extent Pen-Ek is also familiar with these writers, I do not know. I bring this up because much of Headshot is a visual meditation on a disconnected life. There are the genre moments of chases and shootings, but there are also long moments of staring out windows, or gazing on the pictures that cover a wall in Tul's apartment. Bangkok seems to be uncharacteristically desolate, with empty streets, empty highways and forests. Even though Pen-Ek has chosen to describe this as "film noir", beyond the shifting between past and present, Pen-Ek emphasizes mood over motivation.

Vichaya Vatanasapt's score also provides an atypical aural compliment. Just as Pen-Ek strips the narrative aspects to the essentials, Vichaya often just uses a solo piano, if not a handful of instruments to create music that just brushes on the side of the experimental. The overall effect gives Headshot the feel of a European art movie from the early Sixties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM

September 22, 2012

Strip Mahjong: Battle Royale

Mark P. Forever - 2012
Danger After Dark Region 1 DVD

Prior to the beginning of Strip Mahjong were some trailers for other Danger After Dark films. Suicide Club was my introduction to Sion Sono. I've written about the superb Epitaph, and should probably see it again, as the book, Virtual Hallyu points out several cultural and historical points that I missed. I hope that this reactivated label brings more films of this quality to DVD.

Strip Mahjong really isn't the kind of movie made for any kind of serious critical consideration. On the other hand, if you want to see a bunch of reasonably attractive Japanese girls in various states of undress, baring their breasts, this might do, especially with a six-pack or two of your favorite beer at your side. I will be honest, though. One of the girls has a very pronounced overbite, the kind that makes you wonder about casting decisions, or if someone was doing someone else a favor. To call this soft core might be overstating what's on the screen.

There actually is a plot. Four young women with huge debts from playing mahjong are kidnapped and forced to play a game in which the losers shed articles of clothing, and the winner leaves alive with a suitcase full of money. The game is played on a special television broadcast, with a slimy host, his snarky assistant with the aforementioned overbite, and some hooded guy wearing nothing but a jock strap. There might be some drama for the few people who actually know the rules of mahjong. For the rest of us, it's just a matter of watching the girls attempt to outsmart each other, and seeing what bits of clothing they will be forced to discard. The only depiction of sex is a lesbian tryst between Runa Shimotsuki and Kaori Sasaki, that some may find titillating.

I tried to find out about the director with the name Mark P. Forever, and came up with nothing. Research did show that the actresses are AV (Adult Video) stars of varying popularity in Japan. As for the one with the biggest onscreen credit, the singularly named Nina, some readers may want to explore her other work. Others may simply enjoy reading the titles in her filmography. The same could be said for the long limbed Runa Shimotsuki. Also, Hitomi Usano, and Mako Higashio, the girl with the pronounced overbite, have their share of fans. Those with greater interest will find more to explore on any of these actresses as none can be described as being camera shy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM

September 20, 2012

Lone Wolf and Cub

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance / Kozure Okami: Kowokashi udekashi tsukamatsuru / Wolf with Child in Tow: Child and Expertise for Rent
Kenji Masumi - 1972
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx / Kozure Okami: Sanzu no kawa no ubaguruma / Wolf with Child in Tow: Perambulator of the River of Sanzu
Kenji Masumi - 1972
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart to Hades / Kozure Okami: Shinikazeni mukau ubaguruma / Wolf with Child in Tow: Perambulator Against the Winds of Death
Kenji Masumi - 1972
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in Peril / Kozure Okami: Oya no kokoro ko no kokoro / Wolf with Child in Tow: The Heart of a Parent, the Heart of a Child
Buichi Saito - 1972
Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart in the Land of Demons / Kozure Okami: Meifumando / Wolf with Child in Tow: Crossroads to Hell
Kenji Masumi - 1973
Lone Wolf and Cub: White Heaven in Hell / Kozure Okami: Jigoku e ikuzo! Daigoro / Wolf with Child in Tow: Now We Go to Hell, Daigoro!
Yoshiyuki Kuroda - 1974
AnimEigo Region A BD

Coincidentally, when I purchased a blu ray player, I received a this new collection from AnimEigo. The best part is that I had no seen any of the Lone Wolf and Cub films previously, not even in the Shogun Assassin version. Yes, I know it may seem surprising that I some how missed seeing these films in all this time, but, hey, even some of the better known film critics, and I'm not going to embarrass anyone by naming them, have their gaps in films that are considered classics.

The collection is on two discs in a case no bigger than any single disc case, so kudos just for saving shelf space. Each of the films is in Japanese with colored subtitles, with a few historical notes as supplements to explain some of the more arcane references to places and people.

The basic setup is that the Shogun's chief executioner, Ogami Itto, has been falsely charged with an act of treason. The head of the Yagyu clan, jealous that they didn't get this coveted position, is responsible. Ogami's wife is killed. Ogami's infant son, Daigoro, is given a choice between joining his mother in death, or joining his father in meting out death. The little boy chooses daddy's sword. The six films follow Ogami, with Daigoro in a special 'baby cart", traveling throughout Japan, taking special assassination jobs for 500 pieces of gold, while confronting various members of the Yagyu clan along the way.

Having seen all six films now, the popularity forty years after the initial appearance is not surprising. Along with geysers of blood gushing from every cut of Ogami's blade, there are flying body parts, amputations of arms and legs, as well as some dashes of bawdy humor, and a generous dollop of bare breasts and nudity. Heads are split open, torsos are cut in two, but the movies themselves are uncut.

The films were successful starring vehicles for Tomisaburo Wakayama, the older brother of Shintaro Katsu, famous for his series as the blinds swordsman, Zatoichi. The brothers are similar looking, although Wakayama appears a bit heavier. As Ogami, whole armies are decimated. One person claims that around 450 people get killed in the entire series. But there's more than the high body count. Daigoro is the secret sauce here in the form of young Akihiro Tomikawa, four years old when the series began filming. There's the perfect facial expressions, and the eyes that alternate between inquisitiveness and intensity. If Ogami was just another ronin that killed a lot of people, interest would probably be short lived. It is the scenes of paternal affection that make the difference.

The baby cart evolves to a point where one can compare this series to that of the James Bond films. From hidden blades in the cart handle, to spring loaded blades in the axles, and hidden weaponry that shoots arrows or bullets. The cart floats in water, and glides across desert sand and snowy mountains. The sixth film is the most gimmick laden as Ogami faces an army of samurai on sleds and skis in a glacial outpost.

The best of the series are those films directed by Kenji Masumi. What is notable is the use of sound, alternating between the natural sounds of the environment and total screen silence. Masumi also likes to cut to shots of small animals, frogs seem to be a favorite, from the point of view of Daigoro.

A constant in the series is an examination of the social rules of 17th Century Japan, with a sometimes complex caste system, and rules of protocol that govern every aspect of life. As such, Ogami and Daigoro encounter both the highest and lowest of Japanese society. There are several scenes depicting popular culture of the day.

Also, Buddhism is integral to the series. Not only are there scenes of priest and formal practices, but also scenes taking place at roadside shrines. In one film, a hungry Daigoro takes the food left at a shrine, but leaves his little jacket behind as an offering. Similarly, Ogami leaves coins in the offering dish when taking food from some shrines. The attention to cultural and character details help distinguish these films.

While the film is filled with many of the expressive faces of Toho's supporting players, there are a few guest appearances of note, including So Yamamura, Eiji Okada and Go Kato.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:10 AM

September 13, 2012

Female Teacher: Dirty Afternoon

Onna Kyoshi: Yogoreta Hokago
Kichitaro Negishi - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Ignore the salacious title. If you cut out the requisite sex scenes, what is left is a superb drama about alienation in contemporary Japan. As has been previously noted, especially by Jasper Sharp in his history of Roman Porno, young filmmakers hopped on the pink bandwagon to jump start their careers, and often used the opportunity to explore more serious issues. Kichitaro Negishi makes the most of what he has both in story and style.

The teacher Sakiko is called by the police to pick up a student named Sueko. The young woman is unknown until Sakiko is reminded of a time she was a student teacher in a small mining village. Sueko was one of her students. The memory of that time is painful as Sakiko was raped by a man who smelled of paint thinner. Sueko's father was the man identified as the rapist. It turns out that Sakiko identified the wrong man, causing a rupture to the family, now trying to establish their lives in Tokyo. In the meantime, Sueko makes it a habit of being picked up by older men for an afternoon of hotel sex. Feeling guilty, Sakiko attempts to make amends with Sueko's father, at this time fully addicted to
huffing.

Credit is also due to Yozo Tanaka, still active, and most recently the writer for Negishi's most recent film, the acclaimed Villon's Wife. Add to that a considered use of the wide screen. Negishi sometimes has the characters framed in such a way that we see the characters in profile with space between them. Such framing emphasizes the gap between the characters, and this is one of the main themes throughout the film. The spaces between people are often emotional, but also based on differences of gender, age, class, and region. To illustrate how the lives of women are disregarded by men, Sakiko's boyfriend states that he doesn't want to carry the burden of her memories after she recounts the time she was raped, while Sueko likes to talk non-stop about her childhood in the mining village, much to the annoyance of her pick-ups. There is no comfort in the trappings of stability as Sakiko finds herself alone in a seemingly empty Tokyo, while Sueko finds temporary happiness in an itinerant existence with her father.

And yes, Yuki Kazamatsuri, is sexy, even when wearing nothing but a pair of glasses. The act of seeing is a recurring motif. Additionally, there is a scene of Sueko looking at Tokyo through a large telescope. Sueko and one of her pickups talk about how they've noticed each other, making their meeting less than accidental. Characters catch each other in compromising acts, silently watching. It was in 1981 that Negishi made the transition from pink films to the mainstream. Looking beyond the surface attractions of Female Teacher makes it clear why the transition was seamless, and within the confines of the Japanese film industry, not unexpected.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:12 AM

September 11, 2012

Hammer House of Horror

Tom Clegg, Alan Gibson, Don Leaver,
Francis Megahy, Peter Sasdy, Don Sharp
and Robert Young - 1980
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD (Five Discs)

This is the collection of all thirteen episodes of the 1980 British television series. The final episode, "The Mark of Satan" features Peter McEnery attempting to perform brain surgery on himself. There are also a couple of scenes involving brain surgery, not very graphic, but enough to have upset a few viewers thirty years ago. Still, I found this episode especially fitting coming from a company called Synapse.

Actually, the most shocking aspect of this television series is how much nudity was featured. The classic Hammer movies were as much about young full breasted women showing a certain amount of cleavage, as they were about vampires, werewolves, and assorted monsters. Still, I wasn't prepared to see Patricia Quinn as a 17th Century witch back from where ever she'd been for three hundred years, shedding her cloak to reveal nothing underneath, to seduce Jon Finch. Miss Quinn isn't the only one to bare breasts or backside in the series. For some viewers, of course this is a bonus in this newest DVD version of the series.

As for the horror aspect, a few thrills and chills. It should be pointed out that all of the stories have contemporary settings. Some of the episodes felt more like extended versions of the kind of stories one might have seen in the portmanteau films like Dr. Terror's House of Horrors or The House that Dripped Blood. There are also recurring motifs such as the car that mysteriously goes out of control, the guy who gets stabbed in the chest, and the unfaithful lover. As for scariness, if you've made it though the original "X-Files", you're home free.

The Hammer connection is a bit spotty, with house producer of the last features, Roy Skeggs, on board, with Phillip Martell as music supervisor. The directors from previous films include Don Sharp, Peter Sasdy and Alan Gibson. Some of the more interesting work is from Don Leaver, a mainstay of British television, who directed the first episode with the naked witch and the final episode with Peter McEnery's misguided attempt to ease his mind.

The actor most associated with Hammer, Peter Cushing, makes what might be assumed to be an almost obligatory performance. But what may be of greater interest is seeing the gallery of other British actors who participated, some former top names, one future star, and a handful of people who briefly were associated with high profile projects. Among these are Dinah Sheridan and Powell-Pressburger regular Marius Goring, Brian Cox and a nebbishy Pierce Brosnan not yet hitting their respective strides, and persons of interest including Simon MacCorkindale, Leigh Lawson and Christopher Cazenove.

My own favorite episodes feature veteran actors. In an episode that might strike some as a little bit similar to Groundhog Day, Denholm Elliott portrays a real estate salesman who has a recurring nightmare that he's been accused of murdering his wife by some unknown, and usually unseen, person. Showing up at his office is luscious secretary Lucy Gutteridge who appears in a different outfit and different persona, each time Elliott enters his office in the morning. The episode is by turns funny and sexy until Elliott actually does wake up to a real nightmare.

The other episode that may come closest to being a reminder of classic Hammer films features Diana Dors as the overly friendly, and mildly creepy "mother" to a brood of young children, in a very large house deep in the woods. Even though the twist here is more predictable than in some of the episodes, Dors makes it fun to watch with her own sense of pleasure, leaving her "Blonde Bombshell" days well behind.

Kathryn Leigh Scott and Mia Nadasi briefly share their recollections on the same episode, "Visitor from the Grave", directed by Nadasi's husband, Peter Sasdy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:24 AM

September 06, 2012

Nympho Diver: G-String Festival

Shikijo Ama: Fundoshi Matsuri / Lusty Ama: Loincloth Festival
Atsushi Fujiura - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Nobody asked me, but I would have suggested "Fundoshi Festival" as the secondary title for this film. I think it has a nice, alliterative ring to it. For those unaware, fundoshi is the traditional underwear worn by Japanese men, more commonly up through World War II. A type of fundoshi is worn by sumo wrestlers.

As for the basic story, coastal villages were famed for their female divers who wore very little, and dove for abalone and pearls. While there have been films about these "girl divers", it was a series of films from Shin Toho, mostly in the late Fifties, that emphasized the erotic possibilities with wet clothing clinging against the skin, and filming underwater where there were possibilities of placing the camera in more unusual angles. An excerpt of one of the films, Girl Divers of Spook Mansion, might still be available on Youtube. That film was shown as part of a tribute to Shin Toho at the Far East Film Festival at Udine, Italy. As they've done with other films, the Roman Porno squad took some inspiration from past exploitation movies.

Most of what we have here is good natured comedy about a small town trying to reverse its declining fortunes by inducing some attractive young women to come work as divers. Persuading these women is Nobuo, the goofy son of the mayor. As it turns out, Nobuo is caught in a triangle between the Tokyo girl who accepted his proposal of marriage, and the local girl, daughter of the woman who owns the bar where everyone meets. As it turns out, there are more than these two women who are competing for there claim on Nobuo.

Unlike any of the earlier "girl diver" films, the camera never goes underwater. Aside from a scene purporting to be that of a traditional fertility celebration, where everyone shows up wearing fundoshi, the "g-string festival" in the title, the most significant display of flesh is to be seen on the movie's poster. I do have to give some credit, where as most films presentation of intergenerational love is with an older man and a younger women, Nympho Diver also has the coupling of a mature woman with a younger man, although further details might give some viewers pause. The woman in question isn't the only matron in this film to make clear her sexual urges.

Nympho Diver isn't a bad film, but it's not particularly memorable either. The women are generously proportioned, but this is an ensemble show with no real star. Too put this in some perspective, Nikkatsu was a true film factory in churning out these films. But if you're like the audience of this movie from thirty years ago, you could do worse than this lightly enjoyable time waster.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:35 AM

September 04, 2012

Karate-Robo Zaborgar

Denjin Zaboga
Noboru Iguchi - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

It's been months since the last Sushi Typhoon DVD came my way. And in comparison to previous releases, this is almost family friendly entertainment. The original inspiration, a Japanese television from 1974 must have captured the heart of five year old Noburu Iguchi. From what I could tell, Iguchi's movie was a loving, and comic, tribute to a childhood fantasy, updated with computer generated special effects, some mildly risque humor, and a few sprays of blood here and there. The original series is available on DVD and even has spawn some pricey dolls action figures, so there is a cult out there for this new version. Those in search of something more along the lines of Machine Girl or RoboGeisha might be disappointed.

For those like myself, unfamiliar with the series, the setup is that the young hero, Daimon, is the son of a top scientist, a specialist in robotics. The father was kidnapped and killed by a rival scientist who rules from his perpetually airborne lair called Sigma. Before he was killed, the father created a robot that could transform itself into a motorcycle. The robot, Zaborgar, was made in part with the DNA of Daimon's twin brother who dies in infancy. The villains of Sigma are a bunch of cyborgs with human DNA. The goal of the villains is to destroy humanity. Sent to earth is Miss Borg, who falls in love with Daimon, who in turn questions his own beliefs, especially in the face of the obvious corruption of the man slated to be the next Prime Minister of Japan. Daimon's conflicted interests cause him to be kicked out of the secret police.

In the manner of writers who take classic novels and create fanciful sequels or revisions, Iguchi forwards twenty-five years later. Daimon is in ill health, and has just been fired as the chauffeur for the Prime Minister. Sigma is still working on their plans for world domination. Two more cyborgs have been created, one of whom is the daughter of Daimon and Miss Borg.

There is a lot of silliness here, with a giant robots and weird science. Weaved into this is a satire about Japanese politics and protocol, as well as the concept of "righteousness". Iguchi also takes the basic framework from the television series, and pushes at several of the premises to comical conclusions. Even better than the movie is the series of very short episodes playing with the limits of Zaborgar's limited intelligence such as trying to put out a fire with water that continually slips through his fingers, or his inability to pick up a coin due to those very thick fingers which work best for punching out enemies.

The most notable actor here is Itsuji Itao as the older Daimon. A popular presence in genre movies, Itao probably was seen to best advantage as the sad sack bachelor in Air Doll. Itao looks like the kind of guy who's only known disappointment in life, and has no reason to expect it will ever get better. Mami Yamasaki appears with the kind of metal bra Madonna dreams of wearing, at one point leading a trio of babes clad in bikinis and football helmets.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

August 30, 2012

White Vengeance

Hong men yan
Daniel Lee - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The Chinese title refers to the meeting place between two former allies, turned rivals, fighting for political and military power, approximately two hundred years B.C. The English title would be a symbolic reference to the colored pieces of the game Weiqi, also known as Go, the Chinese game of strategy using identical black and white "stones". This is a historical drama with several big battle scenes, but the heart of the film is about the strategy used by the principal characters.

The basic story is not well known, even for Chinese audiences. Essentially Liu Bang and Xiang Yu are leaders of their respective armies. When they realize they have a common enemy in the Qin feudal lord, they join forces. It is also understood that whomever conquers the city of Guanzhong first is entitled to claim a royal title. Both men have their reasons for wanting to claim the throne. What follows is gamesmanship with exchanges of power, and a variety of shifting alliances.

This film might be considered something of a companion piece to Daniel Lee's Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon from 2008. The main difference is that some of the battles are off the field with the games of weiqi, and discussions of loyalties and protocol. More so than some of the other Chinese films I've seen, White Vengeance might require a bit more attention from western viewers as the historical details and cultural aspects might strike some as arcane.

More easily understood is the relationship between Xiang Yu and his wife, Yu Ji. No matter that Xiang Yu and Liu Bang have sworn to kill each other, they are both protective of Yu Ji. And don't be surprised if the actress who plays Yu Ji, Liu Yi Fei, becomes the next Chinese actress to become an international star. Miss Liu is so cute that it just seems right that CGI cherry blossoms swirl around her.

The supplemental interview with Daniel Lee is helpful in gaining a bit more historical context to the film. One of the stars, Anthony Wong, also adds some interesting insight regarding cultural differences between Chinese and westerners. As befitting a historical epic, White Vengeance was nominated for the costume design for the Asian Film Awards and the Hong Kong Film Awards. Daniel Lee was also nominated for his production design. Lee certainly takes advantage of the mountain and desert settings, as well as the several very large armies that fight each other on the otherwise desolate landscape. Very fitting is when Xiang Yu and Yu Ji realize that they may not have much of a future to look forward to, and the space in front of them is wide open and empty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:29 AM | Comments (1)

August 28, 2012

Quick

Jo Bum-Gu - 2011
Shout! Factory Region 1 DVD

The more serious minded, with longish memories, are apt to dismiss Quick as not much more than a loose remake of Speed. Keep in mind that the older film came out in 1994, and this new film is aimed squarely at the Korean teenagers, whose parents were the ones to watch Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock race against time with a bomb in bus that had to stay in perpetual motion. That the boy and girl in this film need to stay within no more than ten meters apart lest they get blown to bits makes me think of a high tech version of The 39 Steps with its hero and heroine going through most of Hitchcock's classic handcuffed to each other. Nothing about Quick will strike all but the youngest viewers as original, but that's not the point.

What Jo Bum-Gu and his team have done is create a series spectacular car crashes, chases and explosions. Nothing subtle here. It's not simply a matter of a few cars crashing into each other, but cars spinning in the air, trucks overturning, and what looks like more stunt work than several Burt Reynolds movies combined from the glory days following Smokey and the Bandit. And just to remind the audience that even in these days of computer generated effects and fakery, there's still an element of risk in making this kind of film, without outtakes displayed alongside the closing credits.

Motorcycle courier Gi-su finds himself trapped into delivering small packages containing extremely potent bombs by an unknown person. The packages must be delivered within a certain time or they will explode, along with Gi-su. Complicating things is that Gi-su, by chance, finds the pick up he as stopped for is actually his ex-girlfriend, Chun-sim, hoping to beat traffic to a scheduled gig. Gi-su's helmet is stuck on Chun-sim, with the threat of explosion if the helmet is removed, or if the two are physically separated by more than ten meters. Pursuing the pair is Meong-sik, a former biking buddy of Gi-su's, desperately trying to overcome his reputation as Seoul's most incompetent cop.

While the emphasis is on the need for speed, my favorite scene is the comic highlight. Not seen for about six year, Gu-si finds out that Chun-sim is now a member of one of South Korea's ubiquitous pop girl groups. While Gu-si fights fans to keep within safe of Chun-sim, the helmeted singer makes a mad dash on stage to maker her performance in time. Trying to avoid explaining that the helmet is not some strange fashion statement, a few moments are given to making fun of the rivalry of the singers within the group.

Quick is the South Korean version of a "popcorn movie", and is enjoyed best with no other expectations. The final scene, with the one last unexploded bomb, is a well realized combination of humor and tension. This is the perfect movie to watch while munching on sweet chili rice snacks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:44 AM

August 21, 2012

The Viral Factor

Jik zin
Dante Lam - 2012
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I can't fault Dante Lam for being ambitious. Starting in Jordan, with a brief hop in China, before settling in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia, it seems like Lam was itching to bust out of the confines of Hong Kong. In addition to the chases on foot or by car, there's also a helicopter pursuit through the city. In terms of action set pieces, this is Lam's biggest film, yet it did grab me and leave me breathless like his previous film, The Stool Pigeon.

The story gets a bit complicated, but essentially in begins with Jay Chou as Jon, part of an international paramilitary group attempting to escort a scientist out of Jordan to asylum in Norway. The scientist created a new kind of smallpox virus that can not be treated with current vaccines. One sample of the virus is still in the hands of the scientist as a bargaining chip if there's a problem in getting safe passage. The escort team is ambushed, the scientist is kidnapped, and Jon is left with a bullet in his head and two weeks to live.

A brief reunion with his mother in China ends when Jon is encouraged to seek out the older brother he didn't know he had. The brother, Yeung, is in Malaysia. It also turns out that Yeung is involved with the people who have the virus sample, a criminal gang with plans to profit from biological terrorism.

The Viral Factor is Jay Chou's first film since The Green Hornet, and Lam has made the still boyish looking pop star look a bit more mature, and much grittier than he's appeared previously. The DVD supplemental interview would indicate that Chou is ambivalent at best about doing another demanding action film such as this, but he carries himself well. Nicholas Tse has much been around the block previously with Lam and The Stool Pigeon, and several other action films under his belt. For the most part, The Viral Factor is a two man show with Lam putting his two stars through their paces, matching each other for the most part in stunts and shootouts.

The film gets more emotionally involving near the end with the race against time, with Yeung's kidnapped daughter is infected with the virus and only has a few hours to live. The Chinese title translates as "uphill battle". Both Jon and Yeung are up against obstacles that neither can change, in addition to finding themselves caught between various law enforcement agencies and the criminal gang. Lam revisits themes of people caught in impossible situations that test loyalty or conscious. The action scenes are expertly filmed, if over reliant on lots of editing. Still, I felt The Viral Factor might have been a bit better if Lam had pared down the technical virtuosity in exchange for a little more heart.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:25 AM | Comments (1)

August 16, 2012

The Sins of Rachel Cade

Gordon Douglas - 1961
Warner Archives DVD

Sometimes you just want to see a movie pretty much for its own sake. And sometimes you discover cinematic art where you weren't seeking it. And over the past few years, I've come to appreciate the craftsmanship of Gordon Douglas, a director I had blithely dismissed back when I was watching films as an academic pursuit. And yes, I am admittedly repeating myself, in using that word, craftsmanship, in discussing Douglas, but the years have revealed that some of his films are smarter, and smarter looking, than some of what currently flits in and out of the multiplexes.

And I wish that Warner Brothers hadn't made it a practice to make their DVDs unplayable on my Macbook. Especially with The Sins of Rachel Cade. People have written about the extreme close ups of Carl Dreyer and Sergio Leone. Gordon Douglas is someone who doesn't get discussed in terms of visual style, so I don't know who gets credit here, but this is a film to be loved and cherished for the close ups of Angie Dickinson. How many are there? I don't know. We're not only talking about full face shots, but several where the bottom of her frame is at her lips, and the top of the frame meets her eye brows. Really, really close. And whether the colors are muted because it was intended that way, or maybe the source print is a bit faded, I don't know, because it works. I've seen Angie Dickinson in several movies over the course of her career, but I've never seen her as lovingly photographed as in this film. If one cut out everything else in The Sins of Rachel Cade, with only the close ups of Angie Dickinson remaining, one is left with a visual poem even more beautiful than what Joseph Cornell did after whittling away all that was extraneous in East of Borneo, leaving the viewer to admire only Rose Hobart.

The close ups aren't reserved exclusively for Angie Dickinson. Other cast members treated well by J. Peverell Marley's camera, his last feature film work, include Peter Finch, Roger Moore and Errol John. But it is the images of Dickinson that are a revelation here, as if I had never really noticed her before.

The premise does seem unpromising, about a missionary nurse from Kansas who shows up in the Belgian Congo right before World War II heats up, bringing western medicine and the word of Jesus to the natives. And some of the film plays by the classic Warner Brothers template, complete with Max Steiner score. And for a film that is in part about faith, it allows for respectful discourse and a generous view of what it might mean to be Christian that could conceivably disturb those with less flexible views. The conclusion might even be thought of as proto-feminist, both for a film that was made in 1961, that takes place twenty years earlier.

The triangle with Dickinson caught between Finch and Moore is the less interesting part of the film. More compelling is seeing several black actors given more opportunity to perform in something other than bit parts - in addition to Errol John, there's also Woody Strode, former Olympian Rafer Johnson, Scatman Crothers, Juano Hernandez and Frederick O'Neal. And sure, it took a film that takes place in deepest, darkest Africa, actually the Warner Brothers back lot, to get this kind of cast together, but there's a sense of respect and dignity afforded to everyone involved.

There is also some unexpected humor. I don't know what Finch and O'Neal were smoking in their pipes, but they let the audience know that it's not tobacco. Also, one of the more convenient plot twists is when Roger Moore literally crashes onto the scene and reveals himself to not only be an unlucky R.A.F. pilot, but also the doctor the village needs.

What may be most amusing is that The Sins of Rachel Cade was often booked in its theatrical run with another Gordon Douglas film, Gold of the Seven Saints, which also had Roger Moore in the cast. The double feature was covered by Eugene Archer for the New York Times, cracking wise about "saints and sinners" and describing the two films as "nostalgic throwbacks" of "old-fashioned movie-making". To all that, I say Amen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:00 AM

August 14, 2012

The Life and Death of a Porno Gang

Zivot i smrt porno bande
Mladen Djordjevic - 2009
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

While the more easily exploitable elements are what is used to sell The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, viewing this film reveals there is much more than what's on the surface. Presented as a video diary of a young Serbian film director, Marko, whose career takes some unexpected twists and turns, the film takes place between 1999 and 2002. There are references to Serbian history that may be lost to the more casual viewer, perhaps the most important being Marko's completely sleeping through October 5, 2000, a significant day for Serbians. It's not the first film to be self-contradictory or self-critical, or to be ultimately nihilistic. What needs to be recognized is that there is some serious intent, and not simply shock for its own sake.

Marko's plan to make a artistic horror or fantasy film is derailed when the only producer who bothers to speak to him deems the project to expensive to be profitable. A career making commercials brings in some money, but little satisfaction. A chance meeting with a porn producer leads Marko to making videos, where he is constantly admonished not to make anything "artsy". The one time Marko makes a film on his own, it's a parody of the kind of films that use to be made in Eastern Europe, of a failed farmer who ends up, as the Bible would put it, spilling his seed on the arid farmland. Between the film the producer can't sell, and the money lost for another production, Marko decides to change his career.

Creating a group that performs on stage, combining sex with political and social commentary, Marko soon hits the road with his group where they perform in various rural villages. An older man, a German journalist with international connections, offers Marko and the gang a substantial sum if they make the occasional "snuff" film with volunteer victims. The acceptance of the offer brings about inevitable consequences.

One can describe both the publicly staged performances of the porno gang and the film itself as having antecedents with Grand Guignol, and to some extent the concept of the Theater of Cruelty, or even The Living Theater's production of "Paradise Now". And it could well be that I am reading more into this film than may have been intended by Mladen Djordjevic, but then the history of film, in part is the discovery of connections and meanings that may have not been consciously included by filmmakers. An interview with Djordjevic indicates interest only in the more superficial aspects of this film.

Am I reading too much into what I've seen? Perhaps. And I think that by centering a story on a group of people who are self-described failures, trying to give their lives their lives meaning, Djordjevic is attempting to be confrontational about life in Serbia. Capitalism as it exists is at its most raw. The impulses that led to ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia are not far from the surface. I can't really say whether The Life and Death of a Porno Gang is a "great" film or even a "good" film. For myself, what Djordjevic is describing about the human condition, marginalized people, and the commodification and spectacle of sex and violence, makes aesthetic judgments besides the point.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:01 AM | Comments (1)

August 10, 2012

The Raid: Redemption

Serbuan maut
Gareth Evans - 2011
Sony Classics Region 1 DVD

What will probably be the most memorable quote in this film comes from a short, wiry guy with the nickname of Mad Dog, "Pulling a trigger is like ordering a takeout." Not that there isn't a lot of shooting in The Raid: Redemption, in fact there is a lot. And some of it is point blank, gun barrel against a guy's head. The above quote precedes Mad Dog taking on a cop in a hand to hand martial arts duel.

The story itself is relatively simple. A Jakarta based SWAT team goes to a crumbling high rise that's the base for a local crime boss. Part of their justification is that it is known that a drug lab is in the building. What makes this task more of a challenge is that many of the high rise residents are also gang members. It's also explained later why the members of the SWAT team are for the most part an untested bunch. The crime boss, Tama, is vicious enough to have no problem personally executing his enemies. His trusted lieutenants are the previously mentioned Mad Dog, and the more organizationally inclined Andi. Even though the SWAT team works its way up through the high rise, each floor might be said to correspond with a deeper level of Hell.

What is to be admired about The Raid: Redemption is the complexity of fight scenes. These scenes use a variety of different martial arts styles. In addition to guns, the weaponry gets more personal with machetes and knives. Evans did some of the action choreography, as well as edited the film. To describe what happens on screen as fast and furious is probably a cliche but anyone with a modicum of knowledge on how movies are actually made should be impressed by how the very fast shots have been assembled to create, for the most part, seamless action sequences with very convincing looking stunts and body movement.

This is a man's man's man's world, and the three women who briefly appear are wives left in bed, one sick, one pregnant. There are a few brief shots of the streets of Jakarta, but most of the film takes place in this one building. There's already an English language remake in the writing stage which will probably tone down much of the violence, but hopefully encourage subtitle adverse viewers to watch Evan's original film.

That The Raid: Redemption is the first Indonesian film to get picked up by a major U.S. distributor is a worthy breakthrough. There is some irony that it's also the work of a Welshman. Not to take anything away from Gareth Evans, who has made a small scale international hit with his second dramatic feature, but ideally his film would inspire further interest in Indonesian cinema. Considering the state of seeing Asian cinema in the U.S., I have no reason to be optimistic, but then again, a couple of action movies from Vietnam have made their way stateside. In the meantime, Evans has left his movie with enough of an open ending to look forward to his sequel. Considering what was accomplished with the limited resources he had available, Evans has set the bar quite high for a rematch.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:23 AM

August 08, 2012

Laddaland

Sopon Sukdapisit - 2011
Vicol Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Part of my interest in seeing Laddaland was simply because it takes placed in Chiang Mai, the Thai city I lived in for several months back between the November of 2006 through March of 2007. Between simply living in Thailand, and watching a fair number of Thai movies, what I've learned about ghosts is that if you don't bother them, they won't bother you. A more arrogant westerner might walk by a little ghost house and think that what they see is an expression of outdated superstition. I prefer to think that maybe someone knows something that I don't. In any event, I lived fairly close to the city center, so I have to assume that the ghosts there have been pretty well settled.

Laddaland takes place in an upscale suburb, with good size western style houses with Thai influence, in a gated community called Laddaland. Thee is preparing his house for his wife and family. Wife Parn, and young son, Nat, are excited by their new home. Teen daughter, Nan, is more cynical, stating that she'll stand for a family portrait in front of the new house when the mortgage is paid off. Things look rosy until that first night when a candle is accidentally knocked over, starting a fire in the couple's bedroom, followed by the unwanted visits by the black cat owned by the family next door. More ominously, a woman has been found murdered and mutilated, stuffed in the refrigerator in a house down the street.

Laddaland is closer to more western horror films, than most Thai films. Their is no explanation as such tying the presence of ghosts to anyone wrongdoing, or unfinished business, nor does anyone seek assistance from any Buddhist priests. The ghosts, when visible, are seen very fleetingly. To give a somewhat better idea, as a genre piece I would place it closer to The Sixth Sense in its depiction of the supernatural. As can be expected, it is the children who see the ghosts first, only to be challenged by disbelieving parents.

Simultaneous to this is the disintegration of Thee's life and family. Thee leverages himself not only with the purchase of the house, but other goods that he thinks he can afford. Thee's only had his good paying job for three months before committing himself to move to Chiang Mai from Bangkok. If the next door neighbors are an indication, Laddaland seems to be a magnet for people whose fortune, literally and spiritually, as run out. For Sopon Sukdapisit, the greater horror might not be the ghosts next door, but finding oneself without money and nowhere to go.

Laddaland is Sopon's second film as director. His previous film, Coming Soon was a more explicit horror film taking place mostly in a haunted movie theater. It should be noted that Sopon had a hand in the screenplays for Shutter and Alone, two of the most notable Thai horror films, Alone sadly not getting even a stateside DVD release as interest in so-called Asian Extreme movies fell out of favor with the sub-par Hollywood remakes. Also, Sopon's film garnered eight nominations from the Thailand National Film Awards, with six wins including Best Picture, and Best Screenplay for Sopon and Sopana Chaowwiwatkul.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:49 AM

August 06, 2012

Warriors of the Rainbow: Seediq Bale

Wei Te-Sheng - 2011
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

First, let me advise readers that the version I saw is the shorter release with a running time of about two and a half hours. Ideally, I would have seen the original version five hour version. I don't know what I've missed, but this shorter version worked well enough for me to overcome most of my concerns.

This is a Taiwanese national epic about Japanese occupation prior to World War II, and the guerilla warfare of several aboriginal tribes in what has been referred to as the Wushe Incident of 1930. And while some aspects might be culturally specific to the place and time, there is enough for those aware of other histories to see parallels with, for example, native Americans, or Vietnam. On a more visceral level, there is simply the excitement and fascination of seeing a smaller band of people at war against a larger, better equipped enemy.

The film mostly centers on Mouna Rudao, introducing him first as a young man, earning his warrior tattoos on a hunt. The film jumps ahead to an older Rudao, seemingly at peace with the Japanese occupation that has transformed the region where he and his tribe live. As was customary in other countries of Japanese occupation, some would take take on Japanese identities and work with the Japanese authorities, even though they would still be considered as second class citizens. In this film, two members of Rudao's tribe are members of the local police force, wearing the same uniform, although paid less. The tribesmen are consigned to cutting down the forests, part of the exploitation of Taiwan's natural resources, but additionally destroying the Seediq peoples traditional way of life. Continual mistreatment by the Japanese authorities causes Rudao to plan war against the people he considers intruders, although this is tempered by the animosity that continues with rival Seediq tribes.

What I have been able to glean from other sources is that Wei was able to cast the primary roles as authentically as possible, so that the Seediq people are portrayed by actors of aboriginal descent. Lin Ching-Tai, is not a professional actor, yet he is able to carry most of the work as Mouna Rudao. Possibly the best known actor in the pan-Asian cast would be Masanobu Ando who plays a Japanese policeman who has a more respectful attitude towards the Seediq, at least in the beginning of the film. Also, Seediq is the spoken language in the film, as well as Japanese, and some Chinese, making the film linguistically authentic.

One part of the film that would benefit from explanation are songs performed by the characters. I assume these are traditional Seediq folk songs. In any event, one of the songs provides a particularly interesting counterpoint to the action, a melancholy song about the implications of going to war, where a lesser filmmaker would more likely use some kind of rousing music to signify victory.

Normally, "Making of" DVD supplements are not always of interest. Here though, it is worth having Wei discuss the origin of making the film, the various obstacles in getting financing, and the logistical problems with a large cast and crew in a somewhat remote location. One of the people who appears frequently and is seen dealing with various logistical problems, is Wei's assistant director, Anne Wu. Don't be surprised if Miss Wu moves into the director's chair sometime soon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:13 AM

August 01, 2012

A Tale of Archers at Sanjusangen-do

Sanjusangen-do, Toshiya Monogatari
Mikio Naruse - 1945

A story about a samurai era archery competition is not something to be expected from Mikio Naruse. Even if the subject matter seems out of place for a filmmaker better known for his domestic dramas, Naruse's hand is definitely there visually.

The traveling shot of the main characters walking, with the camera framed just ahead, with a wall in the background, filmed at a mildly diagonal angle is used again here. I think of this type of shot as one of Naruse's visual signatures. In this film, we see Kazuo Hasegawa and Sensho Ichikawa walking down the road, having a friendly chat. Another brief shot that Naruse includes in other films is that of a reflection in a mirror. Here we briefly see Kinuyo Tanaka checking her hair. The shot is something of a visual joke, cut directly after a shot of Ichikawa shooting an arrow.

The story, as such, is about Ichikawa as the son of a famous archer, preparing to compete to redeem the family name, as his father, the region's previous champion, committed suicide under questionable circumstances. Tanaka is the woman who raised Ichikawa, currently running a hotel. Hasegawa is the stranger in town, who comes to mentor Ichikawa in the art of archery.

Filmed in Kyoto during the last months of World War II, the film might be interpreted as apolitical. Rather than being a call for nationalism, or extolling the virtues of loyalty to the emperor, the film might well be seen as gentle encouragement to overcome feelings of defeat. Much of the time, until Hasegawa comes on the scene, Ichikawa complains that he is unable to even come close to the record of 8000 target hits. Hasegawa's cover is dropped when he finds out that his mother is in town. Whatever A Tale of Archers is, or isn't about, filial loyalty trumps everything else.

There is a brief scene of action, with the baby faced Hasegawa taking on a small gang of ruffians. And who doesn't love watching the lone samurai whipping out his sword to take several challengers at once? Naruse strong suit would still be the battle of wills between his characters, but it's still a pleasure to watch the kind of scene normally not associated with his better known work.

Kazuo Hasegawa and Kinuyo Tanaka have had long, well documented careers, working with several of the top Japanese directors over several decades. Sensho Ichikawa is the question mark here. What little I could find indicates a brief career with hardly a handful of credits. Based on several online searches, it would appear that A Tale of Archers was Ichikawa's final film following three other films made in the late Thirties. Hideo Oguni, the screen writer, is better known for his collaborations with Akira Kurosawa. As such, the scene of Hasegawa's sword fight in the streets appears in retrospective to have been a rough sketch for the kind of scenes Oguni would write for Toshiro Mifune.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:48 AM

July 30, 2012

The Bunny Game

Adam Rehmeier - 2010
Autonomy Pictures Region 0 DVD

I can't write about this film without making some other connections that may seem very tangential. But I will come back to write more specifically about The Bunny Game.

First, the shadow of Aurora, Colorado is still in the media and in my life. Keep in mind that I live a few miles away, so this was local news. And since that time various pundits have discussed how responsible film is for inspiring the shooting. One person indicted Warner Brothers based on their Depression era one-two punch of Public Enemy and Little Caesar. And a few years ago, I wrote about a German film about a rapist. My ex was visiting me, and got hysterical watching the first few minutes. Even though the film was about a man who was arrested and was challenging himself to reform his life, the fact that rape was depicted was considered too much for my ex. Her argument was that any form of depiction of rape potentially would inspire a viewer to commit such an act. It was a challenge for me just to keep her from destroying the DVD so I could write about the film later. As far as anti-social activity on the screen goes, I saw again The Great Train Robbery. A gang steals money, shoots unarmed guys dead, and in the most famous image, one of the robbers aims and shoots his gun at the audience. The movie was made in 1903. Yes, over a century ago. Edwin S. Porter may have been inspired by a British movie made earlier that year, A Daring Daylight Robbery. Both films have been considered inspirational . . . to other filmmakers. My own feeling is that the people who get the most upset or pontifical about violence in film usually have at best a very casual knowledge of film history.

I'm also reading Behind the Pink Curtain, a history of Japanese soft core sex films. One thing that is striking is the sub-genre of films involving sado-masochism and bondage within the Japanese industry. Keep in mind that these are films that played in movie theaters primarily in the Seventies and Eighties, and that some of the people involved moved on to mainstream careers. What I have not read in Jasper Sharp's book is any indication that women were in any way violated as a result of someone watching any of these movies, at least not in Japan. Whether one considers a movie like Red Rope or Flower and Snake entertainment is besides the point. Had there been any rapes or abductions inspired by these films, government forces would have certainly intervened.

Which brings me to The Bunny Game. And I did feel much trepidation when I read the synopsis. Basically, a prostitute is abducted and tortured by trucker. The film is also inspired at least partially by the life of the Rodleen Getsic, who shares screenplay credit with director Adam Rehmeier, and also plays the woman in trouble. Getsic and Rehmeier consider their work to be a horror movie. Whatever one wants to make of that, or any other label, the effect is more of confrontation than titillation.

There is no gore. Except for a couple of scenes of branding, and shaving off of hair, the damage inflicted is overwhelmingly psychological rather than physical. In a larger sense, what I think The Bunny Game is about is male power and female commodification. The prostitute, Sylvia Gray, virtually advertises who she is with her bleach blonde hair, cheap and flashy clothing, and fishnet stockings. All that's missing is a portable neon sign pointing to her, with the words, "Cheap sex here". We first see Sylvia performing a blow job. Sylvia is available for whatever comes her way, be it oral sex behind a dumpster, or rough sex in a shabby motel. Sylvia's life seems to consist of street pickups, snorts of cocaine, brief feelings of remorse about her life, and a repetition of the cycle. One of the customers beats and robs Sylvia. One might dismiss such an incident as simply the perils of the trade, but one might also consider such a scene as indicative of how men use their power to rationalize mistreating not only prostitutes, but women in general.

The abduction of Sylvia by the trucker known as Hog, At one point, Hog and Sylvia wear leather masks of a big snouted hog and floppy eared bunny. Sylvia is chained to a wall in Hog's truck. The relationship between the two is about power, and how Hog uses his power over Sylvia. Rather than banging her, Hog would rather bang a hammer around Sylvia's immobile body, intimidating her with the threat of physical violence.

As Sylvia Gray, Rodleen Getsic is mesmerizing. She's garish and cheap looking, and I couldn't take my eyes off her. There are two tufts of hair above her ears that almost look like substitutes for animal ears. A remarkable moment is a scene after a session of rough sex when Sylvia takes a shower. She's briefly seen with the heavy eye makeup washed away, looking towards a window, with her hands clasped in front of her, as if she was praying to somehow escape from her current life. Getsic performs with very little dialogue, but a very expressive face.

The film also is visually striking. The actual filming took place in 2008, and completed in 2011. Shot in black and white, according to the commentary track, Adam Rehmeier was able to do most of the film in single takes. An accomplished cinematographer and second unit director, there is little to argue with in his choice of compositions. Because of the technical skill, visually this doesn't look like the dashed off work of someone like Ed Wood or William Beaudine. Most of the film is made of quick cuts. What exists of a narrative was actually improvised during the course of filming. The overall effect makes The Bunny Game look more like an "undergound" movie or European art house film from the Sixties.

There may be arguments about the value of The Bunny Game, about what's on the screen as opposed to any intentions of Getsic and Rehmeier. What can't be argued is the searing screen presence of Rodleen Getsic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:55 AM

July 28, 2012

Heaven Strewn

Jeremiah Gurzi - 2011
Cinema Libra Studios All Region DVD

I'm not sure if Heaven Strewn would qualify as contemporary film noir, at least in the way that the genre is generally understood. What is more certain is that there is are threads of inspiration, primarily from John Huston with his stories of men losing everything, or almost everything, to pipe dreams. More specifically, when Mickey and Jasper go out to the desert in search of their own lucky strike, I couldn't help but think of Treasure of Sierra Madre.

Mickey and Jasper have been friends since childhood, and have a history of getting into trouble when together. Mickey is currently trying to get by as counterfeiter. Jasper is a freelance journalist unable to meet a deadline due to writer's block, or perhaps simple inertia. Bonding again at a meeting for recovering alcoholics, Mickey, with a couple of DUIs and an impounded car, talks Jasper into going on a road trip to the desert in search of valuable space meteorites. The two are the only ones in an otherworldly stretch of desert, when another car appears in the distance. A big convertible shows up with three equally big men who stop to bury something in the sand. Mickey goes down to the spot where the trio stopped, and digs out a suitcase full of money. As can be expected, trouble follows Mickey and Jasper.

Filmmaker Jeremiah Gurzi made the unusual choice to shoot his film in wide screen 16mm. As is stands, this also represents a one time use of the format as filmmaking becomes more exclusively digital. What is also of interest is that unlike many filmmakers who would use 16mm to film handheld, Gurzi chooses often static, carefully framed and lit shots. In this way also, Heaven Strewn also recalls more classic movies. Even though this is Gurzi's debut feature, the difference is that he not only has made several short films, but has worked on the more technical end of other productions, either in lighting or cinematography.

The real star of this movie would be the location of the Trona Pinnacles. It's the kind of setting that upstages the actors because it is so unnatural looking. Unlike Monument Valley which simply is imposing, Trona Pinnacles looks like the kind of place where sentient beings of any kind do not belong. The actual stars, Wyatt Denny and Rob Tepper, look like the kind of guys one would pass on the street without much notice. On the other hand, even from a distance, the criminal trio of Magdaleno Robles Jr., Robert Zepeda and Robert Larabee manage to look menacing, the kind of guys one gives a wide berth to when seen walking the street.

Save for the smashing of a truck window, there is no onscreen violence. What lingers is the threat of violence, and the sense that the trio is going to do whatever it takes to get their money back. It may be an old fashioned notion to suggest rather than to show in a film such as this. When Gurzi's badass three are on the loose, there is a palpable sense that whatever they are capable of could well be worse than what is imagined.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM | Comments (2)

July 24, 2012

My Way

Kang Je-kyu - 2011
Well Go Entertainment Region 1 DVD

If there was one Korean film director who might be most suited for trying his hand at with a Hollywood blockbuster, it would be Kang Je-kyu. His box office success, Shiri, about a North Korean hit women sneaking into Seoul, compares favorably to the original Die Hard, made for a fraction of the cost. Tae Guk Ki, his epic about the Korean war from the perspective of two brothers, was notably inspired by Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan.

Spielberg is recalled again with this new film, which concluded dramatically during D-Day, from the point of view of a Japanese and Korean soldier who find themselves fighting on behalf of the German army. The origins of the film's story begin with this photograph of a Korean soldier in German uniform, captured at Normandy. The story is a fictionalized account that also serves as an investigation on the concept of national identity, and maintaining one's humanity during wartime.

The film begins sometime during the late Twenties or early Thirties, when Japanese rule over Korea has been well established. Jun-shik, the son of a servant at the household of a Japanese military leader, meets Tetsuo, the grandson from Tokyo. The two boys establish alternating friendship and rivalry over their skills at running. Given the chance to compete in the Olympics, Jun-shik's clear victory is denied by the Japanese judges. Following a riot by the protesting Koreans, Jun-shik, along with several friends, is forced to fight on behalf of the Japanese army. While posted near Mongolia, Jun-shik's newest commanding officer is Tetsuo.

For Jun-shik, history repeats itself. Seeing the hollowness of slogans of fighting for a country that considers him a citizen for military purposes only, he sees no value other than to try and survive, when as a prisoner of war, he fights for the Russians, and again for the Germans. At the same time, when he could have easily allowed himself revenge for all of the mistreatment done personally by Tetsuo and by other Japanese soldiers, Jun-shik helps Tetsuo survive the war. The Korean prisoners are marginally treated better than the Japanese in the Russian camp. One of Jun-shik's friends is the top Korean in the camp, taking advantage of his position, and taking a Russian name. Again, what is addressed is relative power, or the illusion of power, during war.

While Kang seems to glide past the heart of what motivates Jun-shik to hold onto his humanity, there is no doubt that Kang has a great eye for spectacle. One of the great set pieces is of Jun-shik, in the process of escaping the Japanese fort, discovering a large number of Soviet tanks rumbling towards him. A Soviet airplane chases after Jun-shik. A couple of shots will bring to mind Cary Grant chased by the cropduster in North by Northwest. The pursuing plane is shot down by a female Chinese sniper with one single, well aimed bullet. The flaming remains of the plane come hurtling towards the audience. What Kang excels at is an effective visceral entertainment.

It needs to be understood that it has only been in the past few years that Korean films have looked at the years of Japanese occupation. One of recurring themes that unites these films is the meaning and expression of national identity. Spanning a period of almost two decades, and two continents, My Way is more broad than deep. Still, it is worth seeing for the many emotionally charged moments, inspired as it has been, from one of the more unusual footnotes of World War II.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:42 AM

July 12, 2012

Heat Wave

Kagero
Hideo Gosha - 1991
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

The second to last entry in Hideo Gosha's filmography, Heat Wave would appear to be a throwback to the yakuza films of the early Seventies, were it not for the various scenes of women baring their breasts. And with a cast that includes such stalwarts both of Japanese cinema and Gosha's previous films, Tatsuya Nakadai, and briefly, Tetsuro Tamba, it's as if Gosha was doing his own update of genre while paying tribute to the stars of the past.

The film mostly belongs to Kanako Higuchi as Rin, the itinerant gambler who returns home, with deadly consequences for all. The plot could well be the same for a western. Even though the action takes place in 1928, it is in a Japan that is still very traditional, even with the presence of trains and electricity. Orphaned as a young girl when her father is killed for cheating at a card game, Rin is adopted by a prosperous family that runs a large restaurant. Accidentally meeting up with her younger brother, ten years after leaving Kyushu, Rin finds herself returning home, playing a high stakes game with multiple connections to her past.

Gosha's opening shot is of Rin pouring water over herself, her tattooed bare back clearly seen. In her first scene with dialogue, Rin is standing with the extended, open palm, the classic scene of introduction found in most period yakuza movies. It may be no coincidence that Rin, who lives autonomously, is the one female character in the film that is still standing. This is not to say that Heat Wave is particularly feminist in design. The message, if one is to be found, is more nihilistic, suggesting that it is best not to invest too much in material or personal attachments.

I'm not sure what to make of one scene where the crime family that Rin confronts are introduced watching a live sex show. What appears to be a geisha and a tonsured male is revealed to be two women performing for the entertainment of their male patrons. Without making a "Pink Film", Gosha was known to push the envelope for his depiction of nudity in mainstream films during his last decade as a filmmaker. Even though it may have caused finger wagging from some critics, it kept Gosha commercially viable, and did nothing to keep Heat Wave from getting seven nominations from the Japanese Academy.

It's only been in the past few years that some of Gosha's films have been made available officially in the U.S. Most of the writing as centered on individual films. Writing for the Washington Post, Steohen Hunter is certainly not alone in seeing Gosha's films as westerns in eastern garb, although for myself, I see Goyokin (1969) as something of a riff mostly on Sergio Leone with an unexpected play on Hitchcock's The Birds on the side. Unlike most westerns, Heat Wave ends with the climatic battle happening indoors, in Rin's family mansion, with guns, knives and swords, while the place is on fire. And in classic yakaza tradition, Rin leaves in the same way that she first appears onscreen, alone.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

July 10, 2012

Twins of Evil

John Hough - 1971
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Looking beyond the eye candy, the single most striking key to Twins of Evil is Peter Cushing and the character that he plays. More gaunt than usual, Cushing portrays the leader of a group of men called "The Brotherhood" that seek out and kill women accused of being witches. While not necessarily intended, there are contemporary reverberations here, with a group of men using religious piety as their motivation to put to death women who may be independent and sexually active without marriage. There's an obvious thrill to running around with torches, and burning the women to death, a thrill that's amplified when the men find out that hunting vampires requires sharpened blades and wooden stakes with pointed tips. Cushing's character of Gustav Weil is dressed in black, as are the rest of his group. While not stated as such, it is suggest that the men are self-appointed Puritans who act as moral guardians in the community where the film takes place, the town of Karnstein, named after the family that lives in the big castle that overlooks the town, in a rather hazy, unspecific past.

What makes Weil different from the character Cushing is most associated with, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing, is that Hammer now allows ambivalence, so that Weill illustrates the old saying of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. What makes Twins of Evil of interest is not simply that the sex and blood suggested in earlier Hammer films was amplified in keeping with newly liberal production codes in the U.S. and U.K., but that the film reflects a world that is not so evenly split between good and evil.

Actually one of the twins might be considered evil. The twins are two orphans who come from Venice to live under the guardianship of their aunt and uncle. The uncle is witch hunter Gustav, while the Aunt Katy is the often ignored voice of reason. Maria is the goody goody who plays it safe following the house rules. Frieda isn't so much evil as much as she just wants to be bad, stay up late, go to parties, and let the men take long glances at her generous cleavage. Frieda seeks out the young and wealthy Count Karnstein after hearing rumors of his devil worshipping ways and decadence, representing everything opposite of Uncle Gustav. That it turns out that Karnstein is a vampire is an unexpected bonus.

For those who love classic movies, there's Kathleen Byron, best remembered for her two Powell-Pressburger films, Stairway to Heaven and Black Narcissus, as the wise Aunt Katy. It's almost shocking to know that Dennis Price, another Price-Pressborger veteran, was 56 at the time he made Twins of Evil, extremely overweight and prematurely aged by alcoholism.

As for the Collinson twins, their acting really can't be judged as they were dubbed to cover their Maltese accents. Various characters mention how much they look alike. Maybe it's light and make up, but it seems to me that Mary, who plays Maria, has a slightly wider nose and fuller lips. Madelaine is the twin who shows more skin, especially when trying to seduce Anton, more or less the hero here, played by David Warbeck.

The DVD supplement is especially useful in discussing the history of Hammer films at the time of production and the various elements that lead to the making of Twins of Evil. There's some humor in knowing that the producers were named Fine and Style, neither men known as being particularly fine or stylish. For those who may have seen Twins of Evil in its theatrical run, one gets to see what shots in the film were edited out either for the British or U.S. release versions. One of the deleted shots was of a close up of a woman's hand stroking a long, lit candle. The scene in question takes place when Count Karstein is turned into a vampire by a newly revived member of the undead, a beautiful blonde. Which is all well and good except that this gorgeous vampire is Count Karstein's great grandmother, or some kind of relative, so it's probably just as well that we never see what the two are actually doing together. Talking about making the film are director John Hough and Damien Thomas, the film's Count Karstein. Among the film scholars adding their thoughts are Joe Dante, Tim Lucas, Kim Newman and Christopher Frayling. Those with Blu-ray players can enjoy some extra bonuses.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:13 AM

July 08, 2012

Pay or Die

Richard Wilson - 1960
Warner Archives Region 0 DVD

Pay or Die marks something of a anomaly in Ernest Borgnine's long career as being one of the very few films where he was both the top billed star and a romantic lead. And as leading men go, only Gene Evans smooching Mary Welch in Sam Fuller's Park Row may have been more unusual. For a lot of guys watching this film, there might have been a flicker of encouragement to see Zohra Lampert choose Borgnine over the more conventionally handsome Alan Austin.

In other ways, Pay or Die is a bit more conventional, though it has its moments. Coming in after Al Capone, Richard Wilson's film lacks the visual punch of the previous film, nor is David Raksin's score memorable in the jangly, atonal ways that mark his work with the earlier film, or the later Invitation to a Gunfighter. Every once in a while there are reminders that the budget for a major production from Allied Artists was less than allocated for some of the smaller films from the major studios. On the plus side, with cinematographer Lucien Ballard, Wilson demonstrates lessons gained from working with Orson Welles especially in his staging of scenes with extended dialogue. The film is also blessed with a cast of character actors with the kind of faces perfect for playing mugs, thugs and lugs.

Borgnine, Lucien Ballard and Richard Wilson

The film is a fictionalized account of police officer Joe Petrosino during the years from 1906 through 1909. Taking place primarily in the "Little Italy" section of New York City, the story is about the conflict between the protection rackets run by Sicilian gangsters and Petrosino's attempts to fight what became known as the Mafia. The film is also about the conflicts that still continue to persist in various forms, between older cultures and codes of behavior for immigrants in the United States. Petrosino's task is not only to curtail criminal activity but to prove that, for a people who distrust legal authority, that the police are their allies, as well as proving the possibility of making it in America, and demonstrating the capability of people among this new wave of immigrants.

What also makes Borgnine's role unusual is that it is not as dependent on the physical trademarks most exploited in other films. The famous gap toothed grin is absent save for one scene with Lampert where the pair establish mutual interest in each other. Borgnine also isn't called upon to exert his burly presence as he would have done in something previously like From Here to Eternity, or later as in The Emperor of the North Pole. Borgnine engages in gunfire, and in one scene carries a thug down the tenement stairs and into a garbage can, but for the better part of the film, plays a man more reliant on brains than brawn. Unlike the real wife of Joe Petrosino, Zohra Lampert was twenty years younger than Borgnine. Not the most gorgeous of women playing opposite Borgnine (that would be Stella Stevens in The Poseidon Adventure), Lampert quiet attractiveness works best in her own shy wooing of Borgnine.

Wilson's Wellesian touches are mostly to be seen during the night scenes, playing with darkness and shadows, such as a when Zohra Lampert is chased down an empty street by two gimps, and behind the theater where a thug has hidden a bomb inside Enrico Caruso's limosine. Wilson succeeds in creating some very real tension in another scene involving a bomb hidden in a horse drawn wagon, cross cutting between the wagon and several different characters in the vicinity of Mulberry Street. Another moment, perhaps created for the film because of the mental imagery invoked, involves some gangster locking a would be victim, a baker, into an as yet unlit oven. Richard Wilson's career as a director seems to exist in the shadows of Hollywood and film history, yet as some more of his eight features come more readily available for viewing, the evidence is shows certain, if uneven, talent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:39 PM | Comments (1)

July 05, 2012

The True Story of a Woman in Jail: Continues

Zoku jitsuroku onna kanbetsusho
Kuyo Ohara - 1975
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

This is how I like Nikkatsu Roman Porno - with one foot, OK, maybe a big toe, in old school filmmaking, and an abundance of naked women. Some might call the nudity gratuitous, but I say that's the whole point of making a women in prison movie. Like the first film in the series, this entry begins and ends with an enka, a ballad about the travails of being a woman in trouble. This is in keeping with the tradition of Nikkatsu's youth oriented films from the Fifties and early Sixties, to be found in something like Tokyo Drifter, with the song usually performed by the star.

As far as I'm concerned, the best reason to see True Story . . . Continues is for star Hitomi Kazue. Relatively tall for a Japanese woman, and lean, Kazue provides an unforgettable presence. One might describe the character she plays, Mayumi, as the female equivalent to the lone wolf kind of guy often associated with Toshiro Mifune or Ken Takakura in male centered action films. Well, yes, she's hot, but she's one of the few actresses of "Pink Films" that easily commands attention, even when she's fully dressed.

Director Koyu Ohara doesn't waste time in giving the audience what it wants. After the title song, the first image is of several female prisoners parading nude for inspection. There are also a couple of bathing scenes, lesbian orgies and cat fights, in short, the reasons why some of us love women in prison movies. There's also some straight sex, but the guys aren't exactly attractive, and the heterosexual activity comes in the form of rape or as part of a quid pro quo arrangement. All things considered, the girl on girl action might be sleazy, but it's a higher variety of sleaze.

Ohara has a couple of nice moments during a flashback. Mayumi and her mother are walking through some very tall grass. When the mother is abducted by a group of young men intent on raping her, we just see an umbrella tossed in the air from a short distance. Following the rape of mother and daughter, Mayumi is standing in a stream, her clothing torn, splashing water on her legs. Maybe to describe this as junior grade Mizoguchi might be something of an exaggeration, but there is the suggestion that Ohara knows his classics.

I am, of course, hoping that the third film of this series will be on DVD soon. In the meantime, while the quality of the Nikkatsu Roman Porno films is admittedly mixed, I always find it worth my time to see for myself the best in the genre, whether it's a director like Kuyo Ohara inserting a few moments of inspired artistry, or admiring the beauty of an actress like Hitomi Kazue.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

July 03, 2012

Zoom In: Sex Apartments

Zumu in: Boko danchi
Naosuke Kurosawa - 1980
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

This is one of those times when I have to wonder what the people making this film were thinking. And was there anyone who found Zoom In: Sex Apartments entertaining? Whatever director Naosuke Kurosawa and writer Chiho Katsura were intending regarding sexual fantasy seems lost amidst an ugly display of misogyny.

What exists of a narrative is of young housewife Saeko, following a quickie with her horny, if sexually clumsy husband, bicycling to a tryst with her long time lover, Takaya. On the way, Saeko is knocked off her bike and raped by an unknown man dressed in black, with black gloves, who threatens her with a long, pointed awl. Strangely enough, Takaya is dressed the same way, and as a piano tuner, has a similar looking, sharp instrument. Around the apartment complex where Saeko lives, young women are attacked, with the attacker often burning the women alive, lighting up the pubic area. All clues seem to lead to Saeko's lover.

The last ten minutes or so point towards the film to be understood on a more metaphorical level leading to a scene of Saeko perhaps being raped in Hell. There is clearly the influence of Dario Argento at work here, yet the scenes of sex are not particularly erotic, nor are any of the thriller aspects suspenseful. There are what seem to be clues thrown out, such as a small child's piano and a slashed painting, yet they are not accorded any significance. It's never explained why Takayo keeps the toy piano hidden in his closet, or who slashed the painting. The one moment that is an interesting touch is when one of the assailant's victims, a schoolgirl, is suppose to be running away, but is shown running in place, while the lights to the apartments shut off while she calls for help.

It may be worth mentioning that screenplay writer Chiho Katsura's best known credit is for House, a decidedly better work of dream logic. In addition to writing films for Nobuhiko Obayashi, Karsura also wrote Queen Bee for Kon Ichikawa. That Katsura has worked on better films with better filmmakers makes the ill conceived screenplay here more distressing.

There is little to be found on star Erina Miyai outside of this English language filmography. A reasonably attractive woman, her most erotic moment is not when engaged with her husband, her lover Takaya, or her female lover Sachi, but alone, applying lipstick in an extreme close up.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

June 28, 2012

The Great Killing

Dai satsujin
Eiichi Kudo - 1964
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The second film by Eiichi Kudo to get an official U.S. DVD release is mostly known for the use of hand held cinematography. If The Great Killing is any indication, Kudo should also be acknowledged as a great formal stylist. The hand held camera work is tremendous, especially when one considers that these were 35 mm cameras that weighed over one-hundred pounds, and required a two man team for operation. The final battle begins with a stampede of horses that disrupts the procession of a lord, the heir apparent to the shogunate. The footage often looks like newsreel footage, perhaps deliberately so, as Kudo also used sound recorded at student protests for his soundtrack. There is a real sense of immediacy that works so much better here than what might be found in the shaky cam footage of the current crop of "found footage" movies.

Kudo also shows that he is as good as any of the acknowledged masters of Japanese cinema, or world cinema, for that matter, in his use of compositions. The placement of characters in the wide screen, and the emphasis of depth of field, are both remarkable. In the scenes where the characters have to sit according to protocol, Kudo places his characters in such a way that the viewer is forced to observe both the width of the frame and the presentation of depth within that frame. A typical setup would have two vassals on each side of the frame, a ranking official approximately midway in the field of vision, and the high ranking official in the back, all in focus. Kudo also plays with sense of scale in his placement of characters in some shots.

The basic story is to some extent a variation on the same narrative setup for Kudo's 13 Assassins. A small group of disenchanted samurai plot to disrupt the plans of a high official, Lord Sakai, whose high taxation has caused financial ruin for many farmers, and who hopes to act as the power behind the throne for the young heir designated to be the next shogun. The original group of rebel samurai have been hunted and killed. Sakai's men track down one of the rebels to the home of Jimbo. Arrested due to his protection of a rebel, Jimbo's wife is killed by Sakai's men. Jimbo seeks to avenge the death of his wife, but instead of acting alone, is urged to join with several others by the mysterious Lady Miya.

Even though Jimbo is the main protagonist of the film, following his evolution from unintentional observer to determined participant, it is Lady Miya who is the more interesting character. Miya is both pragmatic and idealistic, and her beauty is both her strength and weakness. What also interests me is that she is one of the rare females in what was at the time still a very male dominated genre, not a subordinate character like a wife or romantic interest, nor as someone to be protected or rescued. If Lady Miya is not the fiercely independent woman personified by actresses Junko Fuji and Meiko Kaji, it may not be totally coincidental that such a character would be in a film from the same studio, Toei, just a few years prior to these better known actresses who became that studio's stars. There is very little information on Nami Munakata, the actress who played Lady Miya, other than that her career was very brief, from 1964 to 1967.

Definitely The Great Killing should be seen by those who may not necessarily be interested in the samurai film, or think that the only artist who worked in the genre was Akira Kurosawa. Aside from the mix of visual styles, there are individual shots of impressive quality, such as the stampeding horses running towards the camera, or long shot of a lone samurai walking in a field in the rain, with its variety of gray zones. An extra bonus is AnimEigo's colored subtitles, making it easy to follow multiple voices in conversation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:52 AM

June 25, 2012

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Roger Corman - 1958
Shout! Factory Region 1 DVD

An approximate dual anniversary at the time. It was a little over seven years ago that this blog was launched. It was also approximately fifty years ago (yeah, I'm THAT old) since I saw my first Roger Corman film in a theater.

At the time I saw Attack of the Crab Monsters, it was the day following a surprise goodbye party given to me in June, 1962. In a matter of days, I would be leaving Teaneck, New Jersey for Evanston, Illinois. I'm not sure what was playing at the Teaneck theater at the time, but it must have been something that had no interest to us. Instead, we looked at nearby Hackensack, at one of the two theaters on Main Street. There was some interest in Cabinet of Caligari, based more on the reputation of the silent film, which we might have read about but hadn't seen. After reading about the silent classic in "Famous Monsters of Filmland", I finally saw the original film a few years later, and that reworking by Robert Bloch, a few years ago as well. We settled on the special matinee showing of Corman's film, which was playing with the biblical epic, Herod the Great.

Was the theater, the Oritani? I can't say for sure. If it weren't for the invitation to see a double feature of Carousel and The King and I on my last day in in Teaneck, there would have been some sort of symmetry, as the first film I saw when I moved to Teaneck was Hercules, also in Hackensack. Some movie going experiences are more memorable than others, and I recall seeing what must have been an hour's worth of cartoons, primarily from Warner Brothers. And there may have been more previews, but I do recall vaguely those for The Leech Woman, and The Brides of Dracula. The latter made a real impression on me as the film became something that I wanted to see from that point on. I had to wait decades, first for the VHS version, and later, the DVD. What can I say, for this ten year old boy, those Hammer starlets were the sexiest women he had ever seen.

I haven't seen Herod the Great since that first time. If the opportunity arose for another viewing, it would be primarily to catch classic Italian cutie pie Sandra Milo.

As for Attack of the Crab Monsters, I had caught it at least once on television, and again theatrically as part of a Roger Corman retrospective that took place at New York City's Kips Bay Theater, almost forty years ago. Seeing it again on DVD, it doesn't hold up as well for me as some of the other Corman films from the era before he took on Edgar Allan Poe. I don't know when I started being conscious of Corman's name except that I eventually realized that I was watching a bunch of films he had something to do with, and that I was fascinated, even though these were films that weren't good for me, as compared to something by Stanley Kramer. And I could not foresee a future where Roger Corman would be the first director I would interview, for one of the student run newspapers at New York University.

What affection I have for Attack of the Crab Monsters might be attributed to what the place the film has in my lifelong cinephilia, as well as the experience of watching the film at a time of single screen movie palaces and matinee shows more or less pegged for children. The price of admission could not have been more than fifty cents, so I certainly got my money's worth. What also was revealed over an extended period of time is that for those devoted to cinema is that even the most seemingly random film watched in childhood may become more meaningful in the most unexpected ways.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)

June 21, 2012

Kakera: A Piece of Our Life

Momoko Ando - 2009
Third Window Films Region 2 DVD

Even without fully reading the original manga, "Love Vibes", Momoko Ando has made the significant change of having the two principle characters look distinctly different, as well as changing the names. But what interests me more in this regard is the difference between Hollywood and Japan in using graphic novels as source material. The Hollywood films are based on stories written by men with characters who, if not superheroes, are in some way mythic. The Japanese films often are sources from female writers, and are about relationships of very human characters.

Haru is short, a bit awkward, and seemingly uncertain about her life except that she wants to be loved. Hara's idea of love may be unclear, but it's not what she's getting from her boyfriend, a lout with questionable hygiene, worse table manners, a girlfriend on the side, and a habit of immediately kicking Haru out the door in the morning. Riko, taller and more stylish in dress, is more certain of herself and her feelings. Riko zeroes in on Haru at a coffee shop, initiating a relationship that takes a toll on both.

Even though it is physical attraction that attracts Riko to Haru, the relationship that we see is primarily one of emotional needs, and a conflict between Riko's certainty and Haru's vacillations. The two view fireworks from a distance, and as if stated as a riposte to Alfred Hitchcock's love and fireworks in To Catch a Thief, one comments that the fireworks look like war. Documentary footage of war plays on a television set while Haru, knocked out by a fall, is sexually taken advantage of by her boyfriend.

Rika states that it is categorization that makes things difficult rather than basing love on gender. Ando deliberately chooses show only a few scenes of kissing and a couple of playful moments between the two women as a strategy for not allowing their relationship to be clearly defined. Even the last scene is open ended so that the future of the relationship is left to the imagination of the viewer. As Ando has stated, "I just wanted to say that before we talk about being a woman or a man, we should figure out how we should try to live our lives as human beings. We;ve all got hearts. That's the message."

Rika is a sculptor of prosthetics, creating artificial body parts for people. Momoko Ando has commented on how Kakera was made in part as a reaction to the feelings of disconnection people have, and Rika states that one of her prosthetics will not be a substitute for any emotional absence. Going back to the war analogy, the characters here are conflicted, neither being happy alone, nor with anyone else unless that relationship is on one person's terms. Love, it would seem, is not simply a piece of life, but something fragile and in fragments that doesn't always hold together.

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM | Comments (1)

June 19, 2012

Yes or No? So I Love You

Pu Chai Lulla: Yaak Rak Gaw Rak Loey
Sarasawadee Wongsompetch - 2010
Lots Entertainment Region 3 DVD

One of the popular descriptions people give to their own relationships is, "it's complicated". And so it goes with Yes or No?. Even though the film has been touted as Thailand's first lesbian romance, the characters understand how messy affairs of the heart can be, and also that there is tyranny to labels whether self-attached or applied to others.

Mostly centered on two college students, Pie has just changed dorm rooms due to her discomfort with a lesbian roommate. She finds that her new roommate, Kim, is tall and boyish looking with her short (for a Thai female) hair. After dividing the room with red tape, Pie sets some rules. Eventually the uneasy truce evolves into friendship, which in turn evolves into a more emotionally involved and volatile relationship.

As Kim's Aunt Inn says, it is not appearances but what is in the heart. While Kim looks the part of the "tomboy", she freaks out at the appearance of a cockroach, and is afraid of the dark. Going further against the grain of stereotyping, at least for the female characters, is that the aggressively lesbian Jane is also the most super feminine. Only Jane's sidekick, the gangly, effeminate, and very gay Boyd, who perhaps makes the other males in this film nervous, would be considered a stock character.

This is a very gentle comedy drama. What works best is that there is the understanding that for these two girls, whatever they feel about each other is subject to parental and peer pressure, as well as uncertainty about one's sense of self. What is also of interest is that both Pie and Kim's attraction, deemed by some as unnatural, is played against their respective studies of the natural world, Ichthyology and Botany. While the film is clear eyed about homophobia, especially in the depiction of Pie's mother, there is also a brief moment of magic realism when a brief flurry of butterflies surround Pie and Kim.

Yes or No? was the directorial debut of Sarasawadee Wongsompetch. The film was enough of a commercial success that Yes or No 2 is scheduled for release later this summer. The film also gained Sarasawadee Wongsompetch a nomination for Best Director for Thailand's National Film Association Awards. Previously, Sarasawadee had served as a Second Unit or Assistant Director, most notably on Ong Bak. There is virtually nothing in English about Sarasawadee other than her filmography. Yes or No? has been screened for western audiences primarily in GLBT film festivals.

This post is part of the Queer Film Blogathon hosted by Garbo Laughs and Pussy Goes Grrr.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM | Comments (2)

June 14, 2012

Red Scorpion

Joseph Zito - 1989
Synapse Film Region 0 DVD

One of the best reasons to check out the new DVD of Red Scorpion is for the supplementary interview with producer Jack Abramoff. After a few years as a movie producer, Abramoff comments that he went "into other areas". Talk about understatements! As it turned out, Abramoff probably made a lot more money as a Washington, D.C. lobbyist than had he remained a movie producer. On the other hand, the double dealing and general chicanery that goes on in Washington makes Hollywood look like a bastion of integrity.

I bring this up because Abramoff originated the story for Red Scorpion. The documentary, Casino Jack and the United States of Money provides more background, with Abramoff's trip to Angola to meet with anti-Communist leaders there. The film takes place in a fictional African country but there is no mistaking the subject when the bad guys are mostly Russian and Cuban soldiers.

This was the film that established Dolph Lungren as an action hero, back when movie audiences embraced European guys with ripped bodies, speaking heavily accented English. Sure, there were a couple of American guys as well. But Dolph Lungren followed the path established by an Austrian named Arnold, and a Belgian named Jean-Claude. And Lungren does cut an imposing figure, between his towering height and massive build. As the film progresses, Lungren is seen wearing a pair of pants that are so short that the display of beefcake takes on a homo-erotic edge. M. Emmet Walsh succinctly gets it right describing Lungren's character as "King Fucking Kong".

Walsh plays a journalist who is a friend of the African anti-Communist leader Lungren is assigned to assassinate. The pudgy character actor is fun to watch spouting off profanities, and at one point shooting at the Russians and Cubans chasing after him. Any political agenda expressed by Walsh or anyone else in this movie needs to be taken with a grain of salt. What Red Scorpion is really about is making the world safe for the world to shake its collective booty to the songs of Little Richard.

The film was shot in Namibia. Setting aside all the action set pieces, there are a couple of moments of sheer visual beauty in desert scenes that suggest a modest budget Lawrence of Arabia, as well as a single shot of Lungren under a naturally formed rock bridge, the kind of shot that might remind some of John Ford in Monument Valley. Joseph Zito's commentary track is informative about the difficulties in making the film, as well as impressing on the viewer that all the stunts and explosions, and there are lots of both, are all very real, with no computer generated effects, miniatures, and with Lungren doing virtually all of his own stunts.

I don't know if a rehabilitated Jack Abramoff could return to Hollywood. But I will be the first to attest that making an action adventure film with questionable politics is never a crime.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:03 AM

June 12, 2012

Seeking Justice

Roger Donaldson - 2011
Anchor Bay Entertainment Region 1 DVD

First off, I say we cut Nicolas Cage a little slack. I suspect some of us might even take a role in (shudder) Human Centipede 3 if that's what it took to help pay down back taxes of eight million dollars. Sometimes, you just can't be choosy.

And, yeah, there were times while watching Seeking Justice that I wondered what happened to the Nicolas Cage of Leaving Las Vegas, or even the entertaining and ridiculous National Treasure, as well as the Guy Pearce of Momento and L. A. Confidential, and Roger Donaldson, a wildly uneven director who seems to have peaked with No Way Out, back in 1987. Even a screenplay with characters who quote Shakespeare and Edmund Burke still feels generic. Just when I thought this film would be as forgettable as Trespass, the film Cage made with Nicole Kidman that went virtually straight to DVD, patience was rewarded with the last ten minutes of Seeking Justice.

The setup is that Cage plays an English teacher in inner city New Orleans at Rampart High. January Jones is his wife, a concert cellist. Jones is assaulted and raped. Guy Pearce is the mysterious stranger who knows Jones' attacker, and offers private resolution in exchange for calling in a favor or two in the future. Of course, nothing good comes of this, as the chess playing Cage finds that he's an unwitting pawn in someone else's game. I refuse to believe that screenplay writers Todd Hickey and Robert Tannen did not see Strangers on a Train and Magnum Force, or maybe even The Star Chamber before penning this story about a secret vigilante force in New Orleans, where strangers murder strangers.

Maybe it's the somewhat unusual setting of an abandoned mall, with its empty display cases, stilled escalators, and stripped mannequins, but Seeking Justice comes truly alive in this setting, where the principle characters have their final showdown. The effect is as if everyone had saved their energy for this one scene, kind of like a runner who keeps pace suddenly sprinting before the finish line. There is also the added kick of seeing January Jones with a gun, but then anyone who knows me knows that I'm a sucker for girls with guns.

Seeking Justice unsurprisingly did not get much a theatrical release in the U.S. But it is the kind of film that's reasonably entertaining for home viewing. Say what you will about Nic Cage and his movies where he seems to always play a character bent on revenge for one reason or another, Seeking Justice is a hell of a lot better than Trespass.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

June 07, 2012

Countess Perverse

La Comtesse Perverse
Jess Franco - 1974
Mondo Macabro Region 1 DVD

There's a scene in Countess Perverse which is basically of actress Kali Hansa on a sailboat, heading to the dreaded island belonging to Count and Countess Zaroff. In a voiceover, she describes the fear of looking at the high, forbidding cliffs, and the trepidation of viewing the Zaroff's geometric marvel of a mansion, an actual building called Xanadu, It's a leisurely paced scene, and one that unexpectedly made me think during the voyage of Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising, and later, when Hansa feverishly runs up the stone staircase to the mansion, of the earlier films by the Kuchar brothers. And it struck me that maybe why some of the critical assessment I've encountered regarding Jess Franco in the past is so wrong is because the critics are condemning Franco for not being a conventional filmmaker making conventional films. There are extended moments, such as this opening scene, where Franco is much closer in spirit to the so-called underground filmmakers who wrangled their friends and any available equipment, and made movies virtually on the fly inspired by the mythic elements of movies, and sometimes classical myths as well.

I wasn't sure what to expect as reviews based on previously available versions of this film would have you believe this was the worst film in Franco's prolific career. As far as I'm concerned, Franco should be given his due simply for offering the world the iconic image of Alice Arno wearing almost nothing but a bow and arrow.

There is also the sight of Franco's late longtime muse, Lina Romay, a baby faced nineteen year old, in one of her first big roles. As film historian Stephen Thrower mentions in the DVD supplement, Romay and Franco were meant for each other, with the screen's least inhibited exhibitionist performing for cinema's most devoted voyeur.

Frequent Franco collaborator Howard Vernon as the Count. Some might consider a nude, posterior view of Vernon as the most horrifying sight in Countess Perverse. Be that as it may, Vernon shows again why he made such a great screen villain with his soft, malicious laugh. Vernon makes a threatening presence simply by standing around, his aloofness barely disguising any evil plans in the making.

The story is a variation on The Most Dangerous Game, the names of the villains is a giveaway. Franco ups the ante with lesbian couplings, threesomes, lots of nudity, and cannibalism. For those who need to know the plot, essentially Lina Romay is invited to dinner and discovers too late that she's the main course. This is the kind of film that would be best appreciated by those who've been familiar with Senor Jess and his idiosyncratic cinema.

Franco's films have been notes for their sometimes unique musical scores. Here the music more or less alternates between fuzz box rock guitar, and the kind of creepy crawly organ music that was perfected when Lon Chaney's version of Phantom of the Opera was first released. There's also some flute driven jazz for good measure.

The DVD also includes an interview with actor Robert Woods, mostly discussing working with Franco, but also touching on his career in Hollywood and Europe. The actress I'd want to know more about is Tania Busselier, best known for her work with Franco, who also worked on two of the last films by Marcel Carne. The DVD of this film, which was recut into several versions, primarily for soft core as well as hard core markets, was taken from Franco's original negative. The film was also signed by Clifford Brown, one of Franco's many pseudonyms, although Franco's name appears on the screenplay credits.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:05 AM

June 05, 2012

Accident - A Second Look

Yi ngoi
Soi Cheang - 2009
Shout! Factory Region 1 DVD

At the time that I originally wrote about Soi Cheang's Accident last year, the film had been out long enough for me to assume that there would be no U.S. release of any kind. That's all changed with the forthcoming DVD and Blu-ray releases.

I was glad for an excuse to see Accident a second time. Over the past few months, I have finally gotten around to seeing four of Soi's previous films. What is of interest to me is how his films are thematically linked. Certainly, Accident is where everything comes together in terms of both style and substance, making it his strongest film to date.

What is common in Soi films is that his films often revolve around people who exist in the margins of society. Especially in the films made before Accident is the conflict between those who have materially comfortable lives and those who are scrambling just to get by. Accident doesn't have the class or cultural divisions of those earlier films, but the tie with those films is a protagonist who finds himself getting deeper and deeper into an irrevocable situation that offers no escape. Of Cheang's earlier films, the one most similar to Accident is Dog Eat Dog, about a Cambodian hit man adrift in Hong Kong, whose carefully planned life falls apart when he addresses his own previously suppressed humanity.

Anyone who has seen Coppola's The Conversation will recognize how much of the character of Harry Caul is in Louis Koo's "The Brain". The quartet that stage what appear to be accidents are all known by nicknames. We have Michelle Ye as "Woman", the wizened Feng Tsui Fan as "Uncle", and frequent Johnny To supporting player Lam Suet as "Fatty". "The Brain" creates the accidents, and directs the others in the staging. Things fall apart when an even bigger accident takes place during the staged accident, and "The Brain" also finds his apartment broken into, with the contents of his safe robbed. Where The Conversation ultimately hinged on the verbal inflection of certain words, leading to Caul's paranoid breakdown, "The Brain" puts meanings into conversations he partially hears but does not see, or meetings he has witnessed but not heard.

Visually, there are repeated uses of glass, glasses, and windows, both as ways to see and to be seen, and as a reflecting surface. Also there is much use of circular shapes, such as with the little telescope used by "The Brain", or the windows of the office that he observes. The key moment in the film takes place during an eclipse, when one circular object obscures another. There is also the selective use of red as a signifier of death or danger.

Possibly the best thing I can say is that seeing Accident a second time did not put a damper on any of the suspenseful moments.

Even better, for someone reading this, is that I have had one Blu-ray of Accident to give away. The only requirement is that you are a U.S. resident, are the first person to respond in the comments section, and are not paid to write about movies.

Eduardo wins!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:49 AM

June 01, 2012

Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl

Zumu appu: Biniru-bon no onna
Takashi Kanno - 1981
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Someone at Nikkatsu knew exactly what they were doing when they had Junko Mabuki wear those little black panties. Getting around the rule of no shots of genitalia and no pubic hair, those black panties look almost like the black patch of the forbidden zone. The camera zooms in on those panties while Mabuki is fingering herself, with wetness becoming more obvious. Even within the boundaries of Roman Porno, Zoom Up: The Beaver Book Girl is made by some people who were unafraid of pushing the depiction of sex beyond previous restraints.

I don't know much about Junko Mabuki other than that she briefly was a very popular Nikkatsu Roman Porno actress for a very, ahem, brief time, from 1980 through 1982. Most of her films were part of a bondage series. There is a bit of rope play here, most notably with Mabuki tied to a cross. Whether that particular scene is deliberately sacrilegious might be up to debate, but it is certainly one of the more visually striking moments.

The story, as such, is about a photographer, Kimura, who shares a little apartment with his assistant, and a model. Kimura's specialty is shooting photos of young women dressed as schoolgirls, showing off their white panties or urinating at convenient locations. A mysterious woman, Nami, appears at seemingly auspicious moments. A bit older and more sophisticated in dress, Nami proves willing to do the kind of posing that the others models won't or can't do.

Aside from the close up of the wet panties, there are shots of bulging from men's pants, oral sex, urophilia, and frequent scenes of eating, drinking and cooking. To cop a line from a tuna commercial, the film is not about good taste, but what tastes good. I can't absolutely vouch for the veracity, but I assume that there is some truth to the presentation of this lower end of the porno industry being populated by failed artists and students looking for a relatively quick and easy yen. What I found most interesting were the ways in which the filmmakers inventively worked around and with taboos of what was allowed within the Japanese film industry. Strangely enough, the most obvious digital manipulation in this film is of an obscured logo on the shirt worn by the other main female character.

Showing how little there is available online in English, I found out more about Junko Mabuki in these notes about a CD entitled Slave of Love. My curiosity is piqued by the comparison to Ingrid Bergman. I am thinking such a comparison might be based on Bergman's frequent playing of a woman who is subjected to the psychological tortures of various men. There's even less to be found on Takashi Kanno other than that he directed one other film titled Masochism. I have also taken it upon myself to order a copy of Jasper Sharp's book on Japanese soft core films to assist in my own coverage of these DVDs. Certainly, like the other Nikkatsu titles, may be of appeal to certain enthusiasts. But there is a certain fearlessness, especially on the part of Junko Mabuki, that is to be admired.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

May 30, 2012

Eros School: Feels So Good

Erosu gakuen: Kando batsugun
Koretsugu Kurahara - 1977
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Proof, if any were needed, that being the younger brother of an acclaimed filmmaker might get you in the door, but is no indication of talent. How much of credit, as such, should go to Koretsugu Kurahara, and how much to screenwriter Akira Momoi, I couldn't say. When the foremost English language expert on Roman Porno, Jasper Sharp, declared himself bewildered by this film, there's some meager consolation that one is not alone in wondering what was intended here.

There is none of the visual style of the elder Koreyoshi Kurahara. One could see a tenuous connection between the two filmmakers, with the elder brother paving the way to some degree with his own taboo busting films. And if there is any social commentary, it somehow got lost in what is suppose to be an erotic comedy that is neither erotic nor funny. Maybe it's a film that would appeal to a small segment of humanity that finds humor in a film about a character named "Ryu the Rapist", a much too old juvenile delinquent, who appears at Eros High School with the announcement that he will be de deflowering the school's student leader and athletic star, Misa. There is a tiny chuckle in Ryu's first appearance with his Clint Eastwood snarl and thin cigar, the battered straw hat, and his small pet pig.

Eros High School has a student body composed of sexually frustrated young men, and girls who have no inhibition concerning beating them up. One of the students, Akemi, is in a co-ed judo class where she and her male partner hit the mat, and nibble each other's nipples. The main rivals of Eros High School go to Agape High School. As everyone in this film is aware that Misa has never menstruated, the Agape girls try to disrobe Misa to discover whether she is in fact female. I guess there is some kind of undeveloped symbolism concerning Eros versus Agape to make this film appear more meaningful.

With the exception of a couple of actresses, everything is underdeveloped here. This can be pretty much be summed up in a scene where one of the boys fucks Ryu's pig. Following a glance at the little pig's swollen genitalia, the young man grinds away for a while before getting caught in the act by Misa and running away. Whatever was imagined before a frame was even shot, the effect is one where the filmmakers tried to outdo each other with outrageous ideas, only to shrink back when it came to the actual performance. Even the rinky-dink piano music can't hide the fact that the attempts at slapstick humor are simply not funny. Even the attempted comic shock when it's revealed that the patron of a porno theater is a transvestite is fumbled. The best part about this movie might be the original Japanese poster, reproduced for the DVD notes by the estimable Mr. Sharp, featuring the exposed chests of the three female stars. Were I able to provide a copy, I would do so. Even though this is a story about horny high school students, one could liken this film to the guy who gets worked up about getting it on with his dream girl, only to find himself flaccid.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:41 AM

May 28, 2012

13 Assassins (1963)

Jusan-nin no shikaku
Eiichi Kudo - 1963
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Watching the original 13 Assassins, my feeling is that Kudo film served as a general blueprint for Takashi Miike. The effect is as if the comedy and horror, as well as some of the elaborations of characters, were all pared away. The story remains the same, but the difference is between Miike's rococo tendencies that might have been needed to make the film more entertaining for contemporary audiences, and Kudo's trust in keeping things mostly direct and plain.

Essentially, a samurai has been recruited to assassinate the half-brother of the Shogun. The film takes place in 1844, as the Shogun era in Japan is about to end. The shogun's half-brother has cause disarray in the government due to his indiscretions, including the rape of another lord's daughter in law. The samurai, Shimada, enlist eleven other samurai and ronin who can be trusted to take on this clandestine mission. The thirteenth member of the group is a self-styled samurai in the town where the confrontation is to take place.

Much of the critical attention on Kudo's film is based on the final battle, with its then innovative use of hand held cameras. And I am sure that the shaky cam stirred up the audiences almost fifty years ago. But what was more interesting to me was the use of tracking shots, nothing unusually long, but providing a visual style to the proceedings of lords and samurai talking about taking action or what it means to be a samurai. Rather than cutting back and forth, Kudo keeps most his characters within the same wide screen frame. Close-ups and some brief montage, such as a series of shots of samurai grabbing swords, are only used for the infrequent moments of visual emphasis. Kudo's visual style with the emphasis on wide shots forces the viewer to be an active participant while Miike will throw the spectacle in your face.

13 Assassins is the first of Eiichi Kudo's films to get an official DVD release in the U.S. His other two films in his "Samurai Trilogy" are scheduled for release in the near future. Probably the best online overview of his career can be found at Midnight Eye. Robin Gatto points out that Chiezo Kataoka, the actor playing Shimada, was a major star of Japanese period films, especially in the years preceding World War II. Two of the more significant names, in smaller roles here, are the seemingly ubiquitous Tetsuro Tamba as the government official who initiates the assassination plot, and Junko Fuji as the daughter of an inn owner, in what was her second screen appearance, but one where Kudo saw fit to provide her with her own medium shot.

What also distinguishes 13 Assassins both from period films of from the Sixties, as well as the most samurai films in general, is the sense of detachment. Part of what attracts audiences to the genre is the visceral excitement. The distance here is not just visual, but emotional as well, with Kudo acting as an almost impartial observer to what is both a battle of wits as well as swords.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:09 AM | Comments (1)

May 24, 2012

Life Without Principle

Dyut meng gam
Johnny To - 2011
Indomina Releasing Region 1 DVD

Johnny To has been stretching artistically lately. Life Without Principle goes against what might be expected not only in subject matter, but in casting. No Simon Yam or Lam Suet here. And even though one of the main characters is a cop, this is not an action film by any means. Stripped away are the jauntiness or moments of sheer visual panache. For the most part, this is To at his most serious.

What humor is to be found is in the English language title, a dual edged pun on money and morality, taken from an essay by Henry David Thoreau. It takes a while to catch on to what To has done with the narrative, intertwining stories on his three main characters who only in the most peripheral manner cross paths. The effect might be described as watching a filmmaker known for his Peckinpah inspired reveries, transform himself, at least for this film, into a subtler Robert Altman.

For a film that is about a year old, Life Without Principle is still also remarkable topical, even without a plot twist that hangs on the financial crisis in Greece. The film revolves around a cop, whose wife wants to purchase a very expensive condo in what is one of the world's most expensive cities. There is also the investment banker with a career on the line, doing what she can to line up clients with life savings tied to the stock market. A triad flunky is deep in debt to a crime boss. Connecting the three is a loan shark with a satchel full of money.

While the comparison to Robert Altman extends to the narrative structure, Life Without Principle also makes me think of Robert Bresson, specifically the film L'Argent. Bresson's film, in some ways his atypical with some of the kind of action one might see in a To film, is about the catastrophic chain of events following the passing of a counterfeit bill. To's film also revolves on a satchel full of cash, as well as more abstract notions of money. There is also the comparison of titles, with Bresson's literally about money, while To's hints at multiple meanings. But more than any To film I have seen, most of the drama is internal, within the main characters deliberating on their own dilemmas. That interiority is referenced by the majority of the film taking place indoors, in offices, restaurants, and parking spaces. In the one major scene that takes place outside, the triad member and his wounded friend are driving through Hong Kong to a hospital, only to find themselves inadvertently trapped by various road blocks created by the police closing on a crime scene.

The other principles involved here are understood to be fluid and deliberately open ended. Some critics have argued as to who the real thieves are depicted in the story, but I think To has made a work that allows for degrees of ambiguity. Only the cop is not motivated by making a quick buck, and his financial rewards are the most modest. Whether anyone else is truly a criminal can be argued. What is certain in Life Without Principle is that the biggest robber is the bank.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:37 AM

May 22, 2012

Mutant Girls Squad

Sento shojo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu
Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, and Tak Sakaguchi - 2010
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

There is one image in Mutant Girls Squad that might be considered audacious as well as satirical. The girls have killed off a team of enemy soldiers. Geysers of blood are squirting everywhere. The girls, triumphant in their white PVC outfits stand in front of a large white sheet. Blood splattered on the white sheet appears like a crude circle. The image appears to be a kind of variation on the Japanese flag. And in its own goofy way, Mutant Girls Squad poses the question about what it really means to be Japanese.

Before that question becomes tangential to the rest of the mayhem, we are introduced to Rin, a high school girl, on her sixteenth birthday. The parents appear to be a humorous version of stereotypical Japanese parents, with the mother having lunch ready for Rin to take to school, and father heartily encouraging Rin to study hard. The smiles and good cheer appear forced, artificial. Rin has been bothered by physical discomfort in her right hand, but acts as if all is normal for her. Things change when she is bullied by her fellow students, and discovers just how different she is.

After a promising start, Mutant Girls Squad gets less interesting. Rin joins a group of other mutant girls, but finds herself on the outs when she decides she doesn't want all out war with the humans who are seeking to eliminate the mutants. Rin seeks peace both for her half mutant, half human self, as well as within society. What the film is more interested in is in showing off the battles between the mutant girls and the humans, as well as between some of the mutant characters. Heads and arms get lopped off, blood sprays every where, and the mutants are either part animal or part machine. Swords and tentacles reach in and out of different orifices. Eyes pop out. If you have seen even a single film by any one of the three directors, then you know what to expect.

Can Tak Sakaguchi, Noburu Iguchi and Yoshiro Nishimura make films that are both different and better than what they've done previously? Certainly, the earlier films I've seen are arguably better. And it could be that they have no choice but to do more of the same. Interestingly, while this is another Sushi Typhoon production, it was done in conjunction with a different studio, Toei. The film is divided into three parts, with the three filmmakers collaborating on the story, and each one taking the main responsibility for direction of each segment. Sakaguchi also appears as the leader of the mutant girls, and served as action director.

The three lead actresses, Yumi Sugimoto, Suzuka Morita and Yuko Takayama, are certainly cute, and have established themselves mostly as television actresses with recording careers on the side, as well as their own websites. The one familiar face, the actor who might well be one of those supporting players referred to as "that guy", is Kanji Tsuda. Just checking his filmography, I've seen Tsuda more times than I realized. In Mutant Girls Squad, Tsuda appears as Rin's father, with a few secrets of his own. While there are those who will be entertained for the hour and a half running time, my feeling is that there is only so much that can be done within the genre of movies about hybrid young females. One hopes for inventiveness that goes beyond a chainsaw that emerges from a young woman's rear end.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:52 AM

May 17, 2012

Zoom Hunting

Lie Yan
Chi Li - 2010
Kam & Ronson Region 3 DVD

What do we mean when the name of Alfred Hitchcock is mentioned in describing a film by someone else, or when a film is described as Hitchcockian? Is Hitchcock's name invoked as lazy shorthand? Much of the time, I would say that is the case, especially by those whose knowledge of Hitchcock appears to begin and end with Psycho. What makes this especially frustrating for those who have seen more or most of Hitchcock's films is that Psycho is in several ways an atypical Hitchcock film. One could argue that a reputed potboiler like Topaz has more Hitchcockian elements with its story of spies and international intrigue.

Hitchcock's name has been invoked in relation to Taiwanese filmmaker Cho Li's Zoom Hunting. But much of that comparison hinges on the initial set up, which will remind some of Rear Window, of a photographer who accidentally photographs a pair of lovers in an apartment across the street, and winds up getting involved in ways unanticipated. There are also elements of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation in this mix. More in terms of content than style would Cho's film with linked with the three older films. What Blow Up, The Conversation and Zoom Hunting share is that they use the basic premise of Rear Window as a starting point for their own distinctive explorations regarding how technology theoretically used for impartial documentation interacts with human fallibility.

Rear Window and Blow Up are inquiries about understanding and interpreting images, while The Conversation is about spoken language - not only what is said, but how it is said, how inflection can change meaning. The two main characters are sisters, with complementary professions. Ruyi is the photographer, whose photos of an adulterous couple forces her to face some uncomfortable truths about herself. Ruxing is a writer of detective stories, whose writer's block seems to have ended by using Ruyi's photos as the basis of her new murder mystery.

The lovers across the street are married, but not to each other. Ruyi continues to photograph them, as well as the wife's family. When Ruxing questions Ruyi on her continued documentation, the inelegantly translated reply is that "peeping is the mother of creativity". Cho's bigger concerns would be the role of the artist as observer and creator. Cho also brings up what it means to be a female artist comparing giving birth to a child with giving birth, as it were, to a work of art. But going back to Hitchcock, the film is mostly about the act of observation and understanding what is seen.

A search for more information on Cho Li in English turns up very little. She earned an M.S. degree at Indiana State University in Radio/TV/Film, and previously worked as a producer before making her directorial debut with Zoom Hunting. What should give Zoom Hunting a certain degree of consideration is that it is the work of a female filmmaker touching on voyeurism and eroticism from the point of view of female characters. Is the film Hitchcockian? Maybe not in the way one would apply such a term to films by Brian De Palma, for example. A twist near the end is hardly a total surprise, but it does provide a satisfactory conclusion to a story where art and life follow each other.

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This post is on behalf of the the Third Annual For the Love of Film Blogathon. Hunt for your wallet or purse and make a donation to stream The White Shadow. More postings will be found at This Island Rod, part of the archipelago of participating film bloggers.

Writer/Director Cho Li

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:03 AM | Comments (2)

May 16, 2012

Lady in Black

Duo ming jia ren
Sun Chung - 1987
Joy Sales Films All Region DVD

Were that there was more suspense than melodrama, Lady in Black could more appropriately be described as Hitchcockian. There is enough to indicate that there was some influence at work here. The only overview of director Sun Chung is informative about his career in general. The film would indicate that Chung and the three credited screenwriters had some familiarity with Hitchcock's later films.

The opening scene of Brigitte Lin forging a check for $500,000 Hong Kong dollars brings to mind Marnie, in that the film centers on a woman who steal from her employer. In this regard, as well as with the use of other elements, Lady in Black takes elements that in a generic sense recall Hitchock. From the very beginning, the woman, May, is wracked with quilt, startled when her best friend barges into the office, thinking she's been caught in the act. The nervous guilt is with Lin when she goes to the bank to cash the check, and drops the envelope in front of a policeman who courteously picks it up, handing it back to her.

As it turns out, the money is for May's rat bastard husband, Sheng, to pay off a gambling debt. May and Sheng go to Thailand in the hopes that Sheng's uncle can help them out. When the visit doesn't pan out as hoped for, Sheng, feeling sorry for himself, sits out the outside of a tourist boat, getting drunk, seemingly posed to commit suicide. May tries to talk Sheng out of killing himself, only to fall overboard. Whether Sheng has deliberately let go of May, to drown in the water, and cover her crime of embezzlement, is unclear. As it turns out, reports of May's death prove inaccurate.

Hitchcpck is more or less quoted during May and Sheng's frenzied final encounter where it is easy to think of both Psycho and Dial M for Murder, and even Torn Curtain. Death in several of Hitchcock's films isn't quick and easy, but sometimes a drawn out struggle between the two players, where one or both people are grabbing at any sharp instrument they can as for use as an implement of of self-defense, but in a Hitchcock film, fatal for the person on the receiving end.

Lady in Black might have been a better movie had it emphasized the kinds of elements that might be found in Hitchcock's films. Aside from the embezzling wife, there is Tony Leung Ka-Fai as the social climbing, conniving, manipulative husband. There are the feelings of guilt that plague May, and to a lesser extent, Sheng. There is also May's "death", accident or deliberate murder. One of the better scenes is of a nightmare May has, a remembrance of the events that led her to her current state, with a battered face from the downing, her dream marriage now one of horror. Nightmares, usually composed of distorted memories, are another familiar Hitchcockian element.

What is sadly missing here is any sense of the erotic. It's not like Sun Chung had not made films with any degree of eroticism. Perhaps there was the thought that there shouldn't be anything sexy about a female who is both a wife and mother. Lady in Black came out a year after Peking Opera Blues, Tsui Hark's film that made some of the best early use of Lin's allure. Between the kernels of a suspenseful story and the presence of Brigitte Lin, Lady in Black is a film of squandered opportunities.

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This entry is part of the Third Annual For the Love of Film Blogathon. Black is also the color of the ledger ink for funding the streaming of the silent classic, The White Shadow. Send your green here. More postings will be found at always fashionable Self Styled Siren.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:53 AM | Comments (1)

May 14, 2012

M (2007)

Lee Myeong-se - 2007
Panorama Entertainment All Region DVD

From a long time ago, I have always been interested in dreams. Dreams have always fascinated me. I dream a lot. I had a dream in the year 2000 in which Hitchcock gave me a book, and that book was titled "M." I said I would look at in a little while, and then I woke up from the dream.

Since then I have chased the meaning of "M" in that dream. I realized that "M" means MacGuffin.
- Lee Myeong-se

What makes M of interest within the context of films and filmmakers who have claimed inspiration from Alfred Hitchcock is that Lee's film takes on some of the content, but not the style of Hitchcock. This is not a mystery film in the conventional sense, nor a thriller. Instead, what Korean filmmaker Lee is more interested in is the Hitchcock who makes films about false and real memories, dreams, and love lost and possibly recovered.

Even the narrative aspects can not be fully trusted. Minwoo is a popular writer who dismisses his work as trash, and wishes he could write like James Joyce. He may be working on a new novel, but he seems to have writer's block. A young woman follows him in the street. She in turn may be pursued by someone else. Minwoo finds himself in a bar, the kind that has an entrance in a dark alley, the kind of bar that one sometimes finds by accident rather than design. Minwoo's relationship with his wife is shaky. Minwoo is also consumed by memories of his first love, a girl named Mimi.

Unlike a Hitchcock film, there is no progressive story line. Instead, the narrative goes forward, backward and loops around itself, and into dead ends that ultimately lead nowhere. To best enjoy M you have to totally surrender to the dream logic where different characters repeat the same dialogue, where time and space blend into each other.

Lee uses a lot of reflective surfaces - mirrors, glass, water. The viewer may find themselves as disoriented as Minwoo with the shifts in use of space and combination of images. There is also voiceover used from Minwoo and Mimi. There are moments when I wasn't sure if I was watching a dream, and if so, who was the dreamer? That's not criticism of the film, but one of the ways Lee keeps on upending viewer expectation.

While Lee has stated that Hitchcock inspired this film, other references are more clear. It is impossible not to think of Fritz Lang's movie of the same title. There is the mysterious bar, with its curious, aged bartender. The bar is named after the French fictional detective, Arsene Lupin, and an image of Lupin is seen on the bar sign as well as a matchbook. The bar, and the patrons are lit in such a way that may remind viewers of the bar in Kubrick's The Shining. The visual reminders of Kubrick are also in the scenes of Minwoo typing small phrases repeatedly.

While some of the stroboscopic lighting and editing would not strike traditionalists as being Hitchcockian, Lee shows Minwoo and Mimi on the run at various points, through long, dark alleys and hallways, in and out of shadows. It is the sense of space, of being in a place where there is some kind of unknown and unseen danger, that is most closely associated with the films of Alfred Hitchcock. And, as happens in several Hitchcock films, Lee Myeong-se pokes the viewer, to remind them not to trust too much in images, that not everything is necessarily what it appears to be.

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This post is part of the Third Annual For the Love of Film Blogathon. Another word that starts with the letter "M" is Money. Send yours here if you want see the silent film, The White Shadow stream onto your internet connected device. And check out the other postings at Ferdy on Film, no letter of introduction needed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:05 AM | Comments (4)

May 10, 2012

Sex, Lies and Death

Sexo, mentiras y muertos
Ramiro Meneses - 2011
Lionsgate Films Region 1 DVD

While the filmography of Alfred Hitchcock is finite, the number of films that have been remakes, homages, or just plain rip-offs might be, if not infinite, at least not fully explored. This article is of some help, but more as a starting off point than anything resembling the final word. When it comes to variations on Strangers on a Train, I will happily include Danny DeVito's fine and funny Throw Momma from the Train.

Patricia Highsmith is probably owed more credit than given for her original novel, about the two men who meet on a train, and agree to trade murder victims. I also have to acknowledge that Highsmith's popularity as an author is such that she has several books filmed more than once. I am certain, though, that it was Alfred Hitchcock's film of Strangers on a Train that has inspired the many versions that have followed. Among the more recent films I am aware of is a Tamil version, titled Muran. I am certain that more versions will be uncovered.

The original story has been described as being about tit-for-tat murders. This distaff version from Columbia might be described best as tit-for-tit. Viviana, taking a break from her abusive husband, is chatted up by Alicia, in a bar. Alicia is in an unhappy relationship with her lover. Within minutes of meeting, Alicia proposes murder. Viviana goes along, seemingly uncertain if this scheme will work. And of course nothing goes as planned.

That Alicia's victim is her lesbian lover is the least of the twists to this film. Sadly, the film, shot on video, is like the murders, better in the planning than the actual execution. When all is said and done, the potential for eroticism and suspense gets squandered. Had Brian De Palma gotten hold of the script, we might have had a better film. And hopefully, he would have added the murder of Viviana's cloying mother-in-law.

One aspect of Hitchcock's film that has been up for discussion is the depiction of homosexuality.. Sex, Lies and Death offers a mildly titillating view of women who love women. What makes Hitchcock's film enduring, while the Meneses remains a forgettable diversion, is that for all of the twists and turns in this remake, it lacks the depth that Hitchcock gave to his characters. There are worse ways of killing an hour and a half than watching the redhead star Columbian television star, Andrea Lopez. But Sex, Lies and Death also proves that when it comes to cinema suspense, it's not just the contents of story, but how you tell it that makes the difference.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:39 AM

May 08, 2012

Schoolgirl Report #8: What Parents Should Never Know

Schulmadchen-Report 8: Was Eltern nie erfahren durfen
Ernst Hofbauer - 1974
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

During the first half of 1973, I was living in Portland, Oregon, primarily doing unpaid work at the Northwest Film Study Center. My capacity as some kind of expert in film got me into a special advance screening of Deep Throat, that seminal film in the history of "Adult Cinema". I found out after the screening that most of the audience at that screening was composed of lawyers, presumably enlisted in case of possible legal action against film or the theater. While I appreciate the erotic in film, my interest in films made primarily for the raincoat brigade is casual at best.

I figured that as long as Impulse Pictures was going to send me Schoolgirl Report #8, the least I could do is take a look. This is best described as a soft core film, presented as a documentary, about some overly ripe high school girls on a field trip, telling stories about their sexual misadventures. There's a bit of bawdy humor, and some slapstick, mounds of pubic hair, the obligatory group shower scene, and a sanctimonious ending voiced by some male narrator in a feeble attempt to give the film some sense of greater signicance. Sometimes just watching plump and naked German girls, circa 1974, is its own justification. Maybe the best that can be said is that at the time this film came out, my idea of German cinema was catching up on work by Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, among others who were lumped as part of the "New German Cinema". What I wasn't watching was the kind of German movies that actually helped pay the bills.

Coming, as it were, when more graphic depictions of sex were on theater screens, Schoolgirl Report #8 seems almost innocent in comparison. The kind of coupling going on here is pretty basic, no gymnastics, and nothing that could be considered kinky by anyone other than those self-appointed guardians of morality. Regarding personal preferences, I can only depend on Pedro Almodovar, an openly gay filmmaker, to provide me with decent cinematic depictions of cunilingus. In this film, there's sex in bed, in a field, on a pool table, all hetero and vanilla and simulated.

I'm baffled by any contemporary interest in this kind of film. This movie appears to have been originally shot in 16mm, and no one will be fooled by the obviously post-dubbed dialogue. I can only assume that there is a firm cult for this kind of film to justify making it available on DVD. The actors and actresses are listed in the film as uncredited parents and students although here is where IMDb proves itself useful. The online trailer, in German without subtitles, provides a brief taste of the action. What may be this films best asset is that the actresses look like relatively attractive girls next door, and not a collection of wannabe models. And when too many women in front of the camera are filled with silicon and other artificial ingredients, there is some pleasure to see one voluptuous actress run blissfully naked, her breasts bouncing in the breeze.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM

May 03, 2012

The Shock Labyrinth

Senritsu Meikyu
Takashi Shimizu - 2009
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I feel like an old fogie, not only not being able to watch the Blu-ray version, but even worse, missing out on the 3D Blu-ray. I can imagine someone muttering about how watching a movie nowadays on DVD is so late 20th Century. Anyways . . .

It would have been even better to have had the opportunity to see Takashi Shimizu's film as originally intended, in a theater. Sadly though, unless the art theaters do some technological upgrades, or the multiplexes take chances on more imported fare, stateside audiences are going to miss some interesting work done in 3D, such as this film, and the British StreetDance.

The basic story is about three childhood friends who reunite after ten years. All about twenty years old, the dark and stormy night is disrupted by the appearance of a fourth friend, Yuki, who claims she has escaped from a hospital. Three three aren't sure if that really is Yuki. Meeting with Yuki's teenage sister, things go from bad to worse, as Yuki suddenly is in need of hospitalization. The hospital that this quartet finds appears to be in the middle of nowhere, and seem abandoned. As in the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the film takes place in a building with a life of its own.

I can only imagine what The Shock Labyrinth looked like theatrically, and can only hope that any filmmakers wishing to work in 3D would study this film. Shimizu emphasizes depth and a keen sense of color, expressively using yellow, pink and red. A shot near the end of the film, of a long corridor, and feathers floating down, took my breath away. Definitely recommended is the supplementary section which discusses the creation of a small camera, allowing for shooting in 3D in confined spaces. The film was shot on location near Mount Fuji, mostly inside the attraction, Labyrinth of Horrors.

Shimizu smartly steers clear of what currently passes for horror. Instead, there is a buildup of dread and creepiness, as past and present converge, collide and wrap around each other. Shimizu makes use of some iconic imagery, such as the child's rabbit back pack that seems to have a life of its own, and a spiral stairway with a red railing. I was also reminded of Alejandro Amenabar's The Others, where there is uncertainty about who are the ghosts, and who is doing the haunting in this house of horrors. The story takes on the logic of a dream where the characters are helpless to change their future, especially in the face of a past revealed.

On the face of it, Shock Labyrinth might seem resistible with the basic premise of young people trapped in a haunted house. But as anyone who has watched dozens of genre films, be they film noir or westerns, or anything else, will tell you, it's not the story but how you tell the story that makes the difference. And as for the 3D, Takashi Shimizu is much younger than Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Martin Scorsese, but I think he could teach these acknowledged masters a thing or two.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:47 AM

April 27, 2012

East Meets West

Dung sing sai tsau 2011
Jeff Lau - 2011
Kam & Ronson Region 3 DVD

If any filmmaker is as obsessed about hair even more than Alfred Hitchcock poking the lens into Kim Novak's coiffure, it would be Jeff Lau. It's not just the flamboyant styles of several of his characters. Several shots are of the back of Karen Mok and Eason Chan's heads. When Mok and Chan first meet, scissor are whipped out with Chan providing Mok with a new do.

I couldn't begin to tell you what East Meets West was about. There is some story about seven good immortals and one that is evil, meeting again in this lifetime. There's also the Cantopop group, The Wynners, reuniting, with Kenny Bee rescued from his current career as the world's least scary amusement park zombie. There is also talk about body temperature and love at first sight, and a few quotations from William Shakespeare. The Chinese call this "nonsense comedy". I like to think of it as being a contemporary equivalent to the kind of comedies Hollywood use to make with the Marx Brothers at their peak, or something along the lines of Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, W. C. Field's last movie which is virtually a series of visual non-sequiturs barely held together by an astoundingly incoherent narrative. Rather than frustrating one's self with logic or even the need to catch up with the fast and furious subtitles, it's better just to give in the film's many visual pleasures.

Second only to the hair are the loving shots of Karen Mok's legs. Skinny, but still shapely. Not tall, only 5 foot, six inches. Still, if I'm going to hear that musical cliche called Pachelbel's "Canon in D", I'd rather hear it while watching Mok's slender stems bathed in golden light. Sure, the film is loaded with other Hong Kong stars, but East Meets West mostly belongs to Mok who runs, flies and basically takes over every scene she's in.

For those unfamiliar with recent Hong Kong movies or pop culture, East Meets West may prove baffling. Aside from Kenny Bee basically playing a parody of himself, Lau loads the film with verbal and visual references to other movies, including those he's produced for Wong Kar-wai and Stephen Chow. At one point, a mob's shouts consists of Hong Kong movie titles. And while several Cantopop songs are used, notably The Wynner's big hit, "Sha La La", Lau teasingly uses The Turtles' "Happy Together" when gangsters are chasing after Bee and Mok. The perfect DVD would include running subtitles to point out the various references. One the other hand, no translation or explanation is needed to laugh at the sight of Kenny Bee with an oversized Elvis pompadour.

The Chinese title translates as "Anything is possible" which pretty much sums up what goes on here. Of the Jeff Lau films that I've seen, it isn't as inspired as Eagle Shooting Heroes, the parody of Wong Kar-wai's Ashes of Time, which Lau also produced, made with most of the same cast members. Talk about eye candy- the film might be described as having the visual qualities of a multi colored popsicle. The heart of the film, both literal and metaphorically, is revealed at the end, giving a bit of substance to this overabundance of style.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:19 AM

April 25, 2012

SuckSeed!

SuckSeed: Huay Khan Thep
Chayanop Boonprakob - 2011
Cai Chang Region 3 DVD

All I'm going to say about the title is that it reflects the sometimes idiosyncratic usage of English that I've come across while I was in Thailand, and one of the characters also explains why he's chosen it for the name of his rock band.

And while SuckSeed! is not the Thai equivalent to A Hard Day's Night, it is, by turns both funny and charming. At the heart of the film is the unrealized affection between Ped and Ern. The two form a friendship as schoolchildren. Ped, a very shy boy, is challenged to create a song for his class. Ern, with parents who run a record store, introduces Ped to rock music just days before leaving Chiang Mai to live in Bangkok. Jump ahead six years later, and Ern, now an attractive teenager, has returned to Chiang Mai to finish up high school. Ped, more or less on impulse, decides to form a rock band with his pals Koong and Ex. Ern, who has played with high school bands previously, is invited to join the group. Complicating things are Ped's continued shyness around Ern, and Koong's infatuation with Ern and his sibling rivalry with twin brother Kay, a more accomplished musician with his own band.

The film is divided into three time periods of 2000, 2006 - when most of the film takes place, and 2011, when the main characters reunite. There is a break from the live action, given over to an animated section where Koong explains the meaning of SuckSeed. The drawings look pretty much like what you'd expect from a high school age boy, scribbling in his notebook, an indication that some things don't change that much over generations or cultures. Given the opportunity, I would imagine western high school kids enjoying this film.

One of the funnier recurring motifs is the use of Thai rock bands to act as a kind of Greek chorus. Where most films settle for using a song to express the inner feelings of a character, Chayanop has the singers appear on film for comic effect. Showing up at various points are the bands Bodyslam, So Cool, as well as solo turns by Anon Saisangcharn, and Ekarat Wongcharat, the lead singer from Big Ass. As such, these musical interludes also help serve as an entertaining introduction to Thai rock music. It could be that Chayanop was inspired by the those scenes in Rock and Roll High School where Joey Ramone suddenly appears in the most unlikely places to serenade P. J. Soles.

The film was shot in and around Chiang Mai, with a few setting recognizable from my time there. The battle of the high school rock bands, the Hot Wave Music Awards, is an actual music competition that has served as the launching pad for several popular Thai rock bands. SuckSeed! is also one of the rare Thai comedies that was popular with both critics and audiences. That this is also Chayanop's first feature indicates another reason to pay attention to the future of Thai cinema. Especially at a time when Thai films are little seen, save for a few martial arts films, SuckSeed! serves as a reminder that there is more to Thai cinema than meets most westerners eyes. Few new Thai films are available as subtitled DVDs, and like this, are made for the Chinese language market. Without getting to pedantic about it, this is a film recommended both for the Asian film scholar and the rock film aficionado.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM | Comments (4)

April 23, 2012

Let the Bullets Fly (Again)

Rang zidan fei
Jiang Wen - 2010
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

What? You think I'm going to send back the new DVD/BD set of what will probably be counted as one of the best foreign films of 2012?

Most of what I have to say coincided with the theatrical release at the beginning of March. And if you haven't seen Let the Bullets Fly yet, you have no excuse now. I watched the English dubbed version this time. And while it is jarring to listen to Jiang Wen, Chow Yun-Fat and the others in English, it does allow for better attention to the visuals. To some extent, the various narrative threads are easier to follow as well.

Jiang recently was honored as Best Director by the Chinese Directors Guild, along with the film as Best Picture. The very popular "everyman", Ge You, won for Best Actor. Not that awards are always the most accurate gauge of a film's worth, but this is an example of getting it right. Just don't be surprised if you see Jiang's film on a few U.S. critics lists at the end of 2012.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM

April 19, 2012

Gunman in the Streets

Frank Tuttle - 1950
Allday Entertainment Region 1 DVD

"In the middle drawer are pictures of me in nude . . . at age 2." And so Simone Signoret teases the detective looking for an escaped convict, as well as the audience. Signoret is not exactly a femme fatale in this film. As repeated by her and the convict, played by Dane Clark, everybody is playing out their predestined roles.

Gunman is in the Streets bears a strange history as the English language version of a film that was shot with essentially the same cast in a French language version with a different director as La Traque. A somewhat cut version played in Britain and Canada, but never in the United States. There are several probable reasons why the film never got a U.S. release. At the time, director Frank Tuttle, a former member of the Communist party, was dodging the blacklist. Tuttle later named names, notably Jules Dassin, and made three more films in Hollywood before retiring. Dane Clark's star was on the wane, before settling to a career of guest shots on television. While Simone Signoret had appeared in a couple of English language films prior to Gunman in the Streets, it would be several years before her Oscar winning turn in Room at the Top.

What may have put off potential stateside distributors is the Gunman in the Streets was, by the standards of the time, a rough film. Clark kicks a wounded cop, socks Signoret in the jaw, leaves an informer to inhale the fumes of a gas stove, and does some self-surgery, removing a bullet from his upper arm. In a bit of grim humor, Clark regales the informer, an antique dealer of ambiguous motives and sexuality, with how he almost got burned alive in the police van, shooting his way out. The posters for the film tried to sell Clark's character, an army deserter turned holdup man, into someone in the tradition of the film and real life gangster of the Thirties - "Dillinger, Little Caesar, Scarface, Capone". Clark's Eddie Roback might be as nasty, if not nastier, but he lacks the charisma of his cinematic predecessors.

Eugen Schufftan has some very adoring shots of Signoret. One fantastic image is a close up with Signoret holding a very large wine glass in front of her lips. There is also the beautiful shot of Signoret, hearing the whistle of a train, that sounds almost like a scream, knowing that she has lost her final chance to get away from Clark. A good part of the film was shot at night in the streets of Paris. Some point of view shots of when Clark and Signoret drive much too fast on a foggy night through a wooded back road, must have made for tense viewing on the big screen. Signoret was game enough to run barefoot through the streets of a small French town near the Belgian border during the final sequence.

While the film on the DVD is the complete version, it's hardly pristine, as if no one bothered to clean up the print. The stray hairs, scratches and such might be considered a blemish by some, although I thought they added to a seedy kind of charm. Even with Joe Hajos wonderfully sad and dreamy score, this is the kind of film that would have been best seen in a worn second run theater on the cheap, rather than a first run picture palace.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

April 17, 2012

Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Alex Stapleton - 2011
Anchor Bay Enetertainment Region 1 DVD

I wasn't expecting to learn anything new about Roger Corman. I've been following his career on and off for almost fifty years. I wrote about Corman almost six years ago for a blogathon instigated by Tim Lucas. I had purposely not seen any previous documentaries on Roger Corman because I figured that as I had seen most of the films he's directed, read most of the anecdotes, and in some cases personally knew some of the people who began their own filmmaking careers with Corman, that there was little incentive to revisit familiar ground. My main reason for seeing Corman's World is that aside from being the most recent documentary on Roger Corman, it has become the most publicized of the bunch. But it does raise a couple of questions.

One of Roger Corman's claimed pet projects was a film about Civil War general Robert E. Lee. One of the stories I recall was that Corman couldn't get financing because the unnamed studio thought the proposed budget was too low. I have to wonder why Corman never took his own money to make the film. Was he that gun shy after mortgaging his house to produce The Intruder, one of his few financial failures? It's something not mentioned in Corman's World, and a question I think worth asking.

There is also a nice little anecdote from Polly Platt, who also was one of the executive producers of this film. It's only been in retrospect that the best things in a Peter Bogdanovich film were often due to Platt's collaboration with her then-husband. At the time of their divorce though, while Bogdanovich was still feted as a top young filmmaker, it took a while for Platt to be recognized for her talents. Apparently Roger Corman had extended an invitation to Platt to direct a film. I don't know what Corman might have had in mind, but I would like to think that he would allow Platt to make a film closer to the artistry of Jeanne Moreau's directorial debut, Lumiere, which Corman brought to U.S. screens, than films made by such Corman alumni as Stephanie Rothman, Barbara Peeters and Amy Jones, which managed to have some kind of feminist message tuck in between shots of women displaying their hooters. Maybe Platt felt more comfortable being in more supportive film production positions, but I wish she had taken up that invitation to direct at least one movie herself.

There is also Penelope Spheeris mentioning that a younger generation of film aficionados don't know about Roger Corman. I would assume some truth to that in some message boards from people who couldn't understand why Corman received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar. And while the Oscar was probably a kind of tribute to someone who gave early opportunities to a significant number of people who became Academy Award nominees and winners themselves, whatever one thinks of the films Corman himself directed, many are still fun to watch.

There's also an unintended wistfulness to this documentary in that several people interviewed have recently passed. Including Ms. Platt, there is also George Hickenlooper, David Carradine and Irvin Kershner. To the best of my knowledge, Kershner was the first of the university trained filmmakers to get his start with Corman with Stakeout on Dope Street. The big news was hearing that once upon a time, the then unknown Kershner was also working in theater, and that he directed a production of He Who gets Slapped starring an equally unknown Jack Nicholson. Jack sits back to tell stories about his time with Corman as actor and writer. Corman is shown at home and on the set of Dinocroc, possibly the most energetic octogenarian on the planet. For those who still have no idea who Roger Corman is, take the hour and a half to see the DVD. For the rest of us, there may be bits to glean, but even better are to see the films themselves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2012

Thou Shalt not Kill . . . Except

Josh Becker - 1985
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

I think for a good number of people watching this film, the thought will be that one of happiness that Sam Raimi pursued a career as a director. Made primarily with a bunch of friends and acquaintances, Raimi appears in the film as the leader of a gang modeled after the Manson family. Describing the performance as over the top is to put it mildly. Then again, Thou Shalt not Kill . . . Except isn't the kind of film that was made to be viewed with any serious intent. The ideal way to see this film is with some rowdy friends and a handy six pack or two.

Raimi had his feature debut, Evil Dead, under his belt but was still a few years before his career kicked in steady gigs. Other talent that can count on the film as an early credit include writer-director Josh Becker, Scott Spiegel and Sheldon Lettich. Bruce Campbell contributed to an early version of the screenplay, and would have been the star had he not been a Screen Actors Guild member by the time money was raised to shoot the film. Nobody says exactly how much the film cost to make by the time production was completed although through anecdotes, Becker spent under $30, 000 prior to post-production. So we're not talking Shadows here, but I've seen enough films by cast and crew with little or no experience that look a lot worse, and this includes films that had greater artistic aspirations.

That the story can be boiled down to "Marines versus the Manson Family" pretty much tells you every thing you need to know. The main characters are a quartet of marines who survived Viet-Nam, and reunite near Detroit in 1969. A newscast pinpoints the time with the announcement of the death of Judy Garland. A gang of vicious hippie types barges into one house in Grosse Pointe, killing everyone including a baby. The gang also terrorizes a group of campers and kidnaps the girlfriend of the main character, Stryker, a wounded vet. Stryker and his pals go after the cult leader and his gang.

The entire film, including the scenes in Viet-Nam, was shot in the wilds of Michigan. And while the film wasn't made to be showcased at film festivals or win critical approval, you have to give it up for the filmmakers' tenacity in making a reasonably watchable film more or less designed for the outer edges of commercial cinema. I hadn't been aware of Thou Shalt not Kill . . . Except prior to the new Synapse release, but reportedly the film was successful both in a limited theatrical release, and as VHS release a few years later. The DVD includes interviews with several of the people involved with the making of the film, plus Becker's early version, shot in Super 8, with Campbell.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:09 AM

April 03, 2012

True Story of a Woman in Jail: Sex Hell

Jitsuroku onna kanbetsusho: sei-jigoku
Koyu Ohara - 1975
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

How about if I just refer to this film as Sex Hell? It wasn't that long ago when the "Female Prisoner #701: Scorpion" series came and went. What effort director Koyu Ohara and writing partner Akira Momoi put into the screenplay seems to have been in remembering scenes from that cult series from the early Seventies. For those unfamiliar with the earlier films, they star Meiko Kaji in the title role, a woman taking the rap for some guy, standing her ground with the guards and fellow prisoners, and escaping from the joint long enough to get revenge before getting locked up again. Sex Hell bears more than a passing resemblance to Meiko Kaji's series, and Hitomi Kozue was probably cast due to her vague resemblance to Kaji.

One very obvious lift is a scene of the female prisoners forced to march naked for an inspection. I don't recall which of the Kaji films had a similar scene, with a staircase constructed so that a male guard could look up the legs of the prisoner. Sex Hell also begins with an Enka, a Japanese pop ballad that is usually sung by the star, bemoaning one's fate in life. Nikkatsu Studios "youth films" from the Fifties often began that way, with several of the young movie star establishing even longer careers as singers. Even though Sex Hell begin with just enough association with some beloved cult films, the film is neither as erotic nor as stylish as the films cribbed by Ohara. Hitomi Kozue doesn't even get the chance to wear a big, floppy hat like Kaji, either.

Based on the evidence in this film, Koyu Ohara wasn't much interested in anything resembling a visual style. There is the need to get down and dirty, with several scenes of urination, with some of the women getting the results of trickle down liquid assets. Ohara also employs a few close ups of hands, both male and female, exploring orifices, both male and female. The gals are in stir because of their involvement with guys who should know better than to cheat on them, or perform a surgery that indicates deliberate malpractice. As is required in Women in Prison movies, some of the girls hook up, leading to jealousy and fights concerning who's wearing who's panties. There is also a scene of "chicken plucking" with pubic hairs pulled out one by one.

Just when I was about to give up, Sex Hell ends with a pretty good scene of Kozue and a pal escaping from prison and reuniting with the men of their lives. Finding some cans of gasoline in a room for no apparent reason, the two set the prison on fire, distracting everyone from their bid for freedom. The scene takes place in a snowy night, and the two women are running around the prison grounds barefoot. Anybody can get naked and have sex with whomever is convenient. It takes a truly fearless person to run outside the house without the benefit of shoes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 AM

March 29, 2012

Debauchery

Ryoshoku
Hidehiro Ito - 1983
Impulse Pictures Region 1 DVD

Hidehiro Ito may have had an avant-garde sensibility that sometimes appears in Debauchery. One of the first shots is of a white wall, nothing but white on the screen. A small blue ball pops in and out of this field of white. Was Ito going for some abstract expressionism here? Could be. For me, this is what makes Roman Porno, the soft core Japanese films, interesting, is that as long as the filmmakers had the required amount of exposed body parts, and scenes of coupling or group sex, there was also the, er, insertion of artier moments, as if the filmmaker was notifying the more thoughtful viewers that they were capable of a loftier kind of cinema, given the opportunity.

For myself, I admit to some ambivalence about Roman Porno. I watch a few films here and there mostly to have some first hand familiarity with the genre. Jasper Sharp, probably the most knowledgeable writer on the subject provides some notes with the DVD. And yes, Debauchery does have a basic premise similar to that of Luis Bunuel's Belle de Jour. But there is more than the two films being about housewives who work part-time as prostitutes. Where Ito has also taken his queues from Bunuel is with a couple of scenes that may, or may not, be dreams. One, which can be read more its symbolism, is of a spider crawling up Ryoko Watanabe's shirt, up to her neck. Instead of brushing the spider away, Watanabe opens her shirt, and cups one of her breasts with her hand, beginning to pleasure herself. In Belle de Jour, Bunuel use the sound of cats mewing. Ito makes use sometimes of a kind of buzzing sound in some of the scenes of sex.

How seriously one wants to examine a film like Debauchery depends on the individual viewer. The main character, Ami, seems at the mercy of the men in her life, be it her husband who is more absorbed with his work as a doctor, and the men who use Ami for their own sexual pleasure. I should also note that Debauchery is presented as was originally seen by Japanese audiences, with masking done to hide certain naughty bits. What we have here is mostly bondage, some rough sex, and a bit of sadomasochism, in short, something for the Japanese salary man to enjoy during his break from work.

Some of the greater visual pleasures are a shot of a crack in the ceiling, just moments after Ami is about to step out for her first dangerous liaison. Also, near the end, a silent shot, a view outside a window, of trees swaying in the breeze. Ito also likes to photograph feet, whether walking, dancing, or on a bed. Which is to say, that there is a bit more going on in Debauchery than the obvious allure of Ryoko Watanabe.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM

March 27, 2012

The Girl in Room 2A

La Casa della Paura
William Rose - 1974
Mondo Macabro All Region DVD

The Girl in Room 2A is one of those oddities that's more interesting because of some of the talent involved than what is actually on the screen. Aside from starring the former Miss Italy, Daniela Giordano, others marking time here are are former Italian matinee idol Raf Vallone, Brad Harris - best known as the American star of Italian peplum. the fetching Rosalba Neri and German strudel Karin Schubert. The film was written and directed by William Rose, a filmmaker who knocked around the exploitation circuit in the Sixties, whose career seems to have disappeared as mysteriously as those of the kidnapped girls in his last movie. If The Girl in Room 2A had been seen theatrically, it would have been caught as part of a grindhouse or drive-in double feature.

Giordano plays the part of a young woman, Margaret, who was just release from prison after doing time for a drug bust where she was erroneously fingered. She is sent to live at the house of a Mrs. Grant. It's not explained why someone's private home would have a numbered room, especially as Margaret is the only guest, with Mrs. Grant's creepy son, Frank, in the room next door. What is apparent also is that Mrs. Grant's home serves as a halfway house for wayward women - halfway to hell as it turns out. Among Mrs. Grant's friends is a philosopher named Drees, who loves quoting Nietzsche and Torquemada, leading a group with some half-baked ideology regarding sin and repentance that gives them a reason to torture and kill others, primarily attractive young women.

There is are a few moments of interest - the room with a bloody spot on the white floor that always reappears after Margaret washes it away, Frank's room with its masks, props and a snake, and the mysterious character dressed in red who first seems to appear in Margaret's nightmares. Still, for a film about some characters with misplaced convictions, William Rose seems to be hedging when he should have gone full throttle. There is little visual style to speak of, and neither the nudity nor the violence are provocative. As one who spent a few hours of movie watching at New York City's 42nd Street back in the early Seventies, I could easily imagine members of the audience yawning through most of the story, perhaps popping eyes open long enough to catch a glimpse of Karin Schubert's exposed breasts.

The DVD comes with an interview with Giordano, undated, but I'm guessing from the late Nineties, talking a bit about her career and some of the directors who worked with, such as Mario Bava. There are also notes about William Rose's career including comments on some of his work in nudie and adult only movies prior to this attempt to make a more mainstream film. I've been a fan of much of what I've seen from Mondo Macabro. In comparison to other Mondo Macabro DVDs, The Girl in Room 2A comes off as bland gruel compared to the company's usual servings of movies that are hot, spicy, and not a little bit nutty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM

March 22, 2012

Air Doll

Kuki Ningyo
Hirokazu Koreeda - 2009
AVE All Region DVD

I've had this film as part of my unseen DVD pile for longer than I care to admit. What inspired me to watch it now was reading that the film was part of the recent series at New York City's Japan Society, "Love will Tear Us Apart".

I might be wrong, but I am thinking that unlike several of Koreeda's other films, Air Doll was never picked up for stateside release because the narrative goes against the expectations one might have about its basic premise. Perhaps most radical is that the film is told mostly from the point of view of the title character. Nozomi is first seen as the silent companion and sex toy for a man, Hideo, whose job running a restaurant brings one complaint after another. Nozomi discovers herself awake with a heart, and walks out into the world, actually a small neighborhood outside of Tokyo.

And while there are comic scenes, Koreeda's film can be more rightly described as a wistful look at what it means to be human. The symbolism is there on the surface regarding people as being as disposable as trash, or easily replaceable. Koreeda also breaks from Nozomi to show the lives of several people in the neighborhood whom Kozomi encounters, all of whom are dealing with loneliness in their own lives. Some of what happens can be interpreted more than one way as when Nozomi, accidentally causing herself to deflate while working at a local video store, is revived by fellow worker Junichi. The implications of Junichi breathing life back into Nozumi can be read as theological, although the way it is presented is also sexually charged.

One might ascribe some cultural significance to having the title role played by Korean actress Doona Bae. Aside from not being Japanese, Bae is unconventionally attractive. Bae has probably been most widely seen in The Host, but the performance that ties in with her earlier work would be Linda, Linda, Linda where Bae played the Korean high school exchange student who accidentally becomes the singer of an all girl band. Bae's performance here is physical, especially when Nozumi first comes alive, with almost mechanical movements. First walking, the gait is like that of a toddler in the body of a slender young woman, awkward and sometimes tentative. Also Bae's eyes seem unusually large, especially when she is in the process of observing the activity around her, trying to make sense of what she sees. Nozumi first appears dressed in a maid's uniform, one of the fetish outfits Hideo has bought for Nozumi. What may be a point of contention is that while Nozumi always dresses in a way that is fitting for someone, or something, that functions as a sexual object, that objectification is almost neutralized by Nozumi's self knowledge.

That Nozumi only looks human is reinforced several times with shots of her parts of her body, including seams along her neck and the air hole in her belly. Even when she acts human, Nozumi will revert to being a listless sex toy when necessary. While Koreeda made the film with the assumption that the metaphorical aspects would be understood, he simultaneously plays on Nozumi's literal interpretations of symbolic language. While there have been comparisons to Pinocchio, the classic doll come to life, one might also find a comparison to James Whale's interpretation of the Frankenstein monster.

Koreeda explains some of his choices regarding the making of Air Doll in this interview.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 AM

March 20, 2012

Spiritual Love

Gui xin niang
David Lai & Taylor Wong - 1987
Joy Sales Films All Region DVD

Deanie Ip was unknown to me when she won the award at the last Venice Film Festival for her performance in Ann Hui's A Simple Life. The film never gained traction even with a screening at Toronto as everyone seemed mesmerized by the Best Actor at Venice, Michael Fassbender and his exposed penis. In the meantime, Ip has racked up awards from various Asian film groups. Even with the awards and critical acclaim, it looks like I'll probably see A Simple Life the same way as I've seen all of Ann Hui's other films, as a subtitled DVD.

Checking into IMDb's information on Ip, her win at Venice is less surprising in light of the number of awards and nominations received over her career in Hong Kong cinema. I felt it important to see at least one Ip's earlier performances, and chose Spiritual Love more or less at random. The film is primarily a starring vehicle for Chow Yun-Fat, with Ip in a supporting role, although another of her performances that received an award nomination.

Chow plays the part of an ineffective mob enforcer, Bob, who's better at sponging off his cousin, played by Ip, than he is at making collections for his boss. When not asking when her cousin is going to pay his share of the rent, Ip is involved as some kind of Taoist priestess although she alternates with Buddhist prayers. Chow finds an antique desk that contains the letter of a woman, Wei, whom in some past period was condemned to live in the afterlife as the wife of a horrid man. Bob has the correct horoscope to be the man to rescue Wei. Bob brings Wei back to life in then present day Hong Kong, much to the horror of cousin, Chin-Hua. Spiritual Love can be best summed up as a broadly comic version of that classic Asian genre of a man in love with a female ghost.

Wei is played by Cherie Cheung. In a scene that shows why Ip was popular as a comic performer, she has a duel with Cheung, an extended piece of physical comedy that combines a parody of martial arts moves with Chinese opera. Much of this is done in full shots so that one can appreciate the ability of Ip to move around with Cheung as the two hit, kick and use available household items as weapons. What may seem unusual for a film of this kind of genre is that it is also partially a musical, taking advantage of Ip's standing as a popular singer at the time the film was made.

This is not a film with anything resembling artistic aspirations. As likable as Chow Yun-Fat usually is, he is less interesting to watch than the rest of the cast, which including Ip and the charming Cheung, features Pauline Wong as May, the former girlfriend who decides she really wants Bob for herself. Aside from a couple of shots of the leggy Wong in her underwear, the actress is in a scene of where she threatens to commit suicide by hanging herself. Wong's scene is so darkly comic that it might cause that master of suicide humor, Billy Wilder, to momentarily hesitate. It's also a scene that initiates a final battle between May and Wei in a disco, complete with wonderfully cheap special effects and a large video screen that acts as a conduit between the real world and the realm of ghosts.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:53 AM

March 13, 2012

Hard, Fast and Beautiful

Ida Lupino - 1951
Warner Archives DVD

I would think that what attracted Ida Lupino to making this film is the obvious parallel between the sports world and show business. The intertwining of the two may have always been mixed though there was still a greater discretionary distinction sixty years ago. And there is the basic story of the mother trying to live out her dreams through her daughter, not so much autobiographical in Lupino's own life, but one that she certainly observed from the time she was a teenage starlet in Hollywood.

Florence Farley is a talented amateur from Santa Monica. The boy next door just happens to work at a country club, where Florence shows her stuff on a couple of tennis dates. From there, here ability impresses all so that she receives sponsorship in top amateur competitions, eventually making it to the top, championship at Forest Hills. Her mother, Millie, never happy with her lot in life, although comfortably living a modest middle class existence, sees Florence as a way to have the best that life has to offer. Millie hooks up with Fletcher Locke, a former tennis champion turned coach-promoter. Endorsements come to Florence, along with free designer clothing, and a trip to Europe. Things sour when Florence gets a clearer picture of how her mother and Locke are using her. Instead, Florence takes things on her own terms with the others reluctantly going along. There is a physical transformation as the girl temporarily becomes a hardened woman. The symbolism of the end is obvious, but fitting, as Millie is left with nothing but an empty championship cup.

Bosley Crowthers of the New York Times, commenting on the film, described the script by Martha Wilkerson as, "a trite and foolish thing. It simply recounts the quick parabola that a girl tennis player describes in becoming a tennis champion and then chucking it all for love. And it is played with such lack of authority by everyone in the cast that it doesn't even carry the satisfaction that a well-acted romance might have."

Ida Lupino would go on record as saying she wasn't a feminist. And perhaps, as it may be understood, Hard, Fast and Beautiful may not be a feminist or proto-feminist, but there are a few bits of business that are worth noting.

When Sally Forrest, as Florence, is playing tennis, she is always wearing a small cap. It's the kind of headwear more traditionally associated with men. Also, Florence is introduced hitting the tennis ball against a garage door with numbers painted on it, announcing the number before the ball hits the numbered square. Even though Florence likes to wear more formal dresses on occasion, the opening scenes indicate someone who likes to be in control of a situation, and may be a bit of a "tomboy". That Florence takes on the boy next door in tennis suggests some regard for gender equality.

The tennis matches are composed often of documentary footage intercut with Lupino's footage of Forrest and the match audiences. One a purely technical level, one can gripe about the footage not matching. What struck me here was how Forrest is framed. While the compositions may have been done to disguise that it was studio work, Forrest is usually filmed from a low angle looking up at her, so we see just her upper torso, and her arm swinging the tennis racket. The angle is the kind one uses to film heroic characters. In this case, Florence Farley is presented as someone of strength and power, at least on the tennis court.

One of the other visually striking moments is when we see Millie Farley and her milquetoast husband in their bedroom. As would be normal in a Hollywood film of the time, there are two separate beds. What is unusual here is that the two beds, instead of being parallel with several feet between them, have the two headrests against each other, with Millie and her husband facing opposite directions in their respective beds. This unusual bedroom setup provides enough clues about the state of a marriage as well as the differing viewpoints of Florence's parents.

A nice visual touch is when Florence has won the match that has in turn got her set up for a tour of Europe and newly established celebrity. The camera pulls back so that we see Florence in the distance behind some grillwork in a fancy restaurant. The shot suggests that of someone behind bars, in this case Florence, about to be a prisoner of her own fame.

Some of the concerns in Hard, Fast and Beautiful show, between sleazy promoters, merchandising, and the interest people have based on rankings or celebrity, a world that has become arguably more corrupt, exploitive and public in the past sixty years.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:43 AM

March 08, 2012

Blood Rain

Hyeolui Nu
Kim Dae-seung - 2005
Pathfinder Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

What sets Blood Rain immediately apart from other South Korean thrillers is that it is set in 1808. In and of itself, the film is of interest simply because it is not the usual era associated with detective stories. Part of the work of Lee Won-Kyu is simply to provide scientific explanations to a series of mysterious and violent deaths attributed to a vengeful ghost. In his investigations, Lee uncovers family secrets that tie everyone on the island together in one form or another, with guilt shared by an entire community.

Even though Lee Won-Kyu is modern in his investigations of crime, feudal attitudes still dominate the thinking of most people. What Blood Rain looks at is how rules regarding class, culture and religion caused escalations of tragedy in this remote location. Punishment, usually death, is meted out for being Catholic or even being accused of being Catholic. Aside from the possession of guns, western culture is viewed as unwanted and a possible act of treason. Arcane rules apply to those who are considered part of the aristocracy. A so-called commoner with great wealth is still a commoner.

The mystery kicks off with a female shaman seemingly possessed by the spirit of a murdered man. At the same time, a fire spontaneously erupts on a boat stocked with paper. The paper is the special product produced on the island, and the stock in question was intended for trade with China. The political intrigues that cause an emissary and Lee to come from the mainland prove to hide more personal vendettas. As in any reasonably good mystery, nothing is quite what it seems. Even the shaman, who holds a certain amount of influence regarding spiritual beliefs on the island, is revealed to be Lee's most reliable ally.

Kim Dae-seung's reliance on cross cutting between past and present sometimes makes the film difficult to follow in some scenes. Also problematic are some of the cultural aspects, although one can see parallels between Joseon era Korea and Shogunate Japan. While not overly graphic, the onscreen deaths are violent, although I suspect more people would be upset by the decapitation of several live chickens. Blood Rain has been cited for its costume and production design. The costumes especially are notable for clearly signifying class and rankings. Remarkable also is the paper mill, showing industry in early 19th Century Korea.

Kim Dae-seung began his filmmaking career as an assistant to Im Kwok-taek. As Im's most famous films were about artists and Korean culture, this feeling would informs Kim's towards the island inhabitants, who are first seen in community celebration. One of the major characters is a young artist who hopes that his ability at portraiture would enable him to overcome the stigma of his humble origins. While peripheral to the main narrative, the moments devoted to art and the artist allow some visual beauty into an otherwise grim story.

There's a blogathon devoted to Korean cinema this week with the main links over at CineAwsome and New Korean Cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:48 AM

March 06, 2012

Blade of Kings

Chin gei bin 2: Fa dou daai jin / The Twins Effect II
Corey Yuen & Patrick Leung - 2004
Well Go USA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Blade of Kings is full of mystery, beginning with why is this eight year old film getting a U.S DVD release now? I had to check my Netflix queue to remind myself that, yes, I did see the first film, with the English language title of Vampire Effect at about the same time this film was originally released for Chinese language audiences. What I can assure everyone is that seeing that first film will neither help nor hinder any enjoyment out one might get here.

The rather elaborate story involves a kingdom ruled by a woman unhappy in love, where women rule, and men are shackled slaves called "dumbells". There is also a prophesy that a young man is going to find the sword, Excalibur, and make things right in the world. The evil queen will have none of that and sends a spy to try and stop a pair of young men who have a map that's suppose to lead them to the sword. The spy competes with another young woman who is out to kidnap one of the young men, to be the personal slave for her boss, a woman of great power and heft. This is a movie with characters named 13th Young Master, Blue Bird, Red Vulture (a too briefly seen Fan Bingbing), Block Head, and Charcoal Head, with Donnie Yen as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.

There are lots of special effects and lots of wire work. The film came out at a time when Chinese producers were certain that the way to world wide success was with lots of CGI and wire work. And some of the films were better than others, but the response was generally indifference here is the U.S.

The best part of Blade of Kings is watching Charlene Choi mugging, whining, laughing, fighting and kicking her way through the story. She's got a roundish face, and is not as conventionally pretty as Gillian Chung. Nonetheless, she is the one who grabs the attention here with her animated facial expressions. What should be explained, for those unaware, is that Choi and Chung are part of a Cantopop duo called Twins. They play rivals here, and one wishes that if the two are going to do any more films together, that they team up with Jeffrey Lau, possibly the best purveyor of nonsense films around, to do something like a distaff version of the old Bob Hope and Bing Crosby "Road" movies. For those less familiar with Choi, I recommend the film, Diary by Oxide Pang.

The best scene in the film is near the beginning when Choi and Chung first encounter each other. Bickering leads to a duel involving swords, fists, feet, and yards of cloth. Sure, there is a heavy reliance on special effects, but still . . . watching the two encounter, evade, and move around each other is like watching ballet as imagined by action choreographer extraordinaire Corey Yuen. I am less familiar with co-director Patrick Leung, but he had his hand in the very funny La Brassiere, a film I'd recommend to anyone who loves the classic comedies of Frank Tashlin. For some people, the selling points pf Blade of Kings are seeing Donnie Yen and Jackie Chan, who also have a scene where they duel each other with swords and spears. For myself, Blade of Kings would have been much better if everyone involved allowed the presence of Choi and Chung to firmly be the point of the film. The assumed extra star power here is unneeded baggage for two young women who do best when they're the only ones on the screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

February 28, 2012

Black Ghost

Kuroi Shojo
Mari Asato - 2009
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

I decided not to let February go by this year without a nod to "Women in Horror Recognition Month". Especially after reading this editorial from Fangoria Magazine, welled a feeling of some kind of gallantry, if that's the right word. I mean, I like eye candy as much as most other guys, and the proof is in some of my screengrabs, but these guys in Fangoria act like there's no female talent on the other side of the camera. And since most of the contributions are on English language talent, I figured I'd chip in on a film by an Asian filmmaker.

I don't know much about Mari Asato. She did serve as an actress and Assistant Director on Sodom the Killer, a pretty good film as I recall. She's also made a film with the delightful title of Samurai Chicks which is about a dance school that is a cover for women learning movements of a lethal variety. Another of Asato's films is titled The Boy from Hell, about the extremes of a mother's love for her son. Based on her filmography, Asato has several horror films to her credits.

Black Ghost is the second half of two films running less than an hour each, part of Ju-On 4. The story is not directly related to the original series, which to me is not important, although it was by Takashi Shimizu, the creator of the series. Because I wasn't paying attention at the time of purchase, what I saw was a Thai DVD with no English subtitles. If getting the plot points is that important, they can be found at IMDb among other places. What struck me was the dismissal of Asato's film by the critics I've read.

Maybe because I saw the film without subtitles, I was able to appreciate the craft of the filmmaking. Is Black Ghost scary? No. But it does have its moments of creepiness. And Mari Asato has a better sense of where to put a camera, more so that some guys who've managed to wrangle Academy Award nominations. What I liked about Black Ghost were the faces and the use of shadows. Asato has a taste for tracking shots as well. Everything is cleanly composed. A favorite moment involves a woman, walking alone along a dark street. You have the sense that something unexpected could happen. It's the kind of scene that you'd often see in the horror films produced by Val Lewton, who's frequent protagonists were women in some kind of supernatural danger.

If a film like Black Ghost is worth writing about, it for this reason: sometimes good craftsmanship should be appreciated for its own sake. Not every film has to have lofty artistic or philosophical goals, and most of them don't. For myself, I see more than enough contemporary filmmakers without the sense of where to put a camera, how to block a shot, or how to visually relay a story economically. Mari Asato may currently be the equivalent of the more than competent "B" filmmakers of the past, but as the longer view of film history has proven, that's really not a bad place to be.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:31 AM

February 23, 2012

Confessions

Kokuhaku
Tetsuya Nakashima - 2010
Third Window Films Region 2 DVD

Suzanne Vega once wrote, "Blood makes noise". Blood makes plenty of noise here as Confessions is in part about HIV, family relationships, and about bloody revenge. That this discomforting film was chosen as Japan's entry for the the foreign language film Oscar showed some courage. That Confessions never received distribution in the U.S. is not surprising.

Without giving too much away, the basic setup is of a teacher on her last day at school. She talks about a celebrated teacher with a best selling book. The man is revealed to have been her husband. The two had a young daughter. The young daughter dies in an accident according to official records. According to the teacher, her daughter was murdered by two of her students in the classroom. The narrative is in separate chapters, from the point of view of four main characters, presented as their confessions.

I am not familiar with the source novel by Kanae Minato. I would imagine it is primarily an indictment of Japanese society, as well as a legal system that is lenient to even the most vile of juvenile offenders. The students here are in the equivalent of Junior High School, about thirteen years old. I don't feel the need to link to current news stories to indicate that what takes place in the film has reverberations beyond Japan. There are enough news stories about bullying and callous behavior to make Confessions hit home, no matter where you call home.

As far as the content of the film goes, it may be best to let it speak for itself. It is the kind of work that invites discussion about individual and collective responsibility.

What also interest me is how Tatsuya Nakashima has made a film that in content is more serious than Kamikaze Girls or Memories of Matsuko, yet connects with the previous films. The outsider status in Kamikaze Girls is established by the choice of the two young women to dress in styles that are idiosyncratic, but more so with their living in rural Japan. In Confessions the status of outsider is conferred internally as well as externally. The students, both female and male, wear the traditional dark blue uniforms. Even the clothing worn by the teacher is not too different, with solid dark blue dresses. Even though the film centers on four characters, there is the implication that almost everyone here feels a sense of alienation from themselves and others. The title also carries the weight of irony when we see that not everything shown or heard is necessarily true, as the respective narratives are contradicted or given additional information.

Confessions is also as visually stylized as any of Nakashima's previous films. Where a DVD supplement proves valuable is in Nakashima explaining how he not only created storyboards for every shot, but essentially made a video version to use as a guide in making the film. Some of this stylization comes in the form of editing of a succession of quick, almost abstract, images. There is also the digital raindrops, and the bubbles that seem to pop out of one of the student's ears. There is also the choreography with the students dancing to "That's the Way (I Like It)", and a scene near the end, an overhead shot of the students gatherer in circle around one young man.

The center of the film is Takako Matsu as the teacher. No fragile flower here, but someone with understated reserves of steel. The final shot of Matsu is with tears in her eyes. Yet even when she appears to have tipped her hand, she let's you know that perhaps all is not quite as it appears.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:01 AM

February 21, 2012

War of the Arrows

Choi-jong-byeong-gi Hwal
Kim Han-min - 2011
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

War of the Arrows takes place in the area where Korea shares a border with Manchuria, in 1638. Compared to what was happening in Europe at the time, the culture and the battle armor worn by the soldiers here made me think of a more Medieval period. One could, with only a few changes, easily transpose the film to that earlier era of chivalry, something along the lines of Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur

The film starts breathless from the get go, as a young man and a girl are hiding from some enemy soldiers. It is revealed that their father, who held some kind of court position, has been labeled as a traitor. The son, Nam-yi promises his dying father that he will do everything he can to protect little sister, Ja-in. The two are reluctantly taken in by Lady Kim, whose young son, Seo-goon, immediately has his eye on Ja-in. Fortunately, the little girl who can't stop crying and whining in those first scenes grows up to be a beautiful, and composed, young lady. Fast forward to thirteen years later, Ja-in is preparing to marry Seo-goon when the festivities are disrupted by invading solders. Taken prisoners by the Manchurians, Nam-yi travels north to rescue the pair.

War of the Arrows was the second most popular Korean film of 2011. It's a good film, yet I think it would have been better had Kim Han-min not relied so much on hand held camera work. I understand that it seems for some to add to a sense of immediacy. Call me old fashioned, but it didn't always work for me. What did work, and what I suspect helped make the film a hit is watching the clean shaven, boyish Seo-goon show his mettle against the Manchurians, as well as watching Nam-yi try to outrun and outwit the better armed soldiers, running through the woods, and into physically challenging situations.

It helps that Park Hae-il comes off in his first scenes as a person who earns his heroism by sheer skill and tenacity. Aside from a couple of comic sidekicks, he's alone in the world, save for Ja-in. It is the kind of performance that brings to mind Toshiro Mifune, especially in the earlier films with Kurosawa, where we have a sense of both the outsider pushing his way through the world, and that same person's bouts of self-doubt or weakness. And who doesn't like women who kick ass? Certainly no one who usually visits this site. No surprise that Moon Chae-won has won awards and lots of attention as Ja-in, taking on all comers with sword and bow. A veteran of several Korean television series, this is an auspicious feature film debut.

Attention has been paid to period accuracy regarding the design of the bows and arrows, as well as some remarkable costumes from the era. The Manchurians are definitely a sight to behold with their heavily studded leather outfits, and custom shaved pates. Sure, the Manchurians are out to rape and pillage, but they dress to kill.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:22 AM

February 16, 2012

Age of Assassins

Satsujin kyo jidai
Kihachi Okamoto - 1967

The film opens with shots of inmates behind bars in a highly styled insane asylum. The biggest lunatic is the doctor who runs the joint, Mizorogi. As part of a group with Nazi ties, his plan is to transform his patients into professional killers, all in the name of population control. What gets in the way is that one of his intended victims, a grubby professor of criminal psychology, Shinji, confounds everyone when his would-be killers unintentionally cause their own deaths.

The opening credits are made of cartoons setting up the cheerful black humor to come for the next hour and a half. The visual style is influenced by pop art. There is a lot of emphasis on forced perspective, differences in size, or simply framing people so that it looks like part of a comic book panel. Some of the signs are oversized. Age of Assassins is hardly subtle, even when the characters spout philosophy. The film is so at ease in its own goofiness as to have one characters, an inept car thief, named Otomo Bill (some may have to hear it aloud a couple times to get the joke).

At the heart of it all is Tatsuya Nakadai. In this case, an unrecognizable Tatsuya Nakadai. For those less familiar with the long time star of Japanese cinema, Nakadai can't be missed because he's taller than everyone else, just a shade under six feet. Often a brooding samurai, Nakadai can also show his sensitive side in the Human Condition trilogy. But I couldn't recognize that guy for the bumbling academic, unshaven and generally unkempt, with glasses with the thick black frame, stooped over, with the chronic athlete's foot, always thinking of his dead mother. Of course all goes well when the dapper, well groomed Tatsuya Nakadai shows up on the screen.

In a movie like this, you need the villain to be equally powerful. Hideyo Amamoto's name may not be recognizable, but some might remember him best when Woody Allen dubbed him with the imitation voice of Peter Lorre for What's Up, Tiger Lily. With the wild hair and the too wise mouth, it's as if Amamoto was the living personification of every mad scientist who appeared in every anime and manga. Reiko Dan usually is known for supporting roles in the more stately film by Ozu, Kurosawa and Naruse, among others. As the writer for a mystery magazine, Dan joins forces with Nakadai in pursuit of an exiting story, and provides some eye candy with a nude scene, where props are arranged to hide all but enough to give the audience a good idea of what's going on.

What I love about Age of Assassins is that it fits in with other films of the 1960s, most notably those by Seijun Suzuki, where filmmakers were hired to do genre films, but seemed to have a free hand in creating highly stylized works. Tom Mes might be generalizing a bit on Okamoto and filmmakers of his generation. While films of a somewhat younger generation by Nagisa Oshima and Susumu Hani may have been more deliberately created as art cinema, there is the shared sense of busting taboos and creating dynamic visuals. The best thing about Age of Assassins is that it's fearless in its embrace of the ridiculous.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:33 AM

February 14, 2012

Cyrano Agency

Si-ra-no;Yeon-ae-jo-jak-do
Kim Hyeon-seok - 2010
Pre.GM Region 3 DVD

The title gives away only part of the story. If there's anyone who's gotten this far and is asking, "Who's Cyrano?", read the play in the language of your choice, or watch the film version of your choice, and come back later. Anyways, as those familiar with the play can assume, the agency acts on behalf of lovesick, tongue tied men, ultimately getting them together with the women who make their hearts pump faster. But again, that's only part of the story.

The agency is run by a quartet of down on their luck actors. Their tools include not only scripts, but sometime special effects, and even a team of extras. Kim Hyeon-seok is smart enough too take the film beyond the obvious comic premise. Life interrupts, or simply goes against the most well intentioned and thought out script. As anyone familiar with Rostand's play knows, things go badly for everyone at the end. And Christian, the lover who wooed Roxanne with the words by Cyrano, is shown some sympathy.

The most fun is watching the lengths that the agency goes to in getting two people together. The contemporary Cyrano has replaced whispering from behind some foliage or other hidden place with tiny, undetectable earphone connected to a wireless microphone. Adding to this are strategically placed video cameras. Mere rainfall is augmented by some well placed equipment to create a torrent. And a team of extras dressed as soldiers doing drills comes in handy when a client is being threatened by some gangsters.

It's no surprise that the high technology is very expensive, threatening to undo the agency. The head of the team, Byeong-hoon, finds himself reluctantly playing Cyrano, in a very personal turn of events. At one point, Byeong-hoon, who created the agency to finance a dramatic company, is seen weeping while the Jose Ferrer version of Cyrano De Bergerac plays on TV.

At almost two hours, the film feels a little overlong, with the dramatic portions threatening to wash out the goodwill created by comic first hour. What's best about Cyrano Agency is the humor to be found as when a young woman coughs up a piece of gum from a church balcony, only to have it land in the mouth of a young man, sleeping during a sermon, or when coached to count to ten before that first kiss, a suitor's fingers stop at seven. There is also a bit of magic realism, with bubbles in the air while Greek singer Agnes Baltsa is on the soundtrack with "Aspri mera ke ya mas" (There Will be Better Days). It's a moment where past and present briefly blend in and out, aided by an unexpected choice of music that makes the scene more effective. Cyrano Agency might not be a throwback to the heyday of the screwball romantic comedy, but Kim, like Rostand, understands that comedy is not based simply on "quirky" characters, but people dealing with everyday emotions and foibles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:24 AM

February 09, 2012

Car of Dreams

Graham Cutts and Austin Melford - 1935
Shanachie Region 1 DVD

Unless this is the only film blog read, you may already know that a new "For the Love of Film" blogathon has been announced just over a week ago. Hosted by Farran Nehme of Self-Styled Siren, Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Film, and Rod Heath of This Island Rod, this third outing will be devoted to writing about film, united by a common theme, and raising funds for film preservation. The blogathon will begin on May 13. Start saving those pennies now, because the goal is to make the recently rediscovered silent film, The White Shadow available for temporary online viewing. And you like to watch, don't you?

The story of a former white NBA player coaching basketball in an inner city high school twin sisters, one good, one evil, was considered lost until recently. Keep in mind that at this point, what we have is three of six reels. So why bother with a partially restored film? In this case, because of the work of one of Graham Cutt's uncredited assistants. Cutt's career is a strange one of starting more or less at the top, cofounding Gainsborough Studios, and directing the top productions, and ending his career with quota quickies, before totally retiring from any film activity while still in his 50s. Cutts is more famous for the filmmakers who worked with him early in their careers such as Michael Powell, Rowland V. Lee, and Charles Frend. Most famous of all was the multi-talented Assistant Director, Set Designer, Editor and Screenwriter - Alfred Hitchcock. The White Shadow was the second of three films Hitchcock made under Cutts.

Even with Car of Dreams are a couple of Hitchcock connections. Charles Frend, who began as an editor for Cutts, worked as Hitchcock's editor on several of the British films. As a director, Frend helmed the detective film, The Third Key, as well as several episodes of the TV series, Danger Man. John Mills' connection to Hitchcock is a bit more tangential, having a supporting role in Don Sharp's version of The Thirty-Nine Steps, considered by some to be one of the better remakes of a film first made by Hitchcock.

How much of Car of Dreams was directed by Cutts or screenwriter Austin Melford, I don't know. It is certainly a far better, more clever film that I had expected. Particularly noteworthy are a series of traveling camera shots in the films opening, and the use of sound, especially in scenes of a musical instrument factory secretary, and the instrument tester next door. One funny bit is a close-up of the secretary's hand, tapping on the desk, mimicking the sound of supposedly walking away to confer with her boss. There is also the film's title song, performed by the two leads while the rear screen projection changes from one locale to the next. Perhaps not original or innovative, but with a bit more imagination and style on what is essentially a quota production with a running time of about seventy minutes, The story is only in the movies as rich boy John Mills impulsively buys poor girl Grete Mosheim a Rolls-Royce, and pretends to be a chauffeur.

Given her history, Grete Mosheim would probably be seen to better advantage than in this film. On the other hand, John Mills is quite charismatic, in an atypical song and dance performance near the beginning of the film, weaving his way through a retinue of instrument makers. One aspect where it was obvious that pennies were counted is in the soundtrack, where a couple of the songs are repeated. The final shot of Mosheim and Mills driving away after all the misunderstandings have been cleared away might surprise and delight with an ending that anticipates a very similar film ending with John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John, forty-two years before Grease was the word.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

February 07, 2012

Sword of Desperation

Hisshiken torisashi
Hideyuki Hirayama - 2010
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

It should be noted that the literary source of Sword of Desperation is a novel by Shuhei Fujisawa. The author also provided the source material for Yoji Yamada's samurai trilogy. There are some thematic similarities here, but it helps to understand that in spite of the title, Sword of Desperation is not an action movie, although there is much sword fighting at the end of the film. Instead, Hideyuki Hirayama, like Yamada, has chosen to contemplate on what it means to be a samurai.

The climactic set piece near the end of the film has a bit more gushing blood, with sprays of red along white walls. Otherwise, Hirayama's film looks like it could have been made with little variation about fifty years ago. Unlike Takashi Miiike's version of 13 Assassins which includes elements that could not have been used in the original version, Hirayama's film might be described as neo-classical in its execution. I would place Sword of Desperation closer in spirit to something like the 1962 or earlier versions of Chushingura (The 47 Ronin), but on a more intimate scale.

Taking place in the Edo period, the film opens with a vassal, Kanemi, murdering the favored concubine, Renko, of the lord he serves. Fully expecting to be beheaded, Kanemi is instead put under house arrest for a year, after which he is asked to serve as chief bodyguard for the lord, Ukyo. Though never stated, a series of flashbacks partially reveal why Kanemi killed Renko. The bigger mystery, based on the protocol of the times, is why Kanemi is allowed not only to live, but to live in relative comfort, even as he shuts himself away from everyone.

In the first scene, a Noh performance is being observed by members of the feudal household. The basic themes are introduced regarding the manipulation of nature and appearances. It is Kanemi, and the niece by marriage who loves him unreservedly, who act in ways true to themselves, and are undisguised to others. Throughout the film, Hirayama devotes time to shots of clouds, the passing of time through the seasons, birds in flight, and snow melting into a river. A sunny close up of a spider web may hint at things to come, but it is benign in comparison the web of intrigue in the lord's mansion.

The title takes on a double meaning, but originally is Kanemi's term for a sword fighting technique he's developed. In the Noh play, dogs are hunted as a means to train to hunt for foxes. Kanemi uses a subtle, quick move of the wrist to snatch birds off trees with a long stick as an exercise that is used also in sword fighting. Kanemi's sense of loyalty and his ability as a master swordsman are also what trap him like the little bird we see in an earlier scene. Up until the end, Sword of Desperation is a muted, period drama where the patience of watching an elaborate scheme unfold pay off for the viewer, if not the film's characters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:56 AM

February 03, 2012

Ocean Heaven

Haiyang tiantang
Xue Xiao Lu - 2010
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

I wasn't quite prepared for the first shot of Jet Li in Ocean Heaven. I've been watching Li for about fifteen years, a combination of Chinese language and English language films, on the big screen and home screen. It could be the combination of the glasses and the flecks of white hair along his temples that did it, but Li looks so vulnerable. There was the sense that it wouldn't take much to knock over this guy, sitting in a small boat with his adult son.

At the very least, one gets a chance to see Li stretch his dramatic muscles as he approaches age 50. And give him credit for foregoing a paycheck to make the film. And even though Li is the most well known name, and the person most responsible for bringing attention to the film, he also surrender most of the attention to young Wen Zhang, the actor playing his son.

This is the second film written, and the first directed by Xue Xaio Lu. The previous film was Together, directed by Chen Kaige. What the two films share is a story line about a father and a son, and their uneasy relationship. In this film, Li plays a father, Xingchang, of an autistic young man, Dafu, who just turned 21. Xingchang is trying to minimize the effects what is revealed to be terminal cancer, while at the same time trying to find a future home for Dafu. Xingchang does maintenance at an aquarium where Dafu enjoys swimming with the dolphins, hence the title.

The film follow Xingchang's attempts to get Dafu to develop some independence, and a few life skills. Along the way, a traveling circus takes up residence at the aquarium, the equivalent of Sea World in Quingdao. Dafu temporarily becomes friends with a juggling clown, his first attempt at socializing on his own.

Xingchang and Dafu visit various potential institutions for Dafu's care. One very striking image takes place in a facility where the patients wear striped pajamas. The visual reference to a concentration camp is not hard to miss.

Li's involvement in the film may have been what attracted several other major names to participate in the modestly budgeted production. The casually framed cinematography is by Christopher Doyle. Kwai Lunmei plays the sad clown who befriends Dafu. Joe Hisaishi provided the film score. Having Jay Chou sing during the closing credits here is comparable to having Madonna providing vocals for a million dollar independent film stateside. Ocean Heaven may end up being better known for showcasing Wen Zhang, noted here for his goofy grin and fluttering fingers on his left hand. In one scene, Wen is dancing by himself in the rain, doing a little strut that made me think of Charlie Chaplin. The swimming scenes indicate a litheness suggesting that this young actor has more to show given the right opportunities.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:59 AM

February 01, 2012

Yakuza Weapon

Gokudo Heiki
Tak Sakaguchi & Yudai Yamaguchi - 2011
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

In the middle of Yakuza Weapon is one scene I would encourage any serious film critic or historian to see. Or at least those people with an abiding interest in how scenes of action are filmed. The putative hero, Shozo, is pursued relentlessly by an powerful, international criminal organization. A large gang of killer nurses were unable to put Shozo down. Next, Shozo is in some building where he faces an army of guys in gray hoodies and jeans. Shozo shoots, punches, slices his way through these anonymous hired killers. The action starts as Shozo enters the building, going through rooms and hallways, and up a flight of stairs. What makes this scene remarkable is that it was done as a single take, almost four minutes long, staged by action director Yuji Shimomura.

I bring this up because of periodic discussions in some critical circles about how action scenes are filmed, especially when the current Hollywood model relies on lots of fast cutting, and extreme close-ups, all meant to convey a sense of chaos. In this case, watching a "Making of . . ." DVD supplement pays off in letting the viewer know that the scene I'm citing here was filmed as a single take, and perhaps more amazingly, it only took two times to get it right. So I'm calling it here: Yuji Shimomura is the Orson Welles of action directors, at least for his part of Yakuza Weapon.

The film is based on a manga by Ken Ishikawa. Nothing is as sustained or as inspired as that fight scene, but there are moments to savor. The story is about a young gangster, Shozo, who avenges the death of his father, a big time yakuza chief. Along the way, after being almost killed by the rival who murdered his father, Shozo is rebuilt by a secret government agency, with the ability to turn his prosthetic arm into a machine gun, and use an upper thigh as a cannon. That part of the film puts Yakuza Weapon loosely alongside other works of a uniquely Japanese genre of people with weapon body parts, like Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police.

At the very beginning, titles inform the viewer about the yakuza code of honor, of loyalty and chivalry. And while several characters talk about it, very little is on display here. I had to view this with a jaundiced eye, because even during the heyday of yakuza films in early Seventies, while some films presented stories of honor among the yakuza, there were also films such as those by Kinji Fukasaku that argued that there was no honor among these thieves.

My other favorite part of Yakuza Weapon is of the reunion of Shoza with fiancee, Nayoko. After demonstrating his ability to take on anybody with any weapon, Shoza meets up with Nayoko for the first time in about four years, and promptly gets shot at and beat up by this kimono clad woman. The relationship between Shoza and Nayoko, intense love and hate on her part, seeming indifference for him, recalls the stuff of great screwball comedies. Tak Sakaguchi has established himself in a series of action and fantasy films, but his scenes with Mei Kurokawa suggests an alternate type of film worth further exploration. As it stands, within the constraints of a two week shooting schedule and a budget less than a tenth of an average Hollywood film, Sakaguchi and company are to be commended for the bursts of imagination to be found in Yakuza Weapon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:53 AM

January 26, 2012

Wind Blast

Xi Feng Lie
Gao Qunshu - 2010
Mega Star Region 3 DVD

Wind Blast starts off with a point blank shooting in Hong Kong before jumping to a SUV speeding along on what passes for a highway, somewhere near the China-Mongolian border. For those who demand introductions and exposition, this isn't the film for you. There's no hesitation as the film dives into the action, eventually revealing a story about a trio of cops pursuing a hit man, who is also pursued by a pair of assassins.

What makes Wind Blast of interest is that it takes much of the iconography of the western and transposed it to contemporary China. This is not just in terms of the narrative, or that two of the main characters wear cowboy hats. The environment acts as an additional character as well. Much of the film takes place in an uninhabitable landscape, where desert meets mountain. Some of the characters are almost literally swallowed up by this environment with part of the film taking place inside an underground cave.

The wide open spaces allow for some very fancy driving between two dueling SUVs, as well as an SUV and a very large truck, combined with the tossing of Molotov cocktails. Traditional gun fights alternate with some high kicking martial arts. The climax takes place in an almost abandoned outpost of crumbling office buildings planted in the middle of nowhere. The western element takes over with a stampede of what appears to be hundreds of wild horses galloping through the town and into the main building where the police nominally are in control. As if that wasn't enough, dynamite is casually tossed back and forth between the police and lead bad guy, Francis Ng. The strong winter winds are the least of anyone's problems here.

The visual elements will recall for some Sergio Leone primarily, but also William Wyler and Delmer Daves. There are several shots of the mountains and desert, as well as shots of the characters dwarfed and overwhelmed by the vastness, the sense of endless space. The opening shots are of Hong Kong's skyscrapers. I name the three filmmakers because of how important geography is, as a part of their respective narratives, and how nature is perhaps not so much hostile, but indifferent to the conflicts of the characters. On top of that is a contemporary music score with Mandarin rock and rap, as well as harmonica. The title translates as "West wind martyrs" which is something of an exaggeration as it would suggest that almost everyone dies in this film. That the assassins carry computers with high tech GPS devices also pushes some of the plausibility. Such quibbles are easily put aside for the sheer visceral audacity of Gao and action director Nicky Li.

The best known cast member would be Francis Ng. The film belongs to Duan Yihong as the grizzled sage leader of the police force. Cowboy hats worn by Ng and Duan serve as both character and cultural signifiers well before either of them start shooting their guns. Duan, more than anyone else, is the equivalent of the archetypical character of classic Hollywood westerns. Also of interest is Yu Nan as a female assassin. Known best by some as the title character in Tuya's Marriage, but also with Speed Racer as part of her resume, Yu has been tapped to be in The Expendables 2. One look at Yu's bruised face, and "don't fuck with me" glare, should answer any questions as to her ability to hang out with Stallone and company.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:34 AM

January 24, 2012

Red Eagle

Insee Dang
Wisit Sasanatieng - 2010
Shengchi Region 3 DVD

As almost any filmmaker can tell you, critical acclaim can only get you so far. And for all the attention and acclaim given to Wisit, the films he has made previously, even the internationally distributed Tears of the Black Tiger, were never financially successful. His newest film, hoping to capitalize on the love of the original Red Eagle series of films, was so hampered by artistic compromises that Wisit had temporarily considered leaving filmmaking. As it turned out, Red Eagle was another film mostly well received by Thai film critics, but again falling short commercially. Wisit has been working on another film though, this time independent of any studios.

I had written about the last film of the original series a few years ago. Sadly, of that was the only film available as a subtitled DVD. It perhaps made more economic sense to make the new Red Eagle a contemporary character, taking advantage of computer generated effects and give the hero more high tech tools to play with. It may have also seemed like a good idea to play it as a mostly serious action film. The reaction to Wisit's previous films was that Thai film audiences weren't interest in homages to Thailand's cinematic past. And yet, based on the evidence of Insee Thong, the Red Eagle films really lend themselves to the kind of parody of the secret agent out of his time as with the Austin Powers films, or something along the lines of the recent OSS 117 films.

There are only a couple of times when Red Eagle shares the unembarrassed goofiness of the original series. At one point, Red Eagle has a sword fight with the masked villain, Black Devil. The two find themselves in a giant mall, in a section of a store selling cooking ware. Black Devil's sword cuts through two small pots that Red Eagle lamely uses to defend himself. Briefly letting his guard down, Black Devil gets beaned on the head with a giant kettle. Another moment has the earnest young police detective, Chart, on a high speed chase on a motorcycle, modified with a small ice cream wagon on the side, constantly playing the tune, "Mary Had a Little Lamb". There is also a fight near a bunch of outdoor food stalls, where the Sikh detective shows off his fighting skills with deft throwing of food skewers that fly into the eyes of the bad guys. Missing are villainous ladyboys and Petchara's elaborate hairdos.

The new film takes place slightly in the future, 2016. Aside from the cultural significance of the character of Red Eagle, what would be lost on non-Thai audiences is how much of the film is a critique of the Thai political landscape. There are certainly nuances that probably passed me by. And it is the political aspects of Red Eagle that would make the film less meaningful to those unfamiliar with what has been going on in Thailand since 2006, between changes in the government, and actions of different civilian groups.

Where Wisit seemed to most successful keep his hand in the proceedings is the use of color. Much of the film takes place at night, or where everything is shaded blue, with dramatic streaks of red. The first fight scene has brief flashes of red on the entire screen. The action sequences are done as series of short, highly edited, takes. The action scenes are shot in such a way that there is no sense of loss regarding the placement and the activity of the characters. One of the visual devices used are animated x-rays showing broken bones. A sequel is promised at the end of the film, but the bigger cliffhanger might be as to if it will actually be made, and if so, will Wisit be back on the set.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 AM | Comments (2)

January 17, 2012

Daisy Kenyon

Otto Preminger - 1947
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

The first time I was really conscious of the existence of Joan Crawford was seeing one of the films she made following the success of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane. The film I saw was The Caretakers, one of several films made dealing with issues of mental illness at the time. What I remember of that film was that Crawford was the mean, show them no mercy, bitch who ran this mental facility who was pitted against good old Robert Stack who was the humanistic, understanding medical professional. I also remember that I didn't find Crawford to be attractive, although the word "hag" hadn't yet entered my vocabulary. But in one scene, where she's wearing leotards, I was impressed by her great looking legs. I was around 12 years old at the time so my views regarding female beauty were somewhat more superficial then they are now.

It wasn't until I saw Grand Hotel for the first time at New York City's eclectic Thalia Theater, that I realized Joan Crawford had once been a babe. I would have had no problem tossing Greta Garbo for the former Lucille LeSueur. The only other time I found Crawford totally alluring was when I saw Tod Browning's The Unknown, a film I find more horrifying than any rats on a platter in Baby Jane.

And then I saw Daisy Kenyon, probably on AMC when they actually showed classic movies introduced by Bob Dorian or George Clooney's dad. I don't remember if I actually made a point of seeing Otto Preminger's film or it just happened to be on. I even introduced my mother to the film when it was on at some later date. (My mother's side of of the family was made of Bette Davis partisans.) What I do remember is that I found myself really liking Joan Crawford in that film. Dana Andrew's kisses Joan Crawford. Henry Fonda kisses Joan Crawford. Given the chance, I'd probably kiss the Joan Crawford who appears in Daisy Kenyon.

Maybe it's because I got older and my ideas about female beauty have become a bit more flexible. The DVD commentary by Foster Hirsch helps articulate some of those feelings. Crawford smiles. Crawford seems approachable. Between Preminger's direction and Leon Shamroy's cinematography, Joan Crawford actually looks lovable, rather than being the inexplicable object of man's affections because she is Joan Crawford. Until Hirsch mentioned it, it hadn't occurred to me that I was watching a 42 year old woman playing someone ten years younger. The age of the character never seemed important to me. Hirsch mentions a "softness" about Crawford that is absent in most of her other performances. Even in the other MGM films I've seen that were made after Grand Hotel, Crawford lacks the warmth that Preminger was able to convey. Maybe it's all acting. Maybe it's a few tricks with make-up. What I do know is that Stephen Harvey, an acquaintance from my New York days, who wrote a little book on Crawford, might well be laughing from his particular perch in movie heaven. And I also know that I love Joan Crawford in Daisy Kenyon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:37 AM

January 12, 2012

Sweet Love, Bitter

Herbert Danksa - 1966
Efor Films All Region DVD

One of my best memories of studying film at New York University was encountering Lewis Jacobs. Best known for his book, The Rise of the American Film, we had some lively discussions both in and out of class. I knew he had also co-written a screenplay to a film I had read about, but had not seen, and had wished that he had shown it in class. Sweet Love, Bitter might not be lost classic, but it is very much worth seeing both for a glimpse of a past era, and as an example of a true independent film.

I haven't read the source novel, Night Song, by John A. Williams, but I have read one of Williams' other novels, which told about being a struggling black American novelist in New York City, in the Fifties. I wouldn't be able to judge the veracity of the novel or film's portrayal of a fictionalized version of Charlie Parker. And I also don't think that much familiarity is needed, because the real focus is on the interconnected relationships between the main characters: "Eagle" Stokes, a famed jazz sax player to often controlled by his drug addiction, David, a university professor who tries to drink away the guilt for causing the accidental death of his wife, Keel, the owner of a coffee shop who acts as a caretaker for "Eagle" and takes in David to help run the coffee house, and Della, Keel's girlfriend. Della is the least defined character in the film, and the interracial relationship between her and Keel, while somewhat radical in an American film at the time, doesn't carry the same weight as the sometimes volatile friendship between the three men.

The inspirations of cinema verite, French New Wave, Cassavetes, and Ingmar Bergman, are easy to spot, but what's best is seeing a film shot on the streets of New York and Philadelphia back in 1966. No sets here, but real apartments and night clubs. Not only are the apartments small and cramped, but sometimes truly grimy, very much lived in. And this is what makes Sweet Love, Bitter worth seeing. Even if one deems aspects of the story to be contrived, the characters exist in a very real, very unpretty world. The camera pans on the patrons in the bars and nightclubs, and these look like people from the streets, not from some casting agency. I'm not absolutely sure, but Professor Jacobs may have made a cameo appearance sitting in at Keel's coffee house.

The production is unique confluence of talent. Herbert Danska did some documentary work before leaving filmmaking for artistic expression as a children's books illustrator. This is the only film credit for Lewis Jacobs. Don Murray was in a transitory period between his early Hollwood stardom of the late Fifties and early Sixties, and a career primarily in television movies and series. This would be Dick Gregory's only substantial acting role. How much of the performance was improvised, I couldn't say, but there is a sense of rawness that adds laughter and anger. Murray reputedly was responsible for the casting of Diane Varsi, a Hollywood dropout who acted with Murray in From Hell to Texas, the same production noted for the contentious relationship between director Henry Hathaway and Dennis Hopper. In smaller roles, Bruce Glover, more famous for his son, Crispin, and John Randolph, one of his first big screen credits following being blacklisted. Sweet Love, Bitter did prove to be an effective launching pad for Robert Hooks, his first feature film, to be followed by work with Otto Preminger, and television series stardom in N.Y.P.D..

Whether the film is in any way "about" Charlie Parker is besides the point. After forty-five years, what does stand are the thoughts on art and artists, as well as the often taken for granted exploitation of artists. Even the racial aspects to the film, so topical at the time, are still issues that have not been fully resolved. Most pointed is a moment of truth between David and Eagle, where David fails in the courage of his stated convictions. Even more timeless is a brief moment when a would-be admirer of Eagle, a young white woman, eagerly tells the musician that she would do anything for him. The glimmer of hope for some kind of rendezvous sags to disappointment when constantly broke Eagle asks her to lend him twenty dollars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:28 AM

January 10, 2012

Gurozuka

Yoichi Nishiyama - 2005
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Is this a horror film primarily aimed for a young female audience? It looks that way for a couple of reasons. First, the cast is all young women. Second, even though there is a bit of chatter about two of the characters being "in a relationship", and there is a scene of one of the women taking a shower, there is nothing going on that would be considered titillating. I would imagine that this film would have been rated something like the equivalent to PG-13 in Japan, with only some of the bloodiness being tilting towards something a bit more extreme for stateside audiences.

The story is about a group of six students and a teacher, part of a movie club, who go to a secluded house in a remote, wooded area. One of the students has discovered an old film made seven years ago, by some previous students, about a vengeful ghost wearing a Noh mask. Part of the film features an on screen murder. There are rumors that what was recorded on film was real. The attempt to discover the truth, as well as recreate the older film, causes havoc and death.

Food disappears. Cell phones and money disappear. Eventually some of the students disappear. When those that are still around get a drift of what's happening, and assume that they are being haunted by the mysterious masked woman they saw in the film, it is understood that the deaths are staged in ways that refer to five categories of Noh plays. While this isn't discussed deeply by any means, it provides a nice contrast to similar western horror films that are either self-referential or refer usually to any horror film usually no older than Night of the Living Dead. There are some of the usual horror film tropes, the point of view camera shots, the "gotcha" moments, and the discovery of being in the one place where there is no cell phone signal. The use of the noh mask in Japanese horror films, while effective, has not been overused.

There is nothing of substance about the creative team behind Gurozuka, although a good part of the credit would seem to go to Tadayoshi Kubo, who created the story and was one of the film's producers. Kubo's high watermark would be as a producer of Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera. IMDb is not the most reliable source for Asian films, but it seems like Gurozuka marks the end of a four film filmography by Yoichi Nishiyama, as well as composer Ryuji Murayama, whose creative use of scratchy guitars and bells makes the score worth mentioning. Yukari Fukui has made a career for herself as a voice artist, but makes for an engaging screen presence with her cute overbite. Yuko Kurosawa provides most of the eye candy during her time onscreen.

The film is a curious choice for the return of Synapse Films' Asian Cult Film Collection. Unlike previous releases, Gurozaku is not particularly gory, nor is there anything erotic. Nor is the film just flat out idiosyncratic like the films of Minoru Kawasaki. I would hope that the brain trust of Synapse looks beyond Japan for some movies in need of DVD rescue, perhaps the acclaimed Thai thriller, Slice, from the director of a couple of the Art of the Devil films, Kongkiat Khomsiri, and written by Wisit Sasanatieng, most famed for his Tears of the Black Tiger. Or maybe something from Indonesian filmmaker Joko Anwar. For what it is, Gurozaka is better than what I had expected, but without either audacity or originality to make the film of more than minor interest.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:01 AM

January 05, 2012

Air Hostess

Kong zhong xiao jie
Yi Wen - 1959
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

"Tis the season to be pummeled by various studios with screeners, bearing the words, "For your consideration". And yes, some of these films have already been considered as award worthy by critics groups. For myself, I'm already tired of the sense of self-importance, and worse, the joylessness of these films. Sometimes you need to see a film that really isn't aspiring to be anything more than entertainment.

Enter Grace Chang. It was a couple of Decembers ago when I went through her five DVD box set. Any of her other films are now separate purchases. And there is nothing in Air Hostess that is expressly artistic, but it sure is fun. There's also nothing very original, but this is a film made at a time when the Hong Kong film industry would shamelessly crib from Hollywood without fear of consequences. It doesn't take much to imagine Doris Day, Lauren Bacall and Rock Hudson in the roles respectively taken by Chang, the lean and lovely Julie Yeh Feng, and the solid Roy Chiao.

Chang plays Keping, a young woman who is constantly reminded by her mother, and a drip of a would-be suitor that she's of marriageable age. Maybe her motivations for being what is called in this film, an air hostess, is questionable, mostly as a way of avoiding marriage to a guy she wants to keep at arms length, in a profession that at the time required that the young women remain single. Even if being an air hostess keeps Keping from doing what she really wants, which is basically to sing and dance, it also allows her to bide her time to figure out what she wants out of life. And while Air Hostess can't really be described as being feminist, at least in the western sense, it does present a narrative involving women having professional aspirations and a loosening of the traditional filial ties.

Keping proves to be a natural at her job, proving her ability to offer coffee in English, French, and three different Chinese dialects, making friends with the other hostesses, and carrying on an on and off relationship with Daying (Chiao). Along the way, smugglers of fake jewelry are caught, Keping finds opportunities to sing and dance, and a marriage is conducted in mid-flight.

The film seems to be geared to a younger, more cosmopolitan Hong Kong audience. Keping travels to Singapore, Taipei and Bangkok, and the film would serve as reminder of the wonders of air travel, with an emphasis on pan-Asian connections. A song about Taiwan is a reminder of that time when Hong Kong and Taiwan were more closely linked as part of the Chinese diaspora following the communist takeover of mainland China. Chang and Chiao spend time wandering around various temple grounds near Bangkok, the kind of scenic meandering that could well have inspired parts of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love.

Based on what I've read previously, How to Marry a Millionaire must have been very popular in Hong Kong, providing a template for several films. Jean Negulesco's film had a running gag with Marilyn Monroe bumping into everything without her glasses. In Air Hostess, one of the women is perpetually clumsy, allowing her to "meet cute" with a flight navigator when she slips on the airplane stairway. One of the musical themes is a barely disguised reworking of the song, "I Cain't Say No" from Oklahoma, so obvious that Richard Rodgers should have received credit. Younger viewers may find themselves aghast at the sight of propeller airplanes and passenger meals handled with bare hands. For myself, at a time when the Hollywood machine wants to browbeat me into taking some of their very current films seriously, a detour into the past of cheerful silliness can be its own reward.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM | Comments (1)

January 03, 2012

Nichiren and the Great Mongol Invasion

Nichiren to moko daishurai / Nichiren - A Man of Many Miracles
Kunio Watanabe - 1958

I first read about this film, mentioned by Donald Richie, without knowing anything about it. The title meant nothing to me until a few years later. Being a Nichiren Buddhist not long after this introduction to Japanese film, my interest was piqued. I even bought the Japanese DVD, even though it lacks English subtitles. Having been a Buddhist for about thirty-eight years, I pretty much know the main narratives about Nichiren. I had no idea that there was a subtitled edition of this film until I browsed through a list of DVDs starring Raizo Ichikawa from, shall we say, an independent dealer of subtitled Japanese films.

The period of life covered here starts from the day Nichiren, a Buddhist monk, declares that the way to practice Buddhism correctly is to chant, "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo", essentially the title of the Lotus Sutra. The film ends when the huge Mongol invasion is repelled by one very strong typhoon that sinks hundreds of ships carrying thousands of soldiers, off the coast of Japan. The basics of the story are true, even if some of history is changed. I don't know if anyone experienced any kind of epiphany when watching the film, or any kind of change of faith. To me the main motivation of the filmmakers was more of an emphasis on historical spectacle, a chance to show what the special effects department could do, and to keep some of Daiei Studios big stars busy.

Paul Schrader wrote about what he called "Over-abundant" means in his book, Transcendental Style in Film, using Cecil B. DeMille's work, primarily in his second version of The Ten Commandments as his main example. For subtlety, look elsewhere. Here the soundtrack includes a chorus melodiously chanting "Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo" to music. A scene with Nichiren about to be beheaded features the would-be executioner electrocuted by some very unconvincing lightning. About to be dumped at Sado Island, riding a small boat buffeted by some big waves, Nichiren takes a stick, points it at the water, and the kanji for "Nam-Myo-Ho-Renge" appears superimposed on the now calm sea. Some of the dialogue is recognizably from the letters of Nichiren, but when people speak to each other, it is not in conversation but more of an exchange of overly dramatic declarations.

As often happens with historical films, the makers are a bit loose with the facts. Even with allowances for dramatic license, I have to wonder if there was anyone to give some advice on the set regarding Buddhism. At one point, Nichiren is seen having a small enshrined statue in his house, when one of the main parts of this Buddhist practice is the absence of anything other than chanting to a scroll, known as the gohonzon. I also have to assume that when a gohonzon is actually shown, it is a movie prop, and not the work of a temple based calligrapher. Nichiren's parents appeared much more prosperous than is suggested by the biographical writings, especially considering that this is a caste bound society where fishermen were considered lower class. With the exception of the shack in Sado Island, Nichiren's various residences are much bigger and nicer than one would expect from someone who relied on the donations of his believers.

Kazuo Hasegawa, with his baby face and luxurious eyelashes, may have been a big star. At age 50, he was also a bit too old to play someone in his thirties. Given that extant artwork isn't the most accurate indicator of what anyone in 13th Century Japan, Hasegawa's Nichiren is no more or less true than Jeffrey Hunter, Max Von Sydow, or anyone else who took on the role of Jesus. Back when he was still groomed to be a matinee idol, Shintaro Katsu plays Shijo Kingo, a famous samurai believer, while Raizo Ichikawa appears as a government official and seemingly the only straight-shooter in the otherwise corrupt shogunate. Kurosawa stock player Takashi Shimura has a small role as a peasant who helps feed and protect Nichiren. Simply viewed for the appearance of a cast from Japanese cinema's golden age makes Nichiren and the Great Mongol Invasion entertaining. It might have been somewhat better had Kunio Watanabe's ideas for filming in wide screen extended to more than several lateral tracking shots, or having the actor run straight stage right or stage left across the screen. A smarter film that used a more sophisticated means of conveying Nichiren Buddhism was written about here. Still, I'm comfortable enough with my own faith and how it is depicted in film to giggle when, in response to Nichiren's stating to a young samurai that he predicted the Mongol invasion, the subtitle reads, "No kidding?".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

December 30, 2011

Hunger

Sult
Henning Carlsen - 1966
New Yorker Video Region 1 DVD

Seen forty-five years after its initial release, Hunger looks and sounds like the very definition of a mid-Sixties art film. Aside from the basic story about urban alienation, there is the stark black and white cinematography, the score by Krzysztof Komeda, sometimes discordant and atonal, and a scene of Per Oscarsson and Gunnel Lindblom alternately trying to seduce each other when not hold each other at arms length, with the kind of intimacy that English language films at the time could barely hint at. One could call Hunger an art film with a capital A. The film was Denmark's entry for the Oscar for Foreign Language Film in 1966, but didn't make the final cut. Consider also that another very serious Scandinavian film didn't make the cut either, Ingmar Bergman's Persona, and Henning Carlsen's film would be in good company.

Hunger is the film that won Per Oscarsson the Best Actor award at Cannes. Oscarsson lost weight prior to shoot, walking a distance of about 300 miles from Copenhagen to Oslo, the location of the film. And while Oscarrson never lacked for work, appearing in character roles in English language films, and starring in films in his native Sweden, he would never appear in a film that would seem to make the most of his abilities as in this film.

Not having read Knut Hamsun's novel, I can't discuss in what ways the film honors or strays from the literary source. In opening scene, Oscarsson's character, the writer Pontus, is scribbling some notes, tears off part of a sheet of paper, and stuffs it in his mouth, almost choking himself before spitting it out. It's a scene that was improvised, but it provides a powerful visual sense of the title. There is the other kind of hunger as Pontus stares at hanging sausages, looks longingly at plates of some kind of stew (the 1890s version of a fast food meal), as well as the hunger for respect and recognition. Pontus also is in self-denial about his circumstances, literally giving away what little money he has, making up fantastic stories about his life, even when reduced to trying to sell his suit buttons for some pocket change. There are several shots of Pontus' extremely scuffed shoes to indicate his extreme poverty.

There is a sense of Oscarsson begin totally immersed in his character with the unkempt hair, the unshaven face, and especially the stained teeth. That Pontus and the woman he is obsessed with, that he calls Ylajali, briefly get together is in a conventional sense astonishing considering Pontus' lack of grooming or basic hygiene. Ylajali is an ambiguous character as well, by all appearances the resident of one of the better neighborhoods. Yet in one scene, looking at the menu of a restaurant, she and her sister agree that they can afford to treat themselves to coffee. When Ylajali tells Pontus to leave her apartment because the maid is scheduled to return, there is the possibility that it is Ylajali is the in fact the maid of the house. While never obviously stated, the film suggests that whatever attraction Ylajali may have for Pontus may be based on her own unstated appetites.

The DVD includes Henning Carlsen discussing his interest in making a film from Knut Hamsun's novel, and the various twists and turns in the production, noted also for being the first pan-Scandinavian coproduction. A different actor, Per Myrberg, was the intended star, bowing out to perform in a play directed by Ingmar Bergman. Carlsen talks about the conflicting acting styles of Oscarsson and Lindblom, actors who spoke different languages, and trying to make the film appear to take place in overcast weather during the sunniest Fall season in memory. There is also some insight to be gleaned in a discussion by writer Paul Auster and Hamsun's grand-daughter Regine Hamsun.

The main attraction is Per Oscarsson's performance. This may open the eyes of a younger audience who might only know Oscarsson as Lisbeth Salander's guardian angel, Holger Palmgren, in The Girl who Played with Fire. There is much to like about Hunger, but Oscarsson's performance is enough reason to rescue this film from its status as an almost forgotten classic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:06 AM

December 28, 2011

Rickshaw Man

Muhomatsu no issho
Hiroshi Inagaki - 1958
Toho DVD

While most of Rickshaw Man seems to indicate that Hiroshi Inagaki hasn't quite figured out how to make use of the TohoScope screen, there is one brilliant moment. The following scene is done in a single long take, in a full master shot. The rickshaw driver, Matsu, is carting a man who appears to be British, or perhaps it is a Japanese businessman dressed in the British style, complete with the bowler hat. Matsu sees the young boy, Toshio, whom he looks after on behalf of the boy's widowed mother, struggling with a kite string. Matsu stops the rickshaw, seen on the left hand side of the screen, and goes to help Toshio who is approximately in the center. While Matsu is quietly assisting Toshio unravel the kite string, we see the business man knocking the ground with his umbrella, soon hopping around the abandoned rickshaw like an angry rabbit. The scene is shot in the simplest way possible, and while it forces the viewer to glance between two points on the wide screen, it is also quite funny to watch. Were that the rest of Rickshaw Man were as good as that one scene.

The main reason for seeing Rickshaw Man is that it is the only film pairing two of Japan's golden age stars, Toshiro Mifune and Hideko Takamine. One the down side, the film is more Mifune than Takamine. And setting aside that Inagaki was never the visual stylist on the level of Kurosawa, neither is he a director of actors, too often letting Mifune worst excess dominate. Maybe the character of Matsu is mostly bluff and bluster, but too often I was thinking of the difference between John Wayne directed by John Ford in The Quiet Man compared to John Wayne as a parody of himself in something like Andrew McLaglen's McLintock!. Takamine seems to be in the film mostly for her star power, in a role that probably could have been filled as easily by any of her peers. Considering that there are so few of her films available on subtitled DVDs, it's a matter of grabbing whatever is available. Chishu Ryu appears in a couple of scenes as well. Most of the pleasure of watching these actors has less to do with their respective performances in this film than what they represent in the history of Japanese cinema.

The film takes place initially in 1905, at the end of the war between Japan and Russia. Except for a policeman in uniform, and the one previously mentioned gentleman in modern dress, one would think that the film takes place in an earlier era. In a scene where Matsu causes a ruckus in a theater, it is explained about the change in status of rickshaw drivers, where certain considerations were part of a now forgotten tradition. Matsu encourages a young boy, egged on by his friends, to climb a tree. When the young boy hurts himself, Matsu, feeling guilty about causing the situation, takes the boy home. Refusing any form of financial compensation, Matsu takes the boy to the doctor, and develops a friendship with the boy's parents, an army officer and his wife. The officer prematurely dies, and Matsu is entrusted by the widow, Yoshiko, to act as a masculine role model for the boy, Toshio. What follows is primarily a story of unstated love between Matsu and Yoshiko.

Rickshaw Man is one of those films that works more often in spite of itself. Where Inagaki really goes wrong is the too frequent use of shots of rickshaw wheels spinning to indicate the passage of time. There is also a scene with Matsu reflecting on his life, with the flashback primarily consisting of previously seen shots seen as color negatives, almost as if the Fifty-three year old Inagaki, whose directorial career began in 1928, needed to prove he could be as avant-garde as the new kids from rival studios. Somewhat more successful is a flashback of Matsu as a boy, alone in a forest, imagining himself to be pursued by some malevolent flying spirits.

As the title indicates, this is mostly Mifune's show, and Inagaki proved himself to be compliant enough to be Mifune's director of choice in between the star's projects with Akira Kurosawa, and after his final break with the star filmmaker. Kurosawa may have been a hard taskmaster, but he also brought out a range in Mifune that isn't as apparent in other films. No sword fights here, but Mifune gets to show his "musical" talents, beating on a giant drum, demonstrating different kinds of percussive beats. Inagaki goes a bit wild here with a series of quick panning shots of the admiring audience, and a visual non sequitur of ocean waves. Rickshaw Man was one of six films starring Mifune in 1958, a year that included Kurosawa's Hidden Fortress. Hideko Takamine would not make another film until 1960 with what some consider a signature role in Mikio Naruse's When a Woman Ascends the Stairs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:56 AM

December 26, 2011

The Reluctant Debutante

Vincente Minnelli - 1958
Warner Archives DVD

I don't know why it took me so long, but I just realized that both of Vincente Minnelli's films from 1958 centered on preparing young women for their "introduction" as it were, to society, or at least a specific society. Gigi is the film with the box office and Oscar glory, but I prefer the less appreciated The Reluctant Debutante. What I mostly like are the two female stars, Kay Kendall and Sandra Dee.

There is one great shot of the two actresses together. They are listening to young drummer John Saxon tell about his time in Africa, recounting his witnessing of a tribal wedding dance. Both women are wide eyed. Dee looks on in fascination, while Kendall looks on in shock. That they are able to express themselves with their eyes only, without the need to verbally explain their feelings, is both tribute to their abilities as well as that of Vincente Minnelli.

In retrospect, it seems fitting that Kay Kendall and Sandra Dee would be in a film together as neither had the opportunity to fully manifest their respective talents. Kendall made one more film - the title is painfully ironic as Kendall had died in 1959 of leukemia at age 33. My favorite moments with Kendall involve her falling out the door, discovered eavesdropping on Rex Harrison and Sandra Dee. Between the pratfalls in this film, and her seemingly impromptu turn on the trumpet in Genevieve, I always felt that had she been given the opportunity, Kay Kendall could have excelled in a role calling on physical comedy.

As for Sandra Dee, I suspect that she is primarily dismissed by people who haven't bothered to actually watch any of the films. I also think Dee's signing on with Universal at a time when the studio system was crumbling may have hindered her potential. Still, whatever was involved in the casting process, Dee is good when she worked with good directors. The high point is A Summer Place, especially a strong scene when Dee is force to undergo an unwanted and unneeded gynecological exam following a chaste night with Troy Donahue. A hint of what was to come a year later is in a scene in The Reluctant Debutante when Dee fights off the unwanted advances of a would be suitor. Maybe it was her age, and perhaps she was playing off of her own emotions, but Sandra Dee could make the plight of a misunderstood teenage girl as real as anything done by any method actor.

As for the film itself, the years have made London society and debutante balls seem more remote. This is a world where men dress in tuxedos and the women wear long gowns. There is a brief tourist eye view of the changing of the guard, but otherwise everything takes place either in the apartment home of Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall, or in a ballroom. Only in a shot of a tea room is there a glimpse of multi-culti London with some Indians also enjoying their afternoon tea. If I place what may seem like inordinate emphasis on that shot, it reflects Vincente Minnelli's own world view of racial inclusiveness which would extend to his films where possible. While the story ends with the American in London girl, Sandra Dee, dancing the night away with the American in London boy, John Saxon, the final shot has some poignancy as the last screen kiss of onscreen and real life husband and wife, Rex Harrison and Kay Kendall.

Kay Kendall, Rex Harrison and Vincente Minnelli

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

December 22, 2011

Norwegian Wood

Noruwei no mori
Tran Anh Hung - 2010
Soda Pictures Region 2 DVD

Probably the biggest problem with translating Haruki Murakami's novel into a film is that it is bursting with imagery. And the film that I imagined wasn't the film that Tran Anh Hung made. Which in turn leads to the questions of what is a filmmaker's responsibility when adapting a novel to film, and also what should the expectations be of the audience, especially those who have read the source novel.

If you haven't read Murakami's novel, I can't recommend it enough. It is, of the several novels I have read by him, his most conventional in structure and most realistic. A look back at the end of the Sixties, it is about a young man, Watanabe, trying to navigate his way though the turmoil of the times, with student protests and concurrent cultural shifts, and his personal relationships from the past. Those past relationships are in the form of his best friend, Kizuki, who committed suicide during their last year of high school for no apparent reason, and Kikuchi's girl friend, Naoko, who unexpectedly shows up in Tokyo, where Watanabe is now studying. Losing her virginity to Watanabe on the night of her 20th birthday, Naoko's attachment to the memory of Kizuki is so great that she withdraws from life, living in a secluded psychiatric facility in the mountains. Watanabe attracts the attention of Midori, a fellow student who's willing to give Watanabe the space to figure a few things out for himself.

The title is from the Beatles' song, perhaps chosen by Murakami because its brief narrative is about an awkwardly handled relationship. What the film doesn't convey, and what makes Murakami's novels fun to read, are the loaded cultural references. Not just music, but also the many literary references. There is a very nice passage in the novel, relayed in the first person by Watanabe, about bonding with a friend over their share enthusiasm for F. Scott Fitzgerald. For me, the biggest loss in the film version of Norwegian Wood was the lack of cultural references, especially knowing that when I went to college at about the same time that the film takes place, all we would talk about is film, literature and music, especially music.

Even though the film comes across as a stripped down version of the novel, there are still reasons to appreciate what's on the screen. It is also worth remarking that the film stands as a very coherent work considering it was made by an international cast and crew, under the direction of French-Vietnamese Tran. Barely speaking above a whisper, Rinko Kikuchi, is who imagined as Naoko. Kikuchi has never failed to command audience attention, especially since her role in Babel, and convinces as a younger woman, just out of her teens, totally vulnerable, only able to protect herself by withdrawing into a shell that offers little protection. The other nice discovery is Asian-American model Kiko Mizuhara as Midori, with her expressive eyes and full lips. As can be expected from his previous work, cinematographer Mark Lee is unerring in his choice of compositions. Certainly, if the opportunity arises, see this film theatrically, but one of the highlights of the "Making of" DVD supplement shows Lee setting up an elaborate tracking shot in the snow. For a film with the title of a Beatles' song, much of the period music is from Can, with also a Doors' song, "Indian Summer", all integrated with a score composed by Jonny Greenwood, that ranges from guitar solos to full orchestral soundtrack. For those interested, I very much also recommend another adaptation of Haruki Murakami, Jun Ichikawa's film of Tony Takitani.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:46 AM

December 15, 2011

Rider on the Rain

Le passager de la pluie
Rene Clement - 1970
Optimum Home Entertainment Region 2 DVD

At one point in Rider on the Rain, Marlene Jobert tells Charles Bronson that he has a smile like a Cheshire cat. The description is apt as most of their relationship is of a cat toying with a little white mouse. Also, the film begins with a quote from Alice in Wonderland, with Jobert's character plunging down a rabbit hole of troubling past memories and a mystery that's over her head.

Bronson's smile is simultaneously friendly and threatening, insinuating himself on Jobert, first spying on her as a wedding guest at a church, dancing with her at the wedding party, and making mention of facts that should be unknown to anyone. This cat plays a series of games of catch and release with his presumed prey. Even when the mystery of how Bronson's character is revealed, what is never explained is why his real object of pursuit, the title character, showed up in the small seacoast town in the first place.

Rene Clement and writer Sebastian Japrisot pay light tribute to John Huston and Alfred Hitchcock, with Bronson as the mysterious stranger, Dobbs, and another character named McGuffin. Marlene Jobert plays the woman, Mellie, short for Melancholy, who first spots the rider, a stern bald man clutching a small red bag. That the rider is never actually seen stepping of the bus that normally doesn't stop through the small town, but appears as the bus leaves adds to the mystery of his presence, as does his walking through the rain storm towards some unknown destination in the otherwise empty town. Ultimately, Clement and Japrisot are more interested in Dobbs and Mellie than they are in the person who inadvertently brought them together.

I usually don't talk about clothing in film, but one of the visual constants in Rider on the Rain is that Mellie is seen only wearing white, white mini-dresses and a white raincoat. The she is wearing white clothing, with lengths well above her knees, there is the simultaneous projection of innocence and sexuality. Even though Mellie is a married woman, the white dresses almost make her appear as a bride. In a way these conflicting images are fitting for someone who is both the possessor of certain knowledge and at the same time someone who puts herself in danger due to mistaken assumptions. There is a running gag involving the throwing of walnuts against glass windows that indicates if someone may be in love. While the relationship between Mellie and Dobbs remains chaste, the sexual tension is apparent from the moment that the two meet.

The Optimum DVD comes with both the original French language version and a somewhat shorter English language version. Even dubbed in French, Charles Bronson's presence is unmistakable. The film was made at a time between the end of the Sixties and beginning of the Seventies, when Bronson was a bigger star in Europe than in the U.S., where he was mostly relegated to supporting roles or television guest shots. There is one scene where Bronson demonstrates his physicality, getting into a fight with a bunch of gangsters, but mostly this is a more thoughtful person who can simply look intimidating and still get his way. According to IMDb, Bronson wanted to revisit the character of Dobbs over ten years later, although that project never came to fruition. Bronson had collaborated with writer Japrisot previously on the film, Farewell, Friend, against top billed Alain Delon. Rider on the Rain also features Bronson's wife, Jill Ireland, in a small role of Nicole, the owner of a dress store, Mellie's best friend, and a woman with some secrets of her own.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:43 AM

December 13, 2011

Don't Open Till Christmas

Edmund Purdom - 1984
Mondo Macobro All Region DVD

The most fascinating part about Don't Open Till Christmas is the "Making of" supplement. What makes this of interest is that there are bits of deleted scenes and a scrapped song, suggesting that there could have been alternative versions of the film. The song, a vocal by an unknown female, has lyrics about being insane, and actually is pretty good, better than much of the pop vocals one would usually find in a low budget horror film. One of the scenes involves some rats who are actually fatter than most of the guys wearing Santa Claus outfits. Another scene, that didn't quite work out, had one of the victims electrocuted by Christmas lights. There is also one scene that was reshot with different actors, although why that scene needed to be redone is never explained. It's to Mondo Macabro's credit that no one tries to disguise the fact that no matter what was originally intended, Don't Open Till Christmas is in their words "a patchwork".

This bit of cinematic Christmas cheese is a holiday themed slasher movie, based in London, with the victims all men in Santa Claus suits. The killer, as a young lad, saw Mommy schtupping Santa Claus. Variety being the spice of life, the killer employs various means each time - gun, straight razor, knife, garrote, among other implements. That's not chestnuts roasting in an open fire, it's Santa's face!

The best scene in the film, and one that almost appears to have been inserted from another movie, was shot on location at The London Dungeon. Santa is chased around by the unknown killer, surrounded by various displays of horror, torture, depravity and some brazen sexuality. If I ever visit London, I'm going to visit this place. It's not that the scene is any more suspenseful, as much as it is more elaborate and more atmospheric. I can't say for certain, but I'm assuming this was one of the parts of the film not directed by Edmund Purdom.

For those too young for the name to mean anything, Edmund Purdom's Hollywood star shone as bright and as long as a Forth of July sparkler. For overviews of Purdom;s career, there is this fairly respectful obituary, and a view that further explains the unintended humor to be found in his films. Purdom probably shouldn't have taken all the blame for the failures of the films he was expected to carry, and the guy was nothing, if not tenacious enough to make a lifelong career of acting, taking what appeared to be anything that came his way, big or small, big budget or no budget. As it turned out, Purdom's one shot at directing turned out to be so bad that even though he is given solo credit, about half of the released film was actually shot by Alan Birkenshaw under the name of Al McGoohan, given screen credit for writing and directing additional scenes.

Caroline Munro appears briefly to strut her stuff, and show off her singing ability, cut shot when a dead Santa appears on stage. One of the other DVD supplements covers the career of producer Dick Randall, the kind of show biz character from a time when movies could be made for a few dollars and lots of promises.

Don't Open Till Christmas is more curio than classic. Drink enough spiked egg nog and I'm certain several of the plot holes and incongruities will be easily overlooked, providing the viewer a mildly scary little Christmas.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:40 AM

December 08, 2011

Turning Gate

Saenghwalui balgyeon
Hong Sang-soo - 2002
YA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A line repeated three times in Turning Gate is, "Even though it's difficult to be a human being, let's not turn into monsters." It's a line that is initially mocked by the main character when he first hears it, only to be repeated by him to the two women with whom he has thorny relationships.

It's not just difficult to be a human being, but often times awkward. Turning Gate is a movie about things said and unsaid, and the conversations between people that take often substitute for meaningful dialogue. While riding in the back of a cab, Kyung-soo receives a phone call from Sung-woo. It takes a few moments for Kyung-soo to realize who he is talking to, as the two men have been out of touch for about five years. Having just been told that his anticipated acting job will not happen, and with nothing else planned, Kyung-soo goes to spend time at the small town outside of Seoul where Sung-woo lives. The relationship between the two men is cemented by eating and drinking, but little else. For the two men, about 30 years old, there is not much else going in their lives as Kyung-soo's acting career is stalled, and there is no evidence regarding Sung-woo's description of himself as a writer.

What limited fame Kyung-soo has as an actor is parlayed, with mixed results, with with his relationship with women. Sung-woo introduces Kyung-soo to Myung-suk, a dance teacher. While the three get together for dinner and many bottles of beer, Sung-woo steps outside for a moment. Myung-suk invites Kyung-soo to kiss, to "break the ice" between them. The invitation is expressed in a fragmented sentence, and to kiss, the two need to contort themselves with the small dining table between them. The two get together, spending the night in a hotel. For whatever physical passion is expressed, Myung-suk also declares her love of Kyung-soo, a feeling not reciprocated. Not only is Myung-suk angry that Kyung-soo is not in love, but her attempt as revenge, a night with Sung-woo, fails to elicit any jealousy.

While riding on the train back to Seoul, Kyung-soo strikes up a conversation with another passenger, Sun-young. Gradually, Sun-young reveals that she has seen Kyung-soo on stage. Kyung-soo gets off the train before reaching Seoul, to follow Sun-young to her home. Even when the two get together, it becomes clear that a real relationship will probably never happen.

The title comes from a legendary gate serves as a tourist attraction. The actual gate is never seen, and reportedly doesn't turn either. The legend is that a commoner, in love with a princess, was transformed into a snake that wrapped itself around the princess. The princess was free only when she departed at the gate to get food for the snake. The princess never returned. The legend is one that may well be incompletely told. Hong's film chronicles a series of unkept promises of return, of love and relationships that prove to be one-sided.

There is some kind of color scheme that takes place that I cannot explain. Sun-woo gives Kyung-soo a red t-shirt which is worn through the rest of the film. The same shade of red appears at various points in the film. There is a similar use of color noticeable when Sun-young wears a camel color jacket contrasted against other shades of light brown. Again, I can't point out any kind of specific meaning to the use of color other than that Hong manages to sneak in a painterly visual scheme to some of the shots.

The lives of the characters turn no more than the gate. The four either wait for something, or someone, to change their lives, or simply choose not to leave a life that may be unsatisfying, but also comforting in its familiarity. In the case of Kyung-soo, no matter where he goes, or what he does, his life is one of getting caught in the rain.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

November 29, 2011

Three Stripes in the Sun

Richard Murphy - 1955
Columibia Pictures Archives DVD

I'm not too optimistic about the chances of ever seeing King Vidor's Japanese War Bride. Donald Richie made sure that film was not included in a King Vidor retrospective presented by the Museum of Modern Art, back in the Seventies. In the meantime, there is Three Stripes in the Sun, perhaps less meaningful as a more modest production from a filmmaker of decidedly less reputation. The film is worth seeing in terms of how it deals with interracial love at a time when Hollywood was tiptoeing around the subject.

The basically true story is about an American soldier stationed in Japan in 1949. A survivor of the attack at Pear; Harbor, Hugh O'Reilly doesn't want anything to do with Japan or any Japanese people. When the Japanese man O'Reilly mistakes as having stolen his wallet turns out to be a priest, O'Reilly is ordered to make amends by driving the priest back to his orphanage outside Osaka. Coming along to show the way is Yuko, a young Japanese woman who works as a translator for the army brass. It's a bit of Irish and Hollywood blarney as O'Reilly makes it his mission to build a new orphanage, feed the children, and eventually fall in love with Yuko.

Part of the film was shot in and around Osaka, and the Japanese characters are all played by Japanese actors. From a historical perspective, Three Stripes in the Sun is a fairly progressive film. Even though the production code was starting to crumble, it could be that with a relatively lower budget, Richard Murphy was able to tread where the higher profile and more expensive films dare not go. While we don't actually see Aldo Ray and Mitsuko Kimura kiss, they are filmed in such a way that the viewer assumes they could be locking lips, or at least puckering up face to face. There is even brief discussion that racial prejudice exists in the United States. There is that grain of salt, that this is the story of an American military man with a Japanese woman, Madama Butterfly with a happy ending, with a white male protagonist and the exotic other female. For Hollywood, the other shoe wouldn't drop for another four years, when Sam Fuller's The Crimson Kimono showed Victoria Shaw choosing James Shigeta over Glenn Corbett.

Richard Murphy directed only two films. The second, The Wackiest Ship in the Army is as mildly amusing as the title. Murphy's main distinction was as a screenplay writer. Twice, the Writers Guild of America nominated Murphy for screenplays, ". . . Dealing Most Ably with Problems of the American Scene". The movies in question were Panic in the Streets and Cry of the City. Murphy was also nominated twice for Oscars, once for another film directed by Elia Kazan, Boomerang!. Having taken time off from Hollywood to fight in the Pacific during World War II seems to have made a major impact, so that whether Three Stripes in the Sun came as an assignment, or as a project he pitched for himself, Murphy had the credentials to make a film with a military setting and one addressing a topical issue.

The real Hugh O'Reilly looked more like William Schallert than Aldo Ray. Of course Ray was a star at Columbia Pictures back in the Fifties. Historical accuracy aside, Ray also arguably looks like an imagined American, tall, blond and not the least subtle. When Ray pushes his way through the crowds of Japanese citizens in the beginning of the film, he could well be playing up on the Japanese perception of their Yankee "guests". In supporting roles, there are Chuck Connors and Dick York before finding stardom on the television. Does anyone know what happened to Mitsuko Kimura? Three Stripes in the Sun appears to be her last film. The only other films to her credit are are small, independent film from 1952, Itsu Itsu made mo, also about an American G.I. in love with a young Japanese woman, and two films notable for having screenplays by Kaneto Shindo and Nagisa Oshima. Kimura's biggest claim to fame was appearing on the cover of Life magazine.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM

November 22, 2011

Helldriver

Nihon bundan: Heru doraiba
Yoshihiro Nishimura - 2011
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

I'm not totally sure how to critically approach Helldriver. It's the kind of film that's designed to function as entertainment. There are elements of satire, but otherwise no identifiable message. This is the kind of film that a lot of serious film critics would probably dismiss as a genre film that panders to the fans. To a certain extent, these critics would not be wrong. And while a film like Helldriver is made primarily for an audience much younger than myself, I think my years, decades really, of filmgoing and interest in film history, brings a different kind of perspective.

Consider that these films produced by the Japanese company, Sushi Typhoon, are made by young, or relatively young filmmakers, in conjunction with the venerable Nikkatsu Studios. In the past couple of years, Criterion, primarily through their budget subsidiary, Eclipse, has released several Nikkatsu productions from the mid 1950s through the mid 1960s. These were primarily modestly budgeted films by younger filmmakers, with young actors, for an audience of teens and young adults. These films were usually ignored by the likes of Donald Richie, and only rarely imported, primarily for the exploitation market. Maybe it will take a few years to give Helldriver the kind of consideration now given to a film like A Colt is My Passport or The Warped Ones.

Yoshimura's film looks like he took his favorite bits from George Romero, Sam Raimi, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper and Quentin Tarantino, and tossed them into a mixmaster. High school girl Kika has a hard enough time dealing with a mother and uncle who are serial killer cannibals, but some fireball from outer space has turned them into seemingly indestructible zombies. Even worse, a spray of ash has caused six million people in northern Japan to also become mutant zombies. A wall separates the two parts of Japan, while the government tries to come up with a solution. Kika's mother, who apparently never had much in the way of maternal instincts while human, rips Kika's heart out. Kika manages to live anyways, becoming part cyborg and all zombie hunter.

Nothing is too excessive as far as Yoshimura is concerned. There's an overabundance of sprays of blood, lopped off limbs, and exploding heads. At one point, there's a rain of zombie heads flying towards the small band of zombie hunters. A giant creature composed of zombie parts made me think of something imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. Additionally, there is a speeding car made of reassembled zombie parts. As in such films as Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police, there are hybrid creatures, zombies with guns and swords for appendages. And maybe I'm inured to the blood, guts and gore, but nothing was particularly shocking or disturbing. One might look at Helldriver as the cinematic equivalent of a series of gross out jokes.

Then again, one could also ignore some narrative elements, and view Helldriver as a kind of action painting done with high definition video. It's not only sprinkling of red across the screen. Yoshimura plays with color, with dollops of day-glo colors in almost monochrome scenes, such as in the beginning with a character dressed from head to toe in black, save for his bright red gloves. The occasional creative bursts of color suggest that given the opportunity and inclination, Yoshimura is capable of visual invention beyond the use of body parts.

The five foot, seven inch, lean and full lipped Yumiko Hara has only appeared in two films to the best of my knowledge. She carries the film as Kika, convincingly playing someone a few years younger, and capable of knowing her way around a chainsaw. The better known star in Helldriver is Eihi Shiina, best known as the girlfriend from Hell in Audition, as one mean mother here. One of the DVD supplements is about the launch of Sushi Typhoon in Japan. No matter what one might think of the movies, the enthusiasm of the filmmakers and actors is, well, infectious.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:24 AM

October 27, 2011

Dream Home

Wai dor lei ah yut ho
Pang Ho-Cheung - 2010
IFC Films Region 1 DVD

As pleased as I am that a film by Hong Kong's idiosyncratic Pang Ho-Cheung has received a limited theatrical release in addition to the recent DVD release, I feel some concern that Dream Home might put off those not familiar with his other films. For those who have seen some of Pang's previous films, like Isabella or Exodus, Pang's sometimes sardonic humor is the leavening element for films that have grim premises or taboo subject matter. Dream Home is the grimmest of Pang's movies, yet the filmmaker doesn't shy away from such moments as when a young man, his guts spilling out on the floor, complains about his burnt out marijuana cigarette.

What will also be lost to many stateside viewers is that the film has been conceived and executed as an elaborate middle finger towards China. Dream Home can be seen as a Hong Kong filmmaker's catalogue of almost everything that isn't allowed to be shown on Chinese movie screens, made at a time when virtually every Hong Kong filmmaker looks to China for commercial viability. To some extent the over the top sex and violence is both a throwback to an earlier era of Hong Kong films, while pushing the envelope further than what what done in the past.

The film follows Sheung, a young woman obsessed with buying an apartment with a seaside view. Switching between a night in October 30, 2007, when Sheung goes on a killing spree, and incidents in her past, it is gradually revealed why Sheung wants a particular kind of apartment and why she goes on the rampage in the building she hopes to call home. The film is something of a critique regarding Hong Kong's consumerist society. While Sheung is hoping to buy an apartment that seems financially out of her reach, she works as a telemarketer for a company that issues dubious financial services, as well as part time for an upscale leather goods store with items she could probably not afford herself. Even when Sheung seems ready to buy the apartment of her dreams, the sellers cancel the deal in the hopes of taking advantage of the housing bubble. Yes, Dream Home has its very topical side, with a horror story too many could identify with.

Just how taboo busting is Dream Home? There's patricide, homicide, male and female nudity, sex scenes, some girl on girl action, dismembered fingers, a dismembered member, fatal uses of plastic ties, flesh piercing knives, and lots and lots of blood. The flashbacks simultaneously tell of Sheung's attempts to maintain her place as the good daughter who strives to take care of her family, and makes personal sacrifices to get the "dream home", while part of the narrative is about the forced relocation of poorer Hong Kong families, evicted to make way for newer, taller, and unaffordable apartments. Sheung's actions are extreme, but they are shown to be a response to the failure of playing by the rules, when others change the rules to their advantage.

In the middle of all of this is Josie Ho, serving as both star and producer. Hopefully, Contagion will give Ms. Ho more attention, and remind a few people that she is fluent in English. Josie Ho has made some daring choices in the past, notably the lesbian themed Butterfly. Reportedly Ho and Pang had a dispute regarding the level of violence in the film, with Pang wanting a more realistic approach. As best as I can tell, the producer got the upper hand. I;m not sure if extreme quite covers the level of violence in Dream Home. And it is quite possible that the portrayal of violence is meant to be questioned. And yet with all the maiming and slashing, nothing quite prepared me for the suggested horror of Dream Home's caustic ending.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM | Comments (2)

October 25, 2011

Remaker

Kon raruek chat
Mona Nahm - 2005
Kam & Ronson All Region DVD

With some assistance from producer Oxide Pang, I had higher expectations for Remaker. Mona Nahm's short feature doesn't tread any new ground, nor does it have the visual panache or narrative twists associated with the Pang brothers, working together or separately. The film is of some interest in being one of the few Thai commercial films to be directed by a woman. For the past few years, Nahm has settled on a steady career as a production designer in Los Angeles.

Saved by drowning in a traffic accident, Tom finds himself with a psychic connection to Pim, a young woman now in a coma. Tom takes financially responsibility for Pim's hospitalization. Through telepathy, Pim explains to Tom that he has to save the lives of others to make amends for his karma. Tom eventually learns to go out of his way to do the right thing, rather than bypassing those in trouble. Philosophically, this is barely Buddhism 101. There's even an orange robed priest that seems to appear and disappear at will in a couple of scenes.

The film was done with an extremely low budget. Some of the computer generated special effects are too obvious, and appear done with old technology. And yet . .

Maybe it was a choice done for budgetary reasons, but actress Piyada Akaraseni plays multiple roles, as Pim, and as three women whose lives are saved by Tom. Piyada even got nominated by the Thailand National Film Association for her performance. Maybe Mona Nahm was inspired by Meg Ryan's multiple roles in Joe Versus the Volcano. Piyada has more consistently worked in Thai television. The most interesting of her performances is as Tom's awkward secretary with the very large glasses, which hints at some comic potential that isn't realized in this film. Where mystery and suspense are lacking, Mona Nahm fills the running time with close-ups of Piyada's long hair whipping in the wind. Ultimately, The Remaker is a disappointing film, not heeding the lesson of its own story, that sometimes just having good intentions is never enough.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:11 AM

October 21, 2011

The Echo

Yam Laranas - 2008
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Filipino filmmaker Yam Laranas remade his own film which might have seemed like a good idea at the time. While the original version, which I wrote about two years ago, was a pretty good thriller, the English language remake unsurprisingly went straight to video for U.S. audiences. That The Echo came out at the time American audiences lost interest in English language versions of Asian horror films didn't help the film's commercial prospects.

Most of the film takes place in a huge, dark apartment building in the lower East Side of New York City, 20 Avenue E, a fictional address as "Alphabet City" only goes to the letter D. The walls are all dark brown. The manager describes the construction of the building as pre-war, and since there's an elevator, I assume that means the place hasn't been rehabbed since Franklin Roosevelt was president. What makes The Echo so unbelievable isn't that there's an apartment building haunted by ghosts, but that there's an apartment building in the lower East Side with an elevator, and vacant apartments. Yes, it's been years since I've lived in NYC, East 7th Street near 2nd Avenue to be more exact, but I know things haven't changed that much that a relatively inexpensive apartment would go empty, ghosts or no ghosts.

Ex-con, Bobby, is released from Riker's Island, going to his mother's apartment. The mother died under mysterious circumstances. Bobby hears noises from the apartment next door, followed by an argument between a man and a woman. The arguments continue with the same exchanges of dialogue. Bobby may or may not be seeing and hearing things, with spontaneous bleeding from his ears, and doors that slam shut by themselves. Strange things happen to Bobby's girlfriend, Alyssa, and the neighbor down the hall. The bothersome neighbors next door include a small girl who plays with her toy piano, her young mother, and a tall, bullet headed cop. There's also someone in the apartment across the courtyard sneaking peaks at Bobby's apartment.

The screenplay makes the mistake of moving too much of the scares and mystery outside of Bobby's apartment and the hallway, where the original film took place. Also in the first version, there is more time spent making the girlfriend believe that the haunted apartment dweller has a relationship with the wife next door. What hurts The Echo is that motivation is sacrificed to allow for some creepy, and even mildly scary scenes with characters who are only peripherally involved in Bobby's dilemma.

Laranas even has actress Iza Calzado reprise her role from the first film as the wife next door. As The Echo progressed, there were times when I would have wished that Laranas had, if not done a shot for shot remake, spent more time duplicating the first film's strongest visual moments.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:12 AM

October 19, 2011

Cave of Silken Web

Pan si dong
Meng Hua-Ho - 1967
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The premise sounds like some kind of horror movie. Seven spider demons plan to kidnap and eat the flesh of a Buddhist monk as it promises immortality. As it turns out, the film is a musical fantasy, and the demons resemble showgirls, albeit showgirls with swords. And that's perfectly fine.

The film also is a reminder of the charm of old fashioned special effects. Anybody with even a Super 8 camera can make people appear and disappear at will. Peter Sellers even made fun of this camera trick in The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, referring to it as a cheap cinematic trick. And it does get confusing when several characters exchange places with each other, or pretend to be someone else, but it's hardly the kind of movie that requires close concentration to enjoy.

Taking a little bit more suspension of disbelief is that there are actors portraying a pig and a monkey. I have to assume that because these talking animals look almost human, that they are inspired by similar characters from Chinese theater. This is no ordinary monkey, but a monkey king, who has powerful magic and great martial arts skills. More disconcerting is that when the spider demon women are in animal form, they resemble beetles, not spiders.

The spider demons are shown at their most spidery in the very beginning when waving multiple arms, kind of like Hindu deities. They are easily identified by their almost monochromatic costumes. Between the spider demons and their attendants, it's obvious that the Shaw Brothers had a lot of cute women under contract. Most notable is Angela Yu Chien as the seductive third sister, briefly seen "nude" against one of the oversized spider webs. The film is much like a spider web for that matter, pretty in its own unique and sometimes intricate way, and finally ephemeral.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

October 13, 2011

Amer

Helen Cattet & Bruno Forzani - 2009
Olive Films Region 1 DVD

About four years ago, I wrote a piece on Dario Argento's Opera for a blogathon devoted to the close-up. Amer will certainly remind those familiar with Argento's films. Substantial portions of the images are of extreme close-ups of faces, hands, eyes, and sometimes just a single eye. Even though the poster tries to sell the film as an homage to giallo, Amer as decidedly different aspirations beyond genre expectations.

Let us not forget that the title of Argento's most famous films, Suspiria, roughly translates as "sighs". What Cattet and Forzani take from Argento is the sound of heavy breathing and the rush of wind, and jettison plot and dialogue. There is the old fashioned open razor, black gloves, and mysterious characters who seem to appear and disappear at will. There are also echoes of the work of Henri-Georges Clouzot's Les Diaboliques, a film that helped set the stage for giallo. But also some of the images will recall Bunuel and Dali's Un chien andalou, and Jean Cocteau's Orpheus and/or Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising. It may well be that the reason Amer did only limited theatrical play in the U.S. is because the film has deeper affinities with what are considered parts of the canon of avant-garde cinema. The connection to Bunuel might also be considered as his autobiography is titled, My Last Sigh.

The wisp of a story is in three parts. Ana is first seen as a young girl, hiding from her parents, and also from a woman clad totally in black, face covered by a thick black veil. Through some distantly heard bits of dialogue, it is understood that Ana's grandfather has died. Ana is alone in the room, with the desiccated body of the grandfather. Coveting the pocket watch clasped in his hands, Ana pries loose the watch with a crucifix, dislocating one of the fingers. Like most of Amer, there is no graphic horror in the scene, instead relying on silence, and the dread of being alone in a room with a corpse.

The adolescent Ana exudes a promise of sensuality with close-ups of her full lips, and a breeze that constantly threatens to lift up her short dress. A runaway soccer ball could well be Cattet and Forzani's little nod towards Mario Bava. In this case the ball leads Ana to a gang of bikers who gaze upon the still too young beauty.

Finally, an adult Ana returns home, to a crumbling mansion. The cab driver appears threatening with his black leather gloves. Ana may or may not be alone in the house. Portraits that seem to observe Ana are seen again the eye slashed out of the canvases. Ana seems to move in and out of nightmares where she may, or may not, be the victim.

The more direct Italian connection is in the soundtrack, with pieces by Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai and especially Stelvio Cipriani. What is more notable is that the music is used sparingly, unlike most giallo films which propel the mood and the story with music.

The DVD includes five short film made by Cannet and Forzani which use visual and narrative ideas reworked in their debut feature. Like Amer, there is little or no dialogue, and usually what dialogue does exist does not really explain anything. Even though Cannet and Forzani are abundantly clear about the filmmakers that have influenced them, their smartest decision in Amer was to concentrate on mood and atmosphere. As much as I love classic gialli, many of the films are saddled with plots and narrative twists that make little sense. Amer is best enjoyed by surrendering to the (il)logic of a dream.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:45 AM

October 11, 2011

South of Heaven

J. L. Vara - 2008
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Much of the time, the complaint is that the filmmaker doesn't try hard enough. With South of Heaven, J. L. Vara maybe tries too hard. I can't blame the guy for loving film noir so much that he might want to make his own version, and one that looks kind sort of like the films of the Forties and Fifties. Vara has a great sense of color, which may in effect be film's undoing. The sets looks like sets, and even some outdoor scenes are clearly shot on a sound stage. The problem is that with eye popping reds and yellows, South of Heaven looks like an Edgar G. Ulmer cheapie re-imagined by Vincente Minnelli.

The title is also that of a novel by Jim Thompson. The main bad guy, a psychopath named Mad Dog Mantee, recognizably has the nick name and last name of two gangsters on the run, played by Humphrey Bogart. At the same time, Vara gives way to the more contemporary presentations of sex and violence, mostly violence, especially in the scenes of when the young would be writer, the victim of mistaken identity, has his fingers cut off with a gardening tool. As Roy Coop, Adam Nee also gets his face punched a lot, so that bruised and puffed up, he looks almost like a less grotesque version of Eric Stoltz in Mask. But the what may be the biggest problem for South of Heaven is that the film gets swiped by the supporting players.

As the femme fatale named Veronica who seems to magically appear following one of Roy's beatings, Elina Lowensohn looks the part with her Louise Brooks hairstyle, and her dresses that reveal just enough leg and decolletage. I didn't even mind that her revealing of her identity made her accented English even more incongruous. On the other hand, when Lowensohn removes her wig, all I could think was how the scene lacked any of the impact as when the equally bald Constance Towers kills her pimp in Sam Fuller's The Naked Kiss. Although he's only onscreen for mere minutes, Sy Richardson is memorably lit and photographed as a character named Pawn Daddy. Also upstaging everyone else are Jon Gries and Thomas Jay Ryan, whose soft-spoken patter belies their unrelenting brutality. With their green sports coats and bright yellow straw hats, the pair look more like carnival barkers than a couple of enforcers.

If you want the opinion of someone much more enthusiastic about South of Heaven, I have nothing but respect for Todd Brown of Twitch, one of three critics who provide one of the three commentary tracks on the DVD. J. L. Vara and some of the production staff also provide a commentary, as do several of the actors. For myself, I have trouble watching a feature length pastiche that never lets you forget that you are watching a series of reimagined moments from other movies and novels.

And based on J.L. Vara's commentary, I hope someone was kind enough to let him know that it was William Wellman, not William Wyler, who made Track of the Cat.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:27 AM

October 06, 2011

Veerana

Tulsi Ramsay & Shyam Ramsay
Mondo Macabro All Region DVD

In his brief notes about Veerana, Mondo Macabro master Pete Toombs claims that the Ramsay brothers were inspired by the Jose Larraz film, Vampyres. It's a bit of a stretch, I'd say, but it's also not too difficult to identify those films the Ramsays plundered. Just in terms of genre filmmaking, there's bits from Dracula as envisioned by Tod Browning and Terence Fisher, a revolving head from The Exorcist, as well as inspiration from Bava's Black Sunday. The everything plus the kitchen sink approach is most evident in a scene taken from Poltergeist where the witch is sitting in front of a television showing nothing but static. The witch resembles a cross between Jacqueline Pearce in the Hammer horror, The Reptile, and Linda Blair in The Exorcist, albeit with non-existent dental hygiene. For all I know, the Ramsays must have been inspired by Bob Hope in Ghost Breakers, with their own elbow nudging "in joke", as there's a plump comic character, named Hitchcock (!), a film director of horror films, who contributes a measure of self-referential joking to the entire mishmash.

Like any good Bollywood film, there's also time for some singing and dancing as well. But what makes Veerana of interest is not only how some Bollywood filmmakers attempt to make a horror film to fit within an Indian setting, but the ways in which the Ramsays have also attempted to push what can be shown in Indian films. Totally out of left field are an obtuse reference to the Rolling Stones, as well as what is meant to be some kind of gay joke. According to Toombs notes, the film was cut for censor approval, and only those 18 and older were able to see Veerana at the time of its original release. The violence is relatively mild, but the cutting seems to have affected the more sexually suggestive aspects of the story. Even by current standards, Veerena may well be one of the sexiest movies from Bollywood.

The witch Nakita, in her beautiful human form, seduces men, and drinks their blood. One of the local men, Sameer, attempts to put an end to this reign of terror. In a significant cultural twist, Sameer is able to put Nakita at bay with an aum symbol, instead of a crucifix. What Sameer doesn't realize, though, is that hanging a witch isn't enough. The spirit of Nakita comes back to life taking possession of Sameer's daughter Jasmin. Jasmin mostly seems to stay in her room, although gradually, the rest of the household realizes that she's been making a habit of taking late night walks out in the woods that seem to coincide with the appearance of several dead men.

As if to make things easy for the audience, Jasmin is played by an actress named . . . Jasmin. By Hollywood standards, she's a bit on the fleshy side, but by Bollywood standards, her appearance here is brazen. With her display of cleavage, shots of her chubby thighs, and two scenes that take place in bath tubs, plus scenes that suggest that sex has taken place, Jasmin, under the direction of the Ramseys, must have made more than a few people blush. It's not quite Elizabeth Taylor encased in a body hugging slip in Butterfield 8, but the effect was probably similar for those seeing Jasmin running around in a black slip that does nothing to hide her voluptuous curves.

Even though they keep their clothing on, the musical number performed by the young hero and his virtuous girl friend, played by Hemant Biieje and Sahila Chadda, is an ode to raging hormones. As if that wasn't enough, another scene cuts to a man reading the Kama Sutra. Curiously, the title has been translated as "Loneliness" although there is nothing to indicate that anyone, even Jasmin (the character), is really lonely or looking for love. And while the Ramsay family kept on making horror movies, Jasmin seems to have disappeared. And while Veerana is of some interest as a horror movie, the real reason to watch this film are the two musical numbers. The singing was dubbed by Suman Kalyanpur, but the body teasing the audience, whether peaking out of a soapy bath tub, or thrashing along the beach, belongs to a one named actress, remembered primarily for this single film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM | Comments (1)

October 04, 2011

Black Cat Mansion

Borei kaibyo yashiki/Mansion of the Ghost Cat
Nobuo Nakagawa - 1958
Beam Entertainment All Region DVD

Nobuo Nakagawa is best known for his last movie with Shin Toho Studios, Jigoku, an ambitious horror movie about hell and karma. That film also was the final production from the Japanese studio that was mostly known in its last years for pushing the envelope in sex, violence and horror during the latter half of the Fifties. While Jigoku is available in the U.S. from Criterion, Nakagawa's films, as well as other Shin Toho productions, are difficult to find in English subtitled DVDs.

I went through the trouble of finally grabbing this version of Black Cat Mansion for multiple reasons. The Udine Far East Film Festival had a tribute to Shin Toho that whetted my interest in seeing the kinds of films ignored by Donald Richie and those who maintain that the only Japanese movies worth watching are primarily the canon films by Kurosawa, Ozu and Mizoguchi. Also, after seeing Kuroneko last year, I wanted to see a real ghost cat movie. And Jigoku made me want to see other films by Nakagawa when he was Shin Toho's horror specialist.

A young doctor, Tetsuichiro, brings his wife, Yoriko, to an old, abandoned mansion owned by her family, to help her recover from tuberculosis. Walking through overgrown weeds and untended greenery, Yoriko glances at an old woman just outside the mansion. Tetsuichiro doesn't see the strange woman with the thatch of white hair. The house his cleaned up, with Tetsuichiro setting up the place as a medical clinic. The old woman appears and disappears at will, finally showing up to strangle Yoriko without motivation. Tetsuichiro visits a nearby Buddhist priest who tells the story of when the mansion was the home of a hot tempered samurai who set in motion a series of events that led to one of his victims, a blind woman, feeding blood to her cat, and having the cat act as an agent of revenge.

Nakagawa jumps into the creepiness from the very beginning. The first shots are from the point of view of what is revealed to be Tetsuichiro. The camera follows a flashlight going through an unlit hospital. From that opening, the film is already in dream logic rather than real life logic. Not only is the hospital totally dark save for the beam of the flashlight, but we see a doctor and nurse wheeling a dead patient across the floor.

While the present day scenes are in black and white, the extended flashback in muted color. The color scheme is mostly gray, black, white and brown, all of which makes the appearance of blood more dramatic. Making the most of his limited resources, Nakagawa illuminates the now mad samurai with a light from a color wheel, giving the scene a mildly psychedelic touch. I wouldn't be surprised if audiences then, as would certainly would now, would laugh when the ghost cat's ears spring up. I would guess that Black Cat Mansion was primarily made for a teenage audience that was looking for some light chills and thrills. Mark Schilling has compared Shin Toho's exploitation films to those produced by Roger Corman, but some comparison to the films produced by Val Lewton may not be inappropriate in the way Nobuo Nakagawa is able to work with, and around, his modest budget. What matters most in horror movies is not so much the triumph of good over evil as much as the triumph of imagination.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:34 AM

October 01, 2011

Thirst for Love

Ai no kawaki
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1966
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

Maybe had I seen Thirst for Love closer to when it was released, I would have liked it much more. The film has all of the visual trademarks of Kurahara's previous films, and then some. The arty juvenilia of I am Waiting and The Warped Ones has given way to full blown pretentiousness in the service of Yukio Mishima's musings on art and life. Kurahara seems to have been given permission to overuse shots where the camera is looking directly over the characters, a visual tact often used by Robert Aldrich with greater restraint. Even worse are the slow motion shots and exaggerated sound effects, and montages of still photographs. There is also some use of both printed and voice over narration taken from Mishima;s novel. The overall effect is of a filmmaker beating the viewer over the head with the reminder that he's making a movie that is every bit as artistic as anything from Europe. Not surprisingly, Nikkatsu studio bosses considered the film "too arty", according to Mark Schilling in his book on Nikkatsu films.

The story is about a young widow, Etsuko, who lives as the mistress of her father-in-law. The relationship appears even more incestuous with Etsuko always addressing the man as "father", whether at the family dinner table or in bed. With what is certain to be a nod to D. H. Lawrence and Lady Chatterly's Lover, Etsuko is attracted to the young gardener, Saburo. Meanwhile, Saburo is revealed to have a relationship with the family maid, Miyo. It's a drama about class and sex which ends badly for almost everyone. Or to describe the essential plot of several of Mishima's novels: a person is unhappy with discrepancy between the real world and an unrealized ideal, and makes a point of destroying that which has failed to meet their expectations.

I'm not going to deny Yukio Mishima's skills as a writer. I refuse to buy into his philosophy.

What is good about the film, Thirst for Love, is to watch it as a visual poem about the geography of Ruriko Asaoka. Kurahara returns to filming immense close-ups, of not simply the actress's face, but her large, almond shaped eyes, her tears, her fingers. I don't know if that is her or a body double when the camera follows along her legs, and briefly meditates on her belly button. What I do know is that Asaoka is much more sensual here than when seen running around in bra and panties in I Hate but Love. One aspect that is never explained is that Etsuko was married, the flashbacks show her in contemporary dresses, while as a widow, she is seen wearing nothing but kimonos, as if she were a living anachronism. The better visual aspects of Thirst for Love don't overcome the heavy-handedness that drags down the film, but I'll take a single close-up of Ruriko Asaoka's mascara stained tear over the pontifications of Yukio Mishima any day.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:14 AM

September 29, 2011

Black Sun

Kuroi taiyo
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1964
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

Black Sun isn't a sequel to The Warped Ones, but it does continue some of the themes, and even reuses one of the settings. It's also, at least for me, a difficult film to get a handle on. I'm not sure about what Kurahara is trying to say about race and religion.

Tamio Kawachi returns as the young jazz fanatic, Mei, a less animated version of the character he played in the earlier film. Stealing enough wire to get cash for the Max Roach album, Black Sun, he no sooner steps out of the record store only to have it dropped on the street when he's almost hit by a car. The high heeled female passenger blithely steps on the album, breaking it. The driver gives some money to Mei as payment. As far as Mei is concerned, the cash isn't enough, and he steals the couple's car.

Not getting ready payment from a fence, Mei is given an old beater to drive in the interim. The car is so slow that bicyclists complain about Mei getting in the way. Mei stops in the street due to a crowd gathered to see a soldier, part of the U.S. occupation troops, pulled out of a river. The military police warn about a fugitive soldier on the loose with a machine gun.

Mei is squatting in a bombed out church. It's also where the fugitive, a black G.I. named Gil is hiding. While using the same actor, Chico Roland, and the same character name as in The Warped Ones, the similarity ends there. Gil has a bullet wound in the leg. Akira is oblivious to Gil's physical pain, instead overjoyed at the presence of a black American in his life. And at this point the film raises lots of questions for me.

Mei only understanding of black America is through music. Posters of various musicians cover his walls. His dog is named Thelonious Monk. As far as Mei is concerned, Gil should be able to play music and sing for him. Gil tries to control the situation with his machine gun. Aside from the language barrier, the two men battle for control over each other while simultaneously trying to elude the law. More questionable is a scene where Mei paints Gil white, and displays him to his friends at the jazz club, the same one seen in The Warped Ones, as his slave while Mei goes out in blackface.

And maybe I am misreading Kurahara's intentions here, especially watching a film almost forty years old, and yanked from some of its cultural contexts. What I am seeing is a study about how "the other" is made to be exotic, to be idealized. And it could be something I may well be guilty of as well. What Black Sun presents is such an idealization in extreme, as well as its opposite, when Mei humiliates Gil, again devoid of really understanding the implications of his actions from the point of view of a black American.

In this same way, I am also not certain what Kurahara is trying to say about Christianity. There are several shots of Gil's crucifix. At one point Gil prays to one of the ruined church statues. There are also other shots of religious symbols within the church Gil and Mei hide in, as well as another church Gil sees when the pair are on the run. The symbolism at the end of the film, where Gil literally ascends to the heavens is open to interpretation.

The music for the jazzy scores for Black Sun and The Warped Ones have been recently made available on CD. Certainly, Kurahara has been musically aided by Toshiro Mayuzumi, as experimental in his soundtracks as Kurahara has been in his filmmaking.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:53 AM

September 27, 2011

The Stool Pigeon

Sin yan
Dante Lam - 2010
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

An almost visual constant in The Stool Pigeon is the lack of space. Streets and alleys are narrow, with only room to run forwards or back, often to an enclosed space. Even when there is the rare shot of sky, it is surrounded by the skyscrapers of Hong Kong. The effect is like watching people running through a maze, only more deadly. The sense of physical enclosure is also stressed with characters inside cars, hiding within the cramped spaces of a street market, and in an abandoned classroom stuffed with chairs. For Dante Lam, there is no escape, whether from cops, crooks or karma.

Even though Nick Cheung is top billed, the film firmly belongs to Nicholas Tse in the title role. Recruited by Cheung to infiltrate and rat out a criminal gang, Tse is the pivotal one in the action scenes. And what action! First up is a street race where Tse has to prove he has the goods to be a getaway driver, with plenty of high powered cars. Even better is when Tse, choosing not to deal with a police roadblock, careens away amidst heavy daytime traffic and police pursuit while Dean Martin croons "White Christmas". Yes, the film takes place around Christmas time in Hong Kong, providing some holiday cheer for those who want decisive break from It's a Wonderful Life. There is also the big jewelry store heist, where Tse smashes his car through the store. Finally, there is the breathless street chase with Tse and Kwai Lun-mei pursued by the gang that they have betrayed. Tse also has the best name for a character, Ghost, Jr.

As the police detective who works with informants, Nick Cheung's character is forced to be sidelined by the energy of Tse. Cheung's character, Don Lee, is essentially passive. Making arrangements, meeting with the "stoolies", Lee watches the action from a safe distance. It is only near the end of the film that Cheung takes action himself, when there is no else around. While one of the subplots attempts to detail Detective Lee's sense of emotional distance from the people he works with, his attempts to reconnect with his ex-wife who has forgotten him due to a traumatic injury seems out of place with the rest of the film. The attempt to humanize Lee not only disrupts the pacing of the film, but shoehorns a very contrived situation that distracts from the rest of the drama.

Better is watching the relationship unfold between Nicholas Tse and Kwai Lun-mei. In a humorous flashback, we see the two crossing paths, when he's chased by cops, and she, by a criminal gang, only to escape when the cops choose to chase the gang. Kwai's role as Dee, along with Ghost, Jr.'s sister, provide a narrative thread concerning the commodification of woman, as both are used for their financial value to others, with money used to purchase freedom.

I have to admit to being more conscious of how the action sequences were filmed after reading a series of essays by Jim Emerson. Then again, I wasn't watching in slo-mo or frame by frame, but appears that Lam and company have adhered to the classic rules of keeping the sense of space and direction consistent when cutting between characters. The action is truly fast and furious, but it doesn't look edited in a cuisinart. There is plenty of blood, bullets and bandages by the time the closing credits roll. It's also probably the only movie made where a criminal couple cases a jewelry store, and then takes a moment to have their photo taken with Santa Claus.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 AM

September 22, 2011

I Hate but Love

Nikui Anchikusho/The Despicable Guy
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1962
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

A good chunk of I Hate but Love is devoted to a road trip from Tokyo to Kyushu, a 900 mile drive. The film seems to periodically meander, lose direction, and regain some momentum, just like the main characters. The film is centered on a radio and television personality, Daisaku, and his manager, Noriko. The film is something of an examination of the meaning of love and celebrity, with two of Japan's biggest movie stars of the time, Yujiro Ishihara and Ruriko Asaoka.

Visually, it veers between Korehara's freewheeling shots with the camera spinning on its axis, or lots of hand held, documentary style shots on the streets of Tokyo, Osaka and other points, with scenes composed of shots where the camera never moves. Part of the story is about Daisaku driving an old jeep to Kyushu on behalf of a young woman who's maintained a platonic love affair with a young doctor in a remote village, their relationship fueled by their exchange of letters. There is discussion as to whether Daisaku is driving the jeep as a publicity stunt or as a humanistic gesture. There are several scenes of crowds on the street gathering in front of Daisaku and the jeep, but they could well have been in actuality shots of fans gathering to catch a glimpse of Ishihara. Had an American producer seen this film when it was released, I'm sure he would have had the idea to do a remake starring Elvis Presley.

According to Mark Schiling, in his book on Nikkatsu films from the late Fifties and early Sixties, the original English language title was "That Despicable Guy". I'm not sure if despicable is quite the right word to describe Daisaku, but I like that title better. From the opening scenes, it is evident that Daisaku is tiring of the demands of his schedule of radio banter, talk show appearances, and late night appearances at night clubs. All the guy wants to do is sleep. Noriko has Daisaku's every day, and virtually every hour planned out in advance. Adding to their tension of the business relationship is their personal relationship where love is kept at a distance, both fearful of how it could affect their careers. When Daisaku takes off to drive the jeep, Noriko sees the professional commitments coming apart, threatening the careers of both of them.

Ishihara, also popular as a singer, is given a couple of opportunities to sing, both on and off the camera. I am assuming here that Korehara was permitted some freedom as a filmmaker, with such signature motifs as shots directly of the sun, and some rain drenched moments. But the film mostly was designed to serve as a vehicle for the two very popular stars. What may be amusing to contemporary audiences, that may have caused young Japanese girls and boys to swoon when the film came out, are the several scenes of the Ishihara and Asaoka in their underwear. Ishihara has a couple scenes wearing nothing but his tighty whities. Asaoka is seen in her white bra and granny panties, at one point admiring herself in a full length mirror. Aside from the display of celebrity skin, the film indirectly expresses Ishihara own evolution from studio contract player to independent star.

The film is also something of an odd choice in the Kurahara series. Not having seen Kurahara's other Nikkatsu film but relying on descriptions as well as the trailer, I would have preferred Glass Johnny: Look like a Beast. Having seen I Love but Hate, I would also like to see the previous film Kurahara made with Ishikawa and Asaoka, Ginza Love Story. Of possible interest to some might be the Toshiro Mifune vehicle, Incident at Blood Pass with Ishikawa and Asaoka in supporting roles, filmed eight years later. By this time, Yasujiro Ishikawa's alcoholism had physically taken a toll on the former teen idol, his puffy features almost making him initially unrecognizable, and saddening when Mifune refers to him as the "young fellow".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:08 AM | Comments (2)

September 20, 2011

The Warped Ones

Kyonetsu no kisetsu
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1960
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

Did Koreyoshi Kurahara and his scriptwriter, Nobuo Yamada see Godard's Breathless prior to making The Warped Ones? Godard's film opened in Japan in March 1960, while Kurahara's film debuted the following September. A six month gap between the two films would be considered fast but not impossible, and definitely not that unusual back at that time. There seems to be an influence, not only in filming in the streets of Tokyo, but in the choice of characters.

Kurahara's main character, Akira, makes Godard's Michel seem almost like a model of decorum in comparison. First seen busted for grabbing the wallet of a bar customer, part of a scam with his young prostitute girlfriend, Yuki, Akira is sent to a juvenile prison where time is passed by getting into fights. Released from the joint, Akira and pal, Masaru, dive back into the life, stealing knives and a car, picking up Yuki, and heading out to the beach. At the beach, the guy who set up the bust, Kashiwagi, is seen, and knock over when Akira drives by with his car door open. The gang grabs Kashiwagi's girl, Fumiko, who unwillingly becomes part of Akira's life.

What impresses about Akira, as played by Tamio Kawachi, is his almost unflagging exuberance. When he and Masaru first enter the streets from prison, they sound like Beavis and Butthead, yipping and grunting to each other in enthusiasm to being out in the sun. One of Kurahara repeated visual motifs is shots of the sky, oven too brightly lit and overexposed. Akira ferociously dives into food and drink like an animal, and emotionally dives into jazz to the exclusion of his surroundings. Akira doesn't just taste life, but gobbles it up whole and spits out what doesn't satisfy him. The opening of the film are dizzying shots of the ceiling of Akira's favorite bar, with its photos of various American jazz musicians, with Kurahara duplicating the effect of looking closely at a record spinning on a turntable.

There is no explanation for Akira's amorality, and even when he seems to be taking responsibility for his actions, it still comes across as making a bad situation worse. Akira's love of jazz, specifically jazz by black American musicians, seems emotionally rooted, as is his friendship with Gill, seemingly based on his personification of the only art form for which Akira feels any affinity. Part of the film deals with Akira's conflicting relationship with Fumiko, an accomplished abstract painter. Akira goes to an exhibition where he is bemused by what he sees, going as far as turning one painting upside down to the approval of one of the other gallery patrons. Later, crashing in on a party at Fumiko's house, Akira is introduced as a model, but is indifferent to the intellectual and hipster approval of his anti-social behavior. Akira's life seems to be as improvised as the music he loves. At the same time, Akira is oblivious to how is life is connected to others, or the formal underpinnings of jazz, only seeing it as a musical form that as he explains was created in America by black musicians, stolen by white musicians, and copied by Japanese.

Kurahara's camera is just as restless as Akira, almost constantly in motion. Many of the street shots have a documentary quality. A glanced sign would indicate that the bar where much of the film takes place was in Shibuya. Fumiko's house seems to be in an outer section of Tokyo, where has a small chicken coop in the back. This is a Tokyo that existed fifteen year following the end of World War II, but not yet the overly developed urban Tokyo of today. Seen within the context of traditional Japanese behavior, Akira must have been extremely shocking to audiences when the film was first released. The Japanese title has been translated as "Season of Heat". The English language title ultimately refers to all of the characters, as Fumiko and Kashiwagi turn out to be as warped as Akira, Masaru and Yuki.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:57 AM

September 15, 2011

Intimidation

Aru kyouhaku
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1960
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

I'm not alone in enjoying the use of close-ups in films. The classic example for some critics and historians is Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc. Andrew Sarris has cited Sam Fuller's use of close-ups in I Shot Jesse James. Sergio Leone's close-ups are also famous. What we're talking about here are not just shots where the face fills the frame, but also shots of the eyes, maybe the lips, the wrinkle of the brow, the facial tic.

A good portion of a robbery sequence in Intimidation is made up of close-ups. Koreyoshi Kurahara cuts to the glancing, nervous eyes of the robber, his face mostly covered by a scarf and hat. The bank employee fear is more obvious. Both are sweating. The scene could well be Koreyoshi's attempt at doing something along the lines of the heist in Riffifi. There is no dialogue, but instead the exchange of nods and glances. Kurahara's robbery is nowhere near as long as the one filmed by Jules Dassin, but I would not be surprised if the older film did influence Kurahara, an admitted Francophile, who probably saw the film a year or so before his own directorial debut.

There are only three main characters: a thug who shows up at a small town to blackmail an assistant bank manager, the assistant bank manager who is getting ready for a promotion to manager at another bank, and a clerk who began his career at the same time as the assistant manager, a long-time friend for whom career advancement may never come. The film could be read as a look at Japanese society, where advancement is only possible by family connections, taking advantage of other people, or using various illegal means. The intimidation comes from the flow of power between the three characters here, each one getting getting the upper hand on the other, and how they use that power. All three men find themselves in situations where they feel helpless, reduced to begging for their lives.

As the assistant manager, Nobuo Kaneko looks like the kind of guy who never missed a meal in his life. Looking entirely self-satisfied, whether getting a promotion at a relatively young age, or finding that his old love, and best friend's sister, still pines for him, Kaneko has the appearance of a guy for whom getting kicked in the ass by life, actually his own misdeeds, could never come soon enough. Kojiro Kusanagi as the blackmailer looks lean and hungry. What struck me about his appearance most was his very small mouth, perhaps appropriate for one who only says what is most necessary. The real star would be Akira Nishimura as the milquetoast bank clerk whom no one takes seriously. If I hadn't had the notes that come with the DVD, I would have referred to him as THAT GUY, you know the kind of creepy guy who appears in a bunch of Akira Kurosawa movies.

Part of the fun of Intimidation is that it provided the three, who would have supporting or minor roles in much more famous films, with the chance to be the main stars. Nikkatsu Studios resident bad girl, Mari Shirakai puts in slightly more than a token appearance as the sister of the bank clerk, ashamed of the failings of her brother, but not too ashamed to throw herself at her now married former lover. The DVD is part of Eclipse's new five disc set of film by Kurahara. I hope to cover the other films in the coming weeks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:55 AM

September 13, 2011

The Exterminator

James Glickenhaus - 1980
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

That they don't make films like they use to can certainly be applied to The Exterminator. The film is another example of the kind of productions made on relatively modest budgets that were all but extinct when Hollywood films became competitors for opening weekend grosses playing on several multiplex screens around the U.S., and eventually the world, at the same time. What is also more of a present day anomaly is seeing movies about working guys that is neither condescending to the men or their work.

I think that it's the attitude that James Glickenhaus has towards his main characters that made The Exterminator a popular, if not critical success. It was that the sense of recognition that some of the people on the screen had daily lives not too different from those in the audience. In his commentary, Glickenhaus talks about how his film was playing to full houses in two New York City theaters, the Lyric on 42nd Street, and the National Theater. I've been two both theaters, and could imagine people whooping it up when Robert Ginty takes on the various bad guys. The National was a first run theater that mostly showed action movies on what I believe was the biggest screen in town, which would make the several explosions quite overwhelming. Sure, the film is a revenge fantasy, but this was a film made mostly for people who saw life as an everyday struggle just to get by, with a hero who could just as well have been a beer drinking buddy.

The film immediately jumps into the action with a scene in Viet-Nam. Robert Ginty and Steve James are both prisoners of the Viet Cong. James is able to undo his ties and overpower one of the soldiers. Ginty gets shot but is saved by James, pulled onto a helicopter. Cut to New York City where the two are working at different parts of a food distribution center. Ginty catches some young thugs breaking into one of the storage rooms where they're stealing cases of Rheingold beer. But it's James, who's the one who kicks ass here. The thugs, a bunch of young white guys who are part of a gang called the Ghetto Ghouls, later catch James alone, beating him up and leaving him paralyzed. Ginty finds the gang's hideout, killing a couple of the members. One of the Ghouls remarks of James that he is, "just a nigger". Ginty's priceless response is, "That nigger was my best friend, motherfucker!".

I don't believe that Glickenhaus intended The Exterminator to be understood on a literal level. His version of New York City melds parts of the Bronx with Brooklyn. Likewise, the Ghetto Ghouls party in a room decorated with posters of Che Guevara and Angela Davis, low level career criminals who might not necessarily be capable of articulating a political position other than being grabbing images and iconography that would be considered anti-social and/or anti-establishment. Later, when detective Christopher George checks out Ginty's apartment, he notices a copy of Jean-Paul Sartre's The Condemned of Altona. Glickenhaus briefly discusses why the book is used. While there are no philosophic discussions in The Exterminator, on its very visceral level, it also is about personal and public responsibility, and the uses of violence as means to an end. The use of the book also serves to indicate that Ginty's character is a person of some education and intelligence who works at a meat packing plant maybe more by circumstance than by choice. In The Exterminator, almost everyone is working for someone else. The difference between the good guys and the bad guys is one of choices made, knowing that there is little to control when financial or political power are always in the hands of someone else.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:57 AM | Comments (1)

September 06, 2011

Triad Underworld

Jiang Hu
Wong Ching-po - 2004
Palisades Tartan Region 1 DVD

I know it wasn't everyone's cup of chai, but I was one of those people saddened by the demise of the Tartan DVD label. Sure, they focussed on certain kinds of films, but the Tartan Asia Extreme label was how many of us were introduced to Park Chan-wook, Shinya Tsukamoto, personal favorite - the Pang Brothers, and other Asian filmmakers of varying repute. I even saw every Tartan Asia Extreme DVD in the Denver Public Library. Since the closure of the original company, many of the original titles are available again through Palisades Tartan. The new DVD, Triad Underworld seems to indicate that the new company is picking up where the original Tartan left off.

The stylization barely hides a relatively simple story. Two young punks, looking to make their reputation as Hong Kong gangsters, make their way through the streets on the way to kill an established gang boss. Their target, Hung, has just become a father. While young Yik and Turbo weave in and out of back streets and alleys, Hung and his best friend, Lefty, discuss Hung's possible retirement from criminal life. Cutting between the two sets of friends, the film establishes the parallels between Yik and Turbo, and the days when Hung and Lefty first made names for themselves.

I don't know if Wong Ching-po as seen the films by Gaspar Noe, but visually there are similarities. The opening shots track through a restaurant as the staff cautiously walks around Edison Chen, the volatile Turbo. Claustrophobic nightclubs crammed with kids dancing also makes me think of Noe, as do shots of large, empty urban environments such as warehouses and tunnels. During one scene, Hung and Lefty are eating dinner in Lefty's restaurant, and Wong cuts between the two, with the background in continual motion, indicating the lack of stability in the relationship between these two longtime friends. Again like Noe, Wong is interested in creating visual equivalents to ever shifting senses of self.

Even though Andy Lau is one of the producers, his own role is the less showy Hung. The more dramatic appearances are by Jacky Cheung as the dreadlocked Lefty, with Shawn Yue as Yik. Virtually axiomatic in a Hong Kong gangster film is an appearance by Eric Tsang, with the five foot four inch actor playing a mob boss named Tall Guy. Johnny To mascot Lam Suet is briefly seen as a hapless cop who's lost his gun to Yik and Turbo.

Although he's yet to make his reputation internationally, Wong Ching-po was awarded Best New Director for the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2005. I should also note that Wong's newest film, Revenge: A Love Story has been getting attention at the festival circuit. Triad Underworld was also nominated for costume design and art direction, fitting for a film that stronger in style than substance. The strongest dramatic moments are part of a subplot involving Yue going on a brief crime spree of several convenience stores to get enough cash to redeem his would-be girlfriend from a life of prostitution. Lin Yuan displays more spunk and energy as the prostitute named Yoyo than any of the guys that I had wished she had more scenes. Another very nice moment is when Yoyo writes her phone number on Yik's back, and in time honored movie tradition let's him know that she'll be waiting for him when he completes his mission. This is the first film I've seen by Wong Ching-po, and given the opportunity, not the last. The visual bravura makes Triad Underworld worth watching, even though it doesn't do enough to hide a familiar story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:06 AM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2011

Road to Nowhere

Monte Hellman - 2010
Monterey Home Video Region 1 DVD

In an early scene where the director, Mitchell Haven, and the screenwriter, Steven Gates, meet with a producer, Gates blurts out, "This is the film noir of our dreams". But what Gates is referring to is not the realization of a film that meets, or exceeds, the expectations of genre. Instead, Road to Nowhere, both the film we watch, and the film (or is that films) within the film, can be thought of as dreams as film noir. More specifically, as in a dream, there is a continuity of events that take place, in this case a mystery, or series of mysteries. And as dreams, at least the ones I vaguely remember, go, they don't always make a lot of sense when awake, but I feel like it is a mistake to insist that a dream does make sense.

One of Monte Hellman's dream projects was to make a film version of Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Maison de Rendez-vous. Robbe-Grillet's work in literature and film is often concerned with differing points of view, and memories that may possibly be contradictory. What is of interest here is not a narrative that cleanly progresses from one point to another, but something that shifts around almost at will. What one looks for is not a story in the traditional sense but in literary terms, the pleasure of the text, to borrow a phrase from Roland Bathes, or in film, the pleasure of the succession of images.

The bulk of Road to Nowhere a film within the film, with a DVD of that title inserted in a player. There are also scenes of Mitchell Haven and his muse, Laurel Graham, watching movies on television, with excerpts from The Lady Eve, Spirit of the Beehive and The Seventh Seal. The excerpts are chosen as commentary on what is to come. Additionally, there are lots of shots involving mirrors and windows, reflecting light and shadows. Rather than making simply a movie about the making of a movie, many of the shots visually refer to those words used to describe movies.

While watching Spirit of the Beehive, Laurel tells Mitchell, "You disappear into your dreams". In a sense, that's what watching a movie is all about. Possibly someone smarter than me could really tell you what Road to Nowhere is really about. Me, I dropped off the film theory train during the time that semiotics was in vogue. Not only could I not recount the multiple stories within Road to Nowhere, I'm not sure if I really care for an explanation, were one available, nor do I think it really matters.

What matters more to me is that first image of Shannyn Sossamon holding one of those hair dryers that looks like a gun, pointing at herself, Dominque Swain in her white underwear, the movement of the shadows on the illuminated fountain while Sossamon and Tygh Runyan sit in the dark, the shocking image of the small airplane diving into the water. Too many films seems to rely on over-explanation. Road to Nowhere is dialogue free for about the first ten minutes, and one of the first sounds heard is a scream in the dark. Imago ipsa loquitur - the image speaks for itself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:43 AM | Comments (2)

August 25, 2011

Don't Torture a Duckling

Non si sevizia un paperino
Lucio Fulci - 1972
Shameless Entertainment Region 0 DVD

At the time I received my preview copy of Don't Torture a Duckling, the riots that burned down the Sony warehouse had not happened. This review is posted a few days in advance of the official release date. As Shameless was one of several DVD companies affected by the riots, the release date and availability of this DVD may be affected. Considered by some to be Lucio Fulci's best film, this is one which would benefit the most with some accompanying material to put the film in greater context, both as part of Fulci's filmography, as well as the concerns raised in the subject matter. I should note that the DVD comes with notes by Stephen Thrower from his study of Fulci, Beyond Terror, but I have read neither those notes nor the book. Compared to some of Fulci's other films, the narrative aspects were done with greater care. Even so, what I suspect is that Fulci used some of the trappings of the mystery primarily to address other concerns.

The film takes place in a small, out of the way, Italian town called Accendura. Several young boys are found murdered, all strangled. The police investigate several suspects. A big city newspaper reporter also worms his way into the investigation, sometimes helping the police. The town is like some shown in other Italian movies, where everyone seems to know everyone else, the local women all dress in black, and strangers are regarded with suspicion. The town is off of a major highway, providing simply symbolism for a place stuck in time while the future speeds by.

The three leading suspects are outsiders of different kinds. The first is a mentally handicapped man who jeopardizes himself until it is clear that he is unaware of the implications of his actions. The second suspect is a woman, Maciara, reputed to practice witchcraft. There is finally the young woman, Patrizia, from Milan, the daughter of a man from the small town who found is fortune in the big city. The young priest mentions to the reporter that strange incidences in town have coincided with Patrizia's arrival.

What Fulci seems to be primarily interested in here is attacking small town conformity, with a side swipe at some of the dogma of the Catholic Church. The townspeople are eager to find someone to accuse and punish for the murders. The insularity of the town in reinforced when the priest mentions that he does not allow certain newspapers and magazines to be made available. Maciara and Patrizia pose as the greatest threats because they are both single women in a town where women are almost invisible, and are both fiercely independent. Patrizia's very sexual presence stirs the imagination of some of the pre-adolescent boys who have been discovered dead.

One of Lucio Fulci's films still unavailable as a subtitled DVD is the one he has stated is his favorite, Beatrice Cenci. Not a horror film, but in part a critique of the Catholic Church in a late 16th Century setting. Having this film available might be key in discussing how religion is treated in Don't Torture a Duckling, as well as reminding even his most rabid fans that Fulci was more than the purveyor movies about eye gouging and zombies.

There are some actors of note here: Tomas Milian, Barbara Bouchet and Irene Pappas. (One could program a double feature of Barbara Bouchet movies that feature headless dolls, with The Red Queen Kills Seven Times.) The film belongs to Florinda Bolkan. Never more feral on screen than in the opening shots where we see her clawing at the dirt, uncovering a small skeleton. Fulci's close ups provide a geographical study of Bolkan's face when she bares her teeth and stares straight into the camera. Bolkan is also in the most brutal scene in Don't Torture a Duckling, albeit one that is not exploitive. It is no small coincidence that Bolkan starred in Fulci's other best animal titled film, Lizard in a Woman's Skin. Whatever one might think of Lucio Fulci and his films, he tapped into the certain strengths, a physicality, that Florinda Bolkan possessed, bringing it out in full force, literally seen in her ripped flesh.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

August 23, 2011

Kokoro

Kon Ichikawa - 1955
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2

There's a shot in Kokoro of a foot literally stuck in the mud. It's a fitting visual metaphor for the character, Nobuchi, who finds himself unable to move from his own emotional trap. Many of the scenes in Kokoro also involve rooms, and opened or closed doors, emphasizing the characters' own closing off from each other.

Even when the film is a studio assignment, as Kokoro, there is still thematic continuity. The central question is about choices that are made, rightly or wrongly, that put the protagonist in a moral quagmire. One part of the story is a flashback, taking place in about 1897, about Nobuchi and his best friend, Kaji. The two young men, soon to graduate from university, have differing opinions about how to live. Nobuchi expresses skepticism regarding Kaji's choice to live an ascetic life following Buddhist principles. The two rent rooms, where they unavoidably develop interest in the landlady's daughter, Shizu.

The framing narrative is about a young student, Hioki, who first comes across Nobuchi by accident, perceiving the older man to be drowning in the ocean. For reasons never made clear, Hioki decides to make Nobuchi his mentor in life, even though the older man's life consists of nothing more than scholarly pursuits. Nobuchi is married to Shizu, in a relationship that is often punctuated with arguments and misunderstandings, based, as is eventually revealed on Nobuchi's relationship with Kaji.

There are aspects of the film that may be lost, even with some general understanding of Japanese history. The film was based on a novel by Natsume Soseki, taking in some of the general themes of the author. 1912 marked the end of the Meiji era and the beginning of the Taisho era in Japan. Even though the Meiji era marked the beginnings of "modernization" in Japan, and the end of the feudal era, the differences in generations can be seen with Nobuchi always in a kimono, while Hioki is periodically shown wearing western style clothing, the student uniform of the day. The changes in eras allows for a look at contrasting the connections of the historical past with the emotional past. Kokoro also provides an interesting comparison to The Burmese Harp not only for its fatalism, but also how in the latter film, the young soldier pretends to take on a Buddhist practice only to have it evolve into something both serious and ultimately liberating.

Michiyo Aratama as Shizu was twenty-five when she made Kokoro. With only a change in hairstyle, she is transformed from a younger woman who encounters Kaji and Nobuchi, to a woman who has been married to Nobuchi for thirteen years. I've seen Aratama in other films, but never was struck by her as I've been in this film. She doesn't have the kind of more obvious kind of beauty of Ayako Wakao, or someone like Machiko Kyo when she plays a modern character. Aratama has the kind of understated beauty that gradually grabs your attention, at least in this film. Kokoro is the Japanese word for heart, and Aratama is the true heart of the film around which everyone else revolves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:34 AM

August 18, 2011

Irezumi

Yasuzo Masumura - 1966
Yume Pictures Region 2 DVD

Is there anything to explain why Kaneto Shindo, a director in his own right, served as screen writer for two films directed by Yasuzo Masumura, both based on the writings of Junichiro Tanizaki? The better known of these two films is Manji, also starring frequent Masumura muse, Ayako Wakao. Irezumi has recently been screened as part of some retrospectives, providing this film a higher profile.

Otsuya, the daughter of a pawn broker, runs away with her lover, Shinsuke, the apprentice to her father. I'm unsure about the time period as everyone wears kimonos, but I'm guessing near the end of the samurai era in the 19th Century. Taken in a family friend, Otsuya is kidnapped and sold to a geisha house, while Shinsuke is taken others to be killed. Shinsuke manages to kill his would be murderer and lives the life of a fugitive. Otsuya is further objectified when an artist is allowed to tattoo a giant spider on her back. The spider, with the face of a female demon, is the alleged cause of Otsuya taking advantage of various men in her life, leaving them at best without money, or at worst, without their lives.

In several ways, Irezumi is the opposite of Masumura's Kisses. Unlike the earlier film, where the characters take responsibility for their actions, the characters here blame outside forces for their transgressions. Rather than trying to live pure lives in an impure world, Otsuya and the others dive straight into the cesspool. Also, unlike the natural, and real life settings of Kisses, Irezumi was shot entirely in a studio, with unnatural appearing exteriors. In one scene, Otsuya and Shinsuke are standing on a bridge in the snow. Otsuya threatens to drown herself in the water below the bridge which remains unseen. Masumura barely disguises that the scene could just as well have been taking place on a theater stage. And as Kisses ends optimistically, Irezumi ends with the death of virtually every major character.

Masumura is said to have been unhappy with the cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa, although that didn't seem to stop them from working in the future. What is most visually interesting is how some of the scene are framed. Almost like the layers of Ayako Wakao's kimonos, not everything is revealed with the scope screen. Parts of the frame are blocked off with shoji screens, walls, doors, or simply the positioning of the actors. The emphasis would be on the insularity of the characters, most of whom find themselves emotionally, if not physically trapped.

Ayako Saito has an essay on the collaboration between Masumura and Wakao. What makes Irezumi of interest is that it is both self-critical and self-contradictory. In Masumura's films, Wakao plays women who can be described as independent and self-assertive, unlike the traditional portrait of Japanese women. Otsuya is essentially made into an object for the benefit of the male gaze, yet turns her status as a way of extracting revenge on those who would use her for their own sexual or financial benefit. To some extent, the primarily male audience, for whom the film was made, as well as the filmmakers, are implicated with the frequent shots of a partially nude Wakao, where she displays her back and the tattoo. The essay, found in the collection, Reclaiming the Archive: Feminism and Film History explores not only what is to be seen in the films made by Masumura with Wakao, but also the extent to which Wakao expressed herself artistically rather than simply serve the director's muse.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM

August 16, 2011

Kisses

Kuchizuke
Yasuzo Masumura - 1957
Yume Pictures Region 2 DVD

Sweet is not the first word grabbed to describe a film by Yasuzo Masumura. Not as well known to western audiences as some of his peers, Masumura's reputation mostly rests on a handful of films that have received subtitled DVD releases. Blind Beast, from a story by Edogawa Rampo, emphasizes the twining of the erotic and the grotesque obsession of a blind sculptor and a young woman, while in Red Angel, Ayako Wakao finds danger everywhere in the World War II drama. Kisses may seem like an extraordinary film in the context of Masumura's career if only because the two main characters are relatively ordinary.

In his book that primarily covers Japanese filmmakers that emerged in the Sixties, Eros plus Massacre, David Desser quotes Nagisa Oshima: "In July, 1957, Yasuzo Masumura's Kisses used a freely camera to film the young lovers riding around in a motorcycle. I felt now that the tide of a new age could no longer be ignored by anyone, and that a powerful irresistible force had arrived in Japanese cinema."

Jonathan Rosenbaum provides a deeper look at Masumura's career. The neo-realistic influences are clear throughout Kisses, and a reminder that it was Italian neo-realism that provided one of the main influences for the French Nouvelle Vague. Rosenbaum's article is of interest in pointing out some of the similarities between several of Masumura's films and those of Hollywood filmmakers that the Cahiers du Cinema gang had championed. As Rosenbaum points out, Kisses was neither a commercial nor critical success at the time of release. I have to assume that the reason the film was produced, and assigned to Masumura as his debut was in response to the youth oriented films that Nikkatsu Studios released at about the same time.

The film covers a two day period where Akiko and Kinichi meet, separate, and finally come together again. Their respective fathers are both imprisoned, Akiko's for embezzling money to pay for his wife's medical treatment, Kinichi's for some never clearly explained election fraud. Kinichi sees Akiko berated by a prison clerk for not paying for her father's meals, and impulsively hands over enough money to cover the fees. Akiko chases Kinichi down to thank him. A bet at a bicycle race determines whether the two will spend the rest of the day together. Akiko wins the bet, and the pair spend the day at the beach, roller skating, eating, drinking and dancing. In addition to having their fathers in prison, Kinichi and Akiko are concerned with ways to come up with the 100,000 yen needed for their parent's release.

While the initial setup is contrived, what makes Kisses different from the Nikkatsu films is that the characters live in a mundane world. Kinichi, a university student, gets by working as a delivery driver for a bakery. Akiko works as a nude model for painters. The two live modestly in shabby quarters, when money, or more often the lack of money, dictates their lives. Unlike many youth oriented films where the parents either do not exist or are marginal, part of the narrative here is of children who seek to redeem their parents, in the moneyed sense of the word, and simultaneously prove their own worth, again in a literal sense.

The actors who played Akiko and Kinichi, Hitomi Nozoe and Hiroshi Kawaguchi, might well have been cast because they were the same age as their characters, 20 and 21. Both appeared in other Masumura films, together also notably in Giants and Toys, as well as Yasujiro Ozu's Floating Weeds. Both began their careers shortly before Kisses, and both cruelly died at relatively young, Kawaguchi at 50, and Nozoe at 58. There is very little about either actor in English, although Nozoe's most notable appearance would be as the victimized model in Blind Beast.

Where Kisses is different from other Masumura films, and other films centered on young people is the sense of reconciliation that concludes the story. While Masumura's aim was to remove the sentimental aspects from the source novel, the ending, even if it may be considered conventional, is still satisfying, perhaps because it suggests a hopeful future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:42 AM

August 11, 2011

Almost Human

Milano odia: la polizia non puo sparare
Umberto Lenzi - 1974
Shameless Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Shame on me. I had no idea over five years ago that s second DVD version of a film I wrote about would come my way. Back when this blog was barely a crawling infant, a still new DVD label called NoShame had me on their screeners list. Almost Human was one of the first films I wrote about, along with another police thriller. I no longer have that DVD to compare with the new version from Shameless, but again, since NoShame has sadly gone belly up, this film is again available. Shameless even has included the Thomas Milian interview that was included in the NoShame DVD.

Umberto Lenzi grabs your attention with three bank robbers donning grotesque masks prior to a robbery. The wheel man, edgy and impatient, loses his cool when a street cop approaches about a possible parking violation. The cop is shot point blank, and the wheel man and the bank robbers embark on a high speed chase through Milan. Eluding the cops, it turns out that that the guy behind the steering wheel is a small time hood who gets beaten by the mob for his incompetence in blowing the bank job. The driver, Giulio Sacchi, has a big mouth, big dreams, and a plan to make a big score.

Almost Human is described by some writers as being part of the poliziotteschi genre, Italian films about policemen largely inspired by Don Siegel's Dirty Harry. That classification doesn't quite fit here as the main character is the small time hood, Sacchi. The character, as played by Thomas Milian, fueled largely by drugs and alcohol, made me think of an even more manic and dangerous version of the character Johnny Boy, played by Robert De Niro in Mean Streets. Did Lenzi or screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi see that film, perhaps at Cannes in 1974? Another possible influence might be the classic High Sierra, with Humphrey Bogart as "Mad Dog" Earle. Certainly, Lenzi has stated his admiration for Raoul Walsh, One can see both some similarities in story elements, a robbery gone wrong, and a car chase, but mostly Sacchi is like Earle in cruelty towards his own gang members, but without Earle's humanity that almost redeems him.

Sacchi and his two lunkhead companions kidnap the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Along the way, others are killed, including Giulio's too trusting girlfriend. In pursuit is Walter Grandi, a no nonsense detective who puts the pieces together. As played by Henry Silva, in one of his rare good guy roles, Grandi is a cop you should be afraid of. Ultimately, it is Sacchi, in his megalomania, who undoes himself. This is a very unadorned film with no time for lyricism. Ennio Morricone's propulsive music is much the same way (turn up the bass), charging forward. And if you still need another reason to add this film to your collection, the first 1000 copies of the Shameless DVD have this special lenticular cover art.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:51 AM

August 09, 2011

The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh

Lo strano vizio della Signora Wardh
Sergio Martino - 1971
Shameless Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Two words: Edwige Fenech. This is the film that made the young actress a star primarily in Italian film throughout the Seventies. And yes, there are some nude shots, but best of all are the close ups of that still photogenic face. In the meantime, after a bit of a lull, the British company, Shameless, is back on track with new DVD releases. Especially as the previous DVD release, from NoShame, is out of print, a new DVD release of The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh is very much welcomed.

Taking place in Vienna, the film begins with a quote from the Viennese Sigmund Freud, and plays with some psychological concepts. The wife of a diplomat, Julie Wardh is pursued by an past lover, Jean, with whom she have a relationship based on rough sex. Married or not, Jean still sends a bouquet of roses, refusing even the most clear refusals. Julie's marriage is loveless, and she succumbs to the advances of George, a stranger from Australia. In the meantime, there's a mad killer on the loose murdering attractive young women with a straight edged razor. As this is giallo, everything does come more or less together, although in ways not entirely expected.

While I loved the NoShame DVDs for their interviews with the cheerfully ingratiating screenwriter, Ernesto Gastaldi, the extras here are worth mentioning. The Shameless series frequently uses a "Fact Track", subtitles that discuss aspects of the film being watched. The commentary by Justin Harries is more serious and informative than some of the commentaries of other releases. In this case, not only does Harries discuss aspects regarding the making of the film, but also connects Mrs. Wardh not only to the obvious proto-giallo, Les Diaboliques, but also, unexpectedly, The Wind, Victor Sjostrom's 1928 film with Lillian Gish going crazy over both real and imagined fears. There is also an interview with Sergio Martino discussing Mrs. Wardh and his career in general.

A credit that caught my eye was that the music was scored by Nora Orlandi. And it is a catchy score, recycled by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill, Vol. 2. I mention this as there are so few women even now who compose film scores, and those of previous era, like Orlandi and Elisabeth Lutyens, are barely remembered today.

Sergio Martino might not be the visual stylist on the level of Dario Argento or Mario Bava, but there are several close ups using light and shadow that make the most of the face of Edwige Fenech. And while Martino freely admits that much of the nudity in the film, with Fenech and some other actresses, was commercially motivated, I'm not one to argue that any of it was gratuitous. There is the killer, or is it killers, with the black gloves. For those merely interested in a film that fulfills genre requirements, Mrs. Wardh succeeds on that level. What other films don't have is that one delirious, extreme, and upside down close up of the large, faintly exotic brown eyes and very long eye lashes of Edwige Fenech.

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I have received an email from Valentina of Shameless informing me that the label has also been affected by the Sony warehouse fire that has destroyed the available stock of several smaller DVD labels. If you have an excuse to treat yourself to some films, check out the link above. Thank you.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:41 AM

August 05, 2011

The Woman in the Rumour

Uwasu no Onna
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2 DVD

Released about five months prior to Chikamatsu Monogatari, The Woman in the Rumour (and yes, I'm using the British title here), was a studio imposed project. The story is essentially about a young woman, Yukiko, who returns home following a suicide attempt, after a broken engagement. Her fiance's family objected to Yukiko's mother running a Kyoto brothel, still legal during this time. The mother, Hatsuko, brings in a doctor, Matoba, to examine Yukiko. While the daughter gradually opens up about her disappointment in love, and her objections to the brothel, Hatsuko looks to setting up the young doctor with his own practice, and a more intimate relationship. Things go badly when Matoba reveals his love for Yukiko. The younger women, meanwhile, sees how her mother supports her employees, who often work out of economic necessity on behalf of their respective families. The title refers to Hatsuko, who is unaware of how others see her relationship with Matoba.

I might sound heretical to some, but when I saw this film I thought about Douglas Sirk. This is not simply in terms on the essential narrative, two women of different ages in love with the same, idealized, man. Also there is the consideration of how a filmmaker can simultaneously fulfill his artistic ideas while at the same time fulfilling the mandates of the studio, much like Sirk did, working on behalf of producer Ross Hunter and Universal Studios. This also is a reminder of some aspects of writing about films from other countries as there is less thought about the commercial or studio demands made upon a filmmaker. This is not to take Kenji Mizoguchi down a peg or two, but to note that he was no more an independent artist than peers like Sirk, Vincente Minnelli or Nicholas Ray.

The Woman in the Rumour is also an illustration of the gap between what filmmaker may express and their personal lives. Again, Tony Rayns introduction is helpful on that score. Foremost might be Mizoguchi's prickly relationship with prostitutes and actresses. When Rayns mentioned that Mizoguchi regularly went to the "pleasure quarters", I swore I heard the head of Herman G. Weinberg's ghost explode. Which reminds me, that I need to see Street of Shame again. At any rate, Mizoguchi, far from condemning prostitution, was only against women forced into the profession according to Rayns.

The character of the young doctor may be Mizoguchi's proxy, and again provides a mixed reading of the film. Yukiko discusses her education as a pianist, and mentions how women are generally less valued than men. Matoba presents himself as a more enlightened male, encouraging Yukiko to again pursue her musical ambitions, and at the same time explaining that the women who work for Hatsuko are not to be seen as victims. At the time the film was made, Kinuyo Tanaka, the woman who played Hatsuko, had also become Japan's first female film director. A frequently used actress in Mizoguchi's films, Mizoguchi attempted to use his influence to keep Tanaka from taking on a second directorial assignment. In addition to having a former muse become, to some extent, a competitor, I suspect Mizoguchi chafed at the idea of Tanaka taking on a project written by critical rival Yasujiro Ozu. The Woman in the Rumour was Mizoguchi's last collaboration with Tanaka.

In black turtleneck shirts, her hair pinned back in a boyish cut, and slender frame, Yoshiko Kuga, as Yukiko, made me think often of Audrey Hepburn or Jean Simmons. I've seen Kuga in other films, most notably Zero Focus, where she stars as the wife in search of a missing husband she barely knew. Coincidentally, Kuga starred in Kinuyo Tanaka's directorial debut, Love Letter. Kuga never became famous outside of Japan, and I wonder if it was because no one thought to exploit her similarity to Hepburn or Simmons. This still photograph indicates another side of Kuga that inspires a deeper look into her filmography. Tanaka might have played the title character in The Woman in the Rumour, but the film becomes Yoshiko Kaga's, especially in the final scene, when Yukiko cheerfully accepts her fate to follow in the path of her mother.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:07 AM

August 03, 2011

Chikamatsu Monogatari

Crucified Lovers
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1954
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2 DVD

I've been thinking more about filling in some of the gaps in my knowledge of Japanese films from the "Golden Age", that period that more or less begins with Kurosawa's Roshomon and faded away around the time of Red Beard. Seeing the Naruse films a little over a year ago has certainly been an impetus. My plan is to write about several films currently not available commercially as Region 1 DVDs during the month of August, discussing filmmakers who are considered classic, and those who have only recently been given greater consideration.

I'm not a big fan of Tony Rayns. I think he has taken on the role of cultural policeman, attempting to dictate which filmmakers are worthy of discussion. Nonetheless, his video introduction to Chikamatsu Monogatari is worth watching if just to learn about how Mizoguchi came to make what was essentially a studio assignment. And yes, even though Mizoguchi had a hand in shaping the screenplay, the film was essentially a job to do in between films of more personal interest. This also brings to mind some of what Andrew Sarris would discuss in his The American Film, that Hollywood directors, that the mark of an auteur was sometimes because of, as well as in spite of, the studio system.

Where Chikamatsu Monogatari fits in with other films by Mizoguchi is that peoples' lives are affected not by what they have done, but by what others assume they have done. The artisan and his master's wife are not lovers until after they run away from the false accusations about their relationship. Previous to that, we see Mohei, the house artisan in a print shop, scrupulously obeying protocol with Osan, the wife of his master. Mizoguchi often explored the theme of class differences, especially during the feudal period. Mohei's one relatively small lie, of using the master's seal to get a loan on behalf of Osan's spendthrift brother, snowballs into a situation that traps all of the principle characters, causing loss for everyone.

A sort of visual metaphor for the lack of control the characters have over their lives is illustrated in a seen with Mohei and Osan in a small boat. Osan has decided to commit suicide by drowning. Just before she takes the fatal leap, Mohei confesses his love for her. Osan declares that she want to continue living, even if it is on the run, with Mohei. The two embrace while the boat seems to drift with the current.

Kazuo Hasegawa was cast as Mohei, in spite of Mizoguchi's objections. I'm not sure why the perpetually baby faced Hasegawa was so popular, but at age 46, he was too old for the part. The casting of Hasegawa is no different from many other films with long in the tooth actors pretending to be much younger. By contrast, Kyoko Kagawa was just 23 when she performed the role of Osan, her second part for Mizoguchi following Sansho the Bailiff, also in 1954. Fans of Obayashi's House and that film's haunting hostess might want to note an early significant appearance by Yoko Minamida, seen here as a household servant in love with Mohei.

Even if Chikamatsu Monogatari is considered one of Mizoguchi's lesser films, there are still some visual moments to be savored. In addition to the drifting boat, there is a scene done as a single long shot, where we see Mohei brought down and tied by his pursuers, while Osan is seen locked into a small palanquin, and carried off away from the camera. Also, there is the shot of Mohei and Osan holding hands while tied together, content that they will be together in death if not in life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:47 AM

August 01, 2011

Final Take

Kinema no tenchi
Yoji Yamada - 1986
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Filmed in between his regular assignments in the "Tora-san" series, Final Take is one of Yoji Yamada more personal films. The film is something of a love letter to home studio Shochiku, with nods to A Star is Born in its various tellings, a lightly veiled cinema a clef about Yasujiro Ozu, with a slight detour by way of Sullivan's Travels. There is the question I have to resolve regarding what seems to be missing from this DVD version as various sources state the running time is 135 minutes, while the Panorama DVD clocks in at 116 minutes. Possible missing scenes aside, the film is probably of most interest for this recreation of filmmaking in Japan in the early Thirties.

Koharu, a candy seller in a movie theater, is briefly interview by director Ogura, who thinks the young woman has the face and the voice to be a movie actress. What Koharu lacks, at least initially, is any sense of acting ability. After initial discouragement, Kohura slowly rises from extra work to small supporting roles, catching the eye of Ogura's assistant, Kenjiro. Dismissing the director's films as mere "flickers", Kenjiro aspires to make serious films addressing the issues of the day, a difficult proposition not only due to studio politics but the politics of Japan demonstrating its military strength. Koharu also faces trouble at home dealing with her alcoholic father, a former itinerant stage actor. The studio's main leading lady elopes just before filming commences on Ogura's next production, giving Koharu the chance to show her acting ability.

Yomada includes some scenes showing what it was like to see movies in Tokyo at the time, with the huge billboards, the hawkers outside the theaters encouraging pedestrians to see the currently showing film, and the candy sellers walking up and down the aisles prior to the film start. In what appears to be one of the classier theaters, a silent film is on display, with a benshi, looking like a professor at a lectern to the right of the screen, provides narration. One of the two big sets is a recreation of Asakusa, the part of Tokyo where most of the movie theaters were located. The other major set is a recreation of Shochiku's Kamata Studio. One of the main musical themes is the "Shochiku Studio March", which Koharu sings near the end of the film.

There are also several scenes of filmmaking which are not too different from what might be scene in other movies about making movies. The one scene that did catch my eye was of the Ozu stand-in, Ogura, filming a scene with the camera almost at ground level. There is also a comic scene of two lovers in period costume, drenched in what was ordered to be a light spring rain. Kenjiro writes what is intended to be a serious film about a young girl sold into prostitution, only to be distressed to see that the screenplay has been transformed into a nonsense comedy that takes part of the title and leaves the rest behind.

One of the subplots involves Kenjiro's friendship with a man sought after by the government authorities. It's the kind of subject matter Yamada was able to explore more fully in Kabei, almost twenty years later. The friend appears at Kenjiro's room to hide a small package, the contents which are never revealed. Kenjiro and his friend are arrested by police who have presumably trailed the friend. There is a comic moment when one of the detectives, notices that Kenjiro has a book about Marx, unaware that it is about the Marx Brothers. Kenjiro is locked up in jail after taking a beating, impressing his fellow inmates by being on speaking terms with a famous actress. Kenjiro is next seen returning to the studio, with Ogura asking if he had finished his writing assignment. It is this particular sequence that seems to have been abridged based on the published running time. The cut from Kenjiro in jail to his next returning to the studio seems very abrupt. It is in jail where Kenjiro gains a sense of value of "flickers" and making movies for the masses.

The final film within the film is titled Floating Weeds. That title, and the presence of Chishu Ryu in a small role, are the clearest links to Ozu. This is the kind of film that would initiate a guessing game for those with some knowledge regarding Japanese film history regarding who some of the other characters are modeled after. Also appearing are Tora-san himself, Kiyoshi Atsumi as Koharu's father, and Tora-san's sister, Chieko Baisho, as Kuharu's neighbor. As befitting a film about Japan's studio system, the director whom Yamada served as assistant, Yoshitaro Nomura, is credited here as the producer. The title has been translated as "Heavenly Cinema World", and the film release coincided with Shochiku's leaving Kamata for Ofuna. While the film was made at the time as a tribute to Japan's filmmaking past, in regards to Yoji Yamada's lengthy career, Final Take seems like an opportunity taken to touch on themes that would be explored again in greater depth, with fewer commercial or political restraints.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM

July 28, 2011

Bodyguards and Assassins

Shi yue wei cheng
Teddy Chan - 2009
Indomina Releasing Region 1 DVD

Finally making its way as a stateside DVD is Teddy Chan's labor of love. Ten years of preparations and false starts culminated in wins for Chan and his film for the 2010 Hong Kong Film Awards. It's a good film, definitely, although I think John Woo's Red Cliff II was the better of the competition. The film is being sold for western audiences primarily for the martial arts angle, and the film is one of the wave of films that both features the resurgence of Donnie Yen as the prime Chinese language action star of the past couple of years, and of Chinese language action films steeped in recreating historical events.

The film takes place over the course of four days in Hong Kong in 1906. Sun Yat-sen, taking refuge in Japan, has come to Hong Kong to meet with several fellow revolutionaries. As Hong Kong was a British colony at the time, this was not considered part of imperial China, where Sun was considered an outlaw. The assassins, employed by the Emperor, are in Hong Kong to kill Sun, while the bodyguards, a disorganized assortment of students, workers, and others interested in bringing democracy to China attempt to protect Sun during his visit of several hours.

The bodyguards actually supply an elaborate decoy, traveling the streets of central Hong Kong, while Sun is having a meeting. The film is about those involved on both sides, with the fateful day providing a long action sequence. Most of the film centers on a newspaper publisher who quietly helps fund Sun although he attempts to officially keep his distance. Circumstances bring both him and his son into the action. The mistress of the publisher is the former wife of a small time gambler who acts as an informer for the assassins. Those involved do so out of either idealism or personal motivation, or a combination of reasons.

As the film was made in Shanhai, and employs a cast and crew from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, comparisons with the dreams of China in 1906 and the present day reality are unavoidable. Chan doesn't address these disparities directly, letting the viewer draw their own conclusions. Putting political and philosophical questions aside, the film is impressive for the huge city street set where most of the action takes place, with hundreds of extras milling crowded streets.

While Donnie Yen is the nominal star, the film is more of ensemble piece, with better known actors such as Simon Yam, Leon Lai and the almost ubiquitous Eric Tsang providing supporting performances. The film is stolen be two newcomers, Li Yuchun as the teenage daughter of Yam, who takes to fighting the assassins to avenge her father, and the almost seven foot tall former NBA player, Mengke Bateer, playing a street vendor whose height and strength provide most of the comic relief for the film. Li, at least in this film, isn't obviously pretty, going through the film wearing an aviator's cap, but the combination of her attitude and youth are reminiscent of when Zhang Ziyi was "discovered" by audiences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Pretty in a more conventional way is Zhou Yun as the daughter of a photographer. The object of infatuation by a household servant played by Nicholas Tse, the courtship between the two, while having little direct bearing on a main narrative is one of the most affecting parts of the film. Tse, a Cantopop star, has a large facial scar, making his character appear less desirable due to both class and physical appearance. Zhou, seen sitting in the previous shots, gets up to reveal an obvious limp. It's a nice scene of love of two people looking beyond the kinds of barriers that might one from refusing the other.

Although most of Bodyguards and Assassins is classical filmmaking in the best sense, Chan does allow for some visual play. The opening titles are made of abstract images, wrought iron railings and staircases superimposed on each other. Near the end, when Leon Lai pursues the lead assassin with his glasses off, there are several out of focus point of view shots. Chan also has an unexpected version of the "Odessa Steps" sequence from Eisenstein's Potemkin. For sheer visceral impact, the moment to watch with the biggest bang is Donnie Yen running towards a galloping horse.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

July 26, 2011

The Clone Returns Home

Kuron wa kokyo wo mezasu
Kanji Nakajima - 2008
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

This is the first time I've even seen a DVD cover with the following statement, "Warning: Contains Significant Amounts of Philosophy". I'm not quite sure what to make of that, but what is certain is that The Clone Returns Home is a marked departure from the samurai dramas that make up the main stock of AnimEigo's releases to date. Not only is the film a relatively recent production that takes place in a contemporary setting, but the science fiction setup is a far cry from palace intrigue in old Edo.

This is a science fiction film, but one that shares some of the same concerns as Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris and Duncan Jones' Moon. The basic premise is that an astronaut allows himself to be completely cloned, should he be in a situation where he dies during his latest mission. The doctors supporting this first legal attempt at human cloning explain the benefits in the most humanist terms possible. The astronaut, on an unexplained solo flight, is killed, with a clone created to take his place. What is not planned for is that the clone has suppressed memories of his own that come to the forefront, and that the spirit of the astronaut may possibly have come back to earth.

Nakajima's theme of identity is literally doubled by not only being a story about clones, but of twin brothers. The boy, Kohei, who loves to try and fool his mother, unsuccessfully, by claiming to be his brother Noboru, is the one who grows up to be the astronaut. Several times throughout the film, there is a close up of Kohei's hand, with a large scar between the wrist and the knuckles. It is an important visual clue. With his "return" to Earth, Kohei questions his decision. There is a subplot involving an older scientist who was responsible for most of the cloning science, who used it for cloning a beloved grand-daughter. The scientist brings up the concept of where a person's soul goes when the original body is destroyed.

The science fiction elements are limited to a short scene of Kohei in space, and some computer imagining of the cloning process. Most of the film is concerned the act and meaning of memory. Nakajima contrasts the sterile, sparse contemporary settings with flashbacks taking place in a classic Japanese style house with sliding doors, in a remote, rural setting. Throughout the film, Nakajima is concerned with both the physical and emotional isolation of his characters, where even the most basic family units, mother and son, husband and wife, and brothers, come apart. Even when the home of childhood represents the closest ideal, it provides no escape from some of the darker aspects of life.

Normally I don't bother with "Making of . . ." supplements. What makes this a bit more interesting is that it documents some of the process of making a film over the course of several months, but also the actors discuss their challenges in making the film. Nakajima and star Mitsuhiro Oikawa both talk about eliminating the mannerisms of the celebrity nicknamed Michee. There is also a cute moment when actress Eri Ishida leaves aside her role as the mother to play with the Tsukamoto twins. In turn, we also see Nakajima working on the most dramatic scene with young Ryo Tsukamoto who has to perform in a potentially dangerous creek. As usual with AnimEigo's DVD releases, this film comes with colored subtitles, including a special explanatory title to inform the viewer of color coding for each twin's dialogue. My own hope is that The Clone Returns Home does well enough to encourage AnimEigo to include other types of releases in addition to their many classic films of shoguns and swords.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:18 AM

July 21, 2011

Accident

Yi ngoi
Soi Cheang - 2009
Rose Entertainment & Media Region 3 DVD

A crucial scene in Accident takes place during a solar eclipse. Much of the drama of the film is based on what is seen, as well as unseen. The eclipse also acts as a visual symbol for the main character's understanding of what has been going on around him. The film is about the act of seeing, of understanding what one sees. To that end, many of the shots are not clear. What the viewer sees are reflections on glass, people partially seen through glass, people in shadows and rain. Even when the sun comes out, there is still uncertainty about what one is seeing, who we are looking at, and what, if any, relationship they may have with each other.

Richie Jen plays a man called Brain who leads a three person team in staging elaborate accidents that serve as cover for murders. Things begin to go sour for the team when the eldest member of the group, an older man known as Uncle, shows signs of forgetfulness. A staged accident held on one very dark, rainy night gets out of control when a bus crashes onto the scene, killing a member of Brain's team. The bus crash may be an accident, but Brain is certain that he's being played by a competitor, possibly someone from an insurance company.

Whether intentionally or not, Accident seems to have been inspired at least partially by Francis Ford Coppola"s The Conversation. Much of the film is devoted to Brain watching and listening, trying to make sense of what he sees and hears, gradually enveloped in increasing paranoia. There is also the unavoidable comparison to Rear Window, in content, but not style. Unlike James Stewart, who managed to put two and two together from the vantage point of his apartment, Richie Jen's attempts at adding up what he sees and hears reveal some unexpected answers. Brain's sense of isolation is also emphasized by his memories of his wife, who died in a car crash. Brain keeps his wife's damaged watch, with the time stopped at the moment of that accident. Brain's memory of his wife informs his current occupation, affording the illusion of being in control of life and death.

The first accident shown in the film involves among other things, a car with a flat tire on a street with heavy traffic, water spilled from a truck, and an errant banner hung improperly. The setup is so elaborate that the viewer is primed to be uncertain about what follows. Cheang plays on the assumption of the audience regarding the veracity of what the main protagonist may be seeing, and that what is seen by the protagonist is understood as revealing the truth about a situation.

There is some delight in watching Brain and his crew set up an accident, throwing around different ideas, and coming up with a plan involving a rainy night and a loose wire on streetcar tracks. The timing and the multiple steps involved make the staged murders from James Cain novels look simple minded. The murders are made of a complex series of causes and effects, death as staged by Rube Goldberg. Yet what Cheang is more interested in is how the efforts of confusion and secrecy undo Brain and his team, so much so that absolutely nothing appears to be coincidental, and everything has some sinister motivation. Even though Accident was produced by Johnnie To, and has some of To's crew on this film, including supporting actor Lam Suet, there is not the optimism that is usually found in To's films. In a To film, the protagonist usually finds a way to redeem himself at the very end. In Accident, even the best of intentions have tragic consequences.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:29 AM

July 19, 2011

Women in Prison Triple Feature

Chained Heat
Paul Nicholas - 1983

Jungle Warriors/Euer Weg fuhrt durch die Holle
Ernst R. von Theumer - 1984

Red Heat/Unschuld hinter Gittern
Robert Collector - 1985
Panik House Entertainment All Region DVD

The regulars who check out this blog are pretty smart about cinema. They not only know the difference between King Vidor and Charles Vidor, but also don't confuse Andrew Lau with Andy Lau. And most cinephiles know that some movies simply aren't made to undergo the kind of analysis given to a film like Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach or even The Big Combo. Some movies are made simply to make money, pure and simple. Maybe not a lot of money, but enough to pay the rent, and live in relative comfort between jobs. So the main concern of the people involved with these films was to produce a movie that could deliver the goods for audiences around the world, back in the day before studio productions got the idea to dominate multiplex screens, squeezing out the small time companies.

You want an auteur? How about producer Ernst R. von Theumer? Not only did Herr v. Theumer have a hand in production of all three films, but also had a say in the direction and writing, if not always credited. There's nothing in English about the Germany based Ernst R. von Theumer, but you'll have to admit that the posters for a couple of his earlier films, Operation Jamaica and Ballad of a Gunman are quite eye catching. The guy has been doing low budget exploitation and genre films for a couple of decades and could well be worth a little further investigation.

Most of the women in prison films, and variations of the genre follow certain conventions. The main character is usually the good good girl who finds herself behind bars almost always by accident, or as Curly Howard would say, "I'm a victim of circumstances". The good good girl is aided by the good bad girl, often a career criminal of some sort with a code of honor. The chief nemesis is the bad bad girl, someone who loves to make life hell for other people, and the ruler of her own little roost. There is also the warden, who makes life miserable for everybody, supposedly for their own good. What is provided here are some of the highlights of the films, plus a convenient "cinephile's alibi" for those who might need a convenient explanation for those who are near and dear, or to assuage guilt over putting off viewing that Criterion Collection DVD that remains unopened.

Chained Heat is the story of good good girl, Linda Blair, sent to prison for making Roller Boogie, for accidental vehicular homicide. Blair is taken under the wing of repeat offender Sharon Hughes. One nice thing about seeing a movie like Chained Heat is that it forces me to do some research on the cast an crew. Unsubstantiated, but darn interesting, is the meme that Hughes was the inspiration for the song, "Little Red Corvette". Anyways, the bad bad girl is Sybil Danning, who peddles drugs from within the prison, leads a gang of nasty girls, and lusts after Blair. As it turns out, the people running the prison are even worse. John Vernon is the evil prison warden who videotapes his hot tub rendezvous with select prisoners. Stella Stevens is the captain of the prison guards who actually runs the drug ring with Henry Silva, who happens to be two-timing Stella with Sybil Danning. As if that wasn't enough, Danning has a rivalry with Tamara Dobson, a Vassar educated perp who keeps "her sisters" in line.

As far as Women in Prison movies go, Chained Heat has a lot more nudity than the Roger Corman productions that came out about ten years earlier. Compared to the WiP films of Jesse Franco, Chained Heat might even be considered quite restrained. The high points include a shower scene, and an appearance by former Russ Meyer muse, Edy Willams. The down side is that seeing more of a partially undressed John Vernon that I would ever want to in any lifetime. You want to see Stella Stevens nude? Get thee to The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Best line, from amateur porn videographer John Vernon, "Don't call me Warden. Call me Fellini.".

Cinephile's Alibi: Cinematography by Mac Ahlberg. The name may not mean too much now, but as a director, Ahlberg's I, a Woman was the film that helped beat the distinction between porno and art house films over forty years ago. Lots of big, deep shadows and some Argento like point of view camera work. The DVD supplements include recent interviews with Danning and Stevens saying how much they liked Linda Blair and working with director Paul Nicolas, and how much fun they had making the film.

The real punishment in Jungle Warriors is the theme song, alternately croaked and screeched, by Marina Arcangeli. I don't know if this film was planned with an alternate English language title, but the song lyrics are about giving "heat, it's within reach". Apparently the real drama was in the making of the film with original director Billy Fine, producer of Chained Heat given the heave-ho by producer Ernst von Theumer, and a drug addled Dennis Hopper replaced by a less addled Marjoe Gortner.

A gaggle of fashion models, the kind more likely to appear in a K-Mart catalogue than the pages of Vogue, are trapped in the Central America jungle when their plane is shot down by portly drug lord Paul Smith. Living in a huge old fort, Smith, with very loving sister Sybil Danning, run a massive cocaine operation, with their private army led by Woody Strode. In the meantime, mafioso John Vernon, with nephew Alex Cord, shows up in the jungle to make an offer to Smith that he hopefully can't refuse. Feds are on the case trying to trap Smith, with an undercover agent among the models. Nina Van Pallandt gets top billing here, but the best part of the film is watching John Vernon ham it up. I also like to think of the scene where Woody Strode kills Alex Cord with a bow and arrow as Strode's belated revenge on behalf of John Ford for Cord's starring in the 1966 remake of Stagecoach. Best line, from Vernon surveying the remote jungle paradise, "Do you get television here?".

Cinephile's Alibi: Cinematography by Nicholas von Sternberg. Of course the big tragedy of cinema history is that Josef von Sternberg never got to make a Women in Prison pic. But think of this film as a son's tribute to his father. There is a small display of sapphic affection like in Morocco, a jungle setting like Anahatan, some kinkiness to equal The Scarlet Empress, and women in exotic settings like Shanghai Express. Sybil Danning is even photographed to look sort of like Marlene Dietrich. Too bad Cesar Romero never thought to blow up Dietrich with a hand grenade in The Devil is a Woman.

Red Heat takes place in a parallel universe where everyone in East Germany speaks perfect, if heavily accented, English. Unlike all the complications of Chained Heat, most of the story revolves around the good good girl, Linda Blair, and the bad bad girl, Sylvia Kristel. Blair goes to Germany to be with her fiance. After a disagreement, she accidentally sees a female scientist, kidnapped by a couple of men. Taking no chances, Blair is also grabbed, and the two women are in an East German prison. Sylvia Kristel is a prisoner who seems to have the run of the joint, with assist from two nasty women with tattooed faces. Not only is Kristal the lover of the woman who officially is in charge of the prison, but she also hosts orgies with her girlfriends at night.

For those who couldn't possibly get enough nude Linda Blair in Chained Heat, there's a shower scene here. The best line is from Sylvia Kristal when threatening Blair: "I've murdered three people at least. The first one was my step-father. He ate my pet snake.".

Cinephile's alibi: Soundtrack by Tangerine Dream. Coming in between Hollywood projects Vision Quest and Legend.

All three films have voice-over introductions by Mr. Skin, proprietor of a website bearing his name. I only found out about the website by accident when I absentmindedly googled the words "Margaret Rutherford nude". The main point of this DVD package is see movies with reasonably attractive women in various states of undress. These three movies succeed in varying degrees, especially when they don't let the story get in the way.

An additional note: Check out the remarkable filmography of Monica Teuber, who, in addition to serving as producer on all three films, has a small role in Red Heat.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM | Comments (2)

July 12, 2011

Dragnet Girl

Hijosen no onna
Yasujiro Ozu - 1933
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

One of the more striking moments in Dragnet Girl is of interest both for what is seen, as well as what is not seen. Tokiko, the girlfriend of small time gangster Joji, confronts the woman she perceives of as being a romantic rival, Kazuko. In a previous shot, the camera follows the lower legs and feet of the two women. Tokiko is in western style clothing, a stylish dress and leather shoes, with the lowerpart of her legs exposed. Kazuko is in a traditional kimono that covers her entire legs, wearing thick sandals. Tokiko is about to threaten Kazuko while the two are out on the Yokohama street. Instead we see Tokiko walking up to Kazuko, followed by a shot of the two women's lower legs against each other. Ozu cuts to a shot of Kazuko touching her cheek. We never see if Tokiko has kissed Kazuko although it is suggested by something Tokiko says later that suggests a definite attraction to the other woman.

While there are visual and narrative elements to Dragnet Girl that link the film to those more characteristic of what is known as an Ozu film, there is also plenty to make this different. Unlike the middle class families in the films with the interchangeable seasonal titles, where Setsuko Hara sacrifices her happiness so that Chishu Ryu is guaranteed a good nights sleep, this is a film about gangsters, loafers and other lowlifes. Joji, a former boxer, makes some money doing some unseen criminal activities, and lives with Tokiko, an office girl, coveted by the boss's son. A young boxer, Hiroshi, decides to follow Joji in a life of crime, concerning older sister Kazuko, a record store clerk. Aside from being Ozu's only film with a girl and a gun, people dance to jazz in a night club, waste their days playing pool, drink copious amount of alcohol, and get laid, in other words, the kind of stuff that doesn't happen in a film like Tokyo Story.

There are also several (gasp) traveling shots, as the camera follows a row of typewriters in an office, tracks through the nightclub from the nightclub musicians to the dancing couples, or follows the lower legs and feet of people walking, or running, in the street. One very unusual shot is of the reflection of the rounded back of an exterior car light while the car is moving, so what is seen is a distorted view of Yokohama. There are also the kinds of shots that are more commonly associated with Ozu, such as the montage of the row of men's hats on a series of pegs, the wall clock, and other office artifacts. While perhaps not as pronounced as in some of his later films that Paul Schrader would characterize as looking at the world from a tatami mat, the characters are often filmed with the camera facing upwards.

What Dragnet Girl also shares with later, more well-known Ozu films is the emphasis on the female character. Tokiko is hardly demure, in fact the boss's son says he admires her for her frankness. The film might possibly be read as a critique of some aspects of the westernization of Japan. Certainly one might see this as the case of the stylish bad girl versus the more traditional good girl, who both in dress and actions would be considered more Japanese. Yet, Kazuko works at a record store filled with the RCA Victor logo of the dog listening to the gramophone. Joji is in a booth listening to what is presumably western classical music. It's the kind of moment of confusing cultural refinement with moral high ground that would later be upended by Robert Aldrich in Kiss Me Deadly.

In fact lots of western signs are visible. The boxing club name is in English. On the wall is a poster for The Champ. A small poster featuring Jack Dempsey is visible, as well as a French poster for All Quiet on the Western Front. The very Japanese Kazuko almost seems like the foreigner in the otherwise almost thoroughly western milieu of suits, evening dresses, coffee and cigarettes. It should be noted that this is a silent movie, and that the DVD version here is silent, the Dolby tag at preceding the film notwithstanding. Not even a music track, much less the sound effects or narrator that may have accompanied the film back in 1933. I mention this as it means that what we can see is not quite the film that Ozu had made, presented as originally intended. At the very least, Dragnet Girl is an eye opener for those who think of Ozu films as domestic dramas of people who are overly polite each other, with nary a moment of spontaneity. Here's an Ozu film with demonstrative expressions of love, where Joji tells Tokiko to "leap at me", and leap she does.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:54 AM | Comments (1)

July 07, 2011

Clash

Bay Rong
Le Thanh Son - 2009
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

In terms of action film, is Vietnam the new Hong Kong? I would guess that it would be if Johnny Tri Nguyen had his way. Relegated to stunt work and small supporting roles in Hollywood film, Nguyen has served as star, producer and co-writer of a couple of Vietnamese productions which have attracted some international attention. Clash has some of the feel of the down and dirty films from the late Eighties and early Nineties, when Tsui Hark and John Woo made their presence known initially to a handful of cinephiles and genre cultists.

The setup, a small band of gangsters known to each other only with pseudonyms provided by the gang leader, will of course remind some of Reservoir Dogs, which in turn should remind those familiar with Hong Kong cinema of Ringo Lam's City on Fire. The heist, of a laptop computer in the hands of French criminals operating in Saigon, is only part of the story. There is the short, comic gangster, the guy who's secretly affiliated with another gang, and the undercover cop. In a sign of the changing times, this gang is led by a woman her calls herself Phoenix.

The main narrative is about Phoenix, who leads the gang on behalf of the elegant, opera loving, white suited Black Dragon. In return for doing several "missions" for Black Dragon, Phoenix will get back her kidnapped young daughter. Black Dragon is presented as someone who sees the world as a board game in which he controls the players. Nguyen, known by the nick name of White Tiger, falls in love with Phoenix, with the two attempting to get back Phoenix's child after the planned heist goes awry.

Much of the film is as much a showcase for the lean and leggy Ngo Thanh Van. Even more than her previous film with Nguyen, The Rebel, Ngo demonstrates her way with guns and martial arts moves. One of the high points in the film is Nguyen and Ngo dancing a tango, while simultaneously casing the French thugs in an attempt to discover which of two briefcases has the laptop they are after. In most of Clash, Ngo wears form fitting shirts and jeans, while at the scene in the Saigon Sheraton, she wears a low cut, long red dress, with the camera focused on her legs as she emerges from her car. Well known in her native country as a pop singer, Ngo is exactly the example to bring up to those who bemoan Hollywood's lack of capable female action stars.

Hollywood has proven unwilling or unable for the most part in dealing with Asian action stars. Still, it might be nice if Johnny Nguyen was given a featured role in an English language film. The gap between Nguyen's Vietnamese filmography and what he has done so far in some very high profile Hollywood films is quite wide. The one weakness of Clash is that Nguyen needs to work with a director with greater visual flair than Le Thanh Son. Nguyen was somewhat better served by director "Charlie" Nyugen on The Rebel. One hopes that as Vietnamese action films, and Vietnamese films in general, become more visible, that there will be the equivalent to a Tsui or a Woo, yet to be discovered.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:24 AM

July 05, 2011

Bullets over Summer

Baau lit ying ging
Wilson Yip - 1999
Mei Ah Region 0 DVD

Well, yes, it seems most appropriate to see any movie titled Bullets over Summer at this time of year. But as it turns out, the film isn't as action packed as the English title might suggest. I'm not sure what the Chinese title means, although an attempt with translation of the individual words from Pinyin to English suggests something along the lines of "Carefully looking for the right person while eating pork buns". A good part of the film is devoted to the two main characters, undercover cops, and their surveillance of a suspected gun dealer.

The basic setup of Wilson Yip's film is the Hong Kong version of that Seventies Hollywood staple, the buddy film. Louis Koo and Francis Ng are close in spirit to James Caan and Alan Arkin in Freebie and the Bean in that both have tensions between each other, but share something of the same antipathy towards parts of the police force they are part of, and a sense of unity when actually fighting crime. Francis Ng's Mike is the more diligent of the pair, seeming to function like a mechanism too tightly wound. Louis Koo's Brian is the laid back womanizer, informing Mike with his flat drawl that he's rather finish his ice cream before checking on a holdup in progress.

Looking to keep tabs on a gun dealer, which will in turn lead to the capture of a criminal gang, Brian and Mike seek an apartment from which to view their suspect. The two convince the proverbial little old lady, referred to as Granny, to let them stay in her run down apartment, primarily near the balcony, for a couple of weeks. Granny is both high strung and a bit addled, as she seemingly confuses Mike and Brian with her own children, yet the three become a kind of impromptu family. The family is extended with the inclusion of the sister of a snitch, and the pregnant woman who runs a neighborhood laundry service. The criminal investigation is resolved by coincidence rather than detection, but that doesn't seem to be Yip's main concern.

As one of the screenwriters, Matthew Chow explains: "The miraculous point of Bullets over Summer is that most of the time, we would set a target and a theme before we write a script, but this time we didn't. When the movie was finished, someone commented the characters are so lonely, they are all being abandoned. I then realized that Helena (Law Lan) was abandoned, same for Michelle (Saram), she had to sleep on the street; and Francis Ng's character was an orphan, the pregnant woman was also abandoned by her husband, even the story was being ignored. It seemed to reveal that I need to be cherished therefore in my imaginative world; the characters are all being discarded and ignored. Additionally, Wilson treasures family very much, he introduced a new perspective towards family into the movie."

It is Law Lan who was cited for her performance as Granny. How many movies has Miss Law actually made? Obviously, more scholarship is required, but the fact that Miss Law is still active speaks for the greater appreciation within the Chinese language film industries for some of its oldest actors.

When Bullets over Summer returns to action film mode, it is a jolting moment. It's as if for almost an hour we've been lulled by the comedy and drama of this mismatched family, only to watch Brian and Mike bring out the guns. Characters chase each other through stairways and dark alleys in a hot and humid night. The only misstep in the film is giving Mike an incurable disease which allows him to do the wrong thing as a policeman, even if his motivation is admirable. Still, of the films I have seen by Wilson Yip, I prefer the modest virtues of Bullets over Summer to the antics of the popular, if overpraised, Ip Man.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:43 AM | Comments (3)

July 01, 2011

Buddha Mountain

Guan yin shan
Li Yu - 2011
Guosi Culture All Region DVD

I overlooked that when I ordered my DVD of Buddha Mountain, that although it was a region free version, it also did not have English subtitles. Rather than getting upset, I decided to watch the DVD anyways, to see what I could get out of watching a film without knowing what people were saying, missing details of the narrative. It's not the first time I've watched a film in another language without subtitles. I even have a couple of Japanese DVDs with no subtitles, although they happen to be historically based, about the Buddhist priest, Nichiren, a story with which I have much familiarity. There was also the Thai film, Somtum, with had enough English making that film fairly easy to follow.

One advantage of seeing a movie in a language not spoken or understood is that it forces the viewer to try and pay more attention to what is happening on the screen. The best moments in Buddha Mountain are dialogue free. Most involve Fan Bingbing. In one scene, Fan, seeking to avenge her fat friend who was beaten by a gang of young thugs, confronts the gang leader. Taking a glass bottle, she breaks it on her forehead, blood seeping down her face. If that wasn't enough to let the gang know that she means business, she grabs one of the gang girls, locking lips with her, effectively forcing the gang to sheepishly apologize for messing with the wrong person.

There are several scenes of Fan, with Berlin Chen and Fei Long, traveling on the open air cars of freight trains. Close ups of Fan show her long hair whipping across her face. One very dreamlike image is of Fan and Chen lying together in an identified outdoor space, about to be engulfed by water. There is a hazy image of their hands entwined. No dialogue is needed to follow the opening scene with Fan, singing in a bar, losing control of her microphone, which injures one unlucky patron in a sensitive area.

The story is about the three friends, living marginal existences, moving into the spare rooms of a retired opera singer, played by Sylvia Chang. Fan and Chen have left broken families, while Chang is mourning the death of her son. As memorial, she keeps the damaged car her son was driving. After a few contentious encounters, the three friends and the opera singer find solace in each other. A scene with the car brought back totally repaired might be to obviously symbolic. The car is also the means by which the four go to the Buddha Mountain of the title.

The film is shot entirely with a handheld camera. Even though the camera moves, with only a few relatively still shots, even when the camera pans back and forth between characters, it has none of the obtrusiveness that seems to plague many other films that rely on this same visual tact. One of the nicest shots is a tilt up following the source of a mountainside waterfall.

The film was primarily shot in the city of Chendu, in Sichuan Province. At one point, the characters observe an urban area destroyed by the earthquake of 2008. While the magnitude of destruction is something beyond what a handful of people can repair, the group works to restore a small Buddhist shrine. Buddha Mountain is an intimate film. Li Yu's message would be that even in the face of problems that seem overwhelming, even the smallest kindnesses are meaningful.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:39 AM

June 29, 2011

All about Love

Duk haan chau faan
Ann Hui - 2010
Vicol Entertainment Region 3 DVD

What is evident about All about Love is Ann Hui's love of urban Hong Kong. Unlike the majority of her peers, Hui has not made films in mainland China, nor are her films designed to appeal to the mainland audience. Some of the opening shots have some resemblance to Johnny To's own love letter to Hong Kong, Sparrow, with the series of shots of the narrow streets, often connected by steeps flights of steps, and the piano and violin duo, giving parts of the film something of the casual feel of a free wheeling French film. Hui's Hong Kong is a combination of crowded street markets, small neighborhood bars and restaurants, and glitzy skyscrapers, both ethnic Chinese and international.

Fran Martin's book, Backward Glances: Contemporary Chinese Cultures and the Female Homoerotic Imaginary, discusses love between female school girls as the basis for many narratives, both in film and literature. Most of the relationships in these stories, whether sexual or intensely platonic, are between adolescent girls, with the relationships ending when the girls leave the all female environment of school. Many of the narratives cited by Martin involve one of the characters looking back at the past, at a "lost love" that might have continued if not for demands of family, society, or one's own sense of identity. Hui's film might be considered a response to that genre, presenting new possibilities for women in love with each other. There are several breaks from the film narrative where we see pen and ink drawings of a girls' school, including some images of two girls sharing intimate moments together. While there is nothing in the film by way of an explicit explanation, there is sufficient suggestion that Hui's two main characters, Macy and Anita, may have initially begun their relationship as students in such a school. It is also through these pen and ink drawings that Hui is able to connect the film with the kind of framework more familiar to Chinese language filmgoers.

Macy and Anita are former lovers who see each other for the first time in about a dozen years at a meeting for pregnant women. Both are still single, and neither cares to define themselves with labels, veering between relationships with both men and women. At a meeting with a small group of lesbian friends, when push comes to shove, Macy states to the women who prefer unambiguous identities, "You're marginalizing bisexuality. How's that different from heterosexual hegemony?". Hui has almost always been a socially committed filmmaker, and occasionally this film gets bogged down in polemics, only to get buoyed back up with the series of street scenes.

Macy, a lawyer, finds herself pregnant by a former client, a married man. Anita discovers that her one night stand was with a young man not even 20 years old. Both women are well into their Thirties, and the ticking of their respective biological clocks is loud. In addition to making sense of their rekindled relationship, Macy and Anita have decisions to make about their respective pregnancies. Complicating matters is that both women are pursued by their male lovers, often oblivious to the idea that the women have eyes for each other.

The film's Chinese title translates as "Leisurely Fried Rice". And in some ways, that is a more accurate description for the film, especially as some of the best moments are of the characters just poking along on the streets without any pressing need to get from one place to another. When Macy and Anita first get together again, the two take a walk to Anita's apartment,guarded by the recording of a barking dog, only to walk together back to Macy's building, deciding to walk back to Anita's a second time. In Hui's Hong Kong, there are few level paths, with the city streets representing the frequent ups and downs of the characters' lives.

I haven't seen other films written by Yee Shan Yeung, but from her brief filmography, she seems to specialize in films about romantic entanglements. Yee's most recent film has the English language title of Hi, Fidelity. Does anyone know if Sandra Ng and Vivian Chow knew each other at St. Stephen's Girls College? It could well be possible as the women are only two years apart in age. All about Love marks Vivian Chow's return to the screen after a fourteen year absence. Among Chow's earlier films is Tom, Dick and Hairy, directed by Peter Chan, Sandra Ng's husband. There is the sense that the two women have been longtime friends in real life based on the ease they have with each other, displaying affection including a shared bubble bath. Hui plays on the more obvious feminine appeal of Chow, who in her older films epitomized the ideal young female. Ng's appearance is could be described as tomboyish, more to serve her role as lawyer who is serious about her work, rather than as a statement about sexual identity. Maybe I'm reading too much in the finale with the two stars dancing the tango as a nod towards another Hong Kong film about two male lovers in Argentina, although it is Ng and Chow who are happy together.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:25 AM

June 27, 2011

The Fish Child

El Nino Pez
Lucia Puenzo - 2009
Peccadillo Pictures Region 2 DVD

I think it would be difficult for Lucia Puenzo not to make a movie that would not live up to expectations following her debut of XXY. Even without the surrounding family drama, there was tension simply in the premise of the coming to terms of sexual identity for an intersex teenager. Puenzo let the viewer discover the truth about Alex as the film progressed, letting some of the more unexpected scenes speak for themselves.

Unlike the straight forward narrative in XXY, Puenzo opts to reveal her characters through flashbacks, with Lala reflecting on her relationship with the maid, Ailin, while traveling towards the destination that she believes holds her future. The two young women are about the same age, around 20 years old. That they are lovers provides some motivation for their actions, yet is not the focus of the film. Even though Lala says that she only had eyes for Ailin when first seen at age 13, what seems to really bring the two together is not so much erotic attraction as much as the alienation that they feel towards their own families, particularly their respective fathers.

Puenzo's film is taken from her novel of the same title. I didn't know until recently that Puenzo is the daughter of filmmaker Luis Puenzo, director of the Oscar winning The Official Story. That Puenzo first established herself as a novelist might be interpreted as a way of expressing herself artistically in a way that is understood as being the act of one person, and in a different medium. And while I have seen both feature films by Lucia Puenzo and two by Luis Puenza (the other being the undervalued Old Gringo), what seems to link the two as filmmakers is an interest in questions of identity, whether it's personal, familial, or political.

For Lala, the notions of home and family would seem tenuous. The father, a judge, seems to have been forcefully retired for unstated political reasons. The mother's identity rests on her participating in international running events. The son lives at what is described as a farm, a somewhat remote place where he raises attack dogs on behalf of some of the elite of Buenos Aires. Lala's desire is to jettison her privileged background to runaway with Ailin, who has a house maid from Paraguay of is an outsider based on class and nationality. There is also the racial distinction to by made as Ailin is of Guarini decent, the indigenous people primarily from Paraguay. Ailin has also left her home and family, becoming a maid in part to support herself, but also as an act of rebellion against her own middle class background.

Part of the film plays on the cultural connections of Paraguay and Argentina by having Arnaldo Andre, a Paraguayan by birth, but a major star in Argentina, play a small role as a retired actor, Ailin's father. Also, a scene involving the conflicts between Lala's feelings towards Ailin, and Ailin's more fluid sexuality takes place during a concert of the Paraguayan band Los Potrankos. The title refers to Lake Ypoa in Paraguay, and a legendary being that grants miracles provided with offerings found attached to underwater trees. Certainly, Ines Efron, who played Lala, as well as the lead character in XXY is someone I should see in other films, notably Lucrecia Martel's The Headless Woman where she has a supporting role, and Daniel Burman's Empty Nest. In her two performances for Puenzo, Efron demonstrates a fearlessness that many of her Hollywood peers could learn from. Puenzo should also be cited for her own fearlessness, as this interview indicates, in making a film that in no way indicates the difficult conditions in which it was made.

More GLBT Cinema is to be found at Garbo Laughs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM | Comments (1)

June 23, 2011

StreetDance 3D

Max Giwa & Dania Pasquini
Happy Home Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Watching a DVD with the 3D glasses didn't quite work for me. These were the old fashion kind with a green lens and a red lens, and made for someone with a smaller head. There's also sitting in just the right place, and the fact that I need to wear glasses in order to watch any movie in focus. Still, for the price of seeing a 3D movie in a theater, I think I got a pretty good deal with a Thai two disc set and two sets of glasses, with the second disc being the 2D version of this British dance film. (And for those concerned about region coding, keep in mind that my Macbook is set for Region 1, and I had no problem creating the screencaps. The British R2 version is very reasonably priced, with both the 3D and "flat" version, and four sets of red/green glasses.)

I found out about StreetDance by accident. A website I look at had a link to a post by Jasper Sharp. If you never heard of the film, well it was a big international hit, except for the U.S., where it never got released. It should also be noted that with its May 2010 release, StreetDance was actually the first 3D dance movie, preceding Step Up 3D by about four months. Why didn't this film get a U.S. release? I have a couple theories. It's too bad this film wasn't given a chance here because it is a pretty good film.

What I like about StreetDance was that it is actually about the joy of dancing. Yeah, there's a bit when the lead character, Carly, mentions attitude, but it's nothing like the kind of films where the dance competitions are ready to disintegrate into gang fights. What is also refreshing is an egalitarian spirit as expressed by Charlotte Rampling's character that refuses to make distinctions between the street dance and ballet. Admittedly, there's nothing original in the script, although there's a bit more wit than might be found in an obvious inspiration, Breakin'. Only a small part of the film plays out the snobs versus slobs rivalry, and the filmmakers even had the sense of humor to include a 3D food fight.

Where Step Up 3D bests StreetDance is in the one real street dance, a five minute single take by a couple to the old Jerome Kern song, "I Won't Dance". It was Sheila O'Malley who brought the film to my attention. That one dance scene works for me because you can actually watch the dance in full, with no cuts, no fragmented shots of bodies in motion. The dances in StreetDance are more more heavily edited than I would prefer, but in general, I did get a reasonably good sense of the choreography. There's even a nod to Busby Berkeley with some overhead shots in the final dance performance.

The basic story is about a street dance group needing a place to rehearse. Carly, working as a sandwich delivery girl, seeks assistance from Helena, who runs a ballet school. A dance space is needed for an upcoming national competition of street dance crews. Helena offers studio space in exchange for Carly taking on a group of her students whom she feels have the mechanics, but not the passion, for dance. Unless you're a total stranger to Shabba-Doo and The Boogaloo Shrimp, or even Fred and Ginger, you don't need me to tell you how this story is going to end.

Part of the film has Carly going to her first ballet, Romeo and Juliet, with music by Prokofiev. And there is the love story angle with Carly and Tom, whom she first calls "ballet boy". One might compare what happened to StreetDance to another ballet scored by Prokofiev, Cinderella. The success of the film might be likened to a fairy tale. With a budget that was about a tenth of that for Step Up 3D, the film was a surprise hit, in addition to being the first British 3D movie. Co-director Dania Pasquini stated in an interview, " . . . our aim was to uncover the spirit of dance, poke fun at the preconceptions and celebrate dance - all disciplines of dance!" I think she and Max Giwa mostly succeeded. Mainly though, what StreetDance illustrates is that street dancing doesn't have to necessarily be an expression of anger or frustration, nor do the films need to conflate those feelings with 'attitude". Whatever one might say about how the dances are filmed, or how the dancers are portrayed, there is a real sense of generosity and affection towards all the characters that seems almost forgotten by Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

June 21, 2011

Vanquisher

Suay . . Samurai
Manop Udomdej - 2009
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The couple of reviews I read should have been warning enough. But I decided to see Vanquisher for myself. How bad can an action film with some reasonably attractive Thai women be? As it turned out, writer-director Manop Udomdej must have spent some time studying the frequently incoherent fight scenes in the Rush Hour movies, and set out to prove he could do worse than Brett Ratner. It's all well and good to have your actors train at using guns, swords and personal combat, but it comes to naught when the basics like a reasonably constructed screenplay and a sense of clear visual presentation are ignored.

Manop Udomdej's desire to make a Thai action film featuring women is fine. According to the DVD supplement, the idea came to him while at Cannes, seven years ago. As it turned out, at least three films beat him to the punch: Bullet Wives, Chai Lai Angels and Chocolate. The last of these is the best not the least of which is because the action sequences were filmed Hong Kong style, with most of the action filmed in full frame. Manop ran behind schedule due to an order to cut out one of the actresses, Chotiros Suriwong, from the original production. By the time the film was first released, in November 2009, George Bush, who is mentioned by one of the characters, was no longer the U.S. President, further hampering any notions Manop had about being topical. There are also several scenes in English, with such wooden delivery, that it occurred to me that Vanquisher might have been a more successful film had it been made with marionettes in the style of Team America: World Police.

I don't know how good an actress she is, but I'd like to see a Thai filmmaker give the lead to Kessarin (Nui) Ektawatkul. It's already been established that Nui can seriously kick ass as a national Tae Kwon Do champion. Nui was also cute and funny in her bit as a papaya vendor in Somtum. I would also argue that she is more attractive than the woman given the lead role, newcomer Sophita Sribanchean. Maybe it's me being totally superficial, but it didn't help that the close ups of Sophita indicated a hint of mustache. I'd even hope that Jacqueline Apitananon is given some more opportunities to show what she's capable of, as she seems to enjoy being the villain of the piece, as long as speaking English not part of the deal.

Manop's plot has something to do with Muslim terrorism in Thailand. Somehow, both the C.I.A. and ninjas are involved. The title translates as "Beautiful Samurai", but any connection to the code of Bushido is but a very slender, frayed, thread. There's some kind of plan to blow up Bangkok. Except for the part about an African guy who arranged for a small explosion in an open market turning out to be a C.I.A. plant, the various story threads are sometimes challenging to follow. The question is raised as to whether Manop was being deliberately confusing, are was just lazy and hoped that no one would mind that the story, as such, makes no sense. There are some very real problems regarding Muslim's in Thailand, including a faction that wants to make part of southern Thailand a separate country, but the only half-hearted attempt at any seriousness is in a brief scene when a mother asks her son if he thinks what he is doing is truly the will of Allah.

Some of the faults of the film might have been overlooked if Manop didn't find a way to, and pardon my bluntness, fuck up what should have been some spectacular set pieces. Sophita hops on a moving motorcycle, and then is able to ride on to the top of a moving train which catches fire. Or at least that's what I think happened. The problem is that with a series of very short close ups, I wasn't sure if that's what I actually was suppose to think I saw. Even that master of montage, Sergei Eisenstein, understood that there had to be some long shots to give the viewer an overall sense of what was happening on the Odessa Steps. The fight scenes are composed of close ups or medium shots of the individual combatants, mostly in dimly lit environments, further undermining any sense of visceral excitement. Even with titles announcing where some of the scenes take place, Monop provides very little sense of location. Where Monop is more interested in geography is an overhead shot studying the peaks and valleys of Sophita's cleavage.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:46 AM

June 16, 2011

The Makioka Sisters

Sasameyuki
Kon Ichikawa - 1983
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

One of the best things I might have done for myself was to shell out $60.00 for the Japanese DVD of Shunji Iwai's documentary on Kon Ichikawa. It may have also been a disservice to myself as well. My biggest problem with the new DVD release of The Makioka Sisters is knowing how many other, better films by Kon Ichikawa are unavailable, except in some cases, in VHS versions. Yes, it's good to know that another Ichikawa film is available on English subtitled DVD. Sadly, this is not a very good Kon Ichikawa film. To put it another way, I usually like John Ford, too, but I'm not one to speak up for Donavan's Reef. The Kon Ichikawa adaptation of a Junichiro Tanizaki novel that should be available is Kagi, released in the U.S. under the title of Odd Obsession. The brief clip I've seen with Machiko Kyo and Tatsuya Nakadai packs more heat than the entire 140 minutes of The Makioka Sisters.

I've only seen a few Ichikawa films, with two older films on DVD from Masters of Cinema waiting on a shelf. But based on what I have seen, I would have to concur that Ichikawa's best films are the ones he made in collaboration with his wife, screenwriter Natto Wada. The lethargic pacing of The Makioka Sisters might even be explained by the film being made during the same year Wada died of cancer. This seems more like a film made due to obligation, and lacks the snap and style of the films I've seen that Wada and Ichikawa made together. Even Iwai spends significantly more time in his documentary on the film Ichikawa made in the Fifties and early Sixties, even though Ichikawa continued steadily producing films through 2006.

Tanizaki's epic length novel probably would be better served as a mini-series. Ichikawa's is the third version so far, and with Tanizaki's novels constantly getting new film versions, it probably won't be the last version. Simply based on star power, I would love to see the previous two films. The first film, made in 1950, boasts Hikeko Takamine as the youngest, impulsive sister, Taeko. The second version, made only nine years later, stars Machiko Kyo as the second youngest sister, Sachiko, and Junko Kano as Taeko. Curiously, Kyo and Kano both starred in Kagi that same year. The actress with the most name recognition in Ichikawa's version is Keiko Kishi, as the eldest sister, Tsuruko. Kishi would be best remembered by western viewers as the woman caught between Robert Mitchum and Ken Takakura in The Yakuza. Ichikawa's film also provides an opportunity to see Juzo Itami, better remembered as the filmmaker of Tampopo, in the part of Tsuruko's husband.

Ichikawa's film might be described as a distillation of Tanizaki's novel. The drama of the sisters represents the tensions between tradition and the increasing westernization of Japan. That the film takes place in 1938 serves as a reminder that in a very short time, Japan and Japanese identity would change radically. Most of the story is concerned with finding a husband for the third daughter, Yukiko, which in turn is keeping the youngest daughter, Taeko from getting married. Family pride and various family skeletons keep popping up to interfere. Tanizaki's wry observations don't find their cinematic equivalent here except for one scene when Tsuruko, horrified at the thought of moving to Tokyo with her husband, declares that she has never in her life been east of Osaka.

Sayuri Yoshinaga does not resemble who I would have imagined as Yukiko. The least outgoing of the sisters, Yoshinaga charms on those special moments when she smiles. It's enough to make me want to see her early films when she was one of the house starlets at Nikkatsu in the early Sixties. Yoshinaga hooked me in a scene where she's riding the train with Sachiko to meet with another prospective suitor. Sitting across from Yukiko is a soldier. She steals a glance toward the soldier, and smiles, continuing to keep her feelings to herself.

The saddest aspect of The Makioka Sisters is that the best parts of the film are the nature shots, montages of cherry blossoms. Only someone supremely incompetent could screw up photographic images of cherry blossoms. I even shot a photograph that got published in a Japanese newspaper. Also, in keeping with the title, there are shots of snow falling. The chintzy sounding synthesizer score doesn't help. I also find it inexcusable for a period film to allow the male actors to have inappropriately long hair. If you're a Kon Ichikawa completist, then by all means see The Makioka Sisters. If you're less than familiar with Ichikawa, make a beeline to the films Ichikawa made with Wada, and hope that more of these works become available for western cinephiles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:07 AM | Comments (1)

June 14, 2011

The Image

L'image/The Punishment of Anne
Radley Metzger - 1975
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

When I first saw The Image, it was released during a brief time in the 70s when it was believed that barriers would be broken, that mainstream cinema could also be highly erotic. It was a time when Columbia Pictures released Emmanuelle in the U.S., and Allied Artists responded by picking up another French film, The Story of O. Radley Metzger had hoped to tap into that market with his film version of the novel by Catherine Robbe-Grillet, written under the pseudonym of Jean De Berg.

I made an unusual choice in watching The Image for the first time in almost thirty-five years. The DVD offers the option of an isolated music and sounds effect track. What I hadn't anticipated is that The Image works quite well without the clutter of dialogue. It should be noted that the film is separated by chapters, a literary device I assume was taken from the source novel. The title cards even have a fancy white script on a black background, resembling the title cards used in silent movies. Even though certain details may be begging explanation, what emerges first and foremost is the dance, as it were, between the three central characters. Relationships are established simply by watching how the three look at each other and respond to each other at the cocktail party where Jean meets Anne and Claire. Even though in watching the film without dialogue, the viewer would not know the names of the characters, one could still guess that the film is told primarily from the point of view of a man observing two women who have some kind of established relationship. Whatever one might think of Metger's films or subject matter, the guy knew how to tell a story almost completely in visual terms.

What watching the film without dialogue allowed me to do was also be more conscious of some of the use of color. This is especially vivid in the scene that takes place in the Bagatelle Garden in Paris. Anyone with a passing acquaintance with Sigmund Freud will get the symbolism when Anne sticks her finger in the middle of a rose, opening the petals wider. There is the repeated use of red with the shots of rows of roses, the clothing worn by the women, and even the same shade of red on a passing boat. That the scene with the roses takes place in an environment where flowers are expressly not to be touched adds a special pique.

To make sure the audience gets the point, Metzger also indulges in several shots of some of the more obviously phallic monuments in Paris. A shot of the Eiffel tower seems visually redundant after several views of Carl Parker's erect penis. That the male character of Jean dominates the film made me wonder how different it would have been had Catherine Breillat adapted Catherine Robbe-Grillet. At the time the film was made, the assumption was that the author of The Image was a man. The little I've read of the novel, with the first chapter available online at Amazon, is a first person narrative from the point of view of a man named Jean De Berg. What I know about Mme. Robbe-Grillet suggests that there were some autobiographical elements.

As in some of Breillat's films, the sex in The Image is unsimulated. Most of the coupling between Jean and Anne involves fellatio, There is also a threesome in a women's clothing store with a female clerk who takes special interest in Anne's lingerie, and the raison d'etre, whips and chains. The erotic quotient is entirely subjective. Although the scenes of Anne's humiliation and torture are explicit, they are are also relatively mild compared to another film that received an art house run at about the same time, Barbet Schroeder's Maitresse. For myself, let me return to the garden. While the scene is as explicit as anything else in The Image, the close-up of the rose held by Claire against Anne's mons veneris is Metzger's most provocative image and a reminder that often what is most highly erotic is not always what is seen, or even experienced, but what is imagined.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:57 AM

June 09, 2011

Twenty Plus Two

Joseph M. Newman - 1961
Warner Archives DVD

Sometimes you just want to watch a movie for its own sake. And part of the attraction about Twenty Plus Two is that it is the kind of movie that might have played, and probably did, on late night television, back in the day days before cable, when late night television meant staying up to watch an old film that had no greater purpose other than to be moderately entertaining, and hopefully make some money for the studio. Maybe what I find charming, if that is the right word, about Twenty Plus Two is that it is a film of modest ambition, with little pretense about art, but a work of clear craftsmanship.

No one is going to mistake this for a film by Preston Sturges, were Sturges to have made a mystery. There is a Sturges connection with the brief appearance by William Demarest, as a former crime reporter turned booze hound. I did enjoy hearing one of the characters, a pretentious con man utter the words "modicum" and "erudite". The film is mostly dialogue, from the novel by Frank Gruber, who produced and wrote the screenplay. Even though I figured out the mystery well before the film ended, at the same time David Janssen starts putting things together, there is still fun to be had watching the various encounters he has with a seemingly disconnected group of people.

The ad proclaims, "Twenty mysterious clues plus two beautiful women". Another tagline reads, "20 Hidden Clues...Plus 2 Violent Murders!". I didn't count the clues. Basically, Janssen plays a L.A. based investigator who makes a living finding missing heirs. The secretary of a movie star has been found murdered. Janssen is aware that among her possessions are newspaper articles about the unsolved disappearance of 16 years old girl, the daughter of a wealthy family. Ultimately, the story hinges on a series of coincidental meetings. The preposterous narrative, which jumps from Los Angeles to New York City, to Chicago to Dumas, North Dakota, with a flashback in Tokyo, doesn't make a lot of sense. What makes the film endearing for me is that its like a journey where the destination is almost besides the point.

The only real misstep is that Jeanne Crain and Dina Merrill were too old for their respective roles. Not to seem ageist, but both play women who whom the dialogue indicates would be the same age or younger than Jannsen's character, even though both look well over 30. The only other flaw might be found in Gerald Fried's score, a bit too brassy and insistent when the film would seem to favor something more low-keyed.

On the plus side, in addition to Demarest, Agnes Moorehead has a single scene as the mother of the missing girl, while Robert Strauss literally phones it in as a detective who never seems to leave his office. The film was the second pairing of director Joseph Newman with David Janssen following King of the Roaring 20s. Newman doesn't really have a visual style as such, but at the time was the top house director at Allied Artists because of the economy of long takes with both characters within the frame. Janssen was the top contracted star at Allied Artists, modestly recognizable name for a studio that was in the shadow of the majors.

Cinematographer Carl Guthrie has quite a few television credits indicating he knew how to work fast. He both worked with Newman on several films, as well as Richard Diamond, Private Detective the short-lived television series that provided David Janssen with his first shot of stardom. There are a few images, not really film noir, but noirish, worth remembering, such as Janssen alone in the shadows of his room smoking, and William Demarest brooding over a drink at the end of the bar closest to the camera. Jacques Aubuchon almost steals the film, channelling a French accented Sidney Greenstreet, but David Janssen is too bland and business-like to play Sam Spade against Aubuchon's low-rent Kasper Gutman. Released during the dog days of August 1961, Twenty Plus Two seems to have been roundly ignored by film critics whom might have at least wanted to take advantage of spending time in an air conditioned movie theater. This might not be the stuff that dreams are made of, but sometimes a well made cinematic trifle can be more satisfying then the movie that begs to be acknowledged as a masterpiece.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:57 AM

June 07, 2011

What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

La Polizia Chiede Aiuto
Massimo Dallamano - 1974
Shameless Films Region 0 DVD

The original Italian title translates as "The Police Ask For Help" according to Jasper Sharp's notes at IMDb. This is a more accurate title, reflecting the emphasis on the narrative spending more time following the detectives and the district attorney in their investigation of the death of a teenage girl. There are the giallo elements, primarily an unknown killer clad in black leather, wearing a full helmet, and carrying a meat cleaver. There's also just enough blood and nudity to satisfy genre expectations, mostly in very quick shots. While the premise regarding a ring of teenage prostitutes is salacious, Massimo Dallamano is more interested in the adults, especially his two lead characters.

There is a flashback of teen victim, Sylvia, nonchalantly explaining to her alarmed mother that the birth control pills were bought at a pharmacy. Dallamano unintentionally anticipates Taxi Driver with Jodie Foster's teenage prostitute, Iris, justifying her life by telling a bewildered Robert DeNiro if he has ever heard about "women's lib". Neither Iris nor Sylvia are adult women, and any concepts they may have of liberation are subject to question. Both girls can be said to simultaneously exploit themselves and allow others to exploit them. The difference between the two films is that Scorsese has greater interest in Iris, while in Dallamano's hands, Sylvia is an under developed character who serves as a plot
device.

What little Dallamano might have to say about feminism is with the character of the female district attorney, Vittoria Stori. As played by Giovanna Ralli, Stori is just a few days into her job, and determined to prove she's as capable as any of the guys, especially when some gory murders are involved. Ralli is a classic Roman dark eyed, dark haired beauty, who in this film is nothing but business. At one point, Stori is pursued by the unknown killer, gripped in fear, the damsel in distress. The effect is contradictory, as if Dallamano wanted to be contemporary, progressive even, with a female lead, yet was pulled back by more traditional instincts.

When Farley Granger dies a couple of months ago, this was one film not mentioned, and for good reason. Granger's appearance is limited to a couple of scenes as the concerned father of Sylvia. Most of the dramatic heavy lifting is done by Claudio Cassinelli as the main detective, and Mario Adorf, who discovers the investigation hitting himself personally.

There is a blackly humorous scene involving the identification of a victim, a private detective, in the autopsy room by an angry ex-wife who wants to know exactly what happened to her former husband. Most of the film is devoted to following a trail of photographs and an audio tape in piecing together the mystery. One of the other high points is a chase, with several police cars, lead by Cassinelli, attempting to follow the mystery killer on his motorcycle, through some empty streets and alleys, eventually onto a highway and into a train tunnel. Had Dallamano spent as much time tying up the loose ends of the script as he had on the logistics of his intriguing chase, this might have been a better movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:51 AM

June 01, 2011

Oasis of Fear

Dirty Pictures/Un Posto Ideale per Uccidere
Umberto Lenzi - 1971
Shameless Films Region 0 DVD

Perhaps the most shocking thing about Umberto Lenzi's 1971 film is that it is simultaneously one of his better films, as well as one of his least known works. This is a more traditional thriller with a greater emphasis on the play between the three main characters, but the film works as a kind of period piece, a summing up of the end of the hippie era of the late Sixties. As it turned out, in doing some research, I found that this was a troubled production, with a major cast change needed right before filming began, and that it is a film that Lenzi made with many compromises from his original vision.

One of the key parts of the film is the MG convertible driven around Europe by the toothy and attractive couple played by Ray Lovelock and Ornella Muti. The car is sunshine yellow, decorated by some big cartoony flowers. Near the end of the film, the car is painted black, and yes, that made me think of the old Rolling Stones song. The painting of the car has dramatic motivation, but it also serves as a visual compliment to a story about the end of any sense of optimism these lovers have, however false it might be.

Lovelock and Muti portray two itinerant hippies who get by financially by smuggling pornography. Maybe this was something unique to Europe, but apparently there was a market for recordings of people engaged in sex, kind of like the song "Je t'aime . . . mon non plus", only without the music, or Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's attempts at singing. Without any money, or anything to sell, Lovelock takes to shooting photos of Muti to scrape up a few lira when the two are adrift near Rome. Out of gas, the two take refuge at a very large house, described as an oasis by Muti. The sole resident of this house is a high strung woman who at first attempts to get rid of these two drifters, but then decides to make them her house guests.

The woman of the house is nervous for some very good reasons that are eventually revealed. But what may actually be one of the bigger twists in this film is that she is played by Irene Pappas in the same year as she starred in a film more typically associated with the Greek actress, The Trojan Women. Even the most acclaimed Greek thespian needs a break from Eurpides, Pappas had the opportunity to play the kind of role that in a Hollywood film might have been taken by Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck. Like those actresses, Pappas is attractive not based on conventional notions of beauty but more by the sheer force of her presence. If the casting of Pappas seems unusual, I was surprised to read that she was the last minute replacement for Anna Moffo. Definitely a subject for further research is that Moffo, known primarily as a star of opera and one of the great voices of her time, appeared in some Italian genre films in the beginning of the Seventies, working with directors Tonino Valerii and Michele Lupo. If for no other reason, Oasis of Fear is worth seeing Irene Pappas in a marked departure from her usual film roles.

The eye candy is provided by Ornella Muti, only 16 years old at the time, and in her second movie. Most of the time Muti is seen wearing some highly cut hot pants, providing the viewers with some titillation when she bends forward. Lenzi provides a bit of an in-joke by having one man taking an eyeful of Muti played by Tinto Brass, director of films that often focus on women's rears, one film appropriately titled Cheeky.

Lenzi plays with then current idea of almost anything British being conflated with a notion of being hip, both Ray Lovelock's character being part British, the use of the MG, and Lovelock wearing a Union Jack shirt. Lovelock and Muti present themselves to Pappas as murderous desperadoes, and Muti even writes the word "pigs" in very large letters on a mirror, with catsup, as if to assure Pappas that she and Lovelock are only pretending to be dangerous hippies like those of the Manson family.

With the film now forty years old, some elements might actually seem less dated now then they might have at the time of release. The best parts of Bruno Lauzi score are the jazz inflected passages with the scat singing. Alfio Contini, the cinematographer who coincidentally also filmed Irene Pappas in The Trojan Women, has fun using special lenses to create multiple images as well as some creative frames within frames. Lenzi has expressed his feelings about the film in this interview. The DVD that Shameless Films put together from various elements also provides some evidence of how this film was neglected and nearly lost. Oasis of Fear is hardly the first film that is appreciated more by fans and critics than by its filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM

May 24, 2011

Love Exposure

Ai no mukidashi
Sion Sono - 2009
Third Window Film Region 2 DVD

I took off a past weekend based on the assumption that the Denver Film Society was going to present another four days of Japanese films, something they did in April of last year. As it turned out, that didn't happen. I took the time off from work anyways, and took advantage of seeing a couple of DVDs of Japanese films in my pile that I hadn't gotten around to watching yet. One of the films was The Incident by Yoshitaro Nomura. It didn't help that the Panorama DVD was an academy ratio version of a wide screen film. With a screenplay by Kaneto Shindo, and Nomura's usual go to guy, Tetsuro Tamba, as the star, I didn't think I would find this film difficult to watch. The Japanese Academy also loved this film, but with Nomura competing against himself, I prefer his other film, The Demon. Better still are Castle of Sand and Zero Focus. It literally took me hours, starting and stopping, to get through this courtroom mystery that has bits of Roshomon and 12 Angry Men.

On the other hand, I had no such problem watching all four hours of Love Exposure. What it's really about, I'm not sure of, though. The main themes are of Catholic guilt, the fetish for upskirt photos, and the mythology of Meiko Kaji. I've never been Catholic, or even Christian, and while I can understand the appeal, I've only seen a couple of DVDs just to get acquainted with a certain segment of current Japanese cinema. I am more comfortable talking about Meiko Kaji, having seen several films from the 70s that she starred in, and having a frame of reference when a couple of the characters pose as "Miss Scorpion".

The film is about people looking to be rescued, whether by "Miss Scorpion" or Jesus. It is also about the lengths people will go to to find affirmation in their lives. As a young boy, Yu promises his dying mother that he will marry a women who is like the Virgin Mary. Yu's father takes his own devout faith further as a widower by becoming a priest. Yu wants a father rather than a Father. To get the attention of the man with the commingled roles, Yu devotes himself to sin. Petty acts of ignorance and insult escalate when Yu meets some high school friends mostly interested in shoplifting and getting into fights. Getting involved in upskirt photography, Yu becomes a master in combining ninja moves with a stealth camera.

Observed praying outside his father's church in the rain, Yu gets the attention of Koike, a recruiter from a questionable cult called the Zero Church. Through a combination of events, Yu goes out in public, dressed as Maiko Kaji's iconic character, and helps Yoko, whom he sees as the girl of his dreams, in a fight against a very large gang of thugs. Yoko falls in love with "Miss Scorpion", but would rather have nothing to do with Yu, who in a turn of events, is both a student at the same high school, and a brother through marriage.

What I think Sono is mainly interested in is systems of belief, especially those imposed institutionally, whether through religious organizations, schools, families or medical authorities. It is also quite possible that anyone viewing the film will have their own interpretation of events and Sono's message. The main characters teeter between behaving as they choose to behave, and in ways to fulfill the expectations of others. Where Sono is clearly critical is with the Zero Church, being more of a criminal enterprise rather than an organization based on any doctrine. Sono deliberately has it both ways, calling his young photographers perverts, and playing up the more voyeuristic aspects so that the audience sees lots of shots of lots of panties. Mostly, Love Exposure is about people finding themselves and each other, and learning to accept their strengths and follies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:17 AM

May 19, 2011

In the City of Sylvia

En la ciudad de Sylvia/Dans la Ville de Sylvia
Jose Luis Guerin - 2007
Axiom Film Region 2 DVD

Without stating it directly, In the City of Sylvia is a movie about movies. More precisely, I think of it as the movies we create in our imaginations based on what is seen or heard, especially that which might not be clearly seen or partially heard. There is one scene where the unnamed young man is sitting by the tram stop in Strasbourg, watching the trains go by, looking both at the reflections on the windows and through the windows. If the title had not been so closely associated with Luis Bunuel, this movie could well have been called Illusion Travels by Streetcar.

One of the reviews compares Guerin's film to Hitchcock which is not inappropriate but is misleading. What Guerin does is strip the narrative almost naked. What we are watching is a young man following a young woman through the streets of Strasbourg. We eventually find out through the only scene of dialogue that the young man thinks that the young woman is someone he met six years ago named Sylvia. By jettisoning all but the most basic kind of set up, Guerin has literally cut to the chase.

The film is also about movies in other ways. The opening shot is disorienting. At first I thought I was looking at a shot created by a camera panning in a dark room. I realized when the shot was repeated that the camera was fixed, and the illusion of motion was created by the movement of car lights traveling past the dark hotel room. There are shots of the young man's sketch book taken from his point of view. Whether he is rustling through the pages or they are being pushed by wind is not clear, but the movement of the pages creates a rough kind of animation. Again, without emphasis, Guerin reminds the viewer about the physical essence of celluloid based movies.

There are characters who wander in and out of the film, most notably a street vendor with cigarette lighters and belts, and a corpulent panhandler. Guerin makes use of the idea of certain people being fixtures as it were within specific environments. There's also something of a comic motif with three moments involving spilled drinks. The faces on advertisement billboards provide their own kind of commentary. One wonderful shot is of a light summer dress, hanging out of a window to dry, the wind creating the movement of a solo dance.

Most amazing for me was the first scene with the young man sitting in an outdoor cafe. The way people were positioned within the frame, it would appear that someone would be kissing someone else, or whispering to them, even though the two people would not be sitting together. When two people are sitting together, they are not talking to each other, and the background acts as a commentary on the foreground - the man in this shot is sitting in thought while behind him we can a similar looking man happily chatting with his girl friend. When the camera shows the point of view of the young man, there are a series of shots of various young women, mostly partially observed, seeming to mimic the mind's eye in determining who is or is not in focus.

I find it easier to describe what In the City of Sylvia is not, rather that what it is, because there is very little in the way of narrative. The film is constructed in such a way that the viewer can bring in individual interpretations of what they are watching. The young woman whom the young man pursues remains unnamed. In the final scene, the young man is gazing at the various women passing through the train stop. Maybe all of them are Sylvia.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:36 AM

May 17, 2011

Revenge (1964)

Adauchi
Tadashi Imai - 1964
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Even if his character was not declared insane by the ruling council, there would always be something about Kinnosuke Nakamura that appeared deranged. Definitely the eyes that appear ready to bulge out, darting about, ready to spy upon a real or imagined enemy. There is also something a bit off-kilter about Nakamura's mouth. When Nakamura really goes crazy at the end, there's really no surprise.

I had only come across the Japanese term "zankoku jidaigeki" which translates as "cruel historicals" in a discussion about the original 13 Assassins from 1963. The genre was associated with Toei Studios which also produced Revenge. as well as Imai's previous Bushido - The Cruel Code of the Samurai. There is a sense of continuity that the same studio that would produce films that questioned the samurai code would eventually become the studio most identified with the yakuza films of the 70s.

Those assuming that there would be lots of action to savor based on the titles would be sorely disappointed. Imai, who liked to overturn audience expectations, is not only criticizing the samurai code but also the spectacle of violence. Taking place in 18th Century Japan, the film opens with workers building a temporary outdoor arena, based on very specific rules regarding size and positioning of the audience, to be used for a duel. Through a series of flashbacks, it is revealed that this duel is the result of the youngest brother of a high class family seeking officially sanctioned revenge against the lowly samurai who killed his two older brothers. What began as a fight over an insult escalates to a series of private and public duels that involves several clans.

If there was ever a screenplay writer who loves flashbacks, it was Shinobu Hashimoto. Best known for his work with Akira Kurosawa, Hashimoto makes the narrative a bit more difficult to follow than necessary. The humanistic impulses that are usually found in the films he's written are found here, especially at the end, but the jumps between past and present were a bit harder to follow than in such films as Ikiru or his work for Yoshitaro Nomura, Zero Focus and Castle of Sand.

Eschewing action for the most part, Imai is more interested in contemplating the arcane rules that governed the samurai classes. Everything is based on established rules, and the disruption of those rules create unexpected ripples. The moral quandary that the characters find themselves in would make this film similar to watching a game of chess, where every move needs to be thought out not only for its immediate outcome but in anticipation of countermoves.

Even though he's second billed, that seemingly ubiquitous star of Japanese films of the 60s and 70s, Tetsuro Tamba, appears in a glorified supporting role as one of the brothers looking to put Kinnosuke Nakamura in his place. The cinematography, lighting and framing, are unarguably beautiful, emphasizing through visual formality the life of formality of the film's characters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:09 AM

May 11, 2011

Muay Thai Fighter

Muay Thai Chaiya
Kongkiat Khomsiri - 2007
Lions Gate Films Region 1 DVD

Almost four years after its initial release in Thailand, comes another under the radar release of a Thai movie. Beyond the nearly generic English title is a film that was one one of the more critically acclaimed and award winning films in Thailand. The film could also be said to be Kongkiat Khomsiri's Raging Bull with a bit of On the Waterfront and Goodfellas tossed into the mix. Kongkiat's film is nowhere near as good. The film is more than a series of action set pieces, following how easily dreams get corrupted.

Taking place in the 1970s, three young men with goals of becoming professional fighters leave their small fishing village in southern Thailand to go to Bangkok. They find out that the purity and idealism of the sporting world that they use to know is replaced by gangsters who control the various aspects of the boxing profession, with fixed fights, and drugged fighters. One of the young men, Pao, manages to stay clean and eventually is one of the top fighters. Piak, the fighter who had shown the most potential in the beginning, finds himself fighting in underground cage matches, and with the third friend, Samaw, takes on work as a hit man for an overly ambitious hood.

Kongkiat made his reputation with a couple of the Art of the Devil films. While this film is also unabashedly violent, the motivation is for a kind of hyper realism rather than just scaring the viewer. What Kongkiat is really interested in, aside from showing the different forms of fighting, is an exploration of the conflicts of loyalty, between the three men, their respective families, and their professional allegiances. Within a few shots of dancers and a puppet show, Kongkiat also is interested in the questions of how traditional Thai culture can be maintained within an increasingly urban, and Westernized society. While the bulk of the film takes place in the mean streets of Bangkok, Kongkiat has several moments of visual lyricism with scenes in the countryside and the seaside village. A commentary on some of the action is provided by some vintage Thai pop love songs.

One might also look at the inclusion of stuntman Don Ferguson, as a fighter named Diamond Sullivan, as something of a metaphor for western adoption of Asian culture. Sullivan is top fighter and the one Pao has to beat in the film's final match. Sullivan is presented as an arrogant man who takes steroids and isn't above fighting dirty. I don't think it's giving too much away to note that Pao emerges triumphant, but the two go through some very heavy beatings.

The two best action sequences belong to Piak, played by Akara Amarttayakul. In a part that won him the Best Actor award from the Thailand National Film Association, Akara shows his stuff in two fights, a cage match taking on all comers, and a finale against the bodyguards and hired thugs of the two gangsters who control boxing in Bangkok. Akara uses his fists, swords, almost anything he can get his hands on. There's more to Akira's performance than his fighting skills, as Piak's story is one of the two main narratives, as the fighter who lost everything to easy money and easier sex, redeeming himself at the very end.

A DVD extra that seems curiously truncated features an interview with Kongkiat explaining his interest in Chaiya fighting. Those familiar with The Art of the Devil films may be delighted to know that Kongkiat is currently working on a 3-D horror film. As for his last film, Slice the slasher tale written by Wisit Sasanatieng, there is no English language subtitled DVD at this time. Could it be possible that the company that released the Saw and Hostel movies could be scared of a violent horror film that scared up some glowing reviews?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:42 AM | Comments (1)

May 05, 2011

Sex and Zen

Yu pu tuan zhi: Tou qing bao jian
Michael Mak - 1991
Eastern Star Region 0 DVD

One of the big 3-D hit movies that will probably not appear stateside is the recently released Sex and Zen 3-D. How big a hit? It broke the box office records in Hong Kong and Taiwan established by Avatar. In the U.S., audiences are more apt to embrace blue people rather than blue movies.

I had this film moseying up my Netflix queue. Even if I couldn't see the new film in the series, I decided the time was ripe to see the film that initiated the series. The original film was a relatively big budget production from Golden Harvest, the Hong Kong studio that was home to Bruce Lee. The film also set a record as being the most successful "Category III" release, the equivalent to NC-17. (The U.S. release was rated "R".) It is also an undeniably handsome film, with the kind of visual elegance found in the films of Radley Metzger.

The basis of the film is a 17th Century Chinese novel, The Carnal Prayer Mat. There's some very generic Zen, and lots of sex. What passes for Buddhism are the bookend scenes with the main character, a hedonistic scholar played by Lawrence Ng, visiting a priest with the argument that he can live his life without the effects of karma, only to return to the priest at the end with a tale of woe.

For most everyone else watching this film, Sex and Zen is a tale of "Whoa!". This means admiring the obvious charms of Amy Yip, Isabella Chow and Rena Murakami. Various forms of coupling among different cast members takes place. Yip plays the virginal wife who at first is repulsed by the idea of having sex, while Chow and Murakami are sisters-in-law who are also lovers. There's also group sex, some whippings, nibbling of toes and ears, calligraphy brushes, and creative uses of a flute that anticipate a certain scene in Requiem for a Dream as well as the band camp references in American Pie.

In an, ahem, extended scene, Lawrence Ng, discouraged by his modest endowment, finds a doctor who specializes in limb surgery, and a dream of performing transplant surgery. Both hilarious, horrifying and just plain silly, Ng undergoes an operation that leaves him literally hung like a horse. The emphasis is on bawdy humor. Whatever Michael Mak's artistic intentions were, as declared in the DVD supplement, Sex and Zen is ultimately meant to be enjoyed for its virtues, or lack of them.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM

May 03, 2011

Silent Naruse - Disc 3

Street without End/Kagirinaki hodo
Mikio Naruse - 1934
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

I wouldn't be surprised if someday, someone creates a Youtube montage of car accidents in Mikio Naruse's films. Consider that one of Naruse's last films was titled Hit and Run. Nothing fatal happens in Street without End but the plot hinges on the actions of the man behind the wheel.

The street is one in the Ginza section of Tokyo where two waitresses work in a cafe that apparently is famous for its pancakes. Sugiko and Kesako are coworkers and roommates. A couple of guys from a movie studio have their eyes on Sugiko to take the place of a recently retired movie star. Sugiko puts the idea on hold, also thinking about the future with her boyfriend. Distracted, Sugiko gets hit by a car, and wins the heart of the driver, Hiroshi, a man from a wealthy family. While Sugiko is on the mend, Kesako jumps at the chance to be a star, taking her street artist friend with her. The two women learn that wealth and glamour aren't all they seem to be.

In his last silent film, Naruse pares down the stylistic flourishes of the earlier films. There is one emphatic dolly shot closing in on Setsuko Shinobu as Sugiko. While Naruse would continue to favor traveling shots, such as those with the camera moving in pace with his actors, there are fewer shots using obvious framing devices. The film begins with an extended montage of the Ginza, with its shops, restaurants and movie theaters.

Hiroshi talks Sugiko into going to the movies with him. On the screen is a scene from Ernst Lubitsch's The Smiling Lieutenant with Miriam Hopkins and Maurice Chevalier arguing over a chess board. One could make the case that both Naruse and Lubitsch were interested in some of the same themes regarding the crossings of love, class, and money, and the conflicts between tradition and personal integrity. I'm not certain how to interpret Naruse's intentions as the audience of watching Street without End is watching an except of a sound film within a silent film. Additionally, the audience watching The Smiling Lieutenant is solemn, even though Hopkins and Chevalier are engaged in a display of boisterous comedy. Almost certainly, Naruse was contemplating how best to make use of sound and dialogue in his own future work.

There is a brief scene within a movie studio featuring the street artist, Shinichi. Painting part of what appears to be a tenement room, Shinichi is revealed to be standing in a movie set. What first looked like a realistic setting turns out to be an illusion of reality. Without hammering his point, the illusion of cinema is likened to the illusion of dreams, or at least those dreams equating love and happiness with social position or public prominence. Naruse also takes a swipe at studio politics when Shinichi is caught sitting in a director's chair, and later told off by Kesako that the rumors about the two of them are hurting her chances at getting good roles. As it turned out, Street without End was Naruse's final film with Shochiku Studios as well as his final silent film. In 1935, Naruse took up with P.C.L. Studios, later to become Toho Studios, where he could both start making sound movies and enjoy greater freedom in his own filmmaking.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:06 AM

April 28, 2011

Silent Naruse - Disc 2

Apart from You/Kimi to wakarete
Mikio Naruse - 1933

Every-Night Dreams/Yogoto no yume
Mikio Naruse - 1933
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

The two films on this second disc are complementary in subject matter. Both are about single mothers and their sons, a geisha and a bar girl, respectively. Naruse's characters live in humble apartments, where laundry flaps in the breeze, and men's socks have holes in the toes. The women do not like their jobs, but do them as means of supporting the children whom they hope will have better lives.

The two films show further evolution, a paring down, of Mikio Naruse's visual style. There are repeated uses of mirror shots, but less use of obvious framing devices. Frequent dolly shots moving towards the actors are used for emphasis. A montage of a car accident in Every-Night Dreams is less elaborate than a similar scene in Flunky, Work Hard. Naruse does redo a scene from that earlier film when the young son sticks his fingers into the hole of his father's shoe.

That both films will make familiar viewers think of When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is probably inescapable. Apart from You is about an aging geisha, Kikue, who discovers that her son, Yoshio, in his late teens, has been ditching school, and feels resentful about how his mother supports the two of them. Yoshio has no problem being friendly with Terugiku, a younger geisha who works at the same house as Kikue. Terugiku takes Yoshio to visit her family, but also to open the young man's eyes to the kind of sacrifices his mother has made on his behalf.

This might be melodrama, but stuck in the middle is some laugh out loud humor. In Terugiku's seaside village, a hapless salesman and customers are befuddled by the workings of a yo-yo. Terugiku's wide mouthed little brother demonstrates his savvy in getting to yo-yo to wind back up the string. It's not an important moment in the narrative, but it belies the reputation that Naruse's films are totally serious. As the young geisha, Sumiko Mizukubo is captivating. It is little wonder that she starred in films by several of the top directors of the era, including a couple of films with Yasujiro Ozu. Mitsuko Yoshikawa, the suffering mother of this film has a supporting role in Every-Night Dreams.

Naruse's familiar themes are repeated in Every-Night Dreams. Sumiko Kurishima, plays the popular bar girl, Omitsu, raising a young son, Fumio, alone. Omitsu's husband, Mizuhara, returns from a three year absence with the promise to be a good husband and father. Even among the working poor, the husband is unable to get work. As he would do in future films, Naruse looks at the trade offs required for financial security. When focusing on Mizuhara, Naruse appears to be reworking some of his visual and thematic idea from Flunky, Work Hard, although in this film, even being a flunky seems to be a dream out of reach.

The Naruse films in this series have jazz inflected scores by Robin Holcomb and Wayne Horvitz. The music generally supports the films, and isn't distracting, and yet it also brings up questions concerning the use of music for silent films. Some of the questions are raised in a humorous and horrifying post by Greg Ferrara concerning Nosferatu. For Japanese silent films, there are the questions of not only musical choices, but also noting that silent Japanese films also had live narration provided by a benshi. While I have not seen any of these films, I wish to point out that there is a small company based in Japan that offers silent Japanese classics with benshi narration on DVD. One would hope that one of the major boutique DVD labels, Criterion or Masters of Cinema, would follow suit with a classic in need of DVD resurrection.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM | Comments (5)

April 26, 2011

The Dorm that Dripped Blood

Death Dorm/Pranks
Jeffrey Obrow & Stephen Carpenter - 1982
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

This isn't the kind of film that I usually write about, and I'm admittedly not an aficionado of slasher films. Yeah, I saw Halloween when it first came out, and I've been a fan of gialli over the years. I also, memorably, went to see the original My Bloody Valentine with my mother, who was assigned to write a review for the Denver Post.

So why bother with The Dorm that Dripped Blood? What I found fascinating was watching the film with the commentary track by the directorial team of Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter. Sometimes the making of a film can be as interesting, or sometimes more interesting, than the film itself. And while I usually don't bother with commentary tracks, this one is fun as well as extremely informative. I would actually recommend watching the film with the commentary track for any film students or novice filmmakers as a way of letting them now how it was done, especially in those pre-digital and pre-home computer days when making a movie meant working with celluloid.

The real story isn't about some mystery person hacking various people in a virtually empty college dorm, schedule for closure during the Christmas holiday. For me, it was the story of a gang of UCLA film students who grabbed what ever film equipment they could take out during a period of almost three weeks, film stock they could finagle, and some actors that worked for little or no money, shooting in and around the UCLA campus, finally coming up with a feature film that not only garnered international distribution, but provided entry for several people into varying degrees of professional success.

Most of the commentary is provided by Jeffrey Obrow, who with Stephen Carpenter, as well as alone, worked on several more horror films. I haven't seen any of their other work, but have to feel impressed that Rod Steiger and Kim Hunter were both in The Kindred. Carpenter has gone from direction and cinematography to some success as a screenwriter. The name Matthew Mungle might not mean anything until you check out his filmography and realize that you've seen his special effects and make-up work on at least a dozen films minimum. Film composer Christopher Young began his career with this film. And yes, the influence of Bernard Herrmann's shrieking violins from Psycho can't be missed, but it's still got some interesting moments. The DVD also offers an isolated music track, quite rightly. Young and Mungle also get brief DVD interviews discussing their participation in the film. Of the cast members, only Daphne Zuniga was sprinkled with stardust. Seen briefly in her screen debut, the future Princess Vespa is button cute.

Part of the appeal of The Dorm that Dripped Blood is that it was part of the (in)famous list of films designated as "Video Nasties". I have seen some of the other films on that list. The response to some of the more graphic moments is going to based on the viewer's tolerance level for such mayhem, but I can honestly say that I've seen bigger budget films that didn't look as good, a tribute to Matthew Mungle's craftsmanship. For those whose interest is less scholarly or in anyway critical, The Dorm that Dripped Blood has the requisite chasing up and down dark passages, deliberate false clues, brief nudity, and death by a variety of implements. For myself, none of the head bashing, strangulations or lopped off body parts bothered me as much as the cockamamie premise that a college dorm would close down in the midst of the school year.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM

April 19, 2011

Silent Naruse - Disc 1

Flunky, Work Hard/Koshiben ganbare
Mikio Naruse - 1931

No Blood Relation/Nasanu naka
Mikio Naruse - 1931
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

What is certain about seeing Mikio Naruse's earliest existing films is that the themes he would visit in his better known films were already well established. Both Flunky, Work Hard and No Blood Relation are about the sticky and fragile ties of love, money, happiness and family. As in his later films, Naruse also makes use of traveling shots, the camera slightly ahead of his characters as they walk from one one place to another, although the background is level in these earlier films, unlike the latter shots with their downward tilting bridges and roads. The two films have victims of the need for speed, with characters seriously injured by a train, a car and even a bicycle.

Flunky, Work Hard is considered something of an anomaly in Naruse's career being centered on a male character. I would counter that even a film like When a Woman Ascends the Stairs is also a study of modes of masculinity in the form of Hideko Takamine's suitors. In this earlier film, Naruse's financially struggling insurance salesman, Okabe, is looking to make a sale with the matron of a large, well to do, family. Not only does Okabe's wife complain about living in poverty, but their son has been getting into fights with other neighborhood boys, wanting to play with their model airplanes. The father, who tries to dole out sage advice regarding fighting with the other boys, proves an ineffective example when he comes to blows with a rival insurance salesman.

The rival salesman is something of a shock to see because with his small stature and buck teeth, he unintentionally anticipates the stereotypical "Jap" of World War II movies. Naruse makes use of various dramatic contrasts with Okabe's small, rented house, with its traditional Japanese design compared to his client's large, western style home. Okabe wears a kimono at home, and an ill fitting suit when at work. His family is in kimonos, while the better off neighbors are in western dress.

The two films here also show Naruse's penchant for framing devices. Shooting through picture frames is frequent in both films. In Flunky, Work Hard, Naruse also makes use of some very large pipes laying in a field where the boys play. In No Blood Relation, there is also a mirror shot when Yoshiko Okada looks in a mirror. What makes these visual motifs of interest is that they were eventually abandoned by Naruse in favor of a less ornamental visual style.

Naruse also employs dolly shots with the camera moving towards his actors for dramatic emphasis, something not seen in the later films. These shots are used frequently in No Blood Relation, most notably when Yoshiko Okada first tries to reclaim the six year old daughter she left as a baby. Naruse alternates between shots of the woman with her mistaken assumptions about her daughter, and the girl who yells, "Kidnapper!", "Liar!", and, "Dummy!" while running back home.

In her study of Naruse, Catherine Russell notes that No Blood Relation was based on a play, that was previously filmed in 1909. This is the kind of film where the story telling outweighs the story which was considered cliched by 1932. It takes a very big gulp just to swallow the premise of a Japanese woman who runs away from home and becomes a big Hollywood star. Not to mention that when the film takes place, they were making nothing but talkies in Hollywood and Sessue Hayakawa, who was a star in silent era Hollywood, had returned to Japan that year.

Even though the story is about two women fighting over one little girl, it is a couple of guys that really makes No Blood Relation fun to watch. One is Joji Oka, best remembered as the male lead in Ozu's crime drama Dragnet Girl. Tall, handsome, unshaven, ready to take charge when things go wrong for his sister, the woman who raised the young girl, Oka has charisma to spare in the kind of role that Naruse would give to Tatsuya Nakadai in the latter part of his career. Shozaburo Abe provides comic relief as the incompetent thug and sidekick to Ichiro Yuki, who plays the gangster brother of the Hollywood star. This would be tough guy almost knocks himself out trying out a pair of boxing gloves.

Knockabout comedy is also something that one doesn't readily associate with Mikio Naruse. For that and the visual play, there's enough reason to see the earliest examples of what the filmmaker would retain as recurring elements over the next thirty-five years.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:13 AM

April 14, 2011

All About Women

Nüren bu huai
Tsui Hark - 2008
Tai Seng Region 1 DVD

One of my favorite films by Tsui Hark is his screwball comedy, The Chinese Feast. Leslie Cheung and Anita Yuen are expressively goofy as cooks in a competition, trying to come up with meals both unique and delicious. Unlike Tsui's martial arts movies with flying fists and feet, this film comes with verbal play, including jokes about other Hong Kong stars which flew right past me as a novice to Cantonese pop culture.

All About Women isn't as fast or as funny as The Chinese Feast, but it does have some visual gags, some of the best which recall some classic Hollywood films about romance. The story is about three women, all seeking romance with the right man, whose lives intersect at various points before coming together. One of the women, Fanfan, has discovered a way of creating stickers with pheromones that men find irresistible. Fanfan tests it on rock singer, Xiaogang, who has a volatile relationship with young singer-internet novelist Tie Ling, the object of adoration for nerdy Chiyen, the cousin to the spectacularly successful industrialist, Tang Lu, a woman never without a stream of male admirers.

Two of the best visual gags are with Tang Lu, played by the gorgeous Kitty Zhang. Accidentally discovering her intense reaction to the pheromones of an environmental scientist, Tang Lu attempts not to breathe in any part of his aroma at his wedding by lighting up a handful of cigarettes to cover the smell, a comic nod to Paul Henreid in Now, Voyager. Even better is a scene of Tang Lu in a bridal dress, chased by hundreds of would be grooms, Tsui's own remake of the classic chase scene in Seven Chances with Buster Keaton pursued by hundreds of brides.

The filmmaker most recalled in All About Women is Frank Tashlin. Tashlin's best movies were about the minefield of relationships between men and women as well as commentary on romance amidst changes in technology and popular culture. There is also the love of sight gags and jokes at the expense of friends in the film industry, such as director Jacob Cheung as himself, undergoing a prostate exam. A friend pointed out a Youtube clip that was composed of shots of legs in Tashlin's movies. Tsui has several shots of legs, often for comic effect. In an early scene, Fanfan shows up for dancing lessons, immobile while her teacher literally drags her across the floor. As Fanfan, Tsui exploits Zhou Xun's flair for physical comedy, such as a scene in which she haplessly attempts to put on contact lenses, staring into the camera with crossed eyes.

The screenplay was written by Tsui with Kwak Jae-young, still best known for his own debut film, My Sassy Girl. The character of Tie Ling, ferocious in her sense of independence and periodic wrongheadedness is closest to the title character of Kwak's film. As Tie Ling, Kwai Lunmei fearlessly steps into a boxing ring with another woman twice her size, takes to the stage to improvise a rock song with reckless bravado and the declaration that she hates punk rock, and natters away to her invisible boyfriend, a famed Hong Kong musician, only to find herself totally unprepared when the real life star comes into her life.

As in some of Frank Tashlin's films, the set design is used as commentary on the characters. Fanfan's home is almost completely white, appearing even more clinical than the laboratory where she works. Somewhat analogous to Jayne Mansfield's famous stroll in The Girl Can't Help It is Tsui's traveling shot of Tang Lu's male employees blushing as she walks by. Tsui also makes use of animation and CGI to illustrate an internet conversation, as well as showing the many errant paths of the pheromones. Some may quibble with some of the philosophy of the characters, and only the foolish would expect narrative logic from Tsui Hark, but until I see something better, All About Women mostly succeeds in transposing Hollywood comedy from the mid Twentieth Century to contemporary Beijing.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM

April 12, 2011

Good-bye, My Lady

William Wellman - 1956
Warner Archive DVD

I've been gradually watching several of William Wellman earlier films from the Thirties, over the past couple of years. As might be noticed by those who follow my Coffee Break series, there's quite a bit of coffee drinking in Wellman's films. In several films, coffee is part of scenes establishing friendship between two characters. Bonding over a cup of joe is a recurring event in Good-bye, My Lady. A cup of coffee provides the rite of passage for Brandon De Wilde in this film, an informal, down home, coming of age ceremony.

In some ways Good-bye, My Lady seems even more remarkable when so many contemporary movies are about adults desperately clinging on to their last shreds of adolescence. The theme of the film is announced in the song, "When Your Boy Becomes a Man", played during the opening credits. And yes, some aspects of the film may strike some as obvious or corny, but there is also something to be said in favor of a movie in which the whole point of childhood is to eventually grow up.

A relatively simple, though not simplistic, story, the film marks, if not William Wellman's last personal film, his last film that was probably closest to his original vision. After this, Wellman caved to Jack Warner's demand to direct Darby's Rangers in order to make his dream film, Lafayette Escadrille, only to see Jack Warner order new scenes and new cuts, causing Wellman to finally walk away from Hollywood. Good-bye, My Lady was also the last or Wellman's films to be produced by John Wayne, significant as it was Wayne who also produced Track of the Cat, Wellman's experiment with color, which has grown in critical esteem, although it was a box office failure at the time of release.

A boy, Claude, nicknamed Skeeter by his uncle, Jesse, lives in a shack in a remote, swampy part of Mississippi. Hearing strange sounds in the night, he discovers the source of the unnerving laughs in the night belong to a dog. Eventually catching the dog, he teaches her how to hunt birds. An unusual breed, a basenji, Skeeter also is aware that he might not be able to keep the dog, that she might be legally claimed by someone else.

Even though this is a movie about a boy and a dog, it is also unlike the kind of story that was a staple for Walt Disney. As word gets around about Skeeter's unusual and talented dog, tourists show up at the shack to hear stories from Uncle Jesse. Wellman makes a little dig at Disney with a shot of a couple of slack jawed boys in Davy Crockett hats staring awestruck at Walter Brennan. Much of the dialogue emphasizes the regionalism of the story with jokes about Yankees, as well as the sense of physical isolation with wide swaths of swamp and fields, and very few people living in houses miles apart from each other.

One other note about Brennan - there is a scene where Uncle Jesse discusses a possible name for the dog, eventually dubbed Lady, with Skeeter. Jesse suggests naming the dog Gertrude. When asked why, Wellman cuts to a close-up of Brennan. Jesse talks about a woman he knew, that he was in love with when much younger. Having seen Brennan in one of his earlier performances, Howard Hawks' Barbary Coast, I could tell you that Brennan could never have been described as handsome. Yet, unlike most performances I've seen by Walter Brennan, he was able to convince me that once upon a time, he was a young man in love, wistfully looking back on a past long gone.

My own curiosity about the film came about from watching a Turner Classics Movie documentary on Wellman. Sidney Poitier talked about filming on location in Georgia. No Hollywood money could budge the institutional racism of the day when it came to providing Poitier with the same accommodations as the rest of the cast and crew. Wellman reportedly went to bat for Poitier without success. Poitier plays the part of a nearby neighbor and farmer. Nothing is said, and nothing needs to be said, as the character of Gates also provides Skeeter with another positive example of what it means to be a man. Unintentionally at the time, Wellman documents the change of how race would be presented in Hollywood with Louise Beavers, most often seen as a maid, seen in one scene as the matriarch of a nearby farm where Skeeter picks up buttermilk. Wellman films Poitier in such a way that, with his wide brimmed hat, he could have well become another Wellman hero with John Wayne or Clark Gable, which to some extent happened almost ten years later. Beavers' one scene is filmed with warmth and humor, her presence also bringing Wellman's career to something of a full circle almost twenty-five years after What Price Hollywood? and Midnight Mary.

The novel that provided the basis of the film was by James H. Street. The writer's entry into Hollywood was a short story that Wellman filmed as Nothing Sacred. As the screenplay was written by Sid Fleischman, who previously wrote the screenplays for Wellman's earlier Blood Alley as well as Lafayette Escadrille, and also was photographed by William Clothier, another collaborator on those two films, again indicates for me that this could well have been as personal a project as any of Wellman's better known films. The understated score was composed by Laurindo Almeida on guitar with George Fields on harmonica. While it might be impossible to make a movie about a boy and a dog without any sentimentality, Willlam Wellman allows both his film and his characters to exist in quiet dignity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:42 AM

April 07, 2011

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec

Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adele Blanc-Sec
Luc Besson - 2010
M Pictures Region 3 DVD

Luc Besson has been so busy churning out screenplays and producing the films with great frequency, that even when not directing films like Taken or The Transporter and its sequels, his hand in those projects is unmistakable. The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec is Besson's most recent turn at doing the direction himself. As it currently stands, one of the few ways English speaking fans of Besson can see this film is by getting a Thai DVD that comes with both an English language track or in the original French with English subtitles.

After seeing the film, I can see why U.S. distributors, even those who have done well with Besson in the past, would shy away from this film. Even though, by most standards, the story is not as out and out nuts as Besson's screwball comedy disguised as a sci-fi extravaganza, The Fifth Element, your current stock of studio marketeers would be challenged by a film that takes place mostly in Paris of 1911, with a new born pterodactyl terrorizing the city, and a revived coterie of recently revived, French speaking mummies. The title character is adventurous and resourceful, but, perhaps keeping with her era, genteel compared to other Besson heroines.

Adele Blanc-Sec is a journalist famous for her world wide travels. An assignment to Peru is turned by her into an Egyptian journey to find the tomb of a pharaoh's doctor. Adele believes that an aged scientist would have the ability to bring the mummified doctor back to life, with a cure for Adele's sister. The sister has been in a semi-conscious state for five years following a disastrous fall on a very long hat pin that pierce her entire scull in the course of a tennis match with Adele. And, yes, describing some basic plot elements may cause some to slap their foreheads in disbelief, but considering more beloved films from Luc Besson, it's no less nutty than the story of a professional hit man who adopts an orphan girl.

I'm not familiar with the graphic novels by Jacques Tardi, but Besson's version of Adele Blanc-Sec, in the person of Louise Bourgoin, is certainly pretty, and more fashionably dressed. Many of the cast members look cartoonish, resembling the ensembles that populate the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet, especially Amelie. As the aged scientist with a psychic connection to the pterodactyl, Jacky Nercessian resembles Dustin Hoffman as the extremely old Jack Crabb in Little Big Man. Behind sunglasses, sharp facial feature, and even sharper teeth, Mathieu Amalric is almost unrecognizable as Adele's nemesis.

This isn't quite a distaff version of Indiana Jones. Except for the beginning of the film with Adele and the Egyptian tomb raiders, and the finale with reanimated mummies in the Louvre, this is a much more relaxed film that might be expected from Besson. There are several playful moments with earnest, if inept policemen disguised as sheep, a line mentioning that the courtyard for the Louvre would be a great location for a pyramid, and one sight gag involving a mishap with a guillotine. This may not be among Besson's best films, but it is certainly entertaining. Some who are fluent in French may quibble with Louise Bourgoin's acting abilities, but certain judgments are given a rest by the sight of her full lipped smile and her enthusiastic flight on the back of the pterodactyl.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

April 05, 2011

The Secret of the Urn

Tange Sazen: Hien iaigiri
Hideo Gosha - 1966
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Primarily due to the efforts of AnimEigo, more films by Hideo Gosha are available in subtitled versions. This still only represents a small portion of the twenty-four features made between 1964 and 1992. Secret of the Urn is an early work and in some ways is a more traditional film than his genre mash-up Gyokin with its references to Hitchcock and Leone, or the masterful yakuza films like The Wolves and The Geisha. What may be of interest are the hints of things to come, as Gosha's reputation was in part made by his inclusion of more graphic sex and violence.

Tange Sazen was a samurai ordered to kill a spy. The spy was Tange's best friend, or so he thought, losing an eye and an arm in the process. The spy might have lost his life, but Tange's life is one of a poor ronin. A young boy, with an urn that various clans are dueling over, runs into Tange's hut. Tange finds himself caught between the two clans, plus a gang of thieves, all fighting for the urn for their respective reasons.

Does anybody know if Robert Aldrich provided inspiration for Hideo Gosha? One of Aldrich's visual motifs was the use of the direct, overhead shot, sort of a god's eye view of the proceedings. There is also some similarity in the kind of protagonists, men who might not necessarily be outlaws by profession, but operate outside the law and society, loners who make temporary alliances out of need or some personal gain. At the same time, these men, seemingly amoral, also take action for the higher good, even when they do not personally benefit.

There have been several films centered on Tange Sazen over the years, from 1928 through the most recent that I am aware of, made in 2004. Even though what is sold is the character's one armed sword fighting technique, the best reason for watching The Secret of the Urn is watching Kinnosuke Nakamura cock his one good eye, and sneer at royalty and lowlifes alike. The still active Keiko Awaji plays the leader of the thieves, whose cover is that of an atonal music teacher. Awaji and Nakamura were married at the time that they made the film. A comic highlight involves Awaji distracting an army of samurai by casting off her clothing while they chase after her in a palace courtyard. One of Gosha's frequently used stars, Tetsuro Tamba, is seen here as an upstanding clan leader.

There are some other small bits that make me wish that AnimEigo had included some historical context to the story. One of the lords is seen attended to by a someone in western clothing, Portuguese perhaps. Awaji's character wields a revolver, something not seen in most period films. There is also a brief mention of foreign trade, which makes me think that the time period is sometime in the mid-19th Century. It is this combination of unusual details and some unique characters that ultimately distinguishes The Secret of the Urn.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:30 AM | Comments (1)

April 01, 2011

Hahaha

Hong Sang-soo - 2010
United Entertainment Korea Region 3 DVD

Two friends get together for a final get together before one leaves Korea for Canada. They soon discover that both were in the port city of Tongyeong. Leisurely eating and drinking, the two man exchange stories about their time there, unaware that their paths indirectly crossed, and that their stories involve the same group of people.

Hong Sang-soo's film is as casual, letting things gradual unfold or occasionally double back. If the film is about anything, it is about how awkward relationships are, whether between family members, lovers, even friends. More often than not, people unintentionally say the wrong thing to each other, and usually it's the men who put their respective feet in their mouths talking to the women they are with at the moment. With its title, Hahaha creates the expectation that one will be watching a comedy, and the film is a comedy, but not in the traditional sense. Hong's film is more quiet, more gentle, about the recognition of human foibles in others and perhaps ourselves.

One of the central locations is the little restaurant run by Yun Yeo-jeong. Yun might be best known now for her role in the recent The Housemaid. Yun's character doesn't have a name in this film, and plays the mother of one of the two friends, Mun-gyeong. As uncomfortable as mother and son seem to be during their final meetings before Mun-gyeong's departure, the mother is more than ready to adopt some of the other younger people she meets, urging them to call her "Mom". The one time mother and son seem to truly bond is during a scene of corporal punishment which brings out a sense of nostalgia in Mun-gyeong.

Hahaha one the prize at Cannes last year for Un Certain Regard, and in spirit, this is a French film even it was made by Korean talent. I don't think it inappropriate to compare this to films by Eric Rohmer, something like Boyfriends and Girlfriends. In a Rohmer film, people bond over literature and philosophy while in Hong's film, people get together to eat and drink, frequently large quantities of alcohol, with the periodic cup of coffee. Unlike Rohmer's films where the "right" people seem to find each other, Hong's film is more open ended. In the New Yorker, Richard Brody compares Hong to Joseph Mankiewicz, and A Letter to Three Wives, as films about men, women and memory. The comparison has some validity, although in a Mankiewicz film, the characters often exchange the piercing bon mot, while in Hong's film, Mun-gyeong finds himself trying to undo the damage when telling his would be girlfriend that she looks like a chubby rabbit.

In a recent interview, Hong stated: "The important thing for me is to discover the small things in daily life. This motivates me the most, it is what gives me the courage to live." This may also explain why, in spite of the critical acclaim over the years, why Hong remains less known than some of his peers. Hong is not working within the framework of a recognizable genre, nor are the films plot driven. Darcy Paquet wrote an overview on Hong's career about four years ago that doesn't need much revision. Hahaha is a film comprised of many small things, small dogs, small flowers, and sometimes small talk. The seeming simplicity of the film belies a more rigorous narrative and visual structure. At this time, Hong's films haven't generated the kind of interest to support art house screenings or stateside DVD releases, a loss for all but the more dedicated or curious cineaste. Definitely Hong Sang-soo is worthy of more than simply a certain regard.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM

March 30, 2011

The Sandpiper

Vincente Minnelli - 1965
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Back in the early to mid Sixties, in the age before the internet or television shows devoted to show business news, the newspapers seemed to always have articles about Elizabeth Taylor. To some extent, Taylor was the Kim Kardashian of that time, and even though she had established herself as a Hollywood star, it seemed to me that making movies was almost incidental to a life of emergency hospital visits, or simply showing up at a nightclub with Richard Burton. I had a sense of familiarity with Elizabeth Taylor without actually seeing any of her movies. The first one I did see, in a theater, was Taming of the Shrew which I justified by the fact of it being a filmed Shakespeare play. It was also while I was in high school that I caught Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Suddenly, Last Summer. But for someone in the mid to late Sixties, who made a point of seeing every James Bond movie, and discovering the Italian movies by Fellini and Antonioni that he had only read about previously, Elizabeth Taylor was not considered very hip.

I had seen The Sandpiper once on a late night television broadcast, edited and in black and white. I wondered how the film would look, now that I was older, more familiar with the talent in front of a behind the camera, in a semblance of how the film was intended, in wide screen and color. I'm not sure what was intended, but nothing quite comes together here. The one part of the film that did work was when young Morgan Mason (son of James), as Taylor's son, points out Mom to his equally young friend. The tow headed kid's eyes bulge out, as if to say, "Wow! That pretty lady with the stupendous knockers is your mom?".

There are problems with The Sandpiper. Elizabeth Taylor's breasts are not among them. From what I have read, producer Martin Ransohoff, credited for the story, felt this movie had to be made, even when everyone else on his creative team had questions. The screenplay, by the former blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, and reworked by Michael Wilson, creates a dialectic between conformists and non-comformists as well as believers and athiests, with free spirited artists on one side, and the church, state and corporations on the other side. There is also time for some proto-feminist discussion as well. Could the film have been more convincing with Kim Novak as the star? Possibly. The public personas of Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton make the story of an a single mother and artist in love with a theologian whose act of adultery causes his own personal and professional crisis unconvincing. I couldn't forget that I was watching Dick and Liz, two of the biggest movie stars of their time.

William Wyler wisely chose not to make this film. I suspect that Vincente Minnelli got the job in part because of his work in guiding Taylor into adult film roles with Father of the Bride, and as a way of finishing up his contract with MGM. The story, at least that part of the artist rebelling against authority figures and conformity, would seem right for Minnelli. Whatever magic could be found in Some Came Running, Lust for Life or Two Weeks in Another Town isn't here. The effect is as if Minnelli gave up any attempts at being a stylist, resigning himself to simply work as a director for hire.

Where there is the Minnelli hand is in the beach house where Taylor lives, supposedly right by the beach in Big Sur, California. Described as a shack, the design must have been tossed out by Frank Lloyd Wright. The overly cluttered interiors resemble Pottery Barn showrooms. I think the only movie where more black eyeliner was used was in The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari. Actually, that is one of the other things that Taylor did so well is to wear an overabundance of eye makeup that actually was part of what made her attractive. And for an artist who hasn't sold any paintings, Taylor dresses quite well, with more purple designer duds than Prince.

More convincing are James Edwards and Charles Bronson as two artist friends of Taylor's, and Robert Webber as Taylor's sleazy former patron. The frequently pilloried Bosley Crowther's was spot on in his assessment of The Sandpiper back in 1965 when he described it as "romantic twaddle". Unlike some people, I have no affection for the Oscar winning song, "The Shadow of Your Smile", wishing that the Academy had shown some love for at least one of the Lennon/McCartney songs for Help. As for Elizabeth Taylor, I'm lukewarm about her body of work, generally preferring the films she appeared in prior to, and including, Cleopatra. But philosophizing about life and art aside, what The Sandpiper is really about is an acknowledgment that Elizabeth Taylor had an awesome body.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:45 AM | Comments (2)

March 28, 2011

No One Knows the Persian Cats

Kasi az gorbehaye irani khabar nadareh
Bahman Ghobadi - 2009
IFC Films Region 1 DVD

I had briefly read about this film when it played festival circuit a couple of years ago. What I hadn't expected was a hybrid, part documentary, part mockumentary and part long form music video. I'm also surprised that Bahman Ghobadi is still allowed to make films considering how critical he is of like of Tehran, and his depiction of how people get around the various rules imposed on cultural life. Not only is underground life in Tehran depicted, but it is truly underground in some cases.

Negar, a young singer and songwriter, persuades Ashkan to work with her in reforming a band for a performance in London. In addition to recruiting new musicians, the bigger hurdles include getting black market passports and visas. As Negar is a female, there is also the question regarding the possible need to get one or more additional female singers in order to comply with rules regarding women traveling with a group of men. Their conduit for the illegal paperwork as well as other possible musicians is Nader, a dealer of bootleg DVDs.

Negar and Ashkan, sometimes with, and sometimes without Nader, go on an odyssey of hidden recording studios, private concerts, and makeshift rehearsal spaces. One band rehearses in a cow shed. Another band practices in a small room on top on an apartment, subject to neighbors who call the police. Getting arrested for attending parties is common among the young people here. The songs serve as commentary, sometimes more directly than other times, about daily life as perceived by these artists.

The music ranges from what appears to be more traditional folk to heavy metal. In one bleakly comic scene, Negar performs a composition in progress, inspired by her own time in prison, using several key words that evoke as sense of sadness and isolation, yet astonished when Ashkan describes the song as dark. There's also a rap song, as well as an exuberant performance that appears Sufi inspired.

Iranian Kurd filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi has made a point of going resolutely on his own path. Ghobadi's first, and probably best known, feature, A Time for Drunken Horses depicts tribal Kurds, speaking their own language, living, as they've done for centuries, in the mountain region border between Iran and Iraq. As in his first film, Ghobadi focuses on children in the harrowing Turtles Can Fly, a depiction of George W. Bush's war on Iraq from the point of view of those too young to understand why they are victimized by all sides. No One Knows the Persian Cats has some shocks of its own, but also depicts several different kinds of musicians who remain committed to pursuing the muse, even at the cost of their personal freedom.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:10 AM

March 17, 2011

The Kremlin Letter

John Huston - 1970
Twilight Time Region 1 DVD

Even though I considered myself a dedicated cinephile, my following of John Huston's career while he was still alive was inconsistent. I missed The MacKintosh Man, and couldn't rouse myself to see Phobia. My impulse following the trailer for The Kremlin Letter was of dismissing any film that had George Sanders in drag. Even my occasional movie going buddy from N.Y.U., Michael Sragow, someone who had held Huston in higher esteem, didn't seem to be in any great hurry to see this film. According to the notes that accompany this DVD, no less than Jean-Pierre Melville described The Kremlin Letter as "magisterial". For myself, I think my initial instincts proved correct.

In a review for Rolling Stone, Sragow wrote about Huston's Victory, the film about World War II prisoners of war in a soccer match against the Germans, as taking place in an alternate universe. I felt the same way watching The Kremlin Letter. While the Cold War plot of spy versus spy is certain to feel a bit creaky after forty years, what really makes the film seem like an outdated relic is its presentation of homosexuality. The men are lacquered, mincing fairies, while the women are predatory vampires. Added to this is the billing of Vonetta McGee in the end credits as "The Negress". Maybe some of the attitudes might have been excusable with John Huston being an expatriate for about a decade, but it seems like no one bothered to bring him up to speed with the social changes happening in the U.S.

The group of mostly second tier stars are involved in a plot revolving around the retrieval of a letter that would essential have the United States join Russia in declaring war against China. Patrick O'Neal, taking the role James Coburn turned down, plays a Naval officer turned secret agent, taken under the wing of the overly avuncular Richard Boone. Boone is particularly distracting to watch with his hair dyed platinum blonde. Joining the team of spies are George Sanders, Nigel Greeen and Barbara Parkins. One of the few high points of the film is watching a leotard clad Parkins open up a safe with the touch of her toes.

John Huston gives himself a brief role near the beginning, and his old pal, Orson Welles gets to show off his Russian accent. Most of the real acting is done by Ingmar Bergman troupers Bibi Andersson and Max Von Sydow, as a married couple, he a top Russian espionage agent, and she as his unhappy, hashish smoking wife. I've not read the novel which provided the basis for the film, but the delivery of the sex and violence is tepid. Especially after Reflection in a Golden Eye, one would assume Huston would be eager to take advantage of the new production code with the same kind of elan as peers like George Cukor and Billy Wilder.

There's one scene involving Mexican whores in a group catfight. Huston probably shot it as an excuse to get women flashing their panties on film. It's the kind of scene that Andrew Sarris complained about in discussing Huston in The American Cinema, pointing to Sam Jaffe viewing the jitterbugging kids in The Asphalt Jungle and Ava Gardner's two dancing boys in Night of the Iguana. It's the kind of scene that shows Huston giving in to his worst impulses as a filmmaker, as if he wanted to prove to everyone that Sarris was indeed right about claiming that Huston was doing nothing more than coasting on his reputation. And I will appreciate it if someone could clue me in on what Jean-Pierre Melville saw that I've missed in this "red" Letter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:21 PM | Comments (2)

March 10, 2011

The Korean Film Blogathon: Crush and Blush

Misseu Hongdangmoo
Lee Kyoung-mi - 2008
Premiere Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Crush and Blush defies description, hewing neither to conventional formulas regarding story or characters. The relationships between the main characters are so messy, so interconnected, that a soap opera writer coming up with the story might blush almost as brightly as this film's anti-heroine. Lee Kyoung-ki seems interested mostly in the way women, especially those who don't seem to fit it the crowd, navigate their way through life.

Mi-sook is a middle school teacher, demoted from teaching Russian, a language no longer in demand, to English, a language she barely can speak. She is also at the same school and Seo, her teacher from ten years previously and someone she's had a long time crush on. Mi-sook, the least popular student of her class, and now the least liked teacher at her school, is roommates with Yoo-ri, the most beloved of teachers. Yoo-ri may also be having an affair with Seo. Mi-sook enlists the help of Jong-hee, Seo's daughter, the most ostracized girl in her class, to plot against Yoo-ri by pretending to be Seo in a series of online conversations.

Mi-sook also has a condition that causes her constantly reddish face to turn an even deeper shade, especially in anger. Attempts to address this condition fail. Mi-sook essentially turns her dermatologist into an unwilling psychiatrist, who in turn, is so fed up with his patient that he makes a point of not informing her when his office is relocating.

Even without the complications of pursuing a man with no interest in her, Mi-sook's like is full of contradictions. Rebelling against being a person no one notices, she gets attention for the wrong reasons. There is also the viewpoint that being "Number One" in anything is greedy, even though her goal is to have Seo choose her over his wife and Yoo-ri.

And yet, what Kong Hyo-jin is able to do is create an onscreen persona that by conventional standards is less than attractive, and still capable of dominating the screen and even eliciting empathy, even when whatever she's doing defies common sense. One of the subplots is about Mi-sook and Jong-hee performing Waiting for Godot for school, perhaps as a commentary on the pairs shared outsider status within the school, as well being a story about two people waiting for some sense of outside affirmation that never comes.

One of the benefits of this particular DVD edition of Crush and Blush, is that it comes with Ms. Lee's two previous short films. The second of the two, Feel Good Story, also has English subtitles. There is the suggestion of thematic continuity with Lee's first feature, with the story of two young women, office workers, who are rivals working on the same project, and friends due to unexpected circumstances. No word as yet on Ms. Lee's next film, but she has certainly gotten the attention of two of the more prominent Korean filmmakers around - Park Chan-wook produced this film and had a hand in the screenplay, and with Bong Joon-ho, makes a cameo appearance in the cast.

To see other entries, this blogathon is hosted by New Korean Cinema and CineAWESOME!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:02 AM

March 03, 2011

The Man from Nowhere

Ajeossi
Lee Jeong-beom - 2010
Well Go USA Region 1 DVD

The Man from Nowhere certainly fits the description of neo-noir without question. This is one relentlessly grim movie, and I mean that as a compliment, a journey into the darkest black and blue night with just a glimpse of sunlight at the end. There is one scene that recalls Travis Bickle's prepping himself before the climatic scene in Taxi Driver. As Cha Tae-Sik, Won Bin's forward propulsion, stopped neither by cops or gangsters, knives or bullets, might remind some of Lee Marvin as Walker in Point Blank. I doubt the comparisons with other films were unintended.

The film starts of with a drug bust gone bad, with a nightclub dancer snatching a cache of heroin from the would-be target of a drug bust. The dancer has a young daughter who gets into trouble, mostly shoplifting from a candy store. The girl, So-mi tries to ingratiate herself with Cha, a recluse who runs a small pawn shop in the rundown apartment building where they live. The gang seeking the drugs kidnap the dancer and So-mi, involving Cha in the presumption that he knows where the drugs are hidden. The film escalates with Cha caught between the police, and rival Korean and Chinese gangsters, and a plot involving drug smuggling and black market organ transplants.

Within the darkness is the story of Cha's loss, and eventual recovery, of his humanity. It's this particular aspect of the story that helps explain why The Man from Nowhere was Korea's biggest hit last year. For those who only know Won Bin from Bong Joon-ho's Mother, the performance might come as a surprise, an almost opposite turn from the role in his most widely seen film. Unlike the young man in Mother who was emotionally and socially stunted, Cha is more than mentally and physically capable of dealing with everyone he encounters. Right before the final showdown, one of the gang members points out that they are dealing with only one man, but part of the fun, if I can use the word in this context, is watching this one man take on about a dozen guys with guns, knives and some hand to hand combat.

Complimenting the emotional darkness is the use of unlit or barely lit spaces. In one shot, Cha is barely visible, illuminated only by the light of a cell phone. So-mi is first seen emerging from a darkened corner or lower staircase. In one of the gun battles, Cha is unseen in a dark hallway, with the flash of his pistol providing the only light. Most of the film takes place at night, often in streets and alleys, or in interior settings that could use another light bulb or two.

This is Lee Jeong-beom's second film. Hopefully critical and commercial success will bring about a chance to see Lee's debut film Cruel Winter Blues from 2006. An Interview makes it clear that Lee is planning to stick to action films for now. Lee's take on the genre is grittier than most, so without being overly graphic, there is a sense of the wounds created by bullets and blades. The Man from Nowhere also evokes some of the spirit of classic film noir, corroded over the years, where the cops are incompetent and the criminals are remorselessly vile. Part of the action takes place in Seoul's own Chinatown, and from the cursing of one of the policemen sent there, you might think it not too different from Roman Polanski's Chinatown. It is also worth mentioning that The Man from Nowhere was the most heavily awarded film in Korea's equivalent to the Oscars with the prize going to Won Bin, Kim Sae-ron, the young girl who plays So-mi, as well winning for cinematagraphy, editing and special effects among the seven prizes in all. Even if the film isn't everyone bowl of kimchee, Lee Jeon-beom is one filmmaker to keep an eye on in the future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

February 25, 2011

From the Thai Film Foundation: Sugar is not Sweet

Nam Tan mai warn
Rattana Pestonji - 1965

Some films are a challenge to discuss because they seem to take place not only in a different country or different time, but in a different universe. in terms of most conventions regarding narrative film, Sugar is not Sweet is almost like a collection of scenes that meanders along to its happy ending. A more coherent film could have been made by jettisoning several musical numbers and other bits of business that seem to pad out the running time to two hours. What makes Rattana Pestonji's last film interesting to watch are some of the various parts, even if they don't add up to whole film.

The story, such as it is, is about the businessman, Chaokun, who has made his millions from selling a hair restorative product. The product was originally the idea of his late friend, Boong, an Indian. Chaokun decides the best way to show his appreciation to Boong, is to have his playboy son, Manas, marry Boong's daughter, Sugar (Nam Tan). Manas would rather spend his time with the sultry Watchari, who happens to have a boyfriend on the side. Chaokun convinces Manas to marry Sugar with an offer of two million baht if the pair gets married, an offer raised to five million if the two produce a grandchild. Manas and Sugar take turns humiliating each other, with Manas temporarily locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Manas finally gets the upper hand on Sugar, who has steadfastly refused to go to bed with her husband, by playing on her fear of gekkos, those friendly lizards often found in Thai houses. (For myself, there was a cute little green one in my Chiang Mai condo that hung around the kitchen that I treated to tiny bits of food.)

Among the highlights was the comic performance of Chaokun's right hand man, Moti, with his cackling laugh and his Chaplinesque stroll with his cane. Also, the use of color is astounding, with the most intense pastels on the screen. Even when one isn't sure what to make of Pestonji's ideas about character motivation or logic, there is always the unusual colors of the walls and clothing to admire. In one scene, Manas sings a song in the dark, sitting by a blue tinted tree. The use of color can be seen as an inspiration for the imaginative use of color by Wisit Sasanatieng in Citizen Dog.

What may well catch western audiences off guard are the displays how some Thais view non-Thais. Manas initially objects to marrying a woman who is not Thai, and Sugar is often referred to as a "Roti", the name of the Indian flat bread. Sugar is first welcomed to Thailand with a mock Bollywood dance performance where she is almost smothered in garlands. In a couple of scenes, Chinese and Vietnamese gibberish is spoken. I would suspect that even though he was born in Thailand, being of Iranian descent may have contributed to Pestonji's feelings of being something of an outsider in his own country.

Of the cast, the best known actor is Sombat Metanee as Manas, a leading star of the Sixties and Seventies, still active in supporting roles, and perhaps best known currently as the chief villain in Tears of the Black Tiger. Somphong Phongmitr is the scene stealing Moti. As the voluptuous Watchari, Preeya Rungruang could well inspire a search for her other films, subtitles or not, by dint of her scene in the shower. In a small role as a television pitchman is future director Ruj Ronaphop. Unknown to me is the name of the Thai combo that performs at the wedding party of Manas and Sugar, fronted by what appears to an American woman named Roger (?), though their cover version of Fats Domino's "I'm Walkin"" ain't bad.

Sugar is not Sweet can be viewed online at Asia Pacific Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM

February 21, 2011

Sleepy Eyes of Death - Collector's Set Volume 2

Sleepy Eyes of Death 5: Sword of Fire/Nemuri Kyoshiro Enjyoken
Kenji Misumi - 1965

Sleepy Eyes of Death 6: Sword of Satan/Nemuri Kyoshiro Mashoken
Kimiyoshi Masuda - 1965

Sleepy Eyes of Death 7: The Mask of the Princess/Nemuri Kyoshiro Tajyoken
Akira Inoue - 1966

Sleepy Eyes of Death 8: Sword of Villainy/Nemuri Kyoshiro Buraiken
Kenji Misumi - 1966
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

It's been about a year and a half since the first set of four films came out on DVD. Hopefully, fans of this series won't have to wait quite so long for the final four films. Even though one of the films contains a character from one of the earlier films, all can be enjoyed as stand alone entertainment. The basic template is that Kyoshiro Nemuri is a ronin, a masterless samurai, who wanders from place to place, only to find himself caught up in some kind of intrigue revolving around the ruling families. Young and handsome, woman fling themselves at him, whether they be courtesans, princesses or even nuns. The men know of Nemuri by his reputation, his sword technique called the Full Moon Cut.

Two of the films in this set were directed by Kenji Misumi, whom I've discussed in other postings. Misumi is best known for directing many of the best films in the original Zatoichi series, Of the two films here, the fifth entry in this series is the best. Even more amazing when one considers that Misumi was cranking out three or four movies per year, Sword of Fire is worth watching simply for its formal beauty. Lots of framing devices are employed here, be they shoji screens, windows, or branches.

Nemuri gets caught up by protecting a woman, Nui, from being attacked by another swordsman. The story involves a conspiracy to murder a band of pirates, stolen treasure, a woman with a unique tattoo, and some illegal schemes to make a lot of money. What makes watching the relationship between Nemuri and the villainous Nui even more interesting is knowing that Nui is played by the star of the Zatoichi films, Shintaro Katsu's wife, Tamao Nakamura.

A female nemesis, played by Michiko Saga, is the best part of watching Sword of Satan. Saga plays the part of Orin, a woman determined to avenge the death of her brother, flinging sharp metal squares at Nemuri. The story involves the kidnapping of a young boy, who was to be killed as an infant because of his birth meant being the heir to a clan family, only to be held hostage because his existence allows the clan to continue to receive patronage from the shogun. The film is about 75 minutes long, and while it doesn't have the artistic aspirations of Misumi's work, director Kimiyoshi Yasuda lets the action zip along, with just enough time for shots of geysers of blood and a large body count in the sword fighting scenes. One of the first characters in this film is a woman, a would be prostitute, who wears a Noh mask when first scene. Various shots of the mask provide a form of visual refrain.

A Noh mask also figures in the appropriately titled Mask of a Princess. Akira Inoue's film brings back the character of Princess Kiku from the fourth film. Kiku wears the mask to hide the half of her face burned and badly scarred. Kiku seeks to kill Nemuri because he is the only man to have seen her unmasked, although like every other woman in the series, she has feelings of unrequited love. There is also a stranger that Nemuri meets by chance who shows intense interest in Nemuri's sword technique. As if dealing with the stranger and Kiku's band of ninjas wasn't enough, Nemuri also decides to pay off the debt of a samurai hating maid, Haru, who disguises any appreciation with a perpetual pout. One of the highlights involves Nemuri going to bed with a nun who decides that bearing an heir is more important than keeping vows of chastity, with our hero waking up to a couple of deadly snakes.

Misumi returns to direct Sword of Villainy. This time there is a conspiracy involving the distillation of some flammable water, to be used for lighting lamps, stolen plans, and a broken promise to use profits to feed the poor citizens of Edo, present day Tokyo. The story is a fictionalized version of one of the several massive fires that virtually destroyed the entire city. Among the characters are some gymnastic performers, including a young woman who is out to seek revenge for being used by one of the conspirators. Shiho Fujimura may not have been the prettiest actress at the Daiei Studios lot, but she was game enough for a scene where she needs to flee two dueling swordsmen, taking a flying and nude jump into a nearby river.

As indicated by these films, the Sleepy Eyes of Death series has established certain patterns. The main character of Kiyoshiro Nemuri is unusual as a ronin, with his outsider status double confirmed by being biracial, the son of a European, a missionary turned apostate. Even though Nemuri does not identify himself as Christian, and keep in mind that the films take place when being Christian in Japan was illegal, the films occasionally have references or scenes revolving around Christianity or more luridly, Black Masses. On a lighter note, the series also includes a scene or two of eye candy of the type that would have been quite racy for American audiences back in the mid Sixties. As is the case for AnimEigo's DVDs, there are extremely readable, colored subtitles, and additional notes that provide more historical context for each film. Knowing that Shiho Fujimura returns in the twelfth, and final, Kiyoshiro Nemuri film is enough incentive for me to see this series through the end.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:25 AM

February 18, 2011

For the Love of Film (Noir): The Equation of Love and Death

Li Mi de caixiang
Cao Baoping - 2008
Tai Seng Entertainment All Region DVD

Cao Baoping's movie about a taxi driver might not be true film noir in the classic sense, but there is enough mystery and emotional darkness for consideration here. The title translated from Chinese is "Li Mi's Guesses". Like any reasonably good mystery, the audience is kept guessing as well, until clues and connections are more fully revealed. Unlike the classic noir with its occasional infinite blackness and long shadows, The Equation of Love and Death takes place in daytime suffused in bluish gray.

The constantly smoking Li Mi is obsessed with the four years that she has not seen her boyfriend, Fang Wen. Counted are the number of letters received, days between letters and the days since Fang Wen had last written to her. Passengers are the unwitting as well as unwilling recipients of Li Mi's constant obsession, listening to her various theories and attempts to create a logic out of the numbers of days, weeks and months during that four year period.

The film takes place mostly in Kunming, a major city in southwestern China. Li Mi picks up two men who appear to be out of place in an urban environment. Trouble begins when Li Mi is forced to leave her cab to get change for her passengers. What appears to be a minor inconvenience for the driver and passengers escalates to a more dangerous situation for all involved. Cao cuts between several characters who at first appear to be accidentally connected. What gradually unfolds is both a story of lost love, and of people so desperate for money that they turn to crime for quick financial gain, only to lose everything in the process.

Just as Li Mi is propelled by the memory of Wang Fen, one of the passengers, Shuitian, is convinced that his lost love is somewhere in Kunming. The open faced, smiling Shuitian keeps his dream in spite of all that happens to him. Li Mi eventually discovers the truth about Wang Fen, much to her dismay. In a sense, one could view The Equation of Love and Death as a variation on the story of the destruction of youthful dreams of people from rural environments colliding with the alienation and ultimate loneliness of life in the big city. Shuitian's missing girlfriend ran away from home rather than work as a prostitute at the behest of her mother, a woman who convinces Shuitian that his worthiness would be based on coming home with a large sum of money. Like many classic noir films, money, if not necessarily the root of evil, is often the source of trouble, if not outright corruption.

For most critics, the film belongs to star Zhou Xun, who won the Asian Film Award for her performance as Li Mi. Zhou also starred in another film that could be described as Chinese noir, Lou Ye's Suzhou River. There are some shared qualities to both films, both about love and illusion, and both very much worth seeing. Zhou has been noted as being cast against type, playing a working class woman in drab clothing, although even with no makeup, her freckles often visible, she is still remarkably pretty. The Equation of Love and Death is Cao Baoping's second feature. There is very little in English about Cao, although one article notes his interest in presenting a more realistic look at contemporary Chinese life. Cao participated in a screenwriting workshop at Sundance last year, with a film also centered on a strong female character, hopefully an indication that more of significance will be heard from this filmmaker in the near future.

More love and death can be found at Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren. The equation of adding your generous donation for helping preserve the classic film, The Sound of Fury, with this special blogathon link, a joint project with The Film Noir Foundation is what this blogathon is all about.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:39 AM

February 17, 2011

For the Love of Film (Noir): A Bittersweet Life

Dalkomhan insaeng
Kim Ji-woon - 2005
Jin Sun Media All Region DVD

Coming in between the attention grabbing A Tale of Two Sisters and the crowd pleasing The Good, The Bad and The Weird, I can't understand why A Bittersweet Life has no U.S. distribution in any format. There are some cultural nuances, to be sure, but nothing that would make this film difficult to understand. What makes Kim a filmmaker of interest is his jumping from genre to genre successfully.

The basic story is classic film noir about a mob boss, his girlfriend, and the trusted right-hand guy who's been asked to look after the girlfriend. Just a glimpse of a woman's legs is enough to signal that things are going to turn out badly for everyone. Sun-woo works as a hotel manager, and also enforcer for the gangster Kang. Before leaving for a business trip, Kang asks Sun-woo to look after Kang's young girlfriend, Hee-soo. Kang suspects Hee-soo of seeing someone else. Sun-woo meets with Hee-soo on behalf of Kang, and also follows her secretly at night. Meanwhile, the forcible ejection of a trio from a rival gang from the hotel escalates to a point where Sun-woo is the target of both the rival gang and Kang's team. Even if the story about shifting loyalties and revenge seems familiar, it is in the way Kim shapes the story that makes it unique.

Kim is something of a visual virtuoso such as the series of traveling shots through the corridors of the hotel. In one scene, members of the rival gang beat up Sun-woo in his own apartment, a scene made more kinetic with lit shots alternating with blackness, continuing a visual pattern of Kim lying on his couch, mindlessly flicking his lamp on and off. In another scene, Sun-woo fights off members of his own gang, getting hold of a car which he uses as a means both of attack and escape. There is a Spanish flavor to the music used, as if what we are watching is a bull fight, with Sun-woo as the angry bull.

In an interview with Paolo Bertolin, Kim discusses this film as his version of Film Noir: "I just wanted to explore the noir genre, tell the story of this character, and tackle the themes that you see in it. By bringing together these needs, the end result is something quite different from anything I have done before. Yet such an outcome is not due to my choosing for a departure, but just to the necessity of finding a style that better suited the genre and storytelling specificities."

Where Kim's film is most like Film Noir is that the lead character is a solitary figure whose only satisfaction appears to be in doing his work. Before leaving for Shanghai, Kang asks Sun-woo if he has a girlfriend, or has even fallen in love. Like many classic noir films, the man's life is irrevocably upended when he meets "the girl". What is different here is that Sun-woo's feelings for Hee-soo remain unstated until near the very end, in a very indirect manner. What is most similar to classic noir is that the character of Sun-woo, like many noir protagonists, finds himself in a situation that he ultimately has no control over, that becomes increasingly chaotic and violent. With posh settings and facades of corporate respectability, A Bittersweet Life made me think of the iconic neo-Noir, Point Blank, particularly when Sun-woo, like Walker, seems to come back from the dead to get even with all who have wronged him.

More bitter and sweet Film Noir is to be found at Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren. Definitely sweet are contributions made to the blogathon link for saving the classic The Sound of Fury, in conjunction with The Film Noir Foundation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM | Comments (2)

February 15, 2011

For the Love of Film (Noir)(Giallo): Footprints

Le Orme
Luigi Bazzoni - 1975
Shameless Entertainment Region 0 DVD

On the occasion of Florinda Bolkan's 70th birthday.

While focussing on film noir and film preservation, I don't find it inappropriate to take a look at film noir's younger, colorful, and sometimes flamboyant sibling, giallo. Giallo filmmakers, most clearly Dario Argento, have been inspired by film noir, noticeable in the casting of actors associated with some of the classics of the past. Giallo also was the result of the dissolution of the old Hollywood production code, with the new films revealing what the older films mostly concealed. Again, we can thank the British DVD label for rescuing a film that might have be lost, or at least not available in its most complete version. Whether Footpriints is truly an important film doesn't matter. Consider the years it took before there was universal acclaim for Touch of Evil or The Big Combo.

Some of the story elements in Footprints could well be found in film noir. The main character waking up to find that three days of her life are missing, strangers who remember her as someone with a different name, and the recurring nightmare are to be found as parts of other films. In this case, it is a woman named Alice who dreams of an astronaut being abandoned on the moon, who discovers that the next morning is Thursday and not Tuesday, and tries to uncover a mystery after finding a ripped postcard depicting a hotel in some remote town. Unlike classic film noir, Alice finds herself in a situation where the clues reveal greater mysteries.

The first images in the film are of the moon, but most of the film seems to take place in an alien landscape. What is seen of Rome are imposing steel and glass buildings. Most of the film takes place in a town called Garma, actually a village in Turkey, with a very large, ornate hotel and mosques in the village. With the exception of one scene, there are few people to be seen. Even Alice's hotel room is oversized and sparsely furnished. Vittorio Storaro often films Florinda Bolkan in such away to emphasize her aloneness, the emptiness around her, physically and emotionally.

Footprints is not a giallo in the way of Luigi Bazzoni's best known film, The Fifth Cord. The emphasis here is on the mystery, not violent set pieces. It may be a nod to the genre's name that part of the film revolves around a blood stained yellow dress. What makes this film also uncharacteristic is the frequent absence of color, with Bolkan primarily wearing white clothing, often with the scenes taking place in rooms with white walls and furnishings. One of the other places that might be of importance is a memory of a white house.

The mystery is based on what Alice may more may not remember of the missing days, but also the dream of the moon. Is the dream something taken from a partially seen science fiction movie? Is this in any way connected with Alice's work as a translator, working for some kind of international agency with scientists discussing the inevitable end of human life due to multiple forms of pollution? As in some classic film noir, Alice's paranoia may not be quite imagined.

What is it about Florinda Bolkan that makes her so alluring? It's unusual enough that one of the most acclaimed Italian actresses of her era was Brazilian. Bolkan's beauty is severe with its sharp features, especially the penetrating eyes. Bolkan most notably worked with Luchino Visconti, Elio Petri and Vittorio De Sica, as well as two films with Lucio Fulci. There is something so right about Bolkan as Lola Montez in Richard Lester's Royal Flash. Florinda Bolkan, even during her peak period, was not conventionally attractive, yet whenever she's on the screen, it's impossible to look away. There's a sense of commitment to her roles that Bolkan forces even the most implausible scenario to be taken seriously.

Featured in a small role in Footprints is the real crazy guy of cinema, Klaus Kinski, who may be a scientist, or possibly an actor playing one. Lila Kedrova has a small part as one of the people in Garma who might know more about Alice, than Alice herself knows. Kedrova and Bolkan would be seen together again thirteen years later in Michael Hoffman's Some Girls, as the grandmother and mother, respectively, of the three most beautiful sisters in Montreal.

Some of the classic noir films have been centered on women in trouble, such as Whirlpool and My Name is Julia Ross, films that are about a woman's loss of memory and self-identity. For myself, regarding Footprints as an extension of film noir is made easier from this quote from Jeremy Butler: "The noir protagonist is alienated from a combustible, hostile world, driven by obsessions transcending morality and causality . . . . The obsessive noir protagonist is drawn into a destiny he cannot escape; he is impelled toward his fate by exterior forces beyond his power and interior forces beyond his control." In the case of Footprints, the noir protagonist is a woman wearing a yellow dress.

More Noir in all its colors are to be found at Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren. And let your fingers do the walking to the blogathon link where you to can save a print, even if it's a foot or two of The Sound of Fury, stepping up to the plate with The Film Noir Foundation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:40 AM | Comments (2)

February 14, 2011

For the Love of Film (Noir)/From the Thai Film Foundation: Black Silk

Prae Dum
Rattana Pestonji - 1961

Black Silk has been described as Thailand's first Film Noir. I think noir purists would object, although there are certainly some noir elements. Allowing the film the widest berth possible, Black Silk is closer to something like I Wake Up Screaming than Double Indemnity. There's a heroine in trouble, a slimy boyfriend, and his even slimier boss, a stabbing, some shootings, and a few musical numbers. The film was also considered good enough to play at the Berlin International Film Festival fifty years ago.

Prae is young widow who works as a weaver. A friend of her late husband, Tom, is a constant visitor, attempting to get her to leave the house. Prae has no interest in the nightclub where Tom works, more so with a sick baby to care for. Tom's boss, Sina, owes money to a gangster, Wan. Sina comes up with a half-baked plan to have Prae and Tom accompany him while he visits Wan, with Prae discovering that she's to pretend to be interested in buying some land from Wan. Things get out of hand with Sina and Tom killing Wan and Wan's nephew. From there the plot becomes even more convoluted with Sina pretending to be his dead twin brother, and Prae's baby getting kidnapped in order to guarantee Prae's silence about the murders.

The title refers to Prae's outfit. She is always dressed in black, except for her time in a Buddhist monastery where she is clad entirely in white. This is the film where everything comes together for Pestonji. Parts of the film that have no direct bearing on the narrative are of value as documents of what parts of Thailand looked like fifty years ago - the wats, the uncrowded streets, life along a river with its boats and houses, even a classical Thai dance performed at the nightclub. While the DVD is not perfect, there is a reasonably good preservation of the color and letterboxed wide screen "Hunanaman Scope".

Black Silk has been praised rightly for Pestonji's use of color, much of it in solid swatches of red, black, blue, and white. One shot that took my breath away was a short overhead shot of Tom, in his white shirt, entering his red car, which diagonally filled most of the frame. I couldn't do a screen shot of Tom's car, but here is a shot of Sina's car, an iridescent blue, or so it appears to me. There is something so peculiar about the color of the two featured cars making them more conspicuous against the dark exteriors.

If any single classic Thai film was to be made more available for western audiences, this would be the one. Don't go by me. Two of the biggest fans of Black Silk just happen to be among the most critically acclaimed contemporary Thai filmmakers. For Wisit Sasanatieng, "Prae Dum is the film that remains my single major influence. It's the crown jewel of all Thai cinema. It shows that Khun Ratana was not simply a master storyteller, but that he knew how to use colour, art direction and camera angles to create subtle nuances and charge the movie with strong emotions."

For Pen-Ek Ratanaruang: "If I could choose, I would love to remake Prae Dum. It is so, so, so atmospheric and film noir. The shot when the camera pans from the coffin to the pair of sandles on the floor still gives me a chill. That shot would have made Hitchcock proud."

As it stands, Pen-Ek is making his own version of contemporary noir with his newest film, Headshot. Don't scoff at his naming Pestonji with Hitchcock as mere name dropping. When both filmmakers were younger men, in 1937, it was the man later known as the "Master of Suspense" who gave a prize to the novice filmmaker considered the master of Thai cinema.

Black Silk can be viewed online at Asian Pacific Films.

More fashions in Noir can be found at Ferdy on Film and Self-Styled Siren. Green is the favored color for helping preserve the classic film The Sound of Fury with a special blogathon link, a joint project with The Film Noir Foundation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (5)

February 10, 2011

From the Thai Film Foundation: Dark Heaven

Sawan Mued
Rattana Pestonji - 1958

Dark Heaven was Rattana Pestonji's first film in color. Sadly, given the state of film preservation in Thailand, while the film has been saved, the color is often faded. In an ideal situation, one would wish a digital picture and sound restoration.

Unofficially, this is also a Thai version of Seventh Heaven. The basic setup would be familiar to those who have seen either the Frank Borzage silent classic, or Henry King's sound remake. A hungry young girl, Nien, grabs some food from a small, street side vendor, food intended by the buyer, an obviously well-to-do older man, for a dog. Escaping from the man and the neighborhood policeman, Nien hides in the garbage wagon of Choo. Choo takes Nien under his wing, and the couple live together platonically in Choo's shack. Choo is called up for military service. Choo is blinded in battle.

Veering from the original story, Nien, disguised as a boy, takes Choo's job collecting garbage. Returning a dropped bracelet to a wealthy woman, Nien's disguise is undone, and the wealthy woman takes in Nien to live as her daughter. Pursued by a young, western educated doctor, Nien has her heart set on Choo. The doctor's proposed wedding is off when it is discovered that his father is the man who set the law on Nien for stealing food. Choo returns home, feeling that he has no future as a blind man. Nien reunites with Choo at his shack, her feelings of love unwavering. Contemporary audiences might find unintended humor when Choo attempts to commit suicide once it is revealed that the poison in the bottle is actually the only moderately less unhealthy MSG.

Pestonji's film is also a musical of sorts, with singing, but no dancing except for some very limited movement by Choo and Nien. There's even the old gag with Choo singing through a radio to indirectly express his feeling toward Nien. While taking a break from battle, Chool sings about Nien, with the other soldiers providing a chorus. There is very little written about Dark Heaven, but I would guess that while there isn't the kind of innovation with sound as was used in Country Hotel, Pestonji's aim was to again demonstrate there was a place for Thai films that employed the same technical know-how has in films from Hollywood.

At the same time, while Pestonji made films that differentiated himself from other Thai filmmakers, his films were made for a general Thai audience. The sympathies are with the garbage man, the street girl and even the cop on the beat. A more skeptical eye is cast towards the young doctor who makes a point of showing off his use of English in every conversation, and the doctor's father, who judges others by their apparent wealth. Pestonji may have also been looking for popular appeal with the casting of two popular singers, Sutape Wongkamheng as Choo, and Pensri Poomchoosri as Nien's benefactor. Nien was played by Seubneung Kanpai in her only movie role. Seubneung might not make anyone forget Janet Gaynor in one of her most famous roles, but she is sufficiently appealing to make this a lightly enjoyable film.

Dark Heaven can be viewed online at Asia Pacific Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:32 AM

February 08, 2011

From the Thai Film Foundation: Country Hotel

Rong ram Narok
Rattana Pestonji - 1957

Country Hotel is a one set wonder, a film that entertains in spite of a premise that defies any kind of logical explanation. The film takes place in a large bar, run by Noi, the self-described world champion arm wrestler. A variety of musicians including a Filipina singer and a Chinese Opera troupe seems to wonder in and out at random, performing a single number for the one or two other people who might be around. The hotel as such is misnamed as there is only one room, taken by a young man, Chana, whose desire for sleep is constantly thwarted. A young women, Riam, shows up, and settles for a the bar's couch when Chana refuses to give up his presumably comfortable bed. An attractive young woman of mystery, Riam insists that she's actually 65 years old, a divorcee with twelve children, and an opium trader. One of the recurring verbal jokes is about the name of the hotel. The hotel is called the "Paradise Hotel". Chana calls it "Hotel Hell", which is actually the translation of the Thai title.

I also suspect that one of the best sight gags was inspired by Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. Prominently displayed in the bar is a giant picture of Noi, announcing two to one odds in his favor as world arm wrestling champion. How good is Noi? He is nonchalantly yawning, casually defeating one challenger after the other. One angry loser hits the portrait, changing the facial expression of the pictured Noi. Correcting the newly distorted mouth, Noi closely hammers at the portrait restoring it to its former glory.

About halfway through the two hour plus running time, the film shifts into a compact version of The Petrified Forest with the two hotel guests, Noi, and his uncle all held prisoners by a trio of thugs who've shown up to steal a company payroll. Tensions erupt between the gang members overnight. There's also a final showdown with a legendary gangster named Din, who also has his eyes on the payroll.

The best parts of Country Hotel are the comic moments. Rattana Pestonji even has fun at his own expense near the beginning when a handcuffed couple named Yupadee and Songmong show up to grab some free drinks. When Chana and Riam argue about the one hotel room, a solution from It Happened One Night is offered. Pestonji may have played with sound as a demonstration of what can be done with film technology, that the then common practice of live dubbing in Thai movies could not do. The film begins with a man practicing on a trombone quite badly, while nearby, another pair of men are discussing how to perform a song, getting distracted in the process. To explain how innovative Pestonji was in his use of sound, it needs to be understood that while Pestonji was making 35mm sound movies, Thai produced movies for local audiences were usually filmed in 16mm, with local performers, sometimes considered stars themselves, would dub in sound and dialogue while the film was projected, a standard practice as late as 1972.

Filmed in black and white, Pestonji plays with lighting effects in the second half of the story. While everyone is suppose to be sleeping, the room is still except for a swinging lantern. When a gangster, Krai, gets hold of a gun, he is seen as a shadow while shooting one of his victims. Country Hotel was made with a budget that even a poverty row artist like Elmer G. Ulmer would have found stingy. Pestonji creates opportunities to demonstrate his talent during key moments, overcoming the sparseness of the available material.

Country Hotel can be viewed online at Asia Pacific Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:03 AM

February 03, 2011

From the Thai Film Foundation: Forever Yours

Chuafah Dinsalai
Tawee na Bangchang as "Marut" - 1955

Of the films available on DVD from the Thai Film Foundation, several are from Rattana Pestonji. Forever Yours is the one film from the collection that he produced and photographed, but did not direct. A brief excerpt of this film is included in a scene from Pen-ek Ratanaruang's Last Life in the Universe. Film critic Kong Rithdee provided an overview of Pestonji's contributions to Thai cinema during the centennial commemoration of his birth, three years ago. It is also worth noting that one of the supporting roles was by a young man who later became more noted for his socially conscious writings about Thailand, Rong Wongsawan.

The story is about an older timber magnate, Papo, a widower based in the country. After a reported twenty years of living alone, Papa returns from Bangkok with a young bride, Yupadee. While Yupadee is quite gracious to everyone, she soon has eyes for Papo's nephew, Sangmong. The nephew, tall, with his pompadour adding a few inches, seems oblivious to Yupadee's flirting. The young lunkhead finally gets a clue, and the two start seeing each other secretly, or so they think. Word gets around with Papo's household staff, and the older man, catching the two together, grants the couple their with of being together permanently, by handcuffing them.

What caught my attention was that certain parts of the film document an older way of life. The opening shot is of a train carrying the chopped down trees. Later, we see the work force, men and elephants, pushing the trees to be carried down a river. Papo's factory is contemporary enough, yet his right hand man, Tip, does his accounting with an abacus. Away from the urban, more modern, and unseen Bangkok, Forever Yours takes place in what appears to be a remote part of Thailand where western elements are sparingly integrated into daily life, the most conspicuous of these being the wall clock that indicates the times that the lovers meet, and the piano that provides the song, the theme of the film.

Two brief moments also suggest that some things are virtually axiomatic regarding Thai cinema. During the welcoming party for Yupadee, a man flirts with someone seen only from the back. What appears to be a woman shaking her hips from behind turns out to be an effeminate and mustached man once he turns around. The would be suitor decides to go ahead and dances with his newly found partner. There is also a glimpse of a ghost at the end of Forever Yours. The closing scenes of the film could be used as the basis of something similar to many Thai ghost movies.

Even though the basic story for Forever Yours would appear to be familiar, it goes into a direction not expected and certainly not one that would be found in a traditional Hollywood film. There is also a throwaway moment that might catch a western viewer off guard that suggests that while Papo may not have found someone worthy to be his wife, several of his female household staff had served as mistresses. I don't know if this was part of the novel that served as the basis for the film, but there is an ambiguous mix to the main characters, allowing the viewer to almost simultaneously see the conflicting feelings from differing points of view, rather than have the film dictate the sympathies of the audience.

Forever Yours is also available online from Asia Pacific Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 AM | Comments (1)

February 01, 2011

From the Thai Film Foundation: The King of the White Elephant

Phrachao Chang Phueak
Pridi Banomyong - 1941

With the new "For the Love of Film" blogathon coming soon, I thought it appropriate to dedicate most of February to film preservation, and a review of the films available on DVD from the Thai Film Foundation. What I know about Thai culture can pretty much fit into a thimble. Admittedly, my knowledge of Thai film history has huge gaps. Even if what I write is of negligible scholarly value, hopefully some of the screencaps will foster further interest in Thai film and Thai film history. I have to thank Thai film scholar supreme Anchalee Chaiworaporn and the foundation's Chalida Uabunrungjit for making this possible.

Even though Sunh Vasudhara is the director of record, Pridi Banomyong is the person most responsible for the making of The King of the White Elephant. This is the oldest preserved Thai feature, although taken from a 16mm print from the Library of Congress. What makes this film usual is the choice of Pridi to make a nationalistic epic in English. The DVD also contains the American release version which cut the film from 100 minutes down to 52. Because the film was produced with an English language soundtrack, the question is raised concerning whom was the intended audience. At the time the film was made, Thailand was keeping officially neutral in the face of Japan's invasions of other Asian countries.

Political motives aside, it is apparent that Pridi took some of his filmmaking queues from Hollywood films, especially some of the comedies of the era. King Chakra is distracted by affairs of state, not paying attention to the dozens of dancing maidens who have been summoned to entertain, and perhaps be chosen for marriage. A couple of aides to the rival king are seen with their ears against the door, trying to eavesdrop, in a scene that could have been from something by von Sternberg or Lubitsch. There is also some slapstick with the drunken rival king unable to mount his elephant. The film has a similar template to the more recent epics of Yukol Chatrichalerm, with scenes of palace intrigue alternating with battle sequences. There are some spectacular ground level shots of elephants and soldiers marching toward the camera. Some of the shots suggest the possible influence of John Ford. Unintended humor is created by the music track when western classical music is used, especially when "The William Tell Overture", now primarily associated with The Lone Ranger, accompanies footage of the slower moving elephants.

Bosley Crowthers reviewed The King of the White Elephants in April 1941: "Why should a group of Siamese artists attempt to ape Hollywood in a picture about their land? Why should they take a simple story of rivalry between two ancient kings, one a peaceful elephant-lover and the other a martial bully, and dress it up with chases and battles in the manner of an American Western? True, their mounts are pachyderms instead of pintos—and that does make for an interesting variety of spectacle. But why shouldn't a made-in-Siam picture be truly indigenous, played in pantomime, if need be, and as different from Hollywood formula as it could be made?"

The questions of use of language and context are answered by Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee: "The context surrounding the making of that film is different from what we're experiencing now. King of the White Elephant, in which the dialogue is entirely in English, was made specifically to show the international community that Thais are capable of peace and that war, though sometimes inevitable, leaves everybody hurt and in ruins."

One might say that because the film was intended for an international audience, Pridi had chosen to use the most widely accepted model of filmmaking, the Hollywood film, and consequently, the spoken language of Hollywood. The points raised by Crowthers are not invalid, but are addressed more thoroughly in books like Global Art Cinema, even when the discussion is about other films. For all the yelling about making films that are "indigenous" or the effects of cultural imperialism, in order to reach the widest audience, whether locally or internationally, required making a film that generally adheres to Hollwood classical forms. For several reasons, The King of the White Elephant might be regarded as an anomaly in the history of Thai cinema. Where the influence of the film is most obvious is as the template for future Thai films that also looked to the past to address present day concerns.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:16 AM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2011

Ardor

Milae
Byun Young-joo - 2002
Oscar Region 0 DVD

There is, to me, a remarkable shot of Lee Jong-won's back during the first scene of sex with Kim Yunjin. His back is covered with beads of sweat. Most filmed depictions of sex seem to miss that detail. Hot sex is more than the motions. Really great sex is sweaty, smelly and messy.

I'm not sure how the Korean title would really be translated, but Ardor seems about right. Byun Young-joo's film is in part about a relationship primarily based on mutual sexual attraction, but it's also about how love and sex mess with your head. There is a certain literalness to the film, possibly so Byun can put her points regarding what's going on with Kim's character of Mi-heun.

The film opens on Christmas Eve with the sudden appearance of a young woman at the Seoul apartment of Mi-heun and her husband. The inebriated young woman spontaneously reveals that she has been having an affair with the husband, causing shock to Mi-heun. Further attempting to stake her claim, the young woman strikes Mi-heun in the head with an unseen object, causing injury. The rest of the film takes place in late June, with Mi-heun and her husband and young daughter living near a small town, out in the countryside. Mi-heun continues to have headaches, possibly psychosomatic, and seems continually distracted.

Byun's literalness continues when Mi-heun meets the man who would be her lover, In-kyu, when her car stalls at a crossroad. The first day that Mi-heun and In-kyu make love coincides with the beginning of typhoon season. At least Byun is smart enough not to feel the need to underline her points for the less visually attentive viewer.

Ardor in spirit reminded me of Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris and Chereau's Intimacy. In-kyu proposes to Mi-heun that they have a relationship that is temporary, lasting no longer than Summer, to end if either person makes a declaration of love. Mi-huen's passion is such that she sneaks out of the house, barefoot, wearing nothing but a nightgown, and walks over to In-kyu's home. In-kyu even admits that he is having difficulty playing by his own rules.

This is a film of doublings. Mi-heun and In-kyu's relationship echoes what is described to Mi-huen by her husband's lover on Christmas Eve. Right before Mi-heun and In-kyu meet, Mi-heun wanders around the outside of a house, surveying the wreckage of strewn items, which she later learns was the setting of a murderous lovers' quarrel, a true broken home. Mi-heun becomes friends with a woman who runs a small roadside snack house, who also is in a volatile relationship with her husband. Finally, the husband becomes aware of Mi-huen's affair, reacting in fury as if his own actions that set the narrative in motion had never happened.

I have written about Byun Young-joo previously in a post about Flying Boys. Some of the critical reaction to Ardor is of interest because there is a divide regarding how much of a feminist reading should be applied to this film. I don't think the points raised are invalid. With her documentaries, Byun has established her feminist credentials. Perhaps Ardor was Byun's declaration of entitlement for some ambiguity or open interpretation, what is often looked for with many admired filmmakers who also happen to be male.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:27 AM

January 20, 2011

The Kon Ichikawa Story: A Filmful Life

Kon Ichikawa on the set of Dora-Heita.

Ichikawa Kon monogatari
Shunji Iwai - 2006
Pony Canyon Region 2 DVD

Shunji Iwai will be premiering his newest film, his first in English, at Sundance in the next few days. I won't be there, and neither will be some of those reading this piece. However, Iwai has what he describes as his own online film festival. It's as worth checking out as are Iwai's films. My personal favorite at this time is Alice and Hana.

Iwai's movie about Kon Ichikawa is a personal look at both a filmmaking idol and friend. Some of the facts of Ichikawa's life are presented, but this is less an objective documentary than a cozy, and immensely entertaining portrait of a guy who just happened to be one of Japan's great directors. And of course, like any such film, you want to see more work by the filmmaker in question. There is some frustration, in that only a limited number of Ichikawa's films are available with English subtitled DVDs, and the fewest of those films are from his earlier works.

The excerpts are like great delicacies that left me craving for more. There were several Ichikawa films that I've always wanted to see, such as Conflagration and The Key. A couple of minutes are given to seeing Tatsuya Nakadai taunting Raizo Ichikawa (no relation) in the former, and Machiko Kyo teasing everyone in the latter film. An anecdote is told that Kon Ichikawa was given the rights to the film by showing up at author Junichiro Tanizaki's house, driving up in a Mercedes with a large gift of cash. Of films currently unavailable, Hideko Takamine snags the attention of Ken Uehara and myself in Ichikawa's feature debut, A Flower Blooms, from 1948. Ten Dark Women, from 1961, is a black comedy about a television producer, and his wife and nine mistresses who conspire to murder him. And as revered as Yasujiro Ozu may be, maybe because he is so beloved, I would like to see Ichikawa's parody of Ozu, Anata to watashi no aikotoba: Sayonara, konnichiwa. There's also Hole in One, with an extremely voluptuous Machiko Kyo, and a badly fastened wig.

Additionally, there are excerpts from Ichikawa's work as an animator in the early Thirties, making cartoons that look very similar to some of the work of his American contemporaries. A film with marionettes, a period love story, and Ichikawa's first film of any kind, shows his concern for framing and lighting, as if he knew that eventually this work would be practice before given the opportunity to work with live actors. A lifetime fan of Walt Disney, Iwai was able to include excerpts from one a Disney "Silly Symphony" as well as Mickey Mouse in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" from Fantasia. A close up of Ichikawa on the set of his last film, is of his shoes, with the Mickey Mouse logo.

Natto Wada and Kon Ichikawa

Iwai's film is also, at time, a biography of Natto Wada, Ichikawa's wife, screenwriter, and creative partner. Even though she addressed him as Sensei (Master), and he called her Natto-san, Ichikawa would always concede to this intelligent and attractive woman regarding all artistic decisions. Poignant is the story about the couples last movie date, where Wada decides that the two of them should go see E.T.. It is no coincidence that Ichikawa's best films were all done in collaboration with Wada.

Near the ends, the film takes on a more personal note when Iwai relates how Ichikawa had come up with the idea that the two of them would share directorial duties on a film. As would happen when Dora-Heita was in the screenplay stage, nothing would come of conflicting visions. Perhaps, as Ichikawa did with Dora-Heita, directing the film following the passing of collaborators Akira Kurosawa, Keisuke Kinoshita and Masaki Kobayashi, Iwai might film the project he and Ichikawa had proposed to do together. Perhaps, also, Iwai, might film one of Natto Wada's unfilmed screenplays. Iwai also makes some funny and perceptive observations about Ichikawa's men and women.

A second DVD, with Iwai interviewing Ichikawa, sadly does not have English subtitles. Iwai's story of Ichikawa ends with what turned out to be Ichikawa making his last film. He might have need some assistance with a cane, but even at age 90, Ichikawa-sensei was still spry, and still with an impish sense of humor.

Poster for Ana (Hole in One) with Machiko Kyo

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:50 AM

January 11, 2011

Troma-tized

There's Nothing Out There
Rolfe Kanefsky - 1990

The Chainsaw Sally Show
Jimmyo Burril - 2010
both Troma Entertainment Region 1 DVD

While I have seen a few films from the Troma Team over the years, I have to admit that there are only a very few that I really liked. Also, I am not part of the audience that usually watch Troma films. Most of their films are for a much younger audience, for whom Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is considered an old school classic. Still, I laughed at parts of Tromeo and Juliet and Toxic Avenger, so I'm not entirely an old fogey, but at the same time, I regard the best part of Hell Comes to Frogtown to begin and end with the title. I will also have to hand it to Lloyd Kaufman for finding a niche and keeping at it for over thirty years when other companies have come, gone, or been gobbled up by larger corporations.

The story behind There's Nothing Out There is more interesting than the actual film. Not too many twenty year olds make a feature film, especially one with special effects. Rolfe Kanefsky's film never got anything resembling a decent theatrical release, finding a small measure of success on video and cable. The film is about some very mature looking high school kids who spend the weekend at the country cottage of one of the kids, only to be picked off by some alien creature. There's some soft core sex, nudity, spatter, slime and gore. One of the boys is considered to be one of the earliest examples of the on screen character who compares discusses what is happening within the film with other horror movies. If you want to see a truly funny and scary example of this kind of film, of kids in a cabin, film references, and the unstoppable horror that awaits them, then let me recommend Dead Snow. Zombie nazis are scarier than a less than bright space creature with teeth and tentacles, and the death metal in Dead Snow out rocks the lame music in There's Nothing Out There.

Kanefsky's own story makes the DVD extras worth watching. With a stationary camera pointed at him, Kanefsky tells not only about the history of making and trying to sell There's Nothing Out There, but also about his own professional life since his feature debut. Seeing Kanefsky, sitting on the edge of his bed, in a studio apartment in North Hollywood, should possibly be mandatory viewing for all would-be students who go to film school with dreams of being the next Michael Bay or even a Kelly Reichardt. Kanefsky has been knocking around for twenty years, and has been working fairly steadily during that time, and lives quite modestly. His life is not the kind one hears about when discussing professional filmmakers. This is the Hollywood that usually isn't discussed, of remaining both in the game and in the margins.

I have to wonder what Carol J. Clover would make of Chainsaw Sally. The DVD set is made from webcast videos about a young woman who works as a librarian by day, who kills and maims various victims during her free time. One of the first images is of this young woman, chainsaw in hand, chasing another young woman. There's an audience for this show that is post-feminist and post-punk, far younger than me, whom finds delight in this grand guignol series. The show is a family affair, written and directed by Jimmyo Burril, and starring wife April Monique Burril, with Lilly Burril in a supporting role. I admit to having belly laughs watching Peter Jackson's early films like Dead Alive, when nothing about the tasteless mayhem suggested the work of a future Oscar winner. Maybe Chainsaw Sally works better on a small screen in small doses. My own preference is for Sally the librarian, someone with a passion for books and coffee.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:33 AM | Comments (1)

January 04, 2011

The Magnificent Concubine

Yang Kwei Fei
Li Han-Hsiang - 1960
IVL Region 3 DVD

I had written about Kenji Mizoguchi's Yang Kwei Fei two years ago, and decided to see this other version. Mizoguchi's version is the one that is best known nowadays, but it was also a commercial failure at the time of its release. Li Han-Hsiang never had the international prestige of Mizoguchi, but he knew how to make box office hits, and the Hong Kong audience that didn't care to see Japanese actors in a legendary Chinese story flocked to see this new version from the Shaw Brothers. While some parts of the story are the same, the differences are quite striking.

Unlike Mizoguchi's film which depicts Lady Yang's humble origin, and unexpected rise in the royal household, Li jumps in when Yang is firmly entrenched, with all of the power and privilege of royalty. Mizoguchi's Yang is demure, finding herself compromised by people and circumstances beyond her control, while Li's Yang is assumed to have manipulated the emperor into giving her brother the position of Prime Minister. Not only is Yang, played by Li Li-Hua, the most beautiful woman in China, she knows it, and she doesn't shy from letting others no it as well. At a time when the emperor seems to have his eye on another woman, Lady Yang tosses several vases, the classic scorned woman. The emperor and Lady Yang kiss and make up, with the second half of the film presenting a more sympathetic woman who really does have the interests of the emperor and the Chinese people at heart.

Does anybody know if Joe Mankiewicz was at the Cannes film festival in 1962, where The Magnificent Concubine was presented? Or maybe someone who had something to do with the making of Cleopatra caught the film? The scene the introduces Lady Yang, and the actress Li Li-Hua, strongly resembles the bath scene in Mankiewicz's film. While it is only fleetingly glimpsed, there is more nudity in the older film as the camera pans past Li Li-Hua reclining by the pool. What struck me is that had I not known that The Magnificent Concubing had been filmed first, I would have thought that in her screen demeanor that Li Li-Hua was channelling Elizabeth Taylor.

Li Han-Hsiang was one of the top directors at the Shaw Brothers studios, and this film looks almost as good as a Hollywood feature of the time. Unlike Mizoguchi's film which emphasized the tragedy, Li seems more interested in the spectacle, with beautiful costumes, some gorgeous outdoor photography at the beginning of the film, and hundreds of extras. Even with the short running time of less than 75 minutes, Li takes a break to have a performance by a dozen or so acrobatic swordsmen followed by a troupe of female dancers. It may be the sumptuous visuals that persuaded the Cannes jury to award Li with a technical prize at Cannes.

There are some extras which make the DVD more valuable to either scholars of Hong Kong cinema, or Chinese culture. A featurette of Li Han-Hsiang discusses his background in art, and shows clips from several films. Several people who have worked on his films, primarily actors, discuss Li and their experiences with him. The featurette is subtitled except for the naming of the people talking about Li, putting those with less familiarity with some of the actors in a disadvantage. There is also some footage of Li, who dies in 1996, discussing his work. Unexpected and totally delightful, at least for me, was the inclusion of excerpts from three poems inspired by Yang Kwei Fei, including brief explanations. There is also a series of paintings and drawings, along with some historical explanation regarding the clothing worn during the T'ang Dynasty in 9th Century China. One might quibble about the facts as presented in either Li's or Mizoguchi's films. But to dismiss Li's film because he lacks the critical standing of Mizoguchi would be a mistake. While there is little discussion of Li in English, David Bordwell has some observation of interest. If there is room to embrace multiple versions of the stories of Joan of Arc or Billy the Kid, among others, than greater critical evaluation is due this other version of a woman who almost caused the fall of an empire.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:12 AM

December 28, 2010

The Millionaire Chase

Diao jin gui
Umetsugu Inoue - 1969
IVL Region 3 DVD

Of the many filmmakers and actors who died this year, the one that won't be mentioned at the Oscars or any award shows, or most articles, will be Umetsugu Inoue. He wasn't a Hollywood director, but he did love Hollywood movies. I wrote a belated notice regarding his death, including an anecdote regarding the origins of The Millionaire Chase. The basic premise is similar to How to Marry a Millionaire, with three women who intend to marry wealthy husbands. Both films even star a woman named Betty, Grable in the Hollywood film, Betty Ting Pei in the Hong Kong production. While from the perspective of western cinema, The Millionaire Chase may seem hopelessly out of touch with the times, based on the requirements of the Shaw Brothers, what Inoue had done with this film was reconfigure elements from several films by Jean Negulesco.

Love and money figure into Negulesco films including The Best of Everything and It's a Woman's World. Both filmmakers had stories that revolved around three woman, usually friends, but sometimes rivals. In Negulesco's case, romance also involved exotic, in his case European settings. In The Millionaire Chase the idea of foreign travel was distinctly Asian, with the Hong Kong characters traveling to Tapei, Tokyo and Bangkok. The big difference is that while Inoue's films were relatively big budget by Shaw Brothers standards, the difference with the lush production values of 20th Century Fox are quite obvious, especially in the studio sets. Both Inoue's musical comedies, like the Fox films by Negulesco, are generally lighthearted fare, more likely to elicit a smile than any more serious response.

Inoue's film is about three showgirls played by Lily Ho, Betty Ting Pei, and Chin Ping. Lily Ho is in love with show biz quy, Peter Chen Ho, Inoue's usual leading man. Peter Chen Ho is in love with a married woman, a favored singer. When the woman reveals that her husband is joining the pair on their romantic trip and performing tour around southeast Asia, Peter Chen Ho decides taking the trio as a way to distract the woman's husband. Betty Ting Pei falls in love with a gemologist, while Chin Ping gets the hiccups from the sight of a handsome waiter, who jobless, seems to have the means to travel to the same cities as the women. Being a film for a Hong Kong audience primarily, the comedy is broader than what might be found in a equivalent Hollywood movie, with some moments closer to Frank Tashlin, also at the Fox studios at the time of Negulesco. One thing is certain, Jean Negulesco never had a pie fight in any of his movies.

Between what little is available in English, and the few films I've seen indicates that there is much more to know about Inoue. Until it was yanked from Youtube, a clip from his 1962 version of Black Lizard was available. Starring Machiko Kyo, what was seen resembled a musical number, with Kyo holding her pursuers at bay with a gun, changing from a gown to a man's suit complete with fedora, and escaping into the night, a scene of canted angles and giant shadows. What is relatively available for English speaking audiences are the Shaw Brothers films made over a period of about five years, but only on Region 3 DVDs. Inoue's Japanese films, at least those officially available, might be found on Japanese DVDs without subtitles.

With only the Hong Kong films being the most easily accessible, providing a decent overview of Inoue's career is impossible. Not only was his first Shaw Brothers production, Hong Kong Nocturne a remake of one of his Japanese musicals, but Inoue would virtually remake his Hong Kong films. One of his later films with Lily Ho is titled We Love Millionaires. Although I wouldn't count on it, with the popularity of the first set of Eclipse DVDs of Nikkatsu Studios films from the Fifties and early Sixties, possibly one of Inoue's films starring Yujiro Ishihara, such as The Man who Causes a Storm might be included. More definitive scholarship is also required to determine how many movies Inoue actually made, with fifty-nine titles listed on IMDb, but other articles mentioning credits to over 100 films. Even if the final tally is at the low end, Inoue directed more feature films than Arthur Penn and Blake Edwards combined. What also makes the legacy of the Shaw Brothers films more remarkable is that Inoue never learned to speak Chinese.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:54 AM

December 23, 2010

Map of the Sound of Tokyo

Isabel Coixet - 2009
IFC Films Region 1 DVD

Death, or at least the thought of mortality, is never far away in Isabel Coixet's films. The premise of a young woman who toils at a fish market secretly working as a killer for hire seems improbable, and the gender reversal twist of having the hit woman fall for her victim does little to disguise what is still a well worn narrative setup. None of this kept me from liking Map of the Sounds of Tokyo anyways.

There is an underdeveloped subplot involving the young woman, Ryu, and the film's narrator, who is unnamed. The narrator records sounds professionally, and is entranced by the slurping Ryu makes eating ramen, claiming it is the same sound his mother made. There are indications that the narrator, a much older man, has been recording Ryu from a distance. We never know whether the narrator is motivated by his own obsession with Ryu, or has other reasons for his secret recordings.

Coixet's film is more about the fascination Europeans have for Japan, and the fascination Japanese have for things European, especially anything French. David, from Barcelona, the would be victim, has sex with Ryu in a love hotel called La Bastille. Their chosen room is decked out to resemble a subway car that appears to be running across the Seine. While David and Ryu make love, "La Vie en Rose" is on the soundtrack, but song in Japanese by Hibari Misora. Geographic considerations put aside, Coixet, a Spanish filmmaker who most often works in English language productions, also makes films about loners and outsiders. In this respect, Map of the Sound of Tokyo is similar Coixet's previous film, Elegy, with the emotionally repressed Ryu not unlike the aging academic, with the two characters finding love with strangers from foreign shores. Coixet's own fascination with Japan is made clear at her own website.

Food plays a key role in the film. The opening shot depicts nyortaimori, with tables of businessmen picking off sushi from nearly nude women. It is at this dinner that one of the businessmen, Nagara, receives the call that sets the plot in motion. The narrator and Ryu meet at The Ramen Museum. It is also at a small restaurant that David breaks the ice with Ryu, precisely because he does not slurp his ramen.

With some of the sexual content, Rinko Kikuchi's performance harkens back to the role that gained her international attention in Babel. In the scenes of intimacy, I was also reminded of Sergi Lopez in An Affair of Love. Is it possible that those were the films Coixet was thinking of in casting her leads? In discussing the film, Coixet has stated: "I was also influenced by the fascination I feel for contemporary Japanese culture and the atmosphere I find in the novels of Haruki Murakami and Banana Yoshimoto as well as by my unconcealed addiction to wasabi and the almost tangible vibrations emanating from Tokyo during the night: a mixture of expectation, mystery, darkness and tenderness that leaves an indelible mark." By coincidence, Kikuchi stars in the film adaptation of Murakami's Norwegian Wood. I had just seen Elegy a couple of days ago. That film had an added emotion heft watching Dennis Hopper as a dying poet. Some of the critical response to Map of the Sound of Tokyo has been complaints that the film is only surface deep, although admittedly an attractive surface. Maybe the best way to appreciate the film is to regard like some Japanese dining where it is less about what is being served, and more about the presentation of the meal.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 AM

December 21, 2010

Meat Grinder

Cheuuat gaawn chim
Tiwa Moeithaisong - 2009
My Way Films Region 3 DVD

While it remains without a U.S. distributor, those inclined in the San Francisco area were able to see Meat Grinder as part of a series of horror films under the collective title of "Go to Hell for the Holidays". As exploitation ready as the English title is, the film may be so artistic in its, ahem, execution, that it virtually neutralizes the horror. Tiwa not only directed his film, but served as his own cinematographer and editor. It is also worth noting that Tiwa's other credit for last year was cinematography for the Muay Thai movie, Raging Phoenix, the best part of that film.

Even in Thailand, the release of Meat Grinder was almost as tortured as what Mai Charoenpura does to her victims. According to Bangkok based Wise Kwai, Meat Grinder was almost banned for allegedly making all street noodle vendors appear suspect. My own theory is that certain people in power in Thailand were more concerned about a scene where the title character, Buss, is caught in a riot. A large mob of people are chased down a street by soldiers. Tiwa pointedly has all of the civilians wearing white shirts, rather than red or yellow shirts that have been used to designate political affiliations in Thailand. And there is never any explanation as to why the soldiers are chasing the people. But I would think that even if it wasn't admitted by anyone who was part of any Thai cultural agency, there would be discomfort regarding the depiction of civil unrest, almost anticipating events that occurred following the release of Meat Grinder. According the Wise Kwai, Meat Grinder takes place in the 1970s, with the riot victims being students. Perhaps I am not being very observant as the Thailand I see in the film wasn't markedly different from the place I visited four years ago.

The scene of the riot is important not simply as a dramatic device to bring Buss together with a young man, Attapon. Meat Grinder might be understood as a critique of power, and not just that of one country or culture. While the civilian populace is threatened by the power of the army, working at the behest of the government, on a more personal level, Meat Grinder also looks at expressions of male power and sense of privilege. The idea of the use and abuse of power is also echoed in a couple scenes with the police, where guilt is assumed unless innocence is proven. Through a series of flashbacks, it is understood that Buss has been in an abusive relationship with her husband, and perhaps her step-father. A trio of thugs attempt to force Buss to pay off her husband's gambling debts. There is are scenes also of Buss punished by her mother, with Buss repeating the punishment on her own daughter. Seemingly the one honorable man in her life, Attapon shows that like the other men Buss has known, he is incapable of fidelity. The contempt Buss has for men is best shown in the beginning when she cuts off the leg of a victim right at the knee, and flings the detached appendage back in his face.

Tiwa switches between black and white and color, with most of the flashbacks in monochrome. At one point we see young Buss in a flashback, the only color being a real bucket of blood poured over her. The wide strips of plastic that divide the space where the meat is prepared is covered with flecks of blood. Meat Grinder is visually full of rough surfaces. The blades appear all orange with rust. With the exception of the gleaming white shirts of the riot scene, everything else in Meat Grinder looks worn and dirty. Often Tiwa uses extreme close ups, or frames people in such a way that the sex and violence are not clearly visible. Using a Thai pop song titled "Fascination" during one of the scenes of dismemberment, and music that sounds very much like that used for Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love, Tiwa's plays against the notion of a romantic past. While some of the gorier elements, as well as the vigilante sense of justice, recalls Sweeney Todd, the disposal of the victims should also remind some of Alfred Hitchcock's television version of Lamb for the Slaughter, with its police detectives unknowingly eating the victim.

Between the performance of the star, and the look of the the film, it is little surprise that Meat Grinder received Subhanahongsa Award nomination for Best Actress for Mai and Best Art Direction, the Thai equivalent to Oscar nominations. Along with Slice, still sadly unavailable as a subtitled DVD, Meat Grinder appears to be one of the last of a series of artistically expressive Thai horror films. This may be the effect of the unevenly applied new film ratings coupled with the fact that several films have been deemed unacceptable for Thai audiences, even with a restriction for adults only. There is still the periodic horror film, but little that has earned significant critical acclaim, with English language DVD availability not always certain. Meat Grinder has been marketed, not unexpectedly, for gorehounds, but offers more that the spectacle of lopped of fingers and slashed throats. Hopefully the multi hyphenate Tiwa will be able to make the kind of film that will force the serious critical community to pay attention to his talents.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:36 AM

December 16, 2010

Edo Porn

Hokusai manga
Kaneto Shindo - 1981
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Several times in this biographical film, Hokusai's rival, Utamaro is mentioned. It was enough to make me wish I could see Kenji Mizoguchi's film, Utamaro and His Five Women again again after almost thirty years. Mizoguchi does a better job in conveying the importance of Utamaro, and the film works doubly as an argument about artistic freedom, both in the artist's own time, as well as in the immediate years of post World War II Japan. Shindo's film takes advantage of the then new freedoms afforded filmmakers, yet there is no clear sense as to the importance of Hokusai.

It could also be that Shindo made the film for an audience familiar enough with Hokusai that his importance and facts regarding his life would already be assumed. The first half or so of the film is of Hokusai trying to establish himself as an artist, infatuated with the betel nut chewing beauty, Onao. To what extent this is a historical character, I wouldn't know, but Onao appears to be the most liberated woman of 19th Century Japan, not only comfortable in disrobing for Hokusai, but coming and going at will, and occasionally choosing her lovers. In contrast, the depiction of Hokusai creating his most famous painting, of Mount Fuji and the ocean waves, is so brief that within the context of the film, it appears incidental to the story of a guy who liked to paint pictures of naked young women.

Two women have important roles in the narrative. The elusive Onao remains in Hokusai's mind as his most perfect muse. Hokusai's daughter, Oei, in contrast, remains with Hokusai throughout his life, acting as his assistant, supporter, and on occasion is his most severe critic.

Setting aside biographical considerations, Hokusai Manga (I dislike the English language title) is substantially about the idea of men possessing women, as the idealized sexual companion, or at least possessing the idealized image of a woman. One of the key scenes is of Hokusai's father pursuing Onao in his house. The father's house is full of mirrors. While the father is able to catch multiple reflections of Onao, the woman herself remains beyond his grasp. One of the themes of the film is about the reproduction of images, with the paintings of Utamaro and Hokusai representing early versions of art, especially erotic art, made available in multiple reproductions, for purchase at relatively affordable prices by a larger public.

Concurrent with this, is the idea of the artist as celebrity. Utamaro, a minor character in Shindo's film, is discussed by others, the most well known popular artist at the beginning of the film. Hokusai's celebrity is highlighted with a crowd gathering to see him paint on a grain of rice, followed by his painting of a giant ink portrait with a brush that resembles an oversized broom. Fame does not necessarily mean fortune, as Hokusai is seen living quite modestly through the end of his life. Even when the artwork sells, there is self-doubt regarding artistic abilities.

Shindo's early filmmaking career was in part as assistant to Mizoguchi. Later, Shindo made a documentary about Mizoguchi, in 1975. Mizoguchi's film, as mentioned, about Utamaro was about artistic expression and government regulations and restrictions, with the period setting used to comment on being an artist in post World War II Japan. Shindo's film might in turn be thought of as a response to Mizoguchi's film with the past used to comment on the present as well. In this case, the use of erotic content may be understood as being both a cause and effect of economic necessity, at a time when the Japanese film industry had virtually collapsed, and one major studio, Nikkatsu, had committed itself entirely to the genre called "Roman Porno". Unavailable at this time for comparison is another Shindo biographical film made twelve years later, with some similar themes, Bokuto Kidan, discussed by Acquarello.

Shindo plays very loosely with some of the chronology of Hokusai's life, so that a scene about the creation of one his his most famous pictures takes place much later in life on film. Inspired by the female divers he sees on a beach, Hokusai convinces his new muse, a young woman also named Onao, to pose with a small octopus. The film eventually becomes a fantasy of the aroused young woman, with tentacles groping around her nude body. The mood becomes unintentionally comic when the two octopi are seen, even though they do resemble the creatures in Hokusai's painting.

In keeping with the idea of reproduced images, Shindo has some of his actors appear as "twins" of characters from Hokusai's past. Most significant is Kanako Higuchi, who plays the part of two very different women, both named Onao. In the title role, Ken Ogata seems smaller than he appears in some of his appearances, such as Vengeance is Mine. Furanki Sakai appears as Hokusai's father by adoption, while Jo Shishido has a small part as one of Hokusai's friends, the author Jyuppensha Ikku. Hokusai Manga proved to be a breakthrough role for Yuko Tanaka as Oei, the first of several prize winning performances.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

December 14, 2010

Vampire Circus

Robert Young - 1971
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Some of the thoughts I had while watching Vampire Circus weren't unique. Addressed in the documentary supplement are the sexual elements of the film. Vampire films have always been the most erotically charged of the horror genre, but what goes on Vampire Circus pushes what was previously suggested to its most explicit, and then some. The film might be said to be a culmination of the then recent changes in film ratings that allowed for greater depictions of sex and violence, along with changes in the Hammer production house that brought in younger directors behind the camera, and newer actors as their stars.

The opening scene of sex between the vampire, Count Mitterhaus, and his still human lover, Anna, is unmistakably animal lust. The nudity and the sensuality set the very literal stage for the circus, where some of the performers shift between human and animal form, and in one case a blend of the two, but also where the creatures of this "circus of night" seduce women and children. The children, both boys and young girls, are shown as vampire victims, suggesting a form of pedophilia. The decadence of Count Mitterhaus is also indicated by his almost effete, lace trimmed shirt. There are also some moments of sado-masochism, especially when the trapped Anna is whipped by the town's men.

What no one in the documentary talks about is the name of the town, Schtettel. How did it escape notice that the town name sounds like shtetl, the Yiddish word for town, but more significantly, usually a Jewish ghetto. The similarity of Schtettel with a shtetl is that the town in Vampire Circus has been forced to be cut off from the outside world due to a curse by Count Mitterhaus that has caused unexplained death and disease for fifteen years. The name Mitterhaus seems to have been created combining a French legal term with the German word for house.

The film title is self explanatory. One of the vampires is the cousin of Count Mitterhaus, appearing as a panther, or as the dark stranger with eyes for the mayor's plump daughter. The circus mysteriously comes to town to fulfill revenge on behalf of Count Mitterhaus, and bring the count back to life. The more interesting aspects to the film are circus related, twin acrobats who literally fly through the air, a tiger woman who performs a sexual dance too avant-garde for the 19th Century setting of the story, and a "mirror of life" that allows select few to pass into another dimension. The limitations of the budget are most pointed in the scenes of the "mirror of life", where the special effects are largely created through editing and sound effects. While it would have been impossible to do something along the lines of Terry Gilliam's Doctor Parnassus, Vampire Circus could have created more of a sense of wonder had there been the kind of effects Jean Cocteau was able to create for Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus.

Still, for what it is, I can understand the affection some have for Vampire Circus. While there is the strong tug for the traditional vampire tale, Robert Young, a former documentarian who made his narrative film debut here, attempts to push the genre in terms of some of the more familiar themes, as well as with an unusual story. It would have been nice had the documentary about the making of Vampire Circus included Young, as well as some of the actors such as John Moulder Brown. Adrienne Corri and Domini Blythe, several whom are still not only alive but still professionally active. Only Dave Prowse is seen here, talking about how he first tried to make his way as a Hammer monster. Best known nowadays for being the guy underneath Darth Vader's costume in the Star Wars films, Prowse is more visible wearing little more than a loin cloth as the circus strong man. On the other hand, Joe Dante talking about movies is almost as entertaining as his own films. Others bringing their insights are film critic Tim Lucas and author Philip Nutman. Dante may have summed it up best by suggesting that Vampire Circus wasn't quite the film that the filmmakers had hoped to make, but it is worth seeing for tensions between genre traditions and new filmmaking freedoms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:56 PM

December 07, 2010

Love in a Fallen City

Qing cheng zhi lian
Ann Hui - 1984
IVL Region 3 DVD

As they walked farther, the mountains got taller. Either it was the wind blowing in the trees, or it was the moving shadow of a cloud, but somehow the greenish yellow lower slopes slowly darkened. Looking more closely. you saw that it wasn't the wind and it wasn't the clouds but the sun moving slowly over the mountain crest, blanketing the lower slope in a giant blue shadow. Up on the mountain, smoke rose from burning houses - white on the shaded slopes, black on the sunlit slopes - while the sun kept moving slowly over the mountain crest.
Eileen Chang translated by Karen S. Kingsbury

I've only recently been aware of the Chinese writer Eileen Chang, both in films that she has written, and films based on her writings. Chang might be best known currently as the literary source for Ang Lee's film, Lust, Caution. Exploring things further for myself, I recently read the collection of short stories, Love in a Fallen City. The parts of Chang's writings that lend themselves most readily to film are some of the descriptive paragraphs regarding locations, the use of color, so that what I imagine are the kind of shots that are to my mind almost like abstract paintings, that may not advance the narrative, but are appreciated for their visual beauty.

In something of the same spirit, the best moment of Ann Hui's film is dialogue free. Chow Yun-Fat and Cora Miao return to their house, partially destroyed and ransacked following the first days of the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong. Miao looks on as Chow is seen scrubbing a floor clean. The shot says all that needs to be said about the changed dynamics between the two characters. What also makes the shot so powerful is that previous to this moment, Chow appears to have been the type of guy who never did anything resembling physical labor. It's at this moment that Chow's motives can no longer be questioned.

The love is between a divorcee nearing thirty, Pai Liusu, and a businessman and reputed playboy, Fan Liuyuan. The two are brought together through mutual friends, primarily to fulfill social expectations based on Chinese traditions. To some extent they are opposites, he being the worldly, European educated man, she the self-identified country bumpkin from Shanghai. What initially ties them together is that they both feels themselves to be outsiders. Neither is quite sure of the other's intentions until the overwhelming cataclysm of war brings them together.

It's unfortunate that at this time, Love in a Fallen City is only available as a Region 3 DVD, because it presents a very different star than the one known for his action films. Not only does the film feature Chow Yun-Fat without guns, but this might be described as Chow Yun-Fat as Cary Grant. David Bordwell wrote a line about Chow being born to wear a tuxedo. I can't think of a contemporary actor who looks as comfortable in a formal tuxedo or a white suit, the way Chow appears in this film. As Fan, Chow looks like the kind of man whose idea of work is limited to a couple of phone calls or a few well chosen words to some trusted underlings. When, as Fan, he is scrubbing the floor, still in his suit, you can be certain the guy has nothing but love on his mind.

What may be the weakest part of Love in a Fallen City is that it is more faithful in reproducing Eileen Chang's dialogue, while giving her visual descriptions short shrift. The story has been remade as a mini-series, about which there is little available English language information. Even though Hui's film was a prestigious assignment by Shaw Brothers standards, there are too many moments where one senses that the film could have been improved by more money for more extras and bigger explosions, as well as more moments of purely visual story telling. The thought crossed my mind as to how different the film might also have been had Eileen Chang had written the screenplay, The DVD extras include a brief interview with Ann Hui, as well as fan Maggie Q gushing about how great Chow Yun-Fat looks in the film. Through production stills, I discovered that Stanley Kwan, later to direct his own adaptation of Chang, served as an assistant director. As for the actress who played Pai Liusu, Cora Miao retired from acting almost twenty years ago, which partially explains why she is not currently as well known as her some of her contemporaries. At a time when most Americans were unaware of Hong Kong cinema beyond martial arts movies, Miao made a couple of her final films with the American director who became her husband, Wayne Wang.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:50 AM

November 25, 2010

By the Light of the Silvery Moon

David Butler - 1953
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

While most of the story in By the Light of the Silvery Moon does not revolve around Thanksgiving, the best part of the film, the first third makes this Doris Day musical holiday appropriate. A turkey named Gregory, not to be confused with any other turkeys named Gregory, has become the pet of Day's young brother, Wesley, played by Billy Gray. Wesley is so attached to Gregory that instead of taking the turkey to the butcher to be prepared for the Thanksgiving Day dinner, Gregory is freed, and an already prepared, but yet to be cooked, turkey is stolen. Wesley and the rest of the family are in for a surprise on Thanksgiving Day.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon is the sequel to a movie Doris Day and Gordon MacRae did two years earlier, On Moonlight Bay. Both films were adapted from the "Penrod" stories by Booth Tarkington, the guy virtually no cinephile ever talks about when they talk about The Magnificent Ambersons. It's been several decades since I've read any of the "Penrod" books, the misadventures of a teenage boy in small town Indiana, in the early part of the 20th Century. On Moonlight Bay is the better of the two movies because there is a tension between the nostalgia for small town America prior to World War I, and the acknowledgment by MacRae's character of the events beyond Indiana. There's a scene when MacRae jokes about the song, "By the Light of the Silvery Moon", saying that the writer had a glass of beer in one hand and a rhyming dictionary in the other hand. The first film treads the thin difference of feelings towards the past, where one might say they like something "because of" easily replacing "in spite of", where certain aspects of the past are acknowledged as corny, and perhaps more than a bit trite, but are still regarded with affection and humor.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon displaces the few vestiges of Tarkington's observations in favor of whether or not Doris Day and Gordon MacRae will finally get together. MacRae returns soon after the Armistice, in time for Thanksgiving. His war experience consisted of arriving in Paris when combat has ceased. As much as he wants to marry Day, MacRae has made up his mind to be responsible and get himself established professionally and set aside a "nest egg" first. Day's offer to also go to work to get the couple on solid financial footing is rebuffed, much to Day's chagrin.

A more interesting film would have explored the conflict between tradition and more independent thinking. Day's character is first seen underneath the family car, getting dirty, doing repairs. Later Day repairs MacRae's car when it stalls on the road, coming home from a date. Even though Day does the actual work, MacRae makes a comment giving himself credit. These scenes are among those that contributed to the rediscovery of Doris Day in the mid Seventies as a proto-feminist. The film we have is more concerned about misunderstandings regarding a stolen letter, interpreted as a love letter between two unnamed people.

Aside from the episodes involving Gregory the turkey, the most inspired part of By the Light of the Silvery Moon again centers on Billy Gray as Wesley. A self styled detective inspired by Sherlock Holmes, Wesley writers his own story about his creation, Fearless Flanagan. Outwitting a grown up femme fatale and her three henchmen, Gray appears in his fantasy, a cute parody of detective stories. Gray was fourteen or fifteen at the time the film was made and not very tall. His character of Wesley in this film and On Moonlight Bay could be seen as establishing some of the template used for his best known role on TV's Father Knows Best.

There are probably some better Thanksgiving related movies than By the Light of the Silvery Moon. Without Billy Gray or Gregory, the film is lacks the sparkle of On Moonlight Bay. The only other bright moment is a pause from the story, allowing Doris Day one solo, performed alone. Whatever weaknesses there are in the narrative evaporate at the sound of Doris Day singing, something I dismissed when I was younger and thought of myself as being hip. It only took me the better part of my life and some knowledge of the life of Doris Day to give me something else to be thankful for.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:11 AM

November 23, 2010

Baba Yaga

Corrado Farina - 1973
Shameless Region 0 DVD

A review of the the Strangers on a Train inspired Italian film, Designated Victim, got me interested in checking out the Shameless DVD label. The films might be of varying artistic aspirations and achievements, but the existence of such a small niche company is a reminder that film restoration and preservation isn't exclusive to the Criterion Collection. Not that the guys at Shameless are totally academic in their love of film. While there are no commentary tracks, there is a special subtitle track which periodically calls attention to points of interest regarding the making of the film. Effort is made to present the films in as complete a state as possible, even if means inserting excerpts obviously from other sources.

Shameless worked with Corrado Farina on this version of Baba Yaga, billed as Farina's final cut. It's been several years since I have seen any other versions so I can not do any comparison. What makes this version of interest is that it includes two shorts by Farina that are comic book related, Freud and Fumetti and Fumettophobia. Fumetti is the Italian word for comics, derived from the small clouds that held the characters' speech. The first short discusses the expression of sexuality in the comics created for an adult audience, specifically in regards to comic artist Guido Crepax. The second short is an impassioned argument that comic book reading is healthy for children and helps the develop imagination, as well as interest in other reading. There is also an interview with Farina, discussing the making of the film, from the casting, with Carroll Baker coming in at the last minute when Anne Heywood dropped out, to the clashes with the producers who re-edited the film, destroying the original negative in the process.

Farina's film was inspired by the comics by Guido Crepax and his character, Valentina. The basic outline is that a legendary Russian witch, Baba Yaga, pursues photographer and girl about town, Valentina. But the story is not the movie. Anyone looking for logic will be frustrated. The reason to watch the film is for the images. Even when the images are not meant to invoke dreams, they are often dream like simply due to the canted angles or strangeness, be it the use of color, be it a pastel blue suit or Valentina's orange Mini, or even lack of color. When Baba Yaga's huge black sedan shows up at Valentina's door, and Baba Yaga explains that it's fate that brought her there, that's really all the explanation that's needed.

The opening sequence of a movie surreptitiously shot in a graveyard accomplishes in a few minutes what Marco Ferreri took an entire feature to do in Don't Touch the White Woman. Not only did Farina restage Little Big Horn a couple of years earlier, with a scantily clad Indian maiden as the first person we see, but the protest against American presence in Viet-Nam is unmistakable when one of the Indians burn an American flag. Farina incorporates several moments on politically commentary, such as a scene with some protesters that Valentina photographs, and another scene where a black male and a white female pose together for a modeling shoot. In retrospect, Farina's clear political sentiments within the framework of a genre film probably contributed to his being unable to film another feature.

Why most people would watch Baba Yaga still is primarily to watch Carroll Baker attempt to seduce Isabelle De Funes. Farina's original choice, Elsa Martinelli, would have physically been more perfect as Valentina. De Funes comes close with her oversized eyes and full lips, and Louise Brooks hair style. If De Funes name seems familiar, she is the niece of French star Louis de Funes. There is also the considerable presence of Ely Galleani as Annette, the literal living doll in bondage gear to provide an overdose of eye candy. Even as an inanimate doll, albeit one that has exposed breasts between the leather straps, Annette might well be the sexiest character in the film. Among the reasons for the heavy editing of this original film were due to the suggestions of lesbianism as well as two shots of full frontal nudity. There seems to have been no problem with the sado-masochist content. And in his interview, Farina is right, the women in Baba Yaga would cause teenage boys (of all ages) sleepless nights. (Personal aside, Farina knows what he's talking about. Even clothed, Carroll Baker played on my adolescent imagination just watching the tailer for Station Six-Sahara as well as the suggestive poster that featured in very large letters, the word "hot".)

What raises the film above the more exploitive fare it could have been is the care Farina took to duplicate Crepax's imagery. Several times, Farina cuts to high contrast black and white photography, stills that virtually duplicate what Crepax created with his drawings. Sometimes these images are extreme close-ups of Isabelle De Funes' eyes or mouth, the most cartoonlike parts of her face. Some of the color sequences appear to have been informed by the pop art of the time. While not always clearly visible, its worth taking in some of the surrounding artwork, such as posters for classic horror films outside of a movie theater showing The Golem. Unfortunately, Corrado Farina's sometimes surreal visions did not translate into box office success, which explains why this was only his second of two commercial movies. At a time when Hollywood is plundering almost every comic book, er, graphic novel, for inspiration, Baba Yaga should be studied for its use of color and composition, and a reminder that there is more than dark nights and Dark Knights.

* * *
And on a somewhat related note regarding film preservation, those who have neither a DVD label to call their own, or happen to be an A-list Hollywood director, can get in the game of saving a movie, or at least part of a movie. Shifting from a fantastic shade of yellow here to a more somber black, check out Marilyn Ferdinand and Farran Smith Nehme for the first details on rescuing a film noir classic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:14 AM

November 18, 2010

Vengeance

Fuk Sau
Johnny To - 2009
IFC Region 1 DVD

Until I had read this posting by Kimberly Lindbergs, I had no idea that Alain Delon was Johnny To's first choice to star in Vengeance. That To is a fan of Delon, particularly the films he did with Jean-Pierre Melville, will be no surprise to the who have read To's list of favorite films from the Criterion Collection. The character that Johnny Hallyday plays in Vengeance is named Francois Costello. Delon portrayed a hit man named Jef Costello. Did To hope for Delon to play a continuation of the same character? There is the possible suggestion that the two fictional characters are related, not only because of the shared family name, but also because To's Costello runs a restaurant in Paris called "Les Freres" (The Brothers).

Vengeance is still very much a Johnny To film, even with a French star shooting it up in Macau and Hong Kong. If you want to see a film much closer in spirit to Melville, let me suggest Donnie Yen's Ballistic Kiss with its brooding hit man. Aside from Hallyday, and Sylvie Testud as his daughter, the rest of the cast includes To's usual crew including Simon Yam, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, and the incomparable Lam Suet. The basic story is not too much of a variation on To's explorations of male camaraderie and loyalty.

Costello comes from Paris to Macau after his daughter and her family have been shot by unknown gun men. The daughter, Irene, is the only survivor. From her hospital bed, she asks her father to take revenge on her behalf. Costello enlists three Chinese hit men, encountering them the kind of coincidence that could only happen in the movies. Ignoring some of the contrived situations that bring the characters together is made easier by some of the visual pleasures of Vengeance. Demonstrating his ability with a gun, Costello and the gang shoot at a bicycle seemingly propelled by the blaze of bullets nudging it forward. There is also a big gun battle outside a garbage dump, with both sides protecting themselves with huge bales of newspaper, push forward like giant blocks, appearing almost like large, crude mechanical devices from a distance, the flying paper debris adding an other worldly touch.

Costello is on the verge of losing his memory. He takes photos of his team to remember who they are, with their names on each Polaroid. Some of the implications of Costello's memory loss are not explored as deeply as they could have been. Johnny To's visual bravura usually succeeds even when Wai Ka-Fai's screenplay elides all manner of questions and plot holes. To seems to be borrowing from himself in a scene where Hallyday gets lost in a rainy night in Hong Kong, surrounded by scores of people with black umbrellas, a scene similar to one in To's far better Sparrow. Several scenes also revolve around eating, with Costello cooking a meal for his new Chinese friends, and a confrontation between rivals taking place at a barbecue. In a Johnny To film, you can almost count on the gang, if they are not going to shoot each, getting together around the dining table.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:55 AM | Comments (2)

November 01, 2010

Shinsengumi Chronicles

Shinsengumi Chronicles: I Want to Die a Samurai
Shinsengumi shimatsuki
Kenji Misumi - 1963
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Between this film, Samurai Vendetta last month, and more from the Sleepy Eyes of Death series coming soon, AnimEigo is showing lot of love for Raizo Ichikawa. For myself, I would hope to see a subtitled DVD release of an earlier film starring Ichikawa, Conflagration by Kon Ichikawa (no relation), from the novel by Yukio Mishima. As for films the actor Ichikawa made with director Kenji Misumi, an aspect ratio correct DVD of Buddha, the first Japanese film shot in 70mm, could be of interest. Of the many films starring Raizo Ichikawa, possibly the hardest working actor at Daiei Studios, Shinsengumi Chronicles lingers in the mind for its portrait of a way of life about to collapse.

There is an irony to the title as the characters are not samurai, but members of a paramilitary group that was open to men who not of the samurai class. Taking place beginning in 1863, a somewhat fictionalized account of a part of Japanese history, the film has some contemporary reverberations. At a time when the Tokugawa shogunate was at war with factions seeking more direct rule by the royal family, the Shinsengumi acted on behalf of the shogunate, periodically stepping over civil authority. The film raises the question about what is meant by patriotism, as both sides would claim to be acting on behalf of Japan, while causing hardships for the civilians caught in the middle. The Shinsengumi also proclaimed themselves to be followers of the rules of Bushido, yet several members would break those rules, a reminder of Lord Acton's principle regarding the corrupting influence of power.

Ichikawa plays the part of Susumu Yamazaki, presented here as a young man seeking meaning in his life. Convincing the leadership that he has the will and necessary fighting skills to be part of the Shinsengumi, Yamazaki gradually sees the widening gap between the professed ideals of the organization, and the actions of the leaders who act out of self interest, contradicting the rules, and covering up for each other. Isami Kondo, the swordsman who inspires Yamazaki to join the group is shown as easily pliable and manipulative, organizing the deaths of two of the founders of the Shinsengumi for their infractions, and ready to make Yamazaki the fall guy for the actions of others. Yamazaki's friend, and would be lover, Shima, provides bookends to the action. A doctor, she witnesses the crucifixion of a declared traitor by the Shinsengumi at the film's first scene, while the final scene is of her watching Yamazaki march away with the Shinsengumi, his heart hardened by the hypocrisy of the leadership, yet desperately holding on to that vestige of self-identity in spite of that knowledge. Shima is helpless in either healing her country or the man she loves.

Without the introductory titles or knowledge of the history of Japan, one might be hard pressed to identify when the action of Shinsengumi Chronicles takes place. I might be reading more than intended, but one scene encapsulates the impending end of an era. Kondo is seen being photographed. Within one shot we see several men, in traditional Japanese dress of kimonos, with classical artwork in the background. Within this scene is a camera, a new invention from the west, that provided a new means of creating and preserving images. It would only be a few short years before more western technology would appear in Japan, followed by even greater changes in the wake of the Meiji Restoration.

The DVD supplements include the extremely helpful notes regarding the historical background for the film's story, plus additional notes explaining part of the dialogue. Among the several trailers for other AnimEigo DVDs is one for the 1969 film, Shinsengumi. Between that film and Shinsengumi Chronicles, one could debate one the differences between the two actors playing Isami Kondo, Toshiro Mifune and Tomisaburo Wakayama. Even if Shinsengumi Chronicles is not one of Kenji Misumi's top films, it still is indicative of the director's consistent craftsmanship. As Robin Gatto for Midnight Eye, perceptively wrote: "Misumi's true nature is to be found in a clear contrast between poetry and nihilism."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:27 AM

October 26, 2010

The Discarnates

Ijintachi tono natsu
Nobuhiko Obayashi - 1988
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

As in his other films, Nobuhiko Obayashi employs some cheap special effects for The Discarnates. Unlike the other films I have seen, it is used only in a few key moments. Unlike Obayashi's films which seem to be aimed primarily at an audience in the age range of his teen protagonists, this is the Obayashi film about and for adults. The English language title is a giveaway regarding the subject matter. This is a ghost story to be sure. Unlike House, where Obayashi threw everything at the audience, including the kitchen sink, in The Discarnates much is withheld until the last possible moment.

The film is less about ghosts than about love, loss and regret. Hidemi, a television writer, feels a sense of dislocation when his friend, Ichiro, announces his intentions towards Hidemi's ex-wife. Hidemi lives in what is, for reasons never explained, a virtually empty apartment building. The only other tenant, a fairly attractive woman, comes to Hidemi's door to offer champagne and possible friendship. Hidemi curtly turns her away. That feeling of psychological and physical alienation becomes more pronounced when, doing research for a new show, Hidemi, finds himself alone in what is suppose to be an abandoned subway tunnel. Running out of the subway station, Hidemi takes a walk in his childhood neighborhood of Asakusa. While strolling in the neighborhood, Hidemi encounters a man who looks like his father, first sitting in a theater where a magician performs an old fashioned show, and is coaxed in coming to the man's apartment where he lives with a woman who resembles Hidemi's mother. The pair speak to Hidemi in very familiar terms. Hidemi returns to visit the two people, not certain if they are in fact the parents who died twenty-eight years ago.

This new sense of belonging allows Hidemi to open up to his neighbor, Kei. Hidemi and Kei find solace in each other, although Kei also suggests that she has some secrets of her own that she would prefer not to share. Gradually, Hidemi finds that his visits with his parents may come with a price, but in the meantime his attitude is that he doesn't care if they are ghosts or monsters. "They could be zombies for all I care."

Part of the soundtrack consists of Puccini's "O mio babbino caro". As frequently as the song is heard, the message of the film questions the notion of dying for love. More problematic is a scene of Hidemi and Kei conversing, with Carmen Comes Home playing on television in the background. Is what was intended by Obayashi a comic counterpoint regarding those who work in the entertainment industry, self-deluded about their art, and out of place in their environment? How much of the film is autobiographical, I can not say, although the film adapted from Taichi Yamada's novel, titled in English, Strangers. It is worth noting that Yamada's early career was as a writer for film and television, and that his first credits were writing for Keisuke Kinoshita, the director of Carmen Comes Home, who was working in television during the mid Sixties. This may be a simplistic interpretation, but the scene of the magic show, complete with the rabbit coming out of the hat, may be Yamada and Obayahsi's way of showing the seductive power of illusion. The ghosts in The Discarnates may not be real, but the feelings engendered can not be denied. For the characters in the film, it is as difficult to let go of the past as it is to embrace the present. At its conclusion, The Discarnates is never scary, but it is achingly sad.

Nobuhiko Obayashi

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:55 AM

October 22, 2010

D'Anothers

Joyce Bernal - 2005
Star Cinema Region 0 DVD

If one didn't pay attention to the credits, one might think D'Anothers was directed by a guy. This is a film with some of the kind of raunchy humor involving food, farting, and pants wetting that might be aimed for an audience of teenage boys of all ages. Most of the comedy is frankly broad or low brow, but some of it is actually pretty funny. This is a Filipino film made for the home audience, but I suspect that if some smart producer invited Joyce Bernal to make something in the vein of of a Scary Movie or The Hangover, she would be more than capable of delivering the goods.

The film's main character is a variation of the kind of of role often associated with Bob Hope, the perpetual coward who even seems afraid of his own shadow. What makes this film even more deeply Filipino in certain respects is that Vhong Navarro portrays a scaredy cat named Jesus Resurreccion. With a name like that, D'Anothers goes into certain theological areas I'm not really capable of addressing. In this case, young Jesus inherits a mansion full of ghosts that are his past relatives. The plot involves a key which allows these ghosts to pass from being house bound to go "into the light", or turn into cockroaches. The ghosts have been waiting for Jesus, whom all signs point to being "The One". For someone with only a slight knowledge of Filipino culture, D'Anothers simply works when not trying to think about some of the thornier implication of the material.

It's a motley crew of ghosts, including a headless priest, and midget, and a young tough who would rather stay earthbound to be near is beloved, a now mature woman who runs the little sari-sari store down the road. Jesus also has to contend with supporting his very large aunt and her two punk sons. Learning that he has inherited the mansion, Jesus hopes to sell the place with the hopes of buying the approval of his girlfriend's parents. Goaded to prove he is not a coward, Jesus is frightened by all manner of spookiness in a fake haunted house with costumed creatures. With nothing left to lose after being dumped by the girlfriend, Jesus virtually hurls himself into the mansion with its residents possessing temporal corporeality.

The film was probably designed to be something of a lark for Bernal, and screenwriters Adolfo Alix, Jr. and Raymond Lee, not only spoofing conventions of Filipino movies, and other horror films, but some other films as well. The title should be a giveaway, referring The Others. One unexpected bit has the oversized aunt of Jesus posing as an eye patch wearing nurse, with the whistling in the soundtrack making sure one thinks of Kill Bill. Bernal takes a break from the story for an extended dance number that's a bit of Bollywood and a breakdancing face off, including an amusingly silly song, "The Chicken Dance", that does nothing to add to the narrative, but is a reminder of Bernal's skill as a editor. Even though the dance number is composed mostly of some very short shots, the combination of the compositions and the editing appears more seamless and ultimately more visually coherent than visual hodgepodge from the likes of Rob Marshall.

This is the first film I've seen by Joyce Bernal. The chronicler of Filipino cinema, Noel Vera, considers her worthy of being a National Artist. There is very little critical writing about Bernal in English, even by those who claim to champion female filmmakers. Even if one doesn't take the time to give Bernal the same kind of attention given to someone like Nancy Meyers, the sheer number of films made since moving from editor to director is impressive. For those paying attention to Asian cinema, Bernal's films frequently represent The Philippines at the Udine (Italy) Far East Film Festival. In any case, this is a filmmaker I need to make of point of revisiting.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:45 AM | Comments (4)

October 20, 2010

Visits: Hungry Ghost Anthology

"1413"

Low Ngai Yuen, James Lee, Ng Tian Hann, Ho Yu-hang - 2004
Tidepoint Pictures Region 1 DVD

Visits is one of those films that is better understood by watching the "Making of" supplement. Unlike the usual documentation of the director and actor going through the motions of creating a shot, we get to see the four directors discuss the making of their short films, and the producer, Lina Tan, discuss the inspiration and context for the work. The inspiration is the Hungry Ghost Festival. The context is a Chinese language film for the ethnic Chinese, a significant minority, in the primarily Muslim country of Malaysia. From skimming a couple of the reviews of the film, a western viewer, especially one who views Asian film with little awareness of cultural difference, tends to dismiss Visits as falling short of the expectations created by films in more artistically liberal countries such as Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Thailand. What might be more explicitly shown or stated in these other countries has to be suggested in Malaysia in keeping with what is allowed for a general audience. The equivalent to the PG-13 rating was only introduced about two years ago. For western critics, Visits has been dismissed at least in part due to cultural misunderstandings.

What was interesting for me was how two pairs of stories seemed to segue into each other, with the first story, "1413", about the intense friendship between two high school girls followed by another story about friendship between women, "Waiting for Them", with its more obvious lesbian theme. The third story, about a film student attempting to document a ghost beckoning ritual in "Nodding Scoop", was followed by "Anybody Home?" a story primarily told in the form of shots from surveillance cameras in an apartment and the hidden cameras positioned in a woman's apartment. As the work of four different filmmakers, like many omnibus productions, there is an uneven quality with the best of the shorts being from the two most accomplished directors, the relatively internationally regarded James Lee, and Low Ngai Yuen.

"Waiting for Them"

While the filmmakers note that the film was shot on digital video, with a small budget, further research has indicated that Visits was the inaugural feature for a Malaysian theater chain with theaters specializing in art and independent films, done in conjunction with the local production company Red Films. Even though Visits had made the round of film festivals, mostly on the strength of Lee's involvement, I have to assume that the production costs were kept down to recoup costs from a mostly local audience. The star of Lee's film mentions working during the day while filming at night, suggesting that within Malaysia there are only a handful of full-time professional actors. The biggest name in Visits is the pan-Asian star, Carmen Soo.

The limited budget also meant that the number of actors is small. Most of the time, only two or three actors are onscreen. Kuala Lampur is depopulated, with a virtually empty hospital, restaurant, office and street among the settings. In a strange way this works to the overall film's advantage making the film take place in an other worldly environment, and adding to the general sense of unease.

"Nodding Scoop"

Low's film relies the most on some of the familiar tropes of horror films, with a long haired young woman haunting her friend, suffering from amnesia. The two first seen following an assumed suicide pact, having fallen from a tall building. There is a scene with a priest doing some form of exorcism when the amnesiac girl reports seeing a ghost, with the priest not clearly Buddhist or any specified faith. As in James Lee's film, ghosts sometimes appear not for haunting, but for reconciliation with others, or as a means of finding peace within themselves.

Lee's film is about the friendship between two women, Sam and Anne. Anne is distraught over the ending of her relationship with another woman, conveyed through a phone conversation with Sam. The two plan to talk more over the phone later that night. Anne never answers her phone. Sam's boyfriend shows up, they talk, but they do not sleep together, with Sam offering a guest bedroom. The next night, Sam finds Anne walking alone, and picks her up. In Sam's apartment, Anne expresses her appreciation for Sam's continued friendship, even when something was revealed about Anne. It is never stated what that something is, although one can guess, especially when Sam describes to her boyfriend, Anne's relationship as "complicated". Anne goes to the guest room where she finds a ghost in the closet. One might argue that more is being read into this than intended. Or Lee is using some visual signals for a love that dare not speak its name in a Muslim country. Lee has reportedly revisited some of the elements in "Waiting for Them" with his first 35mm feature, Histeria.

The "Nodding Scoop" is a large ladle that is rigged with a small bucket, a wig, and some cloth. The wigged scoop appears to look like a small, reclusive long haired ghost, with the head nodding back and forth. Hoping to scare viewers, and scare up a career, Ng Tian Hann's budding filmmaker finds himself over his head with a possibly real ghosts as well as two rival female assistants. Ho Yu-Hang's film similarly is about a male seemingly in control of a situation, only to discover that his voyeurism comes with a heavy price. The security guard of an apartment building, he sets up cameras to follow the life of an attractive female tenant. Watching her from a television screen is soon replaced by spending time in her apartment, sleeping on her bed, smelling her bra, and discovering more than he would have wanted to know. "Anybody Home?" is overlong, but is finally worth watching for the scene of a distraught Jackie Lim, illuminated by a barely clasped flashlight.

"Anybody Home?"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:44 AM

October 13, 2010

Seeding of a Ghost

Zhong gui
Chuan Yang - 1983
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

A recently posted article explains the status of ghost stories and horror films in Chinese language cinema. Given that Hong Kong now frequently looks to the mainland for financial support as well as an audience for their filmmaking efforts, one can expect even fewer films that dwell on the fantastic. That impact could well reach some other Asian countries as well, such as Thailand, where fewer ghost stories, a staple of that country's cinema, are made, in view of viability in a pan-Asian market.

Seeding of a Ghost may well serve as a record of what was once permissible in for filmmakers in Hong Kong. One of the handful of horror films produced by the Shaw Brothers, there is not only the mix of black magic, Buddhism, and a generous amount of grue, but copious scenes of nudity and simulated sex. For some viewers, this film will be provide everything they will want to know about Maria Yuen and Mi Tien. The film was directed by Richard Yeung Kuen under one of his several pen names.

Chow, a cab driver, accidentally runs over a grave robber attempting to flee a small band of men chasing after him. Looking under the wheel of his cab, the grave robber seemingly has disappeared. Popping up in the back seat of the cab, the grave robber explains that he knows black magic. Even with Chow aiding in the shaman's escape, Chau is informed that he has brought bad luck to himself and his family, proving once again that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. We later see that Chow is married to Irene, a dealer at a casino. A gambler, Ming, has his eye on Irene. Giving her a large tip, Irene spend some of the money on gifts for Chow. The couple seems to be in love, but Ming's increasing generosity tips the scales in his favor, with Irene engaged in an affair. Things go awry when a couple of punks challenge Ming to a road race, and finding Irene alone after a tiff with her lover, kidnap, rape and murder the woman. Chow mysteriously gets a phone message from his dead wife, on his cab phone, which leads him to the scene of the crime. Seeking revenge against his wife's lover, and the men who killed Irene, Chow finds the shaman again. After this, a modicum of suspension of disbelief gives way to total lapses of even a thread of logical storytelling.

This is a horror movie more yucky than scary. Probably the most frightening thing in the film for most people would be the exploding toilet. Chow and the shaman perform a ceremony that reanimates Irene's desiccated body. There's a bit of zombie canoodling, followed by zombie and dead guy's spirit mid-air sex. Irene's spirit shows up to upset Ming's domestic bliss, including the possession of his wife. A band of Buddhist/Taoist monks fight the shaman to exorcize Ming's wife, mostly hurling fire balls back and forth until the shaman's hut burns down. Ming's wife is pregnant with the offspring of zombie Irene, hence the seeding, although how this is achieved is anyone's guess. In what seems like the next day, Ming's wife gives birth to a tentacled monster that is out to kill everyone. The ending suggests that the monster isn't dead, even when the rest of the cast has been shoved off this mortal coil.

There is very little in English on Seeding of a Ghost that I was able to find aside from a few reviews posted online in the past few years. HK Cinemagic mentions that the film had censorship problems in Hong Kong but there is no elaboration or provided sources. A couple of the postings mention that the film may have been intended as a followup to the two Black Magic films, even though the cast and crew were different. What is indicated is that between the nudity and the necrophilia, this film is an extreme anomaly even among the more unusual films from the Shaw Brothers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:49 AM | Comments (2)

October 11, 2010

Samurai Vendetta

Hakuoki
Kazuo Mori - 1959
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The original title, Hakuoki translates as "Chronicle of Cherry Blossoms". It is a more accurate title than Samurai Vendetta which suggests a film with more swordplay. Not that there isn't any of this type of action, but the heart of the film is mostly concerned with the overcomplicated and sometimes contradictory rules of samurai life at the beginning of the 18th Century. The film is about lives so formalized that by the end of the film there is no question as to why Shintaro Katsu's character prefers to be a ronin, a masterless samurai, rather than accept one of several invitations to be part of a clan.

The supreme example of samurai code of honor has been The 47 Ronin, a story filmed multiple times with differing emphasis and interpretations. Samurai Vendetta takes two of the samurai from The 47 Ronin, and makes them the main characters, in a narrative taking place prior to the classic story. Katsu and Raizo Ichikawa are members of rival clans, who also find themselves rivals in love. Even though Katsu's relationship with Chitose Maki remains that of a courtly gentleman, before and after Maki marries Ishikawa, it becomes the subject of rumor primarily stoked in order to create a confrontation between the two men. The personal loyalty of the three main characters remains consistent in spite of the outside forces, including not only the rules of conduct but how those rules are perceived by others.

One scene that show the absurdity of Shogun law involves the treatment of animals. People flee in a panic when a lone dog is on the loose in the streets. Dogs were protected from any kind of harm that they are known as "Noble Dogs". Kazuo Mori cuts from the main story to depict men hung upside down and beaten, crucified and beheaded for their treatment of dogs. The unintended consequence of such a law causes Chitose Maki to find herself attacked by several dogs without the legal means of defending herself. That such a law exists is less surprising in an environment regarding all aspects of life, with a convoluted class structure. That wild dogs can run free serves as a reminder of the basic set up for The 47 Ronin where rank allows abusive behavior without legal recourse.

The casting of the lead players seems to reflect some odd decision making at Daiei Studios. Raizo Ichikawa was called the "James Dean of Japan", and had obvious, matinee idol good looks. Although he didn't have as big a range of type of films at Daiei, Ichikawa was probably seen as that studios equivalent to Toho's tall, brooding and equally young Tatsuya Nakadai. Shintaro Katsu was never conventionally handsome, yet someone at Daiei tried to make him a star. It wasn't until a year later, playing the conniving blind masseuse, and soon after that, the iconic Zatoichi, that Katsu achieved genuine popularity, based on his acting ability, and a face more suitable for a character actor than a romantic lead. Is there more to Chitose Maki than this entry at IMDb? Maki's filmography suggests that someone at Daiei had high hopes for this actress to begin with before letting the contract lapse with smaller roles.

Kazuo Mori uses a few stylistic flourishes of interest. A couple of times a split screen is used, with one shot wiping away the other. There's an artificiality of some of the lighting, exteriors being shot within the studio with dramatically colored cycloramas providing the backdrop. In one scene, Raizo Ishikawa allows himself to be cut by his sword wielding brother-in-law. In a close-up of the wounded Ishikawa, the color shifts to purple. One of the duels is filmed like a Busby Berkeley musical with the camera providing a bird's eye view of the action. It may strain credulity to see a one armed, immobile, samurai fight a gang while lying in the snow, but that's exactly what happens here. Samurai Vendetta suggests that just when you think you've seen almost everything possible in a samurai film, you find out you haven't.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 AM | Comments (1)

October 05, 2010

Kuroneko

Yabu no naka no kuroneko
Kaneto Shindo - 1968
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2 DVD

Just recently, I found out that Kaneto Shindo is the second oldest active filmmaker. Just a couple of years younger than that prolific late bloomer, Manoel de Oliveira, Shindo has made a new film, Post Card, scheduled to premiere later this month at the Tokyo International Film Festival. That Shindo had just completed his latest, and reportedly last film not only says something about his physical health but the fact that when younger directors have been forcibly retired, he still had a way of remaining commercially viable. For those reasons, Kaneto Shindo should probably get a major reevaluation of his work. Only a handful of films in Shindo's filmography are known to western cinephiles, with Onibaba, the title that is most famous. I might be proven wrong about this, but I think there has been a prejudice regarding some of Shindo's films based on the English language titles, The Lost Sex and Operation Negligee as examples, rather than examining the films themselves, by such school marmish cultural gatekeepers as Donald Richie and Joan Mellen. As more films slowly become available on DVD, one discovers more riches when the films are allowed to speak for themselves.

I first saw Onibaba on the giant screen of the New Yorker theater. The scene with the woman unable to remove the mask from her face was one of the most intense viewing experiences I've ever had. And yes, I saw the film because it was a certified classic, but anyone who knows me also knows that I'll take the time to see a good, and even not so good, horror movie. I suspect that some of the people who have seen Kuroneko would not be caught dead watching a kaibyo movie that was advertised as such. At least Doug Cummings of Masters of Cinema has no problem connecting Kuroneko with The Ghost Cat of Otoma Pond. I bring this up because even if one doesn't know, or even care, about the historical aspects of samurai era Japan, Kuroneko has enough genre elements to be enjoyed on a purely visceral level.

On a tangential level, Kuroneko illustrates the Buddhist concept of hunger. The opening scene shows a group of fifteen foot soldiers emerging from a forest to drink water from an irrigation ditch surrounding a hut. The soldiers lower their heads into the water, the sound of them slurping amplified. One of the soldiers walks into the hut and discovers two women, Yone and her daughter-in-law, Shige. While the first soldier grabs food from a boiling pot, the other soldiers walk in and begin to pick at other available food, before putting their hands on the two women. While the rape of the women is mostly offscreen, Shindo cuts to close ups of two of the soldiers still eating, one with grains of rice scattered around his mouth and shirt. The visual suggestion is that the sex is as sloppy as the eating. The appearance of the soldiers suggest that they are of the lowest rank and act in the only way they know how to exert some modicum of power over those who are weaker than them. The women are left in the hut, which is set on fire. This opening scene sets up the rest of the film where distinction between the need for food and sex is minimal.

The women return as ghosts who appear at night, seeking revenge on unsuspecting samurai. Yone's son is introduced in a scene, fighting another man in a swampy area, with Shindo blurring the difference between men and animals, with the two soldiers hair like messy lion manes. The son, Gintoki, considered a hero for returning with the head of an enemy general, is assigned to kill the "monster" that has attacked several samurai. The rest of the film is about a family divided by simply by corporeality, but by their vows to others. While Yone and Shige have promised to suck the blood of their victims, Gintoki has promised his samurai chief to eliminate the "monster". The women have also promised not to reveal who or what they are. Shige and Gintoki reunite briefly for seven nights. At one point Gintoki tells Shige, whose vampiric character has been revealed, that she "is good enough to eat", and "I'll chew you up and make you part of me."

For those who require some kind of intellectual justification for watching any film, one can view Kuroneko as being part of the tradition of Bakeneko stories from Japan. There are also bits of Noh and Kabuki incorporated into the set designs and the acting. One could even spend time discussing the film as an examination of class in feudal Japan. But the real pleasure of Kuroneko is watching ghosts that can gracefully do slow motion leaps in the air, backward somersaults, and lunge at the necks of their victims.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:26 AM | Comments (1)

October 01, 2010

David and Bathsheba

Henry King - 1951
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

I could understand why Henry King may have taken the job of directing this film. If one acknowledges that the auteur theory can apply to a director who may not have originated the film, the thematic elements connect David and Bathsheba to King's other films. As noted previously, in The White Sister and Song of Bernadette, the main characters, both woman, set aside earthly desires to devote themselves to religious commitment. David and Bathsheba arguably flips that around to be primarily about a man who knowingly breaks with his religious commitments in favor of matters of the heart.

Thematic concerns aside, David and Bathsheba is not one of King's better films, even though it is one of his better known films. Part of the problem, at least for me is watching a movie set in biblical times with actors who don't look the part. How Darryl Zanuck came to the conclusion that Gregory Peck "looked biblical" is beyond me. I never was able to buy Peck as the journalist passing for Jewish in Gentleman's Agreement. What did strike me as interesting was Peck's phrasing in reciting "The Lord's Prayer", especially in the context of someone who was hardly living what could could be described as a righteous life.

I'm not sure if Bathsheba looked anything like Susan Hayward. On the other hand, Rule Number One of my imaginary Michael Powell book of film theory states that Technicolor was invented to film redheaded women. And who's going to argue with gorgeous close ups of Hayward, almost painterly as lit by cinematographer Leon Shamroy. The film is strongest when it is just Peck and Hayward on the screen, less so when it aims to be more epic. Not very convincing on a historical level, but entertaining to watch just the same is an uncredited Gwen Verdon performing an Egyptian inspired, but very contemporary hoochie coochie dance.

Andrew Sarris consigned Henry King to "Subjects for Further Research" in his American Cinema. I haven't read the one English language critical study on King, but the scarcity of online material indicates that King is still ripe for further investigation. Hampering this is that there are only a couple of his silent films readily available to view, and even a substantial number of King's films made since 1930 are unavailable. Even with 20th Century-Fox celebrating the 75th anniversary of when Darryl Zanuck took over the studio founded by William Fox, no new DVDs are issued of the work from the director who spent the longest time with the studio. Perhaps there is not enough interest to make the availability commercially viable, yet in terms of the history of a studio, Henry King should be given the same consideration as John Ford. One would hope that King's films with Will Rogers, especially the first film version of State Fair be released. A more ideal situation would package King's nostalgic look back at America past, Margie, I'd Climb the Highest Mountain and Wait 'Til the Sun Shines, Nellie, among other films. Somehow, the name of Rock Hudson isn't enough to coax Universal to release of DVD of This Earth is Mine, Henry King's sole venture outside his home studio, late in his career. Henry King's last few films are uneven - certainly The Sun Also Rises suffers from having a great cast, Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn and Ava Gardner, all too old for their respective roles. My one attempt at watching Tender is the Night had me giving after half an hour, watching a wide screen film in a pan-and-scan version. Seeing the older films on DVD for my first time still gave me the sense that Henry King was being unfairly judged on the basis of a handful of later films. Considering the number of films he made, and the lack of critical writing, Henry King is an example of the need for greater film scholarship regarding American cinema beyond the more familiar and conventionally regarded filmmakers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:38 AM

September 28, 2010

The Bravados

Henry King - 1958
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

"I'm a stranger here myself." The line spoken by Sterling Hayden in Johnny Guitar, directed by Nicholas Ray, is repeated four years later by Gregory Peck. The screenplays for that film and The Bravados were both by Philip Yordan. That it appears in a film directed by Henry King may be a nod towards Ray's recycling some dramatic footage from King's Jesse James for a scene in Ray's True Story of Jesse James. The Bravados fits in thematically with Henry King's other films about characters who are driven by a singular thought, although it twists that theme from one of pursuit of a higher ideal to one of a personal descent.

There is what I think of as a visual correlative that works on two levels. Much of the film takes place at twilight, and frequently the characters are filmed in shadow or in silhouette. This motif serves as a reminder of the ambiguity of the main characters, the presumed hero, Gregory Peck, is not entirely good or altruistically motivated, while the bad guys, particularly Lee Van Cleef and Henry Silva, reveal redeeming qualities. Additionally, one might interpret the film as a reflection of a filmmaker who may have understood that he was at the twilight of a long career at age 72. Henry King was one one of the few directors still active from the silent era, yet he proved himself capable of handling the contemporary story elements of Philip Yordan and the demands of filling the CinemaScope screen.

Gregory Peck rides into town to witness the hanging of four men that he has chased for six months. The men, he was told, raped and killed his wife. The night before the hanging, the four outlaws escape, taking with them the daughter of one of the townspeople. Peck joins the posse in pursuit. Along with the posse is Joan Collins, the woman Peck almost married about five years earlier. The posse stops at the Mexican border. While Peck goes crosses a geographical border, he is urged to cross personal borders earlier. At one point, Joan Collins tries to convince Peck to let the past be, and to discontinue his pursuit. After Stephen Boyd has raped the woman he abducted from the town, Collins can't get Peck to kill the outlaws soon enough. The ending is more incisive than The Man who Shot Liberty Valance with its conclusion of "print the legend". The Bravados ends with Peck gracefully accepting the accolades of a hero, in spite of his newly found knowledge and appropriate self-doubts.

Lance Mannion has written about the emphasis of Catholicism in The Bravados. While Henry King's own Catholic faith has served him personally and to varying degrees as a foundation for several of his films, again he chooses not to impose those beliefs on the viewer but instead allows the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Where there is an emphasis is with repeated shots of a statue of the Madonna and child, as well as key shots of women caring for a young child. The mother and child motif also carries over in connecting Peck with Van Cleef and Silva.

Working again with cinematographer Leon Shamroy, the look of The Bravados is naturalist, Henry King is comfortable with CinemaScope to play with some of the possibilities of perspective, forcing the viewer to actively watch the film. Examples include a shot near the beginning of the film that includes a deputy seen in the foreground looking at Peck riding in the distance. Stephen Boyd peers out of the jail window, almost proportionate to the movie screen which serves as a frame within the camera frame, vertically broken by the jail cell bars. There are also extreme close-ups of Peck, Collins and the others, something that filmmakers shied away from when CinemaScope was first introduced. Interestingly, in one of his interviews, Henry King had thought that the then new wide screen process would eliminate the need for close-ups of the actors. Henry King may have been an old hand at making movies, but he proved himself open to what could be done with the new technology.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 AM

September 23, 2010

Captain from Castile

Henry King - 1947
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

Those lips. Those hips. Those eyes. Those thighs. I've seen Jean Peters in several films previously, but it wasn't until I saw her debut performance that I understood why Howard Hughes would do what he could to move heaven and earth in wooing the actress from Hollywood stardom to his very private life. My favorite performances would be this film, Anne of the Indies and Pickup on South Street, where Peters plays the good bad girl. Whether playing the part of a pirate, a prostitute, or in this film, a servant girl, the characters are united by the strong will, sense of independence, but also an innate sense of fairness that elevates them above those who are considered superior based titles or official position.

Throughout Captain from Castile, Peters wear a crucifix. It's a sign of Catana's faith in inquisition era Spain, but also a more literal kind of sign that helps draw attention to the low cut blouses Peters wears, just low enough to offer a small peak of cleavage. There's also a scene with Peters dancing solo, the camera at ground level to offer a quick view of Peters' legs while swirling around for an appreciative male audience. Again, Henry King would demonstrate his knack for taking new talent, and in this film a true acting novice, and bring out the qualities that would ensure stardom.

What I also found interesting is that in regards to faith, Captain from Castile is a continuation of some of the themes found in other Henry King films. Many of the plot elements hinge on the effect of the Inquisition on both Tyrone Power's lead character, Pedro De Vargas, and Lee J. Cobb's Juan Garcia. De Vargas and Garcia both escape from Spain following the death of their parents, victims of Diego De Silva, a high ranking official who uses his authority from both the King and the Church to settle personal grudges. De Silva is contrasted with Father Bartolome who epitomizes a more humanistic form of institutionalized Christianity. That the Inquisition would be used to represent a certain kind of evil might be considered an easy plot point, yet King and screenwriter Lamar Trotti go beyond that by questioning the proselytizing of Indians of "the New World".

In a conversation with an Indian, a former slave of De Silva's, De Vargas is asked to justify the Spanish invasion, enslavement and imposition of religious beliefs. De Vargas states that Spain is bringing in the one true faith to replace idol worship. The response is that the Indians believe in the same god under a different name. The film ends with De Vargas marching along with Herando Cortez to an unknown destiny or fate. What struck me about Captain from Castile, at least the way I understood this film is that underneath the veneer of Hollywood spectacle was a suggestion of subversiveness regarding the sense white European privilege and the notion of manifest destiny.

Shot on location in Mexico, Captain from Castile is a more natural looking film, with none of the flamboyant use of color as in The Black Swan. The film also is indicative of some of the negative aspects of Henry King as noted by Andrew Sarris, with a longer running time and a slower pace. Still, the film is worth seeing for Jean Peters first time out as an actress. There is also what I assume was a visual gag that went unnoticed by the censors. One of the conquistadors has stolen some gems, and De Vargas is assigned to seek out the thief. The thief revealed, takes his hand down into the front of his pants where a bag with the treasure is hidden. Maybe I'm reading too much into that moment, but I think there's a joke there regarding the family jewels.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:53 AM

September 21, 2010

The Song of Bernadette

Henry King - 1943
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

(Darryl) Zanuck was in the service at the time and was not suppose to participate in business of any kind. But the studio was Zanuck's whole life and soul. He was in the service for a couple of years and came home on leave just as I was finishing Bernadette. I had it the way I wanted it - with no visions. Zanuck came in for a chat and said, "Nobody is suppose to know this, but, as a matter of curiosity, I had to look at your picture last night. What I want to know is, what did the girl see?"

I said, "I'm going to show it no more times than I have to show it. I made it this way purposely."

He said, "I'll tell you what you have to do. You're going to have to put in the vision the first time she sees it and you're going to have to put it at the last. If you don't let the audience see that, they'll throw rocks at you. If anybody else in the world was playing that girl, I wouldn't give a rap. But that girl actually sees something and I found myself leaning over my chair, trying to find out, trying to see what she saw."
- Henry King

Is seeing, believing? And is it necessary to see something to make it true? Henry King's decision to alter his film based on the suggestion of Darryl Zanuck was undoubtedly correct commercially. Yet, in seeing this film again after many years, and reading about King's original intentions, the film as it stands is self-contradictory. On a basic level, The Song of Bernadette is a recounting of the life of a young woman who may, or may not, have seen the Virgin Mary. Arguably, what the film is about on a deeper level is the need of some form of tangible proof to validate faith. Had Henry King made the film without the cutaways to the Virgin Mary, the subject of Bernadette's visions would have been left wide open for the audience to draw their own conclusion.

It is impossible, at least for myself, not to watch any film about faith, any faith, and not think of Paul Schrader and his own theories regarding how faith is, or should be, depicted on film. For Schrader, the austere films of Robert Bresson would successfully represent the transcendent, while the other extreme would be represented by Cecil B. DeMille and what Schrader called "over-abundant means". Henry King thought of himself as an entertainer rather than an artist. Even without Linda Darnell, seen from a distance as "the beautiful lady", one would never think of The Song of Bernadette as Bressonian. Yet the nudges instigated by Zanuck don't quite push the film into DeMille territory either, even with the insistence of Alfred Newman's choral accompanied score. If the film as it stands tilts in DeMille's direction, we are talking about films made by directors of the same generation, with careers that run almost parallel.

What makes The Song of Bernadette work is both Henry King's sincerity, and something that I've mentioned before, what I call his generosity of spirit. There is a sense of respect for the characters without regard to their points of view. Even though the film was made in such a way that the viewer has to accept Bernadette's version of the truth, as we see what she sees, the other characters are allowed to express themselves, whether they believe or not, without being made to appear foolish. The only exception is near the end when the Mayor of Lourdes tries to ingratiate himself on Bernadette prior to her leaving to live in a convent, claiming that he was the only one to believe her visions. Even Vincent Price, chief among those who wants to dispute any claims attributed to Bernadette, many pointedly not claimed by her, may possibly have a change of heart and mind at the end of the film, It is a change brought about by self-realization that with nothing left to gain or lose in the process, Price has to find out for himself if the spring water will bring about a cure for his physical and spiritual maladies.

When I talked to Henry King in Telluride, he had mentioned that he had converted, and became a Catholic at around the time he made The White Sister. I mention this because King's own faith served as a catalyst in making The Song of Bernadette, and also because one of the most poignant scenes recalls The White Sister. In the silent film, Lillian Gish has already taken her vows to be a nun, and refuses to return to her old life, even when she learns that her finance, Ronald Colman is alive. In The Song of Bernadette, Antoine, the young man who many assume will be the man Bernadette will marry, sees her before she goes to the convent. Antoine states his intention not to marry under the guise of taking care of his aged mother. It is clear that Antoine chooses a presumably celibate life to mirror Bernadette own celibacy imposed by the church. Again, as in some of his other films, Henry King is interested in the characters who either defer or sacrifice the easier or more expected life for the more difficult to attain ideal.

Faith in The Song of Bernadette is something personally realized rather than imposed. In the final half hour of the film, with Bernadette in the convent, there is the suggestion, hinted at in other scenes, that the institution of the church stifles belief even more than it encourages faith. As Henry King has mentioned, Jennifer Jones was cast in the title role because she appeared to be seeing rather than simply looking. It certainly aided the audiences that Jones looks almost plain, and had little hesitation in smearing dirt and mud over herself in one scene. The character of Bernadette is so humble, so plain spoken and without guile, that the distance between Jennifer Jones and the young women who have portrayed Robert Bresson's saintly characters is not all that far.

I have often explored religious themes in my pictures but I've never tried to be preachy or holier-than-thou. I feel that the motion picture is the greatest medium of expression that has ever been in the history of the world or will ever be again. I'm just so sorry that the people making motion pictures today don't recognize that you can change the culture of the world with motion pictures."
- Henry King

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:29 AM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2010

Raging Phoenix

Deu suay doo
Rashane Limtrakul - 2009
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In a more perfect world, Thai martial arts films would have the equivalent of John Ford, or Vincente Minnelli, or at least another Prachya Pinkaew. What I mean by this is someone who knows exactly where to place the camera, so that when watching the film, there is no second guessing, at least from myself. It's not that Rashane is bad, as much as there were too many times when there seemed to me better choices to have been made in the framing of much of the action. While the fight scenes were never as visually incoherent as, for example, what Brett Ratner does with Jackie Chan in the Rush Hour movies, neither is there the clean, clear framing with minimal editing that Prachya has in the best moments of Ong-Bak or Chocolate.

And it's not that Rashane had a lack of visual ideas. What makes Raging Phoenix frustrating is that there are some very unique sets where the action takes place. Various abandoned locations - a small amusement park, an old, elaborate church, and the ruins of a building seemingly in the middle of nowhere are among the settings. One of the rooms in the villain's underground fortress is bathed in a phosphorescent blue. The only newish building in the film is a small, modern looking house by the beach, which I wouldn't mind calling home. The only weak spot is a CGI created pit, extremely large and deep, connected by several overlapping, rickety bridges made of wood and rope. It's only in what tangentially resembles the real world that there is a sense of danger.

Raging Phoenix was largely designed to be another showcase for Yanin Vismistananda, popularly known as JeeJa. There is more acting here than in her debut, Chocolate. JeeJa plays a young woman, Deu, who has had a bad day of being dumped both by her boyfriend, and by the rock band where she was the drummer. Deu handles her pain by getting drunk, not tipsy, but the kind where standing is impossible, and one gets sick in the stomach. Deu is almost kidnapped by some people driving around in a van, lead by the obligatory (in Thai movies) ugly ladyboy. She is rescued by Sanin, who fights several bad guys at once. Sanin and his pals, Dogshit, Pigshit and Bullshit, have united to fight someone named Jaguar, who has been kidnapping attractive young women. The young men have lost the women they love to Jaguar, and are seeking revenge. Deu joins the men, learning their unique form of martial arts that involves drinking copious amounts of alcohol. The sequence devoted to Deu learning how to drink and fight from Sanin is the best realized section of Raging Phoenix.

Sanin is played by Kazu Patrick Tang. In the DVD supplement with some of the cast and crew discussing the film, Tang speaks in French. I was wondering if Luc Besson, with his frequent collaboration with Chinese and Thai martial artists, knew of Tang. As it turns out, Tang had a supporting role in Danny the Dog, released in the U.S. as Unleashed. In an elaborate fight scene, Tang demonstrates his proficiency with a combination of Parkour, hip hop dancing, and Muay Thai boxing against a team of guys on deadly powerskip devices with serious cutting edges, hopping around like a gang of malevolent kangaroos. Tang spent four years of doing nothing but training prior to the filming of Raging Phoenix. With the apparent retirement of Tony Jaa, Tang is another young man who could well be a new action movie star.

The form of martial arts performed by Deu and the gang is called Meyraiyuth. The inspiration comes from Drunken Kung Fu. It's a fictional form of martial arts that combines break dancing and other forms of choreography, both in dance and fighting. The fighting is superb. It's the filming of the fighting that is disappointing with the camera too far to the side, or too much cutting when allowing the camera to show the action in longer, continuous takes would have been better. As for JeeJa, she's allowed to show a bit more range as an actress here, and could well have comic potential indicated in her first big scene - Hell hath no fury like a female drummer who has no problem tossing away the sticks in the middle of a set in a crowded nightclub. JeeJa, all 100 pounds of her, definitely has the martial arts moves. What's next is a filmmaker who can make full use of her acting chops.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:52 PM

September 14, 2010

The Black Swan (1942)

Henry King - 1942
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

(Darryl) Zanuck gave him the material to read over and a couple of days later (Ben) Hecht came in and said, "I have some radical changes I want to make. I want to create a new character, change around the plot." He talked about how we wanted to give it some flair and romance. He said, "It'll make a real fine story." We agreed that he had something. So he got the job. He said, "Ten days from today I'll come in with the first draft of the script." Ten days later he came in with a first draft and that draft was the first draft, the last draft and everything else. Once we were in production we did make one little change, something that just wasn't doing what I thought it should do, and Hecht came in and made a little modification. And that was The Black Swan, which I thought was one of the most entertaining pictures I was ever connected with.
- Henry King

The Black Swan is indeed entertaining. Leon Shamroy rightly won an Oscar for his Technicolor cinematography with a use of color that primarily recalls the artwork of Howard Pyle, especially in the use of red for Tyrone Power's costumes. Briskly running at less than ninety minutes, the film is another reminder that Henry King could make a film that was both fast and funny. While King gives credit to Ben Hecht for the screenplay, I have to assume that the other credited writer, Seton Miller, still had some contributions to the film. Keep in mind that the last time Miller and Hecht shared screen credits, it was almost ten years ago on Howard Hawks' sometimes savagely comic Scarface.

Just like in Scarface, there are comparisons of men to apes here. The insults fly fast and furiously between Power and Maureen O'Hara. Coining an original expression, in the hopes that Power would be executed by hanging, O'Hara calls him a "gallows dancer". The more O'Hara tries to resist, the more Power tries to force his affection, stating, "I always sip a bottle of wine before I buy it". O'Hara bites Power. Power socks O'Hara in the jaw. Carrying her over his shoulder, Power unceremoniously dumps O'Hara to greet his old friend and pirate mentor, played by the larger than everyone Laird Cregar. The Black Swan might look like a children's adventure film, but the double entendres are definitely adult.

Cregar plays Sir Henry Morgan, recently rehabilitated from pirate to bureaucrat, making sure Jamaica is safe for British interests. Power is recruited to be Cregar's seafaring enforcer. Resisting the call to convert to more legal private enterprise are George Sanders and Anthony Quinn. Sanders is virtually unrecognizable with his mop of red hair, facial hair and false nose. Quinn hardly says anything in spite of his star billing, mostly grinning with promised menace, and seeming to enjoy just being part of the ride. Ten years later, Quinn would have a bigger role opposite O'Hara in another pirate movie, George Sherman's entertaining, Against All Flags. Reportedly, Power had hoped by look as much like a real pirate as possible, and he is a bit grubby looking in the opening scene, tortured by Fortunio Bonanova, the purple clad Don Miguel. Darryl Zanuck, always mindful of Power's female fans, allowed Power to have a thin, drooping mustache. Power's costume is a combination of Zorro and proto-Village People. It should be no surprise that the film ends with Power finally winning the heart of O'Hara, but its the exchange of insults and injury that constantly amuses.

While not as consistent a collaborator as editor Barbara McLean, Leon Shamroy did some of his best work with Henry King. The Black Swan is filled with the orange glow of sunrises and candle lit windows. if one can glance away from Power and O'Hara trading barbs, there are flowers of the deepest primary colors in the background. Not only was Leon Shamroy one of the first cinematographers to shoot in the then new three strip Technicolor process, he was one of the first to pounce on the artistic possibilities. There are some flaws - a process shot is of two ships at sea, neither of them moving, and a scene with black character actor Clarence Muse is cringeworthy. Otherwise, the real pirates of the Caribbean are here in all their joyful glory.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:39 AM

September 10, 2010

A Yank in the R.A.F.

Henry King - 1941
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

A Yank in the R.A.F. was not a propaganda picture. It was a story worth telling, a story that was happening. At the time, North American Aviation in Los Angeles was building trainers (airplanes). Canada and England bought a tremendous number of them for their training programs because England was already in the war. They couldn't build, they had to buy outside. Civilian pilots here would fly these trainers up to a little place in Montana, just at the Canadian border. You couldn't violate international law, so the Canadians would throw a rope across and tie it onto the trainer and tow it over the border.
- Henry King

One of the footnotes to the history of World War II is that the United States was officially neutral during the years that saw Nazi troops march across Europe, and conduct bombings of Britain. The first scene in A Yank in the R.A.F. illustrates that point, and sets the tone for a film that alternates between screwball comedy and more sober, and sobering, scenes of war. Tyrone Power flies in a trainer, in spite of international law, claiming to confuse Trenton, Ontario, Canada, with Trenton, New Jersey. At one thousand dollars a flight, he next takes the job of flying a plane to England. A planned overnight visit to London changes when he bumps into old flame, Betty Grable. It becomes apparent that Grable has never forgiven Power for a past indiscretion, real she says, imagined says he. They bicker, he catches her nightclub act, they bicker some more, he tries to kiss her, she calls him a worm, and fade out as the two clutch each other tight.

Discussing Samuel Fuller's China Gate, Andrew Sarris describes how "the distinction between the personal plot and its political context evaporates with the first leggy sprawl of Angie Dickinson". One might make the same case for A Yank in the R.A.F. where the first image of Betty Grable is of her famous legs. The camera follows the legs, out of the car, displaying the top of the stockings, panning across the sidewalk to some steps and back again to the car before tilting up to a medium shot of Grable in a military uniform. Betty is doing something, not exactly made clear, in supporting the war effort in England, and performing a nightclub where R.A.F. officers pull rank to get a good view of her. At the same time, Betty Grable virtually steals a whole movie from top billed Tyrone Power.

Evidently, Henry King must have loved Betty Grable, too. I can't recall Tyrone Power getting the kind of close-up Grable gets, virtually filling the screen. Visually, even though the tone is never quite that serious, the film looks very noirish with dramatic lighting and deep shadows. At one point I thought that Power was going to morph into his character in Nightmare Alley, and run off to the nearest carnival to become a sideshow geek. Most of the story is devoted to Power chasing after Grable, while fending off his rivals, who also happen to the men he's flying with on bombing missions over Germany.

Henry King was a pilot himself, who would fly around in search of locations for his films. Still, for all of his passion regarding aviation, A Yank in the R.A.F. has to be regarded more as a personal project for producer Darryl Zanuck. Real wartime footage was commissioned for the film, and one of the cinematographers was future director Ronald Neame. The film went through several changes from inception to final release. The British government objected to Tyrone Power's character dying at the Battle of Dunkirk, believing it would discourage future American volunteers. Henry King added a couple of musical numbers when Betty Gable was cast to take advantage of her talents. I would have to disagree with King's statement - A Yank in the R.A.F> was certainly propaganda, albeit without hectoring the viewer regarding anyone's point of view. There was some unintended prescience on the part of King and Zanuck. Considering the ubiquity of her image, especially on airplanes, it may have seemed to some that Americans were fighting World War II on behalf of Betty Grable.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:43 AM

September 08, 2010

Alexander's Ragtime Band

Henry King - 1938
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

In the first scenes of Alexander's Ragtime Band, Alice Faye has platinum blonde hair, a thick smear of lipstick, and the kind of appearance might best be described as vulgar. Alice Faye didn't quite look like Alice Faye. There was something familiar about the brassy blonde with the attitude. After a few minutes, I concluded that Alice Faye was virtually impersonating Jean Harlow. This might not be too off the mark considering that Harlow was originally considered to star with Tyrone Power and Don Ameche in In Old Chicago, and might have been cast had Henry King not been aware of Harlow's fading health. What little bit of a story exists in Alexander's Ragtime Band begins as a Pygmalion narrative with Alice Faye developing some fashion sense to go along with her singing voice, only to leave Power and Ameche in the dust for Broadway stardom.

I'm admittedly not a fan of Irving Berlin's song. I have no problem with his getting an Oscar nomination for his love song, "Now It Can Be Told", performed by Don Ameche in his best attempt at basso profundo. The Oscar nomination for Best Story for Berlin is egregious. There is no story. The film is really a collection of Irving Berlin's songs strung together with a wisp of a narrative involving Faye, Power and Ameche drifting in and out of each other's lives. Story can be summed up as a catalogue of ways Alice Faye and Tyrone Power can be kept apart before finally coming together in the final reel.

The film actually originated as a biography of Irving Berlin. In retrospect, it is perhaps a good thing that such a film had not been made considering that Berlin lived to be 101 years old, and in 1938, the best had yet to come. I am also not sure if Daryl Zanuck and Henry King would have been the best people for such a film. Elements of Berlin's early life suggest to me that he would have been better served at Warner Brothers with Raoul Walsh or Michael Curtiz at the helm. In an early scene, the camera hones in on Berlin's name as the composer on some sheet music of the title song. Faye, Power and Ameche find their first professional success performing "Alexander's Ragtime Band", but no mention is made of the guy who wrote the song. Powers plays the fictional Roger Grant, who after the title song is refered to as Alexander or Alec for the rest of the film. There's also the suggestion of artistic conflict in Power's character, a classically trained violinist who finds fulfillment with popular music, much to the chagrin of his mentor, played by Jean Hersholt. A collection of songs on film can be filmed with some kind of dramatic heft, perhaps best most recently realized when Julie Taymor created Across the Universe from the Lennon-McCartney songbook. In Alexander's Ragtime Band there is no drama in wondering when Tyrone Power will realize that Alice Faye, and not Ethel Merman, is his one true love.

The film is something of a showcase for Merman. This is a more slender, even sexy Ethel Merman. She has the pipes that she was always famous for, but she's not the woman who verged on self-parody or punchline known for her brief marriage to Ernest Borgnine. Merman might not have been conventionally attractive, but her first shots suggests that there was potential if she was photographed in just the right way. For myself, its enough to want to take any opportunities to see her other films from the Thirties. Most of the time, the camera simply records Merman singing "Blue Skies" and "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody". Of more visual interest is seeing Merman in a flesh revealing outfit as a devil, with a chorus of female devils, performing "Pack Up Your Sins and Go to the Devil". An unintended and ironic reading could be given to the song "Marching Along with Time", a deleted number included as a DVD extra, as the formerly innovative Irving Berlin would find himself considered old fashioned when rock became the dominant form of popular music.

As popular as the film was, and to some extent remains loved by some, this is visually a less interesting film from Henry King than his versions of Way Down East, or Seventh Heaven with its exquisitely lit shots of Simone Simon. There is one faintly clever scene that initially appears to be filmed at the army base where Power and Jack Haley are stationed in 1917, with the camera pulling back to reveal the set of the Broadway show, with Haley singing "Oh! How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning". There is also an interesting scene on a train. Alice Faye's character has walked away from her career, and taken to traveling throughout the country. She is on a train where someone has a portable record player. The camera pans along the faces of the other passengers listening to the song "Remember" at what seems to be a late hour of night. The camera stops on Faye. The song is used to express her inner feelings. For a few bars though, Faye sings along with the record. Or perhaps, in more conventional movie musical terms, Faye is singing to the audience. What ever the case, Faye stops singing, and the record again serves as a narrative device. It may be fitting that the most interesting moment in a film devoted to a song writer closely associated with Broadway takes place far away from the stage.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:47 AM

September 03, 2010

In Old Chicago

Henry King - 1938
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

First, the history: There is a city called Chicago. There was a massive fire in Chicago in 1871. Otherwise, In Old Chicago is pure blarney. Even with credit to the Chicago Historical Society, Henry King's film is as factual as Fargo or The Blair Witch Project.

The first two-thirds or so makes for a fairly entertaining mix of comedy and drama with some musical numbers thrown in. Most notably, the film was the first to have three relatively fresh actors, Tyrone Power, Alice Faye and Don Ameche in one film, and at under two million dollars, an expensive film at that. The three became top stars at the then new 20th Century-Fox. In contemporary terms, it's somewhat similar to two young actors who had made names for themselves in independent films heading the cast for James Cameron's Titanic. The main difference between Titanic and In Old Chicago is that Alice Faye shows off less skin than Kate Winslet, but she gets to perform a furious can-can.

The first part of the film is mostly about the O'Leary family, widow Molly, and sons Jack, Dion and Bob. And indeed, there was a family name O'Leary, and the film has the right address, but again, history ends there. Mostly the film centers on Dion (Tyrone Power), the rogue who takes advantage of others to make as much money as possible with the least effort, and the upstanding Jack (Don Ameche), the original pro bono lawyer. Alice Faye plays a popular showgirl, whom Power woos first as a business partner, and later wife, owning the biggest bar in town. Unfortunately, the bar is in the bad part of town, with high crime, and old wooden buildings that newly elected Mayor Jack mentions could easily catch fire. Mother O'Leary also owns a cow named Daisy that has a big kick.

Those most studious of American history will remember that, once upon a time, Chicago represented the western part of the United States. There is Northwestern University in nearby Evanston. For those who forgot that there was a pre-continental U.S. of A., Chicago will always be part of the midwest. In any case, the operative word here is west. Until the conflagration, In Old Chicago is actually a western with fewer guns and more top hats. That point should be made clear by one of the the musical numbers, with a chorus line in oversized cowboy hats. Entertainment trumps history with some very contemporary songs and the chorus girls in majorette uniforms. What attention was paid to historical accuracy is lost to anachronisms personified by Alice Faye and her legs. Of additional entertainment value is the inclusion of Andy Devine as Power's tagalong pal, Pickle, and Rondo Hatton as the bodyguard to Brian Donlevy's villain of the piece.

As for the fire, what may be the most amazing part might be the logistics involved in the filming. Journeyman director H. Bruce Humberstone was responsible for the special effects, but most of what is on screen is real fire with stunt men and crowds, filmed in a forty acre area not far from Beverly Hills. Credit should be given also to Oscar winning Assistant Director Robert Webb, the one primarily responsible for the second unit work. There's a trick to organizing chaos, with the extended ladder of a fire truck knocking down a wagon, making its way through a jam of vehicles and people trying to escape the blaze. Shots of stampeding cattle from a nearby pen almost serves as a parody of the scenes of people forcing their way through the streets. It's easy, almost habitual, to feel blase about Hollywood magic, even that from the days before computer generated effects. As a person somewhat more knowledgeable about the filmmaking process, I am awed by the work that must have been involved. Considering the state of fire fighting in 1871, it's a wonder not more of Chicago was burned down.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:52 AM

September 01, 2010

The Winning of Barbara Worth

Henry King - 1926
MGM Region 1 DVD

Nothing in The Winning of Barbara Worth is as visually striking as the first shots. A woman is seen burying someone in the desert. There is a painterly quality to the composition of this shot, this lone woman leaning over the shovel stuck in sand. A full shot reveals her wagon, and the the mound where a body of, presumably her husband, is buried. A blonde little girl walks around with a doll. It isn't until after disaster strikes in the form of a sandstorm that we realize that the little girl is the title character.

As if to remind contemporary audiences that often the people who need most to learn from history ignore past lessons, The Winning of Barbara Worth is about the forces of nature being more powerful than human arrogance and greed. The big set piece is of a boom town flooded by the river that is supposedly under control. The businessman who finances the dam argues that calling for the need to reinforce the dam will only cause fear and panic. Additionally, an Indian prophesy is simply superstition. I'm not sure if anyone watching the film now wouldn't think of Hurricane Katrina and the images of New Orleans when watching this film.

The Winning of Barbara Worth is also of interest as being the first significant performance by Gary Cooper. Mostly accumulating bit parts over the years, Cooper was originally hired as a bit player by Henry King until another actor dropped out of the production. Much of the Cooper persona is already here. At a town dance, Cooper is shyly gazing at the couples on the floor. A previous scene has established his feelings towards Vilma Banky, the grown up Barbara Worth. City slicker Ronald Colman tries to swoop in on Banky, and has been dancing with here in this scene. Moments later, Cooper is standing in a doorway, too hesitant to make a move. Colman and Banky walk through the doorway towards a patio while Cooper remains almost in the shadows, too shy, or perhaps too much of a gentleman, to make his presence or his feeling known.

For me, the most surprising aspect of this ambitious production was the amount of humor tossed into the midst of disaster. A group of pioneers stuck in a sandstorm find a corset and panties flying into their faces, the belongings of Barbara Worth's mother. During the big flood, there is a running gag involving a man in a wheelchair, unable to move while the rest of the townspeople are running or riding out of town. During this same sequence, a man quickly grabs some clothing, and runs away from the camera, completely naked - one of the rare examples not only of nudity in silent era Hollywood, but male nudity at that. Even film critics of the time found some of the humor of the film questionable, although Henry King would be the first to say that he never made films for New York critics.

More characteristic of King is the scene near the end. The financier, Greenfield, has been nearly washed away by the flood, and has been rescued, covered in mud. He is nonetheless welcomed into Barbara Worth's home, now teeming with small, ragged tots who have escaped from their destroyed homes. The Winning of Barbara Worth is ultimately less satisfying than some other films in Henry King made in his career. There are enough moments that serve as reminders that Henry King's best strengths as a filmmaker are more intimate than epic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:45 AM

August 26, 2010

My Ernest Borgnine Weekend DVD Retrospective

The Stranger Wore a Gun
Andre De Toth - 1953
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Jubal
Delmer Daves - 1956
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Ice Station Zebra
John Sturges - 1968
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

The Screen Actors Guild recently announced that they would be handing a Lifetime Achievement award to Ernest Borgnine this coming January. While I don't have any problem with Borgnine being a more than worthy recipient, I feel like someone is tempting fate here. I'm pretty sure there were several people who were counting on giving Stanley Kubrick an honorary Oscar in 2001. And while Borgnine is still going strong at 93, with several movies yet to be released, I would still keep the proverbial fingers crossed.

The news was enough for me to watch a couple more films featuring Borgnine that I hadn't seen, plus one that, if I had seen it, had viewed as a pan and scan black and white televised version of originally produced with CinemaScope and color. The guy is most famous for his wide, gap toothed grin. Depending on the movie, Borgnine makes that grin whether he's the bully who takes joy in kicking someone when they are already down, or the pal who's ready to give you a rib crushing bear hug as a sign of unlimited friendship. Borgnine's most interesting work for me is in part of male ensemble pieces such as The Wild Bunch or Flight of the Phoenix. While films like Marty and The Catered Affair have their fans, I would rather see Borgnine, if not nasty and villainous, as in Hannie Caulder, then as the sleazy studio head modeled after Harry Cohn and Darryl Zanuck in The Legend of Lylah Clare. I might have made a better choice in one of the films I saw over the course of a weekend, but even that film had some elements worth appreciating.

In The Stranger Wore a Gun, Borgnine plays one of the two lead henchmen of lead bad guy George Macready. If you've seen a couple of Randolph Scott westerns from the Fifties, this one follows the template of Scott coming into town, cleaning up the corruption, and getting the girl. Surprisingly though in this film, Scott ends up with the nearly his age Claire Trevor instead of young hottie Joan Weldon. But the real reason to watch Andre De Toth's film is to see Borgnine in his first teaming with Lee Marvin. The two made several films together, top lining as arch enemies in Robert Aldrich's Emperor of the North, about twenty years later. Marvin is a slack jawed baddie, and the putative brains for a bunch of thugs. Borgnine's villain is as loud as his shirts, negotiating with brute strength.

The Stranger Wore a Gun was originally made in 3D, and uses that device as was intended, for actors to throw stuff towards the camera and the audience. In this regard, the film is similar to De Toth's House of Wax. The film begins with a group of Confederate guerillas shooting at the audience when they're not tossing flaming torches. The big fight near the end features Borgnine aiming his gun at the camera as well as tossing a chair. Those in New York City had the fortune to see the film as intended. Even without the 3D, the film is still fun primarily because of Marvin, Borgnine as the smiling sadist, and Alfonso Bedoya as a goofy rival bad guy, and chief nemesis to town boss Macready.

Those who have read this blog for a while already know how much I like Delmer Daves. Jubal is one of three westerns Daves made with Glenn Ford. Borgnine is a more sympathetic character here, a cattle rancher who finds the physically exhausted Ford on the side of the road, takes him in, and gives him a job as a ranch hand. Borgnine has a young, attractive wife, played by Valerie French. The film isn't exactly Othello, but French is soon eyeing Ford, the only photogenic guy on the ranch, while fellow ranch hand, Rod Steiger, is seething with resentment over the stranger who soon is elevated to ranch foreman. One scene lets us know that French and Steiger were lovers. Perhaps deliberately, their is some dialogue that may remind some of Marty, where French tells Steiger that she finds him no more physically attractive than Borgnine.

I have to wonder if the feelings Steiger expressed on film towards Ford may have really been his attitude towards Borgnine. Steiger had played the role of Marty for television in 1953. Borgnine took the same role in the 1955 movie version, and won his Academy Award as well. One of the film's highlights is Steiger suggesting to Borgnine that French is sleeping with Ford. Borgnine is about to explode with anger but it is Steiger that he attacks. Neither Borgnine nor Steiger might be considered the most subtle of actors. Steiger has one gentle moment, saving a stray calf. Seeing the two on screen together has me believe that Borgnine was the better choice for the big screen Marty, with his more open, friendly expression, rather then Steiger, whose screen characters never seemed particularly warm.

As for Ice Station Zebra, there are better films by John Sturges, and better films starring Rock Hudson, Patrick McGoohan. Jim Brown is stiff here. Borgnine show up as a Russian spy who may or may not actually be on "our side" in this story of Cold War espionage. Is his character of Boris Vaslov responsible for sabotage on the submarine, endangering his own life? And can anyone trust McGoohan's character who cheerfully admits that Jones is not his real name?

None of this matters when the real stars of Ice Station Zebra are the submarine, and the polar ice cap. The best scene is of several men trying to find the remote station of the title in a blizzard. The ice cracks and several men fall into a crevice. The ice is seen as a living organism, constantly shifting and contracting, with the men about to be crushed between two walls. This is the most suspenseful part of a film that undermines itself by being filmed in Super Panavision for Cinerama exhibition, yet was almost completely filmed in studio sets. At no time does breath appear on screen as it would if the film were shot in outdoors, in the cold. Between the obvious expense, star power and some intriguing set pieces there are watchable elements to Ice Station Zebra. What convinced the suits at MGM to think that what could have been a serviceable thriller from the author of Guns of Navarone had the spectacle required of Cinerama? Bigger is not better for a film that would have been as good filmed in standard Panavision. Of note is that Borgnine and Brown also starred in the crime thriller, The Split, a film that could well be worth seeing if only for a cast that included Julie Harris, Gene Hackman and Donald Sutherland. My enthusiasm for Ice Station Zebra is at best luke warm.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:49 AM | Comments (5)

August 24, 2010

Girl of Time

Toki o kakeru shojo/The Little Girl who Conquered Time
Nobuhiko Obayashi - 1983
IVL Region 3 DVD

Like the other films I have seen to date by Nobuhiko Obayashi, Girl of Time centers on an adolescent girl who gets lost in a world of cheap special effects. It is a charming movie, really, and the debut of then teen star Tomoyo Harada. What I've been finding interesting also about some of the Japanese films I have come across is that there have been several films about high school girls that genuinely respect the characters. There is none of the smarminess that seems almost obligatory in too many films that view young women as nothing more than exploitable raging hormones. Overlooking the fact that the story doesn't entirely make sense, Girl of Time shows the sweeter side of the filmmaker still best known for Hausu.

Obayashi takes some of his visual queues from The Wizard of Oz. The opening scene is in black and white, in academy ratio, slowly turning to color and wide screen in the following scene. When color is introduced, it is done slowly, a yellow background seen through a train window, a small object, a pink face among the monochrome kids. The effect is as if the film was hand tinted. The girl of the title, Kazuko, even has a poster from Victor Fleming's film.

Cleaning the science lab in her high school, Kazuko accidentally knock over a beaker with some kind of overpowering chemical. Discovered by her two best friends, Goro and Kazuo, Kazuko finds herself increasingly in situations where she is suddenly in events that haven't happened yet. The time shifting is the least interesting aspect of the story. What is of interest to Obayashi is the sense of wonder of the world. Kazuko also tries to navigate her way through being a young woman with loyalties to the two young men in her life, the practical, down to earth Goro, and the tall, occasionally poetic, Kazuo. This much is made clear in the opening scene when Kazuko gazes on the night sky, and Goro explained the phenomenon of stars in scientific terms. When Kazuko turns around to join her friends who are night skiing, she bumps into Kazuo, well over a head taller than the petite Kazuko.

Obayashi's film was the first feature of several versions of the novel. Setting aside the fantasy aspects, the story is more symbolically about a young woman's sense of confusion about herself. Kazuko constantly asks Goro and Kazuo if they think she is strange. The film could be said to be about an adolescent's sense of unease, physically and emotionally. Kazuko is less interested in the ability to travel through time than she is to feel "normal", of her place and time. At the same time, Kazuko is conflicted about pursuing an impossible, ideal love, one that she mentions at the beginning of the film, a longing for a prince who would emerge from the stars.

The film ends amusingly enough with a musical number, Tomoyo Harada singing the title song in scenes that virtually recap the entire story. There is one scene where Obayashi gets to play with film technique, with simultaneous fast cutting and overlapping images. The one shot that makes the most impact, is a dolly zoom when Kazuo disappears from Kazuko's life. That Obayashi used a shot first associated with Alfred Hitchcock and Vertigo is quite fitting for a story about love lost and found, false memories, and overwhelmingly real heartbreak.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:50 AM

August 19, 2010

A World without Thieves

Tian xia wu zei
Feng Xiaogang - 2004
Tartan Video Region 1 DVD

I've only seen four films by Feng Xiaogang. Even when I don't find the work successful, I feel some respect for his ambition. Feng should be a better known filmmaker outside of China, if for no other reason than that he has made the two most financially successful Chinese films back to back. The romantic comic drama, If You are the One from 2008 has recently been bested by this year's disaster epic, Aftershock. The box office in dollars may seem like no big deal, about 75 million or so, but when you consider the size of the audience, this is the equivalent to Spielberg, Cameron or Nolan. Does this make Feng a great, or even good filmmaker? No. But it may be at least one reason to pay more attention to the guy and his films.

Feng almost undermines himself by tarting up his images with unnecessary digital coloring, when letting the story speak for itself would be sufficient. At several points, there is so much cutting of action that is meant to reveal rather than obscure, that one wishes Feng had allowed the camera to linger when thief tries to outwit thief. That the spiritual journey is concurrent with the train journey also makes what Feng might have to say about free will and karma groaningly obvious. What makes the film work is the engagement of the actors, lead by Andy Lau, with sly turns by Ge You and Li Bingbing.

That the film may be intended as some kind of Buddhist parable is difficult to say as the Buddhism depicted in this film is both generic and casual. A man and a woman are introduced, arguing while on a road trip. It is eventually revealed that they are professional thieves in a stolen BMW. Wang Bo (Andy Lau) and Wang Li (Rene Liu) are also lovers. Wang Li tells Wang Bo that she wants a "normal life", stop with the thievery. For Wang Bo, it is once a thief, always a thief. The two stop at a Buddhist shrine under restoration. While Wang Li joins others in prayer, Wang Bo finds plenty of pockets to pick. He also encounters a young woman with similar designs on the unsuspecting worshippers. Another argument leaves Wang Li on the road, alone and distraught, until the open-faced, naive, Sha Gen, known as Dumbo according to the subtitles, picks up Wang Li on his bicycle. An offer of money for the ride is refused, though Dumbo gives Wang Li a talisman said to ward off evil.

Dumbo has earned 60,000 yuan, about $9000 U.S. dollars, in his five years of working as a craftsman. His plan is to return to his small village to buy a house and get married. In spite of encouragement to wire the money, he feels secure enough to carry the cash in a satchel. Standing outside the train station, he shouts out for any thieves to identify themselves to him. Wang Li appoints herself as Dumbo's protector, with Wang Li trying to get the money for himself. Also on the train is a rival gang of pickpockets, lead by the aphorism spouting Uncle Li. Among Li's gang is the previously spotted young woman, Leaf. The majority of the film takes place on the train with Wang Li trying to outguess Wang Bo, and the pair kept on their toes by Uncle Li and his gang.

With the exception of Dumbo and Wang Li, the other characters are disguised, either in costume or intention. Dumbo sees only goodness in other people, calling Wang Li a Boddhisattva, and ascribing good intentions to Wang Li. For Wang Li, visiting the Buddhist shrine is an attempt to change her self-perceived karma, while Wang Bo indirectly argues that karma is immutable. Wang Bo feels that stealing Dumbo's money will provide a life lesson on the realities of life. Wang Li does what she can to protect Dumbo and his money so that he can continue his belief in "a world without thieves".

The philosophizing is set aside for more visceral set pieces, such as Wang Li standing on top of a moving train with two of the rival gang member, facing a tunnel just low enough to knock off somebody's head. There is a furious dance of sorts between Wang Li and Leaf, done to flamenco music, one of several scenes of mutual attraction and distrust between the two.

Where the film does not work is in depicting the sleight of hand involved in the thievery, especially that between thieves. Feng's editing of very quick shots of hands going in and out of pockets might have intended to indicate just how fast these professionals work. The lack of clarity regarding who is doing what to whom stands in sharp contrast to Johnny To's look at Hong Kong pickpockets, Sparrow, where the hand movement is more clearly, and thrillingly, depicted. A World without Thieves does work as a thinly disguised critique of post-revolutionary China, where money and appearances are valued more than good intentions or camaraderie. The ending is ambivalent, ending where the film began, at the Buddhist shrine. Where a sense of order cannot be restored by the police from the outside, order will be internally restored by traditional religious beliefs or karmic retribution.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 AM

August 17, 2010

The Time Machine (1960)

George Pal - 1960
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

I was eight years old when The Time Machine was released. I was set on seeing the movie after reading the Illustrated Classics comic book version dozens of times. And then my mother said, "No". It never occurred to me why she would not want me to see a movie based on an acknowledged classic novel. By my reasoning, if a film was based on a great book, that automatically made the film worth seeing. Begging, pleading, and a very dramatic temper tantrum finally proved persuasive. Spending that summer in Detroit with my grandparents, it was my grandmother who took me to see George Pal's film. I remember going by another theater in downtown Detroit, and seeing a poster of an attractive woman wearing nothing but a bra, and a fat guy telling the would be audience that they weren't allowed entrance once the movie started. I also recall seeing the last few minutes of the movie playing with The Time Machine, a film I would catch up with in total on DVD, Edgar G. Ulmer's Amazing Transparent Man.

As far as I was concerned, The Time Machine pretty much lived up to my expectations given some of the liberties taken with the story. But what I never told anyone was that part of the film freaked me out. It wasn't the morlocks that I found scary. What gnawed at me for a few youthful years was the scene of the "atomic war". Somehow, I got it in my mind that George Pal knew that life as we know it was going to end on August 16, 1966. Again, it never occurred to me to wonder how George Pal had this special knowledge. I just knew it had to be true. Part of me, especially at night when I was suppose to be sleeping, felt like Toshiro Mifune in I Live in Fear, cowering with awareness that the "big one" was going to be dropped any day. George Pal's taking advantage of one very impressionable eight year old boy never stopped me from rereading H.G. Wells' novel, or seeing Pal's movie several times.

Seeing the film recently, what struck me was how easily fooled I was by the Oscar winning special effects. The imperfect matte photography, the use of models, the insertion of some documentary volcano footage, good enough to fool an eight year old boy who was clearly less sophisticated in such matters as Hollywood trickery. Then again, what might have been more important is what Wells and Pal were trying to say, regarding the human predilection for warfare. The scene of destruction by an "atomic satellite" was not in the novel, but isn't out of place either, with the incorporation of cold war anxiety giving the film more contemporary resonance between the Victorian era that bookends the film, and the far distant future of Eloi and Morlocks.

On the other hand, has anyone learned anything? George, the hero played by Rod Taylor, arguably teaches the basics of war to the Eloi, temporarily defeating the Morlocks with brute strength. For myself, the film raised a lot of questions that the film skirts over. All of the Eloi are college age, attractive and blond. While it's understood that there are no old Eloi, presumably because they are eaten by the Morlocks while still young, there are no baby Eloi being raised. Likewise, the Morlocks all appear to be male. There is also the question about a balance between the Eloi and Morlocks, based on an implied evolution by one of the talking rings. Being Morlock happy meals seems to be the trade off the Eloi have for a short life of leisure in the sun. The Morlocks might be ugly looking characters, but they are also the ones who make life sweet for the Eloi. I don't know how much of this was intended, but the Eloi seem to also stand in for California's evolving youth culture, blond youth, living lives revolving around pleasure and leisure, post-literate, interested only in life in the present tense, where there is no past or future. On the plus side for some is that the Eloi diet is decidedly vegan, and pairs of girls holding hands suggest that if you are young and reasonably cute, being lesbian will always be cool.

George Pal considered Paul Scofield, James Mason and Michael Rennie in the lead role before deciding on Rod Taylor. Shirley Knight was once considered for Weena. While the other actors may have had an edge in conveying the intellectual side of H. G. Wells, the younger Taylor seems like the better choice as a man of action. Rod Taylor isn't someone usually named in discussions about great screen actors, but having worked with Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford and Michelangelo Antonioni should be more than adequate validation. Whatever feelings I have about Yvette Mimieux pretty much rest on her presence in The Time Machine. That Mimieux made an impression on other boys of my generation could be felt nine years later when, at NYU, a group of freshman surreptitiously tended to a little kitten named Weena.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:37 AM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2010

Flying Boys

Ballet Gyoseubso
Byun Young-Joo - 2004
Bitwin Region 3 DVD

The flying in this title refers to the leaps made by the young men, who have found themselves learning the basics of ballet. One could also give a more symbolic spin to the title, as these are high school graduates who are on the verge of leaving home or living more independent lives. Dance is not the focus of Byun Young-Joo's film, which is primarily the story of a group of young men and one young woman, trying to figure out their directions in life, and get a better grasp of their sense of self-identity.

Caught by a ballet teacher driving without a license, Min-Jae and his friends are convinced to take her course in a community center. For the young men, the class is also a way of killing time between going to the college that will accept them following the competitive national examinations. One of the subplots involves another classmate who was part of a gang, looked down by the others, until it is revealed that he is the sole support for himself and his leukemia stricken younger brother. Integrated into the story are glimpses of prejudice based on class and sexual orientation, although Byun also has one humorous moment when an anguished mother wrongly imagines her daughter having a lesbian marriage.

Aside from a group of matrons who act out of ignorance regarding several children with leukemia, Byun is remarkably egalitarian towards her characters. Being a college student is not regarded as being of greater value than working in a warehouse. In Korea, as in Japan, one can put off going to college for a year if the exam grades are not enough to get the student into a more prestigious school. For the young people in Flying Boys, it is about taking the second or even third choice and making the best of that situation.

The film leads up to the big dance scene. Unlike what might be expected from a Hollywood counterpart, the dancers are not always graceful, and there are several missteps and falls, primarily when the dance class performs classical ballet. The gang comes back for more contemporary moves to the sound of T-Rex's "Bang a Gong", a bit of break dancing, and a lot of booty shaking. One of the boys performs without his shirt, while some of the other boys have bare midriffs. If Byun wasn't a woman, one might think this sequence was directed by a gay man.

I'm not sure if it was intended, but there is a scene with Min-Jae sitting on a park swing that made me recall Takashi Shimura in Ikuru. A more obvious nod to another filmmaker is when Min-Jae and the young woman he's infatuated with Soo-Jin, watch a DVD of Save the Green Planet. Mostly what I got from Flying Boys was appreciation for a film that allowed its character to make mistakes, do some growing up, and respected their right to figure out their own destinies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM

August 10, 2010

Countess Dracula

Peter Sasdy - 1971
MGM Region 1 DVD

"CARA may make and/or retain a copy of any version of any motion picture submitted for rating as a reference to compare it to any other version submitted for rating and, after a rating has been certified, to verify that the version being exhibited or distributed is the rated version, or for any other reason related to the rating of that motion picture or the administration of the rating system."

Nowadays, it seems that the Motion Picture Association of America's idea of a PG film involves animatronic animals that say rude things, and have comically anti-social behavior. When the rating, first "M", than "GP" and finally "PG" was doled out, it was for films that may have been a bit more extreme than the kind of films that would have simply been approved under the old MPAA code. This meant that Charlton Heston running around in a loin cloth in Planet of the Apes or John Wayne killing Viet-Cong in The Green Berets would be considered G rated entertainment. A slightly more severe rating was imposed for Richard Harris baring all and getting hoisted up with hooks in his chest in A Man called Horse or George Sanders in drag in The Kremlin Letter. Countess Dracula has a copious amount of nudity, even in comparison to some of the films of its time. What is also striking is that the violence is mostly suggested, with splatters of blood here and there. That the film received a PG rating in its U.S. release in 1972 suggests that there was a time when parents were more concerned about children exposed to graphic violence than an exposed human body. It's a sad commentary that the reverse is true with the current ratings board.

I'm not totally sure what it says about our time that even when there is onscreen nudity in an English language film, it more often involves male actors. For a contemporary movie involving female nudity, I have to add a Spanish film to me Netflix queue, usually starring Maribel Verdu or Paz Vega. While the ratings board has been shaken a bit by Kirby Dick's documentary, This Film is not Yet Rated, my wish is that more filmmakers would use Countess Dracula as a weapon against the MPAA when the board insists on editing onscreen nudity. As it is, in spite of some small efforts to seem more even-handed, the board still sees fit to give big budget Hollywood productions like Lord of the Rings a PG-13, while the less violent Red Cliff is rated R. I have to assume that the MPAA thinks its job is to protect children from subtitles.

Usually when it comes to films, even on DVD, my response is res ipsa loquitur, let the thing speak for itself. Countess Dracula has one of the few commentary tracks worth listening to while watching the film. Most of the commentary is from Peter Sasdy, telling about how he blended his own Hungarian heritage within the framework of a Hammer film, basing the story on Countess Elizabeth Bathory. One point of interest is that the film's sumptuous look comes from reusing the sets that were originally constructed for Anne of a Thousand Days. Sasdy also mentions that this was the first Hammer film produced in more than a decade without Hollywood money, making concerns about the budget even more stringent. Sasdy's discussion about the history of Transylvania helps put the cross cultural elements of his film into greater context with the German and Turkish elements on screen. The titular star, Ingrid Pitt, doesn't say as much, but apparently did some heavy research into the life of her real life counterpart, called Countess Elisabeth Nodosheen in the film.

There is no blood sucking, no fangs in the neck. Unlike Elizabeth Bathory, Ingrid Pitt's countess finds rejuvenation with sponge baths, albeit with the blood of virgins. The scenes that come closest to depicting vampirism are of men nuzzling the voluptuous breasts of some of the women, including Pitt. Some might consider the display of flesh exploitive or demeaning, but Ingrid Pitt expresses no such concerns. As she says, "I had a beautiful body".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:44 AM | Comments (3)

August 05, 2010

Mother

Madeo
Bong Jooh-ho - 2009
Magnolia Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Bong Joon-ho could have used the title Memories of Murder instead of Mother, had he not used it six years earlier. Bong’s new film is not a sequel, but in some ways a continuation of that earlier film in its subject matter of murder in a relatively small community. The twist is that instead of a big city cop showing the small town police how to investigate the crime, the investigation is done by the mother of the alledged murderer.

The young man accused of murder has a memory like a sieve. Not only does Do-joon sometimes forget what he’s doing within a few minutes, but he’s suseptable to others creating memories for him. Early in the film, he confesses to kicking a car side mirror, an act done by Do-joon’s friend, Jin-tae. A young woman is murdered, her body virtually draped over a balcony where she can be easily seen. Based on circumstantial evidence, Do-joon is arrested, and even confesses to the murder.

Do-Joon’s mother doggedly is insistant on her son’s innocence, pursing every possible lead. The film is in part a mystery, but it also shares elements of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, where a crminal investigation is also an examination of class structure, in this case in a small Korean city. The mother, Do-joon, and the victim, a teenage girl known for her sexual activities, are marginal characters. Were it not for the murder, these are would be people given the least regard, especially compared to the policemen, lawyers, academics and politicians that manipulate the community.

Mother does her own kind of manipulation where possible. When Do-Joon is being interrogated by the police for his part in breaking the car mirror, Mother comes in with bottled drinks for the police. Mother works as an unlicensed accupunturist, a profession that can bring both real and imagined feelings of well being. Mother is propelled by her unwavering belief in Do-Joon's innocence, chipping away at evidence to the contrary.

Bong has stated that his film was influenced by Psycho. Unlike other films that have resorted to shrieking violins and progressively shocking scenes of murder, Bong is more interested in the mother-son relationship. There is one graphic murder that takes place onscreen. What Mother shares with Hitchcock's film is the sense of isolation, of the mother and son alone against a mostly indifferent world. In Psycho, that isolation takes on a more obvious physical form with the Bates Motel and family home away from the main thoroughfares. Norman Bates mentions that a boy's best friend is his mother. In Mother, the two main characters are marginalized, Mother, without a husband, eking out a living with her accupunture, and Do-Joon characterized by his stunted intellectual capacity. Mother and son sleep in the same bed. There is a shot of Do-Joon putting a hand on Mother's clothed breast, a scene that Bong explains in an interview as being a normal form of affection shown by children towards their mother. Within this context, one has to understand Do-Joon's relationship to his mother as being pre-sexual, unlike Psycho which was in part about sexual jealousy.

Due to inconsistency of basic film scholarship is the casting of Kim Hye-ja in the title role. Bong has spoken about her iconic presence in interviews. Not that not knowing about Kim or her career gets in the way of appreciating Mother, but it certainly adds to the significance of this actress in this particular role. That a beloved Korean actress plays a title role that goes against her previous screen image indirectly recalls when Alfred Hitchcock took a very popular Hollywood actress and killed her off in the middle of the movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:16 AM

August 03, 2010

Red Garters

George Marshall - 1954
Paramount Region 1 DVD

Depending on your point of view, Red Garters could be best appreciated as either being ahead of its time, or simply out of its time. Originally filmed in 3-D, the film was probably intended to give movie audiences something of a Broadway show experience, something along the lines of Oklahoma with smaller artistic ambitions, and a smaller budget. Simply being a genre buster combining the western with a musical comedy would have been enough. The stylized sets and color are what will grab the attention. Filmed inside a studio, the sky and land are a sun bright yellow, while the interior of the Red Dog Saloon is a shade somewhere between pink and red. All of the sets would be the kind found in a theater, enough to be recognizable, but relatively abstract, especially for a mainstream Hollywood production. Red Garters was hardly a commercial or critical success in its day, but in retrospect almost looks like a mash-up anticipating a cross between the wild pastels of Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger and the Brechtian distancing devices of Lars von Trier's Dogville.

Who's responsible for what, I don't know. According to IMDb, George Marshall replaced Mitchell Leisen, while Frank Tashlin had an uncredited hand in the screenplay signed by Michael Fessier. What I do know is that a musical made at a time when making a musical wasn't such a big deal. Based on what Frank Capra wrote about his time at Paramount during the early Fifties, the budget would have been no more than two million dollars and was probably much less than that. More importantly, even when the best known actor for most contemporary viewers is probably supporting player Buddy Ebsen, and the top billed star is primarily known as George Clooney's once famous aunt, Red Garters is still a hoot.

The whiff of a story concerns the proverbial stranger in town who has come to avenge the death of his brother. The town's leading citizen, Jason Carberry, is protective of his young female ward, almost coming to blows with the stranger, Reb Randall. In the meantime, the star of the Red Dog Saloon, Calaveras Kate, pines in secret over Jason, who seems to have eyes for all the other women in town. The judge who has come to town to bring law and order, has also brought along his neice, attracting the attention of vaquero Rafael Moreno. There's a bunch of talk about "the code of the West", but in its heart of hearts, Red Garters is another version of men and women arguing, or being coy with each other until they finally admit their love for each other.

The only time the film seems obviously made for 3-D viewing is during a line dance, with the men and women rushing to the camera, men high kicking, and the women rustling their skirts. Guy Mitchell and Rosemary Clooney do most of the singing, and most of the time face the audience. Clooney never had much of a film career, with her two starring roles being in this film and White Christmas, also in 1954. As Calaveras Kate, Clooney mugs a bit in a role that probably would have been better served by Betty Hutton. Still, nothing prepared me for hearing Rosemary Clooney sing a cappella for a few minutes, a reminder of her vocal ability. Guy Mitchell, playing Red, spent even less time as a movie star than Rosemary Clooney, with a pleasant voice and appearance, but little lasting impression. Jack Carson is his usual dependable self, full of bluster and self-importance as Jason Carberry, literally the big man in town. Briefly on can see Buddy Ebsen show off his own dancing skills. Even though he had starred in War of the Worlds just the year before, a very skinny Gene Barry has fun as Rafael.

There are eleven songs by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans. Nothing particularly memorable like "Que Sera Sera" or "Mona Lisa", but nothing awful either. If some of the songs hadn't made it for this film, they might have shown up in something Bob Hope would have made at the time. The sets were nominated for an Oscar, and Red Garters certainly doesn't look like any other film from 1954. Without putting too fine a point on it, a comic American Indian character might be interpreted as being a borderline racist creation, yet one could also enjoy the film as being almost proto multi-culti with population of whites, native Americans, and Mexicans drinking and dancing together.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:56 AM

July 15, 2010

The Aimed School

Nerawareta gakuen
Nobuhiko Obayashi - 1981
IVL Region 3 DVD

After seeing Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu theatrically last April, I was sufficiently intrigued about his other films. Obayashi has been making feature films had a fairly regular pace since his debut. A handful of his other films are available for the more adventurous viewer on imported DVDs. This 1981 film, with a title translated as "School in the Crosshairs", has some of the visual and thematic elements of Hausu, but on a more limited scale.

Short, round faced, high school girl, Yuka, discovers by accident that she has psychic powers. She's not entirely certain what to do with her abilities other than help her boyfriend, Koji, win in his kendo match. Koji is under pressure from his parents to pay more attention to his school work than kendo. Yuka's biggest problem otherwise seems to be academic competition from the sniveling Arikawa. Yuka encounters a mysterious stranger who declares himself to be from outer space, expressing desire to assist Yuka in expanding her psychic powers. There is also the new girl in school, Michiru, who inflames the desire of her male classmates, and appears to have a mysterious agenda. In the name of discipline, Michiru drafts several students into patrol units, the similarity to Nazi storm troopers all too obvious with their synchronized marching and salutes.

The film was based on a novel by Taku Mayumura. I have to assume that the film was made primarily for the same young audience that would have read the novel, as the fantasy can be described as more child friendly. The special effects are no more sophisticated than they were in Hausu, with low tech animation, superimpositions, and some playing with color part of the visual scheme. The overall results lend a goofy charm to a film in which the fate of the world rests on a young woman clad in a white nightie.

The Aimed School has been described as being an early of the Japanese genre called seishun eiga, movies about high school students, a genre that has had both realistic and more fantastic explorations. Did the filmmaker's daughter, Chigumi Obayashi, have any influence on the choice of this film? Considering that as a grade school girl, she provided the basic story for Hausu, I have to wonder if there is more to Nobuhiko Obayashi's interest in making several films with young girls as the main characters. It may be worth mentioning that Chigumi Obayashi is credited as the editor on a film that her father made ten years later, about an adolescent girl befriending a ghost. What is evident is that Nobuhiko Obayashi has made thirty-nine films since Hausu, yet almost everything available in English is centered on his debut film. Even if that first feature is to Obayashi's career what Citizen Kane is to Orson Welles, that is, the high water mark in the filmmaker's career, any serious discussion should not begin and end with just one film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:43 AM

July 06, 2010

Memories of Matsuko

Kiraware Matsuko no issho
Tetsuya Nakashima - 2006
Lambaian Filem Region 0 DVD

Many of the best musicals have essentially sad stories. Even the musical numbers aren't always joyful. Anyone who thinks that "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" is a happy ode to the holidays hasn't been listening very carefully, or has forgotten the heart wrenching moments in Meet Me in Saint Louis. Memories of Matsuko made me think not so much of specific films by Vincente Minnelli and Bob Fosse, but their careers that embraced both the fakery of the musical genre and dramas focussed on the seamier side of life. Consider that Minnelli's work includes both the fantasy of The Pirate and the outcasts and losers of Some Came Running and the fractured family of Home from the Hill. Bob Fosse's All that Jazz encapsulates a filmography of self-destructive artists that also includes Cabaret and Star 80. Tetsuya Nakashima's film has both hyper pastel colors and animated singing birds, and the kind of melodrama and tragedy that could only have been hinted at in an MGM movie of a bygone era.

Nakashima is probably best known for his manic Kamikaze Girls, the frequently comic story of two very different teenage girls, whose dedication to particular fashion styles makes them both outcasts in their rural town. That Memories of Matsuko hasn't even garnered a U.S. DVD release has nothing to do with the quality of the film, but is more of a commentary on distributors incapable of embracing a film that defies easy marketing. It may sound like a cheap shot to describe the film as the manic and depressing story of a woman who was both manic and depressed. The flashbacks of Matsuko's life are told within the exploration of a young man investigating the mystery of an aunt he didn't know, and her death under suspicious circumstances.

A description of the story would probably scare more viewers. Matsuko is seen as a young girl, seemingly ignored by her father who dotes on Matsuko's chronically ill younger sister. The closest to approval and affection Matsuko gets from her father is making a face that makes him laugh. That facial expression gets Matsuko in trouble later as an adult. Matsuko's adult life is the stuff of a dozen Joan Crawford movies, with one abusive lover after another, and an existence mostly on the fringes of society. Matsuko's life is described as meaningless, yet the people that the nephew meets explain how their own lives were affected by this woman whose life seemed like a series of one bad turn after another.

The alteration between past and present, and fantasy and reality, as well as the musical numbers, suggest that Nakashima is the filmmaker that should have been given the assignments handed to Rob Marshall. There's more song than dance, but the best musical moments belong to "Happy Wednesday" which is centered around the domestic bliss Matsuko experiences with one married lover, and another song, "Love is Bubble" is about Matsuko's experience as a "soap girl", working at a place where massages are disguised as personalized bathing. There are some comic moments, particularly when the nephew meets one of Matsuko's friends, a very successful porno star.

Even the final credits, in large yellow print, reading "The End" will recall older Hollywood movies. Nakashima, discussing Memories of Matsuko with Mark Schilling stated, "But look at The Sound of Music - that's a film with plenty of sadness in it. Or Cabaret - the heroine hardly has an easy time, does she? The really great musicals usually have something serious going on behind the songs - that's what gives them their power. And that's the sort of film I've tried to make."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 AM

July 01, 2010

One Million Yen Girl

Hyakuman-en to nigamushi Onna
Yuki Tanada - 2008
Catchplay Home Entertainment Region 3 DVD

One Million Yen Girl sometimes seems almost as slight as Yu Aoi's reed thin frame. The film contrasts sharply with the kinds of Japanese films that have been more visible lately, neither based on a graphic novel, nor centered around a fantasy action character. A more appropriate comparison might be to an independent film such as Wendy and Lucy, another film by a female filmmaker, about a young, itinerant woman.

Aoi carries most of the film by herself as Suzuko, freshly released from prison. In a flashback, it is explained that her imprisonment was the result of an impulsive act, reacting to the cruelty of a male roommate. Criminal charges were based on the alleged loss of one million yen, about ten thousand dollars. The onus of having a criminal record puts the timorous Suzuko at odds with her family and former acquaintances. Suzuko decides to leave Tokyo to some of the more remote spots where she finds jobs, keeping them until she saves one million yen, then moving on to another location. Alternating with Suzuko's journey, is her young brother, Takuya, who tries to deal with his own status as the victim of school bullies.

Suzuko protects herself by keeping emotional distance from the people she encounters, even from those who seem to accept her without judgement. Showing up at a beach resort, she reveals a natural talent for making shaved ice treats, content to work long hours behind the counter. At a small mountain town, Suzuko get a job at a peach orchard. Young and pretty, in a community of mostly older people, the city fathers attempt to make Suzuko a public symbol of the town in attempt to sell more peaches. Again, attempts to maintain anonymity are defeated.

While the subject of having outsider status is not unusual for Japanese films, what differentiates One Million Yen Girl is that the character is neither an artist, nor someone enforcing or breaking, the law. Suzuko is a person who has learned not to be trustful of other people, but is not comfortable with herself. For a person who seeks an existence with limited personal interaction, Suzuko oddly takes jobs dealing with the public, at the beach snack bar, and later at a home gardening store. The greatest threat to public exposure ironically comes when she is in the small mountain town, with plans to feature Suzuko on television as the town's "Peach Girl". This sequence is marked by gentle humor.

While there is no discussion regarding One Million Yen Girl, the most extensive interview in English with Yuki Tanada was conducted by Jasper Sharp. A brief conversation with Chris MaGee is also of interest. The film is also notable for being one of the first films with Yu Aoi in the starring role, rather than one of several leads, or part of an ensemble. Not yet 25, Aoi could still easily pass for a teenager. The role of Suzuko shares some similarities with other parts taken by Aoi of a young woman who only appears to be fragile, masking self-assurance and unbending determination.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:35 AM

June 29, 2010

Puzzle

Dodoiyuheui peurojekteu, peojeul
Kim Tae-kyung - 2006
Genius Products Region 1 DVD

At the time that I formally studied film history and theory, there was a linear sense of progression, from silent to sound films, black and white to color, squarish screen to panoramic screen, montage to deep focus to, um, rack focus? Into the current century, maybe it's time, at least for myself to rethink about film theory and history as it was taught back in the days when Robert Altman was king. It's not only a matter of reworking of various genres, but remakes, reboots and "re-imaginings". For myself, Puzzle might be of greater interest as part of a dialogue about film.

Kim Tae-kyung doesn't mind letting everyone know that his debut film was inspired by Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. The basic story about a gang of crooks, strangers to each other, and a robbery gone wrong, should be recognizable without a glance at the DVD supplements. Tarantino's film has arguably been something of a remake of Ringo Lam's City on Fire. What is of interest to me is how the different filmmakers take some of the same basic elements and make three very different films. So we have a Hollywood film, inspired by a Hong Kong film, inspiring a Korean film. Within the broader scope of film history, John Huston proved with his version of The Maltese Falcon that the third time with Dashiell Hammett's novel was the charm. Kim Morgan has put up the argument that Gus Van Sant's version of Psycho may have more than met the eye of many viewers. Likewise, Kim's movie has enough virtues of its own to merit consideration.

Kim dives into the action from the first shots of a man lying dead on a warehouse floor, set on fire. The contents in a brief case are also burnt to a crisp, Following the robbery of the contents of a safe deposit box, four youngish men, and their female hostage, meet in the warehouse. The dead man is tentatively identified as the gang leader. The four men discuss their options regarding their next steps. There is an assumption that they are to wait for the unknown person who brought the five men together, and organized the robbery. The problem is that no one knows who exactly they are waiting for, or if they are being set up to be killed.

The most obvious redo of Tarantino is a scene recalling Steve Buscemi's complaint about being named Mr. Pink. All of Kim's five main characters go by pseudonyms, but there is a mildly comic scene where one of the guys complains about the name given to him on his passport. The characters in Kim's film are more introspective. There isn't the jauntiness of the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs with the gang walking together to a rock and roll beat. The puzzle of the title is the question regarding who the gang is working for in Kim's film. Flashbacks reveal how the five crooks are linked to each other. For the careful observer, the twist ending not entirely surprising.

Each of the five men has a flashback that is only partially revealing. What was surprising was to see clips that were filmed but not used, in one of the DVD supplements. The film, even the original Korean release, runs slightly more than a tidy ninety minutes. Further research has indicated that there is a three disc (!) Korean special edition DVD that possibly has this other footage. Kim and his cinematographer discusses the making of the film, but not the decision of scrapping what appears to be several finely set up pieces of action that give further details regarding the characters' outlaw lives. Kim plays with technique a couple of times, with dutch angles and a short multiple screen sequence. There is no question about the film being shortened either, as the film on the U.S. DVD has the same running time as the Korean version. The decision not to use this additional flashback footage seems more odd considering how frequently Korean gangster films run at the two hour mark or longer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

June 24, 2010

The House of 72 Tenants

Chat sup yee ga fong hak
Chor Yuen - 1973
IVL Region 3 DVD

At the time I saw Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, I was unaware that the main set, a group of tenement apartments sharing a courtyard, was inspired by The House of 72 Tenants. I was also unaware of the classic status of that film, not only as a source of inspiration for other Hong Kong comedies, but as the film that made Cantonese Chinese the prime language for Hong Kong films with its immense popularity. This was the film that bested Enter the Dragon at the box office in 1973.

Seen on DVD, this is also a film that might be best appreciated be seeing all of the supplements, the interviews with Chor, Bey Logan, and Hong Kong film critic Po Fung. Unlike many of the other Shaw Brothers films that have been made available for U.S. viewers, this is one film that is only available as a Region 3 DVD. In part, this can be attributed to the film not being the more exportable martial arts production. More problematic are certain cultural aspects that require some basic knowledge of both Chinese culture and Hong Kong at the time the film was made. The film also relies on word play based on Cantonese Chinese which cannot be conveyed with the subtitles.

The origins of the film are from a mainland Chinese play that served as a condemnation of capitalism. Even though the film, adapted by Chor for the screen, is not openly didactic, the theatrical and philosophical roots are not difficult to identify. Every person and every thing can be reduced to its monetary value. The film takes place at a time when, save for a handful of altruistic people, even needed public services require payment in advance. Some of the neighbors band together to pool enough money for a mother to take her sick child to the hospital. Mistakenly called to put out a fire in one of the apartments, the firemen perform a little rhyme explaining that without payment, they would just assume have the building burn down. Even glimpsed through a window, one can see the difference between the stingy landlady's comfortably appointed apartment, and the rougher, more spartan living quarters of some of her tenants.

In addition to the disparity between those with money, and those without, is the conflict between those who feel entrenched in Hong Kong, and those who are still regarded as outsiders from the mainland. It took me a few minutes to realize that when the characters discuss changing their money, trading the yuan for the Hong Kong dollar. Most of the tenants have recently arrived in Hong Kong, and pointedly cooperate with each other, while those on the outside are guided by self interest, accumulating money through business, legal or illegal, bribery or theft.

The film was shot entirely on a giant soundstage. Even when the film takes place outside of the apartments and the courtyard, there is a sense of claustrophobia in the streets and alleys. The sea and sky are only briefly seen in the distance. Most of the cast is of actors who were part of the Shaw Brothers stable, with the best known, in small parts being Lily Ho near the end of her career, and Danny Lee, not too long after beginning his own still active career. There was a version of the play filmed in mainland China in 1963 that should also be of historical interest should it be ever be available to be seen again. A recent remake, The 72 Tenants of Prosperity is chock full of contemporary Hong Hong stars, including the daughter of Lydia Shum and a couple of the actors from Chor's film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:55 AM

June 22, 2010

The Revenge of the Crusader

Genoveffa di Brabante
Jose Luis Monter - 1964
Mya Communications Region 0 DVD

The Revenge of the Crusader is not a great film, nor is it a very good film. But it does function as satisfying a peculiar nostalgia I have for the kinds of films that usually showed up on the bottom half of double features in in early 1960s. Not that I actually saw many of these films, but I loved the lurid posters that always promised much more than would actually be delivered. Most of these movies were made in Italy, and featured women more voluptuous and unmistakably sexual than any of the stars of Hollywood, the stuff of early adolescent dreams.

Revenge of the Crusader was filmed in Spain with Spanish and Italian actors, with a primarily Italian crew. The authorship is a bit murky with the opening credits stating the film was "realized" by Riccardo Freda, but directed by Jose Luis Monter. Some sources claim that Monter took credit either for completing the film, or as a requirement for financial and quota purposes. What is known is that Monter also worked as the Assistant Director on Freda's version of Romeo and Juliet. This second collaboration uses some Shakespearean elements in this variation of a classic story.

The film is vague on such things as history and geography, as well as motivation for many of the key characters. Count Sigfrid saves a man from a gang of bandits, only to get wounded for his trouble. The saved man is a rival royal, the Duke of Brabante, although their grudge is not explained. In spite of being sworn enemies, Sigfrid is nursed back to heath by the duke's daughter, called Jennifer according to the less than accurate subtitles. Sigfrid and Jennifer get married, and go to Sigfrid's castle. Much to the dismay of his right hand man, Golo, Sigfrid has given up pillaging and assorted banditry to go straight. Wedded bliss in interrupted when Sigfrid is ordered to join the Crusades, leaving his castle and servants under the control of Golo. And Golo does indeed go low, attempting to force himself on Jennifer, finally imprisoning her under false charges of infidelity.

Not listed in the IMDb credits is that some of the cinematography was done by Stelvio Massi, as well as by Julio Ortas, the cinematographer to Freda's Romeo and Juliet. There are a handful of moments that provide Revenge of the Crusader with more in common with some of the Italian genre films of the time. The entrance of Maria Jose Alfonso, with a knife in her hand, is the type of image seen in many horror films. Later, Golo takes Jennifer's servant, Berta, down to the dungeon to be whipped. One of Sigrid's loyal men is killed with an ax by Golo, his face covered in blood. In their final duel, Golo tries to attack Sigfrid with a giant crossbow and a well placed bucket of flaming oil. For those with keener interest in Italian cinema of a certain era, there is enough to remind one that Freda was one of the creators of the Italian horror film, and that some of the peplums, the sword and sandal movies, would contain elements of horror films as well.

An earlier version of the story, also titled Genoveffa di Brabante, was filmed in 1947. The couple of posters alone suggest that even then, the filmmakers were most interested in the most exploitable aspects, with one poster depicting a scene of bloody torture. A 1951 version, starring Rosanno Brazi, titled Mistress of Treves, appears to have had greater interest in the more romantic side of the story. For unknown reasons, this 1964 version never was released in the United States theatrically. What The Revenge of the Crusaders offers is some undemanding pleasure of watching a film made at a time when little films could be made with sword fighting characters dressed in the costumes of a long ago era, all without bombast or pretension.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:46 AM

June 17, 2010

Chushingura

Chushingura - Hana no maki yuki no maki
Hiroshi Inagaki- 1962
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In addition to remembering Setsuko Hara, today marks the fifth year of Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee.

Today I hope Setsuko Hara is enjoying her 90th birthday, wherever she is. Unlike some of my cinephile friends I don't love her for her roles in Yasujiro Ozu's films. I once joked with the Self-Styled Siren that Hara's screen persona, at least in Ozu's films, makes Meryl Streep appear to be a selfish harpie. Having your baby eaten by a wild dog or choosing which child lives or dies in a concentration camp is nothing compared to sacrificing one's personal happiness on behalf of father Chishu Ryu.

Hara came to mind last April when I saw Mikio Naruse's film, Sound of the Mountain. Sure, she remains relatively stoic when in the face of her husband's inattention, but better yet, Hara laughs. If there was a double feature to be had, it would be Sound of the Mountain paired with Ninotchka. Hara has been described by some as the Japanese Greta Garbo for her also choosing to retire rather than age before the camera, and live out a reclusive existence. The differences are that Garbo retired to hide among the crowds in New York City, while Hara chose the more remote Kamakura. Hara also retired with the nickname, "The Eternal Virgin", intact. The status of Greta Garbo's virginity has never been questioned.

It was also last April that I saw Millennium Actress theatrically. The actress of the title lives in a difficult to find cabin in northern Japan, alone except for a live-in helper/companion. That premise seemed inspired by Hara, although the glimpses of fictional films that we see have more in common with the costume dramas starring Hara's contemporary, Machiko Kyo.

Inagaki's version of Chushingura was the last film of note to feature Setsuko Hara. This is basically a featured supporting role, that also includes turns by Toshiro Mifune and Takashi Shimura. For those who have never seen any version of this film, the story is about a young lord, Asano, in the beginning of 18th Century Japan who is caught between conflicting codes of behavior. Refusing to participate in the bribery and corruption of the court, he is goaded by the older lord, Kira, who is to serve as his mentor. Frustration and anger give way to Asano's pulling out his sword, wounding Kira. Asano is forced to commit ritual suicide, while Kira's embarrassment to the court remains unpunished. The vassals of Asano exist in exile, deliberating on whether to avenge themselves, and if so, how to uphold their honor. The basic story has been done many times because it lends itself to open interpretation regarding the themes of loyalty and conflicting codes of behavior, written and unwritten laws, and the value of sacrificing one's life for an ideal.

Setsuko Hara is only seen in less than half an hour of this three and a half hour film. She plays the wife of one of Asano's leading vassals. What is curious about her performance is how she is filmed. The camera is often distant from her, so that there are times when I wasn't immediately certain that I was in fact watching Hara. There are no close ups such as one would note with the other stars. Hara was 41 at the time the film was made. Was she self conscious about her appearance, or was that decision made by Inagaki? Hara is usually seen in full shots, and the few close ups of her are extremely brief, as if it to let the viewer know that that is in fact Setsuko Hara, again keeping reserved while injustices take place around her. Maybe Hara was in this film only to fulfill contract obligations with Toho Studios. One could possibly imagine Machiko Kyo or Hideko Takamine taking the part with little appreciable difference. The effect of watching Setsuko Hara in Chushingura might be said to indicate that even before she stepped away from the cameras, she was already starting to disappear before our eyes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:26 AM

June 15, 2010

Black Legion

Archie L. Mayo - 1937
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

"He who is not for us is against us." Familiar words, and another reason why Black Legion manages to be simultaneously quaint and strikingly still topical. The words are spoken over the radio by an unidentified commentator, possibly inspired by Father Charles Coughlin, in a speech decrying the loss of America to various foreigners who have taken advantage of all the good things offered, only to take jobs and generally ruin things for "the glorious republic". While the version of Black Legion is watered down from an original scripts that was more specific about religion and ethnicity, it still contains a frisson of recognition that elements of a past era are still active in the present tense. The big difference is that not only do we not have Franklin Roosevelt when we really need him, we rarely have current Hollywood films that represent even the sometimes wobbly political convictions of Jack Warner.

In an early top billed role, Humphrey Bogart plays the part of Frank Taylor, a guy who works at a machine shop. Resentful that business acumen of a younger employee trumps his seniority when the shop foreman position is open, Taylor finds an easy target for his anger for the wrong reasons. Pump up by the radio pundit, Taylor gets invited by a coworker to a meeting of a secret society. Taylor finds himself over his head, having committed himself to an organization that does not allow its members to leave, eventually costing himself his job, his family, and presumably his life.

The first victim of the Black Legion's campaign of terror is the man Taylor feels stole "his" position as the next foreman. Dombrowski is never clearly identified, although the name suggests someone of Eastern European origin, possibly Polish. With his "big nose" constantly reading books while on break, and attending night school when not on the job, there is the unstated assumption that Dombrowski is also Jewish. Taylor temporarily gets the foreman position after Dombrowski disappears after a visit by the Black Legion. Taking a worker off the floor to enlist him in the group, Taylor causes his own job loss when his absence causes serious, and expensive, damage to some equipment. The next victim of the Black Legion is Taylor's neighbor, the man who takes over the foreman job from the now unemployed Taylor. The neighbor, Grogan, is attacked for being unmistakably Irish.

What gives Black Legion a contemporary punch is a scene shot by the uncredited Michael Curtiz. A trio of business men discuss how much money they are making from Black Legion memberships and uniforms. One of them states that they need "bigger, better patriots". Also mentioned is how selling this form of patriotism has been more financially lucrative then an oil company business that was closed for illegalities. In a scene last only a few minutes is a reminder that there is nothing new about corporate funding of Tea Party or fake grassroots organizations, only that the people doing the financing are more sophisticated and the money involved is much bigger.

The description of the political structure of the United States could well be recycled from arguments made by the Texas School Board. While the radio pundit has described the United States as a republic, Samuel Hinds, as the judge who makes a big anti-discrimination speech near the end of the film refers to the U.S. as a democracy. That kind of distinction might put certain people of rigid political persuasions in a tizzy. Otherwise, the only thing black about Black Legion are the robes worn by this mob. In an effort not to cause offense to the kind of people who probably would have been the victims of the real Black Legion, or similar organizations, the Hays office made certain that the film takes place in a world lacking the racial or cultural diversity to be found in an average "Charlie Chan" movie. Politics aside, the generally reliable Warner Brothers house director Archie Mayo keeps things moving at a good clip, with time enough for a cutsie courtship between Dick Foran and Ann Sheridan. And if that isn't enough to convince you to see Black Legion, then consider the what was written by Graham Greene: "It is an intelligent film because the director and the script-writer know where the real horror lies: the real horror is not in the black robes and skull emblems, but in the knowledge that these hide the weak and commonplace faces you have met over the counter and minding the next machine."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM

June 10, 2010

The Blind Menace

Shiranui Kengyo
Kazuo Mori - 1960
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The main reason for interest regarding The Blind Menace is that the title character provided a rough template for the Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, played in a long running series of films starring Shintaro Katsu. Already present is some of the deadpan black humor of the Zatoichi series. Suginoichi is also a blind masseur, but unlike the usually upstanding, and sometimes heroic Zatoichi, is a manipulative villain. It's not so much that one roots for Suginochi as much as their is a fascination in watching this repellent character weasel his way in and out of various situations.

Suginochi is introduced as a young boy, fully aware of how to use his blindness to full advantage. Flicking a small booger into a vat of sake, the boy is able to supply is poor, appreciative mother with a large pail of the rice wine. After all, he reasons, what's a little shared dirt between family members. I don't know if there is an equivalent Japanese phrase, but Suginochi could be be described as a manipulative little snot. Another scam involves the receipt of a letter written by a relative, with a missing gift of a coin. In response to his mother's lament about the family's lack of money, Suginoichi works his way into a guild of blind money lenders, with plans to make his way to the top.

Along the way, Suginoichi gets involved with a criminal gang, supplying them with information those who may be traveling with large amounts of cash. Suginoichi also has his way with women, by force, blackmail or outright purchase. Mostly, it is the accumulation of cash that provides motivation.

One of the most interesting scenes is a very simply done dream sequence. Suginoichi dreams of a famed young woman, the model used for a famed artist, and the subject of very popular woodblock prints. Katsu and Mieko Kondo are filmed on a bare stage, each with their own spotlight. Katsu is seated, playing the shamisen, the three stringed instrument somewhat similar to a guitar. Kondo performs what cannot truly be called a dance, but more of a series of poses. While the scene has its place in the narrative, visually it is almost an abstract, not quite experimental interlude within a generally realist framework.

Tamao Nakamura, Shintaro Katsu's wife, plays the part of an upper class woman blackmailed into having sex with Suginoichi in exchange for a much needed loan on behalf of her family. The screenwriter, Minoru Inuzuka, was instrumental in creating the screen character of Zatoichi, from the story by Kan Shimosawa. Katsu was groomed to be a star for Daiei Studios only to see his films rejected by audiences and film exhibitors until turn as Suginoichi. The use of of what would conventionally be considered a disability, coupled with the dark humor apparently resonated with viewers. A character who murders, rapes, commits blackmail and other misdeeds could not be the basis of a series, at least not one of any significant length. As a single film, though, The Blind Menace provides interest in an aspect of Japanese culture not touched on in most other period films, as well as showcasing an earlier performance by one of Japan's most unlikely stars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

June 08, 2010

Somtum

Nontakorn Taweesuk - 2008
Big Warner All Region DVD

Somtum is a Thai movie mostly about spicy Thai food and Muay Thai boxing, sometimes simultaneously. The film also takes some of the basic premise of The Karate Kid and turns it completely on its head. Yes, you have the novice from the west learning from the Asian master. But in this case, it's seven foot tall Nathan Jones taking lesson from little Sasisa Jindamanee. Not only is Sasisa a Junior National Muay Thai champion, she's being groomed for stardom from the studio of Tony Jaa (and probably not a moment too soon, with Tony taking time off to be a Buddhist monk).

Jones portrays an Australian visitor, Barney, in the tourist town of Pattaya. Encouraged to keep drinking by one of the local bar girls, Barney wakes up to find himself with nothing but his pants. While waiting to make a police report, he is seen sitting by himself until a little girl drops her ball. Part of the humor of this film is purely visual contrasting the outsized Jones with the Thais. The little girl is clearly overwhelmed by the sight of this giant foreigner although she gradually warms up to him, falling asleep in his arms. The scene introduces Barney as not only a giant, but a very gentle giant, too gentle for his own good.

Barney almost literally runs into a young girl Katen, running from a gang of older boys. The boys at first are intimidated by Barney when he stands, only to see him cower in fright at the sound of motorbike backfire. Another girl, Dokya, arrives at the scene to take on the boys, sometimes using the passive Barney as a prop for her kicks and leaps. Barney temporarily stays at a temple, and is later taken to visit Dokyo's mother, who runs a small beachfront restaurant. Treated to somtum, also known as Papaya salad, Barney turns beet red, and out of control, virtually knocking down the little restaurant. Taking a variety of jobs, Barney does what he can to rebuild the restaurant while waiting to get a new passport.

Dokyo also does what she can to make money, going into the ring for a boxing match with an adult fighter. And here is where cultural differences have probably kept Somtum from getting even a DVD release in the U.S. While the film is considered the equivalent to a PG rating in Asian countries, the fight scene is mostly in earnest. The MPAA, and probably a few parents, would probably feel discomfort in watching a young girl smacked several times in the face, even with boxing gloves. Dokyo leaves the ring battered, bruised and a little bloody, as well as gipped by a shady promoter who forces a tie, even when most of those attending the match let it be known who should have been named the winner.

The film descends into a live cartoon as Barney is forced to fight a gang of foreign crooks, including the seven foot tall Mark 'Conan' Stevens. At this point, the film seems to take its inspiration directly from 'Popeye', as Barney is conveniently fed somtum, turning into a raging red madman, vanquishing the bad guys and destroying a small jet plane. Dan Chupong makes a guest appearance as a policeman, with a brief scene to show off his martial arts skills. Even better is the appearance by Kessarin "Nui" Ektawatkul, a former national taekwondo champion, seen here as a toothpick chomping papaya vendor who's ready to stand her ground. Hopefully "Nui" will be seen in more films that will use her to advantage for her martial arts ability and comic presence. Both Sasisa and Nawarat Techarathanaprasert, the girl who plays Katen, will be seen in Power Kids, scheduled for DVD release soon. Somtum is the directorial debut of Nontakorn Taweesuk after fulfilling screen writing and editing for the Baa-Ram-Ewe team. Nontakorn's flair for visual comedy is quite evident, and I've never seen Thai chillies filmed so lovingly.

One additional note: This DVD version did not have English subtitles. There is enough spoken English, about a third of the dialogue, to follow most of the story, and this in no way hindered my enjoyment of this film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM | Comments (1)

June 01, 2010

High Kick Girl!

Hai kikku garu!
Fuyuhiko Nishi - 2009
First Look Studios Region 1 DVD

With a remake of The Karate Kid coming soon, maybe it's time to look a real karate kid. Rina Takeda is a bit older than Jaden Smith, by seven years. She also has a black belt, and not just the kind available at Sak's Fifth Avenue. For myself, I would rather watch a skinny Japanese girl who really knows how to kick ass than someone pretending in an overpriced Hollywood film.

Any resemblance to a plot in High Kick Gir!l is comparable to the structure of a porn movie, which is to say that there is a very thin story created to string along a bunch of scenes to create something feature length. Just as a porn film is primarily comprised of scenes of various kinds of meetings and matings, High Kick Girl! is a bunch of scenes of people getting together to beat the crap out of each other, using feet, hands, and the occasional weapon.

Kei, the title character, goes around looking for black belt karate students to beat up. Her wimpy pal, who tags along, decides to recruit her with The Destroyers, a professional bunch of thugs for hire. As it turns out, they have a fifteen year grudge against Kei's teacher, Matsumura. Even though Matsumura appears to be teaching karate at an established location, none of The Destroyers can find him. It's as if the characters live in an alternative version of Tokyo, where there is no Google, or even a phone book. Kei thinks she wants to be a Destroyer until she finds out why she's wanted by the bad guys. In the meantime, we get to watch her fighting it out with a bunch of girls in sailor suit school girl uniforms, with one small girl proving herself a tough opponent.

This might have been a somewhat better film had the martial arts been filmed better. To compare, one can look at the framing of the fight scenes in Chocolate, which also feature a young, female martial arts star. Some of the impact is lost with the more improvised shooting of High Kick Girl!. Nishi also pads the film with lots of aerial shots of Tokyo. Even more obvious, every kick, crunch and thud is repeated, as well as each whoop, yell and assorted kung-fu vocalizing. Not only do we see the action twice much of the time, but Nishi also repeats the action in slo-mo and slower-mo.

On the plus side, compared to such films as Machine Girl, Nishi doesn't exploit the women in this film as some of his peers might have done. Yes, this is a Japanese film, but not the kind of Japanese film designed for guys to watch girls flash their white panties. Nishi tries to incorporate a life lesson regarding karate's purpose for self defense, but what most viewers will remember is the petite member of The Destroyers leaping over a much taller man, and kicking him in the face.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:36 AM

May 27, 2010

The John Williams Blog-a-thon: Gidget Goes to Rome

Paul Wendkos - 1963
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

A guy's got to start somewhere. The film scorer commonly known as John Williams was billed as Johnny Williams during his first decade. Gidget Goes to Rome was one of the early composting credits on a solidly mid-budget studio production, though not the first association with the "Gidget" series. Still a relative newcomer, William provided orchestration for the first film, in 1959. Previous to this film, Williams had his first credit for scoring a little American International Pictures programmer titled Daddy-O. Whatever Williams had done on Gidget, he must have clicked with director Paul Wendkos, giving Williams the opportunity to compose the score for Because They're Young in 1960. While Gidget Goes to Rome does not have the kind of music one thinks of regarding John Williams, the film allowed the composer to have a little bit of fun.

Some critics have noted the variations on the musical theme for Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye. Williams might be said in retrospect to have prepped for that film, almost ten years later, with his variations on the "Gidget" title song. Most of the music is what would be expected for a Hollywood film to evoke Italy, or something faintly exotic, as when Gidget imagines herself to be teenage Cleopatra, with white sneakers. A brass band playing music for Romans to twist the night away sounds like the prototype for Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass. Maybe Williams direction was to primarily to provide continuity where George Duning, Columbia Pictures' house composer, left off, when Gidget went Hawaiian. In terms of film music, Gidget Goes to Rome demonstrates that even future Oscar winners sometimes have to toil inconspicuously, just to prove they can get the job done.

As for the film itself, Gidget Goes to Rome is the last, and least of the three feature films. There are a few moments worth savoring, with Paul Wendkos giving sway to his inner Orson Welles when Gidget wanders by herself in a museum, surrounded by old statues. Cindy Carol is blandly cute, but less interesting than the adenoidal Deborah Walley, who in turn could never quite fill the beach sandals of the underrated and under appreciated Sandra Dee. An overview of the original novel and origins of Gidget suggests that there is far richer material than is indicated by the films. Nonetheless, the first film is key to introducing surf culture to the mainstream, while the second film is much smarter and funnier than might be assumed of a film titled Gidget Goes Hawaiian. I am assuming Universal's exclusive contract made Dee too expensive to continue the role with which she is best known. Unfortunately for Dee, Universal squandered the promise of an actress who showed considerable ability with Vincente Minnelli, Douglas Sirk, and especially Delmer Daves. Aside from Paul Wendkos, only James Darren as Gidget's love, "Moondoggie" remains the constant of the three films. Andrew Sarris is dismissive of the three "Gidget" films as examples of Paul Wendkos's filmography. I would suggest all three films have varying degrees of reward to those who are serious about looking beyond genre, any genre. The "Gidget" films might not exactly be art, termite or otherwise, but they are genial, unpretentious fun.

For more on John Williams and his music, visit Edward Copeland's site, done in conjunction with Ali Arikan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM

May 20, 2010

Two films about Hong Kong filmmaking

Ah Kam/A Jin de gu shi
Ann Hui - 1996
Mei Ah Laser Disc Co. Region 0 DVD

My Name is Fame/Ngor yiu sing ming
Lawrence Ah Mon - 2006
Tai Seng Region 0 DVD

The story of Ah Kam is about a woman who appears on a movie set to serve as a stand-in, accepts an on the spot offer to film some stunts, and even serves as the action director on another movie. The film is most interesting when it is about filmmaking, and might have been something like the Hong Kong equivalent to Hal Needham's Hooper. The narrative wanders off to follow Ah Kam as she falls in love with a businessman who takes her back to China, where they live together while she manages his new nightclub. The boyfriend turns out to be less than faithful, and Ah Kam returns to Hong Kong. The action director, Tung, that she worked with, has found himself in deep trouble with gangsters.

What is worth watching are the scenes that give some idea of filmmaking in Hong Kong, where action scenes are usually handled by a specialized director who coordinates both what the stunt performers with do, and also how they will be filmed. Part of the strength of Hooper was that story elements were taken from Hal Needham and Burt Reynold's own experiences in filmmaking. A more interesting film might have been made using Sammo Hung's experiences both in front of and behind the camera, giving his character of Tung more depth. When Michelle Yeoh, as Ah Kam, is given the chance to direct some action scenes, I was hoping that the film might use some of Ann Hui's own experiences, possibly referring to her work as assistant to King Hu, and that perhaps Ah Kam would have worked her way up in Hong Kong's film industry.

The action was choreographed by Ching Siu-Tung, who probably doesn't have a shortage of his own behind the scene stories. Two smaller roles of film directors are played by Teddy Chan, director of the currently acclaimed Bodyguards and Assassins, and < a href=http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/yim.html>Yim Ho. The film was produced by Raymond Chow, most famous for Enter the Dragon. There is footage during the final credits of Yeoh injuring herself, jumping from a bridge to a moving truck. Given that Yeoh was unable to work for three weeks gives some credence to this review of the film that indicates that the released film was not the film Ann Hui had originally intended to make, but one that had to work around Yeoh's physical limitations. There is little online to address these questions, at least in English. It is also worth noting that Yeoh has returned to Chinese language filmmaking with two martial arts films at the age of 47.

Filmed ten years after Ah Kam, Ann Hui plays the part of a director in My Name is Fame. Lau Ching Wan plays the part of a once promising actor, Fai, with a career that has dissolved to bit parts. A young would be actress, Faye (Huo Siyan), fresh from the mainland seems to be the only one to remember the better part of Fai's career and ingratiates herself, making him a reluctant acting coach and manager. Under Fai's tutelage, Faye goes from bit player to star. The film ends during the Hong Kong Film Awards, with Fai one of five nominees for supporting actor, with the winner to be handed the award by Faye. Faye fumbles with the envelope and the viewer never knowing who won the award. It may not be coincidental that My Name is Fame actually won two acting awards, and received four nominations from the real Hong Kong Film Awards.

There are some sight gags, such as watching Faye repeating a chase scene where she falls, until one leg is injured. Dressed in a flowing red gown for an action scene, Faye is hoisted a bit too energetically on the wires she's hooked to, her head hitting the top of the set. In addition to Ann Hui, director Gordon Chan also appears as himself, while several actors make appearances, including Tony Leung Ka-Fai and Ekin Cheng. What My Name is Fame does unintentionally is remind those use to Hollywood opulence about how much more modestly other film professionals live and work. It's not only Fai, who lives in a dingy apartment decorated with a poster from Scorsese's After Hours and a painting of Jack Nicholson as The Joker, but Fai's parents, with his father a former film director, living in a small, though comfortable apartment. Likewise, the offices of the filmmakers are cramped and overstuffed. In some ways mainstream Hong Kong filmmaking is closer to true independent productions with the limited budgets, small payrolls, and need for spur of the moment decisions on the set.

My Name is Fame is a gentle comedy-drama, not trying to be A Star is Born (any version), or any of the more ambitious exposes about being a movie star, or even a workaday actor. In some ways, My Name is Fame is closer to The Oscar in some of its basic concerns, but with a greater greater self awareness, and a far less inflated sense of self importance. With a nod to the unnamed Infernal Affairs and The Departed Wai sums up Hong Kong cinema as being a product that will be remade in Hollywood "starring Brad Pitt", which is essentially a remake of Hollywood films. Instead of biting the hand that feeds it, My Name is Fame offers a loving nibble.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:34 AM

May 18, 2010

The Sanctuary

Thanapon Maliwan - 2009
First Look Studios Region 1 DVD

I can't argue about the fighting skills of Mike B., formerly Piroj Boongerd. The guy could probably hold his own against peers Tony Jaa and Dan Chupong. Mike B., in fact, had been a stunt performer in Ong-Bak and has also served as action director on a handful of films. What Mike B. lacks is the kind of onscreen charisma that make Tony and Dan fun to watch even when they're not doing back flips or kicking someone in the face. And if Mike B. can be considered some kind of martial arts star, he is to Tony Jaa what Gerard Butler is to Russell Crowe.

The Sanctuary is the type of film that might find its true calling on late night cable television. No cliche has been left behind. The basic premise is that a group of high tech thieves are after a Thai national treasure, with some double crossing in the favor of the highest bidder. Mike B. plays Krit, a dealer in fake antiques, who discovers that his uncle has been involved with the crooks. It also turns out that one of the bad guys killed Krit's twin brother. In one scene, the injured Krit is nursed back to health by a Buddhist monk who uses what is described as a very rare herb. While with the pretty archaeologist, Praifa, Krit is shot and the two fall down in a wooded area where there is a cave, and by golly, the rare herb is in the cave, allowing Praifa to cure Krit. Krit and Praifa manage to run into the bad guys on the road not once, but twice. There is also the one bad guy who knows which tree to jump from, to ambush Krit. And as the closing credits roll, there is the suggestion that the chief bad guy may not be dead after all. As it turned out, just days before I was going to post this review came this news from Cannes. And If that's not enough, Krit also has this jewel which has holographic images of Muay Thai boxing when held in the light, just the right way.

The real stars of The Sanctuary are Russell Wong as chief bad guy, Patrick, and Patharawarin Timkul, as the lethal Selina. Armed with knives, guns, and grenades, you know that Selina is a very bad girl because she's a chic dresser, and has too much lipstick. Intira Jaroenpura, best known for playing the title role in Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang-Nak, is the young archaeologist. One of the other signifiers of Thai cinema is that the good girls don't wear much make-up, and dress in practical blue jeans. Praifa mostly is confined to supporting Krit in the pursuit of the stolen vases, but does have a moment to show off her own boxing skills against Selina. In the one moment of the film that makes total sense, Krit is fighting the bad guy Gary, Praifa is taking on Selina, so after observing the scene, Patrick cooly picks up the goods and the loot and walks away.

The couple of trailers with the DVD indicate that First Look has also hopped on the Asian martial arts movie bandwagon. The trailer for Mike B.s previous film, Brave, also directed by Thanapon Maliwan, looks kind of fun. The Sanctuary was originally filmed in both Thai and English, depending on who was doing the talking. For some unknown reason, First Look has the film available in a completely English dubbed version. The only way one can enjoy seeing Thai actors speak Thai, and follow what they are saying, is by watching the film with subtitles designed for the hearing impaired. To not have the option of having subtitles during the Thai language portions of The Sanctuary was a dumb decision on the part of First Look. Fortunately, the subtitles don't interfere with the pleasure of watching the villainous expressions of Russell Wong and Patharawarin Timkul.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM | Comments (1)

May 13, 2010

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior

Puen yai jon salad/Queens of Langkasuka
Nonzee Nimibutr - 2008
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I have to assume that releasing Nonzee Nimibutr's newest film on DVD in the U.S. is the part of the price Mark Cuban and Magnolia are paying to stay in business with Sahamongkolfilm, the studio of Thailand's biggest star, Tony Jaa. Two years after its release at Cannes, Nonzee is ill-served by a nonsensical title. At least the film is the same version that played theatrically after Cannes, cut from 133 minutes to just a little under two hours. As a producer, Nonzee has been busy with several films, notably The Eye 2 for the Pang brothers, and the Thai classical music story, The Overture. As a director, Nonzee's last film to get significant DVD release was Jan Dara, with OK Baytong apparently only seen outside of Thailand in the festival circuit.

A queen and her two princesses rule the mythical kingdom of Langkasuka. Rival kingdoms, all ruled by men, have formed alliances that threaten the queen. One prince has joined with a pirate, Black Raven, to attack the kingdom. In a small fishing village, a young man, Peri, learns magic from a mysterious old man named White Ray. White Ray has an evil twin brother, Black Ray. There's also a very large cannon, a gift to defend Langkasuka, that is at the bottom of the ocean, the result of a pirate attack. Black Ray plots to raise the cannon for use against the kingdom.

Legend of the Tsunami Warrior represents a major shift in the work of Nonzee Nimibutr, from his smaller, more personal films. The 20 million dollar budget is not much bigger than that of some so-called independent films from Hollywood studios, but was a record by Thai standards. There are parts of the film that will easily recall Pirates of the Caribbean and Star Wars. And it is those parts of Legend of the Tsunami Warrior that work against the intentions of the filmmaker. While not as wrong-headed as the superhero movie, Mercury Man, there is a misunderstanding of what is needed to make a film with international appeal.

The biggest error is to attempt to make a Thai version of the kind of film that Hollywood produces at ten times the budget with big name stars. The most popular Thai film, the first Ong-Bak, was uniquely Thai in its concerns of Buddhism and elephants, and also in its sense of humor. Also uniquely Thai was the first Thai film to get international distribution, Iron Ladies, about the winning volleyball team comprised mostly of gay men and ladyboys. In that same vein, the most acclaimed of Nonzee's films is his own version of a genuine Thai legend, Nang Nak.

The best known actor in Legend of the Tsunami Warrior is the second best known martial arts star, Dan Chupong, seen mostly with a partial mask to cover a wound received near the eye, saving the life of the queen. Ananda Everingham, who for a while seemed to be in every other Thai movie, plays magical Pari who literally swims with the fishes. Sorapong Chatree, a mainstay of Thai cinema since the mid Seventies, plays White Ray. One of the action directors is Panna Rittikrai, probably one of the valuable members of the Sahamongkolfilm team. Weerapon Phumatfon, best known for the fight choreography for Chocolate, also served as action director. The screenplay is by novelist Win Lyovarin with an ending that suggest a sequel. The film was originally envisioned to be in two parts. Legend of the Tsunami Warrior isn't a bad film as much as it is a disappointment from the man who raised the bar for Thai cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM

May 07, 2010

Miyamoto Musashi V: Duel at Ganryu Island

Miyamoto Musashi: Ganryu-jima no ketto
Tomu Uchida - 1965
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Tomu Uchida films a sword fight in a way I have not seen done by any other filmmaker. The swordsman, Kojiro, played by Ken Takakura, is asked to demonstrate his abilities for a local lord. One of the lord's vassals is asked to be the opponent, using a spear. In most films, duels are traditionally composed of full shots of the two duelists alternating with medium or close up shots of each person. Uchida, has instead filmed a significant part of the duel as a long take of nothing but the legs of Kojiro's opponent, followed by a full shot of the opponent. It's a very unusual way to film a duel, and essentially forces the viewer to imagine not only the action, but also the expressions of the actors.

The film begins with a more traditional recapping of the previous four films, and ends with the reunion of the main characters as well. Musashi, taking a break from proving his prowess with the sword, comes across a young boy who's father had just died. Helping the boy bury his father, Musashi sticks around to help with the small farm where the boy lives. The sequence reminds me of Shane, where the gunfighter puts down his weapon for a more pastoral life. The country life comes to an end when Musashi fights off bandits that have come to steal the villagers' rice from a storage house.

There is also a revisiting of the theme of artistic expression from the fourth film. Turned down for an official position by the shogunate, Musashi is asked to create artwork on behalf of the lord of the fief. The spare painting is describes as a tiger lost in the wilderness, a metaphor for Musashi's own spirit.

Even though he is the title character, Musashi is presented throughout Uchida's series as continually conflicted about the meaning of many of his actions. Uchida could be said to undermine the romantic notions regarding the philosophical underpinnings of Bushido and what it means to be a samurai, with most of the characters ultimately rationalizing their self-interests. The final shot in this film leaves Musashi as a tiny figure on a boat, visually suggesting that Musashi is "lost at sea", or at the very least is insignificant against the flow of nature. The ending is disquieting, and does not provide the expected kind of closure. According to the site Wildgrounds, Uchida was working on a sixth Miyomoto Musashi film at the time of his death.

I should mention that AnimEigo has much higher standards than anyone else when it comes to presenting Japanese movies on DVD for westerners. In addition to the easy to read subtitles, and titles that concurrently explain some of the historical context, and the notes that are part of the supplements, is the subtitling that goes beyond the efforts of others. Everyone, and I mean everyone, including the most minor of actors and characters, has their names translated into romaji during the credit sequences. Also, signs, letters and postings of various kinds also get subtitles, leaving the viewer no doubt as to what is written. There may be some debate as to whether the Miyamoto Musashi series is the ideal choice of introduction of the films of Tomu Uchida. Even if this series does not represent Uchida's best work, as some have argued, it's good enough to make me want to see more from this still little known filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:08 AM | Comments (1)

May 05, 2010

Miyamoto Musashi IV: Duel at Ichuyo-ji Temple

Miyamoto Musashi: Ichijoji no ketto
Tomu Uchida - 1964
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

What interests me about the way Tomu Uchida is filming his series on Miyamoto Musashi are his stylistic choices. Each film in the series is done in a consistent visual style, yet the consistency is only within each film rather than carried throughout the series. The fourth film begins with a recapping of the events of the first three films, but with mock period paintings, in color, alternating with black and white shots from the preceding films. At first it appears as an odd conceit, but the reasons for Uchida's visual choices becomes more clear as the film progresses.

Musicianship and painting, art in general, symbolize alternative modes of life and expression. Otsu makes her appearance known to Musashi by playing her flute by the side of a road. The father of the boy, Jotaro, is identified by his playing of an older Japanese woodwind instrument. Musashi spends part of his time contemplating an abstract looking Chinese painting. In a key scene, Musashi spends the night with a courtesan. The courtesan, Yoshino, plays the stringed instrument, the biwa, which she cuts open to explain how the sounds are created. She compares Musashi to a taut instrument that will easily break, as opposed to the hidden flexibility within the biwa.

The narrative is about the students of the martial arts school seeking revenge for their young master having been defeated by Musashi. The hot headed Denshichiro leads the students, ignoring warnings that he may overestimating his own capabilities. The title of this episode refers to the scene of battle, with Musashi standing against the seventy-three members of this dojo. The sequence is in monochrome. I have no idea why Uchida chose to break from color for this part of the film. The contrast is immediate when, after the battle, we see Musashi lying in a field of red leaves, an image that consciously evokes the flames of hell.

Red, of course, is the color of blood. Red is used in various ways also in the color of some of the costumes. The connection of red, blood and nature is also connected within a bit of dialogue. When Musashi returns from a brief sword fight, Yoshino tries to blot some blood from his clothing while entertaining a group of men. One man, taking notice, asks if what he saw was blood. The reply is, "I believe it is a crimson peony petal".

Uchida seems to have used this film to explore his own ideas about art in the way he uses the wide screen. Within each shot one can identify ways of dividing the space vertically as well as horizontally. Much of the vertical space is broken up by the panelling of the houses in interior shots, and trees for the exterior scenes. Most of the shots are relatively long takes with the use of pan, tracking and crane shots to emphasize the unity of the characters within the shot. The visual style is integrated within the film without calling attention to itself. It could well be that in working with what is a very familiar story, filmed several times previously, that what interested Tomu Uchida was not the story of Miyamoto Musashi, but how he could tell the story. Uchida was a well established filmmaker who's real interest was in continuing to find new ways of expressing himself artistically.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM

May 03, 2010

Miyamoto Musashi III: Birth of the Nito-Ryu Style

Miyamoto Musashi: Nitoryu Kaikan
Tomu Uchida - 1963
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Into the third entry of the Miyamoto Musashi series, I feel like I am watching something that in structure resembles something like Robert Altman's Nashville. What I mean by this is that, taken as as whole, characters weave in and out, and are all connected in some way to Miyamoto, although many are unaware of those connections. This particular episode also made me think of Altman in that several of the characters are looking for each other unsuccessfully. Miyamoto's story almost takes a back seat to the narrative strands of several supporting players. I'm not sure if I can even relate what goes on in the film without charts and diagrams.

Miyamoto is still roaming around Japan, looking to pick fights with the masters of other martial arts schools. The aging master of one school won't even see anyone because he has retired. Otsu, the young woman pining for Miyamoto, acts as the old man's assistant, and never knows that as she walks past a country inn, Miyamoto is behind the door. The bat shit crazy woman who would have been Otsu's mother-in-law is still convinced her son is dead, and that it is Miyamoto's fault, chasing after him with a sword. Jotaro, Miyamoto's young courier, kills the dog belonging to the old master after it has scratched his face. By the end of the film, virtually all of the main characters from the first three films have either crossed paths or in some way have been accounted for.

Added to this mix is a new challenger, Sasaki Kojiro. Ken Takakura makes a great entrance, standing in the bow of a small ship. Sasaki is also out to prove that no one is better than him with a sword. His first demonstration is to lop off a rival's top knot. Still very boyish looking, Takakura hardly resembles the actor best known to western audiences for his role in Sydney Pollack's The Yakuza.

Tomu Uchida's visual style is more functional here than in the first two film films. What is even more noticeable is a sense of artificiality. Everything looks like it was shot on a set, even when I'm pretty certain that it was not. The use of color, especially in the final shot with the rosy finger of dawn streaking the sky, made me think of another classic film about journey that leads to self knowledge, The Wizard of Oz. That the journey, rather than the destination, is what interests Uchida is noted in this excerpt from a dialogue with Yasujiro Ozu: "Large groups are no good. If you go out on your own, you don't have to determine where you're headed. On a Sunday morning you can put on a backpack and head out with no specific goal in mind."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM

May 01, 2010

Miyamoto Musashi II: Duel at Hannya Hill

Miyamoto Musashi: Hannyazaka no ketto
Tomu Uchida - 1962
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Fifteen monks with spears to the left. About twenty-five unkempt ronin to right. What's a lone swordsman to do? The second installment of the Miyamoto Musashi series is a transitional episode that can not be judged in the same way as a stand alone film. The film is essential a road film chronicling a bit more of Miyamoto's development, both in his abilities with the sword, and with his outlook towards life.

Some of the characters from the first film appear again briefly. The young woman, Otsu, who was his friend's fiancee, now has her heart set for Miyamoto. The friend, Matahachi, has married the older woman, Oku, and runs an inn with her and Oku's adopted daughter, Akemi. The story, as such, is of Miyamoto showing up at various schools to prove his mastery in martial arts. On his journey, he is accompanied by a young boy, Jotaro, who acts as his courier.

The film begins with Miyamoto stepping out of the room he has been cloistered in for three years. If the equation of sunshine and enlightenment was missed by anyone who watched the first film, it won't be missed with two mentions of illumination within the first few minutes of this second film. Uchida uses a camera setup frequently with the camera looking up at the camera, with the blue sky and some white clouds in the back. This constitutes one of his repeated stylistic flourishes. There is some imagery of the very small characters almost lost in the landscape, though not to the extent of the first film. As for action, it doesn't take place until the title scene, with Miyamoto dispatching the scruffy ronin each with a single well placed blow of the sword. One guy gets his head lopped off, which causes a fellow ronin to observe of Miyamoto: "This guy is tough".

The real payoff is at the end of the film. The leader of the spear wielding monks takes a group of small stones, and has a Buddhist prayer written on each one. The stones are then set on each of the dead ronin. Miyamoto rejects the notion that his rivals are worthy of any kind of human consideration. One of the frequent elements in Buddhist parables, and the central part of the life of Shakyamuni, is the theme of the journey. That Uchida's version of the life of Miyamoto Musashi is to be understood as something of a Buddhist parable is made clear for the viewer, even when the title character is unaware of the philosophical path his life will take.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM

April 29, 2010

Miyamoto Musashi

Tomu Uchida - 1961
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

I first came across the name of Tomu Uchida in 1975. This was in Paul Schrader's essay on yakuza films published in "Film Comment". One of Uchida's earlier films, Theater of Life had been cited as key in the development of the yakuza genre. Uchida is a relatively unknown filmmaker, with the five DVDs in the Miyamoto Mushashi series serving as an introduction to a man whose career spanned from the silent era through the collapse of Japan's studio system. The character has been the subject of a trilogy by Hiroshi Inagaki which I saw several years ago. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Rentaro Mikuni, who appeared in the first film of Inagaki's trilogy, has the recurring role of a Buddhist priest in Uchida's series. How Uchida retells a familiar story is what makes a difference.

This first film begins immediately with two low level sumurai groveling in the mud. They have been on the losing side of the decisive battle that initiated the Shogun rule in Japan. At least in this film, if Uchida resembles any other filmmaker, it is Delmer Daves. in the use of the environment, of having his characters lives tied, sometimes literally, with the natural world. There are several shots of the characters completely dwarfed by the surrounding landscape. In one shot, it takes almost a minute to realize that what is being viewed is not a static shot of a mountain, but Kinnosuke Nakamura making his way through a trail, virtually imperceptible until he arrives near the base.

Uchida could well have been reacting to some of the taboo shattering of the younger directors who emerged at about the time this film was made. That is not the traditional samurai movie is made clear when the star is seen wearing little more than his fundoshi. While not depicting sex, the scene of a woman sucking out the poison from the dirty leg of one of the samurai is unmistakably sexual. There is a vampiric lust in the face of Michiyo Kogure, with specks of blood on her teeth. It is later revealed that she has adopted the young samurai that she has rescued as her son, but what is indicated in their scenes together is that her feelings are more than motherly.

Uchida uses light simply, but effectively. This first film is about Miyamoto Musashi's self realization regarding the ineffectiveness of anger and general disregard of the lives of others. In a scene where he first meets the priest, Takuan, Rentaro Mikuni's face is lit, while Kinnosuke Nakamura is barely visible in the darkness of night. A fundamental sense of enlightenment is given a visual presentation through the use of a close up of Nakamura, increasingly visible with sunlight. It's literal filmmaking, yet Uchida is smart enough not to use the kind of musical accompaniment that would push this part of the film to an overemphasis in the style of Cecil B. DeMille.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:33 AM | Comments (3)

April 27, 2010

Accuracy of Death

Suwito rein: Shinigami no seido/Sweet Rain
Masaya Kakei - 2008
Innoform Media Region 3 DVD

The reaper in this film is not particularly grim, nor is he feared. In this case, death comes in the form of Mr. Chiba, who shows up to decide if the designated person is to die unexpectedly. He wears while gloves to prevent the living from expiring by an accidental touch. There are bargains to be made, though nothing as symbolic as a chess game. When Mr. Chiba shows up, it is constantly raining.

The film is comprises of three episodes, of Mr. Chiba with a young office girl who feels her life is not worth living, a young man who dedicates his life to the gangster who has taken care of him since childhood, and an older woman who operates her one chair barbershop in her little house by the sea. Mr. Chiba is accompanied by a dog, a black retriever, whom exchanges thoughts with him telepathically. Mr. Chiba has his own idiosyncrasies such as wanting to listen to music, "humanities greatest invention", every chance he gets, while displaying an inability fully understand colloquial speech.

This is the kind of film that works in spite of the set up, even though it is never explained by Mr. Chiba is accompanied by the dog. What does work is the limited use of special effects, giving the film something a a visual equivalent to magic realism, such as the flower that wilts in Mr. Chiba's hand, the background outside a coffee shop that morphs into a flashback of the office girl, and the gathering of crows that show up when Mr. Chiba is around. The unusual element in the story, such as the several grim reapers who show up with their gloved hands, are treated either with light humor, or simply as matter of fact. The one part that doesn't work, at least for me, is a yakuza gun battle while "Silent Night" is on the soundtrack. Aside from not being clear about the intention here, although there are some Christmas decorations spotted in the background, the scene struck me as a reworking of a similar scene in John Woo's Face/Off with guns blazing to the song, "Somewhere, Over the Rainbow".

Mr. Chiba determines life or death for the people he spends a few days with based on whether they have fulfilled their purpose in life. It's a plot point that some might feel is severely underemphasised, which is to say, how is a fulfilled life determined, and who is entitled to make that decision? The original Japanese title translates as "The precision of the agent of death". What makes Mr. Chiba odd within the context of what he does, is his lack of understanding regarding the impact of his job, a point presented at the beginning of the film when he is sitting next to a young girl, who it is later revealed, is the one being mourned at a funeral.

Having Takeshi Kaneshiro as the grim reaper has quite easily reminded some viewers of this film of Brad Pitt's similar turn in Meet Joe Black due to his youthful appearance. Certainly the role is lighter, and more comic at moments, than turns in such films as Red Cliff. The Warlords, or House of Flying Daggers. For myself, the real treat to watching this film was seeing Sumiko (Junko) Fuji as the woman barber, living alone in an unspecified future, with her robot companion. Still attractive in her maturity, though not artificially so, Fuji was the top female star in Japanese films in the !960s through early Seventies. Even though she is not wielding a short sword, or showing off her skill in card games, Fuji still gets the winning hand at the end.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM

April 22, 2010

Floating Clouds

Ukigumo
Mikio Naruse - 1955
B.F.I. Region 2 DVD

I wanted to see Floating Clouds in part because I felt like seeing another Mikio Naruse film as soon as possible. Also, fellow blogger Iain Stott, compiled a list of 225 films that felt needed more critical attention, and I had a some gaps to fill. Cutting that list down to size was a bit of work, including tossing out titles of films that I really love. I'm not as fond as others regarding the creation of lists, but there are some movies that need some more attention. I will see again When a Woman Ascends the Stairs as soon as possible.

A second thought that is connected to Iain Stott's list is that some of the films are listed either with their original language, and in some cases, the British release title. More importantly, some of the films, particularly those by Kenji Mizoguchi, are not available as Region 1 DVDs. I bring up this point because every once in a while, I will read someone, or hear someone say, that a movie is not available on DVD. Usually what they mean is that the film in question is not available on a Region 1 DVD. Maybe someone will call me on this, but my attitude is, if you're a serious cinephile, you should own a DVD player that is region free. Buying the DVDs is another matter, although there are some outlets that rent imported DVDs. In my case, the player I have was bought from Amazon, under fifty dollars, and Amazon even had the hack code on their website, thereby enabling me to see some other films by Mikio Naruse, rather than hope and pray that Criterion will come to the rescue.

And while Floating Clouds is not a favorite of the Naruse films seen to date, Hideko Takamine is positively luminous in the white dress, seen in the first flashback. The movie is based on the writings of Fumiko Hayashi. Takamine plays the part of a youngish woman in love with a man hardly deserving of her devotion. The film takes place initially in 1946, with Takamine's character, Yukiko, returning to Japan from what was then French Indo-China. Nothing is said about her life between the time that Japan was defeated and when we see Yukiko taking her first steps in post war Tokyo. The two, Yukiko and Kengo, met while working for Japan's agricultural department, in what is now the Vietnamese city of Da Lat. One of the men pointedly mentions that the work strictly deals with forestry, an indirect way of acknowledging that whatever they are doing on behalf of the government is not combat related. Kengo is married, yet he and Yukiko have an affair during the time they are working together. Yukiko hopes to renew the relationship with Kengo, only to find herself in one bad situation after another.

On a broader scale, Floating Clouds is about desperate times in Japan in the first years following the war. Yukiko lives in a storage room. Unable to get a job, she is temporarily supported by an American soldier, a small step up from being a bar hostess or prostitute. Even when she goes to a small resort inn with Kengo, her lover has his eye on the innkeeper's wife, initiating an affair while still with Yukiko. Finding no other viable way of supporting herself, Yukiko takes up with her sleazy brother-in-law, now the head priest of a newly created religion devoted to the Sun God. Even with a nice house and clothing, Yukiko still pines for Kengo, no matter that the guy remains married, or has yet another mistress or two.

In this story of "l'amour fou", Naruse recounts Yukiko and Kengo's relationship in Da Lat in a series of flashbacks. What is unusual is that these flashback are all done as straight cuts from the present, eschewing dissolves or any other device. This might be explained by Yukiko's emotional state, that the past is what propels her, what keeps her alive in the present. What the audience sees is not simply a look back at events of a few years ago, but what Yukiko sees in her mind's eye now. The editing of the flashbacks is not simply radical for Naruse, but is something that generally wasn't found in commercial movies of the time, anywhere. What is consistent with Naruse's other films are the traveling shots when two lovers are walking, the use of framing devices in several shots, and compositions of shots that would be repeated in other films. As for Hideko Takamine, even when she's lying on her back, sick from a cold, croaking her lines, she has never looked as beautiful as she does in Floating Clouds.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 AM

April 08, 2010

Sound of the Mountain

Yama no oto
Mikio Naruse - 1954
Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series Region 2 DVD

I don't think I've ever seen Setsuko Hara laugh so much, and I'm not sure if I can recall watching her laugh onscreen, as she does in Sound of the Mountain. Again, as in Repast, she is paired with Ken Uehara as an unhappily married couple. Adapted from a novel by Yasunari Kawabata, the film chronicles the destabilization of one Japanese family and unspoken love.

Hara is first seen riding her bicycle up a pathway, meeting with her father-in-law, played by So Yamamura. The music track is a rippling piano arpeggio. I could imagine the audience falling in love with Setsuko Hara at that moment. Hara plays Kikuko, with Uehara as her husband Shuichi, and Yamamura as Shuichi's father, Shingo. Shuichi complains about Kikuko being like a child, mistaking continual enthusiasm and cheerfulness for child-like behavior.

Kikuko and Shuichi live in the same house with Shuichi's parents in Kamakura. Father and son work together in Shingo's firm in Tokyo, where they commute by train in the morning, but return home separately at night. Both at home and in the office, it is understood that Shuichi has been having extra-marital affairs. The only one who is unaware of what is going on, or at least appears to not be aware is Kikuko. The parents are also wondering when Kikuko and Shuichi will produce a grandchild, indirectly suggesting that Kikuko is at least partially responsible for any problems with her marriage. That attitude changes when Shuichi's sister returns home with her two children, and a complaint about being unloved by her husband. Fusako also complains that Shingo expresses more fatherly affection to Kikuko than he has ever had towards her.

Kawabata had contributed to the screenplay of Repast, and both films share a similar structure of mirrored tragedies. Where the film is more similar to Naruse's other work is in making Kikuko the primary character on whom most of the narrative pivots, unlike the novel, which is from the point of view of Shingo and his memories. The title refers to a sound only heard by Shingo, referred to in the novel, but not in the film.

A couple of scenes that act as commentary involve the gift of a mask. The theatrical mask, of a child, serves as a literal reference to the story where people disguise there own feelings, or conversely, unmask their emotions to give full vent to their emotions. Filmed in black and white, the mask appears almost life like, and perhaps intentionally looks less like a child than a woman, and for at least one person writing about this film, not too dissimilar to Hara.

Naruse has a nifty visual metaphor to close out the film. Kukiko and Shingo meet in a park following an unstated period of following Kukiko departure to live with her parents. The scene takes place during the Fall, with the two walking among the bare, leafless trees. The space suggests the loss that all of the characters have experienced, particularly Kikuko and Shingo. The unobstructed view of the sky through the trees echoes Kikuko's own words about seeing things from a distance with clarity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM

April 06, 2010

Repast

Meshi
Mikio Naruse - 1951
Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series Region 2 DVD

The upcoming series of Japanese films playing this weekend at the Starz Theater in Denver has provided the perfect impetus to see Mikio Naruse's available films on DVD. I've had both sets from Eureka! and the BFI but hadn't gotten around to seeing anything yet. The festival itself is notable for featuring four Naruse films, with Yearning and Lightning not available on English subtitled DVD, and Flowing available from Eureka! for those of use who disdain region coding. I will have to miss seeing When a Woman Ascends the Stairs theatrically due to a change of scheduling, but am more disappointed that I can't meet with David Desser, author of Eros Plus Massacre: An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema. In addition to seeing three of the four films by Naruse, I will also be seeing House, a film heartily recommended by fellow bloggers Dennis Cozzalio and Bob Turnbull. I will also see, but might not write about, Millennium Actress, seen previously on DVD. I'm not big fan of anime, but after seeing Paprika theatrically three years ago, it seemed to me that I should revisit this film on a movie screen.

I have slowly been reading Catherine Russell's book on Naruse. An important point is that Naruse's films were made and marketed for a general audience in Japan. With the distances created by time, geography and culture, Russell's book has been quite helpful in knowing what to look for in those aspects of his films that might be misunderstood or passed over.

Given the meaning of the English language title, food is a significant part of the film. The opening scene is of a breakfast meal, Michiyo preparing breakfast for husband Hatsu, as well as a bowl of milk for her pet cat, Yuri. An older woman comes by, selling rice door to door in this older, run down area outside of Osaka. Michiyo comments that the rice she has prepared smells funny. For Hatsu, Michiyo's most important function is to provide him with his breakfast and dinners, with the frequent declaration that he is starving. Michiyo's high points outside of the house include a cup of coffee at a cafe, and rice cooked by her mother in Tokyo.

Taken from a novel by Fumiko Hayashi, the film chronicles Michiyo's discontent with married life. The "man of her dreams" barely converses with her, more involved with his newspaper in the morning. Married life consists of a routine of cooking, cleaning and other household chores. Michiyo and Hatsu show more feeling for each other when there is distance, when unseen by each other, but seen by the audience, the two laugh and smile during a telephone conversation. Whatever vestiges of affection the couple have are almost lost to boredom and routine.

Clothes are important markers of class or authority. Hatsu wears a relatively nice suit for his job at a brokerage, marked by his possession of some expensive looking two-tone shoes. Michiyo is usually dressed in a plain white blouse and solid skirt, contemporary but anonymous. A collision of styles is evident in one scene with four women - Michiyo, a neighbor in a traditional kimono, a woman who runs a small bar supported by a "patron", dressed in a more colorful kimono, and Hatsu's young neice, Satoko, in an outfit that might be described as futuristic in style. A neighborhood boy is first seen wearing a zoot suit. Michiyo frets about what she will wear for a reunion with some former classmates. Taking place in 1951, after the defeat of World War II, but a few years before the boom years, someone in the neighborhood has stolen shoes.

Hatsu's flirting with the young and pretty Satoko is mirrored by Michiyo's infatuation with her cousin, Kazuo. The film is about a balancing act between the traditional and the modern ways of being, with happiness seemingly understood by many of the main characters as being something always beyond reach due to money, societal expectations, or some other inner or outer force. The ending provides just enough ambiguity to suggest that while the grass might be greener on the other side, there might be something to appreciate with what one has, no matter how modest, or possibly that one is setting themselves up for disappointment by looking for more, be it love, money or simply some form of validation.

The final shot, which includes one woman stooping over a basin, doing laundry by hand, probably dissuaded a few young women from marriage, or least tossed out the romantic notions of a blissful future. The scenes shot on the streets of Osaka and Tokyo help give a portrait of a part of Japan during the years following World War II. One woman still hopes that her missing husband, perhaps a P.O.W., will return home. At a time when more Japanese women were by choice or circumstances having to support themselves, Satuko looks into being an office girl, while Machiyo toys with the idea of finding a job in Tokyo. Setsuko Hara's Michiyo doesn't suffer the way she does in a film by Ozu, or even Kurosawa's No Regrets for Our Youth. There is a certain amount of self-perspective when she tells Hatsu, played by Ken Uehara, that she has frittered away 2500 yen. Even when the characters revert to the familiarity of a life dictated by tradition, they find some small comfort in acknowledging the existence of other possibilities.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:35 AM

April 01, 2010

Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G-8 Summit

Girara no gyakushu: Toya-ko Samitto kikiippatsu
Minoru Kawasaki - 2008
Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

Minoru Kawasaki's film not only works more or less simultaneously as a parody and homage of Japanese monster movies, but is quite easily a better made film than many of its sources of inspiration. While the original Monster X, known as Girara in the Japanese version and Guilala in the English language version, was made by rival studio Shochiku, the story uses the same template established by Toho studios. The main characters are a newspaper reporter and a photographer, there's a group of people living in a remote area who worship an ancient god, there the connection between a monster and a young boy, and there's the boy in a baseball cap who manages to sneak into an off limits facility. The villagers also have some kind of group dance as part of their rituals. Add to this, Kawaski's own penchant for making fun Japanese culture as well as the pomposity of political leaders. It is somewhat disconcerting that for a filmmaker who virtually celebrates his own cheapness, this may be the most polished and best looking film from Kawasaki.

The leaders of the industrial world have gathered in northern Japan to discuss the environment. Whatever jockeying for influence is put aside with the news that a monster has invaded Japan. Rather than scurrying home, the President of the United States declares that the best thing would be for him to stay to fight the monster. The other leaders, realizing the political advantage, follow suit. Japan, Italy, Russia, Germany and Great Britain each come up with ideas to defeat Guilala. Each attempt ends in failure, with the monster emerging even stronger. The only foe that can defeat Guilala is the god, Take-majin, who exists as a mythical character.

Guilala creates havoc, busting through buildings that look no more real than the sets of similar films from forty years ago, breathing fire, and literally laughing at the failed attempts to kill him. Some of the more topical humor includes a Japanese prime minister with very audible irritable bowel syndrome, a French prime minister more interested in bedding his attractive translator, and a dictator from a place identified at the North Country, recognizable to anyone who has seen Team America. Kawasaki doesn't spare his own film by having one of his artist friends, interviewed on television, commenting that while it's good to see Guilala back in action, he would have preferred an attack by Varan or Baragon.

I have to wonder if Kawasaki has worked himself into an artistic corner. While Monster X Strikes Back is fun to watch, it does eventually get almost as tiresome as many of the later Japanese monster movies tend to do after the first hour or sometimes less. For myself, Kawasaki's best films are The Calamari Wrestler, about a talking octopus who is a professional wrestler, and Rug Cop, about a policeman who overcomes the bad guys by flinging his toupee. Less successful for me are the more ambitious Executive Koala and The World Sinks . . . except Japan. A Youtube glimpse at the film, Pussy Soup, featuring puppets, with a cat who cooks ramen, offers little promise of anything new. Even though Monster X Strikes Back doesn't offer some of the laughs of Kawasaki's best films, there is still pleasure to be had with the reassuring voice of Beat Takeshi as the saviour of the world, and the sight of the monster itself doing a little victory dance in the sunset.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:36 AM

March 30, 2010

Augustin, King of Kung-Fu

Augustin, Roi du Kung-Fu
Anne Fontaine - 1999
Wide Sight Region 3 DVD

Anne Fontaine's film is a slight comedy-drama, an expansion on an earlier film about a character named Augustin, a childlike man trying to find his place in the world. When first seen in this film, Augustin is on the phone, seeking auditions for small roles in movies. When an immediate offer is made, Augustin claims himself as too busy, and goes off to watch a movie, Drunken Master as it turns out. Inspired by the dream, Augustin travels to as close to China as is currently possible for him, the Chinatown section of Paris.

For someone with the dream of being a French martial arts star, Augustin is hobbled by the fact that he can not stand being touched, even shaking hands is impossible. A cure is sought from an acupuncturist, Ling. Augustin immerses himself in Chinese culture, working at a gift shop, training in kung-fu, and learning to speak Chinese. Augustin is also befriended by an older clerk at the gift shop, Rene.

I saw Fontaine's first major film, Dry Cleaning, but don't remember much about it. Nathalie and Coco Before Chanel were seen more recently. What appears to be a constant in Fontaine's work is a theme about people put in circumstances where they reinvent themselves. As it turns out, Augustin finds his place in spite of himself, as much as a result of any conscious efforts.

The most extended comedy is in an early scene where Augustin has garnered a small acting job. Constantly forgetting his lines as a waiter, serving a dish to Fanny Ardant and Andre Dussollier, Augustin can't get things right even after thirty-one takes. Augustin complains to the director that he has only had one week to rehearse his one line part.

Jean-Chretien Sibertin-Blanc, perhaps not coincidentally, the brother of Anne Fontaine, resembles Steve Carell, both physically and with the similar kind of character in the latter's career defining 40 Year Old Virgin. Sibertin-Blanc is all energy and enthusiasm but no coordination as he knocks over lamps practicing martial arts moves in his small apartment. A deliberately unglamorous Maggie Cheung plays Ling. It's the kind of role that maybe should have gone to a lesser known actress. It could well be my own perceptions but if she is not performing in Chinese, that Cheung's performances in English with Olivier Assayas work better for me, perhaps because she is the focal point of those films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM

March 25, 2010

The T.A.M.I. Show

Steve Binder - 1964
Shout Factory Region 1 DVD

The first time I saw The T.A.M.I. Show was when the film was seven years old, in a sixteen millimeter print, in Berkeley, California. This is the kind of film which, if you're part of a certain age bracket, probably can't be seen without it invoking multiple feelings. There is the adage that one's tastes in music are fairly well established by the age of 12. Not true in my case, at least with the acts involved here. Adding to the experience watching the film are the biographies behind many of the smiles.

Not all biographies. I hope Gerry Marsden and Billy J. Kramer are happy where ever they are, but I don't really care. But there is a twinge of sadness in watching the original Beach Boys, knowing about Brian Wilson's breakdown and artistic, if not commercial, comeback. This was a time when I was a fan of Jan and Dean, enough to try sidewalk surfing on one of those first generation skate boards on the streets of Evanston, Illinois. Art followed life in the worst possible way for Jan Berry. I can't watch The Rolling Stones without thinking about how Brian Jones was booted from band he formed, and died under questionable circumstances.

The opening montage owes a debt to A Hard Day's Night. There are shots of The Barbarians and Gerry and The Pacemakers in their respective tour buses. Leslie Gore rehearsing on stage. Diana Ross trying to apply make up in a crammed dressing room. Bits of madcap business with The Miracles running out of The Knickerbocker Hotel and crowding into a cab. There's also Jan and Dean, riding in motorcycles and, yes, skate boarding around Sunset Boulevard, shot with kooky camera angles. Much of this work should be credited to Vilis Lapenieks, whose credit would be unknown without director Steve Binder's commentary.

As for the music, mixed feelings as I shuffle towards senior citizenship. I like some of Chuck Berry's songs, but the guy himself always struck me as kind of creepy, even before I leaned about his scandalous past. Gerry and the Pacemakers were were never quite good enough to be Beatles wannabes. There's no electricity until The Miracles show up, with Marv Tarplin standing by on bass. As far as I'm concerned, "Mickey's Monkey" is still an infectious delight.

It's been over ten years since I read David Ritz's biography of Marvin Gaye. Was he battling demons behind that expressive smile even then? Every shot of Gaye seems to indicate that he's quite happy to be in Santa Monica, backed up by The Blossoms. This was before the really great Motown songs that would follow, but "Stubborn Kind of Fellow" and "Hitch Hike" indicate the themes of many of Gaye's songs, which could be said to be about idealized love, or romantic longings, fueled by persistence, and perhaps a form of masochism. It's no stretch to imagine the guy who will "hitch hike around the world" for that one perfect woman, is also the same guy who remains the devoted lover in a song recorded the following year, "Ain't That Peculiar".

I use to have a crush on Lesley Gore. I wanted to let her know that even though I was five years younger than her, I wouldn't break her heart the way Johnny did in "It's My Party". Years later, Lesley Gore outed herself in The Village Voice, and I keep thinking maybe in her heart of hearts, Judy and Johnny would have switched roles. I still like "It's My Party" and "Maybe I Know", although the latter song has the kind of lyrics that would raise eyebrows, "Maybe I know that he's been cheating, but what can I do?". On a more personal level, Lesley Gore was not the first lesbian I would fall in love with.

The Barbarians, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, The Rolling Stones? Once upon a time I liked them in varying degrees. The high point of The Beach Boys is when the camera moves away from Mike Love to concentrate on Brian Wilson singing "Surfer Girl". The Supremes were on their way to becoming Motown's biggest act, with the camera focusing on Diana Ross's teeth and eyes, looking more scary than sexy.

On the other hand, time has been on the side of James Brown. You want classical music? You want a great theatrical performance that Laurence Olivier could only dream about? The only thing better than watching James Brown (and the Famous Flames) perform "Out of Sight" is his following that with "Prisoner of Love" and "Please, Please, Please". Nobody can drop hard on their knees like James Brown and seem like they mean it. The consolation of his flunky, the flinging down of the jacket, even the man himself thinks this is his best filmed performance. In the close ups, streams of sweat are visible after the first song.

Keep you eyes open for a glimpse of Jack Nitzsche, conducting the house band that would include Glen Campbell and a short haired Leon Russell. Dancer Terri Garr is most visible at about the thirty-six minute mark. The dancers are sometimes distracting, and the production uses the same kind of setup seen on television's Shindig and Hullabaloo. The commentary track helpfully points out that the spectacularly endowed woman dancing on stage in a bikini is Joy Ciro, who was a performer on the television show Where the Action is. Toni Basil was the assistant choreographer, while documentarian Kent MacKenzie lent a hand in the editing. One of the more interesting bits of information was that the theme song, "Here They Come (From All Over the World)" was written by Steve Barri and Phil (later P.F.) Sloan when they were still in high school. A little fact checking indicates that Sloan and Barri were already out of high school in 1964. Their song could have used a little fact checking. Is there still anyone who thinks The Rolling Stones are from Liverpool? The musicians were hardly from "all over the world" for that matter, but when you were an American teenager in 1964, the musicians were from the parts of the world that mattered.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM | Comments (2)

March 23, 2010

Dora-heita

Kon Ichikawa - 2000
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

One of the ironies of Akira Kurosawa's legacy is that as a filmmaker, his name has become more commercially viable in death. Following the expensive failure of Dodes'ka-den in 1970, financing for Kurosawa's films largely came from Russia, Hollywood and France. After Kurosawa's death came the production of older screenplays, as well as remakes of The Hidden Fortress and Sanjuro, and a television series based on Seven Samurai. That Dora-heita was made almost thirty years after it was written is indication of the change of perception towards someone who was virtually written off by the Japanese film industry.

The selling point has been the screenplay, a collaboration of Kurosawa with well regarded peers Kon Ichikawa, Keisuke Kinoshita and Masakaki Kobayashi. The four created a production company, in theory a tantalizing idea, but one that might remind film students with long memories of a similar attempt by William Wyler, George Stevens and Frank Capra, where precarious financing trumped artistic autonomy. At the time Dora-heita was filmed, Ichikawa outlived his friends and colloborators, remaining an active filmmaker until 2006, a career lasting sixty years.

Based on a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto, the elements that link this film to Kurosawa's other films are readily identifiable. A magistrate is sent to an outlying fief, the subject of much corruption. The son of a lord, Koheita has the reputation of being more interested in playing around than fulfilling the duties of a samurai. His nickname can be interpreted as being a play on the Japanese word for alley cat. Koheita shows up to meet with the local feudal lords, where he promptly pulls rank, and lets one and all know that he plans to clean up the small town that is a haven for prostitution, gambling and smuggling. Koheita proves more than capable of handling all opponents, save for the woman Kosei, who single-mindedly is determined to bring Koheita back with her to Edo. Koheita plays three crime bosses against each other, and proves himself unbeatable using his wits as well as his sword.

Some of the machinations of the plot should remind some of Yojimbo and Sanjuro, with Toshiro Mufune as the lone samurai who comes to town. It is fairly easy to imagine Tatsuya Nakadai in the title role had the film been made in the early Seventies. Even had the film been made when originally intended, it could well have been derided as old fashioned with nary a suggestion of sex, and bloodshed limited to a small cut on someone's forehead. That Dora-heita was made thirty years later may have been in the film's favor, allowing the work to be judged on its own merits rather than in comparison with the genre work of the time. Koji Yakusho, an actor better known for his association with a different Kurosawa, Kyoshi, works up his voice to speak in the commanding timbre of the chambara of the past.

The greater emphasis on humor can be attributed to Ichikawa. There is also the thematic element of the playing of perceived identities, as in The Burmese Harp and An Actor's Revenge. Like previous Ichikawa films, the characters often undermine themselves with their hubris. Still, with the combined talents that wrote the screenplay, Dora-heita can not be called a great film, though it is certainly an entertaining film. Then again, with all of the expectations that would have been placed on them, Ichikawa, Kurosawa and company more than deserved the opportunity to relax and make some lightweight fun.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:53 AM

March 16, 2010

Death Traps

Sha ji chong chong
Wang Tian-lin - 1960
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Death Traps is the Hong Kong version of one of those dames in distress movies that came out of Hollywood that were produced in the early to mid-Fifties, and usually starred Joan Crawford. The film might be as good an introduction as any to Helen Li Mei, one of the top Hong Kong stars of the mid Fifties through early Sixties. Unlike fellow Cathay Studios star Grace Chang, Li was just a few years older, and by Hong Kong standards, more openly sexual. The film isn't quite Hong Kong noir, but has some stylish touches by veteran Wang Tian-lin, with a screenplay by future martial arts auteur Chang Cheh.

Li plays the part of Jieyun, a woman of apparently independent means, and an alcoholic. Her boyfriend, Shouli, played by the stalwart Roy Chiao reminds her that he plans to marry of woman with good habits, and certainly not one who gets drunk every night. A date at a nightclub turns out badly when Shouli is seen sitting with the ditsy Meigui. Drunk and jealous, Li steps out with the gangster, Fatso Cai. Knowing Cai's underworld connections, Jieyun requests that Cai set up a hit on the woman that Shouli will marry, going so far as to write a check for Cai's services. Waking up the next day, resolved to stay sober, Jieyun finds herself engaged to Shouli, and unable to contact Cai.

There are amusing scenes of accidents and encounters with strangers strike Jieyun as evidence that someone is after Meigui, and then herself, with a flower pot nearly falling on the chatty friend, and Jieyun panicked when fireworks explode while she exits the church following her wedding. There's a mysterious young punk, one of Cai's crew who is seen earlier, who coincidentally is on the same ferry when Jieyun and Shouli go on their honeymoon in Macau. Even stranger is that this man, with his ever present cocked hat and sunglasses, is also staying at the same hotel.

Among the echos of Hollywood films is the opening shot with Helen Li driving wildly drunk on a dark road, a nod to The Bad and the Beautiful. Wang's occasional use of overhead shots recalls a favored touch of Robert Aldrich. Within the context of a thriller, Li's (dubbed) singing to Chiao might recall Doris Day in The Man who Knew too Much. Wang makes nice use of dolly shots moving in on close ups of Li as well as utilizing framing devices within some of the shots. There is also one shot of Li's cheongsam dress rip on top that is relatively innocent by current standards, but no doubt inflamed many of Li's admirers fifty years ago. While one of the weaker aspects of the film was addressed by Chang Cheh in an interview, regarding the unrealistic treatment of alcoholism, it's the kind of flaw that doesn't get in the way of this very entertaining film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:26 AM | Comments (2)

March 11, 2010

Precious: Base on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

Lee Daniels - 2009
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

I will say this for Lee Daniels - he has the courage of his convictions. Unfortunately his convictions are sometimes as outsized and as wrong headed as his title character. I shied away from seeing Precious due the arguments regarding the film's merits. Also, I had seen Daniels' debut film, Shadowboxer. That first film was about a hit man and hit woman doing one last job. Aside from the quasi-incestuous relationship between the older woman and the younger man, there was a mobster who seemed unable to collect too many large, ornate, crucifixes, and a shady doctor with a crack head nurse named Precious. Cuba Gooding, Jr. will appear in just about anything, but how Helen Mirren was convinced to star might better remain a mystery. By the end of Shadowboxer I was convinced that Lee Daniels had watched early Tarantino, and a Guy Ritchie film or two, and said to himself, "I can top that!". Unlike his proclaimed sources of inspiration, John Waters and Pedro Almodovar, Lee Daniels has trouble realizing when he needs to reign in the excess.

Part of my problem with Precious is that Daniels seems to love using technique for no apparent reason. Maybe using an overlapping dissolve shot of Gabourey Sidibe walking down a class room hallway looks arty, but it seemed like a very random choice. The characters have some intense conversations and the camera tentatively zooms in and out as if simply framing the characters and holding the camera still for a few seconds was not an option. There is a pretty shot of the city reflected in a puddle. The scene of Precious and her mother, Mary, watching Vittorio De Sica's Two Women, subtitled on television, was unbelievable, especially as Mary's television diet seemed to consist solely of game shows. The De Sica film Precious reminded me of was After the Fox which includes a film within the film, a parody of neo-realism. Precious frequently seemed like a parody of someone's idea of an art film.

Just like a poet is hidden inside the inarticulate Precious Jones, there was a potentially better film that could have been made from Geoffrey Fletcher's screenplay. The best parts of the film seem like the least forced, especially in the alternative classroom, and the exchanges between the teacher with the unlikely name of Blu Rain, and the other students. Perhaps one reason why the scenes in the classroom work is because Paula Patton's performance as the teacher who coaxes Precious out of her shell is not the stunt casting as is the case for Mariah Carey, Lennie Kravitz or Mo'Nique. Of the young women in Patton's class, Xosha Roquemore as the overly self confident Joann and Amina Robinson as the sexually ambiguous Jermaine might be the ones to watch in the future.

There's a memorable smash cut in Russ Meyer's Beyond the Valley of the Dolls where the shot of a screaming woman about to have an abortion is followed by the close up of an egg dropping into a frying pan. It's a simultaneously gross and funny moment. Lee Daniels, unlike Meyer, doesn't know when to let up, and is like a child furiously writing in big block letters with lots of underlining to make sure we don't miss his point. We get lots of big close ups of eyes, of pots of some awful stew on a stove, and assorted flotsam and jetsam and body parts that must have looked pleasing to Daniel's eye, but don't add up to anything meaningful either in the narrative or in anything resembling a coherent or cohesive visual style. It's not a good sign when I watch a movie about life in Harlem and start to wish it had been directed by white liberals Martin Ritt or Ralph Nelson. This was not the intention of anyone involved with the film, yet the ultimate effect is a work that can be interpreted as supporting the worst stereotypes of urban African-Americans. Especially after an Academy Award nomination, I doubt that Lee Daniels will restrict himself to the role of producer. But I also believe, Precious could have been a better film had the direction been handed over to someone like Julie Dash or even Angela Robinson. A good filmmaker knows that sometimes a stationary camera and confidence in your material and players is all you really need.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:35 AM | Comments (5)

March 09, 2010

Japan at War

Japan's Longest Day/Nihon no ichiban nagai hi
Kihachi Okamoto - 1967

Battle of Okinawa/Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen
Kihachi Okamoto - 1971

Father of the Kamikaze/A kessen kokutai
Kosaku Yamashita - 1974

Black Rain/Kuroi Ame
Shohei Imamura - 1989
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

AnimEigo has taken four older titles and repackaged them collectively. The idea is to give viewers more of an idea of World War II from a Japanese perspective. Two of the films though aren't war films in the traditional sense of being about men in battle, but about the events that took place at the close of the war, and the aftermath for one civilian family. While not an exact comparison, it would be as if a set Hollywood films about World War II included Mrs. Miniver and The Best Years of Our Lives.

Japan's Longest Day is comparable to The Longest Day only in the casting of what must have been every male star on the Toho Studios lot. The most famous name of course is Toshiro Mifune, but there's also Tadashi Shimura and Chishu Ryu, as well as Tatsuya Nakadai providing the narration. Although the history regarding the debates that proceeded the surrender is fascinating, as film it gets a bit talky for the the first hour.

Where things really kick in is when a group of young officers decide that they would not only not surrender, but they would persuade the military staff to back their plan to extend the war. Whether or not these rebellious officers were the wild eyed fanatics that are presented in the film, it is amazing to learn that their obsession with continuing the war included burning down the home of the Prime Minister for being a traitor, and ransacking the offices of the Emperor in order to keep the recording of his surrender speech from being broadcast.

Most of the people are introduced with their titles, and some notes that are part of the supplement give added context to some of the references to other historical events or persons. On a purely cinematic level, what I liked best about Kihachi Okamoto's film was his use of close ups, whether of a pragmatic Mifune, a tearful Shimura, or several of the lesser known actors. Some of the more earnest pronouncements, such as Ryu's declaration that younger people should replace the aging government cabinet, or Mifune's exhortation to his junior officers to live to rebuild Japan bear the hallmark of screenplay writer Shinobu Hashimoto.

Battle of Okinawa is a more traditional type of war epic, alternating primarily between the officers' headquarters and fields of battle. The film is more interesting for its content than any cinematic concerns. What may be most alarming is learning about how the military forces and the civilian population were virtually placed in a position to be defeated by the numerically superior Allied forces, and the extent of suicide among both populations. Used as a symbol of innocence in time of war, there is small girl, perhaps no more than five years old, who is seen wandering from place to place, the lone survivor amidst the ruins, mud and corpses.

A streak of very dark humor also runs through the film, with such characters as a nurse's introduction to battle field surgery, which usually consists of sawing off injured legs, and the army barber, who provides comic relief. Tatsuya Nakadai and Tetsuro Tamba are the two officers who provide the main advice to Keiju Kobayashi. Nakadai portrays Hiromichi Yahara, who survived to write a book about the battle, and served as an advisor on the film.

There is a curious footnote to the film: Tamba and Nakadai nostalgically mention seeing a movie together, the American silent, The Blue Danube, by forgotten writer-director Paul Sloane. In doing some research, Sloane's last listed film, Feng ye qing was a Japanese production made in 1952, about an American soldier and a Japanese woman.

While it appears that Tora! Tora! Tora! has been used as a template, Father of the Kamekazi also seems to have been inspired by Patton. There are not one, but two scenes of soldiers being slapped. I had only scene one previous film by Kousaku Yamashita, the fast moving yakuza adventure, Red Peony Gambler starring the then very popular Junko Fuji. Clocking in at over three hours, Father of the Kamikaze is probably of greater interest for its presentation of historical events.

The idea of using suicide pilots apparently came from several sources, buy it was the naval officer, Onishi, who created the official group. Originally seen as a last ditch attempt to turn the tide of was back into Japan's favor, it became the chosen tactic, even after it became less effective. More so than Japan's Longest Night, the film helps explain the psychological trap that the military found itself in with the inability to accept surrender, as well as the general psychology of Japan of that time.

What worked best for me were some of the quieter moments, primarily Onishi with his wife examining a flower that only blossoms at night, and their reunion in bombed out Tokyo - the wife waiting at the ruins of their house with a pot of tea. There is also one remarkable scene with Onishi defiantly standing outside an air base while others hide from the strafing of U.S. planes.

I have written about Black Rain previously to coincide with that film's initial DVD release. Not only is Imamara's film the best in this set, Black Rain is still the best DVD release of a classic film in 2009, equal if not better than anything stamped with the label "Criterion Collection".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:40 AM | Comments (1)

March 04, 2010

Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters

2499 antapan krong muang
Nonzee Nimibutr - 1997
Audio Graphics Region 0 DVD

Often when discussing the "new wave" of narrative filmmaking in a certain country, there is discussion pointing to a handful of films that were released within a short time of each other. For the history of Thai film, there is the directorial debut of Nonzee Nimibutr, with a screenplay by Wisit Sasanatieng, that served as a catalyst for a decade of films that brought some serious attention to a country usually ignored in discussion of Asian cinema. While Nonzee's film was not the only "new wave" film of 1997, it set a new box office record for Thailand, having the kind of impact that Easy Rider created in Hollywood in 1969. Seen out of context, Dang Bireley might simply be dismissed as a derivative film that owes some of its verve to Martin Scorsese's Mean Street and John Woo's The Killers. It was this repackaging of Scorsese and Woo for a Thai audience that created such a commercial success that it paved the way for Nonzee to produce Wisit's debut feature, Tears of the Black Tiger as well as several other films by new Thai filmmakers.

Based on a true story, most of the film takes place in 1956, when the sixteen year old became a gang leader of considerable influence. The film is also about an identity shaped by outside sources. The son of a prostitute, Dang's last name is that of the orange soda that was popular at the time. Dang's home features photos of James Dean, and Dang wears a small photo of Dean around his neck. It is the mutual admiration for Dean that links Dang with his girlfriend, Paa. Elvis Presley also is present, in photographs as well as the soundtrack, with both original songs and a Thai cover band. There is one scene of Dang and his friends scuffling with each other and some girls, with Hound Dog on the soundtrack, that has as much energy and electricity as anything from Scorsese.

Dang's mother keeps hoping that her son will be ordained as a monk, and at least temporarily forgo his life of crime. Dang gets in deeper, first with a major street rumble that originated from a barely remembered high school rivalry, and then joining up with a former cop turned gangster who sets up a bar and casino near an air base used by U.S. military personnel. Adding to the trouble is the turf rivalry between the ex-cop, Chien, and another gangster, Tek. Chien points out that his casino is open to take both Thai and U.S currency, unlike Tek's joint, making his small operation part of Thailand's increasing attempts at accommodating globalization.

One the surface, Dang Bireley is a story of gangsters in Thailand in 1956. There is certainly some nostalgia in hearing the old Elvis songs, as well as getting a glimpse of the nightlife in what was then known as Phra Nakhon, with Paa act as a lounge singer. The film can also be read as discussion on modern Thai identity, and as as such is a self critical work. Just as Dang and his friends take on some of the style and attitude of Elvis Presley and James Dean in their mass media versions, Nonzee and Wisit have made use of elements from admired filmmakers from outside of Thailand, albeit more consciously then their characters. When Dang shoots a rival, the incident takes place in an outdoor movie theater while the film Nueng Tor Jed, a Thai gangster movie, is running on the screen. In this sense, the film can be understood as commenting on the Westernization of Thai identity concurrently in life and in popular culture. That Dang's ordination as a priest is constantly postpones, and would be done only to please Dang's mother, might be interpreted from a Buddhist standpoint of immutable karma and/or what Buddhist text describe as Dang being a person of incorrigible disbelief.

It is disappointing that this film is currently available on a somewhat sloppily produced DVD. The framing is not always consistent and may not be quite in proportion to the original aspect ratio. The English subtitles are embedded and occasionally not well translated. It's a disappointment that given the historical importance of Dang Bireley, that this virtually out of print DVD has only been made available in Thailand. Unfortunately, with the marketplace being the prime source for determining what films are available on DVD, Dang Bireley may be one of those films known better by reputation, while being unseen by those who might appreciate it the most.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM | Comments (1)

March 01, 2010

Juliet in Love

Jue lai yip yue leung saan ang
Wilson Yip - 2000
Mei Ah Entertainment Region 0 DVD

I didn't know much about Juliet in Love before seeing the DVD other than that a couple people I occasionally exchange notes with regarding Asian films thought it notable that it was listed among the top Hong Kong films of the past decade. This is the kind of film that defies any easy description. The story, as such, is centered around the type of characters who would be peripheral to many Hong Kong films, taking a roundabout route from loosely threaded beginning to heartbreaking end.

This Juliet is actually Judy, a restaurant hostess, who meets luckless gambler Jordan, who attempts to scam a reservation by posing as On Cheng, a local gangster. The real Cheng shows up, with the two men ready for what appears to be a showdown. Jordan later learns that it is Cheng who is owed a significant gambling debt. The three meet again at a hospital where Jordan and Judy end up babysitting the baby of Cheng's mistress. What Wilson Yip's film is really about is people brought together by food, money, bottled Coke, and sense of family.

As if to underline Judy's status as an outsider, she lives in a dilapidated old house a good distance from the high rises of Hong Kong, with her grandfather who seems to live for his Coca Cola. As the grandfather says, "No Coke, no hope". And on the surface it seems like one of those devices that filmmakers use to made a character adorably quirky, yet is arguably truthful to the little or big attachments or addictions that are embedded in daily existence. For Judy, a divorcee and breast cancer survivor, her job allows her to dress up, and be in a situation where she is control of others within her limited sphere. Jordan is content to drift along in life, letting events dictate his actions.

The act of sharing meals ties the characters together. The three main characters encounter each other at the formal, brightly lit restaurant where Judy serves as hostess. Jordan and Cheng meet again at a more informal neighborhood dive tucked away from a main thoroughfare. Jordan and Judy first share a meal at a street restaurant. Judy also feeds Jordan food from the restaurant where she works, food supposedly intended for her cola addicted grandfather who has the bed next to Jordan where both are hospitalized. Jordan and Judy also spend time simply trying to figure out how to mix the formula for Cheng's baby. Key is a scene of Jordan and Judy sharing a simply noodle meal at Judy's home, eyes gazing at each other, establishing an unstated mutual attraction.

There is one moment when Sandra Ng, with back to the camera, exposes her chest with the one missing breast, and asks Francis Ng if he still finds her attractive. Otherwise, Wilson Yip reveals Juliet's character and sense of self through visual clues - the dowdy clothes when she is not working, the open drawer with the mastectomy bra on top, as well as her general self effacing manner, whether with Jordan or the driving instructor who shyly pines for her.

Juliet in Love doesn't hide its low budget. There is a casualness to the flow of the story as well as the way many of the shots were composed. For several reasons, Juliet in Love has been an anomaly in Wilson Yip's filmography, mostly known for male centered action films.

In an interview that in part discusses Juliet in Love, Yip explains his reasons for making the film ambiguous at the end: "I think I share my feelings with the audience and after I lead the audience into the story, I don’t want the audience to think and feel exactly like I do. I was sharing a love feeling with the audience, I tried not to explain everything because I believe one has his own interpretation on different things." As to the more central theme of family: "Maybe because my dad passed away when I was 16. I love family, I like the feeling of having a close family. I also treasure friendship. Family can be gone all of a sudden, when you don't expect it. I didn’t realize this had an impact on me and on my movies and now I'm more aware of it."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM | Comments (2)

February 25, 2010

Geordie

Frank Launder - 1955
Wham! USA Region 1 DVD

It might be considered more appropriate to watch a film related to the Winter Olympics at this time. But thinking about films that had the Olympic games as the subject made me recall the first such film I had seen. What is personally significant for me about Geordie is also that it was one of the few times I had seen a movie on television that my father had selected. Geordie is also the first British film I had probably seen as well. Roughly fifty years, and broadcast in black and white, I vaguely recall that a small Scottish boy responded to a newspaper advertisement, and grew to be a very big man. Parts of the film involved discussion of the wearing of kilts.

The most interesting part of Geordie is the first half of the film, primarily the relationship between Geordie and Jean. The small boy takes the girl, slightly bigger than he is, to glance at an eagle's nest. The boy is too weak to pull himself up on the ledge, while the girl is able to observe the two baby eagles. Looking to challenge his perceived physical limitations, Geordie writes to Henry Samson, following a course of exercise through correspondence. Growing to the tallest and strongest man in his little village, Geordie is encouraged to take up the sport of hammer throwing, with abilities that catch the eye of the British Olympic committee. In the meantime, Geordie has an emotional tug of war with Jean who is skeptical of Geordie's athletic pursuits. Jean eventually becomes Geordie's most ardent supporter.

Raymond Durgnat cited Launder and Gilliat for "their consistent freshness and mischief, their cheerful lightly-and-slightly anarchism, their relaxed romping in and out of the system's little loopholes and bye-ways." The characters could be called quirky, although at the time the film was made, the favored word was eccentric. Chief among the villagers is Launder and Gilliat favorite Alastair Sims, known only as "The Laird", the wealthy, often distracted landowner whom Geordie and his father work for as gamekeepers. There is an affection for the characters as well, which is why the relationship between Geordie and Jean, both as children and as adults feels more palpable than many couplings of screen actors. The more interesting aspect of Geordie is the story about a group of people who are emotionally and physically tied to their little corner of Scotland.

Geordie is less interesting once the title character goes out into the bigger world. Released prior to the Olympic games held in Melbourne, Australia, in 1956, Geordie goes to the games on behalf of Great Britain. On the way, he meets his body building mentor, Henry Samson, amusingly played by the bushy eyebrowed Francis De Wolfe. There is also a female Olympian from Denmark who tries to make her own moves on the pure hearted young man from Scotland who pines for the girl back home. Some drama is attempted in Geordie's decision to wear his father's kilt over the objections of the Olympic committee.

One moment of filmmaking inventiveness is noteworthy. After retrieving his father's gun, left behind in a field after Geordie carries the ill man back home in the rain, Geordie stands over a hill overlooking his home, and hears the howl of a dog. While we hear the eulogy given inside the church during the funeral, what is shown is a panning shot of several dogs lounging outside of the church. The combination of the two shots is sweet, sad and gently satirical. There are some nicely composed individual shots by cinematographer Wilkie Cooper, but as several critics examining the films of Launder and Gilliat have concluded, the pair were craftsmen, not visual stylists. It could well be that it is because a film like Geordie has nothing more than the modest ambition to be entertaining that it also succeeds in being enduringly charming as well.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM | Comments (1)

February 23, 2010

Battle Girl: The Living Dead in Tokyo Bay

Batoru garu: Tokyo crisis wars
Kazuo Komizu - 1991
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

I don't have it in me to hate a movie that stars someone named Cutie Suzuki. And Battle Girl is a mildly enjoyable entry that doesn't take itself seriously but doesn't pointedly aim for laughs either. The best line comes from one of the zombie hunters, when he yells at the zombies who are getting ready to feast on his buddy, that they already eaten too much.

A meteorite has splashed down in Tokyo Bay, enshrouding the city in some kind of fog. The greater part of Tokyo has been cordoned off from the rest of Japan as well as the world to isolate the effects of the meteorite. The dead have turned into flesh eating zombies due to something called cosmo-amphetamine. A army officer in charge of the operations, Fujioka, has found a way to turn people into indestructible killers with the cosmo-amphetamine, and has a small army killing human survivors and zombies alike. It is up to K-Ko, the daughter of an army colonel, to foil Fujioka.

The most interesting aspect of Battle Girl was something Komizu brought to the script, in making Fujioka's actions motivated by a perverse sense of nationalism. To paraphrase a line from U.S. involvement in Viet-Nam, Fujioka's plan is to destroy Tokyo in order to save it. There's also a plan to take over the world. On the down side, the closer one examines Battle Girl, the less sense it makes on all but the most visceral level.

This is the first film I've seen by Kazuo Komizu. The interview that comes with the DVD is somewhat informative, but I feel like most of it was a squandered opportunity by the unidentified interviewer. The most interesting part was Komizu discussing his changes to the screenplay, and the physical limitations presented by the costumes worn by Suzuki and some of the other actors. Komizu identifies The Texas Chain Saw Massacre as a horror film that made a big impression on him, something that should have been examined more deeply by a more perceptive interviewer, considering that Komizu is famous, or infamous, for his own series of films that pushed boundaries regarding sex, violence and horror. Given the little bit of political weight Komizu provided to Battle Girl, I would have also wanted to know more about his early collaborations with Koji Wakamatsu, and in what ways that may have influenced Kozimu's work as a director.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:53 AM

February 18, 2010

The Goddess

Shen nu
Wu Yonggang - 1934
Hong Kong University Press

The following is the second of two entries for "For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon" hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Film and Farran Smith Nehme of Self Styled Siren.

Sometimes film preservation is decided by one person. In the case of The Goddess, we have the sole remaining print made available on DVD due to the efforts of Rlchard J. Meyer. Professor Meyer secured the 35mm print from the China Film Archive, take it Haghefilm in Amsterdam, where the print was restored as much as possible, and a digital conversion created. The Goddess is one of only two films starring Ruan Ling-Yu that is available on DVD. I had written about the other film, The Peach Girl about a year ago. The DVD comes with a short piece with Professor Meyer discussing the restoration of the film and the life of Ruan Ling-Yu, and composer Kevin Purrone on his musical choices for the piano score composed for the DVD.

The title is the slang term of the time given to Shanghai prostitutes. Ruan plays a streetwalker who is working to support herself and her baby son. Almost caught in a police raid on the streets, the woman who is never named, temporarily ducks into the closest open door. She finds herself in the small room of a very large man, though also a very small time gangster, known as "The Boss". First demanding sexual favor in exchange for hiding "The Goddess" from the police, "The Boss" blackmails "The Goddess" into surrendering her earnings to him to keep him from selling her son. "The Goddess" finds away to hide her money long enough to afford to send her growing son to school, with the hopes that he has greater opportunities in life.

Wu Yonggang's debut film, that he both wrote and directed, was socially conscious, dealing with class prejudices and people at the margins of Shanghai. There are several shots of the neon lights of Shanghai at night, promising a glamourous life that is beyond the reach of any of the characters. The overlapping traveling shots of the neon lights remind me of some of the later German silent films. It should be noted that Asian cinema was several years behind in converting from silent to sound filmmaking. Several times in The Goddess, Wu uses framing devices in his composition of several shots, often using windows, and later, the prison bars in the film's final scenes.

The DVD comes with a 94 page book by Professor Meyer that provides a biography of Ruan, a full list of her films, and a good sized biblography that covers writings on Ruan, Chinese cinema, and Shanghai in the 1930s. There are also a number of film stills and photographs of Ruan. All of this is especially recommended to those who only know of Ruan through her portrayal by Maggie Cheung and the few film excerpts that were in Stanley Kwan's Center Stage. There is much more to Wu Yonggang than what is listed at IMDb, as this more complete filmography will verify.

The two Ruan Ling-Yu DVDs are available through The San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

Click here to contribute to the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:36 AM | Comments (5)

February 16, 2010

The Penalty

Wallace Worsley - 1920
Kino International Region 1 DVD

The following is the first of two entries for "For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon" hosted by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Film and Farran Smith Nehme of Self Styled Siren.

Most people know Lon Chaney, if they know him at all, primarily from The Phantom of the Opera and possibly Hunchback of Notre Dame. In both films, Chaney is heavily disguised in make-up, in roles that helped secure his legend as "The Man of a Thousand Faces". Thanks to the National Film Preservation Foundation and the George Eastman House, one can also see The Penalty, significant primarily as Chaney's first starring feature. But even beyond that historical marker, The Penalty is a pretty good film.

Chaney plays the role of a man who had both of his legs amputated as a boy, due to the misjudgment of young Doctor Ferris. The man, Blizzard, has become a crime lord based in the Barbary Coast section of San Francisco. In addition to keeping a pulse on the city, and keeping control of criminal activity, Blizzard has employed a group of young women to make straw hats of a specific design. A secret government agency employs their female agent, Rose, to seek employment with Blizzard's hat factory in order to get the goods on this as yet untouchable felon. The incompetent Ferris has become a respected surgeon, with a daughter, Barbara, who is an aspiring artist. Spotting an ad in a newspaper, Blizzard becomes the model for Satan, the proposed sculpture that Barbara is planning to create to make her professional reputation. Blizzard is hoping to extract revenge on Barbara and her father. Rose gets close to Blizzard, being the one to operate the piano pedals while Blizzard tickles the ivories. Even though she finds out more about Blizzard and his operation, she starts having feelings for the sometimes cruel man. Blizzard, though, is having feelings for Barbara.

The Penalty does get a bit complicated in an hour and a half. There's more cross cutting than one might normally see with several simultaneous developments. Even when the film gets topical with mention of "Reds" and foreign workers, it's only the clothes that date the film, not the concerns of the characters. Without being lofty about it, there is the idea that artistic expression is the best means of expressing a person's humanity. The film also can be viewed as a companion piece to The Unknown, Tod Browning's film with Chaney as a circus performer who pretends to be armless. Made seven years later, there are similarities. In both films, the main character's relationship with women can be said to be peculiar, and the sexual component regarding missing arms or legs is hard to miss. Both The Penalty and The Unknown also have plots that hinge upon particularly horrific surgery.

Chaney made a name for himself here by strapping his legs together and walking on his knees. The procedure was so difficult that Chaney could only do his scenes in short takes. Even watching Chaney, perhaps more so with the knowledge of what he went through, is painful, though nothing short of amazing to witness his physical dexterity in handling stairs and even a chain ladder. What makes Lon Chaney great in this film is watching his creased faced, his curled lips, the way he arches his eye, his expressiveness. Even if Lon Chaney had tossed aside the make-up kit, he would still have been one of the great screen actors.

Also worth seeing is a character actor named James Mason as the drug addled thug, Frisco Pete. Along with Chaney, Mason feral, leering, criminal, has the kind of face that doesn't need dialogue to let us know what's on his mind. The film is notable for being transgressive for its time, with a drug addicted character, women who are clearly prostitutes, an on-screen murder, and nudity in the form of Barbara's female model. Part of the film was shot on location in San Francisco. The Penalty was one of four films Chaney made with director Worsley, The Hunchback of Notre Dame being the most famous. Ace of Hearts is available on DVD. One other collaboration of Worsley and Chaney, A Blind Bargain is considered permanently lost.

There are unimaginable penalties for losing more films. Click here to contribute to the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM | Comments (3)

February 11, 2010

East of Borneo

George Melford - 1931
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

For a couple of years, since I was aware that this film was available on DVD, I've decided that it was time to think outside the box, or at least outside of one of Joseph Cornell's boxes. Like a lot of people, what I knew of East of Borneo was Joseph Cornell's short film, Rose Hobart, where footage of the original film was reedited to eliminate virtually all but shots of the star, with a musical soundtrack added by Cornell. While Cornell's film was part of the required viewing at NYU, the source film was unknown, essentially dismissed as some inconsequential work that needn't be seen by serious film scholars.

East of Borneo definitely is in the category of "old movie" rather than "classic", but it has some points of interest. While Joseph Cornell has kept the name of Rose Hobart alive, the first thing a viewer will notice is that the actress was the top billed star of East of Borneo. The somewhat stern looking Hobart has her name above that of Charles Bickford, a better remembered actor who would usually be cast as the strict patriarch or father figure. Director George Melford is more rightly famed for his Spanish language version of Dracula, shot on Tod Browning's sets. A bit of aside here - both Melford's Dracula and East of Borneo feature Lupita Tovar.

I don't know if anyone on the production crew of East of Borneo could have found the actual country on a map. Certainly the film exploits the ignorance of the audience by cutting in nature footage of all sorts of animals that probably would not be found in the real Borneo. For all intents and purposes, Borneo is some kind of exotic jungle that's beyond the familiar confines of the United States or western Europe. In addition to the imaginative animal life, the Universal Pictures backlot version of Borneo is ethnically and culturally diverse as befitting a Hollywood production.

Rose Hobart plays Linda Randolph, a woman who shows up in Borneo in search of her husband, a doctor, played by Charles Bickford. The doctor is the permanent house guest of Hashim, Prince of Marudu. The doctor, taking the name of Allan Clark, is also perpetually sloshed, whiling away his time playing chess with his host. Hashim dresses like a maharaja in something like Wee Willie Winkie. Three hundred miles inland from the coast, Murudu is a remote paradise guarded by crocodiles, too close to an active volcano for Linda's comfort. When the jungle drums beat the news that a white woman is coming up the river, Allan gets nervous, while Hashim gets his hopes up for what is certain to be a beauty. The scene is basically just a couple of guys sitting at the chess board, drinking tea, but the dialogue has some wonderful howlers. First up is Clark's declaration. "White women are bad enough in their own environment, but when you get them into the jungle..." :Later, the Sorbonne (!) educated Hashim, ready to remind one and all of his superiority, mentions, "I am descended from the Aryan race, the oldest white race known to man." How civilized is Hashim? In this jungle paradise, formal evening wear is required for dinner.

There is one scene that may not have been intended as a visual joke, but given the context could be read as a sly commentary on the film's premise of white women in the jungle. While Linda is asleep, we see the shadow of a very large snake over her. Linda's good intentions come to nothing when she makes friends with a pet monkey, and sets it free, only to see it become a tiger's afternoon snack. Melford's film is a little slow at times, even with a running time of less than seventy-five minutes. The effect is almost as if the film crew was still trying to get the hang of making a talking picture. The obvious rear screen projection and the preposterous story give East of Borneo some antique charm. Whatever one thinks of East of Borneo, it should be studied along with Rose Hobart to compare not only what Joseph Cornell left in, and rearranged, but also what was left out.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:29 AM | Comments (2)

February 09, 2010

Bushido: The Cruel Code of the Samurai

Bushido zankoku monogatari
Tadashi Imai - 1963
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The title might suggest an action film full of sword fighting. That is not the case here. Bushido might more appropriately be called an anti-Samurai film. This is both in the subject and the telling of the story. Much of the action is off screen, and when swords are involved, more often it involves ritual suicide. Tadashi Imai's film is primarily a critique of the samurai code, with the implication that the same attitudes have remained in contemporary times. Additionally, the code of loyalty, whether to a lord, a country, or an employer, sets the stage for personal disaster.

Kinnosuke Nakamura portrays several generations of men in the Iikura family, from the beginning of the 17th Century through 1963. The current descendent of the family reflects on how his own actions may have destroyed his fiancee, and how he has acted in way that is similar to that of his ancestors. The film is also about the ebb and flow of fortunes of a family that is of samurai class, until nothing is left but the belief in a hierarchy that consistently proves itself unworthy of the respect demanded of others. When the Iikura men act in the name of loyalty and obedience, they set themselves up in a trap that inevitably destroys themselves and others.

The sequence that may cause a few eyebrows to be raised now, as it probably did back in 1963, involves homosexuality. The first glimpse is a scene of three men dancing for Lord Tambanokami Munemasa Hori. The lord then meets with a group of young students. One of the young men catches his eye. The student, Kyuraro Iikura, is invited to serve as the lord's page, but suspicions are confirmed when when of the women preparing young Iikura mentions "pretty boys" and tells the nervous young man that he is wanted in the bedroom. This scene is replayed in a sequence that follows. when wife of another generation's Iikura is beckoned to the bedroom by the descendant of Lord Hori. For Imai, the ruling classes indulge in decadence that has no sense of propriety, living out the famous saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It would be interesting to have read reviews of Bushido from when it was initially released. A contemporary of Akira Kurosawa's, Tadashi Imai is virtually unknown except for the most devoted of scholars of Japanese cinema. The film won the Golden Bear at the 1963 Berlin Film Festival, where the competition included Ralph Nelson's Lilies of the Field and Clive Donner's The Caretaker, and the judges included Jean-Pierre Melville and Karl Malden. The sex and violence that make up much of the story are mostly suggested, perhaps because Imai isn't interested in what would be the most exploitable aspects to his story, as much as the causes and effects of said actions. Even without any explicitness, Imai has a way of shocking the viewer simply by tossing aside any preconceptions regarding a bygone era. For Imai, the way of the the samurai has no love and honor, only regret and shame.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM

February 04, 2010

The Killer Inside Me (1976)

Burt Kennedy - 1976
Simitar Region 1 DVD

The disappointing news is that in spite of some of the talent involved, this version of The Killer Inside Me is not a very good adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel. In comparison with his other work, this is not even a decent Burt Kennedy film. Yes, Kennedy is best known for his westerns, but the guy has had some brief flings with contemporary criminals. Man in the Vault, which he wrote, and The Money Trap, which briefly reunited Glenn Ford with Rita Hayworth, suggested that Kennedy might have been able to recreate something resembling Thompson's universe of sociopaths and assorted marginal characters. The character of Bill Masters in the Kennedy penned Seven Men from Now, a darkly comic vision of ingratiating villainy, is not too distant from Thompson's creation, Lou Ford.

Maybe the film might have been better had Kennedy written the screenplay. What there is barely resembles the novel, moving the location from Texas to Montana, and barely touching the desperation of people caught in emotional as well as physical dead end existence. The characters are there, the richest man in town, his dumb son, and prostitute who attempts blackmail, and has a relationship with Ford that is sadomasochistic. What the film lacks is Jim Thompson's black little heart. Even in the 1970s when filmmakers were more prone to push boundaries previously unexplored before the revamped ratings code, Kennedy and company seem skittish about making a film that resembled Thompson's novel in either the dark humor or the violence.

The potential could have been there with the cast at hand. Stacy Keach, Susan Tyrell and Tisha Sterling are nowhere near as pretty as Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba or Kate Hudson in the same roles. Yet Kennedy's cast looks more like the kind of people one would find in a small town where there's not much going on. There is some pleasure at seeing character actors John Carradine, John Dehner, Keenan Wynn and Charles McGraw share screen time with Keach. Tyrell, especially, is right as a prostitute who is alluring without being conventionally attractive, a woman a man might find sexy given limited options, where everyone seems to know everyone else. There is something of a snapshot of Stacy Keach's career with the inclusion of Tyrell from the film that had suggested the most promise, Fat City, and Don Stroud, who would later costar with Keach in the "Mike Hammer" television series.

Where The Killer Inside Me really misses is in the character of Lou Ford. Thompson's dialogue could have been lifted verbatim. In the novel, Ford disguises his madness with an overly friendly manner, a good old boy who shovels folksiness and verbal cliches over friends and enemies alike. It might have been Steven King, writing about Thompson, that pointed out that Lou Ford's preferred method of murder was to bore you to death. What we have instead is a jettisoning of most of Thompson's back story on Ford, and a garden variety psycho. There is some heavy handed use of voices from the past, and flashbacks to indicate that Ford's madness stemmed from the sounds of a dripping faucet and the discovery of his mother in bed with another man.

This DVD version also suffers from not reproducing the original wide screen cinematography of the usually reliable William Fraker. The film in its current DVD state looks not too different from a movie made for television, minus some glimpses of nudity, as if Burt Kennedy had anticipated where his own career as a director was heading. After a reasonably successful ten year run beginning with Mail Order Bride and ending with his first boss, John Wayne, and The Train Robbers, Kennedy seems to have been exiled from theatrical films to television productions. 1976 saw Kennedy drummed of the set of Drum, the sequel to Mandingo, and having The Killer Inside Me, an independent production, get picked up by Warner Brothers only to be quietly dumped into a few theaters. This first filmed version of The Killer Inside Me had the book and the cast, and might have been a better film had the filmmakers not squandered the possibilities, and trusted their material.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:49 AM

February 01, 2010

Hot Summer

Heisser Sommer
Joachim Hasler - 1968
First Run Features Region 1 DVD

It's the middle of winter, so it's a perfect time to watch a beach party movie, albeit one made in East Germany. While other reviews mostly dwell on comparing Hot Summer, not inappropriately to the series of films that usually starred Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, the big difference is that these high school grads from behind the Iron Curtain seem much better educated than their American peers. One example is one of the couples that pairs up briefly discusses the alienating effect of the theater of Bertolt Brecht. Frankie and Annette's pals would most likely discuss Breck hair shampoo. In another scene, two would be lovers exchange lines from a poem that I have been unable to identify even after Googling a few lines. Those couple of moments help make Hot Summer markedly different from the equivalent stateside films, even something as aware of its own absurdity, like Beach Blanket Bingo. While these East German kids aren't all literary, such as in an Eric Rohmer film, these scenes indicate a higher regard both for the characters and the intended audience.

Joachim Hasler doesn't have much much more of an inventive visual eye than his American counterpart, William Asher, but there is one shot displaying some visual wit. While the kids are dancing in line, frugging along towards the left of the screen, a flock of ducks is waddling in the opposite direction. Some may want to read more into that shot than I would, and one of the themes of Hot Summer is emphasis on the group over the individual. I don't know if the idea for that shot was in the original script that Hasler wrote with Maurycy Janowski. Hasler the writer is not always served well by Hasler the director. I wouldn't expect another Richard Lester or John Boorman, but Hot Summer might have been a better film with someone who could have mimicked Sidney Furie's work with Cliff Richards.

Girls are from Berlin, boys are from Leipzig, and everyone meets up at a small town by the Baltic Sea. There's lots of flirting, but most of the sexual tension comes in the form of blonde and pretty Britt playing tall, brooding Wolf against blond and bland Kai. While Kai acts as group leader for the boys, the girls are led by Stupsi. Naturally, being away from the parents, everyone wants to have an adventure, and flaunt the rules, whether they are those from the dormitory where the girls stay, or the rules expected of good kids from good families. The political realities of the time are most obvious in a scene where the boys briefly visit a farm collective run by a sturdy group of women. There is also a boy , an aspiring lawyer, who quotes from various statutes, such as prior to a break-in of the girls' dorm room to scare them with a box of white mice. Politics in its most overt forms is not part of Hot Summer any more than it would in the Anglo-American films of that time. There is just enough rebellion and irresponsibility to satiate the teens, and leave the few adults in the film to conclude that the kids are alright.

What also surprised me about Hot Summer was the quality of the songs. Musically, this is a bit closer to jazz and Broadway than to rock. But where Hot Summer shines is in the lyrics. One of the songs, essentially Wolf's thoughts about Britt, suggest an attempt at a contemporary version of Brecht and Kurt Weil's narrative verse. One of best moments is when Frank Schobel as Kai, performs a solo piece with guitar, with lyrics that include, "Love makes quiet words resound". I didn't find out anything about lyricist Hans-Jurgen Degenhardt, except that four years after Hot Summer, he collaborated on an album with one of the film's soundtrack composers, Gerd Natschinski.

Toothy Chris Doerk was one of Hot Summer's two big musical stars, and for a time was married to Frank Schobel. The most interesting character is bad girl Britt, played by Regine Albrecht. Closer to the actual age of her character than much of the cast who were well into their twenties, Albrecht has continued a career as a much demand voice artist dubbing dubbing American films and television shows. Joachim Hasler's credit indicate a versatile filmmaker serving as director, writer and cinematographer, sometimes on the same film as here. Hasler's best known credit may be for working on the film released in the U.S. as The First Spaceship on Venus. Hot Summer has some technical shortcomings for those use to the audio quality of an American musical, some fairly non-existent choreography, and a poorly staged screen fight where everyone involved is clearly trying not to get injured. But there is also more to the film for those who want to look beyond the superficial comparisons of teen musical movies, suggesting a more in depth examination of the film by someone more knowledgeable in German culture, especially German poetry.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM

January 28, 2010

Fireball

Tarchon, Ta/Chon
Thanakorn Pongsuwan - 2009
Lionsgate Entertainment Region 1 DVD

As if to reinforce what I had written about Thai movies just a couple of days ago, the first Thai movie to get a U.S. DVD release is a genre film, marketed primarily for enthusiasts of films devoted to extreme martial arts. Essentially, the plot involves a man, or group of men, who are put in an arena to fight it out, usually with no rules, until the lone survivor is declared the winner. There may be a sub-plot involving one of the men being put in this situation reluctantly or by force, and having some kind of altruistic motivation for kicking the shit or murdering his opponent(s). That Lionsgate has brought Fireball for DVD for a specific audience was made clear by the trailers for their other releases, two of which had virtually the same plot and cast.

Tai is released from prison under mysterious circumstances when his bail is paid. He finds his twin brother, Tan, in a coma. Tan's girlfriend, Pang, says that Tan attributed his many injuries to a basketball game. Tai goes wandering around under the Bangkok highways to find several pickup basketball games. To make one of the teams, instead of shooting hoops, he has to demonstrate his fighting skill. Making everyone believe he is actually, Tan, Tai becomes involved with an undergound league that plays Fireball, a combination of basketball and muay thai boxing, run by a consortium of gangsters. Tai's goal is to find out who nearly killed his brother, and to make enough money to pay for an expensive operation.

Film critic Roger Garcia, who wrote about Fireball for its presentation at the Udine (Italy) Far East Film Festival last year, thought of the film as a political allegory about present day Thailand. I'm not certain about reading the film that deeply, there is a critique about professional sports. This is made clear in a scene when Den, a team owner, explains the game to a man unfamiliar with the rules of fireball. Two teams of five player compete to either make a basket, or have the last man standing, whichever comes first. Weapons such as knives and steel bars are allowed. While the game itself is designed to attract an audience of rabid fans, the real point of the game is a source of gambling revenue for the team owners. Team players are disposable, while the team owner reap the benefits of games that are sometimes fixed.

Thanakorn's decision to shoot most of the film using hand held cinematography works against the film. In theory, the idea was to give the games a greater sense of immediacy. In execution, there are too many moments when the action is unclear. One of the action scenes that works best is of two players fighting it out in the rain, probably because everything in the shots is highly digitized and sharply defined. Based on this film and his previous Demon Warriors, Thanakorn is at his best when he puts his trust in images that speak for themselves, without the unnecessary hyperventilation of guys chasing after the action with shaky camera work.

Where Fireball really worked best for me was off the court. The scenes of the players personal lives is also an examination of live along the edges of Bangkok. One of the players works selling televisions at a department store, another is a butcher. The butcher is also biracial, part black, allowing for a mention of Thai racism. One of the players is making money to pay rent for his mother, who lives in what is basically a glorified shack located under a highway. He is also hoping to pay for his little brother's education. Another player has an ongoing relationship with a prostitute. Somewhere deep in its heart, Fireball could have been the Thai equivalent to such film noir sports film like Robert Wise's The Set-Up. One of the film's four credited writers is Taweewat Wantha, writer-director of the hilariously anarchic S.A.R.S. Wars, making me wonder if Fireball might have had a more satirical edge in earlier stages of conception. A prequel that explains the origins of fireball during the Viet-Nam war is currently in the works. If Fireball is any indication, than Thanakorn is a filmmaker who needs to learn to explore his ideas and premises with more care, rather than losing the very aspects that would make for an interesting film to a barrage of furious technique.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:50 AM

January 26, 2010

The Spiritual World

Winyan lok kontai
Tharatap Thewsomboon - 2007
Innoform Media Region 3 DVD

Maybe I'm feeling unnecessarily defensive about some of the choices of films reviewed here, but there are factors to be considered as to why most of the Thai movies I write about are ghost stories. I've learned to enjoy this genre, probably as an outgrowth of living in Thailand for a few months, and watching Thai films that were made primarily for a Thai audience. But also, I am at the mercy of what is available to me as one who has to depend on Thai films with English subtitles. Since around 2006, Thai films have increasingly not had English subtitles on DVDs made for the local market, making some of us dependent on DVDs usually sourced from Malaysia or Hong Kong. Genre films are the most easily exportable to the pan-Asian market, as well as the international market. Recent films by Nonzee Nimibutr and Pen-Ek Ratanaruang are not available as English subtitled DVDs. Wisit Sasanatieng's most recent film was only available as an imported DVD. The only two U.S. based DVD labels that have Thai films with some small degree of consistency are Kino and Strand. A few more films are available through Magnet, primarily thanks to a deal with Tony Jaa's studio. There are Thai films I would love to see, and write about, but can not at this time. But I would hope there are those who have interest in the films I can cover for now.

Ming sees dead people. Not friendly dead people, like the ones Haley Joel Osment saw in The Sixth Sense, but troubled dead people who died violent deaths and have desiccated bodies. Ming's ability to see the dead spirits among the living has become known to those wanted her to communicate with their dearly departed relatives. Ming doesn't know why she has her special ability, only that she finds the dead to be more predictable than the living.

On a superficial level when films are prejudged based on genres and nationalities, The Spiritual World is another Thai ghost story. To enjoy this film may take the affection of this particular genre and its conventions, just as one watches a western or film noir, in part to watch how the film hews to certain elements, and also how the filmmaker chooses to make the film unique, either in the narrative, or with the visual style. The Spiritual World is hyper-styled, with digitized colors and a variety of flashy effects, as well as some snazzy camera work. Within the running time of a bit over an hour and a half, the various visual effects as an asset to the film, adding to the creepiness. There is less gore than is often seen, although based on varied reported running times, it appears that a scene involving an exposed brain that was included in the "making of" supplement was excised from this DVD version.

Ming is sought out by a young doctor, Budd, to find out the circumstances of the death of Budd's father. The story moves into an exploration of childhood trauma and repressed memories. While Ming is able to face most ghosts, it those of her own past that prove most difficult to face. Adding to the emotional toil are the asthma attacks that increase as she gets closer to the truth about the death of Budd's father.

Tharatap creates a visual correlation to the story about the truth revealed in increments. Often times the characters are seen partially visible, with doors, walls, or gates obscuring what the audience sees. The motif adds to the general anxiety because one is never entirely certain about either what is visible, or what is unseen. Certainly Tharatap had some specific expectations made of him regarding the story as the film was from Thailand's biggest studio, Sahamongkol, yet he seems to have been given freedom in the visual aspects to The Spiritual World. There is nothing that I can find in English on Tharatap Thewsomboon, nor is this film even listed with IMDb. Still, The Spiritual World is worth seeing for Tharatap's display of technical bravura, and hopefully an indication of better films to come.

The Spiritual World is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:24 AM

January 21, 2010

Rough Cut

Yeong-hwa-neun yeong-hwa-da
Jang Hun - 2008
Ikano Filem All Region DVD

Written and produced by Kim Ki-duk, but directed by Jang Hun, one needs to look a tad closer to see how Rough Cut resembles Kim's other films. There is none of the formalism usually associated with Kim's films. One might suspect that Rough Cut was made as a response to the critical responses regarding what is viewed as Kim's artistic or cultural pretensions, with a film that can be appreciated on a visceral level. What Rough Cut has in common with the films Kim has also directed is his recurring theme about identity.

The climatic fight near the end of Rough Cut is as exhilarating as anything I could imagine. The two main characters are fighting on a muddy beach. From a distance the two look almost the same, covered as they are from head to foot in mud, striking each other with increasingly dissipated strength, until the two men are seen floundering, with one finally staggering away from the scene of battle. I found it impossible not to think of the similar fight in Akira Kurosawa's Stray Dog.

Soo-ta is a popular actor mostly known for his roles in gangster movies. Soo-ta is also known for causing injury to other actors when the action gets too real. A chance meeting with real life gangster Gang-pae, the leader of a small gang, leads to an invitation for Gang-pae to play opposite Soo-ta when no other actor makes himself available. Gang-pae had previous had a small part in a movie. The film follows both the making of Soo-ta's latest crime drama, and collision between the respective characters lives on-screen and off. Rough Cut is as much about the images people think they are projecting to others, as much as the images projected in a movie theater.

In addition to the untitled film in progress, directed by a stocky auteur named Bong (no physical resemblance to the man who made The Host), there is also some footage from Lee Chang-dong's Green Fish, about a young man who joins a criminal gang. At the office of the film producer is a poster for I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' film about public and private identity. The original Korean title is translated as "A Movie is a Movie". The names of the two main characters translate as "star" and "gangster".

Aside from the handful of references to other films, Kim and Jang don't bother with the homages or name checks to be found with Godard or Tarantino. Of more concern is the concept of honesty to oneself and others. Soo-ta insists that his screen fights with Gang-pae be as real as possible, only to find himself discovering that he might not be capable of dealing with that kind of reality. Likewise, Gang-pae learns that creating illusion is physically demanding, comparing himself to a racehorse. One of the funnier moments is when the gangsters observing Gang-pae at work play at being screen actors, hitting each other in slow motion. Rough Cut is also about trust lost and gained, and a movie that, like real life, might not follow the intended script.

Rough Cut is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM

January 19, 2010

Ghost House

Memory/Memory Rak Lon
Torphong Tankamhaeng - 2008
Innoform Media Region 3 DVD

The original Thai title translates as "Memory Haunted Love". Ghost House is more serious minded than the usual Thai ghost story. On the down side, is the common problem with too many commercial Thai films, of a script that is not as well thought out as it should be, with at least one major plot hole. On the plus side, there are a couple of good jolts. Just when you think Torphong has tipped his hand, the film goes into some unexpected places.

A psychiatrist, Krit, tries to evaluate a young girl, Pare. Pare claims to see a ghost which has physically bruised her. By police order, Krit sees Pare at her home when her mother, Ing-orn, refuses to let her outside of the house. While it helps propel the plot, we see that Krit has questionable standards of professionalism, watching a video of his first interview with Pare at home, with his wife who remarks that the girl would be about the same age as the daughter they would have had. Krit also is shown washing some kind of pill with liquor, when not regularly downing shots at his favorite bar. Discretion is set aside when Krit embarks on an affair with increasingly unstable Ing-orn.

Torphong Tankamhaeng directed the often very funny Seven Days to Leave My Wife. That he's made two very different kinds of films about people with marital problems might raise a question or two. Setting aside whether young Pare has actually seen a ghost, or is transposing a fantasy to mask a more disturbing reality, it is the principle adults in Ghost House who are deeply troubled by their respective pasts from which there is no escape. Ing-orn and Pare have left Bangkok for Chiang Mai in an unsuccessful bid for a quiet, anonymous life. Krit shows compassion for his patients, no matter how dangerous, yet has no feelings for his wife. Ing-orn claims to be protecting her daughter from accusations of being crazy from her ghost sightings, yet the demand for privacy reveals that the mother is hiding some darker secrets.

The build up is slow, but picks up about midway. Krit begins to have have a ghostly sighting of his own, followed by a series of nightmares.

Ghost House is one of several films that Ananda Everingham made during an extremely busy two year stretch between 2007 and 2008. It's only when his back story is discussed that he may have been a few years to young for his role. Mai Charoenpura, a popular Thai star, plays the troubled mother and lover. The age discrepancy is never a topic in the film. Nicely photographed in yellow light, the love scene is not as erotic as intended. Sun Khumpirannon is more than adequate as the girl who insists she is terrorized by a ghost. One major problem with the DVD is that it was formatted in 4:3 ratio, with two shots noticeably squeezed to get both characters within the frame. At a time when DVDs usually have the film's original aspect ratio, or a close approximation, the choice to make Ghost House as a so-called full frame DVD is wrongheaded. What ever weakness there are in Ghost House, it is not without interest as an ambitious attempt to do something different with that staple of Thai cinema, the ghost story.

Ghost House is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM

January 15, 2010

K-20: Legend of the Mask

K-20: Kaijin niju menso den
Shimako Sato - 2008
Ikano Filem All Region DVD

In a recently published interview, New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis talks about how Hollywood executives don't believe women can direct action films. The very capable Kathryn Bigelow is considered the exception to the rule for now. Shimako Sato doesn't have the painterly eye of Bigelow, but K-20 is entertaining and affecting. Not that I expect Hollywood to call on Ms. Sato, but she did graduate from the London Film School, and her directorial debut was the British Tale of a Vampire, starring Julian Sands.

The origin of the film began with Edogawa Rampo, but reworked by novelist So Kitamura. The film takes place in a retro-futuristic Japan where World War II did not take place. The class structure of the 19th Century is more firmly entrenched with a group of people of immense wealth, and the working poor who live in shanty towns. At the demonstration of a device that can distribute electricity without wires, K-20 appears to create havoc. The literal translation of the title is "the fiend with twenty faces". When not in disguise, K-20 is dressed in black, and is known for his ability to leap in and out of the action, a combination acrobat and magician. A circus performer known for his skills at illusion, Heikichi Endo, is hired by a mysterious man to photograph the high class detective, Kogoro Akechi, with his fiancee, Yoko Hashiba, from a glass ceiling. Endo is mistaken for K-20 and the adventure begins.

While I liked the general retro-future aspects to the film, like the electrical gizmos that are controlled by giant typewriter keys, Sato's decision to change the time period of the story gnaws at me like some insatiable creature. My main problem is that the change from Rampo's 1930s to an alternative 1949 Japan raises, at least for me, many unanswered questions. The brief English language overview of the character Kogoro Akechi does nothing to explain why Sato would want to distance herself as much as possible from Rampo's novels. Ignoring the questions regarding World War II era Japan, the city of Teito seem more modern than the then contemporary Tokyo of, for example, Akira Kurosawa, with hardly a kimono in sight. There are some visual reminders of Tim Burton's Batman, and Sam Raimi's Spiderman, and the music was no doubt inspired by Danny Elman's work for both filmmakers. With the title character as a master of disguise, I more often thought of Raimi's Darkman, with unlikely, reluctant heroes forced by circumstances to mete out justice outside of the law.

Where Sato really has made the difference is in the character of Yoko. An heiress to a vast fortune created by her industrialist grandfather, Yoko turns out not to be a damsel in distress as she first seems. Yoko is by turns clumsy and naive, but also able to whip out a few karate moves, and most importantly fly a tiny helicopter. Depending on the company she keeps, Yoko is either shy or assertive, both the traditional Japanese young woman and the most modern.

In an interview with Mark Schilling, Sato has indicated the hope to make a sequel. What makes K-20 work is that Sato knows enough to aim her film primarily for a pan-Asian audience, with the casting of Takeshi Kaneshiro, and a story with an appropriate balance of fantasy and reality. K-20 may not be of interest to those who would see English speaking actors in films from the big studios. With a 20 million dollar budget that is a fraction of what's spent on a similar Hollywood film, Sato does well with the resources available. The budget may also explain why the film is heavier on exposition than on set pieces. Those parts of the film devoted to action and special effects are worth the wait. There are more than enough examples of women as on screen action heroes. K-20 adds to the argument that a woman can do just as well handling action behind the camera.

K-20: Legend of the Mask is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM

January 07, 2010

Ichi

Fumihiko Sori - 2008
Funimation Region 1 DVD

Beyond the gimmick of reimagining the venerable blind swordsman as a young woman, Ichi works because, beyond the blindness and the swordplay, the titular character has little resemblance to the source of inspiration. Shintaro Katsu's itinerant masseur was stocky, not handsome, and almost cartoonish when his ears twitched or his nostrils flared at the hint of nearby bad guys. Haruka Ayase's Ichi is much more reserved, playing her character with a consistent seriousness of purpose. Likewise, Fumihiko Sori plays it straight by having the men discuss Ichi's attractiveness, while not exploiting Ayase's beauty, unlike some of the recent manga inspired films with female action heroes.

Just as Zatoichi, as a blind person, was a masseur, one of the professions allowed him, Ichi is a musician, refered to as a goze. Kicked out of the house she was part of for allegedly seducing the husband of the house mistress, Ichi is seeking the man who may know about her father. Traveling with her is Toma, a would-be swordsman, hoping to be a bodyguard. The two come against Banki, a former samurai who now leads an army of bandits who are currently terrorizing a small resort town. The main characters are physically or psychologically damaged, with Toma incapable of drawing his sword after accidentally blinding his mother, and Banki hiding the damaged part of his burnt face, ready to stare down everyone with his one good eye. The story is also about Ichi's mistrust of a world she cannot see.

Fumihiko Sori is still a relatively new director, with a career that straddles both live action films and anime. His debut film, Ping Pong won attention and prizes with its story about two high school boys, and their unlikely friendship and rivalry. In ping pong, as in sword fighting, duels are won by skill and endurance. Sori does soup up the action with some hyper editing, but not so much to make the action incomprehensible. The flash backs explain just a little regarding Ichi's past, but may be deliberately vague assuming future sequels are in the works. Where Sori comes closest to anime is with the character of the leering, laughing Banki and his thugs, with their exaggerated faces reminiscent of the highly expressive faces sometimes seen In Japanese scrolls.

Something of a bonus, at least for me, is that the soundtrack was composed by Lisa Gerrard with Michael Edwards. The music will be familiar to anyone who has heard Dead Can Dance or Gerrard's solo albums, as well as her previous film work. Gerrard's music works well with the film, perhaps because Gerrard's vocals convey the constant sadness and sense of isolation of Ichi. It is this seriousness of purpose that makes Ichi a much better film than its premise might suggest. A lesser filmmaker might have gone for burlesque in more than one usage of that word. Even if Ichi turns out to be a one shot rather than a franchise, it is worth seeing for the way Sori and Ayase create a female action hero who does not cater to a juvenile male audience, but instead maintains dignity even in the worse situations.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)

January 05, 2010

Onimasa: A Japanese Godfather

Kiryuin Hanako no Shogai
Hideo Gosha - 1982
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Early in Onimasa, the young girl who has just be adopted by the neighborhood gangster boss, insists on going to school. Her new father declares that formal education just confuses girls, and instead takes her to a dog fight. The scene of the dog fight sums up the dog-eat-dog viewpoint of Masagoro Kiryuin, also known as Onimasa. That scene also reverberates in a later scene when Onimasa is referred to as the pet dog of a shady businessman who uses yakuza to enforce his will. In the final scene, the barking of the vicious Japanese mastiffs is heard during a duel when Onimasa faces a rival gang. The use of dogs in the film might be obvious, but Gosha keeps any symbolism here from being heavy handed.

The original Japanese title translates as "The Life of Hanako Kiryuin. The film is more about the adopted daughter, Matsue, and her relationship with her adopted family. Even though Tatsuya Nakadai is top billed, to approach this film as primarily being about the character in the internationally used title, or as a genre film, would be a mistake. There are no extended palms, or scenes of gambling, and the one time someone performs the ritual of amputating their pinky is offscreen. Like Gosha's film, The Geisha, Onimasa is based on a novel by Tomiko Miyao. The similarity between the two films, and presumably the novels, is a look at family structures based more on professional relationships, oaths of loyalty, or monetary exchange, and less on biology. The time period for Onimasa runs from 1918 to 1940, with women and children primarily valued as commodities. The concept of people as a form of commodity is also expressed when Onimasa decides to change how his family makes money, with some half-baked ideas for unionization, exploiting superficial understanding between labor and capital, following the request of his boss to curb two union organizers. The two strains of tension are between increasingly outmoded ways of life as Japan becomes more industrialized, and Matsue's torn loyalty between the parents that adopted her, and her own need to assert her independence and intellectual abilities. The original title of the film can be viewed as ironic, as Hanako's death provides the bookends for the main narrative, which is an extended flashback of Matsue's memory of her life with the Kiryuin family.

The various narrative threads primarily revolve around Onimasa's relationship with women. His wife, Uta, is the daughter of his boss, Suda. Onimasa has two mistresses that are kept in the house, who formally ask permission of Uta before going to bed with Onimasa. A third mistress, Otsura, is taken as a form of payment from a rival gang leader. Otsura is the mother of Hanaka, a pampered young woman neither as intelligent or as attractive as Matsue. Hanaka also reveals herself to be less filial towards her father than Matsue, in spite of Onimasa's periodic abusive behavior towards his adopted daughter. Onimasa's family makes most of its money through prostitution. A common theme in Gosha's films is how sex is used for barter.

Of the handful of Gosha films I have seen, Onimasa is the least stylized. To some extent, some of the first shots when the young Matsue is introduced to the Kiryuin house and its residents, are filmed from low angles suggesting the point of view of a child. Generally speaking, the use of dramatic camera angles or color is eschewed, with Gosha's more interested in a more straightforward, naturalistic story telling. The unusual sequence would be of Onimasa's wife, Uta remembering the courtship by Onimasa, the dream of a woman fast approaching death from typhus. While the final swordfight between rival yakuza is in itself not unusual, Gosha has the scene take place primarily on a bridge, amidst heavy wind, on a bridge illuminated by two swaying strings of lightbulbs.

Onimasa received a very limited release in the U.S. in 1985. From the New York Times' Vincent Canby: "When it's almost tolerable, Onimasa recalls the the kind of excesses over which Luchino Visconti triumphed in Rocco and His Brothers and 'The Damned, but which defeated him in Ludwig." Lest anyone get the wrong idea, unlike Visconti's films, the men in Gosha's films are all unabashedly heterosexual. As for excesses, Onimasa is quite restrained compared to Goyokin with its references in both style and content to Sergio Leone and Alfred Hitchcock. That there is limited English language material on both Hideo Gosha and Tomiko Miyao is enough to suggest that a more complete understanding of this film by non-Japanese critics is essential.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:25 AM | Comments (1)

December 22, 2009

Because of Her

Jiao wo ru he bu xiang ta
Yi Wen and Wang Tian-lin - 1963
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Because of Her was Hong Kong based Motion Picture and General Investment's attempt to answer back to rival Shaw Brothers, with a wide screen and color musical. The color is still there, preserved in an uneven fashion. The Cathay Scope is lost to an Academy ratio transfer which trims the image on all sides. This available version is still fairly entertaining, primarily on the strength of Grace Chang's charisma, and the extended musical numbers. The backstage story is the weak glue that holds the film together. That the DVD version is not in a widescreen aspect ratio is also important as this was the studio's first scope film.

Performer Meixin is in love with musician Ziping. Ziping has just found out that he can study music in Japan. He's about to tell Meixin that he's leaving Hong Kong, when one thing leads to another at Meixin's apartment. The beginning of a serious relationship in the eyes of the young woman turns out to have been a one night stand. Meixin picks herself up, and auditions for Shiming's musical troupe where she soon becomes the star attraction. Finding herself pregnant, Shiming marries Meixin. The two work professionally in a nightclub and join a new troupe when Ziping reappears. Of course there is more trouble for the three principle characters.

In the time honored tradition perfected by Busby Berkeley, the musical numbers take place on stages that extend beyond assumed physical limits. One of the extended numbers is devoted to international travel with stops in Japan, a generic South America, Malaysia, Venice, and the U.S. The U.S. segment is primarily a Charleston number with lyrics expressing admiration for then president John F. Kennedy. The other big musical segment has something to do with angels and demons, with Grace Chang alternating between what looks like a white choir robe, and a far sexier skin tight black outfit. The sets are especially spartan compared to what was used for Shaw Brothers musicals done during the same time. More successfully realized is Grace Chang and a group of chorus dancers doing the twist at a rehearsal studio, a naturalistic setting that does not call attention to any budgetary limitations.

According to Wang Tian-lin, he primarily directed the musical scenes, while Yi Wen did the dramatic scenes, although they were often both together on the set. Because of Her was Chang's first movie in about two years after getting married. In spite of the film being a hit, it still marked the closing of Chang's film career, with only three more films before retiring from the screen. Chang is also reunited with two of her leading men, Roy Chiao and Kelly Lai Chen. The film uses Chiao's solid physical presence as the more dependable of the men in Meixin's life. I don't know who thought Kelly Lai Chen could sing, but his monotone vocals are especially glaring, though fortunately drowned out by Chang during their duets. Without giving away the climatic finish, I can only say that it was dusted off from use from other backstage dramas, and is cliched to the point of unintended hilarity. The real tragedy is that Grace Chang should have been in a better film.

Because of Her is available individually or part of the "Grace Chang Collection" from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

December 21, 2009

The Ramen Girl

Robert Allan Ackerman - 2008
Image Region 1 DVD

I happened to watch The Ramen Girl on Saturday night. My excuse was primarily to see Kimiko Yo, who charmed me in Departures. In the film, she plays the wife of the chef who teaches Brittany Murphy who to cook ramen. To have seen a film one day, and read about the death of the star the next evening is disturbing.

I wasn't planning to write about the film because it's not the kind of film I would normally write about, and because, critically speaking, there are a few aspects about the film that don't work for me. The Ramen Girl is frankly a westerner's Oriental fantasy. There also a few gaps of logic, such as how Murphy's character could afford to stay in what seemed like an exceptionally large apartment when she was not making much money. On the other hand, if you don't have cable, and you don't feel like watching a film that requires simultaneous critical thinking, you could do worse than The Ramen Girl. It's not up there with Tampopo, or Like Water for Chocolate either on the level of filmmaking or the food, but consider it the equivalent of a lightly enjoyable snack between the heavier meals.

And if you decide to check out The Ramen Girl, it does have a Christmas scene that might be a little more poignant at this time.

Goodbye, Brittany. This one hurts. 32 is too fucking young.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM

December 17, 2009

Forever Yours

Qing shen si hai
Yi Wen - 1960
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Of the five DVDs in Panorama's "The Grace Chang Collection", Forever Yours is the only one that is not a musical. No singing or dancing of any kind is to be found here. Yi Wen's film is a melodrama, and a pretty good one at that, closer in spirit to the films of Delmar Daves and Douglas Sirk, if more modest in scope and expression. Even Chang's character is closer to her Hollywood counterparts not only in her vivaciousness, but her ability to be assertive when necessary.

At a beach with some friends, Yiling spots a man standing at the edge of a cliff. As it turns out, suicide might not be on his mind, but Weiming moves to firmer ground upon meeting the young woman. Yiling works as an office girl at a Pepsi plant, pursued by a very determined Weiming. Caught in the rain, the couple finds temporary shelter in a modern house overlooking a beach. For Weiming, the idea of being alone with Yiming is heaven.

This being a melodrama, Weiming has incurable tuberculosis which in no way is helped by his incessant smoking. Weiming's brother is an alcoholic, and the aunt and uncle who adopted the orphaned Yiling, don't approve of her relationship with Weiming. Even worse, Weiming is told by his doctor that marriage is virtually guaranteed to cut off years from his short life.

If Grace Chang portrays the modern woman of Hong Kong, Kelly Lai Chen might be said to embody a different kind of man as Weiming. There could be said to be an emotional gender switch, especially in a scene where Weiming breaks down and cries in front of Yiling. There is some gender play suggested in scenes where Liying is shown to have some position of authority at the bottling plant, while Weiming is an artist of sorts, with his miniature nature arrangements.

To what extent Forever Yours made an impression on Wong Kar-wai, it might be worth noting two connections with Wong's In the Mood for Love. Grace Chang is frequently seen in a cheongsam dress, as are several of the other women, particularly in the scene of Yiling and Weiming's wedding reception. Also, Kelly Lai Chen, who had virtually retired from acting at the young age of 35, has a cameo appearance in Wong's love letter to Hong Kong of the early Sixties.

Forever Yours is available individually or part of the "Grace Chang Collection" from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:34 AM

December 15, 2009

The June Bride

Liu yue xin niang
Tang Huang - 1960
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

The biggest problems with The June Bride are that it hardly makes use of Grace Chang's musical abilities, and is mostly a comedy. And as a comedy, The June Bride is not very funny. This is one of those films were misunderstanding tops misunderstanding until all is well at the end. I'm not familiar with Tang Huang, but his direction here is not distinguished. If David Bordwell compares frequent Chang director Yi Wen to Charles Walters, than Tang Huang might be likened, at least with this film, to Charles Barton, the director of several Abbott and Costello comedies, where there is no such thing as too much mugging for the camera.

Within the context of a sceenplay by Eileen Chang (no relation to the star), The June Bride is of some greater interest. There are also some autobiographical elements to be found in the film, suggesting that there may be greater value to be found in analyzing the film from the point of view of the author, rather than as a star vehicle. There are some elements of Hollywood screwball comedy with the father of the bride being a businessman who is always seeking investors for what is revealed to be a dummy company. Grace Chang's character, Danlin, is a young woman who refuses to marry the man she is engaged to as long as she believes that the marriage is primarily a means of financial advancement for her father, and that her fiance is actually in love with a less socially acceptable bar hostess.

There is a clunky, literal mindedness to the filming of the title song. We hear Grace Chang sing of waves, clouds, and we see the sun, and we see waves, clouds, and the sun. It isn't until about halfway through the film that there is a sense of play, with Grace Chang getting drunk unintentionally by Roy Chiao. Chiao plays a friend who puts the moves on Chang, confusing her with the fiance's bar hostess. In an overhead shot we see Chang staggering a bit in the living room of her fiance until she falls on a couch. A shot of the ceiling shows a moving double exposure of a chandelier. In a modified wedding dress, Danlin walks through a misty forest, encountering the three young men in her life, her fiance, his friend, and a musician who Danlin has met on the boat coming to Hong Kong. Each encounter is accompanied by three different styles of dance and music, with Danlin explaining to each man why they are not suitable suitors. I'm not sure if Tang was responsible for the couple of musical numbers in June Bride, but this one production number contrasts sharply with pedestrian visual style of the rest of the film. There is also an oddness to the fact that this film opens with silent white credits on a black screen, as if someone had not done some crucial post production work and there were no funds to make a correction. The three songs used in the film have lyrics by the more visually inventive director Yi Wen, which in itself suggests that he might have been originally scheduled to direct the film.

Based on the handful of Hong Kong musicals I've seen, I don't think Eileen Chang's feminism was unique as much as her feelings may have expressed similar ideas about women challenging Chinese tradition with more complexity and consistency. Within the Shaw Brothers musicals, the stories are generally about women who explore new ideas in social and physical mobility, usually to the chagrin of their elders. As the screen captures indicate, June Bride was filmed in standard ratio black and white, while the bigger budget Shaw Brothers productions were in widescreen and color. It might be an indication of Grace Chang's popularity that her fans supported her films in spite of the comparative cheapness of her studio, Motion Picture and General Investment. When the camera hits the streets, part of the action takes place at Victoria Peak, with tourists and children chasing after Roy Chiao and actress Ding Hao, a scene more chaotic than when Henry King filmed Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. For Grace Chang and Eileen Chang, love here is a many confused thing.

The June Bride is available individually or part of the "Grace Chang Collection" from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:58 AM

December 10, 2009

Spring Song

Qing chun er nu
Yi Wen - 1959
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

After the general exuberance of Mambo Girl, Spring Song is a staid affair. If the title of the first film emphasizes Grace Chang's dance moves, the second film's title is about her voice. Chang's character is nicknamed "Songbird" after an impromptu display of her talents. Spring Song seems to have been made in part to show off Chang's versatility, with her not only performing songs that were designed to advance the story and themes, but also there's Chinese Opera and a little bit of rock and roll, sung in English. In addition to making Grace Chang an entertainer who can appeal to multiple generations, Spring Song is couched in civic lessons of working hard, staying in school, and getting along with everyone else.

Chang plays Quing, the eldest daughter of a man of modest means, a freshman at nearby university. One of her roommates at the dormitory is Jingni, the daughter of a wealthy man. Their friendship turns into rivalry, with Quing's musical abilities competing with Jingni's athletic prowess. Also contrasted are the two boyfriends who may be mismatched, with Jingni going with the nonathletic Monkey, while Quing is pursued by the muscle bound Buffalo. One problem with the film is that Quing and Jingni are confused by others who remark that they look similar, even though slender Jeanette Lin Tsui, as Jingni, looks nothing like Chang. After a series of misunderstandings, Quing and Jingni are friends again, with Quing accidentally scoring the winning points in a basketball game, and Jingni featured in the school chorus.

Unlike Mambo Girl which used mirrors in a couple of key scenes, Yi Wen has the characters sometimes mirroring each others actions. The scene in the coffee house, as discussed by David Bordwell on his own site, is the high point of Spring Song. Roy Chiao (Buffalo) and Peter Chen Ho (Monkey) are both at the same coffee house. Neither is aware that the other is sitting in the opposite booth, nor is either aware that they are meeting each other's girlfriend. While not an exact match, both are adding cream and drinking their respective cups of coffee at the same time. While each is scanning the coffee house in anticipation of their dates, the camera pans from right to left, and later from left to right, mimicking the point of view of the two men. Part of the the frame image is lost in the transfer from film to DVD, but Yi ends the scene with the two confused men on opposite sides of the coffee house, after Quing and Jigni walk in, also confused and also angry. In the middle of the frame is another coffee house patron, visibly confused by what he has seen. Yi plays with the doubling of his characters in other scenes, or playing comic variations on each other. Near the end of the film, we see Quing's father and children, all with lollypops in their mouths, with the pan shot ending with Quing's father and Jingni's father, who is smoking a pipe.

There is a very light dialectic regarding westernization in Hong Kong, where Monkey convinces Buffalo that giving flowers to a woman is antithetical to Chinese culture. In the meantime, the college kids dance to "Que Sera, Sera" sung in Chinese. Chang and Chen go to a nightclub where we hear Bill Haley and the Comets singing "See You Later, Alligator", although the band performing in the film is seen from the chest down, in the signature plaid suits of the group they are impersonating. Quing's rock and roll moment comes with here singing the chorus line of Bill Hayley's song, much to the annoyance of Jingni. Spring Song is ultimately neither as comic or as tragic as Mambo Girl, but it does have a few moments to savor before the film is drowned by its more earnest intentions.

Spring Song is available individually or part of the "Grace Chang Collection" from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM

December 08, 2009

Mambo Girl

Man bo nu lang
Yi Wen - 1957
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Mambo Girl begins and ends with shots of Grace Chang's feet. Chang is mostly now remembered for her singing, primarily in as part of the soundtrack for films by Tsai Ming-liang. Most of the musical numbers in Mambo Girl are solo performances with Chang singing and dancing to an appreciative audience of her friends from school. This is the first film I've seen starring Chang, part of my own burgeoning interest in older Hong Kong cinema, as well as an interest in Hong Kong and Asian musicals.

Mambo Girl also has some links to the more polished wide screen musicals from the Shaw Brothers. A scene in a nightclub features Mona Fong, at the time a singer, several years before she transitioned to become an accomplished movie producer. Male lead, Peter Chen Ho starred in several Shaw Brothers musicals, although he was always overshadowed by the female stars.

Even if the film is no more accurate in reflecting its time any more that an MGM musical of the same era, it offers an interesting glimpse into Hong Kong popular culture, as well as a display of why Grace Chang was so popular. Chang plays Kailing, the most popular girl in school. On the eve of her 20th birthday, she discovers she has been adopted. With her sudden collapse of self-identity, Kailing seeks out her real parents. From the adoption agency, she learns her biological mother's name, and from the mother's former neighbor, is told that the woman might be working at a nightclub. Kailing finds a woman who might be her mother, indeed working at a nightclub, but as a washroom attendant. A school friend's mother, a widow, shares how one of Kailing's songs has been a source of encouragement, and in turn convinces Kailing to return to her adoptive parents. Kailing, her family and friends, all reunite for a big dance party on the night of Kailing's birthday.

As in something like Don Weis' Affairs of Dobie Gillis, too many of the "kids" look too old for the part. Unlike an MGM musical though, Mambo Girl does have some realism when Chang takes to the streets in search of her mother. The film offers a peak into the lives of Hong Kongers with a scene in a slum where Kailing's mother had formerly lived, as well as Kailing's solidly middle-class home on top of her adoptive father's toy store, and the mansion of her clearly more prosperous boyfriend. The two scenes in nightclubs provide an interesting contrast, between Mona Fong's conventional staging, and a scantily clad, non-Asian dancer whose appearance demonstrates some universality in exoticism and eroticism, from an Asian point of view. It is the crisscrossing of similarities and differences, of Chinese culture, Hong Kong life and a Hollywood genre, that makes Mambo Girl fascinating.

David Bordwell has some observations on director Yi Wen. Bordwell discusses the use of mirroring in Spring Song. More literally in Mambo Girl is the use of mirrors in two key scenes. When Kailing first discovers the truth about her birth, she sees herself in three reflections. In the scene where Kailing finds the woman who may be her mother, at one point we see not the women, but their reflection on a mirror. One might interpret these two scenes as the concrete idea of self-reflection as well as raising the question as to whether we see ourselves as others see us.

In his description of Mambo Girl on behalf of the Udine Film Festival, Simon Ko interprets the extended dance number at the end as showing "a household ruled by entertainment is in denial of reality". I would think that the song and dance would be the point, that the film was offering a bit of a respite for the Hong Kong audience, especially with Chang singing about overcoming adversity with perseverance and an optimistic attitude. That Mambo Girl would be popular with a teenage audience is no surprise as Kailing never has to fight for her right to party. Her adoptive father reminds the cranky woman next door that Kailing studies hard at school the rest of the week. In a culture where family harmony is prized, Mambo Girl offers the reassurances that the kids are alright.

Mambo Girl is available individually or part of the "Grace Chang Collection" from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM

December 03, 2009

If You are the One

Fei Cheng Wu Rao
Feng Xiaogang - 2008
Tai Seng Region 1 DVD

It's too bad that If You are the One was not considered exportable enough for a theatrical release in the U.S. The film, released in late December last year, turned out to be one of the biggest box office successes ever in China. Over 50 million dollars may seem like small change compared to U.S. figures, but among Chinese films, this is the equivalent to Gone with the Wind. More importantly, if You are the One might give Hollywood a clue about making a romantic comedy about adults, for adults.

Feng Xiaogang still indulges in images that can be called beautiful, but unlike The Banquet, with its martial arts retelling of Hamlet, Feng allows himself to wander through several remote locations in China and Japan, while never losing sight of concentrating on his main characters. Fen Qin has come up with an invention that has earned him two million dollars from a venture capitalist. With financial stability, he begins looking for a wife, online, of course. He has a date with an airline stewardess, XiaoXiao, also known as Smiley. Sparks fly, but they are the abrasive kind. Still Qin and Smiley can't quite let go of each other either, with mutual challenges and a chance reunion that brings them together, if incrementally.

This is not quite Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, but it isn't Sandra Bullock chasing the hot young actor du jour either. Even with his wealth, Qin appears as a blue collar guy with his omnipresent white baseball cap. Ge You is, by Hollywood standards, an unlikely person to be a top star, yet I would suspect part of his appeal for his main audience is that he looks like the Chinese everyman. Shu Qi as Smiley, the stewardess in love with a married man, continues to prove her abilities as an actress, and will no doubt continue to be a Chinese language film star even when her days of being eye candy have long past. It is this grounding in reality that helps give If You are the One its charm, unlike too many films that have their main characters so quirky that they could only exist in some filmmaker's imagination.

Feng wisely leaves the quirks to his minor characters. When one of Qin's prospective brides appears wearing what appears to be a tribal wedding costume, and explains that that the last leg of a multi-day journey to her home village requires a day's travel by ox cart, you believe her. Another prospective bride sells cemetery plots and berates Qin for his lack of filial piety. In an indication of a more open China, Qin and one of his dates, a Taiwanese woman, discuss the alternating viewpoints of whether mainland China "fell" or was "liberated". If You are the One takes place in a very contemporary China where the past, personal, historical and cultural, casts its shadow on the present.

Even with a running time of over two hours, the leisurely montages allow for some vicarious enjoyment of two of the film's key locations. First is the West Lake area of Hangzhou, with Qin riding a wooden riverboat, listening to the history of the area, and later contemplating the purchase of a large glass house by the lake. Much of the latter part of the film takes place with Qin and Smiley on a road trip through Hokkaido, in northern Japan. In reading Jason McGrath's brief overview of Feng's films, the travelogue aspects of If You are the One work as both a means of appealing to a pan-Asian audience that may travel more freely between different countries, as a way of setting aside long standing tensions between China and Japan, as well as comparing the more eternal, consistent beauty of nature with the transient relationships of human society based more often than not on external conditions. That Feng has made the most commercially Chinese film is no surprise based on his respect by Chinese audiences.

If You are the One seems to have originated from a different film that Feng was planning, a satire on China's nouveau rich. There is still some satire, though it is a minor part of the film, and an element that should still be easily enjoyed by anyone of any nationality. There are some parallels to be found with the screwball comedies of the 1930s in If You are the One, Feng's interest in making popular films in different genres likewise recalls the career of Howard Hawks. What remains in the films of both countries and eras is the persistence of romance and optimism, even in the face of economic uncertainty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:52 AM

December 01, 2009

Silence

Chinmoku
Masahiro Shinoda - 1971
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2 DVD

Even if Masahiro Shinoda had not made his version of Shusuko Endo's novel, I suspect that Martin Scorsese would have still wanted to film Silence. The novel, much more clearly than the film, is about a Portuguese priest who continually compares his own ordeals with that of Jesus during his last days. Even before it became trivialized as a bumper sticker, the question here, as in both the film and novel for The Last Temptation of Christ is, "what would Jesus do?". This is not intended as sarcasm but as the motivating question probably probed by Scorsese himself during his own contemplation of becoming a priest rather than a filmmaker.

Viewed as part of Shinoda's own significant career, Silence might be best understood as being part of his own examination of outsiders who choose exile or death in the name of an ideal. What I found interesting is that even though Endo collaborated on the screenplay with Shinoda, the film does not adhere as an exact filming of the book. Both the book and film are primarily about a priest who travels to Japan during the 17th Century, when Christianity is forbidden in that country, in part to spread the word, and also to find out what has happened to his predecessor who reportedly denounced Christianity. While the opening chapters chapters involving Father Rodrigues voyage from Portugal to Japan, and closing chapters from the diary of a Dutch sailor are easily missed, much of Endo's intended message is lost without Father Rodrigues's inner dialogues. While some of the books elements remain in the book, such as Rodrigues comparing a character to Judas for the monetary reward given to reporting Christians to the government authorities, what really interests Shinoda is the general concept of faith.

Even the the tall, gaunt, David Lampson was probably cast in part because of his resemblance to the traditional image of Jesus, Silence, both the book and film, can be understood as not simply being about Christianity or even endorsing one faith over the other. One of the murkier areas of Japanese history touched on in both the book and film was the problem with different factions, representing both different expressions of Christianity as well as different European countries, in conflict with each other both within and outside of Japan. Not touched on in the film, and only briefly mentioned in the novel, is the role of Buddhism, with its own history of conflicting sects, and persecution of those who did not support the state endorsed temples and priests. What the film also does not explain is why there was an attraction to Christianity primarily by poorest of the Japanese. The film version of Silence only partially conveys some of the more abstract ideas, about the meaning of faith, and how it is expressed.

Masahiro Shinoda

Shinoda is said to have been influenced by Japanese art in his color scheme that is primarily dark brown, black, brown and green. At one point, Father Rodrigues wears a red kimono during the time he is on the run until his capture. I can't explain the meaning, but during Rodrigues's capture, a character in a solid red kimono and mask appears, performing a kind of dance, while Rodrigues is dragged to prison. The other character to appear in red is a prostitute who takes up with Kichijiro, the man who revealed Rodrigues's presence to the authorities in exchange for silver pieces. Refused forgiveness by Rodrigues, Kichijiro requests that the prostitute spit on him in exchange for all of his money, and as a way to expiate his sins. It should be noted that in Japanese folklore, red symbolizes healing and purification.

In a very different way, Silence is as stylized as anything previously done by Shinoda. Instead of the highly theatrical sets of Double Suicide or the use of technique that might draw attention to itself, Shinoda uses the limited color scheme described above, and limited camera movement. At a time when most films were made in some kind of wide screen format, Silence returns to the old "Academy" ration of 1.33:1. I would have to dig out my copy of Sergei Eisenstein's film theory, but one might consider Shinoda's comment in regard to the square screen used in Double Suicide, "The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein said that God meant a square. And I dared to film the existence of God, in a calligraphy represented by that square." Silence is a film and novel exploring the perceived silence of God by one believer. Shinoda is in need of greater critical assessment of his overall career. At this point, most of the English language writing is devoted to individual films. My own understanding of Shinoda is based on only a portion of his total work. Silence might be understood as a Shinoda film as part of the filmmaker's own pursuit in discovering the visual equivalent to philosophical ideas.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:42 AM

November 23, 2009

"Tora-San" Collector's Set Volume 1

Tora-San, Our Lovable Tramp/Otoko Wa Tsurai Yo
Yoji Yamada - 1969

Tora-San's Cherished Mother/Zoku Otoku Wa Tsurai Yo
Yoji Yamada - 1969

Tora-San, His Tender Love/Otoku Wa Tsurai Yo: Futen No Tora
Azuma Morisaki - 1970

Tora-San's Grand Scheme/Shin Otoku Wa Tsurai Yo
Shunichi Kobayashi - 1970
all AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

In Stuart Galbraith's commentary that goes with the first "Tora-San" movie, he discusses Yoji Yamada's time as an Assistant Director. On the surface, it appeared that he wasn't working as hard as other A.D.s. Because of his ability to organize himself and others, Yamada was able to accomplish what he had to with seemingly less effort. This ability to be inconspicuous seems to have been a key to Yamada's career. Unlike his peers at Shochiku, such as Masahiro Shinoda and Nagisa Oshima, Yamada was primarily working on the "Tora-San" films, while Shinoda made the highly stylized Double Suicide and Boy had helped win Oshima international attention. Yamada's strategy seems to have been to establish himself as commercially viable filmmaker so that studio support of his more personal projects would be less of a gamble. Yamada was for many western viewers, definitely myself, an unknown director prior to the release of Twilight Samurai, released when Yamada was seventy-one years old. It is with the "Tora-San" films that one can identify Yamada honing his craft.

The series is about an itinerant salesman who usually sells cheap merchandise on the street. Returning to his old neighborhood near the Edo River in Tokyo, Tora temporarily lives with his beleaguered aunt and uncle who run a sweets shop, best described as a kind of fast food restaurant that specializes in dumplings. Tora's much younger sister, Sakura, helps out at the restaurant. As the formula usually goes, Tora gets into some kind of trouble, embarrasses himself and others, and often gets two lovers reconciled. Tora also meets an attractive woman who enjoys Tora's company and his good hearted efforts. The woman happens to have a boyfriend or fiance that Tora learns of at an inopportune time. Wiping away a couple of tears, Tora packs his bags and hits the road for a place to try his luck at sales, if not love.

If one is going to watch the series, I would recommend watching the films in chronological order. Also, I would recommend watching the first film twice, once with the complete subtitles, and the second time with the commentary. As in other AnimEigo DVDs, there is both subtitling that translates what the characters are saying, but also a second set up titles on the upper part of the screen that explains idiomatic expressions or historical references mentioned by those characters. This is especially important in the "Tora-San" films because of Tora's penchant to speak in nonsense verse, or use humor based on both written and spoken Japanese. Galbraith's commentary is worth listening to as a means of understanding why the "Tora-San" series was so popular, with 48 films made between 1969 and 1996, and how the films are rooted in the everyday life of the Japanese during the time the films were made. Even if one decides that they can't embrace Tora over the course of the series, the first DVD is recommended for those interested in the career of Yoji Yamada and/or Japanese film history in general.

Kiyoshi Atsumi portrayed Torajiro in every film until he died in 1996 at the age of 68. The closest American equivalent I can think of to Tora, in actions and attitude, would be the characters John Candy played for John Hughes, especially the titular Uncle Buck, and the traveling salesman in Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Tora likes to present himself as a yakuza, sometimes introducing himself with the open handed pose, although no one ever confuses him with a gangster or professional gambler. In addition to the nonsense verbiage are the malapropisms. Part of the comedy is based on Tora's inappropriate behavior and lack of sophistication. Having dinner at a small yakitori restaurant with one young lady, Tora jokes about their dinner being made from cat intestines. The humor is often broad, and Tora can be boorish. The attraction, at least for a Japanese audience, is that unlike most Japanese, Tora speech and actions were usually never subject to circumspection.

The films are usually described as comedies. While there are comic moments, with the wordplay, and some slapstick, some of the domestic arguments get serious. The altercations between Tora and Sakura, or Tora and his uncle, are as physical and as hurtful as would be seen in most dramas. Yamada might have been inspired by East of Eden when Tora discovers that the long unseen mother he idealized turns out to be the proprietress of a "love hotel". In addition to family discord, death of a young woman's father takes place in two of the films. In his notes for the set booklet, Alexander Jacoby is more accurate in calling the series bittersweet.

The booklet, which comes with notes by Keven Thomas, Donald Richie and Yamada, that comes with the set, reminded me that Atsumi was a good enough actor that among his earlier films is Bwana Toshi, by Susumi Hani, a filmmaker of the same generation as Yamada, in dire need of rediscovery. The series provided lifetime work not only for the star, but the supporting cast, including Chieko Baisho, who continued to act in Yamada's films outside of the "Tora-San" series, most recently in The Hidden Blade. Ozu mainstay, Chishu Ryu, appeared in forty-five of the films as the neighborhood Buddhist priest. One of many major names to appear in the course of the series, Akira Kurosawa regular Takashi Shimura, shows up briefly in the first film as the professor father of a determinedly blue collar son.

While Yamada wrote or cowrote the four films, he directed the first two in the series. Azuma Morisaki, cowriter of the first film, directed the third film. Shunichi Kobayashi, one of Yamada's other cowriters, directed the fourth film. Yamada returned to direct the rest of the series. One can identify certain visual consistencies with Yamada, especially several full shots of the street where much of the exterior action takes place. The discrepancies in the lives of the working poor with the middle class is something that would be part of the samurai trilogy made almost thirty years later. One can also see elements of the "Tora-San" films in Yamada's most recent film, Kabei, which chronicles the difficulties of a family's everyday existence during World War II, while the father is imprisoned by the Japanese military authorities. Whether one takes to the series is a matter of personal preference. For the serious film scholar, the first Tora-San film is worth studying because of the questions it raises regarding the universality of certain kinds of film narratives, and the limits of translation of written and verbal language. In terms of understanding the work of the still active Yoji Yamada, while the he did direct a handful of films prior to his creation of Tora-San, this is the film that marks the significant beginning of a long career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:01 AM

November 11, 2009

Battle of the Bulge

Ken Annakin - 1965
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

While Battle of the Bulge is the type of film that may be obvious for a Veteran's Day posting, it might not be the first choice for remembering Robert Ryan on what would have been his 100th birthday. Ryan, third billed, after Henry Fonda and Robert Shaw, has more of a glorified supporting role in this film. On could even say that Ryan cut a certain niche for himself as the Sixties progressed, playing the part of a no-nonsense officer in several war films, including The Dirty Dozen and Anzio. In Battle of the Bulge, Ryan's general is courted for approval by the unconventional, intuitive Henry Fonda and the traditional, by the book, Dana Andrews. It's nowhere near as entertaining as watching Fonda and Andrews vying for Joan Crawford's attention in Daisy Kenyon, although Ryan is almost as snappily dressed in his uniform.

My first time seeing Robert Ryan on screen was inThe Longest Day, where he was one of a hundred or so stars in Darryl Zanuck's pet project. Ken Annakin was one of several credited directors and briefly benefitted from his association with that film. I don't remember Ryan in The Longest Day, but he made a greater impression with a major role in a smaller film. Billy Budd, where he tormented innocent, angelic Terence Stamp, is one example of Ryan's ability to a truly nasty character. Looking back at the films I've seen starring Ryan, his good guys weren't always very good, while some of his bad guys relished making life miserable for others. In The Naked Spur, Ryan's sole motivation is to find ways to annoy James Stewart and chortle "do me" to Janet Leigh. It may have taken a committed liberal, as Ryan was off screen, to play a racist crook in Odds Against Tomorrow. A tribute to Robert Ryan might center on The Set-Up or On Dangerous Ground, both very worthy star turns. Ryan's appearance in Battle of the Bulge could best be cited as an example of how his authoritative presence was used as a kind of cinematic shorthand, a decision maker questioned neither by the other characters or the audience.

The real star of Battle of the Bulge isn't Fonda, Ryan or even Robert Shaw, but Cinerama. The film was shot using using a Panavision process that replaced the original synchronized three 35mm cameras, with the film playing first run in theaters that were set up for 70mm road show screenings. Too many shots seem to have been made with the memory of the earliest Cinerama movies in mind, with point of view shots from a speeding car, a train, and a small, diving airplane, all with the intention of making the theater audience feel like they are participants in the action. Ken Annakin's autobiography indicates that some of the footage was created at the behest of Cinerama, one of the production partners. Maybe those sequences attempting to visually overwhelm the viewer worked better on a large screen in a mammoth theater where audiences gazed up at the images of giant Panzer tanks and Robert Shaw's cold blue eyes.

Ken Annakin came to the film as an almost last minute replacement for Richard Fleischer. Due to a financial shortfall, Annakin also was dismissed from the film during the post-production phase, having little to do with the final edit. Even so, Battle of the Bulge fits in thematically with Annakin's other films, with Henry Fonda's officer who operates on intuition, hunches and observation, literally diving into adventure, even when he can't really explain what he's doing or why, similar to some of Annakin's other protagonists. Fonda's opposite, the German tank commander played by Robert Shaw, knows exactly what he is doing and why, and is chilling when he reveals his love of war, not in the pursuit of a military or political goal, but as a continuous venture. Charles Bronson does well as an infantry officer who stands his ground against Shaw. I'm not sure how much better Battle of the Bulge might have been had Annakin had greater input in the film's final edit. An old fashioned war epic at the time of release, some of more intimate scenes remain more impressive than the attempts at visual bombast and gimmickry.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

November 05, 2009

5 Against the House

A conventional reading of the title would be of "the house" being the casino that the five are attempting to rob. After watching the film, my feeling is that the house could well be the world at large, or at least the social conventions or expectations that cause the five to feel a sense of discomfort. Disregarding that the actors were too old for their roles, and that the planned heist is actually a small part of the narrative, 5 Against the House is really about an unarticulated sense of alienation in mid 1950s America.

In introducing the four friends, Al and Brick are veterans of the Korean conflict. Brick has saved Al's life at the expense of his own, causing Brick to have suffered what the screenplay suggests is a brain injury that has left Brick with a sometimes volatile temper. Ronnie comes from a wealthy family, and seems almost consumed with control both in action and theory. Roy is the joker who seems to mostly be part of the group for comic relief, the get along, go along kind of guy. The four attend "Mid-Western College", a campus so pastoral that it is almost no surprise that the guys are attracted to the dark, noisy allure of Reno and all that it seems to offer. When the four are introduced, Ronnie attempts to keep the others to a set schedule for their first night in Reno, and attempts to beat "the house" with his own calculated plan for gambling. That's Ronnie's scheme at beating the odds fails does nothing to deter himself or Roy and Brick from thinking that they can't rob the casino.

Even the seemingly most level headed of the four friends, Al, goes against the grain in his pursuit of Kay. A lounge singer, and a self-described "B girl" who is expected to socialize with the patrons of the club where she performs, there is enough to indicate that Kay might not be the wholesome girl next door. The age difference between Guy Madison and Kim Novak works against what is stated in the screenplay, but Kay lets it be known that Al is hardly the first college boy she's been involved with. Again, what is emphasized is the outsider status of the main characters.

The real star of 5 Against the House is Brian Keith as the shell shocked Brick. It is impossible not to also think of Tennessee Williams' character of the same name, with the play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof also premiering in 1955. This may be purely coincidental as Phil Karlson's film was released in June while the play opened just four months previously, in March. That Keith would play a character named Brick would probably be due to his solid build and red hair. This Brick, though, while physically imposing is revealed to be the most psychologically fragile, the one who causes the greatest damage, and elicits the greatest sympathy.

5 Against the House was one of four films directed by Phil Karlson that was released in 1955. Along with the titles of two of the other films, Hell's Island and Tight Spot, there is a continued suggestion of entrapment and desperation. The characters in 5 Against the House are in a situation of their own making, but it is one based on an intuitive feeling that there is something missing in lives of complacency and resignation to the implied conformity of the times. Brian Keith's Brick is the proxy for America's psychological wounds that will not be healed simply by being ignored or locked out of sight.

5 Against the House was the second billed Kim Novak's last B film, before Picnic firmly established her as one of Columbia Pictures top stars. There are a couple of shots in the film that indicate that even before Novak was truly a star, steps were taken to turn her into an icon. In the scene that introduces Kay, Novak is scene in silhouette in the nightclub where she sings. There is also a shot of Al, played by Guy Madison, entering Kay's dressing room, framed by one of Novak's extended legs. One of the best lines from the film could well be about Kim Novak as about Kay. When Kay informs Al that she is going to get out of her singing dress, smart alec Roy (Alvy Moore) comments that, "she makes that dress sing".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM | Comments (1)

October 31, 2009

Black Magic 2

Gou hun jiang tou
Ho Meng-Hua - 1976
Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

I started off October with a review of the first Black Magic movie. The second is not a sequel but another story about non-believers discovering the supernatural. The same cast is involved, but with different roles, but again the action takes place in Malaysia. This time, a doctor and his wife come from Hong Kong to find out why people have some mysterious, incurable ailments, usually involving oversized, throbbing sores, or worms visible beneath what appears to be translucent flesh. Later, the two doctors and their wives go to dinner, where the biggest dish is a featured dancer in a gold bikini. If you're in the mood for a tastefully crafted horror movie, this ain't it.

Black Magic 2 has everything that was great about Black Magic, only more. This means more gratuitous nudity, more gore, and more out and out nuttiness. The only thing Black Magic 2 has less of is anything resembling a logical story or even a dash of common sense. The hero of the film is so dense that it takes until near the end of the film to recognize that the villain is the same person photographed in what is purported to be a study of Asian black magic by "an American professor". One of the characters drives away, and no sooner than our hero steps out on the street, a cab appears, and we hear the immortal words, "Follow that car.".

The magician has an army of zombies, mostly beautiful women, but also a few guys capable of some basic kung fu, because, after all, this is a Shaw Brothers production. The zombies are kept under control with nails in their noggins. We're talking long nails about the size of acupuncture needles. When the nails are pulled out, the zombies go into instant decomposition mode, leaving an oozing mess. The magician also has a passion for milk. Not just your regular cow's milk from the grocery store, or even something more exotic, like organic goat's milk, but milk from youngish woman, from their nipples to his mouth. The unconventional dietary habits don't stop there. At one point, I had to ask myself if I had really just seen one man gulp down another guy's eyeballs.

The only films I can think of offhand that might be more over-the-top than Black Magic 2 might be the early films by Peter Jackson. If there wasn't so much sex and nudity, this film would be ideal for the space traveling wiseacres of "Mystery Science Theater". As it is, Ho packs a lot into an hour and a half, starting with a group of country girls, shedding their wraps for some skinny dipping, only to have one girl eaten by a very large crocodile, who in turn is caught by the good magician who has a dead chicken on a hook over the water. Don't bother seeing this film if you are sensitive to the misuse of dead animals. Whether intended or not, Black Magic 2 is as funny as it is gross. It might not be art, but it is undeniably entertaining.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (2)

October 22, 2009

Vengeance

Phairii phinaat paa mawrana
Preaw Sirisuwan - 2006
BCI Region 1 DVD

Vengeance is a handsomely produced bit of nonsense where the CGI creatures prove more charming than the actual people. There is some genre blending where the story about a group of cops in pursuit of some escaped criminals evolves into horror and fantasy, the deeper the characters run into the jungle, the film likewise becomes less realistic. Preaw, who both wrote and directed the film, has a narrative that relative to its genre almost makes sense, but seems especially enamored of envisioning all manner of fanged terror.

In its own bizarre way, Vengeance is about filial piety. The main criminal, Naso, is introduced as a young boy who escapes from the same jungle with his father, only to have his father die under mysterious circumstances. The main cop, Wut, is the son of a criminal from the same gang, who saw his father arrested. One of the pivotal characters is a Buddhist monk, addressed with the honorific title of "Father", who is in fact the father of Wut. The cop who arrested Wut's father has become Wut's father figure. There is also an older man who acts as the jungle guide, accompanied by his granddaughter, and a matriarchal head of a jungle clan. The main narrative opens with the capture of a member of Naso's gang, who has returned home, missing his wife and daughter. Naso's father has stolen a stone medallion that belongs to the jungle tribe, a device used to connect all of the characters at the film's conclusion.

But the best part of the film? I love those half alligator-half gecko creatures that climb rapidly down the green trees and leap upon their helpless victims, mouths open wide with hungry grins, ready to dine on human flesh. There is also a weird beauty to the vampire like creatures who spread their wings that resemble veiny leaves. The devil anaconda is mostly from the bigger is better school of fantasy creatures. The fruit tree maidens are a couple of attractive young women, seen bathing nude by moonlight, their long hair strategically placed over their breasts, allowing one foolish man the opportunity to come to a literal understanding of "la petite mort". The first scene of horror is of the tiger wasps, thousands of CGI creatures who make like tiny, flying piranas. Even the sky is ominous, with dark clouds swirling counter-clockwise. Preaw keeps upping the ante so that it's more interesting to see what kind of creatures will next appear to create mayhem, with any concern about the characters escaping the jungle evaporating at each sighting of a set of long, sharp teeth.

While the brief "Making of" documentary does not mention where Vengeance was shot, Preaw should get credit for making the film on location. The film takes place in a jungle area in northern Thailand, near the Burmese border. There is mention of Preaw's background in filming commercials in the documentary which might explain why the film seems more visually polished, with greater attention to the framing of the characters. The title more literally translates as "Evil Spirit of Revenge", and while it is easy to identify the evil spirits, it is less clear who is having their revenge. Curiously, the American DVD version is the true theatrical version, while the Thai DVD version has reportedly been censored for "family" audience watching at home. True to its mission of keeping young adults from watching movies with subtitles, Vengeance was pointlessly rated "R" by the MPAA even though it is less graphic than several Hollywood films anointed PG-13. Preaw almost tips over to the wrong side of pretentiousness on more than one occasion. Fortunately, a fervid imagination resulting in toothy, hungry demons makes Vengeance a twisty pleasure.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM

October 20, 2009

Black Rain

Kuroi Ame
Shohei Imamura - 1989
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

In discussing the challenges of translating Masuji Ibuse's novel from Japanese to English, John Bester writes, " . . . the author invariably balances the horrors he describes with the wry humor for which he has long been famous." Those words can also be applied to Shohei Imamura although the filmmaker's own wry humor is more subdued here, in what is probably the most serious, and saddest of his films. Black Rain is at times a very difficult film to watch as well as write about because of its subject matter which can not, nor should not be trivialized. It is also daunting to encourage anyone who has not seen Black Rain to view the DVD without it seeming like there is the force feeding of spinach, "because it's good for you". Bester also discusses how some critics complained that Ibuse "played down" the horrors of the bombing of Hiroshima and its aftermath. Some of Imamura's images are extremely disturbing, rightly so, without being exploitive, and yet I get the feeling that what I saw was less horrifying than what happened in real life.

Most of the film follows three survivors, a young woman, Yasuko, and her aunt and uncle, Shigeko and Shigematsu. The main narrative takes place in 1950 when the effects of radiation, even on those who had little immediate injury, we still being understood. The aunt and uncle are struggling to get Yasuko married, in spite of rumors regarding her health. The three live in a small, rural community, where in spite of the distance, everyone's lives are affected by World War II as well as the ongoing war in Korea. Ibuse's novel and Imamura's film are not simply about the destruction of a Japanese city, or the physical and psychological effects of the bombing, but how Japanese society underwent changes. Similar to what had happened in Great Britain after World War II, was a shift in Japanese class consciousness in Japan. Shigematsu and Shigeko hold on to their last vestiges of their aristocratic history. The one man that Yasuko almost marries, Yuichi, is a veteran suffering from what we now call Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Yuichi's mother apologizes for broaching the subject of marriage due to class difference. For Yasuko and Yuichi, it is two injured souls finding temporary solace with each other. Black Rain is about people seeking their own sense of place in an environment that is indifferent, if not hostile.

Even for those who have seen Black Rain in its original theatrical version should see the DVD because of one very significant extra. Imamura had written and filmed an ending, in color, different from the one in the novel. After second thoughts, that ending was scrapped in favor of ending the film as Ibuse had written. Imamura's ending follow Yasuko through 1967, divesting herself of all material comfort, becoming a mendicant, perpetually on pilgrimage from shrine to shrine. The scene is Imamura criticism about how survivors of radiation poison are often avoided because of their existence as reminders of the bombing. That Hiroshima was virtually destroyed by a bomb that has only a fraction of the destructiveness of current weapons has become a very abstract idea, underlined by Imamura with a shot of people selling what are claimed to be rooftop tiles from the bombing in front of the building that has served as a memorial, followed by a shot showing the memorial building as virtually lost amidst the modern, flourishing Hiroshima. Rather than being judgmental on which ending should have been used, the inclusion of the unused ending points to a discussion on the degree to which a filmmaker honors the literary author's original vision or asserts his own ideas.

The DVD also provides some insight into Imamura's working methods with interviews conducted by Imamura's son, the screenwriter Daisuke Tengan. Takashi Miike served as a Second Assistant Director on Black Rain, often running afoul of Imamura's darker moods during the course of making the film. Previously working on the film Zengen, working under Imamura also served as the springboard for Miike and Tengan's own collaborations, most famously with Audition. There is a brief interview with Yoshiko Tanaka who won several awards for her portrayal of Yasuko. In spite of the honors, it seems incomprehensible that Tanaka followed up her performance with roles in two "Godzilla" movies. There are also documentaries from World War II which illustrate the extent to which the Japanese people were demonized for an American audience, as well as further DVD notes that explain further some of the references used by characters in the movie.

Shohei Imamura's filmography has been inconsistently served on English subtitled DVDs. This past year has seen the recent release of three Sixties films available from Criterion, with Black Rain as the fourth title made available this current year. Between the readable colored subtitles, as well as occasional explanatory titles, plus the extras mentioned above, Imamura has been well served by AnimEigo. The first twelve minutes are graphic enough that I saw people leave the theater when I first saw Black Rain in 1989. At a time when various, sometimes risible ideas of horror exist as entertainment, an enactment of history serves as a reminder of horror of worst kind.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:30 AM | Comments (2)

October 15, 2009

Sigaw

Yam Laranas - 2004
Regal Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Yam Laranas bears the distinction of not only being the first Filipino filmmaker to have his film remade in a bigger budget English version, but to do the remake himself. That version, titled The Echo, has ended up going straight to DVD in the U.S., although it has enjoyed theatrical distribution elsewhere. Comparisons between the two version will be made by others in November while I'll be devoting my time to the Denver International Film Festival. For those who would rather not wait, or are simply in the mood for a horror film more interested in general creepiness rather than gore, Sigaw is a modestly effective film.

With apologies to James Whale, but this current century seems to see the creation of a sub-genre that might be called "the old, dark apartment". Basically it involves a character who moves into a decrepit apartment building most people would just as soon move out of. The apartment almost always features a big, ugly stain on the ceiling, faulty fixtures, and just enough noise to keep most people from sleeping at night. There may or may not be any other neighbors that one meets, but there seems to be someone or something that appears out of nowhere with the goal of make life more nerve wracking. There's almost always a mystery child. The ghosts that hang around the building do so because of some unresolved issue that causes them to repeat the actions that lead to their death. The ghosts are usually only seen by the person who had the misfortune of moving into the wrong apartment where tragedy took place years before.

Then again, maybe the story is besides the point, and that there is a sense of comfort for a genre film to follow a familiar arc. This might be comparable to a classic western that we watch anyways, always with the knowledge that Randolph Scott-John Wayne-Robert Mitchum will save the day, or at least make things more right than before he showed up. Yam Laranas basically took a familiar story, but what make Sigaw of interest is how he made use of some relatively spartan resources.

A young man who works at a restaurant, Marvin, has taken his entire small inheritance and bought an apartment in the ugliest building in Manila. His girlfriend, Pinky, tries to talk Marvin into moving out to a nicer place. Meanwhile, Marvin is kept awake at night by the neighbors, an angry cop who is convinced his wife is cheating on him and that he is not the father of their daughter. Things get more troublesome when the neighbors start appearing in Marvin's dreams.

This first version has a relatively small cast primarily using six actors. Laranas did the cinematography himself, with much of the action taking place deliberately in a sickly blue-green light. I've seen alleys better lit than the interior of the apartment. One of the most visually striking scenes is of the tightly wound spiral staircase, looking almost like the inside of a seashell. The film is one of several that paired Richard Gutierrez with Angel Locsin. While acting in Filipino films leans towards the melodramatic, Laranas is able to tone it down to a more realistic level. Without giving away spoilers, Locsin impressed me during the last third of the film in a very physically demanding scene when she thinks she is alone in an empty apartment. Laranas makes creative use of sound near the end of the film, which explains the echo referred to by the title.

For those interested, here is an interview with Yam Laranas.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:14 AM

October 13, 2009

Curse of February 29th

2 wol 29 il
Jong Jung-hun - 2006
Pathfinder Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Curse of February 29th is a modestly produced horror film that is effectively creepy in spite of the fact that a major plot twist is virtually given away in the opening scenes. The premise, of a serial killer returning from the dead every four years is something I'm surprised no other filmmaker has jumped on before with the Friday the 13th series, as well as various holiday based horror films. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only film by Jong Jung-hon, and it looks like he spent time studying such films as Psycho, Repulsion, and the first Nightmare on Elm Street, not so much mimicking the films in style as much creating a constant sense of unease with his female protagonist drifting in and out of her own shifting reality.

Ji-yeon is a young woman who works at night at a lonely tollbooth. During a blackout, a car stops, and she's handed a ticket smeared with blood from a woman unseen, except for her manicured hand. Ji-yeon is convinced that a woman, a convicted serial killer, has returned to claim more victims. The woman seems to have disappeared during a fire that claimed everyone else traveling in a van, the previous February 29th, at another tollbooth. The mystery woman is now going after other tollbooth employees and is trying to kill Ji-yeon. More strange is that the scarred face killer dresses exactly like Ji-yeon, appearing almost as a twin to the frightened young woman.

How much is intended, I can't be certain of, but there seems to be something of a feminist message in the film. Ji-yeon lives a very isolated existence. Her only friend is another young woman, Jong-sook, who also works at the tollbooth. Ji-yeon is also, while not unattractive, not particularly pretty, and comments to Jong-sook about how she considers her face common. None of the men that Ji-yeon encounters take her seriously, whether it's the unseen boss, the journalist who doodles on his notepad while Ji-yeon recounts her story, her doctor who provokes Ji-yeon's anxiety about February 29th, or the police detectives investigating who are suppose to protect her. Even perceived sources of protection such as bright lights in her apartment, or a crucifix ultimately tossed away, fail Ji-yeon.

There is an effective use of music and sound, with some discordant string plucking and even the shrieking violins that suggest Bernard Herrmann's Hitchcock scores without obvious imitation. Jong has some interesting use of color, particularly a tunnel bathed in red light, and a lighting store that is dominated by a golden hue. The film was written by Yoo Il-han who also two other films that were part of a four film series, "Suddenly One Day". The four films were produced for about $600, 000 and shot in HD format, initially with brief theatrical runs followed by television broadcast using newer directors and a cast of relative unknowns. The two other films written by Yoo have U.S. DVD titles of The Hidden Floor and My Blood Roomates with reviews at the valuable website Korean Film. If past history is any indication, Jong Jung-hun could be a stylist worth watching out for, or we may have at worst, a future Hollywood remake by lazy filmmakers for a lazier audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM

October 08, 2009

Coming Soon

Sopon Sukdapisit - 2008
Sarawak Media All Region DVD

There is a scene in Coming Soon that takes place in a room with the lights off, with the screen black. It's the kind of scene that you know is much more effective in a movie theater rather than viewed at home on DVD. Much of Coming Soon takes place in a Bangkok multiplex, similar to the one where I saw Alone, my last Thai movie seen in Thailand. One of the writers of Alone, Sopon Sukdapisit, made his directorial debut with Coming Soon, a horror movie about a horror movie. Based on my own experience watching ghost stories in Thai theaters, I could imagine what seeing Coming Soon might have been like at the Major Cineplex in Chiang Mai.

The film begins with a private screening of the horror film within the film, The Revengeful Spirit, a title that pretty much applies to every Thai ghost story made. The gruesome story about a mad old woman who kidnaps and blinds children she claims as her own, the woman, Chaba, is discovered and hanged by some very angry parents. During the running of The Revengeful Spirit the director has walked out. His girlfriend finds him, and he mentions editing the scene of the hanging. It is later that his reasons are revealed.

In the main narrative, a movie projectionist, Shane, has arranged to run The Revengeful Spirit again with coworker, Yod, in order to make a video pirate copy to be distributed prior to the films release date. Shane has some money trouble from a drug habit, and the pawning of the watch belonging to his girlfriend, Som. A couple of young thugs are the least of Shane's problems when he discovers his life repeats scenes in The Revengeful Spirit, and the ghost of Chaba visits him at home as well as the theater. Shane and Som discover that The Revengeful Spirit is indeed based on a true story, but the horror that they experience comes from the making of the film. Life and cinema merge for Shane. I don't know if Sopon Sukdapisit is familiar with Woody Allen, but one might call Coming Soon the Purple Rose of Cairo of Thai horror movies.

As far as Thai horror films go, Coming Soon is nowhere as good as Alone, or even Shutter or the funny and scary episode, Last Fright in 4bia. The characters in the films Sopon helped write, but did not direct, are more fully imagined. The most interesting character in Coming Soon is Chaba, both the woman seen in The Revengeful Spirit and the real life version that Shane and Som encounter. There is also a plot point that makes no sense, where the supposedly missing movie is never found in the most obvious place to look first. As in too many horror films, gore is equated with horror, with one of the images a direct lift from the Thai horror hit, Sick Nurses. Some of the credit, or blame, might go to co-writer Kongkiat Khomsiri. The scenes of The Revengeful Spirit have more in common with Kongkiat's two Art of the Devil entries than with Sopon's films with the Shutter team. There is one amusing scene where Shane finds himself repeating his actions, as if in an endless loop. One of the other effective scenes is of Shane's search for Yod's cell phone, heard, but not seen. Unlike many Thai horror films that aim for laughs as well as screams, Coming Soon goes for the jugular as soon as it begins. Coming Soon might have been a much better film had Sopon not relaxed his grip.

Coming Soon is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM

October 06, 2009

Tiyanaks

Mark Reyes - 2002
Regal Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There is a universality to Tiyanaks as a PG-13 style horror movie about dumb kids who do dumb things. This is the kind of film where it is almost a given that provided with just enough clues, the audience would rather not tread in the places where these fools rush in. But what makes the film almost worth a look is that this is a very culturally specific kind of horror movie.

As a Filipino horror movie, one might carp about the quality of the acting and the special effects. One might also complain that there's nothing particularly scary or even suspenseful. What is of interest is that the monsters are from Filipino mythology. Also, the film is steeped in Catholic belief that is different than what is shown in most western films. The action takes place during the weekend before Easter, with a group of college students off to a remote house for the holiday. Right before leaving, most of them have attended the class of Professor Earl, who is teaching a class on Filipino folk beliefs. The kids are taken by van, driven by a man who forgets which way to turn at the fork in the road. Of course he takes the wrong way, and the kids eventually find themselves at a mansion in the middle of a forest, home of a woman and her young boy. The woman reluctantly allows the kids to spend the night at her house. The kids, of course, leave the house at night in spite of the warning to stay inside, looking for food who knows where, after being told that they are about three hours away from the closest city.

One of the recurring lines stated by the mother is that, because it is Holy Week, "God is dead". As the subtitles seem to be reasonably well translated, I have to assume that this is a reflection of Filipino Catholic belief that is idiosyncratic to that country. While driving to the retreat, two men are seen, one with a thorn cross, both engaged in self flagellation. The tyanaks are fought off with the rubbing of a small personal cross, a knife hidden inside a wooden cross, the splashing of holy water and even a prayer of baptism when one of the little monsters is trying to drown one of the young women. The tiyanaks, at least the ones in this film, seem to reflect lingering beliefs in animism, both in their linking with the elements of fire, water and air, but in their shape shifting ability that helps them blend into their forest environment. Scariest of all is that the tiyanaks have more personality than their human victims.

Tiyanaks was reportedly a big hit for Filipino audiences. I'm not sure if the big draw was a more contemporary take on an old myth, or the popularity of some of the stars, especially Rica Paralejo. There may not be much of a compelling reason to bother with a film like Tiyanaks other than that it can serve as proof Asian horror films are in no way generic, and that a film made primarily for commercial gain can reveal much to the audience about the culture of its origin.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:37 AM | Comments (1)

October 01, 2009

Black Magic

Jiang tou
Ho Meng-Hua - 1975
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Black Magic is one of the few examples of the Shaw Brothers forays into horror. What may open a few eyes is actually the erotic content, with a fairly generous amount of nudity. What makes the film of interest are the various elements that one does not usually associate with the film company primarily known for its martial arts movies.

The black magic is seems to be similar to voodoo, with effigies, chickens, potions designed to make people fall in love, desecrated graves, and unintelligible chants. We are introduced to Master Shan who is hired by the spurned wife to create a death spell on her adulterous husband and his young mistress. Shan does his work with two dolls sized effigies, a female and one well endowed male, and a handful of long, sharp needles. A rival magician casts a spell that almost spells doom for Shan who disappears into a river.

Xu and Quming are a young couple in love. Xu's boss, the attractive young widow, Luo Yin, is in love with Xu. Sleazebag Liang is in love with Luo Yin. Luo Yin is so rich that she lives in a large mansion and drives an expensive sports car. What her money can't buy is Xu, or clothes that don't reveal visible panty lines. Liang hires Shan to cast a spell on Luo Yin, which works, but just for one night. Luo Yin pays Liang to introduce her to Shan, so he can cast a spell on Xu. Shan promises a spell that will work for one year as long as Luo Yin comes up with the money. As shown in an earlier scene, one of the fringe benefits of being a magician is to order attractive female clients to get naked, so it's no surprise that Shan has interests in Luo Yin that extend beyond the professional.

The cast is made up of Shaw Brothers contract players such as Ti Lung, Lily Li and Lo Lieh. This is the first film I've seen directed by Ho Meng-hua. Aside from the film being a shift in genres, what was unexpected was the use of electronically generated sounds as part of the soundtrack. The special effects used some of the same kind of time lapse photography used in old Universal horror movies, with faces melting into dust, and some colored bolts that rival magicians use against each other that looked cheaper than anything seen in a lesser science fiction film from Toho Studios. It should also be noted that while the film was made with Hong Kong talent, the shooting location was Malaysia. Part of it may have been to take advantage of a more wild environment than available in Hong Kong, but I suspect the filmmakers would consider contemporary Hong Kong too sophisticated a place to have practitioners of magic or those who believe in their spells. Most of the magic on screen belongs to Ku Feng as the evil magician. Whether threatening a potential victim, or leering at a female he hopes to seduce, it's never a subtle performance, but, like a good movie villains, Ku is the most fun to watch. Not only does Ku ham it up with his skull and sorcery, but he gets two racy scenes, one with the gorgeous Tien Ni. In the other scene, Ku cooks up one of his potions using a unique recipe to create a very unique version of that Asian staple, sticky rice.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM

September 28, 2009

Triangle

Tie Saam Gok
Tsui Hark, Ringo Lam and Johnny To - 2007
Magnolia Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I'm not sure of the English language title is the best choice for this film, but it does have double meaning being about three losers who plan a heist, and the three directors who made this film. Basically, three men who vaguely know each other discuss robbing a jewelry store in a small, downstairs bar. A man stumbles in, apparently drunk. Overhearing the men, he gives them his card which turns out to be a clue to a cache more valuable than they imagine. The stranger turns out to be a well known businessman who is reported dead according to television reports that next morning. The trio succeeds in digging the treasure, and of course this is when their trouble really begins.

While the three segments of Triangle segue into each other without interruption, the differing directorial styles are identifiable. The first part, by Tsui Hark, is something of a return to form after the more extravagant Seven Swords. A wonderful moment is when the thieves are moving the crate with the treasure on a portable table through the streets of Hong Kong. Turning their back to observe the police cars that they think are after them, the table starts rolling on its own down the street. The scene of the men chasing after the table is the stuff of silent classic comedy, but it's funny nonetheless. There is something about the way Tsui films the streets of Hong Kong, including areas recognizable from Johnny To's Sparrow, where he is much more in his element after the special effect laden efforts. That Sparrow might be recalled is also due to the casting of Simon Yam. Just wearing glasses is enough to make Yam almost unrecognizable as the seemingly weak husband of Kelly Lin. The relationship of Yam, Lin and her lover lover, played by George Lam, echoes the theme of the triangle. The three parts are notable for how some of the relationships shift in each segment.

The second part, directed by Ringo Lam, is the most different stylistically from To or Tsui, in that much of his segment is made of stationary shots. The emphasis is on Yam's discovery of his wife's infidelity, and that fellow thief, Louis Koo, might have acted as an informer. A fair amount of this segment also involves cell phone photography, with pictures of callers popping up, as well as the saved image of Yam's deceased first wife. There is a moment when Yam uses his phone to film Kelly Lin dancing by herself. Ringo Lam is hardly the first director one thinks of for romantic moments, but there is a moment of poignancy in between the shootings, stabbings and other forms of bodily harm.

Johnny To's segment is thematically familiar to Exiled, where the thieves have to decide if the monetary value of their treasure is as important as simply staying alive. To regular Lam Suet appears as an oddball character who seems to have made a career for himself, setting up exposed nails in boards to flatten the tires of drivers, and then selling tires at inflated prices. The main characters all gather for a final shootout that takes place in a dark field at night. What makes this segment interesting is that towards the end of the shootout, the film is virtually dialogue free.

The filmmakers used their own screenwriters for each segment, filming after viewing what had been done previously. Tsui did the first segment being the one to originate the story as well as inviting To and Lam to collaborate. Is anyone aware of any other film produced in this manner? There have been plenty of films with multiple directors making short films united by a common theme or genre. Triangle has somewhat more in common with the mini-series that has more than one director but usually those are unified by the same screenplay writer. In the long view, Triangle should probably be considered not much more than an intriguing footnote in the careers of its three directors. The place the film had a Cannes was rightly "a certain regard".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM | Comments (1)

September 24, 2009

The Beauty Remains

Mei ren yi jiu
Ann Hu - 2005
Emerging Pictures Region 1 DVD

Does anyone have updated information on Ann Hu? Not to be confused with Hong Kong's Ann Hui, Ann Hu was one of the first filmmakers from mainland China to study in the U.S., first business, and then film. Her debut film, Shadow Magic, about the introduction of film and filmmaking in China, was picked up by Sony Classics after playing at Sundance. There isn't much to be found online, with even a brief interview on Youtube providing little of substance. The Beauty Remains seems to have slipped under the radar, playing a couple of film festivals and a brief run in New York City.

Less than ninety minutes, Hu's film seems more epic, not because of what is seen, but because of the events not seen. Taking place in the city of Qing Dao in 1948, the story of sibling rivalry serves as the story of China on the verge of change as Mao's army takes over the entire country. A young woman, Fei, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy businessman, has been summoned to the mansion of her recently deceased father. The man's only other child, Ying, explains that Fei is to officially be part of the family again in accordance to her father's wishes. Fei vacillates between her identity as her mother's daughter, and her goal of studying medicine, and the reawakening of her envy of Ying, her childhood friend when both lived at the mansion. Fei finds that the real reason for Ying's sisterly affections is less than familial, giving Fei motivation to begin a relationship with Ying's lover, Huang.

Just as characters motivations are often veiled, and less than clear, Fei and Ying are often filmed in shadows, or with cloth of some kind draped, obscuring the action. When Fei spies on Ying and Huang making love, it is through the crack of an open door. There are also scenes where the action is washed out in bright light. The narrative is primarily based on Fei's memories, and Hu recreates how memories are often not clear at all, but hazy glimpses of the past.

Several critics I respect did not like The Beauty Remains. I can understand some of the fault finding. The influence of Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love is not hard to detect. On the other hand, if someone is going to imitate another filmmaker, think of everyone who tried to ape Scorsese or Tarantino. There were also complaints about Fei's off screen narration, especially a line, "I am drawn to her like a leaf falls to the ground", referring to her feelings about Ying. Most teenage girls, and probably some teenage boys, would find the words to be the height of poetic expression. Maybe I like The Beauty Remains because a little bit of creative lighting and use of color goes a long way with me.

What is also unusual about The Beauty Remains is that the screenplay was originally written in English, by Michael Eldridge and Beth Schacter, and translated to Mandarin. Much of the production crew was American talent. One of the producers, also appearing in a small role was Lisa Lu. It probably is less than coincidental that the actress playing Ying, Vivian Wu, had acted with Lu previously. Wu's filmography, including work in American television and forays into film production indicate that she has studied the pioneering Lisa Lu's career path. Zhou Xun is familiar to those who have watched more than a couple of Chinese movies in the past few years. Without seeming to put much effort, Zhou appears in The Beauty Remains about ten years younger than her actual age. Even though Ann Hu did not write the screenplay, The Beauty Remains is not too removed from her own experience growing up during China's Cultural Revolution: "That revolution made me realize that human weaknesses are so close to the surface. Human beings are such a complex, weak and confused group of people. Only the strongest can survive the temptation of evil."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:40 AM

September 22, 2009

My Beautiful Days

24
Im Jong-jae - 2002
YA Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Not a whole lot happens in My Beautiful Days. That could be why the film ultimately charmed me. There are a few dramatic moments, but the film is like a quiet pause for the most part, like the life of Joon, the main character, who is trying to figure out what he wants to do with his life. The original title refers to Joon's age. He is currently marking time by doing by doing his mandatory military service as a security officer at a government building. Joon's schedule is loose enough that he also works part-time at a laundry run by a man also named Joon. Other than showing up at work, Joon's existence is aimless.

Joon is conducting an affair with an older married woman, Mi-yeong, begins tentatively to pursue a former girlfriend, Eun-ji, after meeting her by chance, and attempts to pursue Eun-ji's younger sister, Hyun-ji. Joon is so uncertain about himself that his own feelings about the women are unclear. If Joon's feelings for Hyun are the strongest, it may be because she challenges Joon by virtually taking command of the time they spend together, watching a Bruce Lee movie, or running against each other. The one time Joon acts with real deliberation is on behalf of his boss, the laundry owner, bringing out the older man's passion for art that had been dormant for many years.

Joon has a recurring dream about a deer showing up at night at the parking lot of the office building where he works. The origin of the dream is in a story handed down by senior guards to their juniors, as one young man leaves, another tells the story, prefacing it with the disclaimer that the original guard, the source of the story, may not have really seen a deer. The symbolism of the dream in open to interpretation, or at least I would think that this is a deliberate choice on the part of the filmmaker. Joon is himself vague about his own direction in life that when he does finally have some sense of purpose, it come about by the actions taken by those in his life. The deer could possibly symbolize not only the elusiveness of love, but of dreams themselves.

Aside from the dream sequence, My Beautiful Days is a simple film, told without any dazzling techniques. There is nothing that I could find about Im except that this was his second film as a director. Better known are some of the cast, Bang Eun-jin who starred in the thriller 301, 302, and Kim Min-sun, who made her debut in Momento Mori. As best as I can tell, this is the only movie with the exquisitely beautiful Pyeon Eun-jeong. What happened, and why can't I find any information on her. Pyeon seems to have joined that small sorority of screen beauties that only appeared with perhaps just one role, like Sandra Majani in Patrice Leconte's Perfume of Yvonne. I'm not certain why the film was given the English title of My Beautiful Days, although the change from 24 was done to avoid confusion with the television series. Perhaps because the film just glides along without much demonstration of effort, there is a sense of satisfaction at the end of the film, similar to Joon's as he bicycles alone on the night time street.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:08 AM

September 17, 2009

My Mexican Shivah

Morirse esta en Hebreo
Alejandro Springall - 2007
Emerging Pictures Region 1 DVD

I finally saw Go for Zucker a couple of months ago. Like My Mexican Shivah the bulk of the film takes place during the shivah, the traditional Jewish one week mourning period, with family members uncomfortably getting together, and life disrupting all plans. Both films examine in varying degrees the differences in Jewish and national identities. What strikes me as somewhat odd is that, discounting Woody Allen's films which really don't announce themselves as being about Jewish identity as a subject, there has been nothing in contemporary Hollywood cinema that I can recall since Sidney Lumet's Bye Bye Braverman (1968) and Jan Kadar's The Angel Levine (1970) that was was not a period film. There seems to be a timidity over the past fifty years in the U.S. entertainment industry so that television as shifted from the obviousness of The Goldbergs to the Jewishness that dares not speak its name of Seinfeld, and even Adam Sandler, who I find funnier with his "Hanukkah Song" than most of his films, wastes an opportunity with Eight Crazy Nights. But I digress . . .

The cultural clash in My Mexican Shivah is presented in the opening scene with a formally dressed mariachi band playing Klezmer music for a group of actors dining on stage. The actors are all older people well into their Sixties or Seventies. One of the men, Moishe, dances exuberantly until he suddenly falls to the floor, dead. The majority of the film takes place within the apartment of his daughter, with relatives and friends crowding in to participate in the mourning ritual or show up briefly to pay their respects. Observing the activities are two angels, two grandfatherly types, that is, if your grandfather came from the shtetl, writing notes on Moishe's credits and debits, for eventual judgement on his life.

A chevreman, a funeral coordinator, tries to police the family in maintaining the rules, such as covering of pictures and mirrors, and what foods are eaten, as well as the prayer rituals. Helping are two maids unfamiliar with anyone or anything Jewish, learning the rules of Kosher food preparation and serving using colored plates. During the family prayers, one of the maids offers her own prayers to an altar that is a hodge podge of Mexican Catholic and Jewish artifacts, a large Star of David in close proximity to the Virgin Mary. Among the quests at the house is a non-observant man whose presence causes discomfort for some of the other men, as well as Moishe's Catholic mistress who conducts her own memorial service at a church. Like Go for Zucker, the main drama is between battling relatives, as well as two very different cousins who rediscover each other, and are mutually attracted, in spite and because of their differences.

Beyond whatever ethnic humor is to be gleaned from the title, as well as some of the events, in My Mexican Shivah, are some very universal concerns. Acting as a comic Greek chorus, the Yiddish conversing angels, Aleph and Bet frame the main theme of how one chooses to evaluate the life of another, how that person is to be remembered. Some of the conflicts are in regards to the spirit and letter of religious belief. At one point, the daughter who is acting as hostess for the shivah throws out some food because kosher laws were disregarded, calling mixed food and preparation a sin. One of the maids remarks that throwing out the food is a sin. Alejandro Springall has affection for all of the characters, so that one could say neither woman is wrong, even their reasons are at cross purposes. For the characters in My Mexican Shivah, it is whatever can be vaguely recognized as what is similar in purpose or need that brings people together that is of greater value than any real or imagined differences.

Although I was not familiar with Alejandro Springall's name, I found I was familiar with some of his other work with John Sayles and Guillermo del Toro. A name that might be more recognizable for some is that of The Klezmatics, the band that provides most of the music for the film. The basis for the film is a story by Ilan Stavans. The English language title suggests a one note joke, but the film is both sweeter, sadder, and more substantial.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:10 AM

September 15, 2009

Tone

Piak Poster - 1970
Phanthamitr Region 0 DVD

If one depended on IBDb for the history of world cinema, one would be unaware that Piak Poster was considered one of the top Thai filmmakers of the 1970s. Seen almost forty years after it was produced, Tone is might be of greater interest in its attempt to bridge some of the traditional elements of Thai movies with those of the Hollywood films of the same same time. Even if some of the uses of technique might have been considered cliche by western viewers, Tone is a display of how relatively quickly western popular culture became globalized.

The narrative is virtual Thai formula. Honest and simple youngish man, Tone, leaves his rural village and goes to Bangkok to study, I'm not making this up, Interior Decorating. Staying at the house of his new best friend, Aod, he soon locks horns with Aod's voluptuous and spoiled sister, Dang. Of course the two finally admit that they love each other. Dang realizes her feelings for Tone after he rescues her from the gangster who is cahoots with a lout from Tone's home village. There are a couple of attempted rapes, fist fights, and shootings, in short, the stuff that the local audience wanted, or at least what Thai producers assumed was expected by the audience.

The best part of Tone is the title sequence, of psychedelic, polarized colors, and the singing of Thailand's top rock band, The Impossibles. If they weren't singing in Thai, one could easily mistake them for a Bubblegum rock band, maybe not as good as The Monkees, but more credible than the 1910 Fruitgum Company. The song performed during the title sequence is about getting ready for summer vacation, while the second is about riding a train. If either song had been performed in English, it would have found a cozy home on Woodstock era AM radio. There is another band that performs in the film during a party sequence, doing reasonable high school band cover versions of The Beatles' "Birthday", Crazy Elephant's "Gimme Gimme Good Lovin'", and surprisingly well, Booker T and the MGs' "Time is Tight". Tone may not have been any more an accurate depiction of its era than anything released from American-International Pictures, but it shows Thai youth doing the hippy hippy shake shake in Nehru shirts, love beads and miniskirts.

More traditional Thai popular music comes in the form of the shy country girl, Kularb, a childhood friend of Tone. There is also a "love song" performed by the film's comic character, Song, a skinny, older guy missing his front teeth. Song has the good looks of Gabby Hayes combined with the machismo of Franklin Pangborn. In an effort to be timely, some of the characters refer to the Apollo moon landing that took place in August 1969, which took place a year prior to the release of Tone in Thailand. Piak also acknowledges the still new freedom accorded filmmakers after the U.S. initiated their rating system with a, ahem, brief shot of Aod's cheeks while getting caught putting on his tighty whities by sister Dang. It is a cleverly composed shot with Dang seen entering the room on the right side of the frame, while a mirrored image of Aod is on the left side. Whatever one might think of, comparing Tone with films released in the U.S. or Europe, the film was innovative enough to be a major hit during a time when Thai productions were not in favor with the home audience.

While it was never intentional, there is also what might be considered an inside joke in Tone. Conspicuous in its size is a poster in Dang's bedroom of Petula Clark in Francis Ford Coppola's Finian's Rainbow. Piak Poster served as the Second Unit Director for Chatrichalerm Yukol's epic, Suriyothai. When released in the U.S., Prince Chatri's film was presented by old UCLA pal, Francis Ford Coppola. Karma? Maybe. Coincidence? Maybe not.

The print quality is uneven, and the subtitles indicate a tenuous understanding of English, but for those interested, Tone is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:08 AM | Comments (1)

September 10, 2009

Wagon Master

John Ford - 1950
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Wagon Master is one of the handful of sound era John Ford films that I was never able to see until its DVD debut. Reputedly Ford's favorite of his own films, I don't think it's a great film, but it is certainly beautifully photographed in black and white, and often fun to watch. In addition to members of the John Ford stock company, there's the square dance, a moment to sing "Shall We Gather at the River", the bashful courtship between a young man more comfortable handling a gun or a wild horse, and a young woman who is in some ways more worldly. There is enough familiarity with Ford's work that parts of Wagon Master might appear to be by the numbers.

What I didn't expect was a higher level of violence. I can't think of any other Ford film that had a pre-title sequence. Wagon Master begins with the completion of a stick up by Uncle Shiloh and his gang. Upon exiting, a clerk attempts to shoot the fleeing outlaws. Wounded in the shoulder, Uncle Shiloh turns around and admonishes the would-be hero, "You shouldn't have done that", and his gang shoots back, ignoring pleas of mercy. Charles Kemper's Uncle Shiloh Clegg is one of Ford's best villains, knowing how to ingratiate himself with present or future victims. His sons have none of his charm, needing constant reigning in. Among the gang are Hank Worden, an idiot savant in The Searchers, but here, just an idiot, and James Arness, an oversized, hulking menace, just a year away from being cast by Howard Hawks as an intellectual carrot from outer space. In another scene, one of the Clegg sons is dragged away to be whipped after trying to rape a Navaho maiden. It's the kind of scene that might have been played with whipping off screen a few years earlier. As a smaller, more personal film, the more graphic violence may have been Ford's way of dealing with some of the changes taking place in Hollywood filmmaking following World War II, particularly those films dealing with contemporary characters.

By the same token, I can't recall a Ford film with as much sexual tension as Wagon Master. Not even Mogambo, with the teaming of Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly fighting over Clark Gable, comes close. There is something more palpable between the easy going Ben Johnson and the often smoldering Joanne Dru than I've been aware of in other Ford films. In one scene, Dru accidentally tosses her bath water onto Johnson. The sight of Dru from the shoulders up is enough to suggest that she was nude underneath. There's a playfulness between Dru and Johnson that leads up to their final bonding that seems more genuine than the more heavy handed courtships of John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, for example.

That the film is about Mormons seems more like a plot device to create humor out of Ward Bond's attempts to keep from swearing, or broach the truth about Joanne Dru and her medicine show partners to his fellow travelers. Likewise, Jane Darwell seems overly beatific with her constant smile, used for broad laughs when she blows her tuneless horn, but truly funny when she cackles in reaction to Johnson's claim that he only shoots snakes. What is best about Wagon Master are the faces of the characters, the way they are photographed, both in the framing and use of shadows. In this regard, I would not think of the film as simply another John Ford film, but almost as a rediscovered family album.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM | Comments (3)

September 08, 2009

Sorum

Yun Jong-chan - 2001
Tartan Asia Extreme Region 1 DVD

As one who spends a large portion of my time thinking about, writing about, and simply watching films, I realize that part of my life is outside of mainstream existence. I felt even more apart by the simple fact that news that had meant something to me was not even mentioned in any of the "entertainment" news from sources like Yahoo or Huffington Post. The news I received was through the informal alliance of other people who write about films. Most disturbing was the murder of Nika Bohinc and Alexis Tioseco at their home in The Philippines. I've been a sometime reader of Criticine since my own deeper explorations into Thai cinema in 2006. More about Nika and Alexis, and arguably, what the deeper purpose of writing about film should be can be found at Girish Shambu's site. It was through my Facebook connection with Catherine Grant that I learned about the death of Keith Waterhouse. This was significant for me as one who generally likes the British films of the early Sixties, the so-called "Kitchen Sink" period. It was through Todd Brown and his site, Twitch that I found out about the untimely death of Korean actress Jang Jin-young.

Jang made two films with writer-director Yun Jong-chan. I had seen the second, Blue Swallow, knowing nothing about it, but taking advantage of a very brief period when I was able to buy subtitled Korean, Hong Kong and Chinese DVDs in Thailand from some local entrepreneurs. The biography of Park Kyeong-Won, one of Korea's pioneer female aviators, the film starts off as a Hawksian adventure about a young woman who demonstrates her ability to be one of the guys with her flying skills and sense of adventure, before shifting to a much darker film about the relationship between Koreans and Japanese in the years before World War II. Because of the controversial aspects of Park's life, Blue Swallow was a box office failure in Korea, although those who have seen the film agree on the quality of Jang's performance.

Yun first film with Jang, also is directorial debut, Sorum is more easily available for western viewers. The film has several of the elements of several Asian horror movies - the dilapidated apartment building that is inches away from condemnation, the mysterious neighbors, the rumored death of a child by a former resident, the protagonist who moves into the building because there is no available money for anything better. Yun goes against some of the genre expectations by keeping most of the violence off screen. The viewer is aware indirectly of what has occurred by a couple of scenes that suggest some very confused memories comprised of brief, subjective shots. Also, the closest Sorum comes to having any ghosts appear in the film is in the dreams of one of the characters dreaming about her deceased husband. The creepiness is created by a few flickering lights, objects that seem to fall down on their own, and a soundtrack of creaking doors and stairs, faint lullabies heard from an unknown source, and rainfall so dense it is if one can hear every drop.

Jang appears as Sun-yeong, a woman working a late night shift at the loneliest 7-11 in Seoul. Yong-hyun (Kim Meong-min), a taxi driver has just moved into the same building and same floor. The two become connected in ways unexpected following Yong-hyun's first late night purchase of a candy bar. Yong-hyun first becomes learns about the violent death of the previous tenant in his apartment from another neighbor, a failed publisher who is writing a novel. It is the death that has taken place in the building that serves as a connection for the Fifth floor residents, as well as wedge that causes more violence. Yong-hyun thinks his apartment is a cheap refuge from his own past, only to find his life entwined with that of his neighbors, who find themselves unable to leave. While less explicit in this regard compared to films inspired by Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, or Robert Wise's version of Shirley Jackson's Haunting of Hill House, the building that Yong-hyun and Sun-yeong live in serves as another character in Sorum.

Yun often keeps his distance from his characters, with several scenes composed of static medium or long shots. Only in a few scenes are there close-ups, in some of the most dramatic moments. The display of technique is saved for a couple of flashbacks of past incidences remembered or possibly imagined. Yun will even undermine how a scene is expected to be filmed as when Yong-hyun sees Sun-yeong in the distance, and his head completely blocks her out of the shot. The sense of isolation, the distance of the characters from each other, and from the audience, is also emphasized by the absence of people, either barely seen in the distance in the streets of Seoul, or pointedly not scene, as when Yong-hyun and Sun-yeong are in a rural village that has served as a film set. The effect is one where the attempt to be close with another person is an invitation to tragedy, and far from truly being alone, we bring with us our own ghosts.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:00 PM

September 03, 2009

Spirited Killer

Plook Mun Kuen Ma Kah 4
Towatchai Ladloy - 1994
BCI Region 1 DVD

The only reason to see Spirited Killer is for the film debut of Panom Yeerum. Almost twelve years later, this eighteen year old actor would be know throughout the world as Tony Jaa. There isn't really much to see, except that one gets a glimpse of the athletic ability that would be showcased in Ong Bak. The man Panom is seen dueling with is his teacher, Panna Rittikrai.

Ong Bak 2 is scheduled for a VOD release near the end of this month, to be followed by a theatrical release in October. To see both films is something of a study in contrasts in the changes made in the Thai industry in the past fifteen years. Spirited Killer was made on a much lower budget, and was made primarily for a Thai audience, perhaps seen in some neighboring Asian countries. There isn't much of a story - a doctor, a practitioner of black magic, performs a prayer ritual, and offers a handful of people a special concoction that will change their lives. From the lay person's point of view, the people have been poisoned, but the doctor insists that they've achieved immortality. The doctor proves to be expert at boxing and sword-fighting, but one witness gets away. The doctor is chased away by some angry villagers, seemingly lost in a river after being stabbed multiple times. Five years later, a stranger appears, primarily glaring at everyone, before getting down to business with his sword. A group of Japanese students show up, in search of some rare relics, but are in the film mostly to provide lame comic relief. The villagers and the students try to find a way to defeat the mystery man causing havoc in the remote community. Spirited Killer has some of the same weaknesses of Thai films made in the past few years. This is a film that frankly was made for an unsophisticated audience that was looking for lots of action, a some dumb laughs.

The future Tony Jaa is showcased at about the forty-one minute mark. Even back in 1994 it was obvious that this young man had a special relationship with gravity. I'm probably not the only one who considers martial arts movies as musicals for guys who wouldn't be caught dead watching watching a musical. That may be exaggerating a bit, but those who carefully read the credits or know a thing or two about the craft of filmmaking know that the fights are choreographed. And in a couple of shots in this smeary transfer, one can see just Tony Jaa taking flight with a couple of leaps, somersaulting in midair. That Tony is able to do his stunts without wires makes him more fantastic to watch.

While this is not a musical, there is a musical number where one of the actresses breaks out in song, but no dance. Maybe had the lyrics been translated, I might have understood the meaning of this song in the early part of the film. It would perhaps be helpful if the actress who plays the character Fah could be identified. Nonetheless, this interlude is one of the few bright spots in a film that has a negligible plot about an unstoppable killer, and alleged comedy mostly involving a mute named Mute and a short, stocky man with an electric fan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM

September 01, 2009

Don't Touch the White Woman

Touche pas a la Femme Blanche
Marco Ferreri - 1974
Koch Lorber Region 1 DVD

While I am not going to the Telluride Film Festival this year, I thought it time to see again a film that played at Telluride in 1974. While I didn't feel any great wave of nostalgia for Don't Touch the White Woman, the version screened at Telluride was without subtitles. What little I understood had more to do with my familiarity regarding General Custer and Little Big Horn than what the characters were actually saying to each other. Seeing the film for the first time in thirty-five years, even with English subtitles, I wondered why I bothered.

Marco Ferreri's film was made after the more commercially successful La Grande Bouffe, the black comedy about a group of men who commit suicide by gorging on food until they've stuffed themselves to death. One of the several reasons why I am certain that Don't Touch the White Woman never received U.S. distribution is because its allegory was already dated by the time it was released in France in January 1974. Seeing the film again, my own feeling is that Ferreri was primarily addressing a smug audience that considered itself too intellectual to bother seeing an actual western, or even consider one of the more recently released revisionist westerns from Hollywood.

Ferreri's version of Custer and Little Big Horn was to film it in the middle of then contemporary Paris, at Les Halles which was undergoing reconstruction and was essential a very large hole. The French and Italian actors are in 19th Century costume. While there is a brief mention of Algeria, Ferreri reminds the viewer repeatedly that he is comparing the U.S. governments treatment of Native Americans with U.S. military action in Viet-Nam with portraits of Richard Nixon visible whenever possible. Ferreri's own revision comes in the form of the famously blond Custer portrayed by the dark haired Marcello Mastroianni. Competition as America's top Indian fighter comes in the form of an equally vain and buffoonish Buffalo Bill, played by Michel Piccoli. Catherine Deneuve's role as the woman Custer falls in love with is mostly decorative. At the time that I saw Don't Touch the White Woman the first time, the draft had ended and U.S. troops had a reduced presence in Viet-Nam, and Richard Nixon had resigned less than a month ago. Ferreri's film might stand as a lesson on the fragility of making a film that depends on timeliness in making its points.

What bothers me about Don't Touch the White Woman thirty-five years later is how unnecessary it was in criticizing the U.S. government or Hollywood films. Using the "Garryowen" march seems like a cheap shot, particularly at John Ford, who once stated in an interview that, on film, he had killed more Indians than Chivington. Even Ford owned up to an often glossed over aspect of U.S. history, in part with The Searchers, and more directly with Cheyenne Autumn, especially in a scene where a soldier compares the rounding up of the Native Americans with the actions of the Cossacks in his native Poland. One didn't need to look to deeply into more recent films that could be read as allegories about the U.S. in Viet-Nam, Arthur Penn's Little Big Man, and the more direct Ralph Nelson's Soldier Blue. The My Lai massacre would have been fresh enough in the Fall of 1970 when Nelson and Penn has their films released. However avant garde Don't Touch the White Woman may have been when originally conceived, the message was dead even before the messenger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:33 PM

August 28, 2009

I am Waiting

Ore wa matteru ze
Koreyoshi Kurahara - 1957
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

The French influence on I am Waiting is announce in the first accordion notes of the title song. The film may have been a vehicle for star Yujiro Ishihara, but it seem like writer Shintaro Ishihara could well have had Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in mind. The literary Ishihara was a self-proclaimed existentialist and fan of Jean-Paul Sartre. A more obvious nod to French culture comes in the form of an excerpt from the opera Carmen, heard on the radio.

Joji runs a small joint called Restaurant Reef. It may not quite be the end of the line, but it seems like the gathering place for people who really have no where else to go. Walking alone late, on a cold, rainy night, Joji notices a young woman looking like she's about to stroll in the the sea. Joji talks her out of what may be an attempt at suicide, and takes her in, where she works as a waitress. Gradually, it is revealed that both Joji, and the young woman, Reiko, are running away from their pasts. Joji was a champion boxer who killed a man in a bar brawl, while Reiko was a former opera singer who, due to a voice damaging illness, has been reduced to a forced contract with a small time mobster who owns a small cabaret. On a couple of occasions, Reiko describes herself as a "canary who lost her voice". Joji and Reiko learn that they are connected in other ways in addition to the attraction they have for each other.

The film reveals the past of Joji and Reiko through the most public and indiscriminate of means, mass media. At a movie theater, Joji winces while watching a newsreel about one of his past fights. Reiko loses her composure hearing herself singing Carmen. Both could be said to be former performers who have chosen to flee the spotlight for more anonymous lives. Having Reiko describe her self as a canary could possibly also be a nod to Edith Piaf, the "little sparrow", with the relationship of a singer with a boxer being inspired by Piaf's own relationship with Marcel Cerdan. The French influence on I am Waiting can be seen with Joji first serving Reiko not tea or sake, but cognac, the black sweater Reiko wears, and the haircuts of the men, combed down across the forehead. I am Waiting is a Japanese film that indirectly is about mass media, both as it affects the lives of the characters, and how western culture has permeated Japanese life.

Like several other films written by Shintaro Ishikawa, starring Yujiro Ishikawa, I am Waiting was produced by Takiko Mizunoe. Her role as a female staff producer at Nikkatsu, as well as being an actress and singer, warrant more information than is listed at IMDb. That Mizunoe's last known credit as a producer was Branded to Kill, the film that also ended Seijun Suzuki's career at Nikkatsu, should be noted. Faces that reappear in the other "Nikkatsu Noir" series include Naoki Sugiura and Michitaro Mizushima. I am Waiting was the second film to pair Mie Kitahara with Yujiro Ishihara, and the first to have them as top billed stars. There is little written in English on director Koreyoshi Kurahara aside from Mark Schilling's piece in No Borders, No Limits, and a review of several films at The Auteurs. Also leaving Nikkatsu in 1967, Kurahara transitioned from making low budget, youth oriented films to respectability with his film Antarctica which was Japan's Oscar entry from 1983, and the source for the English language remake, Eight Below. Even with a country seemingly better documented in its film history as Japan, there is evidence that there is more exploration needed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:55 AM

August 26, 2009

Rusty Knife

Sabita Naifu
Toshio Masuda - 1958
Eclipse Region 1 DVD

Rusty Knife is part of the five DVD set titled "Nikkatsu Noir, and it doesn't get much blacker than this film. Much of the action takes place at night, in unlit rooms and dark, narrow alleys. The cast and crew are from Japan's Nikkatsu Studios, but the tone of the film and the semi-documentary touches easily allow this film to nestle in between such American counterparts as Phil Karlson's Phenix City Story and Sam Fuller's Underworld U.S.A.. The characters are all here: the ex-con trying to go straight, the mobster who terrorizes everyone, the politician who is really in control of the corruption, the young woman who takes a stand against crime in her community, and the assorted rats, stoolies, b-girls and other lowlife, shadowy denizens in a shadowy world. I also should admit to a special fondness for any movie that was produced in widescreen (Nikkatsu Scope) and black and white.

Taking place in an industrial town in western Japan, the police are stymied in their attempts to nail a yakuza boss, Kutsumata. A former low level gangster from a rival gang sends an anonymous letter to the police, letting them know he witnessed Kutsumata engaged in a murder that was disguised to appear as suicide. That same tipster also tries to blackmail the yakuza boss. Trying to play both side, the tipster gets trapped, his plans for escaped ending violently. The two surviving witnesses work at a very small bar owned by one of them, Tachibana. While one, Mokoto, is easily bought off, Tachibana tries to keep away from both the mob and the police until he finds he has no choice, and that events from the past have still not been resolved.

That the filmmakers at Nikkatsu had relative freedom is evident in a couple of places in Rusty Knife. Toshio Masuda's love of French culture probably was responsible for one of the gangsters speaking a smattering of French. The main character, played by Yujiro Ishihara, is probably more introspective than most of his American counterparts, and even a good number of his Japanese peers, conflicted over ability to commit murder in the past, and unable to let go of his penchant for anger. There is also a scene when Akira Kobayashi is riding his motorcycle with his girlfriend, and the film shows us the point of view shots of a wild ride with extreme angles of the surrounding buildings. As with the lower budget crime films made by Hollywood in the Fifties, it wasn't just the story or characters, but how the various elements were used.

Fans of Suzuki Seijun would want to keep their eyes open during the first ten minutes of Rusty Knife for a small role by Joe Shishido, here playing the former bodyguard who finds himself outsmarted in his attempts at blackmail. The film was written by Shintaro Ishihara, the older brother of star Yujiro Ishihara, the two being the artistic catalyst and the personification of Japanese youth culture in the Fifties. Not only did Rusty Knife mark Yujiro Ishihara's first teaming with Toshio Masuda, as well as one of the earliest films the actor made with Mie Kitahara, who would be his leading lady in twenty-four films before retiring from the screen to be Ishihara's full-time wife. Kitahara portrays an idealist young woman reporter who finds herself involved in the gang activity in ways not previously anticipated. A counterpoint to the stoic hero and upstanding young woman is the villainous Kutsumata, with the immaculately dressed Naoki Sugiura providing an almost constant, hearty laugh as he menaces the rest of the cast. According to Masuda in his interview with Mark Schilling, the film was scheduled had a ten day shooting schedule that was pushed to two weeks. Nothing about Rusty Knife appears rushed or haphazard, especially the way the characters are framed or how the scenes are lit.

I hope that this set of films from Nikkatsu does well enough to inspire more similar packages or releases of individual films from this era of Japanese filmmaking. It was the film Red Handkerchief that is reputed to have inspired 20th Century Fox producer Elmo Williams to choose Masuda to replace Akira Kurosawa on Tora! Tora! Tora!. In retrospect, the pairing of Masuda with Richard Fleischer makes some sense in that, while their careers were not parallel, both had established their reputations in making low budget crime thrillers before becoming directors for hire on more expensive studio projects. In summing up Toshio Masuda's career, what Mark Schilling has written could easily be slightly altered to describe the recent reevaluation of Richard Fleischer: " . . . he (Masuda) made films that were not only box office hits in their day, but are also still affectionately remembered by Japanese fans and regarded by Japanese critics as genre landmarks."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:16 AM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2009

Demon Warriors

Opapatika
Thanakorn Pongsuwan - 2007
Magnolia Films Region 1 DVD

Let us give thanks to Tony Jaa, without whom even fewer Thai films might be available on U.S. DVDs. Demon Warriors is produced by the same company that brought the world Ong-Bak and Chocolate. I have to assume that the price for bringing Tony Jaa and Jeeja to U.S. viewers is to include the rest of the productions slate from Thailand's most successful film producer.

Demon Warriors is a film about faith. It's about a filmmaker's faith that the viewer will not mind the plot holes and lapses of logic, and instead succumb to the visceral pleasures of gorgeous cinematography and a mostly handsome cast of characters. Maybe the best way to approach this film is to liken it to a dream that is propelled by its own internal coherence, intuition if you will. What I am certain about is that Dream Warriors is a singular kind of genre bender, maybe the ultimate Bruce Willis film without Bruce Willis, in other words, the action of the Die Hard movies, with the dead spirits among the living of The Six Sense. Even when the film pauses for some quasi-Buddhist philosophizing on life and death, it somehow works within the context of the film, and is less pretentious than it sounds.

If I try to describe the plot or explain the story, my own head will probably explode. Suffice to say that it's about characters called opapatika who exist as good or evil spirits. The hunt is on for four of the evil spirits who seem to live to kill other people. A new opapatika, Techit, seeking to understand the mysteries of human existence, finds that he has the ability to read minds, but also finds himself losing his other senses. Techit is given the task of seeking out the evil opapatika on behalf of an elder who keeps his own special power a secret. There's lots of fire power, long knives, some Muay Thai action, lopped off heads and hands, and spurting blood. What isn't explained is how one goes about killing somebody who is suppose to be immortal.

There was a reminder of Werner Herzog's version of Nosferatu, when one of the characters states that eternal life isn't all it's cracked up to be. Basic Buddhism is discussed during the quieter moments, so that it is understood that the characters, by no longer being human, are trapped by their own karma, unable to change. This is a Thai film intended primarily for a Thai audience, with a few words of wisdom at the end about the perpetual state of Hell that is in store for those who commit suicide.

What makes Demon Warriors intriguing to watch are the images of Leo Putt with his golden gun and tinted aviator glasses, Kemapsorn Sirisukha wandering around in a white dress, and Shahkrit Yamnarm with his two differently colored eyes and scarred face. Much of the action takes place in what appears to be the most rundown sections of Bangkok, in abandoned buildings and depopulated streets.

Thanakorn Pongsuwan is a filmmaker I am mostly familiar with by reputation, with his current film, Fireball appearing in several film festivals. A film about a sport that combines Thai martial arts with baseketball, Fireball would indicate that Thanakorn is interested in unexpected combinations of elements in his films. Prior to taking the director's chair, Thanakorn was a production assistant to the Pang Brothers, also noted for their use of compelling images, more than the logic of their narratives. Taken on its own terms, Demon Warriors might be best understood as a dream about Buddhism, karma, and the value of life. And like all dreams, it's about the senses, not about sense.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM

August 13, 2009

What Makes Sammy Run?

Delbert Mann - 1959
Koch Lorber Region 1 DVD

The DVD has been around for a couple of months. The recent death of Budd Schulberg hastened my viewing this version of What Makes Sammy Run? sooner. There hasn't been much writing about the teleplay since its release, perhaps because most of what needs to be said has been in reference to the novel. Still, a few thoughts . . .

It's Budd Schulberg's script from his novel, cowritten with brother Stuart, that makes the television version of What Makes Sammy Run? worth watching fifty years after the original broadcast. The kinescope version on DVD is at times crude in quality. What is presented is a black and white version of a show that was seen in color for those households that owned those large wooden boxes with the oddly rounded screens. As one who grew up acquainted with Julian Beck and Judith Malina, I winced at the words by the off-screen announcer, "Living theater in living color". I have read the book, quite a few years ago, when there were rumors of a remake with Tom Cruise that perhaps fortunately was never made. The novel was published in 1941. The television play produced in 1959. Schulberg's novel and teleplay may have been meant as a cautionary tale about the price of success, but a glance at the current state of Hollywood would indicate that Sammy Glick is alive and well. Even though the story takes place from the 1930s to the then present day, there is a vagueness about the settings and costumes that makes the story seem to take place in a constant current moment.

Though religion isn't stated, it is also about being Jewish in America. A young Sammy Glick states he doesn't want to be dumb like his father who eked out a living in New York City's Lower East Side. A later Sammy Glick states he doesn't want to be dumb like his brother, making a modest living, enjoying his work teaching art. What drives Sammy is a success that cannot be doubted, that is so enormous, that it eradicates any of the barriers regarding class, education or ethnicity. The two women in Sammy's life are shiksa ideals, the educated, literary Kit Sargent, and the blonde, wealthy Laurette Harrington. Sammy's idea of success may be seen as conforming to stereotypes, but it is a stereotype that persists to this day. Apparently Samuel Goldwyn had trouble seeing beyond the title, and assumed that he was the real Sammy of Schulberg's novel. Goldwyn seems also to have been the source for pegging the novel as anti-Semitic. While Sammy Glick may be interpreted as personifying the most obvious negative example of the Jewish go-getter, he is counterbalanced by Al Manheim, the drama critic who is Sammy's reluctant best friend and Schulberg proxy, and Sidney Fineman, the paternal studio chief, a warm-hearted soul unlike the real life Louis Mayer or Harry Cohn. It is also notable that nominally Jewish Sammy Glick and Al Manheim are played by two non-Jewish actors, Larry Blyden and John Forsythe.

What really struck me was a line by Glick, about the movie business, "We sell products, not personalities". The films produced by Sammy Glick seem to be reworkings of other movies, either some kind of change of character or plot that is derived from an older movie, or a movie that is made to cash in on the publicity of a rival studio's film by covering a similar subject but getting to the theaters first. An example of the first kind of film is described by The Siren with an excerpt from the novel. An example of the second kind of film is when Glick discussed making a "submarine picture" with his two favorite writers, Manheim and Sargent, because another studio has a film about to go into production. Not unlike stories relayed about current studio executives, Glick is unaware of past productions, having to have Manheim and Sargent describe Rain. Were Sammy Glick alive today, he would chuckle at two studios with competing films about a giant earthbound asteroid, and might even describe even one film about Truman Capote as mashugana.

The big change in Hollywood productions where real life goes beyond what even Sammy Glick imagined is how marketing dictates what films are being produced. The actual film is almost an afterthought. One might be hard pressed to describe exactly what makes a film directed by Shawn Levy different from one directed by Adam Shankman, but they are the type of filmmakers that are successful in present day Hollywood. The financial stakes have become so absurdly high that some recent films would have to earn back at least half a billion dollars to reach the break even point. Mainstream films literally can not afford anything as idiosyncratic as a director's point of view. While Hollywood studios always had to answer to New York City bankers, when Schulberg wrote his novel, the studios were essentially independent entities. With the studios all now subsidiaries of much larger corporations, the wheeling and dealing by Sammy Glick seems almost genteel.

The teleplay ends with Sammy Glick running off to be honored for his humanitarian efforts. Back in 1959, this may have seemed like rib poking irony. Fifty years, the most shocking thing about What Makes Sammy Run? is how the worst aspects of Hollywood that Budd Schulberg attacked are also the most deeply ingrained.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2009

The Samurai I Loved

Semishigure
Mitsuo Kurotsuchi - 2005
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

If anyone thinks of Yoji Yamada's recent films about samurai while watching The Samurai I Loved, there is no coincidence. Mitsuro Kurotsuchi's film is based on a novel by Shuhei Fujisawa, whose books also served as the basis of Yamada's films. The English language title is a bit misleading as it may suggest great passion and much swordplay. The original Japanese title refers to the sound of cicadas and is might be more appropriate for a film where nature plays an important part in this period drama.

The film takes place in a remote village where the samurai essentially act as civil service employees on behalf of the ruling lord based in Edo. Not only are these samurai poorly paid, but are subject to the various political schemes of their superiors. Bunshiro sees the fortune of his family change, as his father is forced to commit suicide for being on the wrong side of a rivalry between two chief samurai retainers. The home and financial fortune are restored, but a price testing Bunshiro's loyalties. Fuku, the girl next door, from a samurai family of even humbler means, is in love with Bunshiro, as he is with her, but both are too reserved to express their feelings to each other. Fuku reluctantly leaves the small village to become the lord's concubine, further complicated her relationship with Bunshiro.

Kurotsuchi opens the film with shots of the sky, of rice fields, the wind blowing, on a snowy winter day. Bunshiro and Fuku's relationship is first established on a hot summer morning when Fuku is bitten by a snake. It's a small bite, with Bunshiro spitting out the venom, and admonishing Fuku that a samurai's daughter would not cry over a small wound. Nature again plays a part when during a flood, Bunshiro's father, Sukezaemon, convinces a group that would take apart a dike, to work in an area that would cause flooding away from the rice fields, saving the livelihood of seasonal workers, and unstated, the income of the feudal lord. Bunshiro's official position is a the rice field inspector of his home area. Kurotsuchi breaks up his narrative with several montages of fields covered in snow, cherry blossoms, a shot of a small tree frog, and flowing water. The songs by the villagers are either about the changes of seasons or about animals. Several times, Kurotsuchi will use long shots of his characters, small, on the bottom of the frame, surrounded by the sky, fields and mountains.

The Samurai I Loved was a leading contender for Japan's Academy Awards in 2006. I have found nothing of substance on Mitsuo Kurotsuchi, although his slender filmography suggests that he might be the Japanese equivalent to Terrence Malick in both his output and visual concerns. In the brief interview that comes with the DVD, Kurotsuchi mentions another notoriously slow filmmaker, Akira Kurosawa, in reference to having his sets created by former members of Kurosawa's team to be as accurate as possible. Kurosawa is referenced indirectly by casting Mieko Harada as Bunshiro's mother. As Bunshiro's father, Ken Ogata brings his own history of not only older period films, but whole chapters of Japanese film history, somewhat analogous to recent films casting Paul Newman as the father or father figure to Kevin Costner or Tom Hanks. Somegoro Ichikawa plays Bunshiro, neither overplaying the sentimental aspects of his character, nor underplaying the hidden feelings kept under close reign. Yoshino Kimura displays similar reserve to Ichikawa in the role of Fuko, indicating her passion in only a few small gestures.

The one scene of samurai action does supply generous spurting of blood when a ninja army fights Bunshiro. What makes is the reaction Bunshiro and the other characters have in realizing what kind of injury they can inflict on each other, the brief hesitation that any of them can die at any moment. The introspective aftermath is unusual for a genre where the characters typically live and die by the sword. The film ends on a poignant note. The Samurai I Loved examines the codes of conduct and how they conflict with a higher set of ideals. This is a love story in which the love is realized only in the intentions of the heart.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

August 06, 2009

The GoodTimesKid

Azazel Jacobs - 2005
Benten Films All Region DVD

Taking place in a period of about twenty-four hours, The GoodTimesKid follows three people who temporarily weave in and out of each others lives due to an unexpected coincident. The two men are both named Rodolfo Cano, with one receiving a letter intended for the other. The letter announced that the recipient has officially enlisted in the Army.

The one who unexpectedly received the letter, referred to in the credits as Rodolfo II, lives in a boat. It's an obvious metaphor for a person who appears to be drifting in life, with only the most casual attachment to the world at large. Rodolfo I intends to break away from his girlfriend, Diaz, by joining the Army, and pointedly denying her plans to celebrate his birthday that day. When Rodolfo I and Diaz are first seen, her attempts at reconciliation for an implied rift from the night before are immediately rejected. If The GoodTimesKid could be said to be about anything, it would be about how totally unexpected incidences can undo plans or conversely, impose a defined direction that might be accepted spontaneously.

Rodolfo I's enlistment in the army might be interpreted as an act of eventual self-destruction, of putting himself in harm's way in the Middle East. Rodolfo I's only physical contact is in getting into fist fights, first with a gang of men at a bar, and later on the street with Rodolfo II. At the same time, Rodolfo I also pushes away Diaz. Rodolfo I does not explain himself, nor does anyone else his motivations. It is as if his only sense of self-validation is though physical punishment, perhaps death, as indicated with the words "Shoot Here" on his stomach. At the same time, Rodolfo II, witnessing a frustrated Diaz mashing a birthday cake, and punching a refrigerator gains her attention by furiously pummeling the refrigerator as well. Even if neither Rodolfo II, nor Diaz, understands why he is hitting the refrigerator, the act stirs Diaz temporarily from her anger to perform a kind of old-timey dance to amuse Rodolfo II.

It really is Diaz who is the heart and soul of The GoodTimesKid because of the animated presence of actress Sara Diaz. My favorite scene in the film simply follows Diaz walking on the sidewalk of Los Angeles at night, the skinny legs in red sneakers, the long, swinging arms, as she strides across while the camera tracks along side her. In his notes that come with the DVD, Glenn Kenny compares Sara Diaz to Shelley Duvall as Olive Oly in Robert Altman's film of Popeye. I would push this further to compare Diaz with the Fleischer Brothers cartoon character in the way her arms and legs stretch across the screen. This is not meant to be an insult. Sara Diaz defies the conventional looks of that would be found in film by someone of lesser imagination, just as she defies the viewer to not look at her. I could take or leave the two Rodolfos but Diaz I would see again in a heartbeat.

While The GoodTimesKid is my introduction to Azazel Jacobs, I have long been familiar with some of the work of his father, filmmaker Ken Jacobs. One of the requirements of New York University's Cinema Studies program was to watch the senior Jacob's Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son at least twice. For those unfamiliar with that film, Jacobs takes an eight minute movie, filmed tableau style, and breaks the various actions into smaller shots, using close-ups and slow motion, stretching out over the course of almost two hours. Ken Jacobs other films could be said to recall the memory of older movies, especially silent comedies. One of the extra features on the DVD is Whirled which takes parts of Ken Jacobs other films shot in the Fifties and early Sixties featuring actor and fellow filmmaker, Jack Smith.

The love for old movies can be seen in the other extra, Azazel Jacob's short film, Let's Get Started. Sara Diaz chases after a runaway bicycle tire that continuously eludes her. It's a short, simple film that might remind some of the pursuit of errant objects in the films of Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy. The comic short concludes that sometimes what we need the most can sometimes come to us if we choose to momentarily stand still.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM

August 04, 2009

The Way We Are

The Durian may provide an imperfect metaphor for Ann Hui's film. What is certain is that that is a smaller scale, more intimate film than some of the other honored Hong Kong films of 2008. That Hui won again for Best Director at the Hong Kong Film Awards is even more amazing considering that she was competing against not only John Woo for his first Red Cliff film, but also Johnny To for his sweet change of pace caper Sparrow, and Wilson Yip, director of Best Picture winner Ip Man. Then again, perhaps comparison with a durian fruit might be appropriate considering that a quiet film about everyday people in Hong Kong is less easily approachable than the more easily consumable films of Hui's peers.

The film takes place in Tin Shui Wai, in a section of rundown apartments literally across the tracks from the glitzier apartment complexes. Hui observes the life of a middle aged widow, Kwai, who works at a supermarket, supporting herself and her son, On. Taking place in July and August, On either hangs around his apartment or with friends, awaiting results of his high school graduation exam that determines his future, of going for further education or into the work force. An older woman, known as "Granny" gets a job at the supermarket through Kwai. A recent resident at the public housing apartment building that Kwai and On live in, Granny eventually becomes an unofficial family member. There is no dramatic arc, or plot, but instead a recreation of everyday life.

Using a high definition video camera and available lighting, The Way We Are deliberately recalls Hui's roots as a documentary filmmakers. The film could be said to be about the events and rituals that bring families together - dinners, funerals, and holidays. The film ends with the three principle characters sharing a dinner to celebrate the August Moon Festival. The most dramatic moment in the film is when Kwai travels with Granny, who hopes to visit her only grandson, Kit. Kit's mother, Granny's daughter, is dead. Not only is Kit unavailable to meet with his grandmother, but Kit's father, Granny's former son-in-law, is abrupt in his treatment of Granny, disregarding her feelings for her only relative. It is after that unsatisfactory reunion that the relationship between Kwai and Granny is cemented.

Kwai's own mother considers her daughter foolish for sacrificing her own future to pay for the education of her two brothers, both of whom have achieved significant material success. Through everything that she goes through, Kwai remains cheerful and resilient. There is a moment when the film breaks to a montage of still photos of women at work at the kind of jobs that have minimal wages and are often physically demanding. Again recalling Hui's earlier work for television, The Way We Are is about the people normally not the subject of either documentary or dramatic films. The dialogue is unforced, virtually belying the existence of a script by Lou Shu-wa, or the professionalism of star Paw Hee-ching.

The film was in fact originally conceived of as a television production, only coming to fruition due to last minute funding from producer-director Wong Jing. Kwai's brothers are portrayed by two filmmakers, Vincent Chui and Clifton Ko. What has made The Way We Are different from the other films by Hong Kong filmmakers is that the film was not part of the general pattern of films designed for the larger Chinese language or Asian markets. Even so, just as there was a universality to Vittorio De Sica's story about a stolen bicycle, Ann Hui's Hong Kong is not so distant our our own streets.

The Way We Are is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:44 AM

August 01, 2009

North West Frontier

J. Lee Thompson - 1959
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

On the occasion of J. Lee Thompson's 95th birthday.

Can anyone confirm if North West Frontier began as a project for John Ford? The story is credited to Ford's son, Patrick, and there is a screenplay credit to frequent Ford collaborator Frank Nugent. The final screenplay is credited to Robin Estridge, yet the influence of John Ford can not be denied. At the very least, the film can easily be described as Stagecoach in 1905 India, with a railroad car. Instead of cowboys and indians, we have the British and Hindus fighting Muslims who are trying to murder a six year boy, a Hindu prince, primarily because of his symbolic importance. The basic comparison to Stagecoach is announced when someone mentions how each of the passengers is representative of differing philosophies. Of course the title would make most immediately think of a western.

Granada, Spain substitutes for the part of India that is now Pakistan. The mountains and plains are don't have the same majesty as Monument Valley but are as much a part of the story just as the environment played a role in The Searchers. Had the boy prince had a more significant part in North West Frontier, Thompson's film might have made an interesting companion piece to Ford's Indian adventure Wee Willie Winkie. The Muslims are like the Native Americans, even in some of Ford's films, colorful, but anonymous warriors. At the same time, there is not the total endorsement or sense of nostalgia regarding British rule. Neither the film's sympathies, nor the film's villain, are difficult to identify.

The film that really had me reconsidering J. Lee Thompson was also about a wartime journey, Ice Cold in Alex. Alex is Alexandria, Egypt, and the movie can almost be summarized as being about John Mills driving across the desert to get a frosty glass of beer. There's more to the film than that, with Mills, Sylvia Syms, Harry Andrews and Anthony Quayle fighting an uncompromising environment and Nazis, with a traitor among them. That film, made a year previously, is almost a warmup for the bigger budget, Cinemascope and color North West Frontier. Not considered worthy of a paragraph by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema, J. Lee Thompson was at his critical peak fifty years ago, competing against himself at the BAFTA awards with both North West Frontier and the arguably better Tiger Bay, the film that launched the career of Hayley Mills.

J. Lee Thompson would probably get a better critical evaluation were his British films more easily available on DVD. Even on British DVDs, Thompson gets short shrift. Most of the films currently on DVD have some kind of entertainment value. At a time when directors with far bigger budgets and more sophisticated equipment seem incapable of putting together decent action sequences, J. Lee Thompson's craftsmanship looks better in comparison. Taras Bulba may not be what Gogol imagined, and Mackenna's Gold did not recapture the magic of the team that made The Guns of Navarone, but are still fun to view. And if we can be honest for a moment, critical stature and Robert De Niro's muscled arms aside, there's no way one can say Martin Scorsese really improved upon Cape Fear.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:14 AM

July 30, 2009

Love will Tear Us Apart

Tin seung yan gaan
Nelson Yu Lik-wai - 1999
City Connection All Region DVD

There's a moment in Jia Zhange's Unknown Pleasures when one of the young men tries to make a living selling pirated DVDs. One of the titles offered is Love will Tear Us Apart. The film's in-joke is that Jia's film was filmed by Nelson Yu Lik-wai, the director of Love will Tear Us Apart. It's a small joke, to be sure, but to not understand that joke is to bring up not understanding a film or filmmaker from another culture. In one scene in Love will Tear Us Apart, a young woman from mainland China gazes upon a portrait of two Hong Kong actors from a past era, Bai Yan and Wu Chufan.

To put this another way, imagine seeing Contempt without following any of Godard's references to other films or filmmakers, or many of the other Hollywood films that depend at least partially on the viewer's knowledge of older films, many assumed to be classics. Add to this only a very general understanding about life in another country. For an assessment of Yu's film in English, let me direct you to a piece by Shelly Kraicer.

There is sometimes talk about the existence of too much information. Sometimes, even with the resources of the internet, there is still not enough. That there is little of substance about either Love will Tear Us Apart or Lu Lik-wai is continued evidence that there is still work to be done on writing about Asian films in general, and even in regards to a film only ten years old. Definitely there is still more to be done to add to what is currently available in English.

With incredible appreciation to Sabrina Baracetti of the Udine Far East Film Festival, I was able to get a copy of one of the festival books, Far East: Ten Years of Cinema (1999 - 2008). The book, by multiple authors, covers not only the state of the art in different Asian countries, but also the state of the industry. To read this book is to understand better why smaller countries depend on genre films, which are usually the most easily exportable. The book also explains the problems filmmakers have within their own countries, making their films and getting them seen.

Having lived briefly in Thailand, I can testify first hand that Hollwood needs no help in getting people to watch their films. While Dan Glickman of the MPAA bullies his way to get quotas changed to favor American film productions, nothing is done to level the playing field. So few foreign films get shown in the U.S., and too frequently, the Asian films that do get any theatrical play, and the better DVD releases are the action and horror films, which in turn perpetuates a misunderstanding of the substance and quality of Asian films.

I apologize for hectoring any readers. Print books will continue to get the greatest respect, but electronic media gets the word out faster, theoretically to more people. My writing skills may be wanting, but I usually know a good, or even great film, when I see it. It also raises my hackles when people, especially those who get paid to write, display their ignorance, such as the writer who referred to the original The Eye as "J-Horror", not bothering to note that the Pang Brothers are from Hong Kong, or that their pan-Asian productions are usually filmed in Thailand. In the meantime, I am putting my own limited resources to the test because their are so many Asian films I haven't seen, some of which I will be inspired to write about. Don't confuse me with an expert, because there are others who know much more than me. And again, don't think that I'm the final word on anything I write, but rather the impetus for more cinematic explorations. Hopefully, some of those postings will be of substance.

Love will Tear Us Apart is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:04 AM

July 23, 2009

Red Cliff II

Chi bi xia: Jue zhan tian xia
John Woo - 2009
Zoke Culture Region 0 DVD

How often do you watch a movie, and while the final credits are rolling, think to yourself, "I can't wait to see this movie again."?

What struck me most about Red Cliff II is John Woo's humanity. The second film depicts the battle with showers of arrows, towering conflagrations, thundering explosions and not a little blood. Yet Woo shows the human toll as well, not simply the scores of dead bodies covering the ground, which in itself is effective, but also how it may effect two people who have developed affection for each other.

The film begins with soldiers playing a game similar to soccer, kicking a ball across the field. Disguised as a male soldier, Vicki Zhao Wei is on the sidelines, butting her head against the ball, catching the attention of the leading player. The sports hero, Suchai, is suddenly made a battalion commander by Prime Minister Cao, yet he is more interested in relaxing with his newfound friend rather than being a soldier. The trope of having a woman disguised as a man is familiar, yet Woo is able to convey a purity in the childlike friendship between the simple minded young man and the woman, who is acting as a spy, and is of noble birth.

At the same time as northern army Cao's soldiers are kicking the ball around, the southern leader, Zhou Yu is showing his prowess, tossing arrows from a distance, into a pot. Unlike the others who continually miss the small hole, Zhou Yu hit the target every time, explaining his success to concentration. While the actual battle of Red Cliff is what Woo's film is building up to, what makes his film more than an action spectacle is the use of motifs involving strategy and art. Part of the film involves a discussion on "The Art of War", with an emphasis on art, be it realized as poetry, calligraphy or a tea ceremony. Cao discovers that a large number of his soldiers have died from typhoid, and rather than bury or cremate them, has them floated to Zhou Yu's enemy camp. The tactic is to both physically and psychological undermine his foes. In another scene of cross-cutting, we see Cao reciting a poem about the transience of life, while Zhou Yu's soldiers cremate the dead soldiers on large pyres. For John Woo, the story is not simply one about a vastly larger army in battle with a smaller opposing force, but of the recognition of other's strengths and weaknesses, as well acknowledgment of one's own vulnerability.

Seeing the completed Red Cliff makes me concerned about the "international" version, condensed to about half of the original two films, that is to be playing U.S. theaters, what it will look like, although advance word has been favorable. The original films are said to be scheduled for U.S. DVD release by Magnolia Films, but this is yet to be seen. It is only at the conclusion that so much that might seem extraneous makes sense to the totality of Woo's vision. One wonderful scene is of Tony Leung Chiu Wai performing a solo dance with a sword, a very balletic moment. Another moment to savor is when Zhang Fengyi, as Cao Cao, talks about missing his young son. Woo's clearly on the the side of Zhou Yu and his allies, but the scene with Zhang allows some sympathy for the enemy. Another favorite scene is of Takeshi Kaneshiro playing a trick on Cao's soldiers, sitting in a small boat, drinking, while arrows whiz around him. One might argue that it is the relationships between characters, rather than the actual battle, that is at the heart of Red Cliff II.

Near the end of the battle are the hallmarks of a classic John Woo film. Leung and Zhang are caught in a "Mexican standoff", with swords instead of guns. There is a last second, breath taking rescue. To criticize John Woo for repeating certain elements from film to film would be like complaining about the use of "Shall We Gather at the River" in a John Ford film. I don't feel like I am exaggerating when I say that the Red Cliff films are John Woo's greatest films to date. Rather than thinking Woo retreated from Hollywood, one could consider that past decade as one allowing Woo training on making a large scale, large budget epic. The "thinking person's epic" did not disappear with Anthony Mann or Stanley Kubrick but is alive and well in China.

Red Cliff II is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

July 21, 2009

Maniac Cop

William Lustig - 1988
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

While I was living in Thailand, I was getting mail at a private mail box in Berkeley, California. Since resettling back in Denver, I have been getting stored mail forwarded to me on a sporadic basis. One of the recent packages received was a DVD of Maniac Cop that Synapse sent to me back in November that must have arrived at about the same time that I was starting to acquaint myself with Chiang Mai. The guys at Synapse obviously didn't seem to mind that I didn't bother to write about Maniac Cop as they have sent me screeners since my return to the U.S. Still, I feel that I should write a few notes on this cult film.

There was a twinge of nostalgia when part of the action took place on Bleeker Street in New York City. Even though the film was shot about eleven years after I had moved from the city, it was still recognizable from when I lived there. I wish the camera had captured the full marquee of the Bleeker Street Theater. That was the last theater I visited before I left New York - a double feature of L'Eclisse and Puzzle of a Downfall Child, seen in the company of Richard Koszarski and his wife. Of course, there is always some nostalgia simply seeing the twin towers as well. Still, from what I had read and heard, New York City of the Eighties was not the same as it was during the early to mid-Seventies, and the changes were not for the better.

I can't believe there would be anyone reading the title, Maniac Cop, and not figuring out what the movie is about. That said, the best way to watch this film might actually be with the commentary by William Lustig, writer-producer Larry Cohen, co-star Bruce Campell, and composer Jay Chattaway. Among the fun bits along the way is pointing out that Maniac Cop was something of a family affair with Lustig's uncle, Jake LaMotta, briefly seen as a detective checking out the first victim, played by Cohen's daughter, Jill Gatsby. Sheree North also appears as a crippled police woman operating the only computer in the police station, and unavoidably a little voice wonders if Marilyn Monroe would have appeared in such a role, in a low budget thriller, had she lived. Deserving of more than supporting roles is Tom Atkins, playing the police detective who almost solves mystery.

What is intriguing is that Maniac Cop combines the genres of police thriller and horror movie into a lightly entertaining package. For a significantly more intense comparison, one might want to see the two French Crimson Rivers films. Maniac Cop was not made for serious analysis, nor should it be examined too closely. Instead, think of this film as one of the better last examples of grindhouse cinema made before the grindhouses all closed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM

July 14, 2009

Sleepy Eyes of Death - Collector's Set, Volume 1

Sleepy Eyes of Death 1: The Chinese Jade/Nemuri Kyoshiro Sappocho
Tokuzo Tanaka - 1963

Sleepy Eyes of Death 2: Sword of Adventure/Nemuri Kyoshiro Shobu
Kenji Misumi - 1964

Sleepy Eyes of Death 3: Full Circle Killing/Nemuri Kyoshiro Engetsugiri
Kimiyoshi Yasuda - 1964

Sleepy Eyes of Death 4: Sword of Seduction/Nemuri Kyoshiro Joyoken
Kazuo Ikehiro - 1964
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Until it made it's U.S. DVD debut, I was unfamiliar with the series of film starring Raizo Ichikawa as the ronin Nemuri Kyoshiro. The name Nemuri roughly translates as sleep. Released under the series title, The Sleepy Eyes of Death, the films were extremely popular in Japan until the untimely death of Ichikawa at age 37 from cancer. Even if cancer had not claimed Ichikawa, a look at his filmography suggests that he was working at a grueling pace, with not only twelve Nemuri Kyoshiro films made between 1963 and 1969, but other films as well, including seven films in the Shinobi no mono series made between 1962 and 1966. As popular as the series about the blind, swordfighting masseur, Zatoichi, the Nemuri Kyoshiro series were dependable moneymakers for Daiei Studios.

Unlike the Zatoichi series, the Nemuri Kyoshiro series never received theatrical distribution in the U.S. There is no surprise in this primarily because the main character is nihilistic, the films end on a downbeat note, and the series is more culturally specific regarding the history of Japan during the 19th Century prior to the Meiji Restoration. The events take place in and around Edo, now Tokyo, when the Shogunate was corrupted by profligate spending, the Samurai were finding their power limited, and a new merchant class was emerging in financial and political influence. The general tone of the Nemuri Kyoshiro series is more serious than that of the more visceral and comic Zatoichi films.

Raizo Ichikawa's own sleepy eyes may remind a few of Robert Mitchum, albeit with a prettier face, but a similar, commanding low voice. Similar too is the attitude of someone who at least outwardly claims not to give a damn about anyone or anything. Kyoshiro not only is a masterless samurai, but he chooses to stay that way, often turning down work, but often fighting more or less reluctantly on behalf of those less powerful or marginalized by those in power. Women fight to be with him, be they princesses, courtesans, hostess or street walkers. With his brush of reddish hair, Ichikawa takes on the appearance of a fox. As a master swordsman, Kyoshiro is know for his technique of moving his sword in a wide circle, his victim slain before the circle is completed.

The first four films, as noted, have four different directors. What is interesting is to watch the evolution of a series, especially as the fourth film is what cemented the popularity of the Nemuri Kyoshiro films after a shaky beginning. The first film is the least interesting except that it introduces the character of Kyoshiro and some of the historical elements that inform the series. The story is somewhat like The Maltese Falcon but with a small jade statue that several people are fighting over. Things ramp up with the next three films. Kenji Misumi is probably best known for his work on on the Zatoichi films. Aside from the marked improvement in the visual style from a guy known as "Little Mizoguchi", what I really like about the second film is the use of extended periods of silence to create tension. Kyoshiro becomes the protector of the Shogun's minister of finance, whose job is in part to keep the Shogun's extended family from bankrupting the country. The third film is by another frequent director from the Zatoichi film, Kimiyoshi Yasuda. There is a constant use of shadows which makes the film visually stunning. The story, about a member of the Shogun's extended family groomed to be heir to the throne by his ambitious mother, adds a greater psychological dimension to the series. Director of the fourth film, Kazuo Ikehiro, is said to have made a point of bringing in elements from the original novel by Renzaburo Shibata regarding Kyoshiro's origins. This time it is the Shogun's opium crazed daughter who causes much of the trouble, while Kyoshiro gets involved with persecuted Christians, and a mysterious nun. The violence and nudity are amped up which may explain why this film was more popular than the preceding three. Part Four also brings back the character of Chen Sun, a master of weaponless martial arts who challenges Kyoshiro's sword with his kung-fu.

Chen Sun is played by Tomisaburo Wakayama, the brother of Zatoichi star Shintaro Katsu. The family resemblance is easy to spot. Wakayama is the only cast member to play the same character twice. When watching the films back-to-back, one will notice a number of cast members from the Daiei Studios stock company playing different parts in different films. Of interest to some in the fourth film is the appearance of Akemi Negishi, Josef Von Sternberg's muse for his last film, Anatahan. As with their other films, AnimEigo has subtitles that explain briefly some of the historical or cultural references spoken of by the characters, with more extensive notes as part of the supplements. When it comes to subtitles on Japanese films, AnimEigo slaps the snot out of Criterion. As for the further adventures of Nemuri Kyoshiro, is suspect that the best is yet to come.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

July 09, 2009

Revenge of a Kabuki Actor

Yukinoji Hange/An Actor's Revenge
Kon Ichikawa - 1963
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

I've only seen a handful of films by Kon Ichikawa, and Revenge of a Kabuki Actor is one of my favorites. The letterboxed New Yorker Films tape now is replaced by an anamorphic DVD that also has improved subtitles that not only translate the dialogue but also, at certain points, will at some context to what is being said. Because of the improved translation, it is also easier to follow the story, but also Ichikawa's satirical points about celebrity.

Kazuo Hasegawa celebrated is 300th film appearance doing a remake of the film he starred in under Teinosuke Kinugasa's direction in 1935. As it turned out, Ichikawa's version was the second to last film Hasegawa made before devoting himself entirely to stage productions. In retrospect, this all seems appropriate as the main character is an actor, and the film, and often the comments made by the characters, concern dramatic and timely entrances and exits. I don't know if Kinugasa's version is available in any format to compare the two versions. What is certain is that between having Kinugasa play two roles, sometimes appearing appearing opposite himself, and what is implied by the relationships of some of the characters, Ichikawa has made a film that remains perversely humorous, or perhaps humorously perverse.

Certainly helpful is one of the DVD notes that explains that by law, oyama, male kubuki actors, were to maintain the female facade off stage. Taking place in the 1830s, it is only the appearance of a gun and a mechanical clock that remind the viewer that the film takes place at a time when Japan held onto feudal traditions. One of the running jokes of the film is that almost everyone falls in love with Yukinojo, the kabuki actor played by the baby faced Hasegawa. Among those to be charmed are the willing, Lady Najimi, who literally falls lovesick, and the initially disinterested, the supposed "man-hater", the female gang leader, Ohatsu, who first declares Yukinoji to be creepy with his high pitched voice, make up and purple kimono. An older businessman offers patronage, while the thief Yamitaro expresses affection that may be more than brotherly. Even setting aside that some oyama were homosexual, the rivalry of women for Yukinoji makes Revenge of a Kubuki Actor a gender-bender where love charges along without need for apology, explanation or second thoughts.

What might be considered more perverse is that the revenge portion of the story is the least interesting part of the film. Yukinoji, a celebrated actor from Hokkaido, has been invited to appear in Edo. It is in Edo that he is able to face the three men who ruined his parents, causing their suicides when Yukinoji was still a child. The men in question seek out Yukinoji, not knowing who he really is, setting themselves up for their Yukinoji's revenge. The trio forwarded their own ambitions in business and government taking advantage of Yukinoji's parents. Complicating things further is the presence of Heima, a formal rival of Yukinoji's when both studied sword-fighting.

And here's where Revenge of Kabuki Actor is fun. Yukinoji may rightly be described as sissy, but it doesn't stop him from handling himself against a band of swordsmen. The exterior scenes mostly take place in a dreamlike or theatrical environment with characters moving in and out of darkness. Sparks illuminate the scene as sword strikes sword. Observing Yukinoji fighting Heima and his samurai friends, Ohatsu comments that the "real" swordplay is more entertaining than what appears in the theater. The use of settings, lighting and color shift in such a way as to eliminate the distinction between artificial and realistic appearing environments.

While Hasegawa was saying goodbye to a career that began in the silent era, many of the other stars were at their respective peaks or on the ascent. Curiously, Fujiko Yamamoto, who played Ohatsu, also retired from the screen after making one more film as if there was a tie in life as there is with her character who disappears with Yamitaro, who decides to retire from thievery. Ayako Wakao had also established her career in the Fifties, but continued her career through the beginning of the Seventies, with infrequent appearances since then. Briefly seen in Shintaro Katsu who had begun his first of many films as Zatoichi, the sword wielding blind masseuse, just the year before. Raizo Ichikawa, in a supporting role as a thief seeking reknown, also began his series as the samurai Nemuri Kyoshiro.

Could some of the dialogue and situations have been veiled commentary on the inner workings at Daiei Studios? The self-reflective parts of Revenge of Kabuki Actor add to the fun, while some the parallels between what happens to Hasegawa, Yamamoto and Raizo Ichikawa's professional lives and their respective characters is uncanny. A filmmaker with lesser imagination would have immediately pounced on the potentially campier aspects of Revenge of a Kabuki Actors. Hasegawa may have been too old to recreate his famous role, yet this works within the context of a story in which the characters peg their lives on appearances being mistaken for reality. That the film remains highly enjoyable may also be related to something Ichikawa has said in an interview with Mark Schilling: "What hasn't changed is the way we look at human beings. Mores and manners change, the cut of a suit changes, but the way we look at human beings doesn't change so much."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM

July 06, 2009

The Sprit of Ed Wood Blogathon: The Calamari Wrestler

Ika Resuraa
Minoru Kawasaki - 2004
Pathfinder Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

What I liked best about Ed Wood, Jr., or more precisely, Tim Burton's version of the oft maligned filmmaker, is his unwavering conviction in his talent. Similarly, many of the actors in Wood's film plunge ahead with dialogue and situations with a sense of seriousness befitting the cast of a Shakespearean tragedy. It doesn't matter that the interior of a rocket ship looks like it was filmed in someone's living room, or that the flying saucers look like suspended pie tins. Ed Wood's films are nothing if not entertaining in their ineptness and absurdity. Even if Wood was totally deluded about his abilities as a writer or director, it's the sincerity of Wood and his players that helps make his films continually watchable.

I had written about three Minoru Kawasaki films last November. Like Ed Wood, Jr., Kawasaki makes films with very limited budgets, with stories that defy conventional description. The very cheapness of his projects is never disguised. Unlike Wood, Kawasaki is a more technically able filmmaker, but the obvious financial restrictions he has to work with are part of a self aware aesthetic. Both Wood and Kawasaki exist as outsiders, working without the benefit of studio support. The main difference is that while one may laugh at Ed Wood, Jr., one laughs with Minoru Kawasaki.

The Calamari Wrestler is about a talking squid who seeks to become Japan's wrestling champion. He might also be the reincarnation of a deceased, highly revered wrestler. The squid costume looks marginally better than something found in a Roger Corman creature feature from the Fifties from the top, but no attempt has been made to hide that there is a boot wearing man underneath. Convinced that the squid is, in fact, the reincarnation of her late lover, a young woman, daughter of the wrestling commissioner, pursues the cephalopod. Interspecies love takes a back seat to sporting spectacles between men and invertebrates. Kawasaki's world is one that a more conventional thinking film viewer would pass on, but I find myself easily swept up by Kawasaki's childlike, rather than childish, universe of talking animals that coexist with humans.

One might argue that Kawasaki is as personal a filmmaker as Ed Wood. Both are writers and directors whose films reflect some of their personal obsessions. Kawasaki's films reflect a childhood growing up with parents who ran a seafood restaurant, as well as his love of wrestling, baseball, and Japanese genre films, especially Toho monster movies. It might also be said that a filmmaker, as well as an audience, with less imagination, would demand more realistic computer generated special effects, rather than watching a guy in a rubber suit. Kawasaki's films are about outsiders whose sense of integrity is challenged establishment characters with greater financial or political power. A Kawasaski hero is incapable of compromise or being untruthful. Even if some of the more distinctly Japanese aspects of Kawasaki's films are not fully understood by western viewers, one has to love a film where the most unlikely protagonists achieve victory in spite of overwhelming odds. Love wins out with marriage and parenthood in The Calamari Wrestler with an ending that could open the way for a sequel, perhaps titled The Squid and the Wail.

For more of "The Spirit of Ed Wood", visit Cinema Styles. Angora sweaters are optional.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (5)

July 03, 2009

New York Asian Film Festival - the Home Version

20th Century Boys

Let's face it, there are even people who live in New York City who couldn't make it to the New York Asian Film Festival. For the rest of us, it should be noted that a good number of the films are available on DVD. It may not be as cool as seeing it on the big screen in a (hopefully) air-conditioned theater. On the bright side, many of these DVDs cost no more than a movie ticket. When you factor in service charges, transportation to and from the theaters, and snacks or meals, and for some, the services of a babysitter, buying a DVD seems even more reasonable. What is listed here are primarily DVDs playable internationally, regardless of home region coding. Some exceptions are noted. Also, while I have listed only one version, there may be a choice of other DVD versions as well as Blu-ray versions. The versions listed have English subtitles. It should be noted that Monster X Strikes Back is now available for rent from Netflix and GreenCine.

20th Century Boys.

Be a Man! Samurai School.

Cape No. 7.

Dream (Region 3)

Empress and the Warriors

Exodus (Region 3)

Eye in the Sky

Five Deady Venoms

High Noon

Hard Revenge Milly

If You are the One (Region 1 pre-order)

Ip Man

K-20: Legend of the Mask (Region 3 Pre-order)

Longest Nite

Magic Hour

Monster X Strikes Back: Attact the G-8 Summit!

Rough Cut

Tactical Unit: Comrades in Arms (Pre-order)

Tokyo Gore Police

The Warlords

The Warlords

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2009

Nuits Rouges

Georges Franju - 1974
Eureka! Masters of Cinema Region 2 DVD

As long as Hollywood is married to the idea that any film made needs to be based on a comic book, television series, or previously made film, I am astounded that no one has thought of remaking Nuits Rouge. Yes, the film was hardly a success, released at the worst possible time in France when the entire country was virtually on strike, while New Line dropped the ball with the U.S. release, titled Shadowman. But what a sales pitch could be made! The plot could be described as The Dark Knight and The DaVinci Code, plus killer zombies. Best of all for those concerned about upsetting the Vatican is that the Templars are the good guys.

Much of the credit should go to Jacques Champreux who wrote and stars in the film. Inspired by Republic Studios serials, Lon Chaney, as well as the serials of his grandfather Louis Feuillade, Champreux plays the villainous master of disguise who is usually seen with his head covered completely by a red mask with only is eyes visible. This villain is known as the man without a face, yet anyone familiar with Franju's most famous film probably can't help but be reminded of the masked Edith Scob, Franju's Eyes without a Face. The faceless man is after a lost treasure, said to be found in a sunken vessel in the Caribbean. The faceless man has an army of men whose faces are equally covered, but in black, a beautiful female assistant, and a deranged doctor in his employ. Seen thirty-five years later, the technology of hidden video cameras and tiny microphones is enjoyably retro while the intent at the time was futuristic. There are also the secret passageways and safes found behind oversized paintings. And of course, attractive women in skintight catsuits or black tights never are out of style.

Georges Franju had always dreamed of making his own version of Fantomas. As it turned out, it was the woman in the catsuit, Gayle Hunnicutt, who starred in a version made for West German television six years later. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote extensively about Feuillade prior to Les Vampires being made available on DVD, touching on Franju's homages. One can intellectualize all one wants to about Franju and Feuillade, but Feuillade's most lasting contribution has been in the creation of a cinematic icon. Musidora has Irma Vep paved the way for the various incarnations of Batman's Catwoman, Mrs. Peel, and Maggie Cheung as a late 20th Century Irma Vep. That also includes Cat-women of the Moon, but this is about an image that moves from film to film. Had I the ability to make screen grabs from a Region 2 DVD, I certainly would. The best I can do is offer a link to Tim Lucas's series of screengrabs. I can tell you that Rouges Nuit is almost worth the price of admission just to watch Hunnicutt in black, with that bountiful red hair.

The DVD interview with Champreux is worth watching to learn the history of how Nuits Rouges was made, and almost undone by a Yugoslavian crew. Aside from Judex, which I had the opportunity to see theatrically a couple of times in New York City, and Eyes without a Face, the only other Franju film I've been able to see was Thomas the Imposter, also many years ago. A film like Nuits Rouges, which probably seemed out of synch with the times in 1974 probably works better thirty-five years later when it's old fashion aspects would be less of a problem, much in the way that John Ford's anachronistic Seven Women looks less dated than, for example, Murderer's Row. The homage to cinema's silent era could be in part why the Nuits Rouges cast also includes Josephine Chaplin. Seeing Nuits Rouges back-to-back with Judex easily demonstrates that the two films are more similar than Franju have been willing to admit. Whatever may be lacking in budget, especially for special effects, Nuits Rouges makes up for abundantly with its low tech charm.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 AM | Comments (1)

June 29, 2009

The Haunted Drum

Perng Mang: Glawng phee nang manut
Nuttapeera Chomsri & Sranya Noithai - 2007
Tai Seng Region 1 DVD

Had I stayed in Thailand for another couple of weeks, I would have seen The Haunted Drum theatrically, mostly because it would have been the major release at the moment. The film recently was made available on DVD in the U.S., and turns out to be one of the more credible Thai ghost stories I have seen. This is one of the few films that plays it straight. If The Haunted Drum doesn't reach the artistic heights of Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak or Wisit Sasanatieng's The Unseeable, it still proves to be a satisfying film for what it does achieve.

Being a period film, taking place in the 19th Century, The Haunted Drum does require some appreciation for Thai culture. The film delivers on graphic horror without dwelling on it, and at least on of the plot twists is not only not unexpected, but may seem like a requirement for Thai ghost stories. The visual gorgeousness of The Haunted Drum begins from the opening credit sequence of shots of a shrine decked with golden masks and incense, a series of pans and dissolves. The narrative introduces Ping, a young boy with the ambition to become a musician. It is later revealed that he is from a prominent family, yet chooses to be part of a musical group that is as prestigious as it is impoverished. While some of the musicians and dancers publicly agree to the vow, there is discontent regarding their financial and social standing, partially determined by the local government chief who sponsors a musical group of his own.

At the time that Ping steps into the courtyard where the musicians and dancers live, the group master, Duong, has everyone gathered while he makes a special vow. Those of the group who do not leave by the time a stick of incense has burned would be expected to remain as loyal members of Duang's group. Anyone who leaves the group after completion of the vow, or who causes discord in the group, would be subject to a horrible fate. Ping stays with Duang, in part because of the opportunity to move up from supporting drums, playing the taphon, to playing the featured perng mang, The perng mang is actually a group of tonally keyed drums that play different notes. The title instrument is said to host spirits who serve to protect Master Duang's group as long as it is revered. Strictly going by the synopsis, one might easily dismiss The Haunted Drum.

I could only imagine what it might have been like to see The Haunted Drum in a theater like the Major Cineplex in Chiang Mai. I would recommend this film based on the soundtrack alone. There is a scene in which Ping and another musician, Pai, compete on the perng mang. To put it in a way that westerners might understand better, it's like watching a face off between Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. I don't know how close to classical Thai music this is, but it is no surprise that the musical group Giant Wave had been nominated for their score. Maybe the biggest twists to The Haunted Drum is that it actually was a box office failure in Thailand, only to score several nominations in the Thailand National Film Association awards, also for the costumes, and actress Woranut Wongsawan, who plays the mysterious Tip.

Because the film was a critical, but not financial success, it will be of interest to see what opportunities are given for the filmmakers. Nuttapeera is also credited for cowriting the screenplay for the critically lambasted White Monkey Warrior. I would hope that Sranya will be heard from again, being one of the few Thai female film directors.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:30 AM | Comments (1)

June 25, 2009

Angel Baby

Paul Wendkos - 1961
Warner Archives DVD

Is there anyone who has the story on the making of Angel Baby? What is known for sure is that the film was begun by Hubert Cornfeld, and completed and signed by Paul Wendkos. There are also two credited cinematographers, Haskell Wexler and Jack Marta. There are parts of the film that appear closer to the work of Cornfeld and Wexler, mostly with some of the more dramatic lighting and unusual angles. In terms of any thematic and visual continuity, Angel Baby has more in common with Cornfeld's other films that I've seen, Pressure Point and Night of the Following Day. It could also be that Wendkos was hired to complete the film because someone remembered that his first film, The Burglar was about the robbery of a fake spiritualist. I found it interesting to discover that Wendkos and Cornfeld both made their debut films at about the same time, with The Burglar on the shelf for two years before being picked up by Columbia Pictures. Andrew Sarris considered Wendkos and Cornfeld interesting enough to mention them in his American Cinema. If nothing else, further study and interviews of those still with us would be of interest in discussing the kind of work that constituted independent filmmaking in the Fifties, when Wendkos and Cornfeld began their careers. Cornfeld's filmography is the skimpier of the two men because he managed to antagonize enough people to effectively cut short his time in Hollywood. Paul Wendkos proved to be more elastic in taking whatever projects came his way, yet Angel Baby is not uncharacteristic considering the scope of his very productive career.

Setting aside questions of authorship, Angel Baby is, on the whole, a film that seems to look better now than it did during its initial release. A mute young woman, Jenny, is dragged by her mother to the prayer meeting held by evangelist Paul Strand. With the audience members also praying for her to regain her voice, Strand places his hand on Jenny's throat. She regains the voice lost when she was a young girl, much to her own shock and amazement. Jenny decides to dedicate her life to spreading "the word", joining the itinerant Strand with his much older wife, Sarah, and their assistants, the less than secretively alcoholic Ben and Molly Hays. Sarah's jealousy of Jenny's youth and fear of losing her husband causes a rift, with Jenny going out on her own with help from the Hays couple. A small town businessman sees a way to make money promoting Jenny. While some critics have described Angel Baby as the smaller scale, distaff version of Elmer Gantry, this ignores both the issues raised by Angel Baby as well as its other merits as a film.

Even though the religion in the story is a form of Christianity, I think it would by short-sighted to think that Christianity is the subject of the film. Taking a broader perspective, I would argue that Angel Baby is actually about the role of faith taken personally, and used in any form of organized religion where hierarchies of any kind are involved. The characters in Angel Baby may be deeply flawed, and yet they are also guided by a sincere belief that they are acting on behalf of God. What makes the film work is that there seems to be a fundamental respect for the characters without making them the objects of derision or cheap humor, even though there is an abundance of opportunity.

One scene that would have surely tempted a lesser director involves Sarah and Paul. Imagining that Paul's feelings about Jenny are more than friendly, Sarah reminds Paul of their marriage vows, and offers herself to Paul, wearing a somewhat flimsy nightgown, exposing the upper portion of her breasts. The actress playing Sarah, Mercedes McCambridge, was never attractive in the conventional sense, and was twenty-three years older than the actor playing Paul, George Hamilton. Paul spurns Sarah's advances. While the scene could be read as one of the old Hollywood trope of there being something wrong with mature women having both sexual interest, and sexual interest in much younger men, the scene is played with greater sympathy for Sarah than would be found in a similar scene in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard which played up the relationship between Gloria Swanson and William Holden for maximum grotesqueness.

Salome Jens, as Jenny, never fit the conventional mold of Hollywood beauty. Her acting ability cannot be questioned in the first few minutes of the film, first by the body language she uses when she is mute, and then when she is healed by George Hamilton. When Jens first speaks, it is with the voice of someone who has not spoken in about ten years, mouthing the words but not being fully articulate, the sounds struggling to come out of her mouth. The film also marks one of top billed George Hamilton's early roles. Whatever limitations Hamilton has had as an actor, he is visibly better delivering fire and brimstone than playing innocent and earnest. His performance in Angel Baby suggests that not enough attention was paid to how much better Hamilton is when his character skirts the sleazy side of life. Peripheral to the story, but a moment worth savoring is a scene of the very drunk Ben and Molly Hays, played by the always dependable Henry Jones and Joan Blondell. Deciding that the need to see the Strands about the trouble Jenny is about to get into, Jones takes Blondell's feet to put on her shoes. There is a palpable sweetness to the scenes these two older character actors share. Angel Baby was also the inauspicious big screen debut of Burt Reynolds, playing a character not too different from the good ol' boy persona he would make his own almost ten years later. Reynolds appears only in a few scenes in the beginning and near the end, showing off the chest that would sell a million magazines a decade later. Reynolds also has my favorite line in the film, letting Jens know how much he feels for her: "You look so nice and sweet. I swear you give me the torments."

I'm not sure if I know exactly what "the torments" are, although I could probably make an educated guess. Still, it's a great line and one that is more imaginative than what passes for dialogue in more recent American films. For those whose church is the cinema, we can be thankful that Angel Baby is born again on DVD.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:44 AM | Comments (2)

June 22, 2009

The Claude Chabrol blogathon: The Road to Corinth

La Route de Corinthe/Who's Got the Black Box?
Claude Chabrol - 1967
Pathfinder Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Road to Corinth is a perfect illustration of what Andrew Sarris meant when he described Chabrol as keeping his hand in the filmmaking process even when his heart wasn't in it. The last film made before renewed commercial and critical with Les Biches, it is easy to understand why Chabrol would think this is his worst film. This is not to say unwatchable or devoid of any rewards. If Claude Chabrol's goal was to be the French Alfred Hitchock, than The Road to Corinth is Topaz, filmed two years earlier and with fewer pretenses.

The black boxes are little electronic gizmos that are suppose to cause failure in N.A.T.O.'s radar system. The boxes are Chabrol's MacGuffin. Chabrol is less interested in cold war politics than he is in presenting Jean Seberg as his blonde damsel in distress, picking up where her murdered spy husband left off. Chabrol may have been glancing at Jean-Luc Godard by not only using the star of Breathless, but introducing his N.A.T.O. spies with a wall sized photo of Lyndon Johnson and a giant U.S. flag. If nothing else, these outsized props serve as notice to not take The Road to Corinth seriously.

What probably was of interest to Chabrol was the constant shifting of relationships. Seberg's goal is to vindicate her husband while everyone else wants to get in her way for their own reasons. Both characters and places are not always who, or what, they appear to be. The film begins with the appearance of a magician named Socrates, who is revealed under torture to be a spy. Michel Bouquet operates a small snack shop as a cover for his spy operation, while the chief villain has a lair inside the family crypt. Chabrol plays with sexual ambiguity presenting a male chambermaid, a portly hitman whose voice and soft features a feminine, and a dandyish hitman with an affinity for flowers and straw hats. The interest in duality within one person is also indicated when a piece of sculpture, the head of the goddess Artemis, is split in half, truly a girl cut in two.

Chabrol finds ways to be visually inventive with such scenes as the dandy spy climbing down a rope, filmed breaking into the movie frame, or Jean Seberg suspended in midair while hoisted from a crane. There is some humor involving spies disguised as Greek Orthodox priests, complete with sunglasses. Coming as it did, when the James Bond inspired spy cycle was tapering down, The Road to Corinth can't really be described as a spoof, but Chabrol is attempting to have some fun with both the genre and the Greek locations.

While thinking about the film, I had wondered it Hitchcock had ever considered Jean Seberg. Probably the combination would not have worked on a personal level, and Seberg was considered iffy at best in terms of Hollywood box office potential. It is also possible that Chabrol cast Seberg because she had a name that had some meaning beyond France, and if he couldn't make a movie with Grace Kelly, he could at least work with Otto Preminger's discovery. If you want to see Jean Seberg's best acting performance, see Lillith. In The Road to Corinth, it's enough that Jean Seberg is blonde and beautiful, and that every man in the film falls in lover with her. Even if one jettisons questions of Claude Chabrol's style and authorship, Jean Seberg's presence alone is enough to justify a view of this souffle of a movie.

For much, much more on Chabrol, visit Flickhead.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM | Comments (3)

June 18, 2009

The Good Guys

Young Billy Young
Burt Kennedy - 1969
MGM Region 1 DVD

The Good Guys and the Bad Guys
Burt Kennedy - 1969
Warner Brother Region 1 DVD

The revived interest in Budd Boetticher has in turn inspired me to watch, or in some cases, watch again the films by Burt Kennedy. Kennedy wrote the screenplays for what are probably the better of the Randolph Scott westerns directed by Boetticher, including the first, Seven Men from Now, and the last, Comanche Station. The eventual disappearance of westerns as a Hollywood staple was one of the causes for Kennedy's career to turn from theatrical films to television assignments. While I never saw Kennedy's films as consistently as I might have, those I did see usually offered a certain amount of pleasure. At his peak, Kennedy enjoyed working with bigger budgets and longer running times than allowed Budd Boetticher, yet Kennedy's film usually lack the vividness and punch Boetticher seemed to achieve with a few broad strokes. Still, what I like best about Burt Kennedy was that even though by choice or by circumstance, he was primarily involved with westerns, and he seemed to always look for some way to tweak the genre.

Kennedy also worked with some of the same actors in different films, and in keeping with his affinity for westerns worked with stars who were primarily associated with the genre, twice with John Wayne, a mentor early in Kennedy's career, and James Garner. One of the more curious collaborations is that 1969 saw the release of two films Kennedy filmed back-to-back with both Robert Mitchum and David Carradine. It isn't that surprising that neither Young Billy Young nor The Good Guys and the Bad Guys rated any discussions of Carradine's past film roles, these are supporting roles with not a lot of screen time. Reflecting on the films Kennedy wrote for Boetticher, I tried to imagine Carradine in Lee Marvin's role in Seven Men from Now, or taking the place of James Coburn in Ride Lonesome.

By extension, this means imagining Robert Mitchum instead of Randolph Scott. Both of Kennedy's films introduce Mitchum crouched down by a campfire, drinking coffee, the type of scene that would appear in Boetticher's films with Scott. The thematic concerns continue, primarily that of youth versus maturity, and the usually surrogate relationships between fathers and sons. Curiously, both Young Billy Young and The Good Guys and the Bad Guys begin with shots of old steam locomotives, as well as vocal versions of the title songs. As much as I usually like Robert Mitchum, he never had much of a singing voice, and what was passable for Thunder Road is painfully thin almost ten years later. The Good Guys and the Bad Guys boasts the then popular Glenn Yarbrough, a real singer, although for this kind of film, I would have preferred Frankie Laine. Young Billy Young, with a screenplay by Kennedy is more similar to the Scott-Boetticher films. Kennedy recycles the last name of one of Ride Lonesome's characters, Boone, as the family name for Carradine and John Anderson. Mitchum's character is named Ben Kane, possibly a combination taken from Will Kane of High Noon and Scott's Ben Brigade in Ride Lonesome.

Young Billy Young claims a book titled Who Rides with Wyatt? as its basis, but there is nothing in the film that resembles even a highly fictionalized version of the story of Wyatt Earp. Instead, two young outlaws, David Carradine and Robert Walker, Jr. sneak onto the train seen in the opening credits, shoot a Mexican officer and ride off, with Carradine soon abandoning the horseless Walker. Roping a jackass found on the trail, Walker comes across Mitchum, sitting alone, drinking coffee by a stream. Mitchum's past catches up to him in the Arizona town where he acts as lawman, with Carridine as the son of the man who killed Mitchum's son. Mitchum also clashes with Jack Kelly, the man who virtually owns the town, with Angie Dickinson caught between them. Unlike the Boetticher films written by Kennedy that take place in isolated outposts, Kennedy prefers more populated settings for his own films. Still the relationships between Mitchum and Walker, as well as Walker with Carradine, share common ground with such films as the aforementioned Ride Lonesome and The Tall T.

Thematic concerns are less to the point for The Good Guys and the Bad Guys. The film starts off as a seemingly traditional western with Mitchum riding foothills of New Mexico, and stopping off to make small talk with curmudgeonly, civilization hating, Douglas Fowley. The cut to Model Ts upsets any previous expectations, with much of the film taking place in the early 20th Century in a town pointed called Progress. The screenplay is credited to Dennis Shryack and Ronald Cohen, but there seem to be a few moments that indicate Kennedy's hand. Carradine's cigar chomping outlaw leader has more screen time. Like many westerns of the time, it is an elegy to the end of the west, although more comic in tone with Martin Balsam's pompous mayor leading the charge towards the future. Seen almost thirty years later, there is a sense of nostalgia not so much for changing times, as much as the pleasure of seeing Robert Mitchum square off against George Kennedy, John Carradine making a brief appearance as a train conductor, and perennial bad girl Marie Windsor as a bar hostess. It seems quite possible that unlike his heroes who have supposedly outlived their usefulness, Kennedy knew that his time as a genre specialist was limited.

Burt Kennedy conducted an interview with Sean Axmaker, primarily discussing his work with Budd Boetticher.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM

June 16, 2009

Japanese Cinema Blogathon: Matango

Ishiro Honda - 1963
Tokyo Shock Region 1 DVD

While I can't really say that watching Toho Studios monster movies initiated my love for Japanese movies, it probably had a lot to do with introducing me to the idea of watching Japanese movies more seriously. If for no other reasons, I would consider the series a gateway that help generate an interest in Japanese film in general. Unlike some of my generation, I didn't see any of the films theatrically but waited for the television broadcast versions of Rodan and Mothra. At the time I first saw the film known to Americans as Godzilla, I was still unsophisticated enough to not realize that Raymond Burr was shoehorned into an all Japanese film by means of editing. Seeing the American edit years later, I've always wondered why no one has had the sense of humor to remake the film - Raymond Burr plays a character named Steve Martin, so why not have Steve Martin in a version as a character named Raymond Burr? I did finally see the original Japanese version on an Australian DVD, several years before the American DVD version of Gojira was available, stunned by how much grimmer Ishiro Honda's film was as was his intention.

That my viewing of Japanese films would segue from Honda to Akira Kurosawa might also be considered somewhat natural, as these two filmmakers worked at the same studio, made films that essentially defined Japanese cinema for American young men, and personally were the best of friends. The name though that meant more to me when I was a much younger film scholar was Eiji Tsuburaya, Toho's special effects wizard, profiled in a copy of "Famous Monsters of Filmland". I eventually felt myself too old to watch Toho monster films, at least theatrically, but would catch something on occasion on television. The special effects might not have measured up to Hollywood standards, and the synchronization of the dubbing would be off, but there was always a childlike fascination with giant creatures that would visit Earth to create panic and havoc, and remind people of the dangers of radiation. In their unique way, Toho monster movies would also create the notion of the world outside of America at a time when the U.S. was less culturally or racially diverse.

I'm not sure how much I would have appreciated Matango if I had seen it when I was much younger, but I can understand now why some of the actors say it is the favorite of Toho monster films they acted in. Unlike many of the other Honda films, there is no giant monster. That the monsters here are people are walking, stalking, human sized mushrooms is a loopy concept that originated from writer William Hope Hodgson. While unstated, as best as I can tell, from anyone associated with the film film, I would say that Matango reminds me of that favorite line from the Howard Hawks/Christian Nyby version of The Thing: "An intellectual carrot. The mind boggles!". There is a brief reference to the dangers of radiation, but the other film that Matango would remind me of, more than the giant monster series, would be Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Siegel's monsters were the "pod people", repeating the idea of people as vegetables, or vice versa, lacking human emotions. This, of course, could be a setup for a joke about the horror of carrots, peas and mushrooms. But what I think Honda was after, on a more symbolic level, was a critique of the conformist aspect of Japanese culture.

The film is told primarily from the point of view of the last survivor of a yacht that lands, after a destructive storm, on deserted island. Kenji, formerly a psychology professor, is himself declared crazy after being rescued. The first view we see prior to his hospital room is a view of Tokyo, almost an abstraction of neon signs. Kenji and the six other people, are on a pleasure cruise to escape from their lives in Tokyo, to relax without demands or expectations. The opening credit sequence could be from a musical or light comedy, with it's cheerful music and shots of the yacht in the open sea. Once the yacht's crew and passengers are stranded, the film shifts to being a discussion of survival with the conflicts concerning group needs versus individual desires, and shifts in who leads and who follows. An abandoned ship is discovered, one that looks almost like an alien planet, covered as it is with fungus and streaks of rust, or is that blood? Even though it is recognizably the remains of a ship, the surface colors make it resemble an alien landscape. The ship's log explains partially what happened to that boat's crew, yet the lure of the mushrooms proves too great. Obliquely, Honda is positing the question of retaining individual identity or surrendering to the demands of the group.

This particular dilemma might be lost on an American audience, particularly a younger audience who would have comprised Matango's primary viewers. Kenji talks wistfully of having stayed on the island, and states that both the unnamed island and Tokyo are equally cruel. One could liken the mushroom people as both standing in for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors who were horribly disfigured, or the more recent victims of Minamata. Kenji struggles both physically and emotionally to retain his human identity, only to find that while he has refused to surrender his sense of self to become a mushroom person, neither is there a place for him in human society. In the conclusion of Matango, the greatest horror is that of finding yourself alone.

For more Japanese Cinema, visit Wildgrounds.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:10 AM | Comments (3)

June 11, 2009

Splendid Float

Yan guang si she ge wu tuan
Zero Chou - 2004
Panorama Entertainment All Region DVD

Seeing Zero Chou's last two feature films proved enough incentive for me to see her debut narrative film, Splendid Float. Like her other films, Splendid Float is a meditation on love and loss, and an eventual coming to terms with life. Like Chou's other films, it is also about being gay in Taiwan. While some aspects of the film are culturally specific, it is a film that should be seen not only because it establishes Chou's thematic concerns but also because those concerns go beyond any drama about sexual identity.

Roy, a young novice priest, works on behalf of his family's funeral business, conducting Taoist ceremonies for the dead. Unknown to his family, Roy becomes Rose at night, a performer with a traveling drag troupe that sing and dance from their mobile stage. Beyond the performers actually singing, within its tiny budget and restricted locale, Splendid Float has deeper concerns than guys in dresses and make-up lip synching to "Shake your Groove Thing".

Roy is dealing with the death of his lover, Sunny. Sunny had been ambiguous about the extent of his feelings towards Roy. Roy has been asked by Sunny's mother to perform a ceremony for Sunny, unaware that the two were lovers. Roy's emotionalism during the ceremony causes concern both for Sunny's family as well as Roy's own, with those unaware of Roy as Rose questioning why he would act as a bereaved widow. The circumstances of Sunny's death are unclear, possibly accident or suicide. What is known, at least to Roy, is that the two made love, with Sunny leaving a letter of apology and a yellow rose.

While Splendid Float deals with Taoism as practiced in Taiwan, some general aspects to that philosophy can be appreciated. Most obviously is Roy's dual identity as seen by others, both designated by the wearing of clothing and the act of performance. The splendid float of the title refers to the brightly lit stage used by the drag performers, and by extension, where their audience sits or dances, introduced in the beginning of the show as a means to transport the audience to paradise. The mobile stage, the yellow rose, and Sunny's death could all be seen as illustrations regarding the transience of life. When Roy attempts to seek answers to Sunny's death, he tosses two I-Ching coins. Chou does not explain the cause for Sunny's death, although there may be a clue when Roy and Sunny first get together. When asking if Sunny thinks Roy and his friends strange, Sunny response that he thinks they are liberated. Indirectly through Sunny and more directly with Roy, Chou examines the dichotomy of society's expectations against personal identity.

This concern with duality can also been seen in Sunny's formal funeral. Three women, in very colorful dress, perform a dance as part of the ceremony. The scene might be read as a parody of sorts of the performance done by Roy and his friends. Duality is also at the core of the songs performed by the drag troupe so that the lyrics provide a form of commentary on the lives of the characters. Like Taoism, which might be generalized as being about finding unity within duality or two opposing aspects, Roy's journey is about finding a sense of unity within himself.

Splendid Float served to announce Zero Chou as a major talent, winning several Golden Horse awards including Best Taiwanese Film for 2004, with James Chen getting nominated for Best Newcomer for his performance as Roy. Certainly those expecting a Chinese language version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert or To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, Chou's film might be a challenge with its elliptical story telling, shifting between past and present, comedy and drama, musical and ghost story. For a deeper examination of Splendid Float, there is this essay available from Film International.

Splendid Float is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM

June 09, 2009

Djamilya

Irina Poplavskaya - 1969
Russian Cinema Council All Region DVD

The story of Djamilya is, at least on the surface, simple and familiar. In wartime Russia, a peasant family in a remote Kirghiz farm, harvests wheat to be used for soldiers' bread. The farms are staffed mostly by women, children and men too old to be drafted. The younger men that help farm have been injured seriously enough to be dismissed from service. Seit, the oldest remaining boy in his family helps with the farming and is also charged with protecting his sister-in-law, Djamilya. That Djamilya's husband is a soldier currently recuperating at a hospital does nothing to keep the men showering Djamilya with unwanted attention. An injured soldier, Daniyar, is assigned to help with the farming. He befriends Djamilya and Seit, but often finds himself the subject of teasing. Daniyar also lets Djamilya know his feelings for her. After resisting his advanced, Djamilya gives in, in part because of the neglect she feels has been expressed by her husband, who mentions her last in his uninformative letters to the family. Djamilya runs off with Daniyar. Looking back at his life, Seit recognizes that he was also in love with Djamilya, but at the time did not understand his sense of jealousy. He soon leaves the family himself when the opportunity is offered to study art away from home.

Djamilya is based on the autobiographical story by Chingiz Aitmatov. While inspired by his own experiences growing up in Kirghiz, Aitmatov's character grows up to be a painter, rather than a writer. Aitmatov wrote the screenplay and provides narration. The film is about about a way of life that probably changed drastically after World War II. Without there being any sense of conflict or contradiction is a life that has one foot steeped in cultural traditions of several hundred years, and another foot following the path and goals of Joseph Stalin. Even though the fighting is unseen, the effects of war are manifest by the actions of Djamilya and Seit, going against traditions of wives as the bedrock of the extended families, and sons growing up to replace their fathers in the fields.

i could find nothing about director Irina Poplavskaya, and I don't know how much of the film reflects what was specifically written in Aitmatov's screenplay, but there are many moments when Djamilya seems closer in cinematic expression to the French New Wave films and American Independent films that emerged in the early part of the Sixties. There are montages of herds of galloping horses and rustling wheat fields. When Daniyar chases Djamilya through one of the fields, it could well be a scene from a Soviet Truffaut. There is a moment for low tech special effects when Seit is out by a lake at night, the scene illuminated with sparkles that exist for no other reason than providing an otherworldly quality for its own sake.

The actor who plays Daniyar, Suimenkul Chokmorov, also provided the paintings that are presented as the work of Seit. The film opens with a man looking a group of the watercolor paintings, holding a stack while standing, letting them drop to the floor one by one. The watercolors act to inform the viewer that the story takes place in a past time, from the point of view of a child. A later montage of paintings, with shots of details, or using different angles, depicts Daniyar and Djamilya's escape from the village and Seit's imagined fate of the two lovers. The paintings are filmed in color, contrasting with the monochrome of most of the story. When color is used for a live action shot of some horses, the color is altered to appear as if in one of Seit's paintings with their red horses against a blue background.

Djamilya seems markedly atypical for a Russian film even forty years after its initial release. Even though there is a brief interview with director Irina Poplavskaya, she mostly discusses how she had to fight to do the creative color photography and credits Aitmatov for supporting her vision for the film. There is no mention of any role played by the more established director Sergei Yutkevich in the making of the film, or of her own career which appears to have had a lengthy lull following the completion of Djamilya. Aitmatov's story has inspired at least two other versions that emphasized the relationship between Djamilya and Daniyar. Undoubtedly reflecting the hand of its original author, the film Djamilya is about what is in spirit a romantic triangle, with the feelings of a young boy manifesting in the form of art that creatively documents a past life and its people.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:34 AM

June 04, 2009

Chumpae

Jaran Phromransee - 1976
Saha Puntamit Sound and Film All Region DVD

Who's the guy in the blue leisure suit with the brown Panama hat who can kick your ass if provoked? Pherg, that's who.

Chumpae, also known as Choom Pae, was at one time the biggest hit in Thai movie history. The star, Sombat Metanee, was the top star of his day, and even looks a little bit like a baby faced Burt Reynolds. I got the DVD as a way of getting a little more understand into older Thai cinema. Chumpae is not the kind of film that lends itself to serious film criticism, it is more accurately an old film rather than a classic. What is greater than the film is that it provokes a host of questions regarding film preservation as well as film studies.

Film preservation as it understood in Europe and the North America is still in its infancy in Thailand. Just as in the U.S., Thai studios were not prepared for the fact that DVD consumers would be interested in movies that played more than ten years previously. While I have read about a number of older films, the substantial number of old Thai titles available on DVD with English subtitles are those films by Chatrichalerm Yukol. For the non-Thai speaking film scholar, there is the dual problem of seeing the film on DVD, or in many cases VCD, as well as having the film come with reasonably correct English subtitles. Chumpae provides a case in point because the film element used for the DVD was pretty well worn, if not quite as bad as Insee Tong, which I wrote about last year. Also, there is the question of subtitles with English being the common language used even for international film scholars. Nothing gets in the way of taking a film seriously when according to the subtitled dialogue, a bad guy tells a potential victim, "You're going to die like a frog."

Chumpae earned 30 million baht at the Thai box office, impressive for Thailand, but small change by U.S. standards, converting to around one million dollars. There is a lot of shooting and some very basic kick boxing. As far as Asian action films go, this doesn't have the polish of something by Cirio Santiago, the prolific Filipino director who worked with equally small budgets. Another question raised is how a foreign film critic or historian is to write about a film that was intended primarily for a domestic audience, and perhaps also for import within a specific geographic area. Some of the questions come to mind because I am currently reading Reading a Japanese Film: Cinema in Context. For a variety of reasons, Thai cinema is more "foreign" than Japanese film, a situation caused in part because of the more limited number of Thai films shown theatrically as well as available on DVD, especially older films made before the Thai "New Wave" of 1997, as well as the extremely scant writing available on Thai cinema.

As for the film in question, Sombat plays a crook named Pherg who shows up at the town of Chumpae primarily to avenge the death of his father. The town itself is in the middle of Thailand. A gangster named Tom has the police in his pocket, and has also promised his young daughter to be married to the police chief. It is later revealed that Tom makes a habit of offering his daughter's hand in marriage to anyone who can be of significant help in his schemes. Pherg decides to fight Tom and his gang, becoming a sort of Robin Hood in the process. Complicating things is another gangster who runs amuck with his mob, causing havoc, claiming that he is Pherg. Pherg's idea of flirting with a female cop involves the two aiming guns at each other. There is much shooting, tossing of hand grenades, a preposterous happy ending, and subtitles indicating a shaky knowledge of the English language and idioms.

There was no information to be found on director Jaran Phromransee. Based on what I have read about Sombat also being a singer, I am hoping someone will tell me if that is his operatic voice on the song heard during the opening credits. If nothing else, having Chumpae on DVD provides one example of the work of one country's movie star at the height of his career. But in another sense, Chumpae also illustrates how limited film scholarship is both in terms of the availability of films and information regarding many films, as well as the kind of obstacles faced by those whose interest in film history goes beyond the well worn paths.

Chum Pae is available from HK Flix, along with more recent Thai classics, like Tears of the Black Tiger featuring Sombat in a supporting role.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM

June 01, 2009

King of the Roaring 20s

Joseph M. Newman - 1961
Warner Archives DVD

David Janssen hardly looked like the real Arnold Rothstein. One isn't going to view King of the Roaring 20s: The Story of Arnold Rothstein for much in the way of historical accuracy. This is a film to watch primarily for the cast generously stuffed with memorable character actors. Veracity matters less when Jack Carson, Mickey Rooney, William Demarest, Diana Dors show up for their few minutes of screen time. Maybe a truer film about Arnold Rothstein will be made. In the meantime, this film will do, as the entertaining story of the rise and fall of a gangster with the same name.

I haven't read the book by Leo Katcher that provided the basis for the film. The film marked screenwriter Jo Swerling's second whack at Rothstein, the first via Damon Runyon with the character of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. The other telling compromise is that this is the story of a Jewish gangster that dares not speak its name. In her book, The Jew in American Cinema, Patricia Erens would note the existence of Jewish groups that pressured Hollywood to essentially censor this aspect of Jewish-American history. The clues are with the casting of Joseph Schildkraut as father Abraham Rothstein, and a couple of discussion about "our faith", without being specific. The biggest error may be in glossing over why Rothstein was important in the history of organized crime, and the extent of his power and ties with other mobsters. In King of the Roaring 20s, the impression is that Arnold Rothstein was simply a gambler who for a time was extremely lucky.

The film story seems to have been borrowed from the Warner Brothers template, even less surprising considering that one of the producers, Samuel Bischoff was one of the staff producers at Warners. One of Bischoff's credits was as Associate Producer for Raoul Walsh's The Roaring Twenties which stands as one of the classics of the genre. There was a resurgence in interest in the era in the early Sixties so that not only was there a television show that shared the title of Walsh's film (though nothing else), as well as a slew of moderately budgeted films.

The film begins with teenage Arnold Rothstein and his pal, Johnny Burke, busted by the neighborhood cop for organizing gambling out in the streets of New York City. Rothstein promises Burke that they'll be friends and partners forever. Anyone who can't guess where this is heading probably has never seen a movie, or at least not one with James Cagney or Humphrey Bogart (or both). The street cop, complete with Irish brogue, played by Dan O'Herlihy, rises in the ranks, while his take from the underworld increases. Rothstein and Burke grow up to be Janssen and Mickey Rooney. The friendship is forgotten when Rothstein starts working for Tim O'Brien, a politically connected operator with friends in Tammany Hall. O'Brien is played by Jack Carson in his last big screen performance. Carson's performance might be said to be a variation on the snake oil salesman some of us have loved in the past, albeit one with higher financial stakes and deadly consequences for those who cross him.

Joseph Newman primarily employs any visual flourish in conjunction with Rooney. Early on, dismissed by Janssen, Rooney's shortness is emphasized as he finds himself bumping into people and being summarily disregarded by the crowds. In a later scene, Rooney emerges from the shadows to for a near fatal meeting with O'Herlihy. Rooney is restrained, downbeat. As if to recall the live wire kid who was a star at MGM twenty years earlier, is the final glimpse of Rooney defiantly yelling at the gangsters he knows will shoot him down.

In it's initial New York City run, King of the Roaring 20s played second bill to Angel Baby. What cult interest has since developed could primarily be credited to Andrew Sarris who cited the film for the performances by janssen, Rooney and Carson. The film is not quite as good as I remember. The King of the Roaring 20s might best be described not as a classic gangster film but a filmed memory of classic gangster films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:54 AM

May 21, 2009

Motive and Chicken

Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind
John Gianvito - 2007

Mississippi Chicken
John Fiege - 2007
both Watchmaker Films All Region DVD

I was not expecting to receive new DVDs from Watchmaker Films and was in no way prepared to write about them. Nonetheless, my feeling is that if someone is going to send me DVDs, the least I can do is watch them, and hopefully write something thoughtful.

What these two documentaries have in common is that they are about the pursuit of the American Dream. Mississippi Chicken is the more traditional film, about immigrant workers from Mexico who have come to work in a Mississippi poultry processing plant. Profit Motive is a more abstract film of shots of the gravestone and historical markers of the famous, and the almost anonymous, who in fought on behalf of the oppressed or marginalized from the days of Colonial America to more contemporary times.

The combination of the two films made me think back to the Fall of 1973 when I was taking a course on documentary films from George Stoney. While I don't remember the title of one of the films we saw in class, what I do remember is that it was about migrant workers, black workers from "the South" who came to do seasonal work in Long Island, the supposedly more liberal, enlightened "North". Whatever they thought they would earn got eaten up from the costs of their contracted housing and the company store that was the only one allowed as their source for buying food and other needs. Between that documentary made about forty years ago, the general overview of those who were killed campaigning for workers' rights in Profit Motive, and the more specific portrait of a community in Mississippi Chicken, there is the impression that nothing has changed all too much, that there are the exploited and those who will abuse their power.

What both films share is they can be called documentaries, but that description is only a starting point. Mississippi Chicken started off as being about workers in a chicken processing plant but evolved into a story primarily about Mexican workers in Canton, Mississippi, and primarily about one extended family. The first person narration by workers' rights Anita Grabowski is at times self-reflective, discussing what her role should be in regards to the lives of the people she's encountered, as well as discussing whether the film as veered from its intended mission. Profit Motive is an extended montage of shots, with the narrative coming out of the historical chronology of the various gravestones, markers and monuments.

What aesthetic or political value these films might have might be nullified by the audience most likely seeing these films, preaching to the choir as it were. If Mississippi Chicken has any effect, it is most likely to convince a few more people to not buy Tyson's chicken. As for Profit Motive, it is a visual compliment to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. What value these films have has less to do with filmmaking, that as acts of reminders that the more shameful aspects to American life are not not closed chapters of the past, but remain stubbornly part of our present.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM

May 19, 2009

Wandering Ginza Butterfly

Wandering Ginza Butterfly/Gincho Wataridori
Kazuhiko Yamaguchi - 1971

Wandering Ginza Butterfly 2: She-Cat Gambler/Gincho Nagaremono Mesuneko Bakuchi
Kazuhiko Yamaguchi - 1972
both Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

The Wandering Ginza Butterfly films introduced Meiko Kaji and her onscreen persona as Toei Studio's new female star. The shot in which she introduces herself, as her character Nami, is astonishing. For those not familiar with the conventions of the yakuza film, might I suggest this essay by Paul Schrader. In both films, Nami introduces herself to another character with the introductory stance of the yakuza. What is significant is that this stance, with one hand extended outward with the open palm, could be read as a masculine stance. While Nami is never less than feminine in appearance, always wearing a kimono in 1970s Tokyo, this introduction serves to indicate that of a professional gambler, and as a person unafraid to assert herself as necessary. Additionally, when she introduces herself to a crime boss, it is implied but not stated, that she wants nothing less than to be treated as a man.

Although these are pulp films that play in both ways, with bits of nudity or glimpses of panties thrown in, the Wandering Ginza Butterfly series, and Kaji's followup "Scorpion" series, both act as criticisms about the role of females of then contemporary Japan. While not articulated as such, the films express the conflict between a nascent feminism fighting an ingrained sense of masculine domination and entitlement. In the first films, one of the bar hostesses comments about the lack of benefits or a retirement package. Some of the concerns voiced are the same as those almost ten years previously by Mikio Naruse. The difference is that unlike Hideo Namamine, Mieko Kaji is willing to punch, slice or shoot in righting wrongs. One could almost retitle the first of the two film, "When a Woman Ascends the Stairs with a Samurai Sword".

It may be worth pointing out that even though she was hired by Toei Studios to replace the then popular, but retiring, Junko Fuji, Paul Schrader does not mention Kaji. The character of Nami, was also known as the Red Cherry Blossom in contrast Fuji's Red Peony Ryu. More striking is that Nami has no romantic interests, acting as an independent agent. When Nami works with men, it is often with a degree of reluctance, and only when they are in battle against a common enemy. The men that Nami allies herself with also choose to work independently rather than be part of any yakuza association, and act as support for Nami rather than as equals or rivals. This would contrast with Nami's enemies, yakuza gangs which have very clear hierarchies. In the Wandering Ginza Butterfly films, even the best intentioned of men have their weaknesses exposed, while some of the women prove to be more reliable as friends. The relationship that Nami has with men is a transient partnership based on revenge against a common foe, and a fleeting, platonic friendship.

The stories for the two films are almost interchangeable. Fresh out of prison for the murder of a yakuza boss, Nami gets a job as a bar hostess. For reasons never clearly explained, her release is hastened by the yakuza boss's widow. We only know that Nami killed the boss as an act of revenge when she was part of an all female gang. The proprietor of the bar is subjected to a potential takeover by another yakuza boss. Nami intercedes on behalf of the warm hearted proprietor, who is given the honorary name of "Mama" by the young women who work for her. The yakuza boss and his gang prove to be less honorable, even when promising to forgo a debt if Nami wins a game of billiards. Nami forms a friendship with another loner, Ryu, the man who helps get Nami her bar hostess job. In the second film, Nami seeks out the man who murdered her father, discovering him to be a former gambler who disguises his criminal activities with a respectable front. In a sequence of coincidences, Nami saves a young woman from prostitution, the young woman's father was a good friend of Nami's father, and is the one who can identify the murderer. Nami also develops an initially reluctant friendship with Ryuji, a would be entrepreneur, whose businesses spark the ire of the yakuza boss controlling the Ginza section of Tokyo. Again, attempts are made to mediate a dispute with a game, in this case the hanafuda card game. Nami and Ryuji again are forced to settle things with guns and swords.

The man difference between the two films is that there is a more comic tone to the second film. Sonny Chiba adds some star power as the stuttering Ryuji, more adept at martial arts than in handling cards. Otherwise, whole chunks of dialogue are lifted from the first film, markedly the words Nami uses to introduce herself, as well as her final words that close out the films. One might think of this as reworking a successful motif, such as in music when a band like The Kinks redid "You Really Got Me" as "All Day and All of the Night". What makes the films of interest, as many of the exploitation films of the time, is not the formula, but what the filmmakers would do within the restrictions of that formula.

The DVD for the first film also has commentary by Chris D. which adds to some of the context of the film and filmmakers, as well as discussion of the yakuza genre For those who haven't read his book, I recommend Outlaw Masters of the Japanese Film. Both DVDs have the same video interview with Kazuhiko Yamaguchi, a gallery of posters, and original Japanese trailers. The second film also has a brief discussion of Meiko Kaji and Japanese films of the early Seventies with J-Taro Sugisaku, co-author of a book on the genre known as Pinky Violence. While the films are more conventional in story and style than the "Female Prisoner Scorpion" that came next, they serve well to explain why Meiko Kaji became an iconic star in Japan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM

May 14, 2009

Red Sun

Terence Young - 1971
Evergreen Entertainment All Region DVD

Seeing Red Sun almost thirty-seven years after its U.S. released, my thoughts are almost the same as when I first saw this film. The casting of Charles Bronson, Toshiro Mifune and Alain Delon seemed to offer so much promise. And while Red Sun is fairly entertaining, this more literal melding of the western with the samurai film falls short, perhaps needing the visual dynamics offered by Sergio Leone or even John Sturges.

Taking place in 1870, Bronson and Delon lead a gang of train robbers who find the Japanese ambassador in a private car. Delon takes a specially designed sword, a gift to the President, for himself. One of the ambassador's samurai escorts is shot down by Delon. The other samurai, Mifune, promises to track down Delon and recover the sword in a week's time. Meanwhile, Delon has also turned around to ambush Bronson, leaving him behind while he and the gang run off with their loot. Bronson and Mifune form an uneasy alliance, tracking down Delon for their own reasons, gradually, and sometimes grudgingly, developing mutual respect.

One of the four writers credited for the screenplay was William Roberts, the man responsible for envisioning an Akira Kurosawa film with a motley band of cowboys instead of ronin. One of the Magnificent Seven was Charles Bronson. One of the other writers, Denne Bart Petitclerc, wrote the pilot for the television series, Then Came Bronson, pretty much suggesting that his participation in this film was someone's idea of a joke. Writer Lawrence Roman's best known film is McQ, the John Sturges directed attempt to re-invent an aging John Wayne in the mold of Clint Eastwood's character, "Dirty Harry". And Eastwood became an international star taking on the role originally done by Toshiro Mifune in another samurai film by Akira Kurosawa. One of Delon's most noted roles was as star in Le Samourai. Red Sun, to a certain degree, reflects some of the cultural give and take of that time between filmmakers.

As has been widely repeated, Red Sun was a hit almost everywhere except the United States. Toshiro Mifune and Alain Delon had already cemented their status as cinematic icons of Japan and France, respectively. Charles Bronson was still a couple of years from realizing major stardom in Death Wish. Red Sun also proved to be the last starring role for Ursula Andress, almost appropriately guided by the director of her first starring role in Dr. No. Maybe it was the heavily accented English that got in the way for most U.S. viewers. Mifune and Bronson's scenes are the best in part because they were unafraid of having their characters look foolish. Delon, in contrast, never looks like he's comfortable away from his more usual urban surroundings. As the prostitute Delon loves, Andress displays just enough skin to titillate the teenage boys in the audience, but she has often been an aloof presence on screen. Mifune's direction seems to have been to "play the gruff samurai", but he's game enough to be caught in his fundoshi, taking a cold water bath outdoors, and getting caught without his clothes or his sword by Bronson. Bronson, in turn, sees his abilities at bare knuckle brawling reduced to being Mifune's oversized rag doll, an introduction to Japanese martial arts consisting of Bronson tossed several times to the ground. Especially as Charles Bronson allowed himself to be typecast as a humorless agent of vengeance following the later films after Death Wish, Red Sun is one of the few times to see Bronson's comic side.

Terence Young probably got the job as director as he was Bronson's favorite director at the time. Too often, there are shots of the sun, sometimes with filters, as if Young, or his screenwriters, felt the intense need to justify the title of the film. There are enough scenes taking place in the desert to convey the heat and dust where much of the action takes place. The most visually interesting work is in the last twenty minutes when all of the principle characters converge. Especially striking is Bronson and Mifune barely seen, hiding in tall wheat, staking out the rendezvous point. Red Sun came at a time when interest in Italian westerns had tapered off. Somewhere, there must be some interesting stories regarding the making of, what on the surface, was a great idea for a film. Even if Red Sun isn't the film one might imagine, in no way does it diminish its team of legendary stars.

Red Sun is available from HK Flix

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM

May 12, 2009

Trumpets, Westbound

A Distant Trumpet
Raoul Walsh - 1964

Westbound
Budd Boetticher - 1959
both Warner Brothers Archive Collection DVD

Growing up in the mid to late Fifties, the first movie studio I became aware of was Warner Brothers. This was not through there movies but through their television series, westerns such as Maverick, Sugarfoot, Bronco and Cheyenne. Each show was marked by a theme song performed by a male chorus, line drop title cards, and a stock company of actors who would periodically appear on one of the other shows. Warner Brothers studios were always seen in an overhead shot of the studios that appeared like giant barns. Growing old enough to see movies that weren't preceded by the words, "Walt Disney presents", I noticed that Warner Brothers actors not only would appear on a revolving variety of television shows, but also starred in movies. Immersing myself more in older films, I learned to recognize that certain actors frequently appeared in Warner Brothers movies.

Part of whatever pleasure is to be had by watching films like A Distant Trumpet and Westbound has as much to do with seeing contract players, as much, and sometimes more, than viewing films by Raoul Walsh and Budd Boetticher. Boetticher may have directed the film as a favor to Randolph Scott, but his hand was in some of the casting with then-wife Karen Steele and Andrew Duggan among the actors he had previously worked with. In comparison, while A Distant Trumpet has a screenplay by sometime collaborator John Twist, the casting seems more imposed on Walsh with the young stars of the time.

The characters utter a "damn" and "hell" a few times, the violence is more graphic, and the treatment of Native Americans is marginally more enlightened, but A Distant Trumpet could have easily been made twenty years earlier by Walsh and Twist, with a score by Max Steiner. I tried to imagine the film with Errol Flynn as the heroic young West Point graduate sent out west, as in They Died with Their Boots On. Olivia de Havilland and Virginia Mayo would vie for Flynn's attention. I have no idea what Walsh thought of Troy Donahue or Diana McBain, but I suspect he might have liked Suzanne Pleshette. Donahue was big, boyishly handsome, and not much of an actor as he even admitted. Still Walsh treats him like most of his stars with frequent shots of his actors with the camera looking upwards against the sky. Walsh's visual motif in this film is as recognizable as Yasujiro Ozu's view of the world from a tatami mat.

A Distant Trumpet probably needs to be seen on a large screen to be best appreciated. In color and wide screen, Walsh also frequently shoots expansive vistas with small characters seen in the distance, or considerably dwarfed by their environment. Much of the film was shot on location in New Mexico. One of the subplots involves Troy Donahue's officer's quarters, something of a makeshift oasis of civilization in an otherwise physically hostile environment. Walsh's red desert may be more literal than Michelangelo Antonioni's, but both filmmakers are interested in having the environments stand in for the emotions and viewpoints of their characters. In the final image of Raoul Walsh's last film, their is an overhead shot of Donahue, newly married to Pleshette, being saluted with raised swords by his troops. One could view this shot as one of resolution of unity, of the man with the right woman, a captain with his troops, but also of the characters with their environments of the fort and the surrounding desert.

Claude Akins, the mustached villain of A Distant Trumpet also appeared in Budd Boetticher's Comanche Station. Virginia Mayo, appearing in Westbound no doubt as Scott, to fulfill contactual obligations, starred in several of Raoul Walsh's films, most notably White Heat. In his list of motifs to be found in Boetticher's films, Michael Grost lists "curved shapes". The curved shapes Boetticher seems most interested in belong to Virginia Mayo and Karen Steele. Mayo wears dresses that reveal the beginning of cleavage, while the form fitting shirts and dress of Steele speak for themselves. The story is virtually from the Scott template, taking place during the Civil War with Union officer Scott officially asked to take over his stagecoach line, which also serves to transport gold from California to "the East". Getting in the way is former partner Andrew Duggan who has bought his way into controlling the town of Julesburg, and has married Scott's old flame, Mayo. Some of the story is suggested by the real history of Julesburg, Colorado. That there was a Colorado town with sympathies towards the Confederacy would be pure fiction. The point of seeing a film like Westbound is not to see anyone doing anything different.

The fun is in seeing Duggan's weasel of an entrepreneur discover that while his claimed ideals might excuse his villainy, his henchman simply revel in villainy for its own sake as they increasingly are beyond Duggan's control. Michael Dante is affecting as the one armed war veteran who reclaims his sense of masculinity after being called "half a man". I don't know how much of their real life relationship was replayed on film, but Steele, Boetticher's muse at the time, is shown ready to jump in where the action is, even getting into a fist fight with a loudmouthed bad guy. A shot of Steele in form fitting jeans also says all that is needed about why Steele was Boetticher's favorite actress. The supporting characters' names provide a sense of the familiar with Michael Pate as the evil Mace, and Wally Brown as a stagecoach driver named Stubby. That Westbound is considered one of Boetticher's lesser films also suggests that screenwriter Burt Kennedy was a more significant collaborator than might have otherwise been acknowledged. The film is titled Wesbound, and sometimes it's nice to watch or rewatch a film that has no surprises, and follows a familiar path.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 AM

May 08, 2009

Chadni Chowk to China

Nikhil Advani - 2009
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Even when I'm not intentionally contrarian, the films that I usually like are the ones that pass by the radars of the general public, or the critics who just cover the wide release movies. Could Warner Brothers have been more effective in selling their first Bollywood film, or are American audiences simply too xenophobic to take the time to see a Hindi Kung Fu musical comedy? I don't feel like being the scold here, but will instead alert the adults reading this post that there is indeed a movie with comedy that is actually funny, with musical numbers featuring singers and dancers at least several years out of high school. For those puzzled by the title, it refers to the Dehli neighborhood that is home to the "hero" Sidhu.

Akshay Kumar's performance is full of the kind of physical comedy that might remind some of Peter Sellers work with Blake Edwards, along with the kind of work Steve Martin did in films like All of Me. Looking further back, some of the gags may even recall Bob Hope. Sidhu, a cook on a street side restaurant is so inept that he accidentally burns his winning lottery ticket with the oversized flame at his personal shrine. His strong Hindu faith also leads him to believe he has seen the image of Ganesh, the elephant god, on a potato. Meanwhile, the citizens of a village outside of the Great Wall of China are convinced that the reincarnation of their legendary hero lives in India. Two emissaries set to seek their their new savior stumble upon Sidhu, who goes along with what he thinks is a joke until he finds out he's in more trouble than anticipated.

Sidhu is also in love with Sakhi, the star of television commercials for a Chinese company called TSM. The most popular product offered by TSM is a set of ankle bands that allows the most arrhythmic person to dance any popular style. Other items include an umbrella that is both bullet proof and serves as a parachute, and a device that translates any language. Sakhi tricks Sidhu into taking his place in the long line for visas to China. From there the plot becomes more complicated with the story of twin daughters separated at birth, a father with amnesia, and a gangster who's best know for having a bowler hat as deadly as the one belonging to Oddjob in Goldfinger.

Someone better verse in Bollywood than myself would be able to identify some of the parody elements. Even those with some general knowledge should at least identify takeoffs on Rocky and The Karate Kid, or laugh when Sidhu complains about some missing subtitles. The best parts of the film, like most Bollywood films, are the musical numbers, especially those of China as Sidhu imagines it, with a nod to The Last Emperor, that morphs into a dance featuring old time gangsters with their girls in cheong-sam dresses. A movie starring Amitabh Bachchan is briefly seen on television. Chadni Chowk to China not only as Gordon Liu, known by many for his roles in Kill Bill, but also that films martial arts coordinator, Ku Huan-Chiu. A music video shown during the closing credits features several dancers dressed at Kill Bill's The Bride.

Credit should also be given to Deepika Padukone, who takes on dual roles as Sakhi and twin sister, Suzy. Not above some mugging for the camera, Padukone fearlessly is also up for some of the films sight gags and dances. Almost any actress can look good while lip synching, but there are few that look this good while making the audience believe they have two left feet.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

May 06, 2009

Ong Bak 2

Tony Jaa & Panna Rittikrai - 2008
Keris Video Region 3 DVD

One of my favorite movies is The Bad and the Beautiful, a fictionalized story about Hollywood with characters modeled after several real life people both in front of, and behind the camera. There are satirical elements best recognized by those well versed in Hollywood history. I bring this classic film up only because I hope that a Thai filmmaker, ideally Wisit Sasanatieng or Taweewat Wantha, would make a film that was inspired by the making of Ong Bak 2. Nothing on screen has as much drama or comedy as the real life events of a young martial arts star given the opportunity to write and direct a big budget Thai film, going over budget and schedule, and walking off the set of an incomplete film to meditate in the jungle among the elephants. For those of us following the making of Ong Bak 2, there was a question about whether Thailand's biggest movie star had undone a career and lots of goodwill that began about three years ago when Jaa first burst upon the world scene.

There is a certain amount of difficulty in fairly evaluating Ong Bak 2 because it is not a sequel nor clearly a "prequel" to the first Ong Bak. Additionally, the film ends unresolved with a promised conclusion in the upcoming Ong Bak 3, which is also said to tie all three films together. Maybe it's a form of cultural misunderstanding, but much of what made the first Ong Bak a hit is thrown out on this new film. What I liked about the first film was that it was fast and funny. Seeing Tony Jaa defy gravity was an eye popping experience, but there was more to Ong Bak than a display of martial arts mastery. I also liked Ong Bak for introducing me to Petchtai Wongkamlao as George, the inept, small time hustler. The only way to really be fair to Ong Bak 2 is to ignore the title, and the accompanying expectations.

Taking place during the 15th Century, we first see a young boy riding on horseback with a man, chased by another rider. Caught in a trap of an awaiting army, the boy is knocked off his horse, his horse with the rider both shot by arrows. The boy is able to hide temporarily until found by a roving band of slave traders, who cage the boy. Taken out of his cage, the boy is tossed into a pit with a crocodile, providing entertainment for a tribal village. Seeing his ability to evade immediate death, a man tosses a knife to the boy who in turn kills the crocodile. Chaos ensues as the benevolent stranger is part of a group of men who have shown up to create havoc and steal goods from the village.

The young boy, Tien, of course grows up to be the character played by Jaa. Taken under the wing of Cher Nang, a leader of a band of land locked pirates, Tien becomes a master of a variety of martial arts. Gradually, it is revealed that as a boy, Tien witnessed the murder of his parents, members of a rival royal household. During an earlier time, Tien also spent time in a remote village, where his best friend was a young girl, Pim. Tien proves himself master of several forms of fighting, beating opponents bigger and seemingly stronger. Before accepting the offer to be Cher Nang's heir and leader of his gang of thieves, Tien goes off to avenge the death of his parents.

While the first Ong Bak was light and often comic, this new film is dark, both visually and in terms of its story. While fans of fighting will probably savor the duels Jaa engages in to demonstrate his prowess, for me, Jaa is most fun to watch in his solo turns. One such moment of madness is of Jaa hopping onto a moving herd of elephants, jumping from on top one to another. Another scene is of Jaa performing an acrobatic dance. Jaa's athletic abilities are not to be disputed. Jaa does have one scene of fighting with a disguised Dan Chupong. In terms of Thai martial arts films, it's almost like getting Gene Kelly onscreen with Fred Astaire. Jaa shares with Kelly the sense of sheer force, while Chupong is like Astaire in his seeming to make every effort look easy. Pim returns as a youthful woman whose dance performance evokes classic images of Thailand. What I was not prepared for was a Tony Jaa so angry that he enjoys beating up his opponents.

What also surprised me was how much digital work went into Ong Bak 2. The first film boasted of lacking wires or other special effects, and the fight scenes were more cleanly photographed. This new film suffers from to many fragmented shots of fight scenes and too many digital effects. The main story may be unclear to those unfamiliar with Thai history, and some of the characters are best understood in terms of Thai culture and folklore. I'm not sure how much of the visual look of the film belongs to Jaa or to Panna Rittikrai, but there are more overhead shots to be found in Ong Bak 2 than in several Busby Berkeley musicals. Of course, more than some people might admit, martial arts films and musicals have things in common, employing choreographed action. I'm not sure if there is any commercial viability to making a Thai musical, but Jaa can be a very graceful presence on screen, not only being born to fight, but born to dance.

A couple of technical asides: Those interested in buying Ong Bak 2 should know that the DVD is playable anywhere regardless of the official designation. English subtitles are found using the remote control button. Ong Bak 2 is available from HK Flix

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:47 AM | Comments (1)

May 01, 2009

Convicts 4

Millard Kaufman - 1962
Warner Archives Collection DVD

"The coffee's so strong a mouse can dance on it." I frankly don't give a damn about, "Frankly my dear . . .". "Rosebud" wilts as soon as you realize it's a psychological explanation that really doesn't explain anything. But the words spoken by prisoner Ben Gazzara to prison guard Stuart Whitman evokes an imagined cartoon of Jerry Mouse doing a soft shoe on a cup of joe. Even more hilarious is a few minutes later when Ray Walston sticks his head out of the floor, and realizing that the tunnel he's been digging out of the prison has been discovered, utters, "That's the way the pickle squirts."

Convicts 4 has almost everything you want in a prison movie, imaginatively colorful dialogue, a jazzy film score, and idiosyncratic characters. Most of the film was shot in Folsom Prison where almost everyone seems to be sentenced for criminally over-acting. In addition to Ray Walston yelling, "You lousy, miserable screwwwwww!" to one of the guards, there is also perpetual heavy Timothy Carey as a well connected con. More modulated is Sammy Davis, Jr. as a former stick-up man who's first seen constantly combing is conked hair, the coolest guy in the joint. Even those in charge of prison are guilty, with Rod Steiger mugging for the camera as a top prison guard, while Broderick Crawford bellows his lines from a comfortable chair. Even Vincent Price shows up for all of five minutes as the art expert who discovers Resko's professional potential. As a wag might say, there's enough ham to stock a small deli.

Most of what Millard Kaufman has to say of real significance is in the first half hour. Based on the autobiography, Reprieve, by John Resko. The opening scene is of Resko's last hours before his execution at the electric chair of Sing Sing prison. As in Bad Day at Black Rock, Kaufman has his heart in the right place with his discussions of capital punishment and treatment of criminals. The rest of the film is about Resko's imprisonment in Dannemore where he eventually finds emotional release in painting, which in turn enabled commuting of his life sentence. Kaufman uses Davis to address racial issues, "Don't call me 'Shine'" being one of the first rules doled out to cellmate Gazzara. Even prison homosexuality is suggested with with the line about, "you two studs falling in love with each other", and a young prisoner complimenting Gazzara's "pretty eyes". The best line in the film actually wasn't written by Kaufman, but by 19th Century French criminologist Jean Lacassagne: "A society gets the criminals it deserves." As usual for this film, Ray Walston gets the best bon mots.

Convicts 4 was the only film directed by Millard Kaufman. The more commercial sounding title never really helped this film, and Kaufman went back to scriptwriting. The cinematography was by Joe Biroc, best known for his work with Robert Aldrich. At one point in the film there is an overhead shot, similar to one of Aldrich's visual signatures. How much credit should go to Biroc and how much to Kaufman is something I can't say for certain, but the film is visually more controlled than the acting. At 31 when he made the film, Gazzara was too mature for the real life Resko, who was 18 when he was imprisoned for the accidental shooting death of a toy store owner. While a flashback indicates that Resko's crime took place on Christmas Eve of 1931, and later signs let the viewer know that the action takes place in the 1940s, there is sense that time has been suspended in prison. Convicts 4 works best in the bulk of the film, taking place within the confines of Sing Sing and Dannemore, where the outside world is sometimes mentioned, or imagined, but never seen. Beyond the specifics of its story, and the entertaining hamminess of the cast, and some howlingly funny dialogue, Convicts 4 still holds up some of its more serious intentions. The film might never be considered a classic, but the issues addressed sadly still remain with us.

In addition to his paintings and autobiography, Resko wrote a teleplay that undoubtedly used some of his personal experiences for The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (2)

April 28, 2009

The Spirit

Frank Miller - 2008
Lionsgate Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The last time I read what were then known as comic books with any degree of regularity, it was in the Seventies, with the Warren Magazines version of The Spirit. What attracted me Will Eisner's work was the sense of humor. Wry and self-deprecating, the character and series itself existed on a special place that combined a self-awareness of the ridiculousness of the situations with graphics that anticipated the comic book parodies that Mad Magazine would create a few years later. Just looking at the magazine covers were enough to make clear that the Spirit in Frank Miller's film was not quite like Eisner's Spirit.

Making films from comic books has always struck me as a dubious enterprise because of the expectations of the look and tone based on the source material. The films I do like are those made by directors whose particular visions of the world I generally enjoy, being Tim Burton's Batman Returns and yes, Richard Lester's Superman films. It could also be that I had less of an emotional investment in Bob Kane's, or Siegel and Schuster's, versions of their characters. I should also note that two of the best comic book style films were not based on comic books, being Darkman and RoboCop. All of which is to say that I was hoping for film version of Will Eisner's Spirit but what is on screen is mostly Miller's moodiness.

While I would not criticize Frank Miller move from comic book artist to filmmaker, he was not the person who should have translated Will Eisner to film. I didn't mind that newspaper seller Ebony White was nowhere to be seen, or that the story takes place in an alternate universe of vintage cars, skateboards, video cameras, and a host of other anachronisms exist. What I did miss was the humor that someone like Sam Raimi or Paul Verhoeven could have provided. Too often I felt that Miller was trying to prove that if he couldn't film The Dark Knight, he would at least film dark nights.

Frank Miller's The Spirit has more in common with the grimness of Sin City or 300. Any attempt to mimic Eisner's playfulness comes down with a thud. References to former Eisner assistant Jules Feiffer, or the tagline to Richard Donner's Superman come across as heavy-handed, a smirk rather than a chuckle. Miller's intense seriousness may be right for his own work, but works against the, er, spirit of Will Eisner. I'm not sure which contemporary director would have been best, but for me, the closest to the feeling I got from Will Eisner's comics was in Philippe De Broca's comic misadventure films with Jean-Paul Belmondo, where sight gag followed sight gag, with a hapless hero and his femme fatale.

On its own merits, The Spirit is as visually as well composed as one should expect from Miller, working here with Bill Pope. Pope has notably worked with Sam Raimi on several films which share something of a comic book style, even when they weren't based on comic books. Gabriel Macht looks about right as the title character, but the best reason to watch the film is for the trio of curvy actresses: Scarlett Johansson, Paz Vega and Eva Mendes. Sure, Eisner's Plaster of Paris was blonde, but when Vega does her dance with her long knives, such considerations disappear. Disregarding all of the digital enhancement that went into making The Spirit, critical considerations also evaporate at the sight of three voluptuous women who, at least on film, more than match the imaginings of any artist.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)

April 23, 2009

Ghost Train

Otoshimono
Takeshi Furusawa - 2006
A.D. Visions Region 1 DVD

To what extent does one consider the horror film as a work of symbolism rather than just evaluating the work for its surface values? I was ready to dismiss Ghost Train until a point approximately fifty minutes into the film there seemed to be more than the familiar Japanese horror film tropes. There is also a thread that seems to be pan-Asian, with the ghost story as a metaphor for urban alienation. What piqued me was the realization that even though Ghost Train takes place in Tokyo, for much of the film, it is a strangely empty, depopulated Tokyo that we see. And while I can't really say that Ghost Train is about female empowerment, the male characters are essentially weak, if not comfortably impotent. Without undue emphasis, Ghost Train can be read as a look at the tenuous sense of family and belonging in contemporary Japan.

The symbolic aspects of Ghost Train seem appropriate when one considers that director and co-writer Furusawa previously worked as an assistant to Kyoshi Kurosawa on two films, as well as co-writer with Kurosawa on Doppelganger. While Ghost Train does not achieve the creepiness of Kurosawa's films, there are a few thematic similarities. That much of the horror is suggested also seems to indicate that Furusawa was making a film for a wider, younger audience. Also referenced lightly is H. P. Lovecraft, with the main character, Nana, considering Miskatonic University, as well as a glance back at Quatermass and the Pit, the cult classic of horror and urban alienation in the tunnel of a subway station.

The Ghost Train is a subway train, with a ghost that primarily haunts a station. The Japanese title translates as "lost and found", and the story is about lives lost and found in the dark of the subway tunnels. A significant part of the film also takes place in the lost and found section of the train company, where the story is partially explained. Nana loses her little sister, Noriko, as well as coming close to losing her hospitalized mother. Isolated from her peers at high school for being too studious, Nana finds friendship with bad girl Fujita in the course of discovering the cause for the disappearance of several people who had all found the same train pass. Nana also finds a new sense of self at the end of the film.

Ghost Train was co-written by a woman, Erika Tanaka, who seems, from what little is available in English, to be interested in women with paranormal encounters. The only man who takes action is the train operator who was confined to the lost and found room after claiming to see something in a tunnel. Even then, it only after the badgering of Nana that he investigates the mystery of the tunnel. The other men are simply interested in keeping the trains running as scheduled and covering any possibility of scandal. Some parts of the story, even within the context of a horror film, don't make sense. There is too much reliance on mysterious long haired women and pale children who seem to have returned from the dead. Still, if one is to view popular culture as indicative of times, Ghost Train is worth a look at a handful of young Japanese women who refuse to be passive about their lives, or even their deaths, while the men clumsily uphold a status quo that is quickly disappearing.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:36 AM

April 16, 2009

The Peach Girl

Bu Wancang - 1931
Lianhua Film Company All Region DVD

Seeing Stanley Kwan's film Actress, about Ruan Lingyu, made me interested in seeing more than the excerpts included in Kwan's film. Billed here as Lily Yuen, Bu's film serves as a wonderful introduction to both Ruan and has also made me more interested in the other work of Bu, billed here as Richard Poh. Ruan was a few years younger than Janet Gaynor. To put Bu's film in the context of general film history, while Hollywood and Europe had completed their conversion to sound filmmaking, Asian films were still silent well into the early 1930s. Bu's film, with this one example, seems to be the work of someone who studied closely the work of D.W. Griffith and probably Frank Borzage. Both because of the star and the director, there should be motivation for greater film scholarship.

The basic story follows a classic silent film template as well. The young, but poor, daughter of a tenant farmer is in love with the son of the landowner. The conflicts here are of class as well as city boy and country girl. Chinese tradition is looked at both in terms of traditions regarding class and gender, as well as how some of the characters dress. Lim and Teh-en are the lovers, whose pure love is disrupted by both their own pride as well as that of their traditional parents. Teh-en's mother would rather pay of Lim and her family rather than allow her son to marry someone considered socially unacceptable. The title comes from Lim, as a small girl, having her life compared to a peach tree by her parents, with the blossoms compared to tears.

In setting up the relationship between Lim and Teh-en, they are introduced as five year olds, with the titles noting that children do not notice class difference. One very funny scene is of Lim and Teh-en joining some other young children, merrily flinging mud at each other. The country children are very informally dressed, in shorts and thin short sleeved shirts, with one small boy not wearing any pants. When one of the boys tosses mud onto Teh-en, it is an act both of camaraderie as a deliberate form of making the formally dress boy an equal to his new playmates. Teh-en's indignant mother, who makes a points of wiping the boy's hands whenever he touches Lim, finds her son as dirty as the other children. Teh-en is taken away, but not before mud is flung onto the mother, a shot as funny as any from Mack Sennett.

Bu's filmmaking style is classical in the best sense of silent film in the late Twenties. There is a frequent use of depth of field, of filming motion within the frame, as well as using traveling shots. In this regard, Bu's style is similar to that of some of the better American directors of the late Twenties. Bu began his career in what would now be call documentary films, and the footage of a fair seems to have been shot at a real event, judging in part from the crowds seen in an establishing montage. Some of the footage is mottled, but not enough to damage the charm of The Peach Girl. Bu's film would also suggest that, beyond its historical interest, there are other treasures of the silent era yet to be better known.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:46 AM

April 14, 2009

Fucking Nazis

My Heart is Mine Alone/Mein Herz - Niemandem!
Helma Sanders-Brahms - 1997
Facets Region 1 DVD

The Reader
Stephen Daldry - 2008
The Weinstein Company Region 1 DVD

Blaise Pascal's observation that the heart has its own reasons has become something of a cliche. Still, one can see the existence of relationships that from the outside make little sense. Helma Sanders-Brahms' film doesn't attempt to explain the relationship between Gottfried Benn and Else Lasker-Schuler. What is presented is almost an expressionist collage of conventional biographical re-enactment, stylized staging, and documentary. There is probably some dispute as to the nature of the relationship maintained by Benn and Lasker-Schuler. Sanders-Brahms might be said to be more interested in emotional, rather than factual truths.

Some might be pressed to imagine that mutual admiration between poets could transcend political differences, touched on in the film, as well as a significant difference in age, which the film does not mention. (It might be assumed that German audiences would be aware of the age difference between Lena Stolze and Cornelius Obonya.) Neither Stolze nor Obonya age much past their initial meeting in the film, perhaps signifying how they would always see each other. What would raise eyebrows is that Lasker-Schuler was open in her life and work concerning her Jewish identity, while Benn was a Nazi until he was pushed out in the late Thirties.

Sanders-Brahms flirts with the conventional biographical film, such as a scene where Lasker-Schuler tells Marc Chagall that he will be one of the most famous artists of the Twentieth Century. Where the film breaks with convention is in the form of dialogues between Benn and Lasker-Schuler, his poetry as a reply to her verse. Lasker-Schuler could be seen as the prototype of the performance artist, in her "Oriental" costumes. Benn later was awarded the Georg Buchner prize for his writings, which complimented his life as both a medical doctor and man of letters. Lasker-Brahms is presented as a kind of prophet who foresaw the folly of Germany's entry into both world wars, while Benn is seen as a well-meaning cad whose idealism blinded him to certain realities.

My Heart is Mine Alone may not explain fully the reasons for the passion between Benn and Lasker-Schuler, or why someone both bright and consistently rebellious as Gottfried Benn would embrace the Nazi philosophy, but on its own terms, it is a more truthful film than The Reader. By contrast, Stephen Daldry and screenwriter David Hare would want us to believe that Kate Winslet's character, Hanna Schmitz, became a Nazi because, as an illiterate, she really didn't know any better, and that she deserved a modicum of sympathy because her inability to admit to her illiteracy caused her to take a fall more severe than her fellow concentration camp guards. Even without the revelation of her background, there is no reason for teenage Michael Berg to even have an affair with the then thirty-six year old Hanna Schmitz other than he's young and she's Kate Winslet. The Reader is a more realistic film employing the techniques of traditional filmmaking, yet everything about it seems false and artificial compared to Helma Sanders-Brahms' film.

What may be more offensive is that The Reader only pretends to be raising questions about law, morality, and German guilt. The Reader is not about moral dilemmas but about creating audience sympathy for Berg and Schmitz because they have to deal with the serious questions. One might argue that Hanna Schmitz never really understands the implications of her actions and that suicide is as much of an escape as literature. I'm surprised no one retitled the film "Schindler's Booklist". Even Michael Berg's choice to not reveal Hanna Schmitz' illiteracy when it could make the difference in her trial strikes me as being dishonest at the very least from a legal standpoint, more so from a law student.

One of the questionable choices made by Daldry and Hare is to not include, as in the novel, that the newly literate Hanna not only learns to read the books read to her by young Michael, but also reads works by Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel. Within that context is conveyed a sense that Hanna Schmitz might have had a clearer understanding of her actions beyond following orders. The main difference between My Heart is Mine Alone and The Reader is that in Sander-Brahms' film, her lovers face the consequences of their actions, while Stephen Daldry would have you believe that being physically attractive is reason enough to excuse the most dubious legal or moral actions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:30 PM

April 09, 2009

Red Cliff

Chi Bi
John Woo - 2008
Zoke Culture Region 0 DVD

After seeing Red Cliff, the large number of nominations amassed for the Hong Kong Film Awards is less surprising. John Woo's film is meant to be seen on the big screen, the bigger the better. There are a few missteps, primarily the use of the zoom meant to underline in big strokes the seriousness of some of the characters' proclamations in the early parts of the film, and the battle scenes that are too overly fragmented. Based on the same source material as Three Kingdoms, Woo's film is certainly the better, although the overlapping of the stories is minimal.

Woo primarily is interested in the alliance formed by Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang on behalf of their two kingdoms against the Han Dynasty. Played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Takashi Kaneshiro respectively, the film has some similarity with Woo's other films about men of action who are guided by idealism against those who are motivated primarily by self-interest. Zhou Yu and Zhuge Liang come to terms not by verbal dialogue, but through a musical duet on string instruments. Zhuge Liang endears himself to Zhou Yu and his wife initially by intervening in the breech birth of a horse. It is a scene that might seem extraneous to the main spectacle. The scene serves to quickly humanize Woo's main protagonists, men of power and position, interested in exercising that power and position judiciously, compared to the Han Dynasty's Cao Cao, who commands his large military force for disguised personal gain.

One of the nicest moments is when Zhou Yu is introduced. The soldiers of Sun Quan are gathered to demonstrate their readiness to fight when they are silenced. A young boy is playing a flute, not badly, but some of the notes are off key. Zhou Yu walks up to the boy who is sitting with his grandfather. Asking for the flute, Zhou Yu takes out a knife, only to whittle a couple of the air holes in the flute, before handing the flute back. The narrative stops while the boy plays his flute, to an orchestrated sound track. It's the kind of scene that should remind some of how music is used in some of Sergio Leone's films, most famously with the character of Harmonica in Once upon a Time in the West. One of the best assets of Red Cliff is the justly nominated, rousing score by Taro Iwashiro, the kind of music that sets the pace for the rest of the film in the way that Elmer Bernstein and Miklos Rozsa would do in their best scores in the early Sixties.

John Woo's most famous Hong Kong films are the kind best described with the term "bullet ballet". The action direction here is by Corey Yuen. Using swords, spears, and bow and arrow, and working with teeming extras, there is less emphasis on individuals than in previous Woo films. There is time to admire one oversized, bellowing general who knocks down a horse with its rider, and Tony Leung pulling an arrow out of his shoulder to personally return it to the archer. Another change from prior Woo films is the inclusion of women in the action, with feisty proto-feminist Vickie Zhao leading her army of female archers.

The first of a two part film, Red Cliff actually ends before the legendary battle take takes place at the title location. It the film ever gets a theatrical showing in the United States, it could well be a severely edited version of the two parts. Seeing the film on DVD seems like a necessary compromise in order to view Woo's film in its entirety. I wouldn't call Red Cliff a return to form for John Woo in style, because that never left him when allowed to make films his way, but there is greater substance than in silly, if entertaining, Paycheck. Yes, the doves make an appearance as they do in other Woo films, although pigeons also figure in the story. One of the more spectacular shots follows one pigeon on flight from the South Palace over the hundred Han battle ship. Between that jaw dropping extended shot to the mountain scenery, for me, Red Cliff could best be described by the adjective I would not throw about lightly: breathtaking.

Red Cliff is available from HK Flix, while Part II is available for advance orders.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM | Comments (2)

April 07, 2009

Voices

Du saram-yida
Oh Ki-hwan - 2007
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

For those who complained about the selection of films offered by Tartan Asia Extreme, Voices could well make you change your mind. As handsomely produced as it is, the Korean Voices is also so derivative that I'm almost convinced it was for that reason the film was included in the "After Dark Horrorfest" series of eight films just released on DVD. I'm not familiar with the comic book that served as the basis for the film. Voices is a mash-up of elements from Whispering Corridors with its high school girl protagonist, The Grudge's family curse, and a plot twist familiar to all who have seen A Tale of Two Sisters. Even worse, the more that is explained, the less the film makes any kind of sense.

Voices, a title that seems randomly chosen, begins with a small boy finding his mother dead, blood smearing the illuminated television set. News reports feature stories about random murders taking place. Ga-in and her family attend a wedding celebration which ends when the bride, Ga-in's aunt, falls from a balcony to the floor. Later that night, Ga-in witnesses her hospitalized aunt being murdered by another woman. Afterwards, Ga-in finds her relationships with schoolmates and teachers more troubled. Another class mate, a young man with a mysterious past, advises Ga-in to trust no one, not even herself.

There is little about Kang Kyung-ok or the original story available in English. What seem apparent is that the filmmakers had little confidence in Kang's story, and in the process created a film generic in the worse sense, and incoherent. Replacing the title, which translates as "Someone Behind You" does the film no favors as well in attracting an English language audience. If there is any reason to bother with Voices, it is to see young Yun Jin-seo in one of her few films readily available for western viewers. Previously Yun was seen in supporting roles for Park Chan-wook's Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. Yun will hopefully be seen in better films more deserving of her capabilities.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM

March 25, 2009

Philadelphia Film Festival 2009: GS Wonderland

GS Wandarando
Ryuichi Honda - 2008
DesperaDo 35mm Film

My first introduction to anything resembling Japanese rock music was courtesy of Dick Clark, on a show he hosted on Saturdays. I don't remember the band's name, but I do remember that they performed a cover version of "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?". After that long time passing, my only exposure to Japanese rock has been intermittent. Some of what I've seen and heard could be marked off as being peculiar to someone who grew up during the era of The Beatles.

GS Wonderland is a very funny movie about a brief era in Japanese popular music. This interview with Ryuichi Honda is of help in explaining the context of his film. The songs are by Kyohei Tsutsumi and Jun Hashimoto, the equivalent to the Brill Building composers who churned out hits performed by various singers of the moment back in the early Sixties. The music is closer to Bubblegum than to actual rock music, but that's just part of the film's goofy charm.

The film is about the quick rise and fall of a band. Chiaki Kuriyama plays Michio, a young woman and rock wannabe, who's talked into joining a trio of three young men to form a band, with her disguised as a male named Mick. As The Diamonds, the group's first single flops, selling only twenty-three copies. Executives coming up with an angle to make the band different in looks from other bands come up with the idea of the band members wearing tights. With a new name, The Tightsmen, the future looks dismal until young women glom onto the appeal of Mick.

In addition to the humor of Mick becoming the most popular band member, there is the rivalry with the band, The Knuckles, and a vocal quartet who are less fresh than their name might suggest. Honda borrows from The Beatles rooftop concert, as well as the most famous scene from It Happened One Night. There is also a running gag with lead singer of The Knuckles claiming that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are hiding out in northern Japan, giving lessons to would be rockers.

Hopefully, GS Wonderland will get a DVD release, if not more theatrical showings in the U.S. Chiaki Kuriyama again plays a strong willed young woman, but a warmer role than of Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill. With her angular features and long neck, one could imagine Kuriyama as the subject of one of Modigliani's paintings. Even if the film ignores the real female musicians of the time, it is an amusing pastiche of a past era, with laughs that will bridge any gaps in time and culture.

GS Wonderland is screening on March 29, 31 and April 1.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

March 19, 2009

JCVD

Mabrouk El Mechri - 2008
Musictronic Entertainment Region 3 DVD

If JCVD has done nothing else, it has proved how much good will Jean-Claude Van Damme has created, often in spite of, rather than because of his movies. This would be apparent from the critical acclamation given to this unexpected cult film. Playing at film festivals, and sneaking in and out of art houses doesn't exactly scream a return to the glory days of Universal Soldier. Why I think JVCD has created interest has to do with its look at the meaning of celebrity.

Van Damme portrays a fictionalized version of himself, returning to Brussels to take care of personal matters. Stepping out of a cab, two local men persuade Van Damme to pose for photos before he goes to a nearby bank to do some business. While the two men, a female cab driver, and a patrolling policeman discuss the presence of Van Damme in the town they describe as a "shit hole", shots are fired from the bank, shattering one of the taxi's windows. Seen briefly behind the bank window, it becomes clear that a bank robbery is in progress, and that Van Damme is involved.

JCVD plays upon the expectations people have about celebrity, wanting the star to be both a "regular person" and simultaneously someone to be revered for their fame. At the same time, the character of Jean-Claude Van Damme finds himself in a situation where he cannot act like an action star in the film's version of real life. Still, Van Damme is asked to demonstrate one of his high kicks for one of the robbers, and gives advice from past films on how to negotiate with the police.

What I liked best was a scene, a monologue may well have been improvised. At one point inside the bank, Van Damme is literally lifted out of the scene to address the audience with a look back on his life. There is enough to suggest that without giving away specific details, Van Damme is reflecting on a life pretty close to his own.

One of the film's running jokes is about Van Damme giving John Woo his first Hollywood directing job. That Van Damme brought three top Hong Kong directors to Hollywood during a time of uncertainty in their own country is worthy of consideration. There is one scene of Van Damme making a film with a Chinese director that highlights the actors frustration with what he can do, and how a scene should be filmed, and the director's own indifference to the project. Again, JCVD plays with the notion of expectations between the real Jean-Claude Van Damme and his fictionalized screen character of the same name.

Whether JCVD will allow Jean-Claude Van Damme to get roles independent of his martial arts abilities has yet to be seen. Even if JCVD turns out to be an anomaly in a career of action films that continues, it may be enough for the moments of seeing a star famed for his grace in motion, showing a sense of grace about his life and career.

JCVD is available from HK Flix, where films are Bigger than Life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM

March 17, 2009

Zero Focus

Zero no shoten
Yoshitaro Nomura - 1961
Home Vison Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I might be surprised, but I can not imagine the remake being as good as this first version by Yoshitaro Nomura. It should also be noted that Zero Focus was also included in a recent retrospective of Japanese Film Noir. And if the classic American film noir was a reflection of an anxious time following World War II, the same can be said for Nomura's film about life in post war Japan. Author Seicho Matsumoto has just begun to have his novels translated into English which will no doubt add to the currently fly-weight scholarship that exists on Nomura. Nomura is still under-represented in available English language subtitled DVDs.

Teiko, married for just a week, sees her husband off at a train station in Tokyo. Kenichi is an advertising executive visiting his old office, in northern Japan, to oversee the transition. Scheduled to return after twelve days, Kenichi is not heard from, either by Teiko, his brother, or his employer. Seeking some clues, Teiko discovers two photographs of two very different houses, one large, indicating financial fortune, the other, not much more than a dilapidated shack. The increasingly frantic Teiko travels to Kanazawa, where Kenichi was last seen. Following some false leads, misinterpreting clues, Teiko finally learns some unexpected truths about Kenichi.

Had Zero Focus not been based on a novel by Matsumoto, one could easily assume that the story was inspired by Cornell Woolrich. Some of the story elements, an impulsive marriage between two virtual strangers, a husband who seemingly disappears, and shameful hidden pasts are reminiscent of the author of Phantom Lady and The Bride wore Black. As in Nomura's best film, Castles of Sand, the screenplay is by Shinobu Hashimoto and Yoji Yamada. At this time I have no way of qualifying how much of the film was already in Matsumoto's novel, but much of Zero Focus plays like an homage to American film noir in the fractured narrative.

The film begins with first person narration by Yoshiko Kuga as Teiko. The very opening made me think of Hitchock's Rebecca. While trying to find out about the whereabout of Kenichi, there are flashbacks from the point of view of different characters. Eventually, Teiko explains what she has assumed to be what has happened to Kenichi and some other characters. Teiko's stories are contradicted by Sachiko, the youngish wife of a much older Kanazawa industrialist. The differing stories, shown in flashbacks, may have taken its queues from Hitchcock's Stage Fright. In both cases, the filmmaker plays on the audience assumption that what is being viewed is as the objective truth. It is probably also worth noting that Nomura served as an assistant to Akira Kurosawa, so that Roshomon could have been another influence. In her demeanor, Kuga reminded me of such mousy Hitchcock heroines as Joan Fontaine and Jane Wyman.

There is something of a critique of Japanese women and how they are perceived in Japanese society. Teiko is newly married at the age of 36, comparatively old by Japanese standards then and even now. She would probably be assumed to have still been a virgin. This point is important because Teiko is contrasted with women who turned to prostitution to survive in post war Japan. In a symbolic way, Zero Focus is about Teiko's loss of moral virginity. While she is not corrupted by others, she is forced to confront realities of lives outside of her sheltered existence in Tokyo. The snow, with its vast whiteness, acts as a symbol of Teiko's purity. The most beautiful place in Kanazawa, a cliff overlook the sea, is also know as a popular spot to commit suicide by falling onto the rocks below. The snow serves a second purpose in Zero Focus, as a reminder of surface beauty covering something less attractive and deadly underneath.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:04 AM

March 10, 2009

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Bava

A piece by Tim Lucas that I hope others have read is about the Devil as a young girl in Bunuel's Simon of the Desert. I thought back to that piece as I viewed Ashura. This more recent Japanese film has a devil that is closer to those found in Fellini and Bava's films as she is seen with a ball. The character of Emishi, played by Hanae Kan, is more literal, with a small pair of horns on her head.

I saw this film, along with When the Last Sword is Drawn, to get some idea of Yojiro Takita work prior to his Oscar winning Departures. Nothing I saw would have made me predict that Takita would even be a nominee. While the Japanese Academy named When the Last Sword is Drawn the the best film, along with honoring the two male leads, in 2004, my own preference would have been for Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi. Takita's film about the uneasy friendship and rivalry between two 19th Century samurai was the least interesting as a samurai film. The subplot about the two men's relationships with the women of their lives caught my interest, and suggests the warmhearted aspect to Takita's work that was noted in a review of Departures.

Ashura is a bagful of loopy fun. A gang of "wardens" search for demons that spurt phosphorescent green blood when cut. One of the wardens leaves to become an itinerant actor, a popular Kabuki star. A young woman finds a mysterious mark on her shoulder that grows. The presence of Ashura means that demons will take over the world, with Ashura residing in an invisible upside down castle. AnimEigo's wonderfully vernacular subtitles may add more snark than intended, but it adds to the fun of a film that seems to be a grab bag of bits from An Actor's Revenge, Shakespeare in Love, Spider-Man, as well as the memory of years of Japanese samurai films. Was the devil girl with the ball inspired by Fellini or Bava? Maybe when more of Takita is known, we'll find out. Whatever the case, the character of Emishi as she appears in Ashura is both iconic and unexpected.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:35 AM | Comments (4)

March 05, 2009

Wonderful Town

Aditya Assarat - 2007
Kino International Region 1 DVD

While most people were paying attention to the Academy Awards, the Thai film industry had its own industry award show. The big winner of the Subanahongsa Awards was Wonderful Town. What makes the slew of awards more remarkable is that the film film was a true independent production without the backing of any of the Thai studios, and was screened in limited release in Thai theaters. Wonderful Town also is unlike most Thai narrative films currently being made. While more polished, there were aspects of the film that reminded me of some of the "mumblecore" films, with the simplicity of the story and story-telling, especially in the trust of allowing stillness and quiet, of letting images speak for themselves.

Ton, a young architect, is in a small coastal town in southern Thailand. His job is to nominally supervise the reconstruction of a resort damaged by the tsunami of 2004. He stays in a run down hotel further in town, run almost single-handedly by Na, a young woman who inherited the hotel from her parents. The hotel is virtually empty as is the town which was decimated first by a tourist industry that concentrated on the beach, and again by tsunami that destroyed the beach. Ton states that he stays in the hotel in town because it is quiet. While there, he begins flirting with Na, a relationship that eventually becomes more serious between the two.

Aditya's film is in part about the act of observation. The first shot is of the waves on the beach, followed by a close up of Na sleeping at the hotel desk. The music score is from an understated acoustic guitar. Very little is stated outright, either by Aditya or his characters. Na's romantic longing for Ton is shown by a shot of her hand caressing the bed that Ton had slept in. The influence of Apichatpong Weerasethakul can be seen in some of the exterior shots, the sound of the wind while it pushes against the overgrown grass. One of the most pleasurable images is of a barefoot child, unseen under a raincoat, kicking puddles in the rain.

One scene that marked Wonderful Town as inescapably Thai was when Ton looks into a house next to the rebuilt resort. Before stepping in, Ton is warned that the place is haunted. Even when they are not manifest, ghosts, or even the idea of possible ghosts, are firmly embedded in Thai culture. Ton walks through the damaged interior, picking up and discarding the few reminders, such as a book, of the former residents. Damaged by time and disuse is the former home of Na, one of the crumbling reminders of a more prosperous past. Ton is viewed with suspicion by the residents of the small town not only because he is an outsider, from Bangkok, but because he represents a future that can not be stopped, further distancing the town from the modest success it may have held previously.

Na mentions that she had a college education in one of the cities. She never explains why she returned to the small town, although it is suggested that it is because of the sense of family obligation. Her brother also remains in the town, seeming to do nothing more than mark time. Even Ton is revealed to have not fully escaped from his previous career as a musician. In Wonderful Town, the past determines the present lives of the characters, whether they consciously try to rebel or resign themselves to what appears to be a predestined fate.

Here is an interview with Aditya Assarat.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM | Comments (2)

March 03, 2009

Three Kingdoms: Resurrection of the Dragon

Saam gwok dzi gin lung se gap
Daniel Lee - 2008
Sun Jian Media All Region DVD

Henry Lai's score to Three Kingdoms owes plenty to Ennio Morricone. Much of the music is reminders of the scores used in the westerns by Sergio Leone. I know I'm not the only one who felt that way about the music. I liked it so much that it gave me reason to watch the DVD until the very end, listening to the heavy drums.

Lee's film was the first of two films two be released inspired by the Chinese literary classic, "Romance of Three Kingdoms". The other film, actually in two parts, is by John Woo, with a much bigger budget. Lee's film is smaller in scope though still with epic battle scenes. In scanning the other reviews of the film, there is some consistency in noting that the film seems truncated. The running time of the version I saw was ninety-seven minutes. Many sources give the running time as 102 minutes. The difference could be written off to a conversion speed of 25 frames per second. Because of the relatively compact running time, with some characters appearing too briefly, there is the question as to whether this was the film Daniel Lee intended to make. Even though the film was still expensive by Chinese standards, though less than Peter Chan's The Warlords or Woo's Red Cliff, it seems like the end result was less than it could have been.

This is a fictionalized version of Chinese history with Sammo Hung as a soldier who recruits Andy Lau to fight for one of the three emperors battling to unite China. Lau abilities as a soldier quickly elevate him in the ranks until he becomes one of the top generals. Hung remains a humble foot soldier watching Lau from further distances. Hung declares himself to be a person of great dreams and ambitions. Hung and Lau's story could be said to be about the deferment of personal dreams for an ideal greater than themselves. Even though Lau ascends to military leadership, his sense of loyalty to Hung remains solid, initially covering for Hung's incompetence without acknowledgment, as well as protecting the person he calls "brother" from execution.

The fictionalization goes a bit further with Maggie Q as the granddaughter of an opposing general, a character created for the film. Artistic license beats history with the sight of Maggie Q in a fur lined costume, with long, metal fingernails, playing a pipa, a Chinese stringed instrument. The sight of her in battle against Andy Lau is a reminder of her talent in martial arts, with sword, spear, or just kicking ass.

Had Daniel Lee perhaps been more trusting of his material, a good film could have been better. The action sequences, directed by Hung, have too much hyper-editing, slo-mo, and digital manipulation. The effect is as if the filmmakers wanted something between the gritty realism of The Warlords and the magic of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but did not achieve either goal. The most thrilling scene is of Andy Lau battling, on horseback and on foot, hundreds of soldiers, with a baby tied to his back, a scene that may intentionally recall Chow Yun-Fat holding a baby in one arm while shooting it out in Hard-Boiled.

For those interested, here is an interview with Lee about the making of Three Kingdoms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)

February 27, 2009

Man Walking in Snow

Aruku, hito
Masahiro Kobayashi - 2001
Facets Region 1 DVD

What I liked most about Man Walking in Snow is looking at the aged face of Ken Ogata. There is a vulnerability that comes with age, and at the same time one can see the man who played powerful characters, samurais and criminals, most notably for western audiences, Yukio Mishima in Paul Schrader's film. Masahiro Kobayashi films screen filling close-ups of that face so that we see every wrinkle and white hair on his head.

The story takes place over a period of three days. Nobuo, a widower, is planning the second anniversary observance of the death of his wife. His youngest son, Yasuo, takes care of his father and the family sake business. The estranged older brother, Ryoichi, works in a warehouse and is contemplating the dissolution of his band. While Yasuo's relationship with his girlfriend is troubled, based on Yasuo's devotion to caring for his father. Ryioichi contemplates returning home to establish a more stable domestic relationship with the pregnant Nobuko. Nobuo temporarily dreams of leaving the cold, snowy fishing town of Mishike for the consistently warmer Okanawa.

The title comes from Nobuo's daily walk from his home through town where he picks up an ice cream cone, and continues his walk to a salmon fishery. It is at the fishery that Nobuo flirts with Michiko and examines the tiny salmon in their enclosed bins. The salmon serve as a metaphor for the characters, between those who accept their restricted life and environment and those who would want to escape. Nobuo's personal rituals and needs supplant those of his family and Michiko.

This is my first film by Kobayashi. A description of his working methods is found in a review of one of his other films. Kobayahsi alternates between formal set-ups with the camera at a distance, often with little or no movement, and hand held close ups and jump cuts. I'm not sure of Kobayashi's motivations but the effect might be described as an Ozu domestic drama as filmed by the Godard of Breathless. From what I have read of Kobayashi's other films, he likes to film in what is known in Japan as "snow country". At this time, there is not much available in English on Kobayashi. What is known is that he is a truly independent filmmaker, unlike most of his peers who are connected with the studios. In doing some research, while IMDb only lists one credit for Sayoko Ishii, the actress who plays Michiko, this is not her only screen appearance. The only other available film from Kobayshi for U.S. based viewers is Bashing, a film critical of Japanese attitudes. What seems to be evident is Masashiro Kobayashi is making films that reflect his own conflicts, an artist both inescapably Japanese, yet not wanting to be confined or defined by his country's traditions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM

February 25, 2009

Four Flies on Gray Velvet

4 mosche di Velluto Grigio
Dario Argento - 1971
Mya Communication Region 0 DVD

I first saw Four Flies on Gray Velvet in February 1973, at a Portland, Oregon movie theater, playing in a double feature with Peter Collinson's Innocent Bystanders. I was enthused by what I saw that I saw Deep Red and Suspiria soon after they opened theatrically. Since then, I've seen all of Argento's films, some of them multiple times. The good news is that after thirty-five years after its initial release, Four Flies on Gray Velvet has been made available on DVD. The bad news is that the film has not aged very well.

In retrospect, the film appears to be a trial run for ideas that would be explored both better and more savagely in Deep Red. Both films have musicians as the main characters, there is the use of large dolls that seem to appear out of nowhere, and both even have sight gags involving dilapidated cars. Whatever tension and excitement I had the first time was not found in a repeated viewing. Four Flies is for me also less visually interesting than several of Argento's later films.

Something I missed the first time out was the "joke" of having Michael Brandon and Mimsy Farmer living on a street named after "F. Lang". While the film is not an obvious homage to Fritz Lang, it could be said to be Langian in the sense of paranoia developed by Brandon. People are observing each other or listening in to conversations. Brandon is photographed killing someone inside a theater, a kind of double joke about a murder being staged and observed. Detective Jean Pierre Marielle emphasizes the "private eye" of his trade with door knobs that look like eyes in his office. The identity of the murderer is based on creating a photo from the last image seen by the murder victim.

Unlike Deep Red or Suspiria which set up the audience to be edgy with the creepy music from Goblin, Argento used silence quite a bit in Four Flies. A maid, with incriminating information regarding Brandon, is alone in a park. We hear music, we see children playing, and a pair of lovers somewhat hidden behind some foliage. The music suddenly stops, and the maid sees that the other people in the park have disappeared. The sun fades away, and the gated park seemingly becomes smaller, with no place to escape from the unseen killer. In another scene, Brandon gets out of bed to explore his house in the dark, certain that someone may be waiting for him. Argento presents the fear from the smallest sounds emanating from unseen sources.

Four Flies also defies certain expectations by being the least graphic of Argento's films. The audience sees the maid's hand scratching against a stone wall, but her murder is otherwise heard but not seen. Not to be confused with the current so-called family friendly rating, but Four Flies was rated PG in the U.S. Were the film to be re-rated, it would be for the glimpses of Francine Racette's breasts as she shares a bath with Michael Brandon. Four Flies revisited appears as a transitional work, with Argento thinking he was to leave the giallo genre, but instead playing with certain themes and visual motifs that he would instead rework. As a genre piece, Four Flies on Gray Velvet can be seen as part of a shift that took place most notably with Psycho and Night of the Living Dead when horror shifted from what was hidden in the dark, to the revealing of things sometimes left better to the imagination.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 AM | Comments (4)

February 20, 2009

The Whole Shootin' Match

The Whole Shootin' Match
Eagle Pennell - 1978
Watchmaker Films Region 1 DVD

Yes, The Whole Shootin' Match is the title of the film, presumed "lost", and recently found and restored to DVD. The title could also refer to the set which includes not only the movie with commentary tracks, but Eagle Pennell's short film, A Hell of a Note, a documentary on Pennell - The King of Texas, and a CD of music from the film, much of it by Pennell's brother, Chuck Pinnell. If that wasn't enough, there is also a booklet with reviews and articles testifying to the importance of The Whole Shootin' Match. It may be impossible to write about the film without discussing the surrounding legends - that this was the film that inspired Robert Redford to take over a film festival in Park City, Utah, and start workshops for independent filmmakers, and well as the legends surrounding Eagle Pennell.

Frank and Loyd are two guys, well on the other side of 30, in pursuit of the one venture that with a big payday. There's usually not quite enough money to pay the rent, but there are enough cold beers to get them through the day. Frank and Loyd are not even capable of making a go of their light hauling business, letting time slip by due to an overly casual attitude towards their work. The one time that it seems they have an invention, an electronic mop, that will pay off, they discover that they sold off all the rights for one thousand dollars. This is the story about people who try to remain optimistic about the future, even when they can barely keep their noses above water.

For all the critical acclaim lauded on The Whole Shootin' Match, I liked A Hello of a Note better. The short film says more in about a quarter of the time, about some working class men and misplaced sense of masculinity. One scene which turned out to be prescient has one of the men, flirting with a woman at a bar, embarrassing her with his glib proposition. A similar scene would be enacted in real life by Pennell with a female producer.

The documentary of Pennell looking back at his career just two years after his debut feature played at film festivals, and had a brief theatrical run, indicates that even had he not surrendered his life to alcohol, he was not interested in a Hollywood career. Of the eight competitors at the U.S. Film Festival in 1978, Claudia Weill, Martha Coolidge, George A. Romero and Mark Rappaport have had careers of varying degrees of success, with Rappaport maintaining his status as a truly independent filmmaker. One of Pennell's unrealized projects was a Texan version of King Lear, an idea that was also entertained by Anthony Mann, and later realized by German Uli Edel as The King of Texas. It is quite possible that Pennell had really only had one or two films in him, as the excepts from his other films were of a couple of white guys sitting around drinking or talking about drinking.

While there are some who have liked The Whole Shootin' Match much more than I did, my recommendation is to see the film with the supplements. Some might share my amazement that the U.S. Film Festival chose this over Eraserhead, David Lynch's audacious debut. The supplements not only help in putting The Whole Shootin' Match into perspective of its place in film history, but also serve as a reminder of what independent filmmaking was like in a different era. Even if the quality of the film is subject to debate, the impact, even if unintended, cannot be ignored.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:48 AM | Comments (1)

February 12, 2009

The Geisha

Yokiro
Hideo Gosha - 1983
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

The Geisha won nine awards at the Japanese Academy Awards twenty-five years ago. There is little doubt in my mind that the awards were all deserved. What may be more puzzling is why it took so long to come to the U.S. without the benefit of a theatrical run. It's also saying something that Hideo Gosha won best director against the formidable competition of Shohei Imamura, Kon Ichikawa and Nagisa Oshima. 2009 is barely out of diapers and The Geisha could well be one of the best films on DVD seen for the first time this year.

The original title refers to the geisha house where much of the film takes place. The story could be said to be about family rivalries. In this case the families are not only biological, but also the family structures of geisha houses and yakuza clans. Katsuzo is a small time, independent "recruiter" for Yokiro, buying young girls to be potential geisha. His own daughter, Momowaka, has become the top geisha in the house. Momowaka has trouble maintaining long term patronage due to her apparent coldness to her clients. Katsuzo lives with a young woman, Tamako, who refers to Katsuzo as "Daddy". The film takes place in 1933, when Japan was still a mix of tradition and modernization, where the women wear kimonos and the men wear business suits. Unlike the traditional geisha, the women of Yokiro are required to sleep with the clients. This is not lost on Tamako who briefly works at a brothel rather than bother with learning how to also be an entertainer. The value of most of the characters in the film is reduced to that of a commodity.

As he did in The Wolves, Gosha films the harshness of nature as a metaphor for the inner turmoil with his characters running in snow or rain. A rain storm almost destroys Yokiro. In one scene, the gunning down of Katsuzo by a yakuza gang is obscured by the steam of a train. Gosho begins and ends this film with shots of cherry blossoms, the traditional Japanese symbol of beauty.

I could easily gush about the award winning cinematography as well. As indicated by the screengrabs, Gosha's favorite angle in shooting close ups was with his actors facing the left side of the screen. This is a filmmaker who loves the facial beauty of his actors, especially stars Kimiko Ikegami (above), Atsuko Asano (below), and the late, great Ken Ogata. It is not only the framing of the faces of any of the characters, or the use of color or lighting, but that this is one of those few films where I could not imagine the camera's relationship to the action being improved upon.

While it is common to praise Criterion for their DVD presentations, AnimEigo may be better for what they do with their live action films. Not only are subtitles offered in standard white, but also the more easily readable yellow, which alternates with green when more than one person is speaking. There is also subtitling for songs, and signs which are often ignored in other films, as well as brief titling to explain some of the colloquialisms used by the characters. DVD notes offer more details regarding the historical background to the films as well as some of the more specific references used in the respective films. From what I have read on another site, Criterion has the U.S. rights to the nutty Japanese horror comedy, House which also features Kimiko Ikegami, but I think I would prefer if AnimEigo got their hands on this piece of cinematic nuttiness.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:25 AM | Comments (3)

February 10, 2009

The Warlords

Tau Ming Chong
Peter Chan - 2007
Bonzai Media All Region DVD

In spite of it's recent win of the Golden Horse awards, The Warlords victory seems based more on the size of the production and the logistics involved. Better was Chan's previous film, the Golden Horse winning Perhaps Love, a self-referential musical about the making of a large scale Chinese musical. Best for me is still Comrades: Almost a Love Story, Chan's last film before his brief departure from Hong Kong. Chan's last small scale Chinese language film was about the struggles of two people from mainland China portrayed by Maggie Cheung and Leon Lai attempting to earn money and assimilate into a very different kind of Chinese society. In contrast to Chan's previous films, The Warlords is fairly impersonal.

Taking place in 19th Century China, the story is about a general, Pang, who is the only survivor when his army of 1600 men are massacred. Taken in by a gang of bandits lead by ErHu and Jiang, Pang sees the struggle of survival a small town has against a rival army. Pang convinces ErHu and Jiang that their best chance would be to transform their group of bandits into an army aligned with one of the warring forces in order to guarantee food, arms and money. The three take an oath of allegiance to each other. What follows is not only a series of large scale battles, but how three three "brothers" change internally and in their relationship with each other. Adding to the conflict is Pang's love for ErHu's wife, the woman who sheltered him following his trek from the battlefield.

Chan's film is a statement about the human waste of war. The hundreds of corpses strewn on the battlefield quickly become abstract. More successful is the more intimate part of The Warlords as an examination of the uses and corruption of power. Those with the real power are seen playing the game Go, discussing the use of pawns. While any reference to contemporary uses of military force may be indirect, the similarities are inescapable.

Chan has gone on record as saying he wanted to make a film with battle scenes that did not rely on any martial art trickery. The soldiers fight in the dirt and mud with arrows, guns and cannons. Probably the reason why this film has yet to be available by a U.S. distributor is because Jet Li does not show off his athletic ability. Li's one major fight scene is with Takeshi Kaneshiro, a brutal struggle between two former friends, one caught up in his adherence to his idealism, the other attempting to justify his consolation of power at the expense of others. Andy Lau plays the reformed bandit leader ErHu, while a very unglamorous looking Xu Jinglei takes to role as the wife torn between loyalty to her husband and passion for her lover.

Chan's one Hollywood production was in affiliation with Steven Spielberg, and is could well be that this association may have triggered interest in making an epic. To a degree, Chinese language cinema may remind some of Hollywood fifty years ago with several competing epics, some with overlapping stories and casts, the biggest of which would be John Woo's two part Battle of Red Cliff which also includes Takeshi Kaneshiro. What makes The Warlords different is not only Chan's interest in presenting war as literally dirty business, divested of glamour or heroism, but framing the narrative with a story that is essentially found in most Hong Kong gangster films, a recent notable example being Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers. While Chan has been interested in making films for a pan-Asian audience, his next film presents greater cross-cultural challenges - Waiting will be filmed in English from the novel of the same name by Ha Jin, with Kaneshiro and Zhang ZiYi. Chan might even argue that at The Warlords is a love story. In discussing his other films, he has stated, "You cannot use rationality to watch my movies. If you use your heart, without dissecting the characters, then you will go with the flow."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:27 AM

February 06, 2009

Cash McCall

Joseph Pevney - 1960
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Sometimes I'll set aside my auteurist badge to watch a movie just because of the starring actors. My only reason to bother with Cash McCall was simply to see Natalie Wood and James Garner in a film together. That the film opened in January of 1960 confirms my suspicions that the essential function of Cash McCall was to keep various people on the Warner Brothers payroll busy, and to provide something to the movie theaters after the big Christmas releases had run their course. Mildly entertaining, the best I can describe Cash McCall would be as a romantic drama with a little comedy thrown in that has no dramatic peaks or valleys, but is more like an hour and forty-five minute plateau.

There is a modicum of entertainment in watching James Garner as a proto-Gordon Gekko, described as a vulture who buys companies cheap, sells them at a profit, and puts employees out of work. Of course this is thirty years before Wall Street, and James Garner is an unashamed capitalist with a heart of gold. Natalie Wood is the daughter of Dean Jagger, the businessman who has sold out to Garner. For James Garner, spending two million dollars to woo the woman he had a brief encounter with during the previous summer is not too high a price. Taking a page from Howard Hughes, Garner's idea of a date is to talk Wood into boarding his luxurious little airplane, and fly off to his private national park.

In a gauzy flashback, a drenched Natalie Wood visits Garner at his Maine cabin. In a scene that should have been more erotic, we see Wood's almost flesh colored dress perfectly molded around her breasts. Joseph Pevney has big close ups of Wood's eyes, and then her lips. I had to wonder what it was like to see a shot of nothing but Natalie Wood's lips on a movie screen in a palatial movie theater. On the downside, Cash McCall seems unnecessarily cruel to Nina Foch as a mature divorcee who thinks Garner is attracted to her.

For myself, it's hard to dislike a film that has a supporting cast with Henry Jones, Edward Platt (with a toupee), and E. G. Marshall, soon to make a name for himself on television's "The Defenders", uttering the line, "I'm not a moralist. I'm a lawyer."

As for Joseph Pevney, as seen by the many available videos he has at IMDb, I can't deny that his name have been associated with some work that is, if nothing else, entertaining.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:58 AM | Comments (2)

February 04, 2009

The Uninvited (2003)

4 Inyong Shiktak
Lee Soo-youn - 2003
Panik House Region 1 DVD

This is one of those times when one wished for a little more imagination in choosing titles. The translated title from Korean would be "Table for 4", which might suggest for some a family comedy or romance. In fact that title is something of a giveaway regarding the plot to this film about alienation and an overwhelming sense of despair in urban Seoul. This is a ghost story which owes some debt to The Sixth Sense, but also to Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now with its sense of inescapable fate and the degree in which architecture and the environment dominate the characters.

In Lee's film, there is little solace in family, friendship, friends, pets or religion. People live in apartments in highrises that are little more than glorified boxes, coffins if you will. There is little to indicate that personal spaces have more than functional use, with bare walls and little evidence of the touches that personalize a home. Jung-won, an interior designer, lives in one such apartment that appears to be essentially a home office with a bed. While he is capable of resolving issues for others concerning the use of office space, he is at a loss regarding his own life and sense of self. Accidentally injured on his forehead, a coworker thinks he is only joking when he describes Jung-won as messed up inside. Jung-won's personal life is dominated by his fiancee, Hee-eun. A wedding is planned for the two, with Jung-won sheepishly going along with Hee-eun's plans. Hee-eun criticizes a comment made by one of Jung-won's friends that marriage and children are hell. Hee-eun has set up the kitchen space in Jung-won's apartment with a small table with overhead lights that spotlight each person. Hee-eun compares the table to a stage with actors, but the effect is one of emphasizing the separation of people while sharing the same space. The themes to be explored by Lee are also announced when Jung-won quietly steps into his apartment to find Hee-Eun in the midst of drilling in the lights, with her comparing his entrance to that of a ghost.

Jung-won's passive existence is thrown into disorder when he wakes up at the end of the line in a subway, alone with two young girls who are seemingly left sleeping. It is later through news reports that he learns the two girls were left to die, munching poisoned cookies provided by their mother. The ghosts of the two girls appear to haunt Jung-won. Into Jung-won's life also appears Yun, a narcoleptic, who first appears as the patient of a psychiatrist, whose office Jung-won is redesigning. Yun also goes to the church run by Jung-won's father, in Ilsan, a suburb northwest of Seoul. When Yun collapses on the street, Jung-won takes her to her apartment. Yun appears to casually notice the two ghosts, appearing as though asleep in two chairs. Yun not only sees the ghosts that have attached themselves to Jung-won, but sees the part of Jung-won's childhood that he has forgotten, that determined much of his life.

In The Uninvited, children and parents perceive each other as monsters. The horror in the film is what these parents and children do to each other. Family is presented as an artificial construct, to be used or discarded as needed. It is worth noting that in this film, written and directed by a woman, that most of the men are little more than helpless observers. The women's actions are presented as reactions to a sense of hopelessness, disconnection from themselves as well as others. For Jung-won, Hee-eun represents a world of normalcy that he is part of only because he is suppose to be part of that world. Yun is both attractive and repulsive because she is able to share those parts of Jung-won's life that he has tried to hide or deny from himself.

Lee also plays with the the perceptions of sleep and death. When Jung-won wakes up in the subway, it is almost suggested that the remainder of the film is his dream. Jung-won suffers from nightmares from his repressed childhood, misinterpreted as pre-wedding jitters by Jung-won's father. The two dead girls, making this film tangentally a tale of two sisters, appear to be asleep. Yun's narcolepsy is explained as an unconscious defense against seeing too much, her ability to see the dreams of others. In The Uninvited, the characters are either spiritually dead, or attempting to rebel against a life that whether real or imagined, is overwhelmingly horrible.

The official website for The Uninvited offers some of Lee's own thoughts on the themes of truth and memory. An in-depth interview with Lee would be in order to understand more of her thoughts and intentions. Some of the religious imagery is in need of some explanation. The large, colorful swastika that appears in one scene may alarm those unfamiliar with its earlier symbolism prior to Nazi usage. There would appear to be more than meets the eye in the use of the spiral as a visual motif as well. I could find nothing of substance on Lee at this time other than that The Uninvited was her debut feature, that earned a degree of critic respect if not praise, but only modest success at the box office. There is no indication of any newer work by Ms. Lee at this time. Whatever faults one might find in The Uninvited, they are not to be found in the filmmaker's incisive eye, or an ambition that lies beyond genre conventions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:14 AM | Comments (1)

February 02, 2009

Susan Slade

Delmer Daves - 1961
Warner Brother Region 1 DVD

What struck me most about Susan Slade is that with genre considerations set aside, this film has the same concerns as Delmer Daves' westerns. Death and the domination of nature over everything else loom as large here as a film like The Last Wagon. Daves' recurring themes are of characters having an authentic sense of identity, and of developing mutual respect without regard to such trappings as race or class.

The key men in Susan Slade's life are connected to nature. Her father is a mining engineer, her first lover has devoted his life to mountain climbing, while would-be suitor Troy Donohue runs a horse stable. Some of the dialogue may be a little too arch, for example when mountain climber discusses virgin peaks with Connie Stevens. The combination of a close-up of an anguished Connie Stevens, briefly frozen, and double exposed against the surging tide of a rocky beach, with a pounding Max Steiner score, may be loading the dice on the heavy side. Daves use of long shots in the several scenes with Susan Slade riding her horse wildly was probably a way of minimizing the identity of a stunt double, but it also consistent with his previous films where the characters are all but lost in their respective environments.

The weakest part of Susan Slade might be Susan herself, in the form of Connie Stevens, although I would give her credit for effort. Daves was hoping to duplicate that A Summer Place magic, and indeed, there is a scene with young lovers on a ship, with Max Steiner's famed theme on the soundtrack. In A Summer Place, teenage Sandra Dee, accused of losing her virginity, is forced to be examined by a gynecologist. Dee conveys the terror of what is both a personal and physical invasion. Connie Stevens was always better suited for television in lightly comic roles. There were times when I thought that the underrated Dee would have delivered the pathos that Daves was aiming for in several highly dramatic scenes.

There isn't much suspense when Connie Stevens is suppose to choose between Troy Donohue and Bert Convy. The set up for the climatic finish is also very obvious. Still, Steven won me over when, caught up in overwhelming despair, she rides at full gallop to the beach and flings herself into the water. Part of why Delmer Daves films were popular in their time is because he understood the pain and sincerity of young love.

For those with Netflix subscriptions, let me also advise you that The Badlanders is available on their instant viewing channel. Not available on DVD, and shown in a pan and scan version, this is a remake of The Asphalt Jungle as a western. The film stars Alan Ladd, but the ones to watch are then husband and wife Ernest Borgnine and Katy Jurado. Even though Daves does not have screenplay credit, some of his same themes regarding race and class are evident. Kent Smith, playing a less than honest businessman here also appears in Susan Slade as the kindly family doctor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

January 29, 2009

Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection - Disc 4

Goodbye, South, Goodbye/Nan guo zai jan, nan guo
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1996

Flowers of Shanghai/Hai shang hua
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1998
Both Sino All Region DVDs

Goodbye, South, Goodbye was made in 1996 but made me think of some American films made more than twenty years ago. Along with film critic Jeffrey M. Anderson, I was reminded of Mean Streets, with small time hoods in big time trouble. Much of Goodbye, South, Goodbye is devoted to Hou's characters traveling from place to place, much like the "road" movies that appeared after the success of Easy Rider.

The film follow two young men, brothers Gao and Flat Head, usually known as Flatty, and Flatty's girl friend, Pretzel. In order to pay off a debt created by Pretzel, and to set themselves up financially, a scheme is set up when it is known that some family property is to be sold. Not only does the scheme fail but the trio are in hot water with the police, some Taipei gangsters and a politician. As a film about contemporary Taiwan, Hou's film is also in part about the anxiety felt during the time that mainland China was transforming itself as a financial power and was a year away from taking back Hong Kong.

Hou begins this film as an opposite of Dust in the Wind, with a point of view shot from a train going away from its point of origin. The three main characters are introduced while inside the train, Flatty and Pretzel playing with each other while Gao looks ahead. Hou also has an extended traveling shot of the trio on motorcycles while facing the camera, as well as an extended shot of the three barely seen past the windshield of a car driven by Gao. The motorcycle ride could also be seen as a reference to Good Men, Good Women and the scene where Annie Shizuka Inoh's television is glimpsed with a scene from Ozu's Late Spring with Setsuko Hara on a bicycle.

Unlike Ozu's films, there is an extraordinary amount of camera movement in Goodbye, South, Goodbye. Like a Scorsese film there is a rock music score, though both contemporary and original. Lim Giong, who played Flatty, wrote and performed the mostly techno soundtrack. One of the songs won the "Golden Horse" award, high honor among Chinese language films. Goodbye, South, Goodbye is the film to watch for those who assume Hou's films are too rarefied, plus the soundtrack kicks ass.

I am not sure if I can much of substance to what has been written about Flowers of Shanghai. For those who know, or have seen Hou's work, this is probably the best known film, or at least the most widely seen until the recent Flight of the Red Balloon. Viewed after seven other films in chronological order, it is also arguably the least like Hou's other films save for the stringent visual style. The entire film takes place in interior settings, mostly dimly lit, so while the outside world is sometimes referred to in conversation, it is as if there was no other world than that of the small group of Shanghai brothels, known as Flower Houses.

My own sense is that aside from the subject matter, the confusion regarding love and money, and the messy relationships between men and women, what interested Hou was the opportunity to make a film within the limited settings, emphasizing the closed in spaces with equally limited camera work. I am certain Hou also was attracted to the opportunity of working with a pan-Asian cast topped by Tony Leung Chiu Wai at his most self-effacing. The structure of the film is mostly in small vignettes that fade to black at the conclusion. While much of the film's reputation rests on its formal qualities, what is of real interest is the interaction of the characters whether it is the patrons playing a drinking game, or the women trying to manipulate the patrons.

Certainly one of the benefits of seeing eight films by Hou in a short time is to get a better grasps of the elements the different films share, and also the differences. It may be comforting to some to know that they may not be the only one to fall asleep viewing one of Hou's films with their deliberate, unhurried pacing. While the DVD versions of the eight films are letterbox formatted, with the noted exception of The Puppetmaster, the collection is currently the only way to see the four earlier films. There are no extras as in some of the now out of print DVDs. It should also be noted that previous Hou collections have sold out and command high prices among collectors.

The Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:48 AM

January 27, 2009

Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection - Disc 3

The Puppetmaster/Xi meng ren sheng
Hou Hsiao-hsien -1993

Good Men, Good Women/Hao nan hao nu
Hou Hsiao-hsien -1995
both Sino All Region DVD

The third and fourth discs of the Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection have the earliest films previously available on DVD individually. The films are also the ones that have been covered well by other writers. Not in the collection are the two films made after Dust in the Wind. Currently unavailable are Daughter of the Nile (1987) and A City of Sadness, the latter key in Hou's interest in the political and cultural history of Taiwan. It is worth noting for those interested in Hou's earliest films that two, Cheerful Wind and Green, Green Grass of Home have DVD versions available.

The Puppetmaster in this collection is again the full screen version. At the website "DVD Beaver", someone at Fox Lorber claimed that the full screen version was the only copy available for transfer. Evidently, this seems to have been the only version available for Sino. Some of the shots suffer due to the cropping on the sides, yet even in its less than perfect presentation, The Puppetmaster is one of Hou's most involving films. On the surface, it would seem that the elements that would be detrimental have little effect in making this film quite watchable.

The story of puppetmaster and actor Li Tien-lu (seen above), the film is also the story about Japan's occupation of Taiwan up through World War II. Through Li, Hou explores the conflict between the Chinese identity of many of the Taiwanese residents and the political and cultural demands of Japan that were effected beginning in 1895. In one early scene, the men in Li's family are forced to cut off their pigtails by government edict. In a later scene, Li's position as a performing artist entails his creating a puppet show that is propaganda on behalf of the Japanese military forces. Hou cuts between scene of the real 82 year old Li telling his story to the camera, and re-enacted scenes from Li's life. Simply watching the octogenarian tells his own story is enthralling.

Just as one is riveted by Li speaking for himself, so Hou succeeds in letting the scenes play out, mostly with little or no camera movement. At one point in Li's story, he is living in a brothel, in love with one of the women of the house. The delicate lighting which barely illuminates the faces of the characters is one of the painterly aspects of The Puppetmaster. In one scene, the actor playing Li is sitting at a table reading, while we hear the voice of a woman offering herself to Li while his lover is away. While the camera does not move, the scene achieves a comic peak in the tension between a man seemingly content to be alone, and the voice of a woman who does not give up easily. To describe what Hou does as minimalism is missing the point. The Puppetmaster is the work of a filmmaker who is confident enough in himself and his material to tell a story as simply as possible.

Hou cuts between past and present in Good Men, Good Women. The connections between past and present are more abstract. Annie Shizuka Inoh plays two parts, as the actress Liang Ching who finds herself looking back at events in her life from a few years ago, and as the resistance fighter Chiang Bi-Yu, whose book was the basis for part of the film. Liang portrays Chiang in the film within the film, titled Good Men, Good Women. The present is in color while the past is in black and white.

Although the contrast between past and present is something of a continuation with what Hou had done with The Puppetmaster, the connections to be made seem vague outside of the casting of the lead actress in her two roles. That both women are in love with men who died young, and by violent means, seems trivialized when one is a former resistance fighter who fought Japanese authority in World War II in the Forties and is deemed a Communist sympathizer in the Fifties for that same reason, while the contemporary man is an unsuccessful small time gangster.

Good Men, Good Women does not work as a total piece, but there are several moments that stand out. Most successful are the contemporary scenes of Annie Shizuka Inoh padding around her apartment in the opening scene, and scenes with Jack Kao as her lover, dancing in front of him, or the two making love in front of a mirror. The flashback to the young, naive resistance fighters joining forces with the mainland fighters is illustrative of the cultural and language barriers that have existed between people collectively known as Chinese. It could also be that Good Men, Good Women was not intended to fit past and present in an obvious way, but rather that Hou is showing that the past is not part of a continuum but a series of tenuously connected fragments.

The Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection is available from HK Flix, along with Cheerful Wind and Green, Green Grass of Home.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:27 PM | Comments (1)

January 22, 2009

Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection - Disc 2

A Time to Live and a Time to Die/Tong nien wang shi
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1985

Dust in the Wind/Lian lian feng chen
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1986
Both Sino All Region DVD

A Time to Live and a Time to Die is a somewhat autobiographical story of Hou's youth. The film is about a family, and the generational differences between the elders who grew up in mainland China and those who have known Taiwan for all or most of their lives. Some aspects of the film are very specific to the history of China and Taiwan and may be lost on some film viewers. This is the story about the dissolution of a family as well as the shifts in national identity.

The father, a teacher, has assumed that his taking a position in Taiwan would be temporary, four years at the most. The grandmother, increasingly senile, forgets where she is and frequently goes on a walk to mainland China, often to be returned home by a rickshaw driver. Against the dreams of a return to a China that no longer exists, the younger generation makes sense out of living in a country that claims to be the true China, that still has vestiges of years of Japanese influence as well as creeping Westernization.

Like most of Hou's other films, A Time to Live and a Time to Die is filmed using medium or long shots. The only time a close-up is used is in a panning shot of the faces of the children when they realize that their tubercular father has died. Death could be seen as a metaphor for the change of Taiwanese identity from one where the country is thought of as temporary home until return to the mainland is possible, to that where Taiwan is considered home.

Most of the film is from the point of view of Ah-ha-gu, Hou's screen alter ego. Introduced as a mischievous boy who gets into trouble with his mother for stealing money, Ah-ha-gu grows into a young man who still has a penchant for getting into trouble. He is doted on by his grandmother who wants to send him back to mainland China, a place distant both geographically and emotionally. Unlike a western film that seeks to develop an identification between the viewer and the characters, Hou's deliberately distances the viewers from the characters and their activities. As indicated in the title, death is a significant part of the narrative, not so much as end of life as much as a reminder of how life in all of its aspects is transitory.

As indicated in the title, Dust in the Wind also explores the transitory nature of life, albeit more lightly than A Time to Live and a Time to Die. Very loosely, the film is about two teenagers, Huen and Wan, coming together and drifting apart. Living in a small mining town, occupational and educational opportunities are limited. Moving to Taipei, Huen finds a job with a tailor. Wan leaves his job as a printer's assistant to work as a delivery driver until he gets drafted. No matter what may be intended, peoples' lives seem to be continually determined by forces outside themselves.

Again Hou's viewpoint is one of detachment. The most humorous moment in the film takes place offscreen when the popping is heard of a firecracker mistaken for a candle. In another scene, Wan meets Huen at a train station, and is barely seen fighting with a man as the two are mostly hidden by one of the station columns. Even the feelings between Huen and Wan seem to be hidden, or are not made obvious as a more traditionally made film.

The opening shot begins in darkness until it is revealed that it is the point of view shot from the front of a train. Unlike a film such as Fritz Lang's Human Desire which focuses on the tracks as if to indicate the that the fate of the characters is predetermined, Hou's camera looks straight ahead. It is as if to say that perhaps one's direction in life is fated, yet the only choice is to look ahead to the future.

The Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection is available from HK Flix where you can find other fine classics.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:50 AM

January 20, 2009

Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection - Disc 1

The Boys from Fengkuei/Feng gui lai de ren
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1983

A Summer at Grandpa's/Dong dong de jia qi
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 1984
Both Sino All Region DVD

I am slowly working my way through four discs containing eight films by Hou Hsiao-hsien. The earlier films have not been made available by any U.S. company. While not a definitive collection, this "Ultimate Collection" does provide a solid overview of Hou's career from 1983 through 1998 when he had begun to establish an international reputation.

In an early scene in The Boys from Fengkuei, Ah-Ching and his friends sneak into a movie theater and find Rocco and his Brothers is playing, English dubbed with Chinese subtitles. While Hou's film has some similarities with Visconti's, especially in the story about small town young men in the big city, Hou's film may be closer in spirit to Fellini's I Vitelloni. Both films are about young men with no jobs, no ambitions and no particular place to go, with one of them coming to realize that there is a limit to how long one can waste one's life.

The Boys from Fengkuei is noted as being the first of Hou's film to clearly bear the style of long takes, often with a static camera observing the activity from a distance. While the influence of Yasujiro Ozu is periodically evident, Hou also makes use of some crane shots so that we can see several of the characters who are also neighbors, climbing up and down the apartment stairs or walking across the building's exterior passageway. It may also be worth noting that one of Hou's admirers is Jim Jarmusch, and that most likely unknown to each other, Jarmusch's Stranger than Paradise, released in 1984, shares similar subject and the determination to minimize the dramatic in favor of letting any kind of narrative concerns slowly reveal themselves.

The use of classical music, notably by Bach, gives The Boys from Fengkuei an elegiac feel. Even if Summer is not over, the music indicates that this is Ah-Ching's last summer with his friends. With nothing to do but hang out or get in fights with other young men, Ah-Ching and two friends go to a larger city in the hopes of getting some kind of work, essentially biding their time before mandatory military duty. Ah-Ching flashes back to a happier summer with his father, who has since become incapacitated by a baseball fracturing the front of his skull. For Ah-Ching, the future is as uncertain as the space blankly stared out by his father.

The alternative English language title, All the Youthful Days, could perhaps be judged fairer in describing the story. Part of what instigates Ah-Ching's newfound sense of seriousness is his encounters with the women his age, all with a greater sense of purpose to their lives. In a greater sense, Hou's film is about the conflicts of ideals with the practical realities of contemporary Taiwan for those whose futures are limited. The film ends with a wistful goodbye both to Summer and to youthful irresponsibility.

Summer a Grandpa's is an extension of some of the same themes of Boys from Fengkuei. The focus is on two young children, a boy, Tung-tung, and his sister, Ting-ting. A sense of sadness pervades the film from the beginning, as the set-up is that the siblings are sent to their grandparents in the country while their severely ill mother is being hospitalized. A reversal of sorts of Boys from Fengkuei, the big city children learn some life lessons in a small town where everyone seems to know everyone else. There is what may be a deliberate echo from To Kill a Mockingbird in which Ting-ting is saved from an accident by a retarded woman, described as mad by the other children, a distaff version of Boo Radley.

Lighter in tone, there is one wonderfully comic scene. Tung-tung and the boys swim naked in a nearby river. Ting-ting is told to leave, informed that viewing the boys will cause germs to grow on her eyes. Her revenge is to gather up the boys' clothing and have it float down the river. The scene provides a humorous counterpoint to the other scenes in which men determine the lives of the female characters.

The visual influence of Ozu is most obvious in a montage of nighttime shots. In terms of the story, one can also see the similarity with the juxtapositions of generations and geography. There is also the conflict of family ties versus the sense that the presence of family members within the household as an imposition. Unlike the characters portrayed by Chishu Ryu, Koo Chuen as Grandpa, the small town's doctor, uses an exterior indifference to mask his own sense of humanity. Also to be mentioned is that one of the cast members is fellow Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang, who also composed the music for this film.

The Hou Hsiao-hsien Ultimate Collection is available from HK Flix.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:37 PM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2009

Gutterballs

Ryan Nicholson - 2008
TLA Releasing Region 1 DVD

TLA's vampire

The best part about Gutterballs DVD isn't the movie. For me, the trailers to TLA's "Danger after Dark" were the highlight. I don't know what film the above vampire is from but as soon as I find out, it's on my impossibly long list of films I want to see. Certainly, Storm, which Michael Guillen had written about previously, is one I want to catch. The Pakistani zombie story, Hell's Ground also looks like fun. The compilation trailer is as good as the one for the late, great, Tartan Asia Extreme, where dozens of great moments are taken out of context, strung together, and you want to see . . . everything!

Storm

Hell's Ground

Well, maybe not quite everything. And that's the problem I had with Gutterballs. I was with someone last Summer who reacted with extreme anger and hostility when I began watching The Free Will, the study of a rapist and the consequences of his actions. From her point of view, the depiction of rape constituted an endorsement of the act. I didn't feel that way, and made of point of having a female film critic review the extra DVD I received as a means of knowing if generalizations could be made based on gender.

Gutterballs tries to play it both ways, critical of rape, yet using it as a convenient plot point to let the audience get a good view of Candice Lewald's breasts. What is suppose to pass as social commentary is a rivalry between four fratboy types who are bowling against a team of outsiders which includes a young black man. The rivalry is escalated when the black man, played by Nathan Witte, comes to the defense of the transexual friend of a trio of girls. Lewald is raped as revenge for the humiliation of the lead frat boy.

As might be inferred from the title, Gutterballs takes place in a bowling alley. In the manner of slasher films from Eighties, the kids are dispatched, one or two at a time, by a killer wearing a bowling ball bag on his head. Unlike those films of past times, Gutterballs is more sexually explicit and much more violent. As far as creating gory special effects, Ryan Nicholson has proven himself to be quite talented. It could also be that someone like myself was never the intended audience for a film like this, with its extended scenes of mutilation and carnage. I did admittedly find a scene involving a profanity spewing machine that waxes bowling balls funny. One may want to compare Gutterballs to Tokyo Gore Police. Both films are works by men who established themselves in creating horrific make-up and special effects body parts for other filmmakers. While Tokyo Gore Police has moments of artistry plus the advantage of Eihi Shiina, in both films, copious geysers of blood frequently substitute for effective story-telling.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM

January 12, 2009

Sparrow

Man Jeuk
Johnny To - 2008
Universe Entertainment Region 3 DVD

I'm more interested in the Golden Horse awards, than I am in Golden Globes. Also, when year end lists appear, it's the films without U.S. distributors that strike my curiosity. And yes, my reaction to Sparrow was the same as that of Andrew Grant.

This story about pickpockets in Hong Kong is unlike the adrenaline fueled films that may come to mind when mentioning Johnny To. The film appears to be gently meandering along seemingly aimlessly, like lead pickpocket Simon Yam, moseying along on his bicycle, looking for the easiest and most profitable marks. The relaxed feeling is emphasized by the cool jazz score. No one is in a particular rush to get anywhere, except for Kelly Lin, who can't run very fast in high heels. Some of the streets are as steep as those to be found in San Francisco. Most of Sparrow takes place within the urban spaces of Hong Kong. The several shots of birds in cages is another reminder of the limited space that the characters call home. Characters find themselves trapped on rooftops, alleys and cul-de-sacs. This use of space has its comedic highlight when Yam and his gang crowd in an elevator with Lin and two men carrying a large glass aquarium.

None of the on-screen criminals can compare with To, who plays his own kind of con game with the audience. Yam and his gang encounter Kelly Lin, at what appear to be chance meetings, individually. To never reveals very much so that it is uncertain about who is gaming who. Wherever Lin shows up, several black suited guys also appear, although it is initially unclear who they are or how they figure in the proceedings. In extending the game analogy, To slowly shows his cards one at a time rather than quickly revealing his hand.

The technical displays of Exiled are played down for a simpler visual style. The simplicity is devious. Even when the camera is observing the action, the narrative is propelled as much by what is not seen, be it hidden motivations, mistaken identities, or the subtle sleight of hand. What Sparrow also has in common with Exiled is a story about a group of men whose lives are disrupted by the presence of a woman, but just as the new film diverges visually, so it also is gentler with the characters, leaving everyone alive, perhaps a bit wiser.

In the DVD supplement, To discusses being inspired by Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and originally envisioning Sparrow as a musical. Simon Yam almost dances his way out of his dump of an apartment in the film's first scene. The grand set piece could well be called "The Umbrellas of Hong Kong". Credit To for further undoing genre expectations by having the final confrontation between Yam and his gang against their rivals as a slow motion stroll in the rain. Replacing the bullet ballet is choreographed movement of umbrellas, hand movements, razors cutting cloth, and splashes of water. It could well be that in its inventiveness, Sparrow has been denied a U.S. release by refusing to be an Asian film defined by martial arts or gunplay. It could well be that Sparrow is Johnny To's most personal film to date with To as a sparrow, not as a pickpocket referred to in Hong Kong slang, but as an uncaged bird who chooses to fly his own way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM | Comments (3)

January 08, 2009

Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

The Pang Brothers - 2008
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

The Pang Brothers remake of their 1999 version of Bangkok Dangerous is not as good as the original, but neither is it as bad as some critics have have it. Perhaps making an English language film takes away a layer of the exotic that would be ascribed to work that was either largely in Thai or Cantonese. The Pangs are due auteurist consideration because of their consistent visual style and themes.

What is usually ignored is that the Pangs are Hong Kong filmmakers who primarily work in Thailand. This point is brought up because, as the Pangs are outsiders based on language and culture, their films are about outsiders. The main characters in the Pang films may be from another country, be differently abled, or simply find themselves, as in Re-Cycle as strangers in a strange land. In the original Bangkok Dangerous, the hitman is deaf, but his deafness works on his behalf so that he is not distracted by the sound of his gun. He is also from the country, and he and his friends are considered marginal even within the Thai underworld. The remake has Cage as the foreigner in Thailand, hired to do a job, but separated by culture and language.

With his hair dyed black, Cage sometimes appears like a ghost, or a cadaver. Early in the film, in part of his off screen narration, Cage's character, Joe, mentions disappearing like a ghost. The suggestion is that Joe is already dead, emotionally and morally, if not literally. This would also be fitting as part of the Pangs' other films which are frequently ghost stories. It is Joe's renewed sense of humanity that is his ultimate undoing. This is somewhat parallel to The Eye in which the blind woman is "cured", only to see a world more terrible than imagined.

As a switch from the first Bangkok Dangerous, Charlie Yeung portrays a deaf-mute pharmacist. While this allows the Pangs to again explore the dilemma of characters who are unable to communicate with each other, the scenes with Cage work against the film in presenting a tourist's view of Bangkok. We are to believe that Joe, a world traveler, would find Thai food too spicy, causing him to break out in a sweat. The scene with Cage and Yeung making friends with an elephant also feels contrived. What does work is a scene where Yeung hands Cage a note declaring her feelings for him while the two are walking in a deserted park at night. We see Yeung in close-up, absorbed in infatuation, while we see Cage taking on two would be muggers in the background. Yeung cannot hear what is going on and is completely unaware of what has happened behind her until she feels the splash of blood on her jacket. While the scene is a reworking of a similar scene from the first version, it is one of the few moments in the new Bangkok Dangerous that is perfectly realized.

Parts of the new Bangkok Dangerous look like they were filmed in the attempt to give the film international appeal. While this is understandable considering the higher financial stakes, it also forces compromise on filmmakers, often denying them the ability to make the kind of films that initially garnered attention. Even the Pangs disorienting visual style has been toned down considerably. While the first Bangkok Dangerous was down and dirty, the new film too often emphasizes the exotic side of Bangkok, and not enough of the dangerous.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:16 AM | Comments (2)

January 06, 2009

Smart Money

Alfred E. Green - 1931
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Don't let the second billing fool you. James Cagney shares the screen with star Edward G. Robinson for about the same amount of time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino have their late night chat in Heat. Release two films after their defining star turns in Public Enemy and Little Caesar. I suspect Jack Warner shoehorned Cagney into what is no more than a supporting role to generate some box office heat. To describe Alfred E. Green's direction as pedestrian would to generous for Smart Money.

Being a long time fan of Warner Brothers movies from the Thirties and Forties, I would think of Smart Money as an example of the studio style in the making, as well as concurrent proof that auteur theory or not, having the right director makes the difference. Consider that most of the writing pool of John Bright, Kubec Glasmon, Lucien Hubbard and Joseph Jackson not only were nominated for "Best Writing" in 1931, but Glasmon and Bright were competing against themselves for Public Enemy. That the latter film has remained popular has as much to do with William Wellman's energy as Cagney's way with a grapefruit. One could also compare how Glasmon and Bright fare with Roy Del Ruth (Taxi!) or Mervyn LeRoy (Three on a Match to imagine how much better Smart Money could have been, not to mention Howard Hawks (The Crowd Roars).

Four men on a screenplay does not guarantee that a film will still make any sense. Robinson plays a small town barber who seems to be lucky at gambling. He also hosts a game in the back of his shop. His friends persuade him to try his luck against the big money in the big city (stock shot of New York City). The basic plot involves Robinson being suckered into a game against a big time gambler who takes Robinson for all he's got. Robinson tries his luck again a few months later, wins everything back, and goes on to develop a reputation for being the best of a bunch of guys with names like Hickory Short, Sleepy Sam and Deep River. Robinson goes to open a casino of his own which the city fathers want to close down. Eventually, Robinson's weakness for bottled blondes is the catalyst for his downfall.

The blondes in this case are forgotten names Margaret Livingston, Evalyn Knapp and Noel Francis. Robinson's preference for blondes could well have been that of Bright and Glasmon as they also wrote another Cagney vehicle, Blonde Crazy which also featured Francis. The story might collapse under closer examination, the blondes shine less brightly that studio peers Glenda Farrell and Joan Blondell. What ages less well is the casual racism towards the black characters,where Robinson rubs the head of John Larkin for good luck, and a Sleepy Sam addresses his servant as "Stupid", repeated by Robinson.

The scenes with Robinson and Cagney are nothing more than amiable. In comparison with those films that had Cagney playing against Humphrey Bogart, or Bogart on screen with Robinson, the scenes with Robinson together with Cagney lack brio. Only one scene, with Cagney bursting into a hotel room with a gun suggests that the pair should been in a different, better film. One the plus side is a short appearance by Boris Karloff, towering over Robinson, as a luckless gambler, a bad sport named Sport. The scene isn't entirely enough to redeem Smart Money, but out of context, there is a chuckle to be had seeing Little Caesar face off with Frankenstein.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM | Comments (3)

January 02, 2009

Princess Yang Kwei-Fei

Yokihi
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1955
Films sans Frontieres Region 2 DVD

I first saw Princess Yang Kwei-Fei in a 16mm print at NYU, roughly a year before I became a Buddhist. While the story is not specifically Buddhist, it is mentioned in one of the writings of the Buddhist priest, Nichiren. As this letter, known as the "New Year's Gosho" is read at every meeting held on New Year's Day, when Yang Kwei-Fei is mentioned, I always think back to Kenji Mizoguchi's film.

Nichiren's reference to Yang is part of his explanation of the innate Buddhism of all people. One can further read this as simply the potential for greatness or value of people or things from humble or ordinary sources. Where one could give a Buddhist interpretation to Mizoguchi's films is in his exploration of the lives of women of lower social status, demonstrating their worthiness both as the protagonists of his films, and in their relationships with other people, especially those deemed more respect worthy due to social ranking. Mizoguchi's version of the story of Yang has been reworked so that it reflects those interests of the filmmaker. A deeper scholarship regarding Mizoguchi's thoughts on retelling the story of Princess Yang would be desirable based also on the fact that Mizoguchi was a convert to a form of Nichiren Buddhism, and was probably familiar with the "New Year's Gosho". What writing there is, at least in English, regarding Mizoguchi and Buddhism, suggests a need for more than passing acknowledgement. What is known is that producer Masaichi Nagata was also a Nichiren Buddhist practitioner, and played in a key role in Mizoguchi's conversion. Mizoguchi's own interest could be based not only on retelling a classic story, but that his own life as one of an esteemed filmmaker of humble origin.

I probably would have been better off to some extent getting the Masters of Cinema DVD because the supplemental material is in English. Still, the English subtitles on this French DVD, as well as the movie itself, is an improvement over the New Yorker taped version. As revised by Mizoguchi, the story could almost describe some of his other films - a selfless woman acts on behalf of benefitting other family members, only to lose everything. Kwei-Fei allows herself to be introduced to the Emperor because it could enable her status conscious cousins to become part of the court. Wealth and position are presented as traps in two key scenes. Dressed as commoners, the emperor and Kwei-Fei walk the streets during a holiday, with Kwei-Fei introducing the emperor to street cuisine. Later that night, Kwei-Fei dances while the emperor joins the street musicians by playing the lute. In another scene, Kwei-Fei witness the emperor distressed that his edict regarding members of the court interfering with politics is understood to mean death for a court lady who had requested a position for a relative. In Princess Yang Kwei-Fei, power and position need to be coupled with humility. The Yang family, and those who attained position through their relationship with Kwei-Fei, are destroyed due to their insatiable greed. Kwei-Fei allows herself to be executed, the mutual love and loyalty with the emperor to great to allow her to leave the court in spite of her attempts to exile herself from the court. Even though Kwei-Fei has done nothing herself, her existence is viewed as the catalyst that created the chaos.

Because Princess Yang Kwei-Fei was a coproduction with Chinese producer Run Run Shaw, the film has some notable differences to other Mizoguchi films. This was the first of two films Mizoguchi shot in color. Also, there are crowd scenes, teeming with extras, such as the previously mentioned street festival scene and a later scene with the emperor's army. What stands out, as in other films by Mizoguchi are the more intimate moments, Machiko Kyo as Kwei-Fei taking a bath, or observing a young girl, a palace cook, who reminds her of herself prior to meeting the emperor, or the scene with Masayuki Mori as the emperor discovering a shadowed Kyo, or plaintively looking up the statue of his late wife.

Bosley Crowther's 1956 review in the New York Times, described the film as " . . . a beautiful thing to look at but a bewildering and tedious thing to sit through." Even now, there are critics, such as Tony Rayns (who also introduces the film on the MofC DVD), who are generally dismissive of Princess Yang Kwe-Fei. Run Run Shaw did a new version of the story under the title, Yang Kwei Fei, in 1962, with the English language title of The Magnificent Concubine. For myself, I had first seen the film with little previous knowledge of Mizoguchi, having only seen Sansho the Bailiff. While repeated viewings have been initiated in large part because of the significants of the story, what I have since learned about Mizoguchi's conversion to Buddhism indicates, at least for me, some greater research.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 AM

December 30, 2008

The World in His Arms

Raoul Walsh - 1952
Universal Region 1 DVD

Does anyone else think that Raoul Walsh's film age better than those of Howard Hawks or John Ford? It may be revealing that while Hawks and Ford's films in the Fifties became longer, with increasing tendency to make grand statements, Walsh continued to make films pretty much as he always had, which was to have fun and shoot a movie on the side. Except for the fact that his career was based on the invention of the motion picture camera, I'm not sure if Walsh really had much use for the 20th Century. Even the contemporary films often were about characters nostalgic for the past, or acting on outmoded codes of honor. The acting was rooted in the 19th Century stage, transposed to film first by Walsh's mentor, D.W. Griffith. Walsh may have seemed out of his time, especially during the last decade of his career, yet it is that same remove, more than fifty years later, that keeps his films from seeming as dated as a misfire like Hawks' Red Line 7000.

Viewed at a time of animal rights and protection of endangered species, some audience members may be appalled by the attitude towards seals and the seal pelt trade in The World in His Arms. The difference between Gregory Peck, and the Russians who run the fur trade in this 1850 tale, is that Peck is enlightened enough to take "what is needed", while the Russians seem bent on getting every seal to the brink of extinction. What ecological message there is takes a back seat along with the faint Cold War allegory which essentially states that that the Russians are O.K. but for their undemocratic government and the people in charge.

This may not be among the best of Raoul Walsh's films, but it has almost everything one would want. It's only about two minutes into the film when the first of several fist fights breaks out. Gregory Peck is a sea captain so successful at poaching furs from the Russians that he is able to raise ten million dollars to buy Alaska for himself. His chief competition, aside from the Russians, is Anthony Quinn, a rival captain who will shake hands and steal your watch at the same time. Peck falls in love with chipmunk faced Ann Blyth, a Russian countess who is to marry the much older nephew of the Czar.

The story is less important than watching Quinn try to steal Peck's boat, Blyth, crew and the movie, at one point having an arm wrestling match on a ballroom floor. Being a Walsh film that initially takes place in San Francisco, Peck knows all the "dance hall" girls who show up at the ritzy hotel much to the dismay of fussy proprietor Hans Conried. The one bit of authentic casting involves Eugenie Leontovich as Blyth's aunt among such faux Russians as Carl Esmond and Sig Ruman. There's also a pet seal, first seen in one of the hotel bathtubs. There's even young Bryan Forbes in his first Hollywood role.

One might quibble with what may be a proto-Dixieland jazz band that makes an appearance to liven up a formal dance at the hotel. More difficult to watch is the footage of seals on the Alaskan coast, blown up from 16mm, even more obvious when used as rear projection while Peck is leading his hunting expedition. The boat race between Peck and Quinn looks real enough, though. This may be the only Walsh film where one might gush about the costumes, taking full advantage of beautifully preserved technicolor. And while Peck may not measure up to more frequent Walsh heroes like Flynn and Gable, there is a thrill in watching him burst through a church window to keep Ann Blyth from marrying Carl Esmond. It is fitting for this most classic of action directors that a recurring line from one of the characters is, "We go".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM

December 25, 2008

The Hanna Schygulla 65th Birthday Celebration

I didn't realize until after I read the credits that it was Hanna Schygulla that I saw in Edge of Heaven. She plays the mother of a young woman, a college student who becomes involved in the life of a Turkish political refugee. At a certain point, the mother, who seems like any conservative older woman, tells the daughter that she had her radical side when she was younger. One can view this scene simply on its surface level of a mother confiding her hidden past to her daughter. As the part is played by Schygulla, one can also interpret the scene as referring to her actual life, or as the characters she played in her earlier films, especially those made with Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It is for those overlapping reasons that Fatih Akin cast Schygulla in that role.

A more appropriate tribute would involve re-seeing the films that Schygulla starred in, especially Effie Briest, and The Marriage of Maria Braun, plus Volker Schlondorff's Circle of Deceit. Without knowing the extent of her involvement, I saw one of her earlier performances for Fassbinder, plus the film she did right after Maria Braun cemented her position as the actress most closely associated with Fassbinder.

Schygulla is seen only in the beginning of Herr R. as a friend of Frau R.'s. With her identifiable curly hair, Schygulla is the free spirit whose existence represents a break from the regimented lives of the R.s. One of the points of discussion is Schygulla's nest of curly hair, as if the straight hair of Kurt Raab and Lilith Ungerer stood as a visual signifier of their lives. It was that mop of hair, barely controlled coils, that made Schygulla recognizable. One almost wished that the film she was in had followed her instead of the repressed, conforming couple of the title.

The Third Generation is more of an ensemble piece initially deemed a failure coming soon after the international success of Maria Braun. Schygulla's role links the other characters. She is introduced as the secretary to businessman Eddie Constantine, and daughter-in-law to a police agent. The agent's son, played by Udo Kier, along with Schygulla, are part of a group of youngish adults who live comfortable, middle class lives, but are part of a "terrorist" cell. The police agent is seen dressed similarly to someone in a classic Fritz Lang film, with trenchcoat and oversized fedora. The Third Generation has generated more interest in part of his line, "I recently had a dream that capitalism invented terrorism to force the state to protect it." Schygulla's hair is shorter, and straight. She was never quite conventionally attractive, yet there is no questioning that men would find her attractive as when Constantine talks about her with Hark Bohm.

Life and art seem to have intermingled as Schygulla's life has not been too different from the character she played in Herr R.. Except for a very brief turn in Hollywood, Schygulla has managed to work steadily in films that were more artistic than commercial in motivation. I'm probably not the only one who might now be re-thinking that list of twenty favorite actresses. And while there are those who will argue the value of certain films made by Fassbinder, I will be the first to admit that I'd rather see those films with his most frequent onscreen collaborator.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:40 AM | Comments (2)

December 23, 2008

The Wedding Director

Il Regista di Matrimoni
Marco Bellochio - 2006
New Yorker Film Region 1 DVD

On a superficial level, one can liken The Wedding Director to Eight and a Half. Marco Bellochio's film is about the misadventures of a movie director, his troubled relationships with women, and his uncertain attempts in setting up his newest project. A relatively lighthearted break between the serious Good Morning, Night and a new film about Mussolini, Bellochio looks at the filmmaker as celebrity. The basic story is about a relatively well known director, visiting Sicily, who is blackmailed by the still influential, if impoverished, local prince, into filming the wedding of his daughter. Complications arise when the director, Franco, and the prince's daughter, Bona, fall in love.

What is more interesting about The Wedding Director is not the story, but the events that take place incidental to the narrative. Early in the film, a television report is aired that a famous film director has died in a car accident. The tragedy spurs others in Italy's film industry to vote for the director to get a "David", the Italian equivalent to the Oscar. There is the comment that the dead rule in Italy, yet it takes very little to see that the history of art, not only film, is full of posthumous recognition of its practitioners. When Franco is discovered on the beach by a local filmmaker shooting a wedding video, Franco is pressed to share his ideas on how to make the video more interesting. While we hear the suggestions on the soundtrack, we see the imagined film - madcap running back and forth across the beach, the young couple making love with the bride undressed, the couple then leaving the beach to the dismay of the rest of the family - a combination of comedy and eroticism that the local filmmaker rejects. Franco is reputed to be preparing a new film based on the novel The Betrothed. Brief excerpts of what appear to be one of the earlier filmed versions of the novel are intercut into the action while Franco and Bona compare themselves to Manoni's characters.

Bellochio makes constant use of framing devices. Characters are frequently seen behind windows or glass doors. There are repetitions of rectangular patterns, on walls, floors and ceilings. Bellochio includes shot of people looking at viewfinders and video monitors. Ideas about love and life are received second hand from popular culture. The prince, manipulating people to consolidate his remaining power, like the title character he refers to, asks Franco to film the wedding like Visconti's The Leopard. "Temptation" and "Autumn Leaves" are among the songs on the soundtrack. In The Wedding Director, the chaos of life keeps interfering with lives imagined as movies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:55 AM

December 19, 2008

A Christmas Tale (2005)

Cuento de Navidad
Paco Plaza - 2005
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

Taking place in 1985, Paco Plaza's film takes some of its cues from the films he watched as a twelve year old boy. The story of five friends, four boys and a girl, takes some of its inspiration from The Goonies and Explorers. One of the boys tries to model himself as the Catalan version of Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. Plaza's film, part of of a Spanish television horror series, goes in a much darker direction. There is some similarity to Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive regarding the myths created by movies and how children respond to that mythology. The behavior of the children also may remind some of Lord of the Flies.

The five children find a woman, dressed in a Santa Claus outfit, trapped in a pit in the woods. An attempt to rescue the woman ends when two of the boys, ignored by a policeman too busy discussing Christmas dinner with his wife, discover that the woman is wanted for robbery of two million pesatas (roughly ten thousand dollars). There is discussion about whether to still turn over the woman to the police for an unstated reward, or try to claim the stolen money for themselves. Only the girl, Moni, feeds the woman, Rebeca, when she can, with soda and packaged pastries. Two of the boys decide to turn Rebeca into a zombie on Christmas Eve, attempting to duplicate the instructions from a character from a favorite movie. When Rebeca is found lifeless a few days later, a policeman is brought to the scene where she was found, only the pit is empty of evidence that someone was there.

The real horror of Plaza film is the cruelty of the children towards Rebeca. Plaza contrasts the comfortable life of the children in their bedrooms during a rainy night, with Rebeca, hungry in the pit with a broken leg. When Rebeca seeks her revenge, it is almost a distaff version of Night of the Hunter, the tensioned heightened by the shadowed faces of the children, trapped in a disused amusement park. A brief shot of a Disney type castle in the background is a reminder of the connections between dreams, fairy tales and nightmares.

Hopefully, Plaza's most famous film to date, (Rec) will be available to judge his work better. If there is another incentive for seeing his Christmas Tale, it is for the participation of young Ivana Baquero. Best known for her performance as Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth, Baquero will soon be making her English language debut opposite Kevin Costner in a film by Luis Berdejo, writer of Plaza's film. Plaza's Christmas Tale doesn't aspire to the visual or metaphorical heights of Erice or Del Toro, but on its own modest terms is an effective little thriller that reminds the audience that monsters are often other humans.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 AM

December 13, 2008

Delayed Happy Birthday, Rita Moreno

I was hoping to do a more timely celebration of the birthday of the hottest 77 year old woman on earth. Due to error of not getting the right DVD on time, I will write a few words on the one film starring Rita Moreno that I saw the night of her birthday. I should say that it's what remains of what was a passable juvenile delinquent story that the bone-headed producer recut, inserting soft core nonsense in an effort to repackage a film whose time had come and gone.

Released in 1960, This Rebel Breed might be best described as a mash up of West Side Story and High School Confidential. What's missing is the colorful extravaganza, songs, dance and artistry of the former, and the unabashed nuttiness of the latter. What is left is melange of vaguely articulated thoughts about race and prejudice in a Los Angeles high school. The casting of Natalie Wood as a Puerto Rican in West Side Story has nothing on This Rebel Breed's Mark Damon, with very dark make-up, as a half African-American, half Chicano undercover cop. Damon and his white partner pretend to be high school students to infiltrate a couple of gangs, the Royals with the white kids, the Ebonies, being the black gang.

Rita Moreno is Lola, the bright daughter of a Mexican metal sculptor and his deceased white wife. Secretly, Lola is dating one of the members of the Royals. Damon attempts to ingratiate himself on Moreno, meanwhile being rejected by both the Ebonies, and the Chicano gang. What interest This Rebel Breed has is not in the story or the message which may or may not have been intended inversions on parts of West Side Story. What remains are early performances by actors who who be seen in better films: Richard Rust, Al Freeman, Jr, Hari Rhodes, and a scene stealing Diane Cannon as she was then billed. Like the aforementioned cast member, Moreno is better than the material she has to work with, which she carries with dignity.

With an Oscar, a Tony, a Grammy and an Emmy, Rita Moreno should have been given more than supporting roles in films. Less accomplished performers have been given greater opportunities. Still, there are appearances in such films as The Ritz, I Like it Like That and The Lieutenant wore Skirts to savor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

December 11, 2008

Two by Frank Borzage - 1932

After Tomorrow

Young America
Frank Borzage - 1932
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

He calls her "funny face". She calls him "You big mug". Not everything that Frank Borzage filmed was a masterpiece, but this lesser work is still very entertaining, and revealing what kind of films could be made before the Production Code was enforced. It also marked the last time Borzage worked with Charles Farrell as his leading man. Instead of Janet Gaynor, the tiny brunette is Marian Nixon. The two play a couple whose extended engagement stretches to four years following financial difficulties and family problems. The New York City rear projection shots may be fake, but Borzage balances the romance and idealism with emotional reality.

Farrell's mother, ready to spout one homily after another, clings onto her son too closely. Nixon's mother has little interest in her daughter, and is planning to leave her husband for another man. Contemporary audiences may be intrigued to hear the young couple discuss abstinence with the absence of religious authority or "purity rings". This is a depression era tale where nobody has much money, and a date consists of gazing at the city from the top of the Empire State Building or sitting on a park bench during the evening.

After Tomorrow is lovingly photographed by James Wong Howe, especially the shots of Farrell and Nixon together. The title comes from a song the two sing, an expression of hope for a day that seemingly doesn't seem to come with each unexpected obstacle. Even if this film is not highlighted by Andrew Sarris, it still fits in with his description of Borzage's, "genuine concern with the wondrous inner life of lovers in the midst of adversity".

There are more stark reminders of poverty in Young America, a film about a delinquent boy. The boy, played by Tom Conlon, lives in what is little more than a shack, sharing the house with dirty children in torn clothing. His best friend, Nutty, played by young Raymond Borzage, lives in a modest cottage with his grandmother. Borzage's film falls uncomfortably between Wild Boys of the Road and Boy's Town. As a socially conscious message, Young America is not very convincing. Where Borzage succeeds is with the affection his two friends have for each other.

Top billed Spencer Tracy is on screen far less than his credit would suggest. He plays the drugstore owner married to married to do-gooder Doris Kenyon. The couple takes in Conlon much to Tracy's objections. Young America can be viewed somewhat ironically in light of what became one of Tracy's signature roles, with Kenyon in the proto-Father Flanagan role. Tracy would used more effectively by Borzage in Man's Castle. Here he serves mainly as a foil to Conlon and Kenyon. Young America is Borzage fulfilling his contract before going off to Paramount to made A Farewell to Arms. Even while the folksy solutions doled out by Judge Ralph Bellamy are unconvincing, Borzage makes the friendship between the two boys feel genuine.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM

December 03, 2008

White Dog

Samuel Fuller - 1982
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I was not surprised when I first found out that Jon Davison was the producer of White Dog. During my first year at New York University, Davison briefly ran a semi-public cinematheque where I saw 16mm prints of Run of the Arrow, Hell and High Water and The Steel Helmet. Like Peter Bogdanovich before him, Davison attempted to revive Samuel Fuller's Hollywood career. Unlike The Big Red One which got a theatrical release following a severe edit, White Dog went straight to cable in the U.S. following rumors of racist content.

I might have seen Fuller's version of White Dog had the chief of Denver's short lived cinematheque not chickened out. Instead, Pick Up on South Street was presented. My souvenir from that evening is a signed copy of Fuller's novel 144 Picadilly. My other memory was the surprise in seeing how short Fuller was, barely breaking five feet, and his calling me "young boy", which I learned later was how he addressed a friend of mine who was also in his Thirties.

The only time I had previously seen White Dog was on cable, in a version that was not quite what Fuller had intended. Seeing it again, what struck me were certain visual motifs and use of color in the film. Before we see the white dog we see nothing, a black screen with the sound of a car in an accident. The first image is of Kristy McNichol. The sweater she is wearing prefigures the image of the dog with the use of an irregularly patterned red against white. There is also the allusion to other animals with McNichol's car, a Mustang, while her boyfriend drives a "Beetle" which is also the same color red as in the sweater. This same unsubtle shade of red is used in the berets worn by McNichol and Lynne Moody in the scene they are filming, a film within the film that is a recreation of the gondola scene in The Naked Kiss.

Even though the story originated with Romain Gary's novel, the relationship between McNichol's character, Julie Sawyer, and the dog, thematically is a continuation of Fuller's other films. Several of Fuller's films are characterized by the relationship between a male character who acts independently of society's rules and a woman, who may be an outsider herself, who attempts to "save" the man. Julie's attempts to keep the dog from being destroyed and to have it re-trained are in essence not dissimilar to the relationships of Richard Widmark and Jean Peters in Pick Up on South Street or Peter Breck and Constance Towers in Shock Corridor.

In the DVD supplement, Davison describes Samuel Fuller as loquacious. If there was ever a filmmaker who should have recorded a DVD commentary track, it would have to have been Fuller. It would have been nice to know how deliberate a visual joke it was to have a truck crash into a dress shop named Oscar's. The filmed scene that recalls The Naked Kiss is directed by Marshall Thompson, dressed like Fuller with the omnipresent cigar. In the supporting cast are past Fuller cast members Neyle Morrow, Richard Monohan and Parley Baer, as well as Fuller's wife, Christa Lang, and daughter, Samantha.

More significantly, Fuller reshaped Gary's novel so that the conclusion is almost a canine version of Shock Corridor. This comparison is two-fold both with Hari Rhodes' black Klansman - modeled after James Meredith and surprisingly prescient in light of Meredith's disavowal of the civil rights movement and his association with Jesse Helms - and Peter Breck's breakdown at the moment he discovers the truth about the murder of a former patient. The ending of the White Dog is consistent with many of Fuller's films, a pessimistic view of America that stubbornly is as valid in 2008 as it was when Fuller made his film, or when Romain Gary wrote his novel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)

December 01, 2008

Jan Dara

Nonzee Nimibutr - 2001
Dawoori Entertainment All Region DVD

Considering the various convulsions going on with the Thai film industry, it would seem that Nonzee Nimibutr might never make a film like Jan Dara again. Nonzee's third feature is not a genre exercise as are most Thai films. The depiction of sex would also be more likely censored as well. The best way to describeJan Dara is to think of it as a Thai version of a classic Greek tragedy, actually several combined into one. A more contemporary comparison might be with Tennessee Williams, without the coyness, a Freudian nightmare.

The story is about Jan, told with first person narration. His earliest memory is of seeing his father and aunt having sex. Throughout his boyhood, Jan is punished by his father for causing the death of his mother in childbirth. There is some solace to be found in relationships with women, but it is usually sexual. His relationship with his aunt, his mother's sister, takes on an Oedipal dimension. The one time Jan falls in love, with a young woman named Hyacinth, his relationship is so innocent that when the two walk together, he is holding onto the sleeve of her sweater rather than assert himself by touching her hand.

Jan takes the family name of his mother as his father constantly reminds him that he is unwanted. The father, Khun Luang. takes a mistress, Khun Boonlueang, referred to as Khun B. Along with the aunt, now married ot Khun Luang, Khun B also acts as a protector to Jan. Eventually, Khun B also becomes Jan's lover. The relationships within the family become more complicated, while the narrative descends more deeply into the theme of the sins of the father visiting the children.

Most of the film takes place from the late Twenties through World War II. The images are all awash in a golden hue, yet most of the memories could hardly be described as golden. Utsana Phleungtham's novel is reputed, at least by the author, to be based on true events that took place during the author's youth. For all of the sex, the most erotic scene in Jan Dara is of the teenage Jan (Suwinit Panjamawat) cooling Khun B (Christy Chung) with ice cubes melting on her back. Even though the film is about Jan Dara, Christy Chung takes over the film from her first appearance as the cigarette smoking, Westernized mistress loved by the two men of the house.

Nonzee seems to have lost some of his momentum since his debut in 1997 with Dang Bireley and the Young Gangsters, the film credited with kick starting Thailand's "New Wave". OK Baytong from 2003 is unavailable with English subtitles, and Nonzee's newest film, Queens of Langkasuka seems to have been hampered by a long running time, and too much similarity to a recent big budget trilogy about pirates. It should be noted that I bought the Korean DVD of Jan Dara which has the complete running time, compared to Kino's Region 1 version that is missing five minutes of footage. Central to this film, as well as his best known work, Nang Nak is the impossibility of love in the material world. Nonzee's characters strive for an ideal existence, but only those with absolute self-awareness find something close to happiness.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)

November 27, 2008

The Minoru Kawasaki Collection

Executive Koala/Koara Kacho
Minoru Kawasaki - 2005

The Rug Cop/Zura Deka
Minoru Kawasaki - 2006

The World Sinks Except Japan/Nihon igai zenbu Chinbotsu
Minoru Kawasaki - 2006
all Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

Minoru Kawasaki has such an idiosyncratic view of the world that it's something of a surprise that he has a successful career in Japan. Then again, it could be because he is able to create an outlet with his films, and humorously attack Japanese culture and tradition that Kawasaki speaks on behalf of an audience that might otherwise be more introspective. In an interview, Kawasaki talks about being silly. Even if the intention is for the films to be enjoyed simply for the surface fantasies, the satire about contemporary Japan is also quite clear.

The basic concept of Executive Koala doesn't quite support a feature length film. What Kawasaki does, with his suit-wearing, six foot tall koala bear, is make a film about how people treat someone who is "the other". In this case, it is Tamura, a pickle factory executive, who is alternately respected, feared, or disdained. Tamura's boss is a human sized white rabbit, while another ally is the frog that works at the convenience store. By having an anthropomorphic character, Kawasaki is able to gently poke fun at Japanese attitudes.

Kawasaki's main story is a variation of that in Spellbound, with the koala a possible killer plagued by nightmares of murder, and memories that may not be real. Along the way, Kawasaki also plays with conventions of horror and martial arts movies. If Kawasaki can be compared to anyone, he comes closest to the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker team in concocting a film that is essentially a series of parodies of other films. Even if some of the specifics get lost unless one is well versed in Japanese films from the Sixties and Seventies, with Ultraman frequently cited by Kawasaki, the jokes and action keep moving, with some excellent translations to convey the verbal humor as well. In addition to the sight gags, Kawasaki has no fear of the pun that will make an audience laugh and groan at the same time.

The Rug Cop has one of the loopiest beginnings ever with a bank held up by an unlikely robber. Without giving this hilarious opening scene away, the rest of the film is about a police detective whose weapon is his toupee. Some may be reminded of Oddjob with his killer derby in Goldfinger. The rug cop joins a band of outsiders, other detectives who make the most out of their physical differences, their nicknames saying it all: Shorty, Fatty, Old Guy, and Big Dick. The last named, not to be confused with The Bank Dick uses his, er, light saber, as a weapon (at least it looks like a light saber).

Along the way, a gang of thieves steals a nuclear bomb and threatens to blast Tokyo unless they get the ransom. The motley crew of police compete against a group of younger government agents to crack the case and save their city. Nothing is too urgent that there isn't time for a flashback to explain how the cop discovered the power of a well thrown toupee, or how a clueless, low ranking yakuza discovers that the bar girl of his dreams was friendly as part of her job. The cheerful silliness is maintained for the length of the film, Kawasaki understanding the motto that brevity is the soul of wit. One may debate just how much wit there is in The Rug Doctor, but even the dumb jokes are funny.

A sequel is highly unlikely for The World Sinks except Japan. The film, taken from the stories by Yasutaka Tsuitsui was released in Japan following the success of the 2006 version of Japan Sinks. Kawasaki's film can be enjoyed without seeing either version of Japan Sinks. I did see Roger Corman's cut of the first Japan Sinks retitled Tidal Wave, with Lorne Greene edited into the action, just like Raymond Burr was inserted into Godzilla, and found a few chuckles in the Toho disaster movie. Kawasaki pays tribute to Toho with the deliberately obvious special effects of world destruction and buildings blowing up into smithereens. A Godzilla, or should I say Gojira, type monster makes an appearance as well.

The satire comes to the forefront as criticism of Japanese attitudes towards the non-Japanese. There is also a moment, not fully explored though, where one of the characters mentions Japan's dependency on the United States for food, primarily soybeans. The title reveals the essential plot which investigates primarily how Japan reacts when it becomes the only safe haven for millions of refugees. As in becomes more clear that Japan is the only country that has not been submerged, the relationships between Japanese and non-Japanese become more strained. Some of the humor is a bit strained as well, such as the inclusion of refugees that look kind of like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and one that vaguely resembles Bruce Willis. More successful is the film clip from the monster movie, a genre popular due to the crushing of foreigners by giant feet.

Hopefully Kawasaki's other films will find their way to the U.S. Who wouldn't want to see a movie titled Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G-8 Summit? Here's a trailer from that film, as well as the trailer from the source of inspiration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:29 AM

November 11, 2008

Tension

John Berry - 1949
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

The only real tension to Tension is detective Barry Sullivan stretching a rubber band in the pre-credit opening. What makes this film instantly endearing are some great scenes of the characters drinking coffee. Is that a reason to like a film? Probably not. Still, whatever deficiencies Tension may have in suspense, it makes up for in being gorgeously photographed by Harry Stradling.

There may be an in-joke in having Richard Basehart portray a milquetoast with the last name of Quimby, also the last name of the head of MGM's animation unit. When Basehart decides on a new name for his alternate identity, his choice is determined when he sees a movie magazine featuring Ann Southern, who was also at MGM at the time.

Basehart is a pharmacist who's bad girl wife, Audrey Totter, leaves him for big and burly Lloyd Gough. Planning the perfect murder of the man who took his wife, Basehart creates a second identity with a different address. In addition to falling in love with the girl next door, Cyd Charisse, Basehart has second thoughts about killing his nemesis, realizing he might actually be better off without the perpetually pouting Totter. Gough is murdered anyways, and it's up to Sullivan, with partner William Conrad, to figure out who done it. Conrad is eating or drinking in almost every scene he's in, prepping for outsized television stardom to come in Cannon and Jake and the Fatman. Audrey Totter is not especially pretty to look at, but it's not her face that makes her the object of attention.

One small part of Tension clearly shows the hand of director John Berry. Two customers are portrayed by Hayward Soo Hoo and Theresa Harris. One can argue that these are token performances by a Chinese-American youth and an African-American actress respectively. Basehart treats these characters with the same respect as other customers at his all night drug store, serving as a surrogate for Berry. It's a small gesture using actors who might have appeared in other films as servants at best, or comic foils. It may be its familiarity that makes Tension entertaining. John Berry displays a sense of affection for all of his characters, no matter how foolish, but also found a way to quietly insert his own humanistic impulses.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

November 06, 2008

Five Minutes to Live

Bill Karn - 1961
Critics' Choice Region 1 DVD

Five Minutes to Live would probably be totally forgotten were it not for the casting of Johnny Cash and Ronnie Howard. This tawdry curio also features Vic Tayback in one of his early performances and Pamela Mason, wife of James, as well as Merle Travis, in supporting roles. The actors are generally better than what the film deserves, but Five Minutes to Live is another example of film as entertaining flotsam, in the days before inflated budgets and the claim of being a "major motion picture".

Neurotic hit man Cash holds the wife of a bank vice president hostage while Tayback negotiates walking out with Seventy grand. This is a low budget film with a low budget ransom. The wife, played by the film's screenwriter, Cay Forrester, attempts to seduce cash with a feathery number from Frederick's of Hoboken. Naturally, things go wrong, both for bank robber Tayback and guitar strumming Cash. Even though most of Five Minutes to Live is predictable, a version of The Desperate Hours produced with pocket change, it's fun to see Cash snarl his way as a small time hood.

The future Oscar winning director proves himself to be the best actor of the bunch. Ronnie Howard essentially is doing a sassier version of "Opie", embarrassing his parents, complaining about breakfast, and showing up the grown ups. Say what you will about Howard's films as director, the seven year old kid figured out the acting game pretty quickly. Clocking in at about 75 minutes, Five Minutes to Live lasts long enough to be diverting, a brief vacation from more meaningful film viewing.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:49 AM

November 01, 2008

The Witch's Mirror

El Espejo de la Bruja
Chano Urueta - 1960
Casa Negra Region 1 DVD

Hola! Happy Day of the Dead! And what a terrific Mexican horror movie is here. There's a lot of classic Universal gothic atmosphere in The Witch's Mirror starting with a setting in what must be a castle that makes the interior of the house on haunted hill look like a cottage. The witch is the housekeeper for a prosperous doctor. The housekeeper's goddaughter is the doctor's wife. In spite of the witch's best efforts to appease Satan, the goddaughter, Elena, must die at the hands of Dr. Ramos. The bad doctor soon shows up with a new wife, Deborah. The mirror that foretold Elena's death now has the ghost of Elena showing up to haunt the newlyweds, making groaning sounds and playing a song on the piano that drives the doctor mad. The doctor attempts to strike at the vengeful ghost by throwing an oil lamp at the mirror and the story veers into a stitching of Eyes without a Face and The Hands of Orlac (or if you prefer, The Beast with Five Fingers).

The Witch's Mirror might not get points for originality. The film might have benefitted from a few more pesos for special effects, but as it's a thriller that actually is thrilling to watch. In his recent posting, Girish Shambu writes about filmmakers from different countries with shared affinities. As The Witch's Mirror was made in 1960, while Chano Urueta probably saw some of the Hammer series of horror films, what knowledge he had of Eyes without a Face, Corman's House of Usher or Bava's Mask of Satan, all produced that same year, can only be guessed. More strange is a bit of similarity to The Brain that Wouldn't Die both in the plot and some of the gruesomeness in the laboratory considering that Joseph Green's infamous film was shot in 1959, but not released until 1962.

There's a subplot about two police detectives who mostly stand around talking about a robber who not only is taking off with dead bodies, but the bodies of young women. Aided with nothing but a newspaper, the two conclude that the criminal must be someone abnormal, probably insane. The police don't take any action until the doctor's assistant, wracked with guilt and the hectoring voice of the witch, turns himself over to the authorities. And this is what makes The Witch's Mirror interesting from a theological viewpoint - the witch is clearly a worshipper of The Devil, but in the scheme of things here, she is a relatively benevolent character, motivated in her care for Elena. The real evil is in the form of Dr. Ramos with his misuse of science and medicine to save Deborah. At no time does any character invoke another deity either in name or with any symbols. The church is almost conspicuous in it's absence.

There is a clear need for better scholarship regarding the prolific career of Chano Urueta. I cannot find agreement on the initial release date of The Witch's Mirror but am leaning towards the date provided by the Mexican database. An edited version of The Witch's Mirror, that primarily excised the introduction with Goya-esque artwork featuring nude witches, was released in the U.S. in 1962. Some may recognize Urueta from his photograph from his later career as a character actor, most notably in The Wild Bunch.

If you haven't seen it yet, check out Jonathan Lapper for a look at Hollywood witches.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM | Comments (3)

October 30, 2008

In the Folds of the Flesh

Nelle Pieghe della Carne
Sergio Bergonzelli - 1970
Severin Region 1 DVD

The erotic promise of the title is quickly eliminated when it revealed that the folds of flesh in the title refer to a different body part, the brain, in a quote that may or may not have been written by Sigmund Freud. A quick google search brought up more references to the painter, Lucien Freud. Had this been a film about Lucien Freud, or even by Lucien Freud, it would probably be better than what Sergio Bergonzelli concocted, and made a bit more sense. Even more disheartening is that this less than thrilling thriller was the final film for Eleonara Rossi Drago and close to the end of the line for Pier Angeli.

My main reason for bothering with this film was Eleonora Rossi Drago, whose passing was barely noticed. I'll see other films with her as they become available, but I am starting to suspect that there isn't much worth watching after Le Amiche and Violent Summer. The harshly lit In the Folds of Flesh does nothing to complement Ms. Rossi Drago or the actress billed here as Anna Maria Pierangeli. Seven years apart in age, the younger actress is suppose to be Rossi Drago's daughter, although they could have, and probably should have, played sisters. Seeing these two actresses as they appear in this film, it is almost hard to imagine that they were popular Italian screen queens fifteen years earlier.

For a story about guilt, trauma and memory, In the Folds of the Flesh is not very well thought out. I'm not one to demand that this kind of film make a lot of sense. A flashback with Rossi Drago as a concentration camp prisoner marched naked with several other women, and forced to watch others die in a windowed gas chamber, is gratuitous on several levels. The use of a prism lens for Pierangeli's memories of murder are the height of creativity, lending a meaningless psychedelic touch to various beheadings of several unfortunate men. Some of the costuming choices forced on the actors are likely to make contemporary audiences squirm and cringe more than the sight of Rossi Drago disposing of body parts in a tub of acid.

More disappointing is that we have another reminder of the haphazard availability of older films on DVD. Several bloggers have posted on films they would like to see, many which are not viewable in any home format. Among the older Italian films I would like to see rescued with at least as much care as given In the Folds of the Flesh, there is Visconti's Sandra starring Claudia Cardinale, or Sign of the Gladiator, a peplum shot in part by Michelangelo Antonioni. At least get more films of Eleanor Rossi Drago when she was hot, such as the one with a poster that made a lasting memory on one impressionable youth.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM

October 25, 2008

Corpse Mania

Si Yiu
Kwei Chih-Hung - 1981
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Corpse Mania owes so much of its style and substance to Mario Bava. There's the killer with the fedora and the barely seen face covered with a white scarf. There's the unusual use of color with whole rooms drenched in blue or red. Corpse Mania isn't a remake of Bava's Blood and Black Lace, but Kwei Chih-Hung must have written some copious notes before executing his own screenplay. In the little more than fifteen years since Bava's film was released, new freedom in film content allowed Kwei to go beyond Bava in sex and violence.

Hong Kong giallo almost describes Corpse Mania. Besides the usual plot points of a mad slasher on the loose, blackmail, and a misdirected police investigation, there's necrophilia. That in itself isn't novel, being the stuff of Edgar Allan Poe and Bram Stoker. What we have here is rotting dead girl covered with maggots necrophilia. The actual act is suggested under a heavy veil of gauze, but there are enough images to let the viewer figure out that sometimes love is better left on a platonic level.

As it stands, Corpse Mania is one of the more unusual productions from the Shaw Brothers factory. In addition to being one of the studios rare forays into horror, the film takes place, for no clear reason, in the 1930s based on the couple of cars and telephones used by the characters. Prostitutes are murdered, all from the brothel of Madame Lan. Li, had bought the freedom of one of the girls when she was too ill to work, and was sentenced to a psychiatric institute when his act conducted with his recently deceased bride was revealed. Li has only been recently released from the institute when the killings occur.

Those who enjoy Italian horror film may be the most apt to appreciate the familiar tropes - the large, dilapidated house full of cobwebs, the young woman pursued on a dark and lonely street by the killer flashing his blade, the generous splashes of blood. There is a certain yuck factor that might challenge some of the more extreme moments in films by Lucio Fulci or Sergio Martino. Still, if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Corpse Mania is a pretty good tribute to the pioneers of giallo.

To find out more accurately the cast and crew of Corpse Mania, check out MKMDb. That's right, the Hong Kong Movie Database.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:27 AM | Comments (1)

October 21, 2008

Two early films by Alexander Mackendrick

Whisky Galore!/Tight Little Island
Alexander Mackendrick - 1949

The Maggie
Alexander Mackendrick - 1954
both Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

Recent discussion on Sweet Smell of Success was a reminder that I should see the earlier available films by Alexander Mackendrick. While on the surface, it may have appeared odd to some that a Scotch director would film a story based in New York City, there as aspects to the earlier films that make the connection logical. The use of extreme angles, the framing of faces, the pictorial compositions of the locations, the respect towards his characters no matter how wrong-headed, and the use of vernacular dialogue are some of the links between Whisky Galore! and Sweet Smell of Success. Add to that the conflict of personal gratification versus the perceived or real needs of a community. The need for scandal or celebrity news is as temporal as the need for alcohol.

While the citizens of the small Scottish town connive their way to stealing the cargo of hundreds of cases of liquor for their dry community from a ship that crashed ashore in the fog, The Maggie offers a small crew conning their way to stay afloat. The boat of the title is a small dilapidated barge that takes on a job of ferrying several large crates for American tycoon Paul Douglas when no other boats are available. The day "The Maggie" is to be declared unseaworthy, the job is snagged by opportunity and a few fibs. Every attempt by Douglas and the shipping company to correct the error is met by "The Maggie"'s skipper and crew using every possible trick to complete the job in order to earn the needed three hundred pounds. Even when Douglas goes along for the ride, he comes to reassess the value placed on his merchandise. While the citizens of Barra and the crew of "The Maggie" can be considered more sympathetic, as well as obviously comic, Sidney Falco in Sweet Smell of Success might be considered to have the same kind of ethos, in a more raw and desperate form.

While Falco could be viewed as a descendant of the playful characters from Whisky Galore! and The Maggie, there is also the corollary characters that would be seen most brutally in the form of J.J. Hunsecker. Captain Wagett attempts to control activity on the island in the unlikely event of a German invasion in Whisky Galore!. As the local military commander, he is also responsible for preventing the whisky from being stolen by the townspeople. In The Maggie, Paul Douglas portrays an airline magnate who finds his sense of control taken out from under him both by incompetent underlings and crew of "The Maggie". In all three films, the men find that whatever sense of control they had in their particular realms is an illusion. Unlike Wagett or Hunsecker, Paul Douglas' character of Calvin Marshall gives in to the chaos, at first reluctantly, finally surrendering to his temporary situation.

It is probably worth noting that in theory, the film director is suppose to be the person with the greatest authority, while Mackendrick's career can be viewed as that of filmmaker who constantly lost control, finally leaving Hollywood. At the same time, I'm not sure if anyone other than Burt Lancaster really wanted to see a film version of G. B. Shaw's The Devil's Disciple, while a Mackendrick version of The Guns of Navarone is difficult to imagine. What is known is that Mackendrick's last three films were not seen as intended by the director. Reunited with Ealing producer Michael Balcon, Sammy Going South can hopefully be restored on DVD with a version longer than the 88 minute cut for U.S. theaters. The theatrical version of High Wind in Jamaica will probably be the only version we will know. His recent autobiography may renew interest in films starring Tony Curtis, but a DVD version of Don't Make Waves remains to be seen. The film that was intended to be Los Angeles answer to Sweet Smell of Success was recut but MGM and proved as unpopular at the box office. Even though Mackendrick has gone on record as criticizing the notion of the director as auteur, one can still see continuity in both assignments accepted as well as the films originating from the director, in the characters, and the visual style. In this respect, The Maggie can be viewed as almost autobiographical, as the story of a filmmaker who tried to sneak in personal elements into the films he had the opportunity to make, and the director who finally walked away rather than constantly battling the more powerful studio chiefs and movie stars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 PM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2008

The Devil's Rain

Robert Fuest - 1975
VCI Home Video Region 1 DVD

Let's give a hand to Ernest Borgnine. Along with the seemingly unstoppable Mickey Rooney, Borgnine shows no signs of retiring at a still vigorous 91. Among his co-stars on The Vikings, Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, he remains the last man standing. Did Borgnine sell his soul to the Devil? At any rate he plays Jonathan Corbis, "Satan's emissary on Earth" in The Devil's Rain, and he looks like he had a damn good time, too.

Admittedly, my favorite performances by Borgnine are when he is the, ahem, heavy, beating up skinny, little Frank Sinatra in From Here to Eternity, or as Dutch Engstrom in The Wild Bunch, the humanitarian outlaw who states, "At least we don't hang people." I'll also take Borgnine in his Robert Aldrich stock company roles, the studio chief in The Legend of Lylah Clare and the railroad agent in Emperor of the North Pole especially. Too often though, Borgnine is caste as the lovable lug, a variation on his role in Marty.

The Devil's Rain may be about the denizens of Hell, but the cast seems to be made up of actors who seemed to be drifting in Hollywood Purgatory. William Shatner would seem not to recapture the glory days of his Star Trek television series, while Tom Skerritt was left behind when M*A*S*H elevated the careers of his co-stars. The two appeared with Joan Prather the previous year in Big Bad Mama. Meanwhile, Borgnine and Eddie Albert, the two top billed actors here, would also be in Aldrich's Hustle in December. Keenan Wynn appears as a small town sheriff, while Ida Lupino plays mom to Skerritt and Shatner. The Devil's Rain is almost worth watching just for the cast.

The best part of the film has no special effects or make-up. Dressed in western gear, we first see Borgnine flashing that famous gap toothed smile, offering Skerritt a drink of water from the pump in dusty ghost town. Borgnine introduces himself and explains his mission of recovering his book, a list of names of people who have signed their names in blood. The seemingly friendly smile takes a malevolent twist. It's a familiar theological discussion, God versus The Devil. Where most of the other cast members overact, Borgnine knows how perform is role with just the right level of gravitas. The threat is always hinted at but never fully advertised. It may be within the context of The Devil's Rain that the performance indicates a greater modulation than seen in other films. Or perhaps Ernest Borgnine is giving the devil his due.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2008

Hollywood Cavalcade

Irving Cummings - 1939
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

The best part of Hollywood Cavalcade isn't in the movie, but in the out takes. One minute and twenty-five seconds of black and white silent footage shows Buster Keaton tossing pies at Alice Faye. It's amusing enough as it is, but for a few seconds there is a moment totally unanticipated: Buster Keaton laughs. Not just a smile, but a genuine open mouth laugh. This is one of those times when I was glad I bothered with the DVD extras.

Had Alice Faye's deleted song, "Whispering" been included, this would have made the DVD version of Hollywood Cavalcade perfect.

The movie itself is fairly entertaining, more so in the first half. A fictionalized version of Mack Sennett and Mabel Normand becomes less fun when the director morphs into D.W. Griffith attempting to make the biggest spectacle possible, eventually becoming an unemployable drunk. Unlike Griffith, Don Ameche's Michael Connors (not to be confused with Mike Connors) gets to make a successful comeback with a talkie. Even though Hollywood Cavalcade makes use of several people who actually were making films in the silent era, it is no place to look for accuracy, even twelve years after the premiere of The Jazz Singer.

Don Ameche bluffs his way into the director's chair, first by sweet talking Broadway understudy Alice Faye into a contract with with a Hollywood studio, and then convincing studio boss Donald Meek that he and Faye are part of a package deal. The years covered are from 1913 through 1928, with Ameche accidentally inventing the pie fight, while Stu Erwin plays the Billy Bitzer surrogate who discovers lighting techniques as Ameche's cameraman. Alice Faye is the young actress in love with the filmmaker who is obsessed with filmmaking to the point of being oblivious of Faye's feelings. The technicolor restoration is a gaudy visual treat but the fun is in the black and white footage.

The directorial credits tell part of the story, although further scholarship may be required. Irving Cummings is officially the director of Hollywood Cavalcade. The silent scenes are credited to Malcolm St. Clair under the supervision of Mack Sennett. St. Clair got his start in film as a Keystone Kop before making a reputation for himself as one of the top comedy directors in the silent era, tapering into the sound era as a frequent writer-director for Laurel and Hardy. Along the way, St. Clair cowrote and codirected The Goat with Buster Keaton. Cummings also started in the silent era, first as an actor before settling as director, ending as one of the house directors at Fox during the sound era. One of Cummings last acting jobs was in The Saphead with Buster Keaton. For those interested in seeing a complete St. Clair silent film, YouTube has The Show Off featuring Louise Brooks. A degree of authorship should be ascribed to producer Darryl Zanuck who began his career writing for Mack Sennett before creating stories for the dog who saved Warner Brothers, Rin-Tin-Tin. Others having a hand in the silent series starring the famed German shepherd were Malcolm St. Clair and Irving Cummings.

In this bit of revisionist recreation, Buster Keaton acts as a Sennett player among the several genuine Keystone Kops, with Chester Conklin and Ben Turpin making cameo appearances. In retrospect, movies haven't changed that much since Mack Sennett's time. While slapstick comedy may be less visible, Sennett's bathing beauties have been replaced by women with even less clothing, while the cars are driven at faster speeds, and the stunts reach new levels of danger and amazement. When the sound era does arrive in Hollywood Cavalcade, Don Ameche takes a gander at The Jazz Singer. An older, heavier, Al Jolson recreates part of his appearance in the original - but not from any of the expected scenes. At least Ameche gets it right when he mentions that The Jazz Singer is ninety percent silent, before completing his comeback film with sound sequences.

As for the rest of Hollywood Cavalcade, Ameche and Faye seem to attempt creating the kind of sparks of John Barrymore and Carole Lombard in Twentieth Century. Of course it's not as good, but it's better than the more serious tone taken in the second half of the film. Whatever it's merits as a film, much less film history, Hollywood Cavalcade provides a view of Hollywood looking back at the not-so distant past during the same year audiences first saw Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights and Gone with the Wind.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 AM

October 09, 2008

Le Deuxieme Souffle

Jean-Pierre Melville - 1966
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

While it's terrific that Jean-Pierre Melville is getting the Criterion treatment, during much Le Deuxieme Souffle I kept wondering why this film never got a theatrical release in the U.S. During the time I lived in New York City, Melville was a filmmaker I would read about but never see, with the exception of Les Enfants Terribles. I've only been able to start catching up on Melville over the past couple of years. Based on the seven of his films that I have seen, Le Deuxieme Souffle is one of Melville's best films. I try to avoid shopworn phrases but, yes, this is one very cool movie.

Taken from a novel by Jose Giovanni, Lino Ventura is the escaped criminal, Gu (Gustave) Minda, who takes the proverbial last job as part of a high stakes heist. The action takes place during the last week of November of 1958 through the first days of January. Titles appear to remind the audience of what day certain action takes place leading up to the robbery of a shipment of platinum. Gu shows up in time to save old flame Manouche, stepping into the rivalry between two gangsters who front their activities with legitimate businesses. Accepting the heist job, Gu unknowingly is working for the gangster who killed Manouche's business partner.

The heist is only one part of the film. What Melville is primarily interested in is Gu's sense of honor, the code he lives by, and that he hopes others adhere to. Ventura was forty-six at the time of filming, and is presented as a guy who is starting to get old. Minda makes the leap across the prison roof, but barely is able to catch the freight train that takes him to Paris. Christine Fabrega's Manouche is a woman still attractive, but no longer youthful. Added to this mix is Paul Meurisse as Blot, a police detective who is so familiar with the Parisian gangsters he deals with that he can supply them with their own fantastic alibis before they are offered, spoken with deadpan, sarcastic delivery. Le Deuxieme Souffle is about people who know that they have limited futures. This may be best seen in a shot of Minda, alone on New Year's Eve, ripping off the last page of a daily calendar, leaving only a blank page.

Much of the action takes place in empty, or nearly empty spaces. The buildings are crumbling, while the interiors are shabby and in need of repair. It is not surprising that the only thing shiny and new in Minda's hideout is the lock that isolates him from the outside world. The heist takes place on a rocky stretch of road that gets little traffic. The heist partially takes place in the rain, while another scene is of Minda interrogated in a muddy lot. As in his final film, Dirty Money, Melville likes to put is characters in a nowhere town stuck in crappy weather. Melville's Paris seems empty of people, even during the daytime. Against this austerity is the what appears as a visual non sequitur, at least initially, of a dance troupe performing in a dive more bar that nightclub, appearing in the early Paris based scenes. There is really no reason for the girls to be in the movie from a narrative standpoint, but they do look good making their moves against the cool jazz style score of Bernard Gerard. In the end, Le Deuxieme Souffle is about people who are alone, even when they are with other people, fighting to maintain their individual sense of integrity in the face of compromises imposed by others.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM

October 07, 2008

Mother of Tears

La Terze Madre
Dario Argento - 2007
Dimension Extreme Region 1 DVD

Were my expectations lowered by decidedly mixed reviews for Dario Argento's "return", or were those who had seen Mother of Tears last year or in its theatrical release anticipating the equal to Suspiria, still Argento's best film? Either way, Mother of Tears is for me a better film than I Can't Sleep or The Card Player, and Argento's best film visually since The Stendhal Syndrome. There are still the elaborate traveling camera shots but they are more functional within the context of the narrative. I also imagine that it may take a few more years before Mother of Tears is better understood on its own terms, rather than the reviews which mostly emphasize the connection to Suspiria.

The basic story is of a witch, the titular Mother of Tears, who is accidentally unleashed when a construction crew accidentally digs open her grave just outside a church. The opening of an urn with several small statues of unearthly creatures and an red robe becomes the Pandora's box of nightmares. Random violence occurs throughout the streets of Rome. Witches from around the world fly in by jet, instead of broomsticks, to be with their "Mother", and usher in a new age of witchcraft. It is up to Asia Argento, as Sarah, a student of art restoration, to harness her unacknowledged psychic powers to defeat the Mother of Tears. The witches resemble goth club kids on the loose, diminishing their threatening presence. There is some discussion referring back to Suspiria and Inferno. And while Mother of Tears is touted as the followup to those films, Argento integrates other reminders of his past work, most notably an evil monkey, a reminder of Phenomena, and an eye examination that recalls Four Flies on Gray Velvet. The initial set-up is a contemporary reworking of the set-up for Mario Bava's Mask of Satan, in which long dead vampire Barbara Steele is revived by some accidental drops of blood that drip in her open coffin.

What struck me about Mother of Tears is a connection, perhaps not fully intended, with The Stendhal Syndrome. In that film, police woman Asia Argento literally gets lost in a painting at a Florence, Italy, art museum. While this condition is not part of the narrative of Mother of Tears, it seems significant that all of the major characters are surrounded by books and art. Not only is there the massive library in the art museum where Sarah works, but the homes Sarah visits are filled completely from floor to ceiling with books, while there are always paintings on the walls. When Sarah is pursued by the police, she runs into a book store. One shot of Asia Argento frames her behind a shelf with graphic novels, comic book versions of Moby Dick and Ligeia. In this scene, Sarah, literally disappears among the books. Mother of Tears should be understood as being about the tension in how horror is represented in art.

Consider that Argento has mentioned Edgar Allan Poe as an influence, and that several of the his films have literary sources of inspiration. In horror literature, there is no limit in what can be imagined by the writer or the reader. For the visual artist or filmmaker, the challenge is to recreate what is seen in the mind's eye. While the horror, as presented by Argento, is graphic, due in part to his own predilections, and perhaps due to audience expectations, the images owe much to images of horror in painting. Argento's horror and violence may seem less over the top when placed next to Hieronymus Bosch's vision of hell or the darker paintings by Goya. In this regard, as in Argento's other films, it is not the narrative elements that are of as much importance. What makes Argento continually interesting is his theme of how horror is expressed, whether in literature or in the visual or performing arts. Asia Argento's journey that descends into the literal bowels of hell is only one part of Mother of Tears. The other part of Mother of Tears is the indirect autobiography of a filmmaker continually inspired by artists of the past, while trying to make his own art meaningful to the present.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:04 PM | Comments (2)

October 03, 2008

The Garment Jungle

Vincent Sherman - 1957
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Completed and signed by Vincent Sherman, The Garment Jungle still is unmistakably Robert Aldrich's film. Photographed, like many of Aldrich's other films, by Joe Biroc, the look of the film literally lightens up during the last third which was primarily filmed by Sherman. Some of the camera angles look as though Biroc shot the remainder of The Garment Jungle as planned by Aldrich, such as an overhead shot which is used in virtually every Aldrich film. There are conflicting reports as to how much of The Garment Jungle is Aldrich and how much is Sherman's work. What seems to be agreed is that Aldrich had conflicts with star Lee J. Cobb and writer-producer Harry Kleiner. Columbia Pictures chief Harry Cohn also was unhappy with the Cohn-type character in Aldrich's The Big Knife. What is ironic is that Aldrich, who was an Assistant Director to Abe Polonsky and Charles Chaplin, was replaced by Sherman, who himself was blacklisted five years previously. And while the background story is highly dramatic, the final film isn't too bad either.

Lee J. Cobb plays the boss of a New York high fashion firm that refuses to unionize. Kerwin Mathews gets to wear long pants as his son who wants to join in the family business. Robert Loggia is the union organizer, while Richard Boone is the "businessman" who keeps Cobb's company non-union for a fee. Gia Scala appears as the young wife of Loggia. There are enough elements in Kleiner's screenplay to indicate that The Garment Jungle fits in thematically with other Aldrich films - the conflicting relationship between father and son, the hope of "the American dream", the independent operator against conformity, bureaucracy and corruption. My guess is that even if Aldrich had completed The Garment Jungle, it would still be regarded as one of his lesser films.

What may be the best part of The Garment Jungle is the unexpected casting of Aldrich favorite Wesley Addy as an unctuous hit man. Paired with baby-faced Adam Williams, who faintly resembles Ralph Meeker, this may have been a twist on Addy's role in Kiss Me Deadly, on the other side of the law. Addy's understated performance is a marked contrast to the shouting of Cobb and Mathews. Also worth watching are Loggia in his second performance on film, and Joseph Wiseman as a fellow union organizer.

Aldrich probably felt like Cobb's character, being second guessed by several people. One could argue that there are enough similarities between the fashion industry and the film industry. After being fired from The Garment Jungle, Aldrich spent most of the next five years primarily working in European based productions, with uneven results until making Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? starring two actresses famous previously for films directed by, among others, Vincent Sherman. Aldrich was able to conjure one last posthumous dig at Cohn in the Ernest Borgnine's studio chief, in The Legend of Lylah Clare. It should be noted that unlike Cobb who likes to remind everyone within shouting distance that it's his company, Aldrich seemed to know that his own success was possible with the efforts of others. It may have been false humility, yet it seems consistent with his films that he would name his own film production company, Associates & Aldrich.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

September 27, 2008

Sweet Bird of Youth

Richard Brooks - 1962
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

For reasons I can't explain, Sweet Bird of Youth is the one movie starring Paul Newman that I've seen the most, along with Exodus. Unlike Exodus, I had only seen Sweet Bird of Youth on television. This was in the days when watching a movie on television meant black and white pan and scan, plus some judicious editing of a Cinemascope and color movie. Not having had the opportunity to see the film theatrically, I finally saw Tennessee Williams' lurid story on DVD.

It is probably pure coincidence, but the main character's name is made up of the last names of the actor and his character in Rio Bravo. I am making an unintended connection here with John Wayne, his character of John Chance, and Williams' creation, Chance Wayne. Even more coincidentally, the play, Sweet Bird of Youth opened about a week before the premiere of Rio Bravo in March of 1959. More likely, Williams' name is a pun on "chance wane", with his protagonist living a life of ever decreasing opportunities and fortune. Of further possible coincidence is that an actor Howard Hawks originally wanted for Rio Bravo, Montgomery Clift, starred in the film version of Suddenly, Last Summer, which opened in December 1959.

I remembered the basic story about a gigolo who shows up at a small Southern town with a drunk has-been actress, still in love with the daughter of the man referred to as "Boss". My memory of how the film ended was closer to what Williams wrote, rather than what actually happens on screen. Even though Chance Wayne is the main character of the play and film, he is less interesting than the characters that surround him, especially Boss Finley and his son, Tom. Paul Newman seems to recede when Ed Begley and Rip Torn, grinning with evil, appear. One of the supplements of the DVD is of a screen test with Geraldine Page and Rip Torn, with Torn performing the part of Wayne. While Torn does not have the Newman's charm or handsomeness, his performance suggests greater desperation and animal instinct in those few minutes.

Some of the political attitudes of Boss Finley and those who surround him are striking, fifty years later. What seemed like a parody of life below the Mason-Dixon line now is in some ways very much ingrained as part of the national political landscape, particularly the false presentation of family values and the dirty tricks that are officially disavowed. That the play was altered to be filmed does not seem to have created much damage. I can imagine the suggestion of an abortion to have been equal, or more disturbing than Wayne's causing his former love, Heavenly, to have a hysterectomy following infection from an unnamed venereal disease. Rip Torn's one whack on Paul Newman's face would have to suffice in place of castration. The film ends with the two damaged lovers driving off from Boss Finley's mansion, although one imagines that the future that awaits them is more squalid than that of Williams' other white trash characters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:47 AM

September 26, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Vanishing Point

Richard C. Sarafian - 1971
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

It took me twenty-eight years after seeing Vanishing Point but I did my own road trip between Denver and San Francisco. Actually it was the opposite direction, from Oakland to Denver. I wasn't chased by cops and I wasn't in that big a rush, but for a good part of the trip I was driving 80 on 80, that is 80 mph on US Highway 80. I also stopped for sleep along the way, in Elko, Nevada and some ugly little place in Wyoming. My car was a Volvo 240 DL, not a souped-up Dodge.

As far as seeing Denver on film, there isn't that much to see in Vanishing Point. What little I could recognize has been transformed by urban renewal in some shots filmed in the outskirts of the downtown area. The appearance by newscaster Bob Palmer was all that could connect the Denver of my memory with Denver as presented in this film. Probably the most fantastic element of Vanishing Point may be a simple lapse in what is essentially a plotless film, that Barry Newman manages to drive from Colorado to California through Nevada, but totally avoids Utah. As one who has been on the road between Denver and California more than once, the direct routes are all through Utah. Then again, if verisimilitude was the goal of Vanishing Point, there wouldn't have been Cleavon Little's blind disc Jockey name Super Soul with a radio station in a no-name town.

Instead of watching Vanishing Point as a narrative film, it works better as a series of abstract images. What I liked were the long shots of open country and two lane highways, visual minimalism to compliment the minimalism of the story. Yes, there are flashbacks to give some kind of story to the character of Kowalski. Mostly what we get are hints. As Kowalski, Newman doesn't say very much, and much of the film is designed to let the audience either connect the dots for themselves. Contemporary audiences might be at a loss in dealing with Vanishing Point as there is little explanation for why Kowalski needs to be in San Francisco at a certain time. A scene deleted in the U.S. release version is emblematic of the disinterest in reality. Driving at night on some off the beaten path road, Newman comes across hitchhiker Charlotte Rampling. The two spend the night together in the Dodge. When Newman wakes up, Rampling has disappeared as mysteriously as she appeared. Like Dean Jagger's prospector, Rampling just seems to appear out of nowhere, as phantoms to remind Newman of his own remaining vestiges of humanity. Vanishing Point makes me think of questions raised by Girish Shambu regarding geography on film. Most films about journeys have the geographical aspects mirror a sense of self-discovery in the protagonist. Vanishing Point takes that well worn trope and gives it a nihilistic twist, with a man who realizes he has nothing more to live for and goes nowhere fast.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM

September 24, 2008

Seoul Raiders

Han Cheng Gong Lue
Jingle Ma - 2005
Arts Alliance America Region 1 DVD

Looking at his filmography, Jingle Ma's best work is as cinematographer for other people. The films Ma has done as a director are more decidedly lightweight, though not without considerable technical skill. At the very least, he should be commended for not jumping on the Crouching Tiger bandwagon, although his previous film, Silver Hawk made it clear that Michelle Yeoh needs more than just her physical prowess to carry a movie. Seoul Raiders is a caper film of not great consequence, but it is enjoyable simply to see a couple of veteran Hong Kong stars having fun.

Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Shu Qi meet cute as thieves competing to steal a suitcase with counterfeit plates. The two plates are intended to be used by a terrorist organization to flood the U.S. Richie Ren plays a U.S. embassy employee from Hong Kong who tricks Leung, and attempts to sell the plates to a gang leader with international ties, based in Seoul. Leung chases after Ren, accompanied by his gang of leggy beauties, with Shu showing up to get what she believes are her just rewards.

Seoul Raiders is a relatively stress free caper film, with little suspense or mystery. What the film has going for it are some amusing fight scenes, such as in the opening when Leung and Shu are chased by henchman, and the two toss the valuable silver case between each other while arguing whether they are partners or rivals. In another set piece, Leung and his team chase Ren through the streets of Seoul and into a subway where Leung grabs onto Ren's scarf on the inside of the train, while Ren is holding onto the outside door, inches from being dashed against the tunnel wall. One other scene that elicits chuckles is Leung defeating a hang of thugs by hurling plates at them. Shu Qi mostly laughs, smiles and generally looks cute. If you want to see Shu as an action star, she is used to better advantage in So Close.

Tommy Wai's score seems to have been lifted, with very little alteration, from one of the music themes used by Quentin Tarantino for Kill Bill. Jingle Ma may be taking his queues, both musical and visual, from American films. There is the nervous camera, the editing of shots to the beat of the music and again, the seemingly inevitable slo-mo action shots. There's very little in Seoul Raiders that hasn't been seen before. But with Tony Leung having made his mark most significantly with Wong Kar-wai, and Shu Qi graduating to the artistic heights as Hou Hsiao-hsien's muse, a lighthearted romp may have been in order.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:23 AM

September 18, 2008

Masters of War

This is Korea!
John Ford - 1951

San Pietro
John Huston - 1945
VCI Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The reason why the serious cinephile will want to check out a copy of Surrender - Hell! is because this is one DVD where the bonus features are more meaningful than the main attraction. While some might find John Barnwell's yarn of battle in the Philippines of some interest, the more compelling viewing is in the documentaries by John Ford and John Huston. Also subject to discussion is how these two filmmakers choose to insert their own personalities and predilections into their observations of war.

This is Korea! has John Ford stamped all over the film. Save for "O Little Town of Bethlehem" instead of "Shall We Gather at the River", and Koreans instead of Native Americans, this is clearly John Ford's version of the Korean conflict. We have the Navy and the Marines, nuns and children, including one boy with the improbable name of Babe Ruth DiMaggio. The colors of Trucolor are no longer true, but are sometimes muddy or washed out. Still there are recognizable visual touches in the use of silhouettes in some of the shots. Ford even inserts some lowbrow humor as he as tended to do in even the best of his films. John Ireland informs the audience that the fight is to same Korea from the Commies, yet near the end he asks the audience to explain the reasons for the war.

From a purely historical point of view, I was unaware that napalm was a major tool of battle. There was a scorched earth policy when it came to the land and the people designated as the enemy - "Burn 'em out! Cook 'em!". As in Ford's features, what is of interest is the male comradery, and the function of doing a job, no matter the meaning of that job. Politics aside, what Ford and his camera crew do well is to shoot film alongside men who are shooting guns in the bitter cold of a Korean winter. Nor does Ford shy away from showing the casualties of war, at least in a form palatable for moviegoers in 1951. Ford isn't afraid to do a bit of showboating with a credit to himself as a retired Navy Rear Admiral, but agree or disagree with his view of the world, John Ford always remained true to his convictions.

John Huston narrated his documentary, San Pietro but otherwise had chosen to step back in his observations of this battle in Italy. Credits inform the audience that parts of the film include dramatic recreations. The most striking images are of the barren trees of what were wine and olive vineyards. Both Huston and Ford show the human cost of war in shots of the graveyards where soldiers were buried, but Huston also filmed the men digging the plots, and one anonymous soldier's wrapped body laid to rest. Huston, like Ford, also seemed unable to resist the easy sentimentality of filming children at play in the most miserable of conditions. Reportedly, the version available is heavily edited due to concerns from the Army that Huston's original film was too "anti-war". Huston could have made a film of more slanted intent as in Across the Pacific, but real life war had the effect of tempering the more boisterous side of John Huston with a larger degree of introspection.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:43 AM | Comments (1)

September 09, 2008

With Beauty and Sorrow

Utsukushisa to kanashimi to
Masahiro Shinoda - 1965
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Would I have liked Masahiro Shinoda's film from Yasunari Kawabata's novel had I not read the book? I probably would have had differing expectations. Comparing the two works does point out to the problem with making films from literature, especially from a novel that devotes space to the thoughts of the characters. It does not help anyone that the DVD is from a faded print. While Shinoda is fairly faithful to the written word of Kawabata, he has made some changes that I question, and refashioned the story so that the relationship of the two former lovers is sidelined, with little of the sense of devotion or loss conveyed in the novel. Coming just a year after Yasuzo Masumura's film of Manji, Shinoda seems even more awkward in his reluctance to be as clear as Kawabata, in dealing with the subject of lesbianism.

The story, which is at least partially autobiographical, is about a middle aged writer, Oki, who travels to Kyoto to hear temple bells on New Year's Day, and also to meet again the woman, Okoto, he had an affair with, twenty-four years previously. The woman was sixteen at the time, and had a child that died in infancy with the writer. In the present day, the writer is famous, primarily for the novel based on the affair, while the girl has grown up to be a famed painter. Okota currently lives with her protege, Keiko, also a painter. Kawabata eventually reveals to the reader and to Toshio that the two women are also lovers. Keiko decides to take revenge, against the advice of Okoto, for the actions Oki took in the past, with the goal of destroying Toshio's family.

I don't know if the changes were choices made by Shinoda, or were mandated by the production company, but a certain timidity to several aspects of Kawabata's novel are evident. Oki's novel, titled "A Girl of Sixteen" by Kawabata, is retitled "Bitter Seventeen" in the film. Not only does this show a problem with dealing with the age of a fictional character, but the novel's title change gives an unneeded and unwanted emotion charge to the past events. Keiko is referred to in the film as one of Okoto's pupils, further lessening the relationship between the two women. What little physical contact in shown on screen consists of a hand slipping into a kimono, and a kiss barely seen in the dark. A scene with the two women sharing a bath coyly reveals Okoto's bare shoulders above the water, and the glimpse of a woman's foot. Even Keiko's declarations that she hates men comes across more as the whine of a girl who has had too many bad dates, then the young woman who understood her sexual preferences at an early age. It may be worth noting also that the sado-masochistic elements of the novel remain relatively intact.

One of the themes of the novel is the use of one's life as source material for creating art. Oki is most famous for his novel based on his relationship with Okoto. Okoto is in the process of creating a painting titled "Ascension of the Child", the child being Okoto's as he is imagined. While the film bypasses the novel's discussion of Oki's thoughts on literature, the choices made on the paintings by the two women raises questions. Rather than showing any of Keiko's paintings, they are discussed by the characters in the film, but unseen by the audience. Unlike in Jacques Rivette's La Belle Noiseuse which uses the unseen painting for dramatic purpose, Shinoda's choice of not showing Keiko's paintings does not work, even though it should be understood that any painting would probably not live up to the expectations of those who read the novel. Okoto's one painting seen in the film is more abstract than the work described by Kawabata. There are a couple of shots of Okoto and her painting that anticipate what would be done to better effect in Double Suicide.

Shinoda's film has, unsurprisingly, some beautiful imagery of its own. There is also the interesting device in the use of screens or passageways, allowing for some of the action to be only partially seen, or only heard. The film was released just a year after the publication of the novel. That was certainly done to capitalize on Kawabata's popularity in Japan in general and on the freshness of the novel. One can only guess as to whether a better film might have been made a few years later when there was more frankness to Japanese film, both with mainstream product, and the advent of the "Pink film", or if Shinoda was the best person to film this novel.

Might With Beauty and Sorrow been a better film had Shinoda been willing, or able, to have made something as avant-garde as Toru Takamitsu's score? Considering that Kawabata wrote the story and screenplay for Teinosuke Kinugasa's A Page of Madness, I think Shinoda might have done better to have given sway to madness, seeking the visual equivalent to Kawabata as the younger artist, rather than the revered master he had become.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:24 AM | Comments (1)

September 06, 2008

The Wolves

Shussho Iwai
Hideo Gosha - 1971
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

Like many American film scholars, my introduction to the yakuza genre was through Paul Schrader. This came in the form of his "Film Comment" article, two films shown at the Museum of Modern Art in early 1975, and of course, the film he co-wrote with his brother, The Yakuza. Currently, I am reading Chris D.'s Outlaw Masters of the Japanese Film. In terms of genre, Chris D. expands on the variations of the yakuza film, pointing out how different types of films were done by different studios, marked by historical periods and narrative concerns. While Chris D. does not discuss Hideo Gosha, he includes a filmography. Additionally this discussion of the different types of yakuza films helps explain why The Wolves does not resemble many of the other films I have seen.

The film takes place beginning in 1926. The new emperor has granted pardons to almost four hundred criminals including Iwahashi and Sasaki. Iwahashi has been incarcerated for the murder of the a rival gang's boss. Sworn as "brothers" while in prison, Iwahashi concedes leadership to Sasaki when his former group is merged with the rival group. The two yakuza gangs are in control of the building a railroad on behalf of a corrupt businessman. Iwahashi also is determined to discover who murdered his former boss. Complicating matters is that in feudal tradition, the late mobster's daughter is to marry Sasaki, the head of the rival gang, even though she was at one time promised to Iwahashi, and is in love with someone else.

Unlike similar films, The Wolves is more methodically paced. One can describe the film as almost a meditation on what it means to be a yakuza. Iwahashi's prime motivation for not seeking revenge for the death of his boss is his concept of honor, loyalty to the code of being a yakuza. Tsutomo, the gangster in love with the dead mobster's daughter states that his code of honor is based on his being human. Sasaki, finally confronting Iwahashi, declares his goal to be an animal. The title is put into focus as the celebrated code of honor is set aside for self-gratification, the animal instinct replacing humanity.

What also makes The Wolves unusual are some of the visual choices made by Gosha. Often characters are partial obscured by by wooden slates or a glass window distorts their features. At one point, when Iwahashi and Sasaki have their final duel, they are seen in the background in silence, while the foreground is dominated by a musician playing a stringed instrument. There are also some unusual musical choices for what is essentially a period film, with the more traditional music electrified, as if redone by Duane Eddy. If surf style Japanese music wasn't enough, some of Masaru Sato's music is totally abstract percussion. Filmed in northern Japan, in a relatively isolated area by the sea also provides a contrast with the more traditionally urban based yakuza films.

In other ways, Gosha breaks from genre traditions. The women are as murderous, perhaps more so than the men, especially a pair of women who work as a team. In addition to the amped up violence, there is more sex and partial nudity. The effect is as if Gosha was personally attacking the traditions of Toho Comany's past, particularly the period films by Kurosawa. Tatsuya Nakadai mostly glowers through the two hours plus running time, at least until it's time for action. Not having seen any other films by Gosha, I can't say for sure if The Wolves is the best place to start. What I can say is that I am intrigued enough to see more by this lesser known filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM | Comments (2)

September 04, 2008

Give Us this Day

Edward Dmytryk - 1949
Allday Entertainment Region 1 DVD

On the occasion of Edward Dmytryk's 100th Birthday.

Is now the time to give Edward Dmytryk a full reevaluation? Are we distant enough from the past events? I know that for myself, I feel a greater sympathy for the one member of the Hollywood Ten who recanted to reclaim his career if only because I understand in my own life how one makes a variety of compromises to pay the bills, and exchange ideals for a sense of security. While I have not seen most of Dmytryk's films, I have seen enough to agree with the majority opinion that he was a better filmmaker prior to his post-blacklist return to Hollywood.

Give Us this Day may be Dmytryk's finest film, where art and political ideals came together in a portrait of the corruption of the American dream. One of the interesting bits of the commentary, actually a dialogue that includes the son of the novel's author and the widow of the screenplay writer, is that there was previous interest in Pietro DiDonato's novel, Christ in Concrete by some more celebrated directors. The original project was set up at one point for Roberto Rossellini, and then Luchino Visconti. DiDonato bluntly refused Frank Capra. It was seeing Crossfire that convinced DiDonato that Edward Dmytryk was the man to make a film from his novel. As it turned out, it was also Crossfire that inflamed several members of the United States Congress, with producer Adrian Scott and director Dmytryk named as two of the Hollywood Ten. Unsurprisingly, this pessimistic story about America was made in England, and was barely released in the United States.

Spanning a period of about ten years, from 1921 through the early years of the Great Depression, Give Us this Day is primarily in the form of an extended flashback. Geremio looks back upon the circumstances that brought him to a state of crisis on his birthday. A brick layer by trade, Geremio finds his life a battle to fulfill the dreams for himself and his immigrant wife, Annuziata, and his growing family. Work is sporadic, and the goal of buying a home is the main source of motivation. It is just on the eve of the Depression that the possibility of buying the home suddenly is out of reach. Bringing in a few dollars by shoveling snow, Geremio accepts the position of foreman on a dangerous construction project in order to support himself and his family. On the night of his birthday, Geremio confronts the reality that he has betrayed his wife, his friends, and his own ideals.

I was hoping to read DiDonato's semi-autobiographical novel before seeing the film again. From what I understood from the commentary, it was the British censor who asked for the title change as well as other changes that caused the religious aspects of the novel to be virtually eliminated. Two moments of visual symbolism stand out - in the opening sequence of the film, Geremio strikes his hand against the arrow shaped end of a fence, creating a self-inflicted stigmata, while the end of the film shows Geremio with his arms extended outward while drowning in wet concrete. The other significant points are the name of Annuziata, from Annunciation, and Geremio's death on Good Friday.

Screenwriter Ben Barzman may have also brought out the best in Dmytryk. This film and Back to Bataan are visually Dmytryk's strongest work. Shorn of the title montage of New York City street scenes, Give Us this Day almost resembles a horror movie, with Sam Wanamaker stumbling through the empty slum streets at night, foreboding clouds in the sky. Give Us this Day also serves as the flip side to Back to Bataan. While the 1945 film attempts to justify the importation of American democracy and ideal to Filipinos, Give Us this Day is about those who came to the United States in search of the imagined America only to find themselves marginalized. Both films are linked by the themes of idealism and betrayal, and the brutality sometimes required for survival.

The availability of Dmytryk's films on DVD is still spotty. I am hoping especially to see one of his early post-blacklist films, The Sniper, just for the opportunity to see virulent Commie hater, Adolphe Menjou as Police Lt. Frank Kafka. Also unavailable is Where Love has Gone with the triple threat casting of Bette Davis, Susan Hayward and Joey Heatherton. And while the rest of the film may have only fleeting resemblance to the novel, Dmytryk will be remembered for his association with the best opening credits sequence created by Saul Bass.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:23 AM | Comments (3)

August 29, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Julie Bishop

Torture Ship
Victor Halperin - 1939
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

Action in the North Atlantic
Lloyd Bacon - 1943
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Today we sail into the Denver sunset with featured actress Julie Bishop in two films with nautical themes. Julie Bishop was born as Jacqueline Wells, and appeared in films under both names. Her bigger roles were primarily in B films in the Thirties as Wells. Presumably as Bishop, with smaller roles in bigger studio productions she got a bigger paycheck. In either case, I had to review her filmography to realize I had seen Wells/Bishop in more films than I had realized. If anything, Julie Bishop, as she was best known professionally, proved that one can be a featured player in three decades worth of films, and still be easily forgotten.

Torture Ship was "suggested" by a story by Jack London. Not having read the story, "A Thousand Cuts" myself, I can't vouch for how much was London and how much was Poverty Row madness. Irving Pichel serves as an actor here, portraying a doctor who tries to modify criminal behavior through surgery. Lyle Talbot is the nephew, who has gone from being an Annapolis grad to being captain on Talbot's runaway yacht that serves as his laboratory. Wells is an escaped criminal, one of several recruited by Pichel to serve as a guinea pig. Wells claims to be innocent of her crimes, and Talbot believes her. This film acts as an argument for contemporary films where the innocent girl fakes almost everyone at the end by being truly evil. But Torture Ship was made in a gentler time for Hollywood, when the brunette with too much lipstick was to be trusted over the brassy blonde hussy.

Torture Ship has one nicely photographed moment of one of the killers checking out scalpals, with the camera looking through the glass casing, and the criminal lit from below. Otherwise, there's not much to either to story or the story telling. There's no torture either, except for the psychological kind when the criminals start getting nervous about the bad doctor performing operations on them. This is the kind of movie they use to show on network television on Saturday afternoons or very late at night, and as such probably would have looked better on a smaller screen.

Meanwhile, in Action in the North Atlantic, Bishop gets a little bit of action, approximately ten minutes in a two hour film. The saga of the Merchant Marines in World War II, Bishop is the low rent chanteuse that Humphrey Bogart seems to have promptly married after decking the jerk who gabbed during her singing. One song, a brief meeting with skipper Raymond Massey who gives the newlyweds his blessing before taking Bogart to his next mission. The film was written by future blacklistee John Howard Lawson about the combine efforts to help out our allies, the Russians. There are a few good moments of action that are probably attributable to montage masters Don Siegel and John Leicester as well as Warner house director Lloyd Bacon. There's not enough of Julie Bishop to create much of impression other than that she seemed to be the contract player called on when a love interest was needed, but the role was too small for the likes of Virginia Mayo or Ann Sheridan.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:33 AM

August 27, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Dean Reed

American Rebel
Will Roberts - 1985
United Documentary Films DVD

Adios, Sabata (Indio Black, sai che ti dico: Sei un gran figlio di...)
Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini) - 1971
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

"Nobody knows Me in My Own Hometown" may be still be the most emblematic song by Dean Reed. I missed out on seeing Reed's return visit to Denver for the screening of American Rebel in 1985 at the Denver International Film Festival. For most people, Reed was the rock and roll singer who left the United States to live in East Germany. Until I finally saw Will Robert's documentary, I did not know how popular Reed actually was in the Soviet bloc, or in South America. Nor was I aware that had I looked a little harder, I might have caught some of his acting career in Italian productions. One can only guess at what Reed's career might have been like had he not been a career expatriate. Unlike some stars of westerns, he was actually born in the west. His strong, faintly operatic voice probably would have been channelled to country music. Given his acrobatic abilities, Reed could have possibly done the kind of parts played by Burt Lancaster in his physical prime. What is known is that Reed's visit to Denver turned out not to be a re-introduction of a native son, but a farewell visit.

One of the stories about Dean Reed that is recounted in American Rebel is that as a young high school track star, Reed raced a mule, for over 100 miles, for a quarter, and won. Reed's own stubbornness in his beliefs was both his strength, and possible undoing. It was pure chance that enabled Reed to get an introduction to a Capitol Records producer, going from unknown to minor celebrity in the United States, to stardom in the countries where his peers never traveled. Even if one questions Reed's politics, the guy was absolutely fearless about performing in throughout Latin America and the Middle East. Did Yasir Arafat truly enjoy Reed's singing "Ghost Riders in the Sky"? I can't say for sure. What is certain is that Reed seemed to truly believe in peace, love, the brotherhood of man, which was his central motivation for stepping on the stage.

The one film that Reed starred in that got major distribution in the U.S. was Adios, Sabata. The third of a trilogy of spaghetti westerns, the only known name in the cast was star Yul Brynner. Reed, second billed, portrays a gambler and sometime artist, who may or may not be working with Sabata to steal a shipment of gold from the Austrians who are ruling Mexico. The gold is suppose to be for purchase of arms for the rebels, but the gang of thieves think about benefitting themselves. Had I not known who Reed was, I would have assumed with his dyed blond hair that he we an Italian or German actor with an English language pseudonym.

What cannot be denied is that Dean Reed could do his own stunts, as demonstrated by some trick riding in one scene. As far as Italian westerns go, Adios, Sabata has a few unique bits, such as a Flamenco dancing outlaw, and a scene with Reed and Brynner playing a Schubert duet on piano. The political aspects, such as they are, probably appealed to Reed. American Rebel shows more clips from Reed's other films that he also wrote and directed, including his own version of the Sand Creek Massacre, the subject of Ralph Nelson's Soldier Blue. Not surprisingly, most of Reed's other films are westerns. The excerpts provide a bit of culture shock, not so much for the location shooting in Bulgaria, but the characters speaking German. One hopes that someone will be enterprising enough to make these films available on DVD. Even though Dean Reed left Denver, Colorado, that his filmmaking mark was primarily in westerns showed that parts of Denver had always stayed with him.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:43 AM | Comments (4)

August 25, 2008

Bangkok Love Story

Pheuan... Guu rak meung waa
Poj Arnon - 2007
TLA Releasing Region 1 DVD

For those paying attention to Thai cinema, one of the bigger surprises was the commercial success of Bangkok Love Story, one of two Thai gay love stories that did well at the box office and with Thai critics. The additional surprise of Bangkok Love Story is that it was written and directed by Poj Arnon, who only half a year earlier released one of the critically least respected films of 2007. Of course audiences flocked to Haunting Me anyways. Still, who would have thought that the guy who made Thai audiences scream with laughter about fat middle aged ladyboys chased by a chubby ladyboy ghost would also make a sentimental love story about a hitman and his would-be victim.

Bangkok Love Story actually begins with the time honored first person narration of the hitman, who of course is an alienated loner. Normally Cloud's job is to shoot to kill. For what he thinks will be his last job, he kidnaps a guy named Stone. It's never clearly explained how Stone got his information or what he does exactly, but as a person who has the goods on a mob boss, he is to be eliminated. Why Stone is kidnapped instead of murdered immediately like Cloud's other victims isn't clear either. What Cloud finds out is that Stone is a person of honor, unlike the criminals that Cloud is usually after. Cloud's sense of ethics forbids him to shoot Stone, and the two make a run for it. The gangsters that Cloud works for have a warehouse full of Buddhist statues, an unusual location for a shoot out. What makes the scene even stranger is that this is a commercial Thai film, released without problem by the same censorship board who went apoplectic over a guitar playing Buddhist monk in Sydromes and a Century.

Stone nurses the the wounded Cloud back to health in Cloud's hideout, a penthouse in an abandoned building. The man who was introduced with his cutie pie wife looks longingly at Cloud, taking advantage of the illness to undress Cloud and wash his naked body. Cloud gets healthy enough to bathe himself but Stone offers to wash Cloud's back. Of course Stone washed more than Cloud's back, and the two start smooching before doing the hibbidy dibbidy. Cloud soon sends Stone away, to walk home to his mansion wearing nothing but his form fitting tighty whities. Stone's wife, Sand, can not understand why Stone has been distant with her. It isn't until she see Stone and Cloud get up close and personal in the rain that she knows the truth about her husband. In the following scene, Sand wonders how she was so oblivious to the wedding videos of Stone holding hands with his best man.

What struck me about Bangkok Love Story is that the man who got some cheap laughs from a parody of Brokeback Mountain made a film that has succeeded with audience and critics, a gay love story that will probably be parodied by other Thai filmmakers, if it hasn't been already. The mawkishness of Bangkok Love Story is stressed by the gushing strings. Imagine, if you will, a vintage Warner Brothers weepie, with Leslie Howard leaving Bette Davis for Humphrey Bogart, to the musical accompaniment of Max Steiner. The effect is an overload of melodrama and beefcake. I could be very wrong about this, but I think the real audience for Bangkok Love Story is actually girls who like to see man on man action. As a sometimes chronicler of Thai films, I do find it encouraging that a new Thai film that is neither a ghost story nor martial arts adventure has a DVD release in the U.S. Now if only Love of Siam, Me . . .Myself and Ploy will follow . . .

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM | Comments (8)

August 22, 2008

Movies about Movies Blog-a-thon: H Story

Nobuhiro Suwa - 2001
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

It has been over thirty years since I had seen Hiroshima, Mon Amour. Since I had decided to write about H Story, it seemed necessary to revisit the source of inspiration. While I had recalled that part of the film, like the novels of Marguerite Duras, was about the veracity of memories, I had forgotten completely another part of the film. Emmanuelle Riva portrays an actress who is in Hiroshima to make a movie about Hiroshima, specifically about the event that literally shook the world. For a few minutes, Resnais films the filming of that movie. Within the context of H Story, not only is it a movie about making a movie, but additionally it is about remaking a movie that itself was partially about filmmaking. The mobius strip doesn't stop there, though.

H Story is additionally about the physical nature of film. For a while there is a visual distinction between the main narrative and the film being made with use of different film stocks. Eventually that distinction is lost. Parts of scenes including those with dialogue, are without sound, and the flare of exposed film is seen more than once. In these ways, H Story is self referential, more so than other, similar films. The device is more closely analogous to that of a novelist like Tom Robbins who breaks off from the storytelling to digress on the act of writing.

The main narrative is about the attempt to remake Hiroshima, Mon Amour. The bulk of the screenplay in the film within the film is from Duras' screenplay. The director, portrayed by Suwa, discusses having Resnais' film stay in his mind in a discussion with the screenwriter, portrayed by actor and writer Kou Machida. (Suwa was also the writer of the H Story screenplay.) There are cuts to stills from Hiroshima, Mon Amour and one can also see a still in the background when Suwa and Machida discuss the film Suwa is trying to make. While some of the scenes of the film in progress roughly duplicate the original film, others do not. For the most part Suwa declines to repeat the formalism of Resnais. Suwa does apparently have a shot of Beatrice Dalle and Machida follow the same path as Emmanuelle Riva and Eiji Okada in a shopping area of Hiroshima. Attempting to film a scene at a bar, Dalle balks at repeating the dialogue from the original film and complains that Suwa's remake is a "carbon copy". The filming appears to have been completed, but Machida gets a message, while he and Dalle are at the beach, that Suwa has decided to abandon the film.

One of the other distancing devices Suwa employs is having his actors in contemporary clothing while filming the remake. We have the incongruous sight of Dalle sporting a tatoo on her shoulder while discussing World War II with Hiroaki Umano, taking the Okada role. While Suwa also uses color documentary footage of the aftermath of the bombing, it is more abstract, more of a scenic view, without the footage of deformed or injured people that was used by Resnais. It should be remembered that Resnais, like Suwa, a former documentarian, was also interested in the appearance of truth, and used staged footage from the feature Children of Hiroshima.

Where Suwa goes further than Resnais is in exploring the bombing of Hiroshima as the subject and inspiration for art. Dalle mentions visiting the museum that features artifacts from the bombing, her only contact with the city during the shoot. She and Machida visit a museum of modern artwork inspired by the bombing. The scene recalls Peter Cowie's commentary on the Criterion DVD of Hiroshima, Mon Amour about Hiroshima having been turned into a sort of theme park. Even for Suwa, or at least his onscreen self, Hiroshima is just the city he was born in, with the historical significance part of the background.

If Hiroshima, Mon Amour is, like other works by Duras, about memory, H Story is about not only about how history is remembered, but remembering movies. That some of the scenes are staged differently by Suwa may be indicative of how those scenes appeared in his memory. That we see the film within the film with the camera sometimes going in and out of focus, with brief interludes of silence, and with the light flares, is all part of the fragility and faultiness of memory.

For more movies about movies, visit Goatdog.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2008

Team Picture

Kentucker Audley - 2007
Benten Films All Regions DVD

There is something that Team Picture gets right that hardly seems to happen in movies. In a couple of scenes we hear the sound of summer in the country. Even with the two speaker sound coming out of my television was the overwhelming aural symphony of crickets and other insects. Maybe the moment seemed so extraordinary because films in general have gotten noisier, and people in general, not just filmmakers, have lost the ability to appreciate not only silence, but unadorned ambient sound. Kentucker Audley also has two moments of total silence, allowing the images to speak for themselves, showing a trust in the viewer that seems to have been lost by many mainstream filmmakers.

The film's setting is the Memphis of cheap rental houses, during a summer spent in part lounging in inflatable wading pools, sipping PBRs. David and Eric are two friends who share a house. Both have a tendency to be self-absorbed. David is unaware of his girlfriend's art exhibit, or of her feelings prior to the opening of the show. His lack of recognition of her feelings is the spur for her to end their relationship. Eric, comically clueless, calls up a young woman whose number he as obtained indirectly, initiated a relationship that he misreads as romantic. David quits his job at a sporting goods store, and drives the girl next door to Chicago for the weekend, a tentative friendship that momentarily hints at becoming something more.

Without putting too fine a point on it, Team Picture has a narrative that play out like Antonioni in small city America. Sure, no one is a sophisticated or beautiful like Alain Delon and Monica Vitti, but at its essence is the story of men and women not totally certain of themselves, or may too certain for the wrong reasons, briefly coming together before drifting apart. Unlike the formality of an Antonioni film, Kentucker Audley's observations of his characters is casual in its observation of how people interact. There is no effort to be dramatic in the theatrical sense, nor does Audley have the need to make his film longer than an hour. What needs to be expressed is done without extra emphasis or adornment.

There is one wonderful shot that would be worthy of Yasujiro Ozu in its simplicity, had Ozu deigned to shoot from a crane, or more likely, a ladder. The camera looks down a the lawn, the wading pools removed, dragged away for storage. We see the rings of flattened grass where the pools were set, and an abandoned yellow ball. Without needing to show anything else, this is the perfect image of the end of summer.

I also should add that the brief running time of Team Picture works to its benefit for a more personal reason. Unlike many films that can can be assessed in one pass, I saw Team Picture once, let a couple of days pass, and viewed the film a second time. Team Picture is antithetical to what currently passes for mainstream filmmaking, and needs to be appreciated on its own terms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM

August 19, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Debra Paget

The River's Edge
Alan Dwan - 1957
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Happy 75th Birthday, Debra Paget!

If there was ever an actress who truly defined starlet, it could well have been Debra Paget. For almost seven years, Paget was the go-to girl for the role of the princess, Native American, Egyptian, or just plain ingenue. At the age of 16, Paget played wife to James Stewart, the first of a series of much older screen husbands. Elvis and Richard Egan fought over Paget in Love Me Tender. As consistently as Paget worked, she never became a true star. When she did receive top billing in a very good film, it was never seen as intended by American audiences. Fritz Lang's Indian films are throwbacks to the kind of work he had done at the beginning of his career in the Twenties. While some may gripe that Paget's role should have been done by an Indian actress, the films are the best of her relatively short career, and the ones that made the best use of her abilities. The Fox films are interesting to see as more representative of her work, although Paget's role in her last film for the studio is atypical.

One of the first things wrong with The River's Edge is that there is no river. It more of a furious stream. Someone thought that the film should be made exactly as written and because the character is described as a redhead, the normally brunette Paget has one of the worst dye jobs ever. This was Paget's last film at Fox and in the beginning of the film she is presented as badly as possible with faded carrot color hair and a pair of shorts with one leg riding much higher than the other. Paget's hair and costume improve later, even if her perfomance doesn't.

Paget plays the ex-con wife of rancher Anthony Quinn. Former partner in crime Ray Milland shows up the New Mexico ranch, looking to hire Quinn as his guide across the Mexican border, with plans to reunite with old flame Paget. Milland is carrying a suitcase full of enough bills for early retirement. Milland and Paget's plans to take off, leaving Quinn behind, collapse after Milland accidentally on purpose runs over a highway patrolman with his pink Thunderbird. Paget still feels that Milland is her one and only even after he attempts to run her over, the T-bird gunning towards Paget in a corn field, briefly a "South by Southwest". Quinn guides the two through a mountain pass, while Paget eventually realizes that the simple minded big lug is the guy for her. Paget hurts her arm, Quinn hurts his leg, and Milland almost gets away with the loot until it gets away from him.

The efforts of film scholars James Ursini and Alain Silver on the commentary track still couldn't convince me that The River's Edge is more than mildly entertaining hokum. One little piece of interesting of information was that Dwan may have written the script as well as others credited to his frequent editor, James Leicester. There is also some discussion on the sexual elements that Dwan liked to insert when possible with his films. In the case of The River's Edge, the audience is teased with shots of a bra falling to the floor, bathtub and shower scenes, and Paget's wearing nothing but a robe. If you want to see more of Paget in a much better film, the Lang films will fit the bill. The River's Edge stands as Fox's odd send off as the studio sweetheart was transformed briefly into a rural femme fatale.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:48 AM | Comments (1)

August 16, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Douglas Fairbanks

Reaching for the Moon
Edmond Goulding - 1931
Passport Video Region 1 DVD

Denver seems to have always had a problem with its own history. Whether this involves preserving older buildings or paying tribute to famed residents, it usually seems to involve efforts from non-Denverites to point out the value in the past. My first knowledge that Douglas Fairbanks had anything to do with Denver was by chance while I was at high school, a little over forty years ago. Someone had mentioned that Fairbanks had attended an earlier incarnation of Denver East High School. It was also mentioned that he grew up at a house nearby, near the intersection of Colfax and Josephine Street.

I think I had seen some stills of Fairbanks, and had I seen any of his films, it may have been an abridged version shown on the short lived television series, "Silents, Please". I could never find out which house was the one Fairbanks grew up in. I tried to find more information from Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. when he came to visit Denver, but he didn't know either. (Not that the evening was a bust, as I still had the pleasure of seeing The Exile again on a theater screen.) I would have thought a little bit more might have been done on the 100th birthday of Fairbanks' birthday in Denver, but there seemed to have been little interest in cinema's first action hero. As for East High School, in addition to Fairbanks, it should be proud of having Hattie McDaniel as a student. I would think that being the first African American to win an Oscar should make up for the fact that she dropped out of school. East High School currently can also brag about past graduates Pam Grier and Don Cheadle. And if you find Going Ape! on a late night broadcast, that's my sister playing a corpse, doing her best to keep from cracking a smile.

Reaching for the Moon almost describes Fairbanks' career at the beginning of the sound era. The title is the same as a film directed by John Emerson, also starring Fairbanks, from 1917. In the newer film, Fairbanks' character, Larry Day, is described as a young man. Fairbanks, was forty-seven in 1930, and looked his age, albeit a very fit forty-seven. What had not diminished was his on-screen enthusiasm and likability. Larry Day is a wealthy stockbroker pursued by aviatrix Vivien Benton. Benton captures the heart of the long time bachelor, and Day ignores business to pursue Benton on an ocean liner bound for England. The film isn't completely Depression era escapism, as Day loses everything he has financially, only to learn that Benton loves his him for himself. Day's financial free fall is cushioned by Benton being independently wealthy herself.

Fairbanks show off his athletic ability mostly in leaping into bed, and running around the ocean liner without a shirt. More rewarding to watch are the fantastic art deco sets by William Cameron Menzies. The historically minded may want to see Bing Crosby's first film appearance, prior to the more intimate kind of singing he was known for. There is also some amusement to be found in the pre-Code gay humor when valet Edward Everett Horton demonstrates to Fairbanks how to put the moves on Bebe Daniels. The DVD version is apparently the surviving version of a film that had a running time of about ninety minutes. The film was made two years before director Edmund Goulding hit his stride with Grand Hotel. As an early talkie, there are some indications that Goulding was experimenting with sound and moving the camera as the film progresses, most clearly in several traveling shots on the ocean liner set. I don't know if Douglas Fairbanks could have re-invented himself for the sound era, or if he really wanted to, but Reaching for the Moon describes a film career that took off like a rocket, and almost as quickly fell back to earth.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Barbara Bates

Let's Make it Legal
Richard Sale - 1951
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Quicksand
Irving Pichel - 1950
Image Region 1 DVD

The biggest irony of Barbara Bates career is that she is best known for a very small part in what was one of the biggest films of its year. Briefly appearing near the end of All about Eve, Bates plays the "new Eve" as it were, hoping to follow in the high heels of Anne Baxter, much as we have seen Baxter follow Bette Davis.

Bates never became a star even on the level of Baxter. Released one year after Eve, Bates and Marilyn Monroe are again in the same film with more prominent billing. Bates is third billed with Monroe fifth, and Robert Wagner in between. There is a shot of Monroe and Bates together, with Bates watching Monroe converse with her "patron", Macdonald Carey. Out of the context of the film, it is almost as if Bates is watching Monroe prepare to walk away with any dreams of stardom held by the more demure actress. Of course it doesn't help that Bates plays a young wife and mother who always claims helplessness, a brat in the body of a woman. There is nothing in Let's Make it Legal to explain why Robert Wagner is in love with this woman.

What few moments of the film are worth watching are primarily due to the smart aleck dialogue of F. Hugh Herbert and I.A.L. Diamond. The casting is of stars at the crossroads, with the main actors on their way down intersecting with a supporting cast on their way up. As if to remind the audience of Claudette Colbert's main claim to fame, the shot that introduces her is of her legs. Colbert is divorcing hotelier and gambler Carey, and pursued by old beau Zachary Scott. Bates is trying to keep the family together while Wagner thinks everyone would be happier apart. Only seventy-seven minutes long, this trifle comes to life during Monroe's brief appearances. If Joseph Mankiewicz's films at this time are champagne, Let's Make it Legal is a less than bubbly ginger ale.

Quicksand offers further proof that Barbara Bates was best in small doses. Hitting 30 but still looking youthful, Mickey Rooney is a garage mechanic who has dumped long-time girlfriend Bates to play the field. The new cashier at the diner catches his eye, and Mickey immediately makes a date. The new girl is played by James Cagney's little sister, Jeanne. Like her famous brother, Jeanne Cagney is a real tough cookie and almost as pretty. Borrowing a twenty dollar bill from the garage cash register to pay for the date escalates to robbing a drunk, theft from a penny arcade, stealing a car and attempting murder, all within one week in which Mickey's life dives into hell in the proverbial handbasket.

Bates plays one of the sappiest women in film history, on constant standby for Mickey, in spite of the broken dates, unanswered phone calls, and newly established criminal record. Bates baby-faced brunette provides a visual contrast to Cagney's hard, lean blonde.

What Quicksand does offer is a tight little noir, a low budget exploration of cheap people with cheap ambitions, all within the tattered confines of Santa Monica. Besides a relatively subdued Rooney, the best performance is Peter Lorre as the arcade owner who was the former employer, and perhaps lover, of Cagney. Fun too, is spotting a brief appearance by newcomer Jack Elam as a bar patron. Cinematographer Lionel Lindon probably should get the credit over director Irving Pichel for the visuals - nighttime shots in the streets of Santa Monica, and a dynamic chase in and around the Santa Monica pier.

Following her performance in Quicksand, Barbara Bates jumped to the big leagues as a Fox contract player. Even if Bates had not been plagued with emotional problems, I suspect that her career would have still followed an identical path, only with more television guest roles as she got older. If Bates' film career was ephemeral, sadder is that her life was too short as well.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM

August 08, 2008

Anne of the Indies

Jacques Tourneur - 1951
Resen Entertainment Region 2 DVD

For this date of 8/8/08 I thought of pieces of eight which of course made me think of pirates. Anne of the Indies is a reminder that Hollywood could occasionally make a good action film starring a woman, even during a supposedly more benighted era. It's too bad that this film is only available as an import DVD at this time as I would think there would be many girls who would delight in seeing Jean Peters take on some big, burly men, with her sword.

Inspired by the real life Anne Bonny, Anne of the Indies is in part a film about family. Taking the name of Anne Providence, the title character seeks revenge against the British for the death of her brother. The pirate known as Blackbeard has served as her surrogate father. The man she falls in love with is secretly married. A search for treasure evolves into the breaking of trust, loss of alliances, and the self-destruction of Anne.

While Anne of the Indies has some of the trappings of a traditional pirate film with the sword fights, rum drinking, and ship battles, it fits in with Tourneur's films thematically. As pretty as this film is in ripe technicolor, Anne, like other Tourneur protagonists, descends into her own kind of madness. In several Tourneur films, the narrative is of a character who begins with a relatively stable sense of the world and their place in that world, only to find that they are overcome by circumstances that challenge that reality. The protagonist either finds their way out of an impossible situation, often a trap of some kind, or dies, surrendering to that new reality.

In this film, Jean Peters allows herself to be undone, making herself vulnerable to the charms of Louis Jourdan. The film for a time seems to endorse Peters' temporary discarding of male clothing, and her temporary discarding of her authority as ship captain, suggesting that all that was needed was the more genteel Jourdan to bring out Peters' femininity. As it turns out, Jourdan is married to the more feminine, and traditionally prettier, Debra Paget. Tourneur is ambiguous regarding Jean Peters' character, so that she defies a traditional interpretation. In some ways Peters character is like that of Simone Simon in The Cat People in that they can be defined as going against nature from one perspective, yet from the point of view of the character, it is that non-conforming nature that is their survival mechanism. The film suggests female vulnerability with the first sea battle described by the British captain as a frontal attack, and with the first close-ups of Peters showing her removing her jacket to reveal bleeding to her doctor, played by Herbert Marshall. In a scene where Anne tries on a lace dress, she finds herself both tied up and confined, the dress representing how women are ideally seen by men. With Anne demonstrating her skill with gun and sword equal, if not better, than the other men, the film invites a more thorough, and feminist reading. The use of water as a metaphor for the female is a component of the films ending, with Anne alone at sea, about to be engulfed by the feminine. Yet the final, brief image, is of Anne triumphant in spirit, if not in body.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 AM | Comments (4)

August 06, 2008

Belphegor: Phantom of the Louvre

Belphegor: Le Fantome du Louvre
Jean-Paul Salome - 2001
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

Belphegor is proof, should anyone need it, that I will watch Julie Christie in just about anything. The film is based on a novel which was also the source of a French mini-series officially. I can't vouch for any previous tellings of the story, but the film I saw combined elements from The Mummy, both the original by Karl Freund and the CGI version by Stephen Sommers, plus Ghostbusters and The Exorcist. That the film is French doesn't make it any better. Even a brief nude shot of Sophie Marceau does little on behalf of this time waster.

Christie plays an English Egyptologist who come to the Louvre to help identify a mummy found about seventy years ago. The spirit of the mummy flies in and out of Sophie Marceau who conveniently lives right across the street from the Louvre. The film starts off with some shots of the Sphinx, its face shot off by Napoleon. Even though the story is mostly about this mummy wanting to regain its needed artifacts for his journey to the underworld, I had to think that maybe it was payback time for France. As if anyone missed it, a character even mentions the various Egyptian artifacts in Paris, plus the pyramid at the Louvre.

Christie gives this film more class than it deserves. The best parts are of her flirting with police inspector Michel Serrault. Christie is more seductive with a glance than Sophie Marceau can achieve with her entire body, so much so that the mature would-be lovers are more interesting to watch than the younger stars. Juliette Greco also appears briefly for those who may be interested. Strangely, that is Christie speaking French in the French language version, but not her in the English language version. Most damning of all is that I actually nodded out a couple of times while watching Belphegor. But, hey, Julie Christie's in it!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:40 AM | Comments (2)

August 04, 2008

Insee Thong

Mitchai Banchaa - 1970
Triple X Region 0 DVD

I can't possibly improve on the notes that come with this DVD: Rome Rittkikrai (Mitr Chaibancha) the real Red Eagle had to disguise himself as The Golden Eagle, just to hunt down Bhoowanai (Kanchit Kwanpracha) the fake Red Eagle, who was having plans to destroy the country. Rome, by the help of Vasana (Petchara Chaowarat) also had to conquer the Red Bamboo gang which was led by Bakin (Ob Boontid). And in the final scene, Vasana would have to pick up Rome Rittkikrai, in the Red Eagle costume just to proof that the real Red Eagle is still alive. And this is also the last scene in the real life of Mitr Chaibancha because of the unexpected accident that took away the greatest actor of our time on October 8th, 1970.

Insee Thong is a key film to understanding Thai cinema. One of the surviving examples from the "Red Eagle" series, it's a film to be seen to more fully appreciate homages past (Michael Shaowanasai and Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Adventures of Iron Pussy) and future, with Wisit Sasanatieng planned "Red Eagle" film starring Ananda Everingham. The film is timely to watch due to some similar circumstances with a currently popular film. In the case of Insee Thong the star was both a masked hero and a joker. His accidental death during the filming of the final shot gave the film a mythic status that still exists in Thailand almost thirty years later. How big a star was Mitr Chaibancha? The DVD includes footage of his funeral which was open to the public. The crowds may not have been the size of that for Rudolph Valentino, but by any standards it was still huge. The original film reportedly included footage of Mitr's fall from the helicopter rope ladder that flies into the sunset. The DVD ends with a freeze frame with titles (in Thai) explaining that the final shot of the film was also the final footage of Mitr. Amazingly, Insee Thong was released slightly more than a month after filming was completed.

The print that the DVD used as source material must have played in every Bangkok grindhouse. It's hard to know if the color scheme dominated by green and pink was deliberate, or part of the general fading of the print. Add to that, scratches and a few jump cuts, all of which adds to the sense of a genuine movie going experience.

I would go as far to say that, except that it's in Thai, and roughly made my Hollywood standards, it has everything current audiences are looking for in a movie, and more. Aside from Mitr as a masked hero, Petchara shows she can handle herself as well when needed. Bakin is capable of having his spirit manifest from red glass Buddhas, causing his victims to be "heart attacked". I can't say for certain how accurate the translation of the subtitles are, but as I understood it, Bakin studied hypnotism under Rasputin and is able to divide himself into up to three unkillable apparitions. At one point, a police detective cross dresses to infiltrate a gang of ladyboy criminals. Mitr's hearty laughter is topped by the chortling of the bad guys. There's also the teensiest bit of titillation with the introduction of a kidnapped scientist's daughter wearing nothing but a very short nightgown.

For those who don't speak Thai, there are only a few examples of Thai cinema from before the "Thai New Wave" and more recent action and ghost films, available on DVD. The concept of film preservation is still debated in Thailand. Add to that, a lack of interest in making even some basic information available on the Internet Movie Database which seems more concerned with having technical staff than film scholars on their payroll. For someone like myself who has affection for Thai cinema, finding Insee Thong on DVD is like finding a lost treasure that may be worse for wear. What the film may lack in polish and professionalism, it more than makes up for in unabashed enthusiasm.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:46 AM | Comments (1)

August 01, 2008

Cinematic Denver: Gene Fowler, Jr.

I Married a Monster from Outer Space
Gene Fowler, Jr. - 1958
Paramount Region 1 DVD

The Rebel Set
Gene Fowler, Jr. - 1959
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

With the circus, er, Democratic Convention coming to my town at the end of this month, I thought I would have some postings on some film people born in Denver, and maybe a couple of films shot here, during the month of August.

It may have been genetic that the two most famous films directed by Gene Fowler, Jr. have titles that could have been the screaming confessional headlines found on a tabloid newspaper. I Married a Monster from Outer Space and I was a Teenage Werewolf almost tell the entire story in a few words. Gene Fowler, Jr.'s father was Gene Fowler, famed journalist for "The Denver Post", who never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story. With a famed newspaper man for a father, it should be no surprise that as a film editor, Gene Fowler, Jr. worked with another tabloid journalist turned filmmaker, Samuel Fuller. The other significant collaboration for Gene Fowler, Jr. was as the editor of choice for Fritz Lang.

That Fowler worked with two of the more famous names associated with some of the darker films of the Fifties should put his two best known films in perspective. I don't think it is much of a stretch to describe Werewolf and Monster as film noir for teenagers. Just as Lang and Fuller made films primarily for adults addressing the anxieties of the time, Fowler's films could be seen as less directly discussing the emotional turmoil of their intended audience. Werewolf is an exaggerated version of being an adolescent male, with the uncoordinated physical changes, emerging body hair, and screaming hormones with no where to go. The "I" of Werewolf was every guy watching the film, with lust for Yvonne Lime, or her real life equivalent, and not quite knowing how to let her know that you want to be more than just friends.

Monster deals with an even scarier thought, what it means to be an adult. The film starts of with a bachelor party, actually just a few guys at a table in a bar. Bill, the one getting married the next day, stops his car when he finds what appears to be a dead guy in the road. Touched by an appendage that is clearly not human, or of a recognizable animal, his body is covered by smoke which disappears. Bill shows up late for his own marriage to Marge, distracted, or if a bad pun is allowed here, "spaced out". Much of the film's narrative owes a big debt to Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Stripped of the science fiction and horror elements, Monster can be seen as similar to so many other films where one spouse discovers a horrifying truth about the other, accompanied by feelings that the person they married is now a stranger. While a conventional reading of the title would make the "I" of the title, Marge, one could also read the title from Bill's point of view. It is he who travels through galaxies with the hope of keeping his life form from becoming extinct. That Marge, first unknowingly, acts in ways that threatens Bill's existence could be interpreted as monstrous. Whatever marriage might ideally be, it is also a trap loaded with issues ranging from sexual performance, fertility, to dealing with the expectations of friends and family. Even if your spouse doesn't come from the Andromeda galaxy, marriage can still be a scary experience.

Away from the fantasy of Werewolf and Monster, the film The Rebel Set offers fewer pleasures. The title would indicate a film about beatniks, but most of the film is heist thriller that does some petty theft of its own with elements taken from Treasure of Sierra Madre and Asphalt Jungle. The best reason to see this film in its current smeary DVD form is for the kick of seeing Edward Platt play against type. Best known as James Dean's policeman pal in Rebel without a Cause and the Chief in the "Get Smart" television series, the bearded Platt is the owner of a coffee house that serves as a front for his criminal activities. Platt recruits three men, a failed writer, an actor looking for his first break, and the criminal son of a movie star, to enact his robbery of an armored car because they are not beatniks. Later, Platt shaves the beard to be disguised as a killer priest, sometimes spouting pieties while dispatching anyone in his way. It may not make The Rebel Set that much better, but a sharper version might have been nice considering that the cinematography was by Karl Struss, his third from final film. There are fleeting moments, especially in the final chase scene, that suggest the work of someone who was once associated with Griffith and Murnau. Beatniks are peripheral to this film, only to be seen at coffee house featuring some passable faux jazz composed by Paul Dunlap. There is one character, a poet named King Invader, probably modeled after beat stand up monologist Lord Buckley, played by supporting player I. Stanford Jolley. His scene is of his attempts to recite his poetry with the jazz band while constantly interrupted by a square in the audience. The more interesting theft to take place in The Rebel Set is of those brief moments when Jolley steals this show.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM | Comments (1)

July 30, 2008

Inglorious Bastards

Quel maledetto treno blindato
Enzo G. Castellari - 1978
Severin Films Region 1 DVD

I should have known better by now. I've seen enough films touted by Quentin Tarantino to know that too many of the films he claims to love are not only not very good, but sometimes outright dull. What also is apparent is that Tarantino, a filmmaker whose career is based in part on plundering other peoples' films, would embrace films that are reworkings of other, usually better, movies. A case in point is Cat Burglar, William Witney's version of Pickup on South Street, moved from New York City to Los Angeles, leaving Samuel Fuller's snappy dialogue and visual punch behind. I viewed that film as part of a series of films Tarantino programmed on cable, only to wonder what if I was missing something. I love junk movies, but they have to be entertaining junk.

With a fraction of the budget, this is the Dirty Half Dozen, with nods along the way to The Train and The Great Escape, as well as Kelly's Heroes. Bo Svenson, fresh from filling Joe Don Baker's shoes in a couple of Walking Tall sequels, leads a band of criminal soldiers on an escape from Nazi occupied France to Switzerland, only to find himself involved in an impossible mission to foil the Nazi war machine. No cliche goes unturned in this would be epic that is surprisingly sloppy. How sloppy? In one scene, Svenson and his men are to be shot by some German soldiers, part of a much larger group that is marching off to battle with the orders not to take any prisoners. Our guys turn the tables on their executioners, overpowering them with guns and knives. Somehow the ruckus, including machine gun fire, is out of hearing range of the much larger army that would logically not be too far away.

Similarly, two of the soldiers spy some women skinny dipping. Rather than listening and observing long enough to identify the nationality of the naked blondes, these guys just dive in. The women seem ready to play until Fred Williamson shows up, totally forgetting that the most conspicuous person in Hitler's Europe is going to be a person of African descent. Sure, the scene is an excuse to see a couple of nude women with machine guns, but it's also an indication of how dumb this movie can be. Additionally, little attempt was made to have the actors look like people in 1944 so that Williamson has his sideburns and Afro, while another actor, a Sonny Bono lookalike, has very long hair. The finale is sort of spectacular almost in spite the shots with obvious miniatures. The "dialogue" between Tarantino and Castellari, actually mostly Tarantino spouting off while Castellari listens, does nothing to convince me that I've missed an unsung masterpiece.

I'm not going to begrudge someone their cult films, but I'm getting annoyed when DVDs are produced of lesser films while too many better films are still unavailable, sometimes in any format. By critical standards at the very least, where is Deep End, Bachelor Flat. or The White Dog? How about rescuing the films by Ugo Gregoretti, the G in RoGoPaG, in other words, a guy good enough to be part of an omnibus film with Rossellini, Godard and Pasolini? How about a Region 1 DVD of Duccio Tessari's Tony Arzenta starring Alain Delon? Of course most people reading this will probably come up with their own list of films that would be more worthy of even a no frills DVD release. I can't even imagine what fills the three (!) DVD Inglorious Bastards set, nor could I imagine wanting to see the other two DVDs after seeing this film. Inglorious bastards, indeed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM | Comments (3)

July 28, 2008

Help Me Eros

Bang bang wo ai shen
Lee Kang-sheng - 2007
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

If one didn't know that Lee Kang-sheng had also written and directed Help Me Eros as well as starred in the film, one would think that the film was another look at contemporary Taiwan by Tsai Ming-liang. As it is, Tsai was one of the executive producers for this film. The similarities involve several people whose attempts at connecting with others are tentative at best. Unlike some of Tsai's films which seem to take place essentially in one location, such as the movie theater in Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Lee takes his camera through the streets of Kaohsiung. Two of the key locations are revealed to be closer to each other than in first suggested the way they are filmed.

Lee plays a stockbroker, Jie, who has lost everything, his job, money, his girlfriend, and is making ends meet by pawning his remaining possessions. He makes the acquaintance of Shin, a young woman who sells cigarettes and Betel nuts from the street stand where the girls dress as strippers, and slide down a pole to their customers on the street. Jie also attempts to connect with a woman, Shyi, who works at the suicide help line that he calls.

The title is ironic in that it assumes that love is the answer to the problems of these characters, that is to say that they may think love will resolve their respective problems. One of the songs in the soundtrack has lyrics asking about the point of life if suffering is a major component. The film begins with an image of Lee watching a fish being gutted alive on a cooking show. While the fish may serve as a visual signifier of Jie's life, much of the film is about people looking at television, computers or bombarded with commercial images. Additionally, the characters attempt temporary escapes from their lives with food, marijuana,sex or simply fantasy. Jie's desperation is such that he chases after a truck televising the winning lottery numbers, a literal image of someone chasing after an illusion, in this case the dream of instant wealth.

While there are some shots with a moving camera, the tracking shot of Shin walking down the street that opens the film is the exception. Another shot is of two men playing pool, very close together. The camera glides around the pool table to show that what was suggested from one angle is made clear when the change of camera position shows the men are without pants. More often, Lee has a static camera with the characters moving within the frame. In one such shot, Jie is conversing on his cell phone. The camera is positioned so we see the kettle with boiling water that Jie picks up and puts down several times, often walking away from the camera down the hallway and back while continuing his conversation. The scene is one that is more wistful than comic, of a man whose lack of control over any aspect of his life extends to being unable to make a cup of instant noodles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)

July 26, 2008

The Free Will

Der Freie Wille
Matthias Glassner - 2006
Benten Films Region 1 DVD

I was going to write about The Free Will about three weeks ago. The former Coffee Mate was visiting me and watched the first fifteen minutes or so with me. Part of the film's beginning depicts the main character, Theo, stalking, beating and violently raping a young woman. The Coffee Mate went ballistic. It is her contention that rape, under no circumstances, should be dramatically depicted. She also feels strongly that any and all depictions, no matter the context, encourage others to do similar acts. I don't accept this argument but chose to see The Free Will after she had left. I also have problems with the concept of censorship of any kind. As I did end up with a second copy due to a post office snafu, I did send that copy to a female film critic, Martina Antunes, of Row Three. I have a few thoughts but nothing as deep as some others who have viewed this film.

The Free Will is a difficult movie to watch, deliberately so. While most of the narrative is about Theo, now an ex-convict, trying to make a new life for himself, the film breaks into some unexpected directions, primarily involving Nettie, a youngish woman who becomes involved with Theo. During the course of the 165 minutes, the characters are given time to present themselves, both the dramatic and boring parts of their lives.

The title is, almost obviously, ironic. Theo claims that there is something inside him that compels him to commit sexual violence. While his life is a more extreme example, the film is really asking whether the many different things we do every day are based on habit, instinct or actual choice. The major part of the film is devoted to Theo and Nettie's relationship. Theo distrusts himself with women, while Nettie distrusts men. The two meet, part, and meet again tentatively, until they finally create what seems like a working, loving relationship. That love can be totally irrational is demonstrated by Nettie's feelings towards Theo after learning the truth about his past.

While the DVD comes with a commentary track by Matthias Glassner and actor Jurgen Vogel, I have chosen to let the film speak for itself. Of course, if I have misunderstood the filmmaker's intentions that might be said to be also of my own choosing. Still, what I think The Free Will is ultimately about is the choices one makes in life, assuming that they are choices, the responsibility for the actions one takes, and that no matter what we do, we finally end up alone either in death or to face a future that can still offer unexpected possibilities.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

July 24, 2008

Tsugumi

Jun Ichikawa - 1990
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Happy Birthday, Banana!

"I sat up a little and gaze out through the saltwater spray that covered the windows at the distant line of the shore. The familiar, well-loved beach zoomed closer and closer, like a movie sped up."

from Goodbye, Tsugumi by Banana Yoshimoto

I first knew about Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto about fifteen years ago. I was working at a bookstore and her first novel, Kitchen, was just out in English. For some reason, word spread between coworkers that this was a novel to read. Since then, Yoshimoto, along with Haruki Murakami, has been one of my favorite contemporary Japanese novelists. Little wonder then that I made a point of seeing Jun Ichikawa's film from the Yoshimoto novel as the filmmaker is best known for his film Tony Takitani, from a short story by Murakami. I have yet to read Murakami's short story, so I don't know what changes he made, but I question Ichikawa's changes to Yoshimoto's short novel.

The basic story is about the friendship between two cousins in their late teen years. Maria, who has grown up in a small, seaside resort town, has moved to Tokyo to attend college. Tsugumi, slightly younger, is described as having been "born weak", and lives in defiance of everyone based on the knowledge that she is destined to die prematurely. Tsugumi knows which buttons to push, and expresses herself with anger and sarcasm. Tsugumi also exposes her more vulnerable side when she meets a young man, Yoichi. Most of the novel and film takes place during Maria and Tsugumi's last summer together.

The first half hour of the film stays fairly close to the spirit and letter of the novel. There is a visual joke while Maria describes how, in spite of her name, she is unlike her namesake saint. Ichikawa films a giant cross, actually a large crosswalk in Tokyo. There are also many shots of the sea, looking out to the horizon. During the credit sequence, we see Tsugumi tormented by a little boy who loves hitting Tsugumi with a fly swatter. While the boy is peering at a small pile of garbage, Tsugumi kicks him face down into the trash. The character of the boy was not in the novel, yet that one moment better captures how I imagined Tsugumi as Yoshimoto describes her.

It is after that first half hour that Ichikawa strays from Yoshimoto's novel. Two of the bigger alterations involve Yoichi's age and occupation. In the novel, he is about Tsugumi's age, and the son of a developer who is building a large hotel that will likely put the smaller inns run by people like Tsugumi's parents out of business. In the film, Yoichi is more mature, and working at a museum. The other major change, without spoiling the plot, involves a elaborate plot conducted by Tsugumi as revenge for the death of a dog.

I might have enjoyed Ichikawa's film better also had it not been hobbled by some badly translated subtitles. As it is, this second feature by Ichikawa has much of the same formal beauty as Tony Takitani, perhaps not to be unexpected by the former director of four hundred television commercials. Ichikawa repeats certain shots in different contexts so that cherry blossoms seen in full bloom are later seen as bare trees in winter. There is a wonderful crane shot of the camera moving from Maria as she emerges from a movie theater with her mother that cranes up to the theater marquee and dissolves into a wide shot of Tokyo. Too often, Ichikawa's film goes against how I read Yoshimoto's novel, choosing to be serious and sentimental while the novel is playful and caustic.

Above is a frame from the film within the film that Maria and her mother watch in the beginning of Tsugumi. Based on the name of one of the characters in that film, and from what I could identify through the Internet Movie Database, I am thinking the excerpt in question is from Meshi, a film by Mikio Naruse, released in 1951. I am not absolutely certain, but I think I noticed Setsuko Hara in the cast. As I cannot read Kanji, maybe someone will identify what is written on the marquee.

In terms of Banana Yoshimoto and film, her debut novel, Kitchen was filmed twice. I have been hesitant about getting the second version, the only one with English subtitles, as it is several minutes shorter than the original release version. It may be worth noting that Yoshimoto has named Dario Argento as her favorite filmmaker, and Robert Aldrich's Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte as one of her favorite films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 AM | Comments (1)

July 22, 2008

Madame O

Zoku Akutokui: Joi-hen
Seiichi Fukuda - 1967
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

Madame O may be of interest as an example of Japanese filmmaking on the fringes. As a film combining erotica and horror, the more mainstream Yasuzo Masumura's Blind Beast made just two years later is more extreme, and a far better film. I am also hoping someone will rescue Susumi Hani's Nanami: Inferno of the First Love, from 1968, one of Japan's few true independent films that more graphically explored sex and sexuality. The audience that may appreciate Madame O the most would be those most devoted to the history of the "Pink Film".

The story is about the gynecologist from hell. A female doctor, raped and infected with venereal disease as a young woman, takes revenge on men by going to bed with them, and secretly infecting them with syphilis dabbed on with a cotton swab, after making a couple of small scalpel cuts. As part of her treatment with her patients, the women may unknowingly have their tubes tied, primarily to make their husbands doubt their potency. A second, male doctor, joins the practice. Discovering his boss strapped to the stirrups for a self-performed abortion, the male doctor brings out the romantic nature of the woman who proclaimed hatred for all men. Love proves to be the undoing with the murder of a man attempting blackmail, double crosses, and an ending that is a variation on something seen in several "noir" films.

Even though the film is a sequel, at least in title, the narrative does not seem to be dependent on viewing the previous film. What reservations I have on judging Madame O stem from the indications that what is said to be the only surviving version is short by three minutes according to IMDb, and dubbed in English. Not that a complete version with Japanese dialogue may make the film any better, but it would be closer to what Seiichi Fukada had intended. How Madame O may have been altered to reflect what U.S. distributor Radley Metzger needed either for ratings or to reflect his own sensibilities is unknown.

I was also thinking about about how other filmmakers would have made Madame O. For Jesus Franco, it wouldn't be enough to hate men, the doctor would find time to make love with her comely female assistant. Had H. G. Lewis filmed Madame O, there would be more blood and shots of dismembered body parts. What may be Madame O's biggest failing is that it is too restrained in its tastelessness. Fukada jazzes up the film with a few shots in color and some stylistic flourishes. Naomi Tani, one of the most prolific actresses of "Pink Films" plays the supporting role to Michiko Aoyama who has the title role. Jasper Sharp of Midnight Eye does some heavy lifting attempting to place Madame O in the context of Japanese Cinema in the Sixties and as a surviving example of genre filmmaking with his notes that come with this DVD. For myself, it is a challenge to feel as enthused about the DVD release of Madame O when the taboo breaking films by Susumu Hani, Nagisa Oshima and Yoshishige Yoshida during that same era are available only in Japanese language versions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 AM

July 15, 2008

Voice

Yeogo Gwae-dam 4: Moksori
Choe Ik-Kwan - 2005
Genius Products Region 1 DVD

While it is commendable that Genius Products is stepping in to fill a void of films that might have been made available by Tartan Asia Extreme, they aren't doing anyone favors with misleading artwork. The image used for the Voicepackaging, with bloody hands emerging from a young woman's mouth is nowhere in the film, and attempts to sell a concept of gore and unrelieved horror for the less discriminating fanboy. What gore and horror actually exists in Voice is extremely limited and is hardly the point of the film. I don't know what kind of ambitions Choe Ik-Kwan may have, but in Voice he demonstrates a well developed stylist's eye that goes beyond the limits of a genre exercise.

The title is literally translated as "High School Girl's Ghost Story 4: Voice Letter". The film is not a sequel but the fourth of the loose series of ghosts stories largely taking place in a Korean high school for girls. The previous films are Whispering Corridors. Momento Mori and Wishing Stairs. The films are linked by an intense friendship between two students, the mysterious death of a student in the past, and a mysterious teacher. Given that the films are about young women, there is nothing exploitive about the films, made primarily for an audience of older teens. The films are also critical about some aspects of Korean education.

Voice visually explores the idea of high school as a form of hell. At night, the hallways are bathed in red light. Parts of the film take place in the school's basement, corridors of leaky pipes and rot which belies the gleaming modernity of the school's exterior and above ground structure. Even the concept of the elevator or simply the elevator shaft for a one way decent is used here. What makes Voice different from most ghost stories is that part of the film is told from the point of view of the ghost, a young woman who is finds that she may be invisible to most of her classmates, yet is physically limited to the school building in her afterlife.

Voices figure into the story. The main character, Young-Eon, is a student with an extraordinary singing voice. Young-Eon's relationship with the music teacher becomes the subject of rumor. The teacher is a former soprano who is noted for wearing turtlenecks to cover her throat. Young-Eon's best friend, records Young-Eon's voice and has a lunchtime "radio" show broadcast in the school. Part of the mystery involves the voice of an unseen singer that only a few of the girls can hear. Another student, who has had the ability to hear ghosts, comments ominously that ghosts are selective in their memories.

Memory is what Voice explores. It is not only ghosts who have faulty memories as the film demonstrates. One of the less sensitive students states that that one of the rumors about Young-Eon must be factual because it has been repeated so often. Within the confines of the ghost genre is the story about the conflicts young people have between wanting to be part of the crowd against making one's self distinguished by a special talent. The few adults that appear in Voice have a tendency to be useless, with the exception of the one teacher who recognizes the talents of her students. For me, Voice suggests again that Korea has been a hotbed of talented visual stylists. While it will be a few years before we see how the careers of the directors develop, I would make the case that the series of ghosts stories may be viewed in the future as the starting point for new talent much in the way that the Val Lewton produced horror film served in the past.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:43 PM

July 11, 2008

Mitchum in the Middle

Man in the Middle
Guy Hamilton - 1963
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

El Dorado
Howard Hawks - 1966
Paramount Region 1 DVD

A couple of weeks ago, I read Lee Server's biography of Robert Mitchum. If there was ever an example of "too much information", it could be found in this book. Based at least in part on the kind of public persona Mitchum displayed, Server thought that Robert Mitchum should have been a more significant star in the the Sixties. Seen together, Man in the Middle and El Dorado serve as a double feature with Mitchum playing characters with a limp. The characters also provide an unintended symbolism of Robert Mitchum's career in advanced middle age.

Man in the Middle is one of those films that suggests greater potential than what was realized on screen. The World War II begins with an American officer shooting a British soldier point blank, in front of several witnesses. Robert Mitchum plays the Lieutenant Colonel asked to defend the officer, portrayed by Keenan Wynn. Mitchum is assured that Wynn is to get a fair trial even though his guilt is assumed as about a dozen soldiers witnessed the act. In attempting to get evidence to defend Wynn, Mitchum finds a variety of obstacles created by army bureaucracy. Mitchum eventually realizes that the trial is mostly for show, and that any dreams of promotion are tied up with his playing the game.

Mitchum gets his first big clue from France Nuyen, the beautiful nurse with a sense of integrity. The film tips its hand pretty early in suggesting that Wynn may be capital letter CRAZY. Even worse, Wynn's character is a racist. The question may be, is Wynn crazy because he's a racist, or a racist because he's crazy? One could also view Man in the Middle as a kind of companion piece to Crossfire, with Mitchum also taking on the Robert Young role. In the older film, Robert Mitchum could not possibly have been the murderer of the Jewish soldier, primarily because he's Robert Mitchum and too damn cool. In Man in the Middle, it is axiomatic that Mitchum will prevail without much sweat. Considering the literary source, a novel by Howard Fast, with a screenplay by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse, there is little of the tension between loyalty and idealism that another actor might have conveyed.

Marlon Brando had the film rights before changing his mind about being in the film. Might Mitchum have done Man in the Middle to dispel rumors of his own rumored racism that dogged him following his rejection of the starring role in The Defiant Ones? Man in the Middle is less incisive than it might have been. What remains is a gallery of effective supporting actors including Trevor Howard, Sam Wanamaker and Barry Sullivan to help make the film watchable if not overly meaningful.

Mitchum limps again in El Dorado. Server writes about how the original film was to be more serious until Howard Hawks and John Wayne pushed screenwriter Leigh Brackett to duplicate Rio Bravo as much as possible. By the time he made El Dorado, Mitchum's own aversion to acting became more pronounced. Second billed to John Wayne, Mitchum appears in half of the film. Mitchum's character is named J.P. Harrah, but the film is mostly Howard Hawks' last hurrah, one last attempt to reclaim commercial viability after that failures of Man's Favorite Sport? and Red Line 7000. I had forgotten that Hawks redoes the ending of El Dorado with his final image of John Wayne limping into the fadeout of Rio Lobo. I know there are some who love El Dorado. Too often, I got the feeling that Rio Bravo was a river that should have been best visited once.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM | Comments (3)

July 08, 2008

Pleasure Factory

Kuaile Gongchang
Ekachai Uekrongtham - 2007
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

Four years after making Beautiful Boxer, it is discouraging to report on the disappointment of Ekachai Uekrongtham's return to filmmaking. Set in Singapore's red light district, Pleasure Factory lacks those elements that made Beautiful Boxer so compelling, primarily a dramatic story, a charismatic star, and the element of transgressive sexuality. Ekachai's attempt to present three loosely connected stories about some of the residents and patrons of the Geylang district seem to suffer from being to vague, perhaps also the result of relying on the abilities of non-actors to improvise, and well as scenes of silence that fail to communicate anything meaningful.

The film begins with a written introduction noting that the Geylang area was originally an industrial zone. Ekachai reminds the audience that sex work is work, with the exchange of cash for labor. The high definition video and harsh lighting further emphasize the factory, more than any pleasure. The use of hand-held cameras also adds to a documentary feel.

The most effective part of the film is the story of a young, inexperienced soldier who spends to the night with an equally young prostitute. The soldier sits on one side of the bed while the prostitute patiently waits for him to make is move. Having only the dimmest knowledge of safe sex, the soldier show a collection of several boxes of different condoms, asking the prostitute to choose one. Briefly the soldier feels infatuated with the prostitute. For a moment, the two are like a young couple, attracted to each other but awkward in expressing mutual affection. In another scene, a popular prostitute, coming home from a tryst with a client, pays a street musician to spend the night with her, sitting together holding hands in silence.

Pleasure Factory begins with the image of another prostitute looking at fish in a pet store, and ends with her boyfriend staring at his small aquarium. I have to assume that this is Ekachai's metaphor for the people of Geylang, able to move within a limited area, but also trapped with nowhere to go, and essentially disposable. Unlike Beautiful Boxer which challenged the viewer not to feel sympathetic towards a champion Thai boxer whose goal was to live as a transgender woman, Pleasure Factory offers little that has not been expressed by others in recognizing the humanity of women who by choice or circumstance are sex workers. The effect of his newest film is that what ever potential Ekachai may have assumed his subject possessed, it is as if he discovered too late that he really had nothing to say.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:56 PM

July 03, 2008

The Booth

Busu
Yoshihiro Nakamura - 2005
Tartan Asia Extreme Region 1 DVD

I only have a couple more titles to go before I have seen every Tartan Asia Extreme DVD available from the Denver Public Library. The Booth is a pretty good little film that is closer in spirit to the films by Yoshitaro Nomura than to contemporary Japanese horror films. The story is about the final night of a Tokyo disc jockey who hosts a talk show devoted to advice for the lovelorn. Due to a move by the radio station, the show is done in the booth that developed a reputation for being haunted when a DJ with a similar show, hung himself. The lesson is that hurtful words can literally come back to haunt you. At less than 75 minutes, Nakamura creates suspense through sound and flashbacks that only partially reveal the truth.

With the discussion about the end of Tartan as a label, comes some some negative comment about Tartan Asia Extreme. While the label probably painted itself into a corner by concentrating on genre films, that these films were made available for US audiences should be appreciated. Some of the films in their library were better than others. The one Tartan Asia Extreme release I was unable to sit through was the GCI heavy Korean science-fiction film, Natural City. For myself, some of the criticism toward Tartan Asia Extreme smacked of snobbery towards genre filmmaking as well as disinterest in examining differences in Asian culture.

In his book, The American Cinema, Andrew Sarris discusses the problems of appreciating certain filmmakers who are associated with specific genres. The western isn't just pantheon directors John Ford or Howard Hawks, but also John Sturges, Anthony Mann, Henry Hathaway and even William Whitney. The MGM musical is not just Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, but also Charles Walters, George Sidney and Don Weis. The Italian western is not just Sergio Leone, nor is Dario Argento the only giallo filmmaker worth investigating. Additionally, one would expect there to be acknowledgment of the country of origin and if needed, some discussion on how that impacts a film. What genuine film scholarship has shown over the years is that the importance of a film does not always relate to the genre or even to the critical reception the film may have initially been accorded. Keep in mind that four time Oscar winner John Ford never was awarded for a western.

The Malaysian, The Maid, for example, may owe much of its style and subject matter to the ghost stories of its Asian neighbors. The film also serves as a critique of the treatment of Filipinas, as well as the influence of Chinese culture in Malaysia. Being a film fan without discrimination is just the flip side of being a film critic who doesn't bother looking beyond the surface of the genre or country of origin.

For myself, it was viewing genre films that has helped fuel my interest in the works of films and filmmakers who might fall outside the description of "extreme". While I would have preferred a US DVD release of The Unseeable or Alone, hopefully The Victim may stir interest in not only Thai ghost stories, but Thai cinema in general. While I did not care for Phone, this is a film with some very enthusiastic defenders. Not every film in the Tartan Asia Extreme library was in the class of Oldboy. Still, considering the spotty availability of any Asian films for US film fans and scholars, Tartan should still be appreciated for what they did right.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:54 AM | Comments (1)

July 01, 2008

Only the Valiant

Gordon Douglas - 1951
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

The most encouraging aspect about Lionsgate releasing a DVD from their Republic Pictures library is that it may mean other films, hopefully Moonrise and China Gate will get overdue DVDs. Even among the films of Gordon Douglas or star Gregory Peck, Only the Valiant is a decidedly minor film with minor virtues. I was hoping to see more of Barbara Payton in her second to last film for a big studio before alcohol and general bad behavior exiled her from Hollywood. Not that Only the Valiant was a major film. The project smacks of Warner Brothers looking for a way to fulfill contracts with employees, and provide product for their theaters.

Gregory Peck plays an Army captain with the very unsubtle name of Dick Lance. Barbary Payton is the officer's daughter who is hoping to get his attention. In the meantime, Gig Young lets his feelings for Payton be known, and is seen kissing Payton accidentally by Peck. Orders to escort an Apache warrior are changed by the commanding officer in spite of Peck's protest so that Young goes on a mission that means possible death. Of course Peck gets blames for the change of orders when Young gets killed. Peck then takes the soldiers he considers the most expendable for what is more clearly a suicide mission to stop several hundred indians before the reenforcement troops show up.

Only the Valiant is not quite the "Dirty Half Dozen", but the twist is wondering whether these soldiers who have no love for each other will destroy each other before getting the Indians. The psychological aspects are as broad as the characters actors filling the parts - Ward Bond as the very Irish, perpetually inebriated Corporal, Neville Brand as the bullying Sergeant, and Lon Chaney, Jr. as the large and angry Trooper Kebussyan. If you're looking for a film with more serious thoughts about relationships with the Native American, you would have to look at Delmer Daves' < b>Broken Arrow released the year before. Still, having much of Only the Valiant take place at night serves as a visual compliment to the darkness of the characters, and the long shots of the virtually abandoned fort that Peck and company defend give the film a noirish quality.

To what extent the look of Only the Valiant should be credited to cinematographer Lionel Lindon I couldn't say, but there are some visually stunning moments, especially a shot of Peck and his troops seen riding in silhouette. There may possibly be a message about the dehumanizing effects of war when the day is saved by that new invention, the Gatling gun, which mows down the Apaches by the dozens. On the debit side, having Ward Bond as a drunk soldier with a heavy brogue is too much of a reminder of his membership with John Ford's stock company, and the kind of role Ford would give to Victor McLaglen in films that would be relatively fresh in the memory of the audience watching Only the Valiant. The effect is that the makers of Only the Valiant had thought about making a different kind of western only to retreat back to familiar cliches.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:49 PM | Comments (1)

June 28, 2008

A Lustful Man

Koshoku Ichidai Otoko
Yasuzo Masumura - 1961
Kadakawa Video Region 3 DVD

Seeing A Lustful Man reminded me of a literature teacher who's favorite adjective was "picaresque". Of the films I've seen by Yasuzo Masumura, A Lustful Man may not have the fevered nuttiness of Blind Beast or even Giants and Toys, but still finds the filmmaker in a teasing mood. While the story is about a man whose guiding principle seems to be "cherchez la femme", Masumura also undercuts any romantic notions of life in old Japan with the oft expressed statement that being a samurai is stupid.

Raizo Ichikawa portrays Yonosuke, a young man for whom the only reason to live is to make women happy. In addition to bedding as many as possible, he evens spends money, albeit not his own, to free a geisha so she can be with the man she loves. The film is episodic, literally jumping from place to place courtesy of the map that appears between scenes. Yonosuke's generally cheerful outlook is contrasted against the misery of virtually everyone else whether samurai, merchant or peasant.

While he did not see A Lustful Man, Jonathan Rosenbaum's essay gives an idea of how the film fits in with Masumura's other work. Most of the characters Yonosuke runs into are the down and out, the losers of society. There are even a couple of glimpses into gay Japan as when Yonosuke stumbles into a brothel populated by transvestite prostitutes, and during a brief lock up in prison, another prisoner suggests that they sleep together. The women are considered for most of the men to be commodities to be bought, sold, kept or tossed aside. Yonosuke appears to love women for their own sake and not not simply out of his own sexual needs. The film may be interpreted as a critique of materialism as almost every activity is based on the exchange of money. Yonosuke's father is introduced picking up a grain of rice and explaining that his wealth was in part established by his frugality.

On the surface, A Lustful Man may seem to be similar to Truffaut's The Man who Loved Women or some of the films of Fellini, Masumura's former teacher. Masumura keeps Yonosuke's fantasies in the head of his character, while constantly reminding us of the uncompromising realities of the world he lives in. This may also be part of the novel A Lustful Man is based on, but Yonosuke remains constantly optimistic no matter what situation he's in, a samurai era Candide. There is humor to be found in situations such as Yonosuke escaping from a Buddhist monastery only to find a pretty nun alone in a hut. Thinking he is going to seduce the nun, the tables are turned when the woman reveals she is a prostitute, the habit being a source of erotic fantasy for her clients. More often, the Yonosuke's women come to a bad end, in spite of Yonosuke's efforts to save them. Still, for Masumura, it is preferable to move ahead, looking forward to impossible dreams rather than remain trapped in a reality that offers no future except for death.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:57 AM | Comments (2)

June 26, 2008

The Wig

Gabal
Won Shin-yeon - 2005
Genius Products Region 1 DVD

From just reading the synopsis, The Wig may seem like one of the dopier entries, one of the too many Asian horror films about cursed objects that haunt seemingly innocent victims. In this case, a young woman, Su-Hyun, has, unknown to her, terminal leukemia, and receives the wig to cover her hair loss from chemotherapy. The wig makes Su-Hyun appear healthy and indeed, she feels revitalized. To follow are some subtle physical changes. Soon after that are nightmare visions affecting both Su-Hyun and the people closest to her.

What makes The Wig eminently worth watching is that it is a character driven film. Yes, there is the requisite shock and gore, but it is used judiciously, making the startling moments more effective. The real story of The Wig is about the fragile connection between three people, Su-Hyun, her sister who bought the wig, Ji-Hyun, and her fiance, Ki-Seok. The film is about images, how things appear, and what is revealed or hidden by images.

Art is used to explore the theme of the image. Su-Hyun uses the wig to disguise her illness. She also spends time recreating old family snapshots, replacing the shots of her sad, withdrawn self with those of a seemingly happier person. Ji-Hyun and Ki-Seok are artists. Ji-Hyun works with glass creating sculptures of people that are distorted. The fiance's artwork masks homoerotic impulses that has trouble fully acknowledging. The film makes use of a color scheme of black, primarily the wig, white, the clothing worn by the characters, and varied shades of gray.

There are allusions to Christianity, most clearly when the wigged Su-Hyun states that she feels reborn. Some Christian iconography figures into the film, primarily as part an art project Ki-Seok does on behalf of a church. What holds The Wig together is the remarkable performance by Chae Min-Seo and Su-Hyun. It may simply be the shaved head, yet Chae strongly made me think of Maria Falconetti in Passion of Joan of Arc. Chae's performance is one reason why The Wig is so much better than I would have expected. Additionally, the photography is more imaginative and precise, especially in how Chae's face is framed in the beginning of the film. The Wig is a reminder that it isn't just the story, but how you tell it, that makes a film worth watching.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:16 AM | Comments (1)

June 24, 2008

The Nude Bomb

Clive Donner - 1980
Universal Region 1 DVD

Would you believe that The Nude Bomb is hands-down the funniest movie ever made? Would you believe that The Nude Bomb is almost as hilarious as a typical episode of Get Smart? How about a couple of random chuckles, a grin or two, before the film wears out its welcome?

My own memory of the Get Smart television series was that of a show that was inconsistently humorous and entertaining. I never bothered to see this film in its original theatrical release for that reason, as well as the less than enthused reviews that were published. While The Nude Bomb was released as a DVD to cash in on the new film with Steve Carrell, time has not enhanced this first film inspired by the television show.

The plot involves Maxwell Smart and his team of agents outwitting a villain with a bomb that causes all clothing to vaporize. The villain, Sauvage, is looking to the United Nations to pay him off in millions of dollars, or have him be the only provider of clothing for the world's people. A couple of demonstrations of the bomb's power ensue, with nude guards at Buckingham Palace, and a partially clad football team. As my viewing companion commented, this film was like watching Austin Powers without the laughs.

Don Adams was game enough to still do pratfalls at age 57. The Nude Bomb even starts with some promise during the first half hour, but the film drags on to the point where the madcap fight between clones of Maxwell Smart and Sauvage becomes uniinteresting. Having some of the female agents jockey for Smart's attention may have seemed funny on paper. Unintentionally, it makes the absence of Agent 99, played by the television series' not-so-secret weapon, Barbara Feldon, more pronounced. Also wasted is Sylvia Kristel, with Emmanuelle only a few years past, and not nude at all.

Saddest of all is that The Nude Bomb is a reminder of the steep decline of director Clive Donner. After a career peak with What's New, Pussycat?, Donner was able to make a pet project, Alfred the Great. Caught in the revolving door that was MGM at the end of the Sixties, this ambitious period film was barely released. Donner's career after that was one of a hired hand on films and television movies.

Leonard Stern, the original producer and sometime writer of the Get Smart series explained why the film went so wrong: "The Nude Bomb is something that disadvantaged all of us that were connected with Get Smart. Originally, Arne Sultan, Bill Dana, and I had an idea that we found delicious. A couturier, a foppish man with an insane fiendish desire to control the world, but not for the power and money, but for the idea that he could dress every single individual and become an international name. The Earth would be designed by him. It seemed marvelous if we could get the right flamboyant actor. It was never called The Nude Bomb, it was called The Return of Maxwell Smart. Then it got into the hands of people who simply did not want, and I can’t explain why, to duplicate the television show. They wanted to do it differently. I kept saying to them, well why did you buy it? Just leave it alone to rest in its present glory. It then became a battle of trying to maintain the integrity of Smart but not being welcome on the set. The director (Clive Donner), who was a good director, but he was used to doing intimate films was a strange choice. As was Vittorio Gassman as the flamboyant, possibly homosexual designer."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (1)

June 17, 2008

Three

Saam Gaang/Three Extremes 2
Kim Ji-Woon, Nonzee Nimibutr and Peter Chan - 2002
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

Today marks three years since "Coffee Coffee and more Coffee" was launched, and so . . .

An explanation of the title is in order. There are two pan-Asian horror trilogies. The second trilogy to be filmed, in 2004, was the first to be seen by Western audiences on DVD. The two trilogies are different in that this first set of stories is less graphic, and more psychological. The films also can serve as an introduction to filmmakers who will be having higher profiles among western viewers in the coming year.

At this point, Kim Ji-Woon is primarily known for A Tale of Two Sisters. Kim's newest film, The Good, the Bad and the Weird garnered attention at the last Cannes Film Festival. Kim's first film, The Quiet Family was remade by Takashi Miike as The Happiness of the Katakuris. Kim's entry here, "Memories", alternates between a husband who is missing his wife, and the wife, who is trying to remember her identity. The husband has visions of a woman who may be his wife, but he finds himself forgetting details about her. Most of the scenes of the wife, portrayed by Kim Hye-Su, are done without dialogue. The film takes place in a city of gleaming high rises, "where dreams come true", that is strangely with very few people. Like A Tale of Two Sisters, even when one thinks that the story is figured out, it isn't. There are dreams within dreams, and the narrative that may tie everything together unravels as soon it is suggested that that too is a dream.

"The Wheel" is Nomzee Nimibutr's continued exploration of Thai folk legends. The story is basically about puppets that are connected with the souls of the artists who perform with them and the curses placed on those puppets. Nomzee also touches on the different hierarchies of Thai folk artists. In this case it is the status of performing artists with those who enact the folk tales with puppets. With the exception of OK Baytong, Nonzee's stories take place in previous eras. Thematically his concern is with corruption of the family unit. In "The Wheel" the patriarch's desire for stature and glory as an artist are his undoing, as his his son's anger at not having the same opportunities as the chief apprentice. Nonzee also explores the Buddhist belief about the impossibility of escaping one's karma.

Peter Chan's inclusion in a horror trilogy may seem unexpected as a writer-director. As a producer, Chan has been associated with the Pang brothers The Eye and its sequels. What Chan's entry, "Going Home" has in common with such films as Comrades: Almost a Love Story it his recurring theme of love that overcomes the most extreme obstacles. There is a continuity with the casting of frequent collaborators Leon Lai and Eric Tsang in the main roles. Christopher Doyle's cinematography conveys a severe, formal look to the film. The story is about a cop and his young son who move into a crumbling apartment building, a month away from being torn down. The only other people who seem to still live in the building are a man with his paralyzed wife and small daughter. It is never explained why the cop moves to the building. The other family is quite private, keeping to themselves. The boy and the girl have disappeared. The reclusive man is forced to reveal secrets to the cop. The attitude towards those parts of the narrative that are glossed over without explanation seems reflected in the young boy - he steps out from a place that may, or may not have, really existed, looks back, and shrugs his shoulders.

Chan, in discussing his episode stated: " I was trying to make a movie about love. And about how far you would go if you love someone. And I was using Chinese medecine as really a way of telling a story, and if you noticed, I purposely stayed away from a lot of details. I was trying to take the film to a level where you wouldn't have questions weither it's logical. I was hoping the audience would just believe in the story that I'm telling not because of Chinese medicine, but because of love."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM | Comments (1)

June 14, 2008

Rock Baby, Rock It

Murray Douglas Sporup - 1957
Arcanum Region 1 DVD

There's a book of oversized postcards I bought titled Lost, Lonely and Vicious. The book is a collection of posters from exploitation films, primarily from the Fifties. One the back of each postcard is a snarky blurb about the film, sometimes with actual information. One of the posters is from Rock Baby, Rock It. It's hard to forget the image of a guy playing piano with a rooster on top. As it turned out, thanks to the DVD release of this film and a little internet research, one can appreciate Rock Baby, Rock it for documenting Rosco Gordon when he performed with his rooster, Butch.

As for the film itself, there isn't a lot to say. The plot actually starts off the same way as The Young Ones. The kids are about to be evicted from their rock and roll club by some guy with a lot more money. The solution: put on a show with the biggest stars available. The stars in this case are names that would mean something to only the most devoted rock music scholar. These were regional acts that were on labels like Sun and King, back before the suits in New York fully realized there was a lot of money to be made on rock and roll. Rockabilly is well represented by Johnny Carroll, while the doo-wop highlight is The Five Stars performing "Hey, Juanita". In other words, the off stage stuff is filler between the music, which is the reason to see Rock Baby, Rock it.

While watching the film, it occurred to me that if there is ever a definitive history about independent films, scholarship should be devoted to the Fifties Drive-in circuit. Rock Baby, Rock it was financed by a Texan with money and music connections based in Dallas. According to Kay Wheeler, the Dallas teen who starred in the film, J. G. Tiger was a pseudonym for the producer who may well have acted as his own distributor. Just as there was a do-it-yourself ethos for early rock music, there's been a parallel movement, albeit much smaller, of filmmakers who made films that were primarily shown at drive-ins or in the second or third run theaters of larger cities. The films were made to make money for a less discerning audience of teenagers and young adults. I suspect that there may have been a few other films like Rock Baby, Rock It that were made on shoe string budgets with local talent, and distribution by Mom and Pop operations.

In the case of Rock Baby, Rock It, most of the film's significance is in the documentation of several musical acts of the time. While it may seem unremarkable now, it is also worth noting that this is a film about Southern white teenagers who dig music by black musicians. Yes, the black faces are restricted to the stage, but in its modest way, the film is a reminder of when early rock cut across racial lines.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:14 AM

June 11, 2008

The Tiger Blade

Seua Khaap Daap
Theeratorn Siriphunvaraporn - 2005
BCI Region 1 DVD

Throughout the DVD supplement in The Tiger Blade, there is talk about making a Thai film for the "international market". And while The Tiger Blade is a pretty good film on its own terms, it does reveal a misunderstanding of what the presumed audience outside of Thailand might be looking for if anyone bothers to see a Thai film. What Ong-bak has demonstrated most clearly is that the best hope for a theatrical run and commercial viability is in films that have lots of Muay Thai boxing and embrace their sense of being Thai. A good test case will the U.S. release of Chocolate, directed by Ong-bak's Prachya Pinkaew, about an autistic woman, skilled in martial arts.

The production team for The Tiger Blade must have spent hours watching anything that had the name of Jerry Bruckheimer or Joel Silver in the credits, plus every John Woo film from A Better Tomorrow through Face/Off. And considering that the budget was a fraction of a similar Hollywood production, the results are pretty spectacular. At its best The Tiger Blade is enjoyable purely on a visceral level with one action set piece following another. For me, the best parts of The Tiger Blade were those elements that I would associate with the sheer nuttiness that is somehow unique to Thai movies.

The operative word here is "sanook", Thai for "have fun". The film begins with the hero, Yos, interrupted while in bed with a young lady, engaged in a gun battle while wearing nothing but bath towel. Chasing one of the bad guys out to the street, Yos drops his towel to get a good shot. Yos follows one of the bad guy's cars with a steam shovel, eventually upending the bad guy's car. Even better are the scenes with the female cop, Dao, pursuing bad girl Jenjila. In a chase that ends up at a large department store, Dao picks up a skateboard to keep up with the roller skating Jenjila. Of course there is also the obligatory Muay Thai boxing scene with the two women exchanging kicks and punches. When it comes to commercial Thai films, there is nothing as fun as watching Thai martial arts between two equally skilled opponents, especially when they happen to be two hot Thai babes.

And that's the other reason to see The Tiger Blade. There are two scenes with guys opening the door to their respective bedrooms only to find several young hotties gathered on their beds. Additionally, there are the girls that populate the discos. There is so much eye candy that the point seems less about making a commercially viable Thai film than to sell the fantasy image of Thailand. Even the title object turns out to be a MacGuffin, lost in the storm of bullets and boxing. There is also a plot involving criminals and a rebel leader from one of Thailand's neighbors, robbing money to finance a revolution. None of the gravitas gets in the way of the action, not that it matters when you see actress Srungsuda Lawanprasert bursting out of a department store window or running down the side of five storey building.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:08 AM | Comments (2)

June 09, 2008

The Big Bounce

Alex March - 1969

George Armitage - 2004
both Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Elmore Leonard's novel, The Big Bounce, was his first foray into the contemporary crime fiction that Leonard is primarily known for now. It would be a few more novels before Leonard would fully develop the snap to be found in The Switch or City Primeval. The basic elements are there - the crooks, shnooks, and criminals with ambitions that exceed their abilities. The basic story is about a young drifter, working a migrant farm in northern Michigan, hits the field boss with a baseball bat. A kindly judge offers him work at the small resort area he owns. The drifter, Jack Ryan, falls for Nancy, the young mistress of a property owner, Ritchie, in the area. Ryan's background as a petty criminal excites Nancy, who is looking for the adrenaline rush she calls "the big bounce". Nancy and Jack dare each other to commit a variety of misdemeanors until Nancy encourages Jack to steal from Ritchie. In the meantime, Ryan's former associates are looking for ways to make in easy score, with and without Ryan.

At the time the first film version of The Big Bounce was made, Elmore Leonard was still a stranger to the New York Times best seller list. The second version seems to have been made at least partially because of the recent success of Get Shorty and Be Cool. What is interesting in comparing the two films is what was chosen in transferring the novel to film. The first version is closer to the book in spirit, and spends more time with the characters, while some Leonard's complications are pared away. The second version is more interested in the mechanics of the plot, so that some short-hand is used to substitute for character development, while more attention is spent on planning the crime. While the first film betrays Leonard in the end with an ending that is less hip than simply repugnantly amoral, the second film tries to be more complicated in its plotting with even less satisfactory results. In neither film is the title explained.

While reading Leonard's novel, I was struck by the similarity with with Pretty Poison. Both stories are about young men, outsiders with criminal pasts. They meet a young woman who they bond with initially with small acts of rebellion against parental or authority figures. Activities escalate to a point where the women goad the men towards more serious criminal activity. It is eventually made clear that the young women are psychopathic, and driven to murder primarily for the thrill of the act. There are similarities in the expression of Tuesday Weld's face when she shoots her mother to the face of Leigh Taylor-Young in the first filmed The Big Bounce. She Let Him Continue, Stephen Geller's novel that was the basis for Pretty Poison was published in 1966, with Noel Black's film released in 1968. Elmore Leonard saw The Big Bounce published in 1969, shortly after the release of the film. That the novels and subsequent films came out within this three year time span, sharing similar plot elements could be considered coincidence were it not for one conspicuous link between the two films.

The screenplay writer of Pretty Poison was Lorenzo Semple, Jr. In 1966, Semple had made his name as the main writer and story editor of the television series Batman. The first filmed version of The Big Bounce was produced by William Dozier with a screenplay by Robert Dozier. William Dozier was the producer of the Batman series, while Robert wrote some of the episodes. While I will not assume that Elmore Leonard was familiar either with Geller's novel or Black's film, I cannot imagine that the Doziers were unaware of the activity of the main Batman scribe.

The first film version of The Big Bounce may not much for a film adaptation of Elmore Leonard, but it does have a couple of points of interest. Even by Hollywood standards of the time, the nudity is generous, with heaping helpings of Leigh Taylor-Young and even Ryan O'Neal dropping trou in a couple of shots. I can go without close-ups of Van Heflin chewing his food, but it is worth noting that this his other appearance in a film based on Leonard's writings, the other appearance being the original 3:10 to Yuma. On the down side is a soundtrack by schlockmeister Mike Curb, with dopey lyrics by Guy Hemric. In Leonard's novel, he tries to show that he has some kind of pulse on the then contemporary music scene, as evident from this description of Nancy: "She changed allegiance from the Hermits to the Loving Spoonful to the Blue Magoos to the Mamas and the Papas." Robert Webber was much too old for the role as Ritchie's foreman and Ryan's rival for Nancy.

Still whatever was wrong with the 1969 version of The Big Bounce, it is still better than the 2004 version. Sebastian Gutierrez adds unneeded complications to Leonard's plot, while the film, clocking in at less than an hour and a half, still finds time to pad the action with shots of surfers. The story, moved to Hawaii, wanders even further in spirit from Leonard's novel. Perhaps had director George Armitage written the screenplay as he had for his version of Charles Willeford's funny and nasty Miami Blues, there would have been a better film. Instead, the film coasts on having laid back Owen Wilson and upright Morgan Freeman, with the stunt casting of Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton, in place of anything resembling character development. Say what you will about Leigh Taylor-Young's limited acting abilities, she makes a more convincing temptress than 2004's Sara Foster. What over sixty years of film noir should have taught today's filmmakers is that the leading lady needs to not only be able to hold her own against the leading man, but she can't be forgotten when the film is over.

Maybe a second film version of The Big Bounce should not have been attempted. When asked about the worst film adaptations of his book for Time magazine, Leonard replied: "Well, it has to be The Big Bounce. When The Big Bounce came out the first time, in 1969, I said, 'This has got to be the second worst movie ever made.' I didn't know what the first one was until they remade The Big Bounce."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 AM | Comments (2)

June 06, 2008

The Scalphunters

Sydney Pollack - 1968
MGM Region 1 DVD

The Scalphunters was one of two credited films that Sydney Pollack shot with Burt Lancaster. As a directorial assignment, the film is still worth watching to pick up some of the themes that Pollack would explore in other films, especially those that he developed. In view of Pollack's filmography, The Scalphunters could also be viewed as a practice run before making one of the films that firmly established his career, Jeremiah Johnson. Not only did Pollack demonstrate his ability with wide screen compositions in largely desert settings, but The Scalphunters contains the theme Pollack frequently returned to of the loner who who is forced to take sides for a cause in spite of personal ambivalence.

The film takes place in an unspecified part of the west, prior to the Civil War. In this case, it is Burt Lancaster as the fur trapper who is forced to exchange his pelts for runaway slave Ossie Davis, by a band of Indians. Plans to snatch back his furs are undone when the Indians are slaughtered by Telly Savalas and his gang who make money selling scalps to the U.S. government. Traveling with Savalas is Shelley Winters and her rolling bordello. Davis stumbles into the camp of Savalas and company, and his held prisoner, to be sold back into slavery. Lancaster finds himself with the sometimes conflicting goals of regaining his pelts and rescuing Davis.

The Scalphunters was the first of several films written by William Norton for the production team of Gardner-Levy-Laven. What the films have in common is the tweaking of genres, usually the western. Probably the best of their productions is The Mackenzie Break, a twist on on the World War II P.O.W. escape film, being about German soldiers in an American camp. The Scalphunters incorporates late Sixties zeitgeist in discussing racism and racial identity in the United States, as well as the notions of nature's bounty to be found in the desert's plant life. While Burt Lancaster's Joe Bass is not the enlightened hippie frontiersman of Robert Redford's Jeremiah Johnson, the similarities are easy to spot.

That The Scalphunters is more overtly political than other Gardner-Levy-Laven productions may also have to do with Burt Lancaster's control over the project. It would be interesting to know to what extent the film may have been re-written, and by whom. Lancaster was the one to choose Pollack to direct, and cast past collaborators Savalas and Winters. The Scalphunters was also consistent with the westerns Lancaster made in the Sixties and early Seventies that expressed his political beliefs. That The Scalphunters has several threads of authorship that can be discerned is in part the result of the collaborative nature of Hollywood filmmaking. In terms of Sydney Pollack's career, this may not be one of his better films, but in retrospect The Scalphunters yields clues about the types of characters and situations that would appear more clearly in future work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM

June 04, 2008

The Machine Girl

Kataude Mashin Garu
Noboru Iguchi - 2008
Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

It is something of a critical truism that works about sex that "leave nothing to the imagination" are inferior because of pornographic expectations that seem to come with the territory. George Steiner once famously accused pornographers of subverting the "last, vital privacy" of sex by doing "our imagining for us."

Linda Williams - Hard-Core Art Film: The Contemporary Realm of the Senses

In his latest posting, Girish refers to Linda Williams' discussion of the lack of respectability in horror, melodrama and pornography. The Machine Girl has all three in spades, although the pornography is in violence so excessive that it becomes meaningless within minutes of the slaughter of a gang of school bullies. Comparisons with porno are not inappropriate considering the close-ups of flesh and gushing fluids. As has been noted before, the basic premise of a young woman with mechanical weapon in place of a missing limb was probably inspired by Rose McGowan's character in Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror. The Japanese, as spoken by the actors in this film, has the same overly dramatic inflections of characters in Kill Bill, Vol. I. Not only is there nothing subtle about The Machine Girl, but it seems like it was designed for an audience whose knowledge of Japanese cinema was learned second-hand through Quentin Tarantino.

The basic premise is that Ami, a very athletic high school girl, has a brother, Yushie, who for an unexplained reason owed money to a school bully and his gang. Yushie and his best friend are killed by the gang, tossed out of a building to appear like suicide. The gang leader is the son of a Yakuza chief who tries to instill his "code of honor" on the son. The Yakuza leader has his hair curled up just enough to suggest devil's horns. Even more out of control is Yakuza mom, especially when she wears her steel killer driller bra. Early on, Ami tells Yushie that violence only begets more violence, and that point is literally hammered into the audience in bloody detail.

Even though the film is based on Iguchi's own screenplay, most of the characters have less depth than those found in a comic book or video game. It is probably very deliberate that when Ami shoots down ninja, school bullies and angry parents, that it is shot to resemble the point of view of someone playing a video game.

Returning to Williams' comment about pornography, the problem with The Machine Girl is that it so detailed in its presentation of gore that when the film tries to be satirical or black-humored, the desired effect is lost. Gags involving sushi or Ami's arm dipped in tempura batter end up simply being tasteless. The kind of scene in the Canadian thriller Cube, in which a character gets finely sliced and diced into multiple cubes, is disturbing. What was shocking in the earlier film becomes a cliche in the new film. Once one's expectations are sufficiently lowered, The Machine Girl is a reasonably entertaining trifle. What Iguchi perhaps unknowingly has demonstrated is that the best screen shocks, such as The Unknown, Psycho, and even the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre always left the scariest stuff to the imagination.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM | Comments (1)

June 02, 2008

Soft Hearts

Pusong Mamon
Joel Lamangan and Eric Quizon - 1998
Water Bearer Films DVD

Even though the Denver Public Library has a fairly amazing collection of DVDs, plus some interesting titles that I could download were I the owner of a PC, the collection is far from perfect. I may need to encourage someone there to check out Noel Vera's list of 100 great Filipino films. Because it was was one of the two Filipino titles in the DPL collection, I checked out Soft Hearts. The other Filipino film, by the way, is Cavite.

Annie, who works in a call center, longs for the seemingly unobtainable Ron. After a party for the employees, Annie as a close encounter with the extremely drunken Ron. Discovering herself pregnant, Annie goes to Ron only to discover that he has a well established relationship with Nick. Soft Hearts is the kind of resolutely "We are family" kind of film that frequently appears at film festivals. Rather than provoke any kind of discussion, Soft Heart exists primarily to preach to the choir. There is little in Soft Hearts that will be a surprise to an audience, whether it's the ex-military father whose own heart softens, the wacky aunt who dresses flamboyantly, or the boss with a secret of his own.

What I did find interesting was the ways in which Catholic ritual was used in a scene of a baby's baptism, where a confused priest initially seeks the mother of the child adopted by a gay couple. There is also a gay wedding conducted by a rogue priest. While a ladyboy appears briefly, primarily to motivate the film's one homophobic character reason to brag about beating up faggots, lesbians are mentioned but not seen. Bisexuality is beyond comprehension save for a few kisses. Unlike The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros, the Philippines of Soft Heart is very middle-class and very comfortable. Only in one small way did Soft Hearts surprise me. In a film about Filipinos with dialogue in Tagalog and some English was a Yiddish word used in the subtitles that struck me as totally unexpected. Even a reference to borscht in a Hong Kong movie seemed less odd. I did some research and found that the Jewish population of the Philippines is about 500 people. Could a Yiddish word escape into the popular lexicon? Or as the old Disney song goes, it's a small world after all.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:09 AM

May 29, 2008

Noriko's Dinner Table

Noriko no Shokutaku
Sion Sono - 2005
Tidepoint Pictures Region 1 DVD

The genesis for Noriko's Dinner Table was developed from Sion Sono's best known film, Suicide Club. Originally a novel by Sono, the film is literary in structure, beginning with its division into chapters. I have not read the novel, but the film seems like a blend of Ryu Murakami in the examination of the contemporary Japanese family, with Marguerite Duras's shifting of viewpoints and memories that can not always be trusted. The origin of one of the characters could well be a deliberate lift from Murakami's novel, Coin-Locker Babies. In the DVD interview, Sono discusses the influence of John Cassavetes which can be understood in how Sono's film is about dysfunctional families.

Noriko is an unhappy 17 year old high school student, looking for life beyond the small town of Toyokawa, that her father considers paradise. The sense of belonging missing at school or with her family is found online with a small group of girls, moderated by someone with the handle Ueno 54. Noriko runs away from home to seek out Ueno 54 in Tokyo. Under the guidance of Kumiko, the young woman known as Ueno 54, Noriko sheds her former identity, becoming part of a group who rent themselves out to act as family members for the lonely and alienated.

A constant theme throughout the film is the idea of connection. Characters ask each other if they are connected to themselves. Even if the premise of the film is preposterous, the idea is that of discovering one's true self among the several false identities. The idea of connection is literally manifested by the screen of the Suicide Club, the members indicated by colored dots, a play on the concept of connecting the dots. In pretending to be someone's daughter or grand-daughter, Noriko finds herself feeling more emotionally attached to the strangers she is with for an hour.

There are several scenes of characters having dinner together, the acted dinners in contrast with those of Noriko and her family. The acted family gatherings have the appearance of warmth as well as more conversation than those that Noriko experienced at home. There is also a scene with Kumiko discussing how stray cats create there own families. What Sono is examining is the not unusual situation of people feeling closer to chosen families. Additionally, there is the question of how one defines one's self in relation to other people, and who chooses the roles we play (literally and symbolically) with each other.

More obvious symbolism may be found in the use of the tangerine. The fruit that needs its outer skin to be peeled off is a motif repeated with the characters shedding identities and costumes. This is repeated with one of Noriko's school friends, nicknamed Tangerine, who wears a costume while advertising for a sex club. That some of the symbolism may be a bit heavy handed is still preferable to those filmmakers for whom there is nothing beyond the surface. That Sono is interested in visual representations of his thoughts makes sense in viewing his filmmaking as an extension of his background as a poet. While the narrative of Noriko's Dinner Table is tangentially related to Suicide Film, one does not need to have seen the earlier film. For those looking forward to a heaping helping of J-Horror, Noriko's Dinner Table will defy those expectations. What Sono is more interested in, at least with this film, is the horror of an inauthentic life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM | Comments (1)

May 26, 2008

The Louis Hayward Memorial Day Double Feature

Fortunes of Captain Blood
Gordon Douglas - 1950
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Captain Pirate
Ralph Murphy - 1952
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Several months ago, I was reading a biography about Ida Lupino. That in itself was interesting in learning about her theatrical heritage as well as her life and career. One section affected me unexpected. Lupino was married to Louis Hayward, an actor I had seen in a few films, but generally shrugged off as a low budget Errol Flynn, based on his starring in several movies featuring swordfights. What I didn't know about Hayward is that, a British citizen, he enlisted in the Marines the day after Pearl Harbor. As a Marine in the photographic unit he was on the ground directing the filming of the war including the battle at Tarawa, one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific Theater. A portion of the footage from Tarawa considered palatable for public viewing was edited for theatrical release. That 18 minute film, With the Marines at Tarawa won the 1945 Oscar for Best Documentary short subject. Two marines in the photographic unit died filming the battle, while Captain Hayward, who was on the beach as well, was awarded the Bronze Star. For me, it seems more appropriate to remember Louis Hayward on Memorial Day, than to watch war films starring actors who chose to stay at home.

As for the movies, they represent the waning years of a era when pirate movies were considered a viable genre. What would have been a major film from Warner Brothers in the Thirties, with Flynn, or from Fox in the Forties with Tyrone Power, was now a B picture from Columbia. Of the two films, Fortunes of Captain Blood is the better. There is nothing unexpected about the story of the physician turned pirate who proves his honor and honesty, winning the love of a lady of high station. What there is to enjoy about Fortunes of Captain Blood is the craftsmanship of Gordon Douglas. What I liked about the first film is that Douglas demonstrates how to film a scene in a single deftly composed shot. Early in the film, Blood goes to the house of a man who may hold important information. Inside, he discovers the man hanging from the ceiling. Blood hears some men entering from another part of the building. Douglas films the shot so that we see Blood on the right, in close up, next to the open door to the room which is on the left side of the screen. Within that same shot we see the two men enter the room to take down their dead victim and search for a missing item. It's only a small part of the film, but it is the kind of scene that a filmmaker with less visual imagination would do with multiple shots.

Gordon's visual panache is missed in Captain Pirate. The film, shot in Technicolor that seems fairly well reproduced on DVD, is prettier to look at, but the energy of the first film is missing. An fake Captain Blood is on the loose, sullying the reputation of the real Captain Blood. The second film has some of the actors from the first film, as well as scenes that attempt to duplicate some of those from from that film, including the discovery by Blood of an incriminating item found clasped by a dead person. Footage from the first film is also included, placed in a different context while Patricia Medina narrates the background story about about the pirate hero for the new set of villains, and presumably those audience members who never saw Fortunes of Captain Blood.

What is certain is that the on screen adventures of Louis Hayward pale compared to his own life. A more complete documentation of Hayward's life may be in order, as well as the opportunity to re-see With the Marines at Tarawa. If Louis Hayward made being a movie hero look easy, it may have been because he experienced the struggle of true heroism when the camera was focused on others.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:17 AM | Comments (57)

May 24, 2008

Ghost of Mae Nak

Mark Duffield - 2005
Tartan Asia Extreme Region 1 DVD

I was saddened by the news first relayed by Wise Kwai that Tartan USA had closed down. Even though not all of the titles were worth seeking out, I especially liked the Tartan Asia Extreme label because of its dedication to bringing some good and even great Asian films to the U.S. Not only were there films from the usual countries such as Japan and Korea, but also Thailand and even Singapore. The Denver Public Library has fifteen films, and I have two more titles to go before I have seen their entire collection. The are questions regarding what is going to happen to the 101 films listed with Tartan USA. I might be wrong, but considering that the label was distributed by Genius Entertainment, which is owned in large part by the Weinstein brothers, and that the Weinstein's launched their own Asia Extreme label, it is possible that an agreement was in the works well before the official announcement.

Mark Duffield's film makes for complimentary viewing to Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak. The oft film story is a Thai legend that takes place in a past time, when newlyweds Mak and Nak are separated after Mak is drafted to fight in a war. A year or so later, Mak and Nak are reunited. The townspeople try to explain to Mak that Nak and their baby are dead. Furious at the thought of being anything coming between her and her beloved, the spirit of Nak haunts and kills some of the neighbors. Not long after this, Mak realizes that he has been living with a ghost, and that he is a ghost himself. The legend of Nak is so popular that there was even an animated version released recently in Thailand. While Nonzee's version, written by Wisit Sasanatieng, is considered to be the best filmed version of this story, Duffield uses the same story as the background in a contemporary setting.

To minimize confusion, the ghost is named Mae Nak. A young man, Mak, and his fiancee, Nak, declare their eternal love for each other. There plans for marriage go unimpeded even though Mak is frequently disturbed by nightmare images of a female ghost with a hole in her head. As is usually the case in these kinds of films, the ghost has some unfinished business requiring some human assistance. What makes The Ghost of Mae Nak better than the usual Thai film is that Duffield treats the material seriously. There are no characters inserted for comic relief, nor does this follow the frequent Thai pattern of punctuating the scares with laughs. There is a certain reverence towards the original legend that makes The Ghost of Mae Nak unexpectedly moving. There is also a twist ending that, while not totally unexpected, still manages to be quite unsettling.

Parts of The Ghost of Mae Nak are devoted to scenic shots of Bangkok. Mak and Nak unknowingly buy the home where the original Mak and Nak lived, the oldest remaining house in Bangkok. While this particular plot point is more unbelievable that the existence of lovelorn ghosts, what concerns Duffield is the persistence of folk beliefs in contemporary Thailand. Even with shiny skyscrapers, the sky train, and all available modern technology, the characters seek solutions with mediums and fortune tellers. For those familiar with Thailand, this makes sense where the miniature "spirit house" is given space with the buildings used by the living.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:24 AM | Comments (2)

May 22, 2008

Day of Wrath

Adrian Rudomin - 2006
Screen Media Films Region 1 DVD

A remake of the Carl Dreyer classic starring Christopher Lambert? Fear not, you purists, although the idea that may strike some as heresy might hit others as hilarity. What both films share, besides the title, is an examination of how faith is used and misused. In the Dreyer film, alleged witches were pursued and punished. Rudomin's film is about the pursuit of heretics during the Spanish Inquisition. Too top it off, this newer Day of Wrath is actually a pretty good film. What this version may lack in profundity it makes up for simply as handsome entertainment.

On the very basic narrative level, this is a mystery film featuring a hard-drinking cop, in Sixteenth Century dress. Lambert plays the sheriff of the town where a series of unexplained murders have taken place. Like almost all good mysteries, this one involves a conspiracy that involves almost every character, knowingly and unknowingly, from the sheriff who discovers he is a pawn in someone's game, to the highest reaches of Spanish society. Like many good mystery stories, this is also a parable about the corruption of power.

While watching the film at about the time of what would have been my mother's 80th birthday, I wondered what she would have made of Day of Wrath. Some of the gore and violence would have appalled her. She might have raised her eyes a bit at some of the gratuitous nudity. But the essence of the story would have been of considerable interest as she had spent some time studying the history of Spanish Jews, particularly the descendants in New Mexico who had only recently become aware of their heritage of Conversos. This is the kind of historical information that deserves more serious treatment than is given here.

History aside, there is another reason to put this Day of Wrath in the rental queue. We may not have Orson Welles or Charles Laughton, but the outsized Brian Blessed continually amuses as the governor who has appointed Lambert to his post. A dinner scene with all manner of fancy dishes easily recalls this image of Laughton as King Henry VIII. Lambert, in contrast, remains dour through most of the film, making the memory of his manic performance in Subway more distant.

Is this version of Day of Wrath more deserving of respect than its straight to DVD fate might suggest? Maybe just a little bit. One has to at least admire how good the film looks, shot in Hungary with an international cast, and a budget at least one tenth of the summer blockbusters. Visually, Rudomin and his cinematographer Tamas Lajos have lit some of the interiors to resemble paintings of the era. Even if this Day of Wrath may remind no one of that master of film, Carl Dreyer, I have to give some credit to a film that, even though anachronistic, will remind me of that master of painting, Rembrandt.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM

May 20, 2008

Letter from an Unknown Woman

Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin
Xu Jinglei - 2004
Dragons Group All Regions DVD

Adapted from the same novel by Stefan Zweig, Letter from an Unknown Woman can easily be enjoyed by those who have not seen the more famous film by Max Ophuls, or have, like myself, not seen that film in many years. If, for no other reason, this satisfying version should be seen as a showcase for the multi-talented Xu Jinglei. With its setting of China in the Thirties and Forties, and glancing nod to the so called "Women's Pictures" of that era, with a poster of Now, Voyager featured at a movie theater, Xu's film is a reworking of the classic genre. At the same time, Xu makes the man who is the object of unreturned love almost peripheral to the story.

As one familiar with Ophuls' version, it was easy to accept Xu in the role associated with Joan Fontaine. What is jarring is the exchange of dashing Louis Jourdan for doughy Jiang Wen. Xu addresses this casting choice in an interview about the making of her film. This casting may not conform with reel life as much as real life where the heart beats faster for reasons often incomprehensible to others. Additionally, Jiang is filmed in such a way that his image is fleeting or obscured, the visual compliment to his being the frequently unseen and unobtainable lover.

What also makes this version of Letter from an Unknown Woman almost radical among contemporary films is Xu's comfort with near silence. There is a scene when Xu is getting dressed after a reunion with her forgetful lover. What is barely heard is the sound of Xu putting on her necklace and earrings. Another moment shows Xu gently caressing the books in her lover's library. What Xu understands is that romance is not just the grand gestures or even the physical act of love, but often the solitary thinking of that other person.

Xu also sees the humor of the situation, first by naming her characters, Miss Jiang and Mr. Xu. In their last time together, the frequently self-absorbed male comments to the woman he has loved and forgotten before, about his feelings of deja vu when the couple has breakfast, ascribing his feelings to a past life rather than events that occurred about eight years ago. It is also worth noting that Xu's film ends in 1948, the year of release of Ophuls' version.

Certainly, a more detailed comparison should be made of these two films, not only in the changes in content but also in examination of visual style. Like Ophuls, Xu makes use of tracking shots that move with and around her actors. Xu's version of Letter to an Unknown Woman can easily stand on its own merits making it that rare remake that actually honors the source of inspiration.

********

Speaking of Ophuls and remakes, I realized that due to a schedule change I made this week, I will be able to see a double feature of The Reckless Moment and The Deep End.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM

May 17, 2008

Too Bad She's Bad

Peccato che sia una Canaglia
Alessandro Blasetti - 1954
Ivy Video Region 1 DVD

I took a class on Italian film history, and have read a couple of books on the subject. At no time was Too Bad She's Bad mentioned. The importance of this film has less to do with director Allesandro Blasetti. More importantly, this was the first film to bring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni together. Too Bad She's Bad is in itself, a cute film, no more and no less. It is in the iconographic significance of the pairing of Loren and Mastroianni that makes this film more important. It is not simply that Loren and Mastroianni teamed up for several films, many of them international hits, but that the two, more than any other actors, represented the face of Italian cinema.

Too Bad She's Bad is reputed to have been the film that brought enough attention to Loren in its U.S, release at the end of 1955, that by 1957, she was starring in three Hollywood films. Certainly she got the attention of Bosley Crowthers at the New York Times: "One striking point in its favor is the luxurious Sophia Loren, who is something to look at from any angle or any side. As the heroine who acts as a potent decoy for the professional activities of her father and brothers, who are thieves, she displays such a full and shapely figure that she makes it a pleasure to consider being robbed. And don't think the lady doesn't know it. With her, ambulating is an art. Leaning over is an esthetic maneuver. The signorina racks up quite a score."

That Bosley was quite the wit, because speaking of racks, Loren looks like she is about to burst out of her form fitting costumes at any moment. While it would hardly merit a second glance today, it is easy to imagine the excitement of the suggested nudity while Loren changes into a swim suit behind some bushes. Even Marilyn Monroe could not compete against the outsized hips and breasts that made the barely adult Loren seem less like a screen actress and more like a force of nature.

The story is hardly worth mentioning. Mastroianni is a struggling cabbie, attempting to pay for his cab. Loren is part of the team that unsuccessfully attempts to steal the cab at a beach location, where Loren distracts Mastroianni. Through a series of coincidences, Mastroianni meets up with Loren, and her father, played by Vittorio De Sica, where it is revealed that theft is the family business. De Sica feels sympathetic towards Mastroianni, while Loren finds herself falling in love. The film not only offers something of a tourist's view of Italy, but a tourist's view of Italian film comedy.

A redone version of the film might well be in order. I only know a few words in Italian but I suspect that Herman G. Weinberg's subtitles are more polite than what is actually being said. Additionally, there are sizable bits of dialogue that go by without translation. The source print also appears to have seen better days. That said, if one is going to watch Loren and Mastroianni in one of their screen pairing, this is more watchable than Blood Feud. At the very least, Too Bad She's Bad offers an inauspicious beginning to a series of films that virtually defined popular Italian cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM | Comments (4)

May 15, 2008

Day of the Outlaw

Andre De Toth - 1959
MGM Region 1 DVD

To coincide with what would have been Andre De Toth's 96th birthday -

Day of the Outlaw is more noir then western. Much of the action takes place indoors in small spaces. When the action moves outside during the last sequence, the whiteness of a snow storm closes in on the characters. The film was shot in black and white, emphasizing the starkness of the almost desolate Wyoming town, the snow and the surrounding mountains. Some of the characters could be described as being in shades of gray, Robert Ryan, the nominal hero, is motivated at least as much by self-interest as he is in protecting neighbors he doesn't care for, while chief outlaw Burl Ives maintains discipline over his disparate and desperate gang, keeping the potential for mayhem in check.

It may be a cliche at this point to discuss De Toth's films as being about shifting loyalties, but Day of the Outlaw is another clear example of De Toth's themes. The film begins with Ryan riding into town with Nehrmiah Persoff. Ryan's ranch foreman. At the general store, it is established that cattleman Ryan is in conflict with farmer Alan Marshall due to barb wire restricting the grazing space. Additionally, Marshall's wife is Tina Louise, with a past relationship with Ryan that is still unresolved. The hostility between the rancher and the farmers, as well well as any romantic entanglements are forgotten as soon as Ives and his gang barge into the town's saloon. On the run from the cavalry for steeling a shipment of gold, the gang plans to stay for the night before heading out again.

The day of the outlaw is actually a weekend, beginning with Ives getting treatment for a bullet in his chest from an animal doctor, and his seeming recovery from what appeared to be a fatal injury. Ryan tries to keep the peace between the townspeople, who are temporarily held hostage, while making sure that Ives' gang stays in control.

As a film that takes place mostly indoors, De Toth uses visual motifs of mirrors, windows, and doors. The use of mirrors is, of course, a literal device for the characterr' own self-reflection. Tellingly, the barroom mirror is broken by one of the outlaws who finds it difficult to behave within the confines of Ives' orders to not drink or be with the town's four women. The windows and doors, as well as stair railings, serve as framing devices, again emphasizing the confinement of the characters. The indoors is suppose to be the minimal oasis of civilization, or at least civilized behavior, while the outdoors is wild and beyond the control of anyone.

When the outlaws are allowed to dance with the women, the women are treated like human sized rag dolls, swung and pulled along in what is less of a dance, than a gallop to music. The way the rest of the gang dances is contrasted with Ives' courtly waltz with Tina Louise. The youngest member of the gang, played by David Nelson, is shown as being perhaps too sensitive to really be an outlaw, but attempts to continue the sense of discipline ordered by old man Ives. (And now home viewers can delight in double features of the Nelson brothers in their respective westerns.)

In the relatively brief 92 minute running time, De Toth has filled the cast with vivid character actors like Elisha Cook. Dabbs Greer and Frank DeKova. DeKova plays a half-Native American outlaw named Denver, which at least for me, hilariously links him to Rio Bravo's Ricky Nelson's character of Colorado. A professional link worth noting is that about six later, David Nelson directed Burl Ives in the short lived comedy series O.K. Crackerby. In Day of the Outlaw, Burl Ives may try to steal the gold, but succeeds in stealing this film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM | Comments (3)

May 09, 2008

Invitation to the Dance Blog-a-thon: Flower Drum Song

Flower Drum Song
Henry Koster - 1961
Universal Region 1 DVD

One last contribution to the Invitation to the Dance Blog-a-thon, a more traditional kind of musical, and a choice made more timely by a posting over at Edward Copeland's by Josh R.

There is so much both right and wrong with the film version of Flower Drum Song. The film and original play were made with good intentions, and yet . . .

Having a virtually all Asian cast in a mainstream Hollywood film was admirable, but having them portray Chinese or Chinese-Americans seems to emphasize the idea that all Asians look alike. I also have a problem with the casting of American-American Juanita Hall as a Chinese matriarch, no matter that Rogers and Hammerstein loved her. Even when the older characters do not speak pidgen English, there is still the taint of Hollywood stereotypes. Had Anna May Wong not died, and played the part filled by Hall, that may have been another reminder of how little had changed for English speaking Asian actresses since the release of Picadilly. Flower Drum Song works best in not looking too deeply at what may be wrong, and enjoy what is best in the film, primarily Nancy Kwan.

There were times when watching and listening to Nancy Kwan that her energy and attitude reminded me of Ann-Margret. Kwan never achieved the career of Ann-Margret which is yet another example of Hollywood's lack of imagination. Not that things have changed that much in the fifty years since the Broadway show opened, and the forty-seven years since the film's release. Flower Drum Song took advantage of Kwan's dance training. That ability was ignored until the end of the decade when Kwan appeared in The Wrecking Crew with the dance transposed to martial arts.

The other standout scenes involve talented Patrick Adiarte as the very American young man who loves baseball and rock and roll, dancing with Kwan as well as showing his solo abilities. The show's best song, "Love, Look Away" is part of a ballet on an abstract set, performed by Reiko Sato, with the singing voice dubbed by Marily Horne.

As one whose interest in Asian films has directed me to seeing some of the recently released DVDs of Hong Kong musicals made during that time, there are questions on how Flower Drum Song would have been perceived had there been awareness of the musicals that usually starred Linda Lin Dai. The Shaw Brothers produced musicals were Hong Kong versions inspired by the musicals Hollywood produced at the time. Of course the only people aware of Linda Lin Dai would be the residents of the real Chinatowns. That the dance sequences are reasonably filmed documents of the performances probably has more to do with choreographer Hermes Pan, than director Henry Koster. Serious thoughts get pushed aside when one considers that the best reason to bother with Flower Drum Song is the sight of Nancy Kwan's legs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:54 AM | Comments (2)

May 07, 2008

Invitation to the Dance Blog-a-thon: Carmen comes Home

Karumen kokyo ni Kaeru
Keisuke Kinoshita - 1951
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

The song heard at the beginning of Carmen comes Homes is a tribute to the small mountain town where the film takes place. The elegiac feel to the song reflects a part of Japan that Keisuke Kinoshita must have known would eventually disappear. What I was not prepared for is that while Carmen comes Home is about the cultural shifts in Japan after World War II, the film also brings up points about art and culture that are still being discussed.

Hideko Takamine plays the small town girl who ran away to Tokyo, and returns to visit as a celebrated artist known as Lily Carmen. Even before she shows up, the head teacher of the village school, Chishu Ryu, talks about the importance of art and culture, with the opening scene being of the school children performing a circle dance. One of the other characters, a former teacher, blinded in the war, is known for his musical compositions, and his loss of his beloved harmonium sold to pay for expenses. Added to this mix are the town's entrepreneur, who will always find an angle at making money, Lily Carmen's best friend, a dancer who almost immediately misses Tokyo, and Lily Carmen's parents who try to make sense of their very westernized daughter.

The joke is that Lily Carmen, for all her pretenses at declaring herself an artist, is a stripper. One of the high points of the film is that her act is filmed in such a way that it while there is nothing graphic, it is clear to what extent clothing has been removed. And yet, even Kinoshita suggests that while being an ecdysiast may not have anything to do with conventional notions of high culture, there is a certain talent and even art involved in removing clothing onstage. And here is where Carmen comes Home remains quite relevant in that it asks who determines what is art, what and what has cultural importance, and how does one decide community standards?

The main claim to fame for Carmen comes Home is that it was the first Japanese film shot in color. What makes the film more interesting is that it was shot on location near Mount Asama, in the Gunma Prefecture of Japan, out in the farm country and literally one-horse town. With the songs that border on the melancholy, and comedy that is more wistful than laugh inducing, Carmen comes Home could almost be described as a neo-realist musical, closer to De Sica than Minnelli.

But beyond the topicality of Carmen comes Home remain the questions about the role of art and society. Dance is presented both in terms of its use as personal artistic expression through Lily Carmen and her friend, but also in its social form, in the group dance at the school. Lily Carmen's performance based dance emphasizes her difference from the community and her particular individuality. The group dance is to bring people together, to socialize, to reenforce the cohesion of a particular community. It is not a matter of one form of dance being better than the other, but appreciating the differences, and finding comic possibilities in both. As Joseph Anderson and Donald Richie wrote about Kinoshita: "He is quite in love with his characters and he admires their faults no less than their virtues."

More singing and dancing is to be found at Ferdy on Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:52 AM | Comments (1)

May 05, 2008

Invitation to the Dance Blog-a-thon: Mesa que Mas Aplauda

Rene Cardona III - 2006
Laguna Productions Region 1 DVD

I'm combining Marilyn Ferdinand's blog-a-thon with Cinco de Mayo today. This is a major holiday not just in my town, but especially in my neighborhood. Mesa que Mas Aplauda is about a small town restaurant without customers, that becomes an overnight success when Las Vegas showgirl Liz Vega shows up to introduce pole dancing. Rene Cardona III's film is closer to a Mexican version of Coyote Ugly than Showgirls, with fewer pretenses. The film was inspired by the Latin hit song recorded by Osskar Lobo y Grupo Climax, performed at the end of the film. Mostly Mesa que Mas Aplauda is an excuse to have close ups of jiggly parts of the voluptuous cast. Viva La Vega!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM | Comments (1)

April 25, 2008

Sick Nurses

Suay Laak Sai
Piraphan Laoyont & Thodsapol Siriwiwat - 2007
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I first read about Sick Nurses through Curtis, also known as Wise Kwai. You can google the term "Thai logic", or you can use this film as Exhibit A regarding the wide, undisturbed release of this film in Thailand while Syndromes and a Century finally gets released in a censored version. Curtis has noted several times the scenes that caused offense to the Thai cultural gatekeepers. Two of the offending scenes involved the medical profession - a doctor has an erection pressing inside his pants, his response to being with his fiancee, a female doctor, and some doctors imbibe on some alcohol while off duty, but on hospital grounds. To the best of my knowledge, no one speaking on behalf of medical professionals has expressed outrage, but these scenes were among the handful that has caused this critically acclaimed Thai film to be seen as intended almost everywhere, except Thailand.

In the meantime, Sick Nurses is in part about a doctor who works with a black market organ market. Doctor Tar is also revealed to have had affairs with most of his team of nurses, impregnated one, and had wistful flashbacks about the hunky male doctor who proposed marriage to him. One of the nurses, discovering that the good doctor was not going to marry her, gets killed by the doctor and the other nurses to prevent her from spilling the beans about the illegal activity. The ghost of the nurse goes around killing the nurses in a variety of inventive and increasingly gory ways.

Well, not always inventive, as the ghost looks like a more fashionably dressed version of one of those long haired ghosts from Ju-On. There is one scene that will look like it was almost lifted from that film or its English language remake. One of the murders involves a nurse losing her jaw after being forced to swallow paper clips, follow by the literal visual metaphor of a cat getting her tongue, topped off with a killer fetus. While Sick Nurses wallows in dubious taste, the revelation regarding the identity of the ghost nurse may strike some as not only offensive, but giving lie to the notion of sexual tolerance in Thailand.

Sick Nurses is crap. Undeniably well made crap, but crap just the same. It was produced by the same team made Tony Jaa a star, and distributed by one of the biggest film companies in Thailand. I wouldn't be surprised if, like the other horror films I saw in Thailand, this was released with their ubiquitous PG13 rating. Adding to the absurdity that the cultural gatekeepers of Thailand felt the need to gang up on a gentle film by a filmmaker who other countries would cherish simply for bringing prestige to their country, is that none of these people seemed to regard it in any way as contradictory that Sick Nurses would be given a pass for a more questionable presentation of the medical profession. It also bothers me that Sick Nurses gets a U.S. DVD release well before that of the far superior Alone. It's within the context of what is going on with Thai cinema, both within and outside of Thailand that I make my comments.

There are a couple of good points to Sick Nurses. The nurses are cute. And the film runs for less than 80 minutes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:07 AM

April 23, 2008

Karaoke Terror

Showa Kayo Daizenshu
Tetsuo Shinohara - 2003
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

The title Karaoke Terror suggest someone just drunk enough to get onstage to sing "Feelings", "Achy Breaky Heart" or "I Will Always Love You", very, very badly. The original title , from Ryu Murakami's novel, means "Complete Showa Era Songbook". Most western viewers will miss any significance from that title. Overlooking the silly English language title, this is a film that will probably be most appreciated by those familiar with author Murakami.

The store is about two bands of outsiders. One is a group of young men who hang out together and periodically dress up to perform songs in costume, in a remote beach location, with no audience. The Midoris are a group of divorced women ranging in age from the early thirties to forties, unrelated but sharing the same last name, who also share an interest in music from their youth. The film follows the escalation of revenge between the two groups, after one of the men murders one of the women following her decline of his advances.

For those who want a better idea of some of the Japanese pop songs of the time, or you just want to find out a bit more about Pinky and the Killers, this site will give you a better idea. Further musical explorations can be done here as well. Murakami has a very caustic view of Japan and Japanese society, but an abiding affection for popular culture in all its forms. In one scene, the four remaining Midoris discuss their next plan of action. Realizing there are only four of them, they think of themselves as The Beatles. When one asks who they were when they were five, the response is The Rolling Stones.

Murakami's novel was written in 1994. The songs used are similar in being about impossible love, or looking back to a lost past. As explained in the notes that come with the DVD package, the Showa era referred to by Murakami is Japan's post-war era which roughly coincides with his own birth and entrance into middle-age. The notes also helpfully come with the list of songs used in the soundtrack with the release dates and authors.

Those how are only familiar with Murakami through Takashi Miike's film, Audition may be disappointed by Karaoke Terror. The killings are bloody, but also very brief. Those who have read Murakami's books such as Coin-Locker Babies or 69 will see how the film fits in with Murakami's other works. The original novel seems to have not been translated into English.

It is worth noting that several of Murakami's other novels have been made into film, but have yet to be available in the U.S. Murakami also wrote and directed an English language film produced by none other than Roger Corman.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:59 AM | Comments (3)

April 21, 2008

The Guatemalan Handshake

Todd Rohal - 2006
Benten Films Region 1 DVD

I hope whomever gives out prizes will remember The Guatemalan Handshake for best DVD packaging. The illustrations by James Braithwaite have a homey charm that held my attention in a way that the slapped together photoshop jobs from the big boys never will.

The two sports that are featured in The Guatemalan Handshake serve as fitting metaphors for life, especially when faced with limited possibilities. In the roller rink, the object is to keep on going forward, in a circle around the rink, or fall down. In the demolition derby, the goal is to be able to crash into another car until it no longer can move, while keeping your own car in motion. The winner is the last mobile car. Both of these sports involve repetition of movement to the point of monotony, kind of like the jobs most people have, and to a certain extent, like real life.

Thinking about the film just a little bit more after one viewing, what The Guatemalan Handshake may resemble is not any other films, but a smaller, less rambling version of a story by Kurt Vonnegut. One of the key events, a power outage in the small town is just apocalyptic enough to cause the mysterious disappearance of one of the residents. Even the names of the characters are reminiscent of those found in Vonnegut, such as Donald Turnipseed and Edith Firecracker. The concept of time, which goes forwards, backwards, and occasionally loops around, is a literary device Vonnegut explored most famously in Slaughterhouse Five.

Where The Guatemalan Handshake is best is when Todd Rohal is simply observing his characters, particularly the young girl known as Turkeylegs. The truth is that Katy Haywood's legs don't seem that much thinner than those of any ten year old girl. Even when some of the small town eccentrics have an overload of quirkiness, one smiles at scenes of Haywood, observing a sunset in a field, falling asleep on her oversized cowboy hat, practicing baton twirling, or swinging on a rope over a small lake. The film ends literally with fireworks, but it is the quiet moments with Haywood that I'll cherish.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

April 16, 2008

Retribution

Sakebi
Kiyoshi Kurosawa - 2006
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

For a good part of its length, Retribution seems like nothing more than a reworking of Cure, the film that brought Kurosawa to international attention. This is not to say that this is a bad film, but so much of it seems derivative from not only Kurosawa's past work but the films of others. The plot twist does bring up an interesting point, directly commenting on the film that is most identified with contemporary Japanese horror films, The Grudge. Kurosawa has never been interested in simply working within the confines of the horror genre. While Retribution may succeed for some for its surface spookiness, what Kurosawa attempts to explore is the symbiotic relationship between people and ghosts.

Like many of Kurosawa's other films, this is also about memory. Do people need ghosts? Do ghosts need people? If the questions seem silly, it is only because Kurosawa is attempting to symbolic and literal at the same time. What is seen onscreen seems less silly if allowances are made for some suspension of disbelief.

Koji Yakusho again portrays a detective, Yoshioka, investigating puzzling cases of urban madness that have no clear connections. Cases are solved on what seems to be an intuitive basis. Kurosawa's characters often live in dark, rundown apartments or houses. Urban alienation has been a consistent thread in Kurosawa's universe, with lonely ghosts and lonely people sharing the same grimy spaces. The title is less obvious than it may seem if one considers that retribution can mean both punishment and reward. The Japanese title translates as "Scream", which could not have been used because of the American film of that title. The scream referred to here is that of one of the ghosts, not so much of a scream as an abstract sound that emerges from the mouth of the ghost of such intensity that Yoshioka runs in fear.

The sense of the abstract or mechanical also informs the look of the film. It isn't Fernand Leger, but many of the compositions are made up of circles and squares interrupted by the placement of the characters. This is not surprising as the word "mechanical" often recurs in discussing Kurosawa's universe. In discussing the origin of Retribution with FearZone, Kurosawa stated: "In the past I've featured ghosts in so many films. In most of them, I've treated those apparitions as something enigmatic and completely beyond the understanding of living humans. Lately, however, I've begun to realize the obvious fact that ghosts are just like any of us human beings. The only difference is that ghosts are human beings who have lived in the past. Therefore, I realized that from this point of view of the past, we may be able to reexamine the relationship between ghosts and humans and also by understanding the past we may learn to better understand ghosts, or human beings who have passed on. This is what got me started writing Retribution." Kurosawa has described his newest film, Tokyo Sonata as a family drama. This isn't much of a stretch because whenever families get together, they frequently talk about the past. In other words, it's still a ghost story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:34 AM

April 09, 2008

The Three Musketeers (1973)

The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Diamonds
Richard Lester - 1973

The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge
Richard Lester - 1974
both Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

According to Charlton Heston and others connected with the making of the Musketeer films, Heston was first approached to play Athos. It was Richard Lester who recast Heston as Cardinal Richelieu. What makes the decision interesting is that Heston is the least physical actor in a set of films that emphasizes physical action. Heston brings to the role his history of being perhaps the most physically active star for the better part of the past twenty years. Additionally, Lester was playing with Heston's previous roles as the voice of moral or religious authority, and intermediary between man and God. It is almost as if Lester was saying if anyone had the right to speak on behalf of God, or play God on earth by manipulating people for his own amusement, the right was earned by Chuck Heston.

I had not seen the Musketeer films in over thirty years. The films still hold up, a concern I had after the disappointment of finally seeing Royal Flash, Lester and writer George MacDonald Fraser's attempt to launch a series combining the action and humor that worked well before. The credit sequence that opens the first film is a lesson on the physical exertion of sword fighting, that there is a greater demand on the body than simply trying to wave a long piece of metal in the right direction. More amazing perhaps, especially in this day of wire work and CGI, is that the actors actually did their own stunts. One beneficiary was Frank Finlay, who switched places with the more accomplished equestrian Raquel Welch, with his holding on to her, while she held the reigns. One of the unanticipated results of time also is that the cast seems more legendary than it did at the time of the original release.

Casting aside, this version of Dumas' story could probably not be done today because the caustic view of Christianity. In addition to the machinations of Richelieu, part of The Four Musketeers is devoted to the war between Catholics and Protestants. The war is presented as being far less about faith than about political power.

What makes the Musketeer films continually entertaining is that Lester crams the films with visual gags, such as Roy Kinnear running around in a bear costume or vainly attempting to leap high enough to diffuse a bomb beyond his reach, Raquel Welch as the constantly clumsy Constance, Oliver Reed leaning too far back with his drink in hand - falling backwards into a well, or the close-up of Michael York's face, after a night of love with Faye Dunaway, framed with a limp orchid. With all the activity going on, sometimes literally around him, Charlton Heston's Richelieu is like the relatively calm, but potentially threatening eye, of one very wild hurricane. It is little wonder that Heston enjoyed playing this role. No bartering with an unseen deity or walking for years through a desert, no suicidal chariot race with the former BFF, no staying on your back for years get paint splattered on your face. We knew what Charlton Heston was capable of doing so as Cardinal Richelieu there are no doubts that he could have kicked the rest of the cast with both hands tied behind his back. Heston as Richelieu is not only a man of God, but in his joyously perverse way, he is God.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM | Comments (3)

April 05, 2008

The Bette Davis Centennial: Now, Voyager

Irving Rapper - 1942
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Now, Voyager is one of those times I set aside my auteurist credentials. I'm pretty certain not all of it is meant to be funny yet I also can't watch it without laughing until tears well up in my eyes. Of course my first introduction to the film was actually a spoof of the famous cigarette lighting scene, a Warner Brothers cartoon of course, directed by either Tex Avery or Frank Tashlin, with the wolf lighting a dozen or so cigarettes from his mouth.

The retelling of the ugly duckling who becomes Bette Davis could never be made today. The film is two hours of platonic love, obvious rear screen projections, and lots of cigarette smoking. The film is also a love letter to Miss Davis, with two shots of the camera tilting up from her heels to her head. Davis liked whatever Irving Rapper did enough to have him direct her in a few more films, the most distinguished titles of the director's career.

It is the romance of Now, Voyager that is the least interesting part of the film. What remains for me as the highlights are the snappy put-downs, retorts and sarcasm in Casey Robinson's script. Between Robinson, producer Hal Wallis, cinematographer Sol Polito, and composer Max Steiner, there was enough talent to stamp Now, Voyager as a Warner Brothers film that it may not have mattered much who actually was the credited director. What makes the film rewatchable are Bonita Granville as the proto-Paris Hilton, with not much better to do than determine who's the hottie and who's the nottie, Ilka Chase as the sympathetic sister-in-law, and Mary Wilkes as the sassy nurse. Even though there is talk about marriage and children, the men, even Claude Raines, seem extraneous to most of the proceedings. The other downside of multiple viewings, especially on a larger screen, is the questions that come to mind, like why does one of the portraits in the Vale mansion look like it's of Elvis, and why do the pages from the diary of Charlotte Vale all appear as from a published book and not hand-written?

One of the benefits of DVDs is watching an English language movie with subtitles. I wanted to make sure I understood that last line of the film. Was it poetic speech or awkward grammar? This is it, as spoken by Davis to Paul Henreid: "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." I'm not sure if I even want to know what that's suppose to mean. I'll just conclude by being man enough to say that Now, Voyager is my favorite "weepie", consistently causing me to weep with laughter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:40 AM | Comments (3)

April 03, 2008

The Chin of Fu Manchu

The Blood of Fu Manchu
Jesus Franco - 1968

The Castle of Fu Manchu
Jesus Franco - 1969
both Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

The Denver Public Library continues to amaze me. Not only am I able to free up my rental queue a bit with their selection, but I often find unexpected titles. Currently in the library are four films by Jesus Franco. That there are four titles is a mere drop in the bucket of his output, but it is four more than may be found in some other libraries. This was enough for me to check out Franco's two entries from the five Fu Manchu films produced by Harry Alan Towers. As Franco films go, these are not only the most conventional films I have seen, but also, sadly, the most boring. Seeing the films did succeed in bringing to my attention an actress I was previously unaware of, Tsai Chin.

One of the more interesting parts of this Fu Manchu series is the interviews included in the supplements. Tsai Chin discusses her conflicted feelings about taking on a role that had racist connotations. Chin had hoped to make her performance a tribute to Myrna Loy, who had played the role of the title character's daughter in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but was denied the opportunity, even by Franco, of being as sexually provocative as Loy. The films provide a footnote into the history of cinematic portrayals of Asians. While it is laudable that a Chinese actress played the part of a Chinese character in the series, the question is raised as to whether a Chinese actor would play the part of Fu Manchu, and if so, would he resemble the character created by Sax Rohmer, or would there be changes to reflect more current sensibilities?

This question of racial casting also brings to mind the subject of films that maybe should be remade. As long as Rosemary's Baby is to be redone by (yipes!) Michael Bay, and other films are slated to be remade or "re-imagined", here are a few more titles to consider:

Breakfast at Tiffany's. Now some will mutter about this being THE Audrey Hepburn classic. Even Blake Edwards has acknowledged that casting Mickey Rooney as the Japanese neighbor was a mistake. "Seinfeld" even had an episode about how the film diverges from Truman Capote's novel. I say that someone like Todd Haynes make a film that actually hews closer to the novel. I also nominate Takeshi Kitano to play Mr. Yunioshi.

Love is a Many-Splendored Thing. How about a Eurasian actress to portray the Eurasian doctor? Instead of Jennifer Jones, why not Cecila Chung or Josie Ho? And Henry King directed the film from the point of view of a tourist in Hong Kong. Maybe Han Suyin's story might benefit from being filmed by Sylvia Chang, Mabel Cheung or Clara Law?

Meanwhile, back to films starring George Peppard that are need of remaking, how about The Subterraneans. There is a reason why there haven't been any other film adaptations of novels by Jack Kerouac and this is it. A year before Capote was bowdlerized for the big screen, Peppard starred in MGM's travesty. The original novel is about a young writer involved with an African-American woman. In the MGM version, the woman is . . . French! I don't think Leslie Caron was who Kerouac had in mind. Then again, maybe it's better not to fool around with film versions of Jack Kerouac novels. While not as tall as Christopher Lee, but taller than Boris Karloff, how about Chow Yun Fat as the first Chinese actor to play Fu Manchu? It couldn't be that much worse than Bulletproof Monk.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:04 AM | Comments (3)

April 01, 2008

The Love God?

Nat Hiken - 1969
Universal Region 1 DVD

The Love God? almost defies description. In its own peculiar way, Nat Hiken's film encapsulates the confusion of late Sixties, simultaneously progressive and conservative, hip and square, nostalgic and progressive. Hiken gently skewers everybody, poking fun of his characters as he embraces them. There is also a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in watching a film more or less made for general audiences that is about sex. Most of the skin on display is no more licentious than what's to be found in the lingerie section of a Sears catalogue.

At the time it was released, The Love God? was already dated. "Playboy" magazine had been around for about fifteen years, and was challenged by new, more graphic upstarts. Hiken is smart enough to let the audience connect the dots involving some of his double entendres though such as having Don Knotts portray the failed publisher of a bird watching magazine, the legacy of his family named Peacock. Edmond O'Brien, the publisher of girlie magazines, takes over the operation. O'Brien's magazine bizarrely feature one woman, his wife, played by Maureen Arthur. Not only could O'Brien's venture be called a mom and pop operation, but O'Brien addresses his wife as "Mother", not entirely inappropriate considering that Arthur straddles the fence between voluptuous and matronly. Added to the mix is the not so silent partner, a gangster played by character actor B.S. Pully, and Anne Francis as the magazine editor, the epitome of the contemporary modern woman. What is seemingly prescient about the role Francis plays as the editor of the envisioned upscale magazine is that while her dialogue seems lifted from Hugh Hefner's "Playboy Philosphy", she also anticipates Gloria Leonard and Christie Hefner.

This is a film where the Attorney General argues with Knotts that it is his constitutional duty to be a smut peddler. Knotts' association with the bucolic entertainment of Mayberry is subjected to Hiken's satire, especially when the loyal, virginal girlfriend waits on the porch for Knotts to come courting, no matter what the weather conditions may be. Hiken manages to fill the screen with women unashamed of their libidos, while putting Knotts in the position of almost publicly announcing his purity.

Almost thirty years later, Hiken's only feature film might be best appreciated by those who cherish Preston Sturges and Frank Tashlin. Most obviously influenced by Sturges is Charlie Midnight, the gangster who finances the revamped magazine. Midnight, in an attempt to better himself, has the elderly former teacher, Miss Love, expand his vocabulary with such words as prerogative and fastidious. The Tashlin influence might be seen throughout the film, but is personified by Edmond O'Brien's character which is almost a continuation of his role in The Girl Can't Help It. Even though O'Brien was a last minute replacement for Phil Silvers, the casting gives the film an extra edge it may not otherwise have had. Anne Francis, coincidentally, starred in Tashlin's Susan Slept Here, another movie about sexual tension in an otherwise chaste relationship. Hiken is best remembered for his comic television series about men in uniform, "Sergeant Bilko" and "Car 54, Where are You". How much of The Love God? represents Nat Hiken's vision may be up to debate as the strain making the film helped cause Hiken to die at the age of 54, almost eight months before the release of the film. As a satirist, Nat Hiken may not have had the edge of some of his contemporaries, but what is offered instead is something both sweet and wonderfully silly.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:51 AM | Comments (4)

March 29, 2008

Fun Bar Karaoke

Fan Ba Karaoke
Pen-Ek Ratanaruang - 1997
Solar Marketing VCD

The original Thai title is said to translate as "Dream Crazy Karaoke". Pen-Ek Ratanuruang's debut is a movie about dreams, and at one point a dream about movies. The influence of Jim Jarmusch's deadpan humor is very evident as well as one scene that seems inspired by Michael Madsen's deadly dance in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. Pen-Ek's background in advertising is very much at play with a scene of a photo shoot for a face cream, part of the action taking place in a 7-11, and some unusual product placement for Coca-Cola. There are a couple of scenes of people dancing, not dance numbers per se, but still it suggests that it would most likely be Pen-Ek who might create the great Thai musical.

Many of the elements of Pen-Ek's future films are already in place. Characters are connected to each other in ways they don't expect while the family unit is often fractured. One of the characters, a young man named Noi, is a small time gangster whose dream is to walk away from that life. The film is in part about the clash between traditional Thai beliefs and like in modern, crowded and international Bangkok.

That Fun Bar Karaoke is currently only available on a frequently unavailable VCD belies the film's historical importance. Pen-Ek's film was one of the first films to bring attention to Thailand by western film critics, and helped kick off the era of younger Thai filmmakers who were college educated, and often studied abroad. In terms of an era of Thai cinema that seems to have been curtailed following the 2006 military coup, to not have a better version of Fun Bar Karaoke available is almost the equivalent to not having the first feature of Claude Chabrol or Francois Truffaut.

As the title play on words indicates, this is a film about a part of Thailand that is not strictly Thai. Thailand's history is one of resistance and absorbing of Anglo-American, Japanese and Chinese influences. As such, Fun Bar Karaoke is a reflection of the changes in Thai identity. Even the soundtrack incorporates this cultural meshing with Thai pop music as well as a song by Nina Simone (an American woman with a French stage name). Pen-Ek's films reflect the push and pull of identity with characters either going further into the country, that is to say deeper into Thailand and Thai identity, or leaving Thailand altogether. Fun Bar Karaoke begins with the beautiful image worthy of a Minnelli or Donen, with two characters dancing together in a totally white studio, the first of the dreams within the film. The real life dreams that the characters achieve in the end are far more mundane. I hope that Fun Bar Karaoke gets the kind of DVD treatment it deserves. Almost in advertising fashion, Pen-Ek's first film is that of someone who developed his style before fully articulating what he had to say.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (2)

March 27, 2008

The Unseeable

Pen Choo Kab Pee
Wisit Sasanatieng - 2006
Innoform Media Region 3 DVD

The Unseeable was playing theatrically, with English subtitles, during my first week in Thailand. I missed it, learning the hard way that if you want to see a Thai movie with English subtitles in Chiang Mai, it is best to hit the mall multiplex during the first week. It may have been for the better that I missed The Unseeable at that time as during my four and a half months I became more familiar with the genre of the Thai ghost story. With that perspective, I could understand how Wisit simultaneously adheres to the genre while adding his own stylist touch.

Unlike Wisit's previous films, The Unseeable was written by Kongkiat Khomsiri, writer of Art of the Devil II. It was all too easy for me to imagine what The Unseeable might have looked like had a director with lesser artistic aspirations been given the script. As it is, The Unseeable has the formal excellence of Wisit's first two films, but is also their opposite. The bright colors and flashy camera work or Tears of the Black Tiger and Citizen Dog are exchanged for shades of brown, white and burnt orange. The camera framing is crucial because of what what is seen, and either off screen or not easily identifiable.

Also unusual is that The Unseeable is a period film. Taking place in the 1930s. the story is about a rural young woman who is seeking the husband who disappeared on a business trip. The woman, Nualjan, has been given the address of a house in a remote area that offers lodging. In the main house lives the owner, the mysterious Madame Ranjuan, who is pining away for her own husband. The household is run by Madame Somjit, a strict older woman given to walking around in the daytime with an old fashioned oil lamp. One of Nualjan's housemates is a young woman, Choy, who provides comic relief with her sassiness.

At least one major plot twist can be anticipated after the first half hour if not sooner. While The Unseeable is relatively subtle and restrained by Thai standards at least during the first hour, comparisons to such films as The Haunting or The Innocent is very misleading. Wisit has stated that the look of the film was inspired by the artwork of Thai artist Hem Vegakorn. If any western frames of reference are more apt, I would consider The Unseeable closer in spirit, as it were, to Carnival of Souls with a nod towards Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill. Too often, the soundtrack blares to instruct the audience to be startled. As the film was made primarily for a Thai audience, the concessions genre conventions emerge strongly during the last half hour. And yet what Wisit achieves a more genuine sense of poignancy that a less capable director could only wish for. Unlike too many Thai filmmakers who think nothing of playing down to their perceived audience, Wisit aims a bit higher. Wisit's artistic aspirations may have hurt The Unseeable at the box office, but it made for a much better film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)

March 25, 2008

Art of the Devil

Art of the Devil/Khon Len Khong
Tanit Jitnukul - 2004

Art of the Devil II/Long Khong
The Ronin Team - 2005
both films Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

It's been almost a year since I left Thailand. Obviously, Thailand has not left me. The two Art of the Devil films intrigued me when I saw posters at the VCD rental stores. As is common now for Thai films in Thailand, even the DVDs do not have English subtitles, so I had to wait until coming back to the U.S. to see the films. I probably would have been better off sticking to admiring the posters, but after reading that a third entry was in production, I figured it was high time to see the first two films in this series in title only. The devil is a woman in both of these films, practicing witchcraft to seek revenge. The films are for those either with less discriminating tastes in horror films, or an abiding love for Thai films made for Thai audiences.

If the first Art of the Devil has a slight edge, it is because Tanrit Jitnukul's film has the more interesting story, and the character played by Supakson Chaimongkol has greater motivation for her mis-deeds. That the scorned woman of a philandering husband takes revenge is not new, but this is Thailand, where the pregnant and abandoned girlfriend finds out that her lover not only has a legal family, but a second family by a long-time mistress. To some degree, the film speaks to the occasionally precarious state that Thai women find themselves in. More often the film is about people coming to untimely and gory ends through Supakson's witchcraft. There is a creepy blonde girl that appears near the end for no stated reason other than that she's a less than friendly spirit with a penchant for jumping on peoples' beds. I haven't seen any of Tanit's other films, but his Bang Rajan is considered his career best. Tanit does raise the artistic stakes slightly by having the film first alternate between the black and white present and the color past. Not exactly Bonjour Tristesse, but more like "Hello Scariness".

Art of the Devil II is not a sequel but the title given to a film about another woman seeking revenge through witchcraft. Napakpapha Nakprasitte portrays the former teacher getting even with her son and his five friends. Napakpapha was nominated a couple of years ago by the Thai National Film Association as Best Supporting Actress, and almost in keeping with her character, had her nomination withdrawn as she thought she should have be up for Best Actress. There are a few interesting twists to the story about a Cambodian curse and inescapable karma. The Ronin Team is actually seven people, with the most notable member being Kongkiat Khomsiri, screenplay writer for Bang Rajan and The Unseeable. It should be sufficient to say that Art of the Devil II has earned its reputation for gross out horror of the kind that often makes Takashi Miike look tasteful.

For those interested, here is the link to the English titled preview to Art of the Devil III (courtesy of Twitch). From what I can tell, the third film includes elements of the first two films. In other words, lots of devil, but not much art.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:27 PM | Comments (1)

March 20, 2008

Paper Dolls

Bubot Niyar
Tomer Heymann - 2006
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

Paper Dolls is the unexpected true story about two groups of marginalized people who find value in each other. The Dolls are a group of performers, Filipino men, gay or transgendered, who perform together in drag. Several of them work as caregivers for elderly Jewish residents of Tel Aviv, some of whom are extremely orthodox. Tomer Heymann, seen above with Doll Sally, originally intended simply to create a documentary about strangers in a strange land. What Paper Dolls turns out to be is an exploration about the fluidity of those parts that create a sense of identity: country, community, family and sexuality.

That there is even a Filipino community in Israel is the result of the need for worker, especially those jobs that may have been previously filled by Palestinians who have been denied the ability to cross the border. Heymann's documentary takes a dramatic turn when some of the Dolls find themselves in a legal limbo following a crackdown on illegal workers. While Heymann focuses on five of the Dolls, it is the overall dramatic arc of the film, as well as the unexpected collision of two cultures that would seemingly never intersect that continues to be of interest.

At one point, Heymann, who is gay, helps arrange for the Paper Dolls to perform at a very large Tel Aviv night club, TLV. The more traditional type of female impersonators look askance at the Dolls. The Dolls, in turn, feel discomfort at seeing two muscle bound men groping each other as a stage act. When the show is over, the Dolls discuss how they feel more at home performing for their smaller Filipino audience. Even though the Dolls have learned Hebrew, and in some ways have greater personal expression of their sexuality than in the Philippines, they also continue to speak Tagalog to each other, and as a reflection of the influence of the Catholic Church in the Philippines, recite "The Lord's Prayer" prior to their shows.

Heymann also concentrates of the friendship between transgendered Sally, and Haim, an 89 year old man without a larynx. The relationship between the two vacillates between patient and nurse, teacher and student, and even father and daughter. The only weakness to the film is that Heymann never is quite where he should have been in filming the performances. Otherwise, Paper Dolls is a reminder that sometimes when real life is filmed, what is revealed is more original than anything Hollywood can imagine.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM

March 18, 2008

13 Beloved

13 Game Sayawng/13: Game of Death
Chukiat Sakveerakul - 2006
Dimension Extreme Region 1 DVD

At the time I arrived in Thailand, 13 Beloved had already completed its theatrical run. Among Thai critics, this was considered one of the best films of the year. If one overlooks the misleading cover art that the Weinsteins apparently hope to woo the Saw crowd, the film, while not living up to some of the hype, is worth seeing. And while 13 Beloved isn't a horror film, it does have a few truly grisly moments.

The premise is that Chit, a failed salesman of musical instruments, has been fired from his job. A mysterious phone call promises funds to be added to his bank account if he succeeds in a variety of challenges. To begin, he just has to swat a fly. This challenge escalates to more outrageous and dangerous dares. It is also revealed that Chit's activities are part of a web broadcast operated by an underground network that seems to have eyes everywhere.

Beyond the sensationalism is a critique of contemporary Thai culture, humorously relayed in ever darkening shades of black. Chit obsession with meeting all thirteen challenges address the question of financial neediness, when having a lot is still never enough. Quite pointedly is the jab at the Thai attitude towards family when Chit tries desperately to contact the oblivious family of a deceased man. Flashback show how many of the challenges reflect on incidences in Chit's past. The film takes place during one day, and the progression into darkness serves as a metaphor for Chit's own journey into childhood traumas.

Chit's descent into a hell more of less of his own making has some unexpected twists and turns. One of the funnier moments comes when Chit's nemesis at work gets accused of some of Chit's mayhem, simply because he fits the general description of a Thai office worker. It's the kind of overworked cliche that gets new life in the way an ever-increasing crowd gets hysterical as the accused becomes more beleaguered. The Weinsteins acquired 13 Beloved for remake rights, and I would have to imagine that such a film would lose a lot in the process. While the film can be appreciated to a good extent by those who may know nothing about Thailand, there are also parts of the film which have an added resonance to those with some familiarity with the country and its people. Considering also what I have been reading about concerning the alteration or censorship of films in Thailand in these past few months, 13 Beloved may also represent the brief period of the past few years, when creative expression flowered in Thai cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:52 AM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2008

Never Let Go

John Guillerman - 1960
MGM Region 1 DVD

There are two reasons to see Never Let Go. The first is to see Peter Sellers. The second is to hear John Barry's score. The film isn't too bad either.

Made after his BAFTA winning performance in I'm All Right, Jack and the hit The Mouse that Roared, I have to assume Sellers was chomping at the bit to show off his dramatic side. This is not simply Sellers in a serious role, or even Sellers as a bad guy, but Sellers as a nasty, take-no-prisoners, menacing heavy. Even though the plot involves a bunch of young car thieves led by Adam Faith, it is Sellers and star Richard Todd who get ready to rumble. Sellers is armed with a crow bar while Todd swings a heavy chain. In comparison, the Jets and Sharks of West Side Story seem so gentlemanly.

The film is about Todd as the worst cosmetic salesman in England. The car he just bought the week before gets stolen by a gang who work for Sellers. Sellers runs his own car repair shop that he loves to stress is a legitimate business, while the hot cars get recycled through a nearby chop shop. Much to the chagrin of the police, his wife, and almost everyone else, Todd becomes obsessed with recovery of his car, which unsurprisingly was not insured. Snooping around, he gets on the trail of Faith and his gang, which eventually leads to Sellers.

Sellers lives in a well appointed pad above the garage, complete with mistress Carol White who clearly would rather be with Faith. Sellers character of Lionel Meadows may have a small fiefdom, but everyone who knows him is also in fear of him. Sellers performance is of a person so fearlessly nasty, shoving women standing in his way, breaking Faith's hand, that for a moment I thought that had his career gone a little bit differently, Sellers would have become one of the all time great James Bond villains.

Which takes us to John Barry. Never Let Go features Barry's first film score. Not exactly rock but percussion based and rockish. Not quite as good as his score for his next film, Beat Girl which was good enough to be sampled by Fatboy Slim, but more fun to listen to than almost everything he did once Hollywood came calling. Coincidentally, Adam Faith and Carol White both appeared in Beat Girl as well, a film still in need of a decent, and complete DVD edition.

Never Let Go is also one of John Guillermin's better films, made in the period between I was Monty's Double through The Blue Max, with a couple of detours to make Tarzan adventures. Bosley Crother's detested this film which may be for some reason enough to see it. Released in New York in 1963, Crowther's sums up: "How come he (Sellers) was caught in this nonsense? That itch to play Hamlet, I suppose; a desire to change his pace, which Mr. Sellers has often proclaimed he likes to do.
Anyhow, this little terror was made more than three years ago. Since then, no doubt, Mr. Sellers has resolved to avoid yielding to his whim."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:46 AM

March 11, 2008

Bravo My Life

Saranghae Malsoonssi
Park Heung-Sik - 2005
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

There are only a handful of actors I'll see in virtually anything, and Moon So-Ri is one of them. Bravo My Life is not in the same league as Oasis, A Good Lawyer's Wife or even Bewitching Attraction. Moon has virtually a supporting role as the mother of the teenage boy, the central character of the film. Bravo My Life is a flawed film, but Moon's performance is just about perfect.

The film begins on October 27, 1979, when news was published about the assassination of Korean President Park Chung-Hee. I have to assume that the date was chosen to provide something of a counterpoint, the turmoil of a nation against the turmoil of adolescence. The main character, Gwang-Ho, is a short, pimple faced youth attempting to grope with a sense of being a man, but still very much a child. His father is absent, working in Saudi Arabia, while his mother attempts to eke out a living for her son and young daughter by working as an itinerant make-up sales person.

Park Heung-Sik fills the film with slightly colorful characters such as the class "bad boy", who may or may not have cut off his own finger to demonstrate his toughness, or the neighbor boy with Down's syndrome who appears to exist solely to embarrass Gwang-Ho. it is only Gwang-Ho's mother who emerges as more than a cipher, large part because Moon's ability to immerse herself into the character. Keeping her sense of humor while coping with an unnamed illness, the mother alternates between total plainness and being overly made-up. There is no moment of amazement such as in Oasis when one realizes that the woman seen through much of the film does not have cerebral palsy. In Bravo My Life, Moon's finest moment is of her simply sitting in a chair, laughing with affection about her son, and the neighbor boy who constantly sings one song off key.

The problem with Bravo My Life is that while there are several nice moments, there is not enough to cohere into a satisfying film. Among the nice touches is when Gwang-Ho sees the young assistant nurse, the object of his erotic dreams, dancing behind the paper screen to a tune by Ritchie Valens. Later the two are seen reading comic books together, seen first with their feet in the air as they read on the floor. The weakness of the narrative is that Park creates some potentially interesting characters and plot developments that end up being forgotten by the end of the film. The use of a character with Down's syndrome seems especially gimmicky at best, done for cheap laughs and cheaper pathos. I'm not the only writer to think highly of Moon So-Ri. Bravo My Life may be one of her lesser credits, but Moon almost single handedly keeps the film from being negligible.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:39 PM

March 08, 2008

Oh Kei! Two films by Kei Fujiwara

Organ
Kei Fujiwara - 1996
Synapse Region 1 DVD

Id
Kei Fujiwara - 2005
Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

I don't know if there is anything of substance about Kei Fujiwara in Japanese. What there is in English discusses the two DVDs here. Fujiwara is essentially sold as the maker of horror films. And the films have more than enough guts and blood to satiate the more demanding gore-hounds. Yet to categorize Fujiwara as a horror filmmaker seems to have missed the point. While Fujiwara is best known for her work as an actress for Shinya Tsukamoto, a key to understanding her two films may be a brief mention I found stating that she studied under stage directorKara Juro.

One has to go to the supplement for Organ to hear Fujiwara speak for herself. "I wanted to describe the agony of a wounded soul of someone decaying from the inside." Discussing her never completed Organ 2 there is some indication that Fujiwara's motivation is to break through limits, to be confrontational. Fujiwara has been linked by some writers with Tsukamoto, Miike and Cronenberg. The connection with Tsukamoto has been established. Miike is known for his transgressive films, while Cronenberg is cited for his early films like Shivers and Rabid. Less obvious might be a connection with Guy Maddin, both in the melodramatic performances and having narratives about physically maimed characters. The gulf between human existence and spiritual ideals made me also think of Dusan Makavejev's Sweet Movie.

Fujiwara shows little interest in narrative structure. Organ begins somewhat conventionally with two detectives tracking the gang responsible for black market organs. One of the detectives is kidnapped, and is latter seen, limbs removed, connected to various tubes. The other detective makes it his mission to stop the gang, lead by the one-eyed woman, Yoko. Id is something of a continuation with references to the actor, reprising his role as the detective, finding himself in a small community of pig farmers. The introductory premise in Id is that all people are forgiven their sins by Amida Buddha.

Id makes more use of Fujiwara's theatrical background in casting an adult male as a nine year old boy, and two men in female roles, simultaneously having her characters commenting on the incongruity of the casting. Unlike a film like An Actor's Revenge which is about an actor who is a female impersonator, or Black Rose Mansion which has a female impersonator in a role clearly defined as female, Fujiwara chooses to play with gender. To describe the two characters as transvestites or impersonators would be inaccurate. Both are dressed in female clothing. The one with facial hair attempts to rape the one in a schoolgirl uniform. The rapist then complains that the intended victim has male parts. Adding to this is Fujiwara's play with the "male gaze". In Organ, a male character knocks down a schoolgirl, played by a female, and comments that her panties are showing. While we hear the comment, the audience does not see the girl exposing herself. Conversely, in Id, Fujiwara creates the almost iconic Japanese fetish image of the schoolgirl showing her panties, with a male assuming the position. Fujiwara also has her male characters exposing themselves with such things as a bed spring, or a flower, in place of the penis. With the use of certain archetypes of Japanese popular culture, Fujiwara seems to be pushing for an extreme that may have its roots in the writings of Antonin Artaud.

While the release date of Id was in 2005, when the film was actually made is questionable. Some of the footage from Organ and Organ 2 has been integrated into the film. Also, much of the main set was used in the earlier films. Much of the cast remains the same in both films. Not only did she write and direct her films, but Fujiwara also acted as cinematographer, editor, production and costume designer. In this regard, Fujiwara has more in common with the "underground" filmmakers like the Kuchars, who made narrative films with bare-bones budgets, on their own terms. It may be that Kei Fujiwara may best be considered in conjunction with other female artists who may be considered transgressive.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:48 AM

March 06, 2008

My Blueberry Nights

Wong Kar-Wai - 2007
CM Entertainment Region 3 DVD

If I may be allowed a pun, seeing Wong Kar-Wai's first English language film was a bit disorienting. The casting and language of Wong's previous films give them an exotic layer that is missing from My Blueberry Nights. It did not take too long to recognize the new work as being a continuation of the themes explored previously, love and memory, but in new settings. Even with respected mystery writer Lawrence Block sharing the screenplay credit, My Blueberry Nights, is still very much the work of the man who made In the Mood for Love and 2046.

Norah Jones plays a woman, Elizabeth, who seeking out the lover who dumped her, keeps showing up at the small restaurant of his last rendezvous. The restaurant is run by Jeremy (Jude Law), who may not remember names of his customers, but what they have eaten. The restaurant is called "Klyuch", Russian for keys. Jeremy, the keeper of keys left by his customers, develops a friendship with Elizabeth over late night blueberry pie and coffee. The pie serves as a metaphor for choices one makes. Pie, served whole or in slices also acts as a metaphor for divided identities.

Elizabeth works her way across the U.S., from New York City to Memphis, and eventually across Nevada, as a waitress. At various points, she is known as Lizzie, Betty and Beth. The theme of the divided self is made most clear in the Memphis sequence. Lizzie works during the day at a restaurant, and at night as a barmaid. Her regular customer at both places is Arnie, the upstanding law officer during the day, and the forgetful drunk at night. The bar where Elizabeth works, and where Arnie repeatedly "celebrates" his last night of drinking is also where Arnie and his ex-wife, Sue Lynne, confront each other. As in his other films, Wong examines relationships that remain stubbornly difficult for both people, and the impossibility of being free of emotional bonds, set against a soundtrack featuring Otis Redding singing "Try a Little Tenderness".

Just as My Blueberry Nights remains Wong's film in theme and subject, as well as choice of characters, so it remains a Wong film visually. Even though Wong's films are said to be improvised, random pausing of the DVD seems to indicate a precision to the visuals. Darius Khondji has become Wong's cinematographer, bathing shots in blue or red lights, opening the film with extreme close-ups of what is eventually understood to be pie a la mode. Several of the elements of My Blueberry Nights seem to be reworked from Chunking Express. One major difference is that at one point Wong breaks from the claustrophobic settings of his previous films to enjoy the wide open spaces of Nevada. The shots of the empty Nevada sky contrast with Wong's Hong Kong settings of tenements and skyscrapers. Just as Elizabeth travels around the U.S., only to return to New York City, Wong Kar-Wai has travelled to new environments, as in here and in Happy Together. The landscapes and languages may be different, but as a meditation on love, memory and food, My Blueberry Nights has everything one has learned to expect from Wong Kar-Wai's cinematic kitchen. The cherry on top is one of the best screen kisses on film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM | Comments (4)

March 04, 2008

The Young Ones

Sidney J. Furie - 1961
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

After seeing The Young Ones for the first time, I had thought I had seen the missing link between The Band Wagon and A Hard Day's Night. Then I watched the film with Sidney Furie's commentary where he mentions Babes in Arms and Give a Girl a Break as inspirations, and makes the claim that he was first offered the chance to direct The Beatles' film debut. What is true about The Young Ones is that while it hardly rocks, it does have more inspired moments than I would have expected from Furie, especially with the dance numbers choreographed by Herbert Ross. Prior to his own career as a director, Ross seems to have been something of a hepcat himself, with the kind of exuberance in the choreography missing from the films Ross would make himself. Also, unlike most films from Furie, this one from his young career is actually fun to watch.

The story is that Cliff Richard and his band play at a London youth club. The property has been bought by Richard's magnate father, Robert Morley. Trying to keep his identity secret from the rest of the gang, Richard attempts to keep the club open. Money is needed to extend the lease. What to do? Put on a show! It's a bit more complicated with Morley buying out the theaters where Richard and the gang are to perform, and although the end is predictable, it is less than tidy with a couple of plot points conveniently forgotten.

At the time The Young Ones was made, what passed for rock music was often the watered down variety from the likes of James Darren and Fabian. A couple of songs hint at Richard's claim of being the British Elvis Presley. At least on screen Richards seems more of a rock singer than Tommy Steele in The Dream Maker, but both were from a time when British rock stars were concerned with reassuring the parents that the kids were alright. The Young Ones is actually better when it doesn't try to be about rock music, and plays like a lower budget MGM musical from the Fifties, only shot in England in the early Sixties.

What makes The Young Ones watchable more than thirty-five years later is not the bland presence of Cliff Richard or the forgettable songs. What Furie did right was cast the film full of talented character actors, chiefly Robert Morley. Has Robert Morley ever given a bad performance, or not been fun to watch no matter what film his was in? Even the love interest in the film, Carole Gray, hints at talent that seems to have been underutilized since her debut here. Based on her brief filmography, Gray may have been passed over due to her unusual looks, marked by very full lips that suggests she was Joan Crawford and Mick Jagger's secret love child. Had they been born earlier, Richard O'Sullivan and Melvyn Hayes might have been part of the "Carry On" team.

Furie also points out in his commentary how he collaborated with Ross in filming the dances. A duet of Richard and Gray to a song titled "Nothing is Impossible" has the two dancing against a wall, and making a flying leap over a fence. The strings are visible. It isn't Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling in Royal Wedding, but it charms nonetheless. The opening number with cast members singing about Friday night recalls Stanley Donen's forays into the urban based musicals such as On the Town. An extended musical number will remind most of half a dozen such pieces in any number of MGM musicals with a show biz setting. The dance numbers are alone worth seeing The Young Ones. While Rob Marshall and Christopher Columbus strain to prove how cinematic they can render their musical numbers, Furie and Ross get it right by placing the widescreen camera just far enough away to allow the performance to speak for itself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:48 AM | Comments (5)

March 01, 2008

Bigger than Life

Nicholas Ray - 1956
B.F.I. Region 2 DVD

The only previous time I saw Bigger than Life was in the early Seventies. This was on a late night black and white television broadcast, pan and scan format. Wide screen television isn't the same as a palatial movie theater with a CinemaScope screen, but it is a bit closer to the way the film was meant to be seen.

Seeing Bigger than Life on the wide screen means having a clearer sense of the physical space between James Mason and Barbara Rush. Mason would also be framed in such a way that he would constantly be bigger, or above, Rush and screen son Christopher Olson. Seeing the film in color meant seeing Barbara Rush's orange dress contrasting against the gray, blue and black clothing worn by the other characters. As is also mentioned by Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Jarmusch in the DVD supplement where they converse about Ray and Bigger than Life, Christopher Olson is noticeably wearing a red jacket, just like James Dean in Rebel without a Cause.

Olson could well be dubbed the littlest rebel. It was in seeing the DVD a second time that I noticed that many of the children exiting the school during the opening credit sequence had red clothing, as if Ray was anticipating the cultural impact that would be made almost ten years later by that generation. In looking back at Ray's films it might be argued that the function of sons is to rebel against their fathers. This may not always be a biological father but a father figure. This can be seen with Farley Granger acting against his criminal "family" in They Live by Night, as well as Jeffrey Hunter's questioning and uncertain Jesus in King of Kings. The most famous scene in Bigger than Life is of Mason's attempt to re-enact the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament. Bigger than Life can also be viewed as a companion piece to Rebel without a Cause in how Ray looks at middle class families with both hope and despair. When James Dean tells Jim Backus to "pop one" on mother Ann Doran, it's the expression of wanting to believe in patriarchal, traditional roles. Similarly, in Bigger than Life is the dichotomy of the desire for the traditional male role, as idealized by Mason, the impossibility of living up to that ideal, and the fragility of alternate solutions.

Being at cross purposes is both at the core of Ray's life as well as his films. Ray's filmography suggests the conflict between the desire for artistic expression and the approval of commercial success. There is also the shift between the collaboration with political and artistic rebels in Ray's pre-Hollywood career, followed by his early development in Hollywood under the patronage and protection of Howard Hughes, a relationship that kept Ray from being blacklisted or appearing before the House of Un-American Activities. Ray was probably keenly self-aware of the contradictions in his life and work. What a film like Bigger than Life represents is Ray's own vacillation between the comfort of the established, traditional ways of living, and the exhilaration and anxiety of finding one's own direction.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:33 AM | Comments (3)

February 26, 2008

The Arrangement

Elia Kazan - 1969
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

It may sound morbid, but one of my favorite parts of watching the Academy Awards has been the in memoriam tribute to the deceased actors and crafts people of the past year. What never fails to happen is that I will see a clip from some film and wonder why I'm not watching a good, if not great, classic film, instead of complaining about the seemingly endless boredom of the Oscar show. Not having cable, or even on-air television at this time may have proven to be a good thing for me. I had my own in memoriam tribute by watching a film starring Deborah Kerr.

I didn't see The Arrangement when it was originally released. At the time I was put off by the generally negative reviews, plus Andrew Sarris' designation of Elia Kazan in "Less than meets the Eye" in his "American Cinema". In retrospect, at least for myself, it was better to see The Arrangement after having greater familiarity with Kazan's career, and seeing most of his films. Some to the stylization of The Arrangement makes the film visually unlike Kazan's other work, although there are also moments that are echos of his work on stage. There are elements of autobiography in the film which was based on Kazan's novel. I haven't read the novel, or Kazan's massive autobiography, but the film The Arrangement is the work of someone who felt the deep need to prove themselves still relevant at a time when a new generation of filmmakers were making themselves known.

Kirk Douglas portrays Kazan's alter-ego, Eddie Anderson, an advertising executive who wants to chuck all of the trappings of an affluent lifestyle in favor of his original goal of being a writer. Following a failed suicide attempt, Anderson attempts to face his past and figure out his future. Kerr is the seemingly perfect wife, Florence, whose life is wrapped up in her husband living a life of material success. Faye Dunaway is the girl friend, Gwen, who may not always want to be with Anderson, but encourages him to confront truths about himself. Parts of the film are flashbacks of Anderson remembering parts of his past life. One very theatrical device is shots of Douglas seen with his younger self and his parents, something that may remind some of Wild Strawberries, but also recalls Kazan's stage work with Arthur Miller. There are also scenes of Anderson past and present, in conversation. The advertising executive Anderson is easily recognizable by his mustache which makes Douglas resemble a cheerier version of his similar appearance as a gangster boss in The Brotherhood, released the previous year.

The Arrangement seems to have anticipated Kazan's own filmmaking career. Just as his character of Eddie Anderson leaves behind his "successful" life, Kazan's next film was also his first to be made outside of the Hollywood mainstream, the low budget The Visitors. While trying to stretch himself as an artist is a worthy goal, some of the stylization of The Arrangement should have been resisted, especially a scene with Douglas imagining himself in a fight with another of Dunaway's suitor, punctuated with the kind of comic book title cards better associated with the "Batman" television series that had already fallen out of favor. More effective is when Anderson talks about his uncle and we briefly see a clip from Kazan's most personal film, America, America (still overdue a DVD release). The Arrangement offers an interesting little time capsule of when major stars took advantage of the new ratings system with on-screen nudity for Douglas, Dunaway and, yes, Miss Kerr. In his own autobiography, Douglas stated, "I enjoyed doing the picture . . Kazan was trying to do something different, bold, go inside the head of my character in all his confusion over his career, his women, his father, his life. Screening of the picture drew mixed reactions. In the editing, Kazan changed the ending. I felt that he hadn't made the movie that was based on his book, the movie that he had shot." What may be the most troubling aspect of The Arrangement is this indication that Kazan himself compromised his own story about authenticity and integrity, neither trusting his audience nor himself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:46 PM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2008

The Gnome-Mobile

Robert Stevenson - 1967
Disney Region 1 DVD

This is where my curiosity takes me . . . I checked the IMDb listing for Upton Sinclair. I had wondered if there were any earlier film versions of Oil! that had since been forgotten. What caught my eye was seeing that the last time there was a film version of any Sinclair novel, it was one made by Walt Disney. I was unaware that Sinclair wrote a children's book, titled The Gno-mobile. Even more surprising, given that they were politically opposite, is that Disney made the film. Sinclair was primarily a socialist, with writings critical of big business. Disney, the capitalist son of socialists even had a kingdom named after himself. The Gnome-Mobile was first released in July 1967, almost half a year after Disney's death. It would have been interesting to know if Sinclair had seen the film and what his reaction had been.

To some extent, Sinclair's allegory is recognizable. The head of a conglomerate, D. J. Mulrooney, is introduced as having made his original fortune with lumbar. Taking time to go on a road trip with his two grandchildren, they stop for a picnic in one of the forests areas that he owns. The trio discover two gnomes, young man Jasper, and his grandfather, Knobby. The Mulrooneys learn that the colony of gnomes living in the area were almost all driven out by the tree harvesting by D. J. Mulrooney. A decision is made to help the gnomes find another colony to join, which will allow Jasper to marry a gnome bride. While on the road, the group encounters Horatio Quaxton, who hopes to feature the gnomes with his traveling freak show. D. J. Mulrooney is temporarily held prisoner in a psychiatric facility. There also are some talking animals who discuss with the gnomes whether the humans are to be trusted. I can't be totally certain as I haven't read Sinclair's book, but I would guess there was some kind of message concerning ecology, responsibility to nature, and consideration to indigenous people that pretty much gets forgotten by the end of the film. More attention seems to have been devoted to the female gnomes Tinker Belle style costumes, and the male gnomes ghetto fabulous pimp hats.

I vaguely recall part of an interview with Howard Hawks where Walter Brennan offered to play a part with or without teeth. Hawks decided Brennan was much funnier without teeth. In The Gnome-Mobile, Brennan plays Mulrooney with teeth and Knobby without teeth. He's not very funny either way. As Knobby, Brennan is simply cantankerous rather than cantankerous and endearing as he was in Rio Bravo. Likewise, the character of D. J. Mulrooney could have potentially been a friendlier, more successful version of the sly entrepreneur, Old Atrocity, in Barbary Coast. Better are the smaller roles, such as Sean McClory as Quaxton, in a part same seemed intended for Jack Carson. The two have some physical resemblance, and Carson was virtually typecast as the guy who was always selling something to somebody. Two refugees from "Green Acres", Frank Cady and Alvy Moore, provide seconds of pleasure. Perennial punching bag Richard Deacon and Ed Wynn, in his final performance, are virtually wasted. It may be that Robert Stevenson knew all along that he could never repeat the success of Mary Poppins, or that being house director for Walt Disney had simply taken a toll on his energy.

For Oscar prognosticators, they should consider how film adaptations of Upton Sinclair's novels might not have won Academy Awards, but have attracted Oscar winning talent. The Wet Parade was directed by future winner Victor Fleming, and featured Walter Huston. While Robert Stevenson had to content himself with a nomination for Mary Poppins, Walter Brennan had bragging rights to three wins compared to one solitary Oscar (so far) for Daniel Day-Lewis. Is that enough reason to see The Gnome-Mobile? Not really. But it does provide an amusing footnote, and a reminder as to why the Oscars should never be taken too seriously.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

February 12, 2008

Invisible Waves

Pen-Ek Ratanaruang - 2006
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

It has become more clear that the Oscar category of Best Foreign Language Film needs to be reconsidered. What good intentions inspired the recognition of films from beyond Hollywood is now muddled by international co-productions, official choices over critical choices, and the decisions made by a small group within the Academy. While the Academy could be commended for embracing Federico Fellini and Ingmar Bergman, others such as Michelangelo Antonioni and Bernardo Bertolucci had to wait until they made English language films to get any recognition. If being considered the best film in your own country was enough, than a film like Savage Nights should have been a nominee as well.

That the primary or sole language spoken in the film is that of the particular country is becoming more problematic. The original nominee from Israel, The Band's Visit was considered to have had too much English. Conversely, and perhaps perversely, I have to ask if Spanish should be considered a foreign language within the United States. Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 was a pan-Asian film with the different actors speaking the language of their respective countries, even to each other. Invisible Waves flips that around with the characters primarily speaking English. For a brief while, the film was Thailand's nominee for Best Foreign Language Film even though there is hardly any Thai spoken.

Pen-Ek's film is about a Japanese chef in Macau, who is also the lover of his boss's wife. Sent on a cruise to Phuket by his boss, the chef, Kyoji, finds himself literally adrift, where he meets one of the few passengers, Noi, a woman with her own secrets. As in Last Life in the Universe, not all of the characters are who they claim to be. With the notable exception of a scene taking place in the boss's home, the settings for Invisible Waves are ramshackle, if not simply shabby. A major part of the film takes place on the decrepit boat. Whether battling an errant shower head, or a folding bed that won't stay down, Kyoji seems to be waging a losing war against the mechanical world. The deadpan humor of the sequence is reminiscent of a Jim Jarmusch character lost in the world envisioned by Jacques Tati.

Invisible Waves was written by Prabda Yoon who had also written Last Life in the Universe. Both films also had Tadanobu Asano as the lead character. In the latter film, some of the same ideas of identity are explored, but the narrative is stripped down, rendering the film more abstract and elliptical. Some of the more dramatic events are off screen, heard but not seen, or barely suggested by one or two quick shots. Adding to the effect of abstraction is that all of the settings are depopulated. Spaces may be cluttered with things, but there are very few people.

With a cast including the Korean Kang Hye-Jeong and Hong Kong mainstay Eric Tsang, whatever interest there is in Thailand or Thai identity is incidental to Invisible Waves. I had to wonder if the Thai committee responsible for making the film the official entry last year had actually seen the film or had based their decision on Pen-Ek's reputation with three previous entries. The replacement entry, Ahimsa: Stop to Run, is almost as unconventional in its story about a young man encountering karma in the form of a guy in a red track suit. What makes this choice stranger is that the film was released in Thailand in 2005. Pen-Ek wasn't considered for this year's Oscar race as Ploy was almost banned in Thailand due to sexual content. Those who have some awareness of Thai film were the least surprised that Chatrichalerm Yukol would have his film chosen to represent Thailand. Aside from being more traditional, the story about King Naresuan is a celebration about Thai identity. Additionally, Prince Chatri is a member of the Thai royal family which explains why the release of his two films on Naresuan were considered national events. When some film critics ask why certain films are anointed for Oscar consideration, it is not that the waves are invisible, but that closer observation is required.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:37 PM | Comments (3)

February 09, 2008

Golden Balls

Huevos de Oro
Bigas Luna - 1993
Lolafilms Region 1 DVD

With Javier Bardem receiving a slew of awards lately, it's a good time to look at his earlier work. Certainly the title of this film should be enough to elicit notice. Bardem has typically portrayed characters who are generally self-assured, and it does not take much to imagine what the title means. Bigas Luna makes certain that the viewer gets the, er, point of the film with a plethora of phallic imagery.

Golden Balls moves into unexpected directions as a film about a man whose sexual and professional identities are firmly connected. The symbolic aspects of the film are obvious. Bigas Luna isn't stating anything profound about Spanish machismo, or perhaps male identity in general. The strength of the film in the close-ups of lips, hands, shoes floating in a pool, a stopped Rolex, and ants exploring the human body. While Bardem's character speaks frequently about his admiration for Salvador Dali, and copies of his paintings are seen in his house, it is the images of the ants that brings to mind similar images from Un Chien Andalou.

Bardem's Benito Gonzalez is convinced he can bluff his way into the construction business, with the the Spain's tallest building, in other words, a very big erection. Benito charms a model, Claudia, into his life, eventually keeping her as his mistress after marrying a prominent banker's daughter, Marta. For a brief period, Benito appears to have achieved his dreams. Where the story takes it turn from the comic is when the images of success collapse.

Unlike a film with a similar plot from an Anglo-American filmmaker, there is no shyness regarding the sexual aspects of Golden Balls. As Claudia, Maribel Verdu is first seen dancing on a table, her feet between large plates of paella. Even Maria de Medeiros, as Marta, eventually sheds her clothes and her demure manner. Even when Benito achieves his fantasy of having the two women at once, Luna lets us know that once Marta and Claudia discover each other, no one else is necessary. (It may be coincidental, but Woody Allen may be borrowing a page or two from Luna. Allen's new film shot in Spain stars Bardem involved in a menage a trois with two women who have their own relationship. One of the women is played by Penelope Cruz who gained international exposure starring with Bardem in Luna's Jamon, Jamon. Oscar watchers may want to note that Golden Balls features an early performance by future winner Benicio Del Toro.)

Based on his involvement with other artistic projects, the more obvious aspects of Golden Balls may say less about Luna's own sophistication than his desire to reach a mass audience. The scant information in English about Luna indicates that there is much more to explore beyond his films. It should be noted, for those with even less knowledge of Spanish than myself, that the title translates as "Eggs of Gold". And eggs appear throughout the film. It is a more apt metaphor for masculinity as well as slang for part of male anatomy. For Luna, men ultimately a like eggs - hard on the outside, soft inside, and unless handled carefully, quite fragile.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:37 AM

February 05, 2008

Random Harvest

Mervyn LeRoy - 1942
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Random Harvest managed to worm its way into my heart. This in spite of the many preposterous plot points that defy even minimal common sense. Even when you know that, of course, Ronald Colman and Greer Garson are going to end up together, finally, after so many travails, the film zips ahead leaving logic far behind. Next to the more famous film from the more famous James Hilton novel, Random Harvest makes Lost Horizon seem more believable.

Instead of escaping to Shangri-La, Ronald Colman escapes into his own head. A shell shocked British World War I veteran, suffering from amnesia, Colman finds his way out of the asylum and onto the streets where he is picked up by showgirl Greer Garson. Garson whisks Colman away to the country in an attempt to cure him. The two get married, have a child, and Colman begins a career as a writer. Just when everyone is happy, a traumatic experience causes Colman to regain his memory, but temporarily lose Garson.

If that's not enough, there is an extraordinary sub-plot involving Colman and Susan Peters. First introduced as a girl of Fifteen, Peters decides at first sight that the much older Colman is the man for her. The young girl and the older man is a favorite Hollywood staple, yet there is a patina of unhealthiness in Peters' determination. That a man like Colman would show a more active interest in Peters would not be thinkable in a 1940s MGM production, but the thought occurred to me that had the opportunity been available, Ronald Colman might have made an interesting Humbert Humbert.

At this time of discussion of Academy Award winners, past and future, Random Harvest may be seen as bolstering the argument that the losing films are often more fun to watch then the winning films. Greer Garson was essentially competing against herself, with Random Harvest losing every nomination to the more serious minded Mrs. Miniver.

Random Harvest persists in the memory due to a scene that is unnecessary, and pads the running time to over two hours. To call Garson's performance of a song called "She's Ma Daisy" as musical number may be something of a stretch. Garson's singing voice, assuming she wasn't dubbed, is passable. Whatever it is she's doing on stage can't really be called dancing even though there is some evidence that choreography was involved. Garson's performance during those few minutes is a much needed antidote to those overly dignified appearances in most of her other films. Maybe it's just the legs and that very short kilt. For those few minutes, Greer Garson gives new meaning to the idea of a highland fling.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:27 AM | Comments (1)

February 01, 2008

The Burt Reynolds Blog-a-thon: 100 Rifles

Tom Gries - 1969
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

Blog-a-thon host, Larry Aydlette, had a poll regarding the favorite actress to star opposite Burt Reynolds. As good as these leading ladies may be, none of them have the pure sex appeal of Soledad Miranda. It is those few minutes of Burt and Soledad that provide the high point of 100 Rifles. Even the presence of Raquel Welch is less charged than that of the woman whose character is named "girl in the hotel". In her only English language film, Miranda was probably seen by more people than in any other film before, or after. 100 Rifles was released the year before Miranda became the muse for Jesus Franco, a productive period that ended prematurely with Miranda's death in an auto accident in August 1970.

But this blog-a-thon is dedicated to Burt Reynolds, after all. 100 Rifles is notable for being the third billed Reynold's first appearance in a film produced by a major studio. Prior to this film, Reynolds was primarily known for almost a decades worth of television appearances, notably a supporting role in "Gunsmoke", as well as his short-lived detective series, "Hawk". Reynold's previous film role was starring in Sergio Corbucci's Navajo Joe as the title character, two years earlier. Now Reynolds was back playing another part Indian character, Yaqui Joe.

Yaqui Joe describes himself as the son of a Yaqui Indian mother and a father from Alabama. Reynolds plays him for most of the film as the good ol' boy he would perfect in such films as Gator, White Lightning and Smokey and the Bandit. This is classic Burt, with the infectious laugh and the self-effacing humor. 100 Rifles may be considered significant in providing the origin of one of Reynolds' more enduring relationships, with stunt man Hal Needham, who eventually directed Reynolds almost ten years later in some of their best (Hooper and worst Cannonball Run II) films as a team.

Yaqui Joe is wanted for robbing a bank in Arizona. The money was used to buy the 100 rifles on behalf of rebelling Yaqui Indians. Joe is being chased in Mexico by a part-time sheriff named Lyedecker, played by Jim Brown. The Indians are being oppressed by an evil Mexican general portrayed by Fernando Lamas. The audience is set up to hate Lamas and his army because in the first scene of 100 Rifles, they hang Raquel Welch's father. In case anyone misses the point on how evil Lamas is, his German military advisor suggests genocide for dealing with the Indians, giving the audience a proto-Nazi to hiss at as well. Lamas steals the cache of rifles. Reynolds, Brown and Welch steal them back. There is also some back and forth business with railroad magnate Dan O'Herlihy who is willing to do business with almost everyone.

Considering some of the talent involved, it's a wonder that 100 Rifles wasn't a better movie. Having no familiarity with the source novel by Robert MacLeod, I can only observe that the character of Yaqui Joe and the concern about Indians rights thematically fits with the other works of co-screenwriter Clair Huffaker. Co-writer and director, Tom Gries had previously made that critically acclaimed, but little seen Will Penny the previous year. Huffaker also wrote Rio Conchos, the film that served as Jim Brown's film debut. It should be noted that the DVD release is a PG version of a film originally rated R. As I haven't seen the film in over thirty years, I can not say exactly what all the alterations are, although there is some obvious doodling with inaudible or muffled dialogue. One can see Reynolds lips move while uttering a bon mot after a priest is killed. 100 Rifles will never be considered a classic, but Fox's tampering of the film is questionable, disallowing this curio to speak for itself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM | Comments (5)

January 25, 2008

Boys Town

Norman Taurog - 1938
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Almost a week to go with Edward Copeland's Best Actor Survey and I finally realized that there are about ten Oscar winning performances I have yet to see. There are too many nominees to catch up on as well. Of the winners, I finally saw Save the Tiger, the most recent of the unseen films. What is really amazing is that I actually worked in the theater that showed this film, the Greenwich Theater in New York City, and never bothered to sit down to watch the whole film. I also caught Gregory Peck's nominated performance in Twelve O'Clock High, a film I had promised myself that I would see since 1975 when I saw an excerpt at Telluride for the Henry King tribute. There will still be gaps - I will have to take the Academy at their word that Paul Lukas's performance in Watch on the Rhine was better than Humphrey Bogart's in Casablanca, or that Dan Dailey was a worthy competitor to Lew Ayres, Montgomery Clift, Laurence Olivier and even Clifton Webb.

While I like Spencer Tracy, I'm not convinced that his was the best performance of 1938. While I haven't seen Charles Boyer in Algiers, I have seen the other three nominees. Beaten by the cinematic Father Flanagan were James Cagney in Angels with Dirty Faces, Robert Donat in The Citadel and Leslie Howard in Pygmalion. Cagney and Donat would get their Oscars, and Rex Harrison would win for the musical version of Howard's role. Of the nominees, my own preference is Donat who has the advantage of being in a film directed by King Vidor, and even better, has Rosalind Russell as his leading lady.

Father Edward Flanagan was a role Tracy played twice, starring in the sequel Men of Boys Town. Tracy was first nominated as the priest, Father Mullin, in the much more entertaining San Francisco made two years earlier. For a few years, playing a priest would merit an Oscar nomination, Gregory Peck in Keys of the Kingdom, if not an actual Oscar, like Bing Crosby's for Going My Way.

For a film biography, about the only things factual about Boys Town are that there was a Father Flanagan and there is a Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska. No effort was made to establish any sense of when Flanagan first established his home for boys (1917). The passage of time is vaguely indicated by the graying of Tracy's hair near the end of the film.

Even though Tracy won the Oscar, it's Mickey Rooney's performance as bad boy Whitey Marsh that makes Boys Town watchable. It's a foregone conclusion that the little punk will clean up his act and get into the good graces of Father Flanagan, but it's still fun watching him play the wise guy to Tracy's idealistic priest. Rooney would go on to earn Oscar nominations in future films, although it was in some of the less heralded films that would make the best use of Rooney's brash energy. Boys Town was beloved by the Academy seventy years ago, one of ten (!) films nominated for Best Picture of 1938. While Father Flanagan was famous for his belief that there was no such thing as a bad boy, Boys Town is a reminder that some films accorded classic status are not always that good.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:08 AM

January 23, 2008

Woman on the Beach

Haebyonui Yoin
Hong Sang-soo - 2006
Bitwin Region 3 DVD

There is an illustration by Girish Shambu topping his blog entry that I immediately thought of during a scene in Woman on the Beach. The young film director, Jung-rae, creates an illustration made up of connecting points while discussing his ideas with the woman, Moon-sook. Earlier, Jung-rae discussed a script he is working on, about a character who discovers the coincidental aspects of his life connected by a barely visible string. As it turns out, the connections made by the characters in Woman on the Beach are revealed to be more tenuous.

Even though Hong's primary male character is a filmmaker, Hong is more interested in exploring the messiness of human relationships. This stands in sharp contrast with Godard, Fellini, Mazursky and almost any other filmmaker I can think of who would concentrate on the filmmaker and his writer's block. Hong's film is about people who weave in and out of relationships for the flimsiest of reasons. While most of the relationships in the film are of friendship, romance or purely sexual, the superficial aspects also inform other relationships, as when Jung-rae changes his mind about eating at a restaurant due to a perceived slight by the staff.

Moon-sook is also an artist, a composer and singer, whose music is played in the scene introducing her. While not expressed in the film, there is a visual contrast between Jung-rae's black points of connection and music, which in its written form is a series of black dots that are organized based on precise lines and order. The man who introduces Jung-rae to Moon-sook is a set designer. Perhaps the point is too obvious, and one that Hong has revisited in past films, contrasting the deliberate structure of art with the chaos of life.

Filmmaking is an art form that frequently employs chance and accident in its final form. An interview with Hong by Kevin Lee brings that point across. Jang-rae's proposed film is about chance and coincidence interpreted as miracles. Hong has been noted by other critics for the literal and metaphorical geometry within Woman on the Beach. What is also deliberate is the setting - a resort town off-season sparsely populated by residence and tourists, and the beach itself, where any trace of activity will be washed away. As the film ends, there is the realization that Woman on the Beach is less about relationships, than about the memory of relationships.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (1)

January 21, 2008

Story of a Three-Day Pass

Melvin Van Peebles - 1968
Xenon Pictures Region 1 DVD

I didn't see Story of a Three-Day Pass at the time it was first released. What I do remember was that it was regarded as something of a novelty. For many people, it was the first film we were aware of to have been directed by an African-American. It wasn't until almost ten years later that I would first see films by Oscar Micheaux and Spencer Williams, as well as learn that there was once the existence of films and theaters that played what was known as the chitlin circuit. Seen forty years after its initial release, Melvin Van Peebles' Story is a wildly uneven first feature that is often as awkward as the lovers in the film.

As is suggested by the title, the film is about a soldier given leave from the base for three days. Based in France, he goes to Paris where he meets a youngish woman in a night club. She agrees to go spend the weekend with him in Normandy. Upon his return, the soldier is restricted to the base, officially for traveling outside a specified distance from the camp.

Van Peebles breaks up the narrative with his main character, Turner, engaged in dialogues with himself as well as scenes of fantasy. Portions of the film are so choppy, with bits of dialogue repeated in different shots, that it is unclear whether the fragmentation was a deliberate aesthetic choice, or Van Peebles pieced together a feature length film with out-takes due to necessity. There are times when Story resembles a student film, which in a way it was, given what appear to be some extreme limitations in the budget.

There are also a couple of truly inspired moments of filmmaking. Early in the nightclub, Turner spots an attractive blonde. He begins to walk towards her, facing the camera, while the club patrons separate on each side of the screen, a parody of Moses walking between the waves of the Red Sea. Later, there is a shot of three men dancing, part of the sense of joy and uninhibited silliness in the night club. The camera takes advantage of the charismatic presence of Harry Baird, an actor too often underutilized during his lifetime. With the Nicole Berger as the woman, Story of a Three-Day Pass has a link between the French New Wave and what became part of the first wave of films by African-Americans to play in mainstream U.S. theaters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:49 AM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2008

Syndromes and a Century

Sang Sattawat
Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2006
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

I'm not sure if I can add any real insights to Syndromes and a Century except that I think I understand why the Thai government banned the film. First, it must frustrate the hell out of the government officials that the most critically acclaimed filmmaker is openly gay, and gets his financing from foreigners. Equally damning is that the filmmaker with the familiar name of Joe makes films that look nothing like either the Thai films made for Thai audiences, or something stately like The Overture, a Thai film for non-Thais. Joe's films lack the frame of reference that connect them with traditional Thai films which goes against the grain of a country where mainstream cinema means embracing the familiar.

Syndromes and a Century contemplates the differences between how we see ourselves and how others may see us. A statue of Buddha is seen several times, and there are several discussions about karma. While some of the characters may seek easy answers to their lives, the conclusion of the film is that one's karma is ultimately unknowable, most of all by other people.

The structure of the film is in two parts, where some scenes are repeated, but varied in dialogue and setting. The idea of duplication is also carried out with characters mirroring the actions of others. The duplication also is in effect with a scene of the young female doctor dipping her hands in a lake, mirrored by a later scene of a young man imagining himself to be dipping his hands in water as part of Chakra healing.

The color scheme is deliberately hazy, pastels and light colors, as if there was little of substance. The characters are often photographed from a distance, making them appear a small elements of a larger, abstract universe. Syndromes and a Century could be likened to a series of dreams half remembered. We know we experienced something and can remember some random images, but any deeper meaning is impossible to grasp.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:14 PM | Comments (1)

January 14, 2008

The Val Lewton Blog-a-thon: The Leopard Man

Jacques Tourneur - 1943
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Walks with zombies and further Lewton inspired bedlam is to be found at The Evening Class.

Even before I watched The Leopard Man with William Friedkin's commentary, I wondered about Friedkin's film, Bug. Could his own film be an attempt to re-invent a Val Lewton style horror film for a contemporary audience? Consider that the horror of Bug is largely psychological, taking place in the minds of the characters, much to the dismay of an audience that was expecting the more explicit horrors of Friedkin's more famous The Exorcist. That Bug was also a much lower budget film mostly taking place within a single set may have been a tribute to Lewton and his limited resources. There is also the classic beauty of Ashley Judd, who when photographed in certain ways, reminds one of the classic Hollywood brunettes. As Friedkin discusses Lewton and Jacques Tourneur, as well as episodes in his life growing up in Chicago, it would seem that Bug was Friedkin's attempt to recapture what made him excited about film in the first place.

Tourneur's third film for Lewton begins with a leopard on the loose in some small town in New Mexico, the result of a mishandled show business stunt. The action takes place in a totally imagined location that hardly qualifies as a small town, yet has a restaurant-night club that features hoofers from Chicago. The New Mexico location allows for some low budget exoticism in both the set up, and the film's finale. What is best about the New Mexico setting is that it allows for the introduction of one of the characters, Clo-Clo, whose act is a Spanish style dance with castanets. The castanets are incorporated as a dramatic device, as well as being the most significant element of Roy Webb's imaginative score.

Most of The Leopard Man takes place at night. In their final collaboration, Lewton and Tourneur amplify and parody elements of The Cat People. This is especially notable during the sequence of the first victim. A young woman, sent by her mother to get cornmeal, walks alone to the one store open that night. This in spite of fear of the leopard on the loose in town. Walking home, she has to choose between walking around or under a railroad bridge. One way may be safer, but out of the way, the darker passage under the bridge is shorter and more direct. The scene seems to have been designed to remind viewers of the similar moment of the woman alone in the swimming pool in The Cat People. The parody of the "Lewton style" comes literally from the hands of the first victim's little brother, with his inappropriate penchant for creating a shadow that resembles a fierce creature.

It is life in the shadows that is where The Leopard Man truly lives. There are two lateral shots of Clo-Clo walking along the street of the small town. Against the darkness of one building is a man smoking cigarettes, creating O rings of smoke, one of which Clo-Clo grabs. A pair of lovers a glanced at kissing in the darkness. A fortune teller extends her hand with a deck of cards which may reveal Clo-Clo's future. Whether the killer is really a runaway leopard or something else is almost besides the point. What The Leopard Man is really about is the mysteries of fate and choice, and darkness as a form of sanctuary.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (2)

January 12, 2008

Alibi

Roland West - 1929
Kino International Region 1 DVD

Edward Copeland's Best Actor Survey will probably be slanted towards debates on the best and worst Oscar winners of recent decades. Most of the films discussed will be those we have grown up watching or are readily available on DVD. Having an Academy Award is no guarantee that a film is available. Emil Jannings can be seen in The Blue Angel as well as his silent films made in Germany, The Last Command, one of his two winning performances is only on tape. Tape is the only way you can see George Arliss as Disraeli. It won't be until the March DVD release that many of us will see Lionel Barrymore in A Free Soul, a performance that beat out the more readily seen Adolphe Menjou in The Front Page and Richard Dix in Cimarron.

If Alibi has any reputation, it is mostly due to the set design of William Cameron Menzies. The opening scene introducing Chester Morris as he is about to leave prison may remind some of the massive sets of Metropolis, especially when the prisoners march in line. Otherwise, the film seems to serve as the prototype for the kind of movies that Warner Brothers would crank out regularly in the Thirties. Chester Morris appears in retrospect to be a prettier version of James Cagney. The tough guy turned coward performance near the end anticipates Cagney's similar turn in Angels with Dirty Faces. It takes little to imagine Alibi with Cagney and Pat O'Brien instead of Morris and Pat O'Malley,

Morris plays an ex-con who is accused of shooting a cop during a robbery. Among those vouching for his whereabouts is girlfriend Eleonore Griffith, playing the rebellious daughter of a policeman. O'Malley plays the detective in love with Griffith, and out to prove that Morris is a killer. Complicating things is an undercover detective played by Regis Toomey, who poses as a constantly inebriated playboy.

Alibi is one of the few films available by Roland West, and that unavailability of his work may keep him in Andrew Sarris' category of "Expressive Esoterica". That West worked with Menzies on the set, and Ray June as cinematographer, probably contributed to the visual look of Alibi. Too often the film betrays its stage origins with static shots of characters in conversation. The best moments are the shots of the oversized set, a point of view shot with the camera going through night time traffic, and the musical numbers which with the leggy showgirls. There is also the use of sound dramatically used, with the percussion of the policemen's nightsticks. What Alibi has is a collection of inspired moments, but not enough to make the difference between a classic and an old movie.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM

January 10, 2008

Mercury Man

Ma Noot Lhek Lai
Bandit Thongdee - 2006
Bonzai Media Corporation All Region DVD

While I never had the opportunity to meet him, I did exchange emails with Curtis, the Bangkok based film critic who writes for the English language Thai newspaper "The Nation". Curtis also has his own blog, Wise Kwai's Thai Film Journal, much improved from when it was hosted at Rotten Tomatoes. If you haven't checked it out, I recommend clicking back to Curtis' first posts on his new site. I probably should have checked his site myself before I lost a few dollars getting Mercury Man, but this one one of the many Thai films I couldn't see in Thailand simply because the available DVD version lacked English subtitles.

Mercury Man represents in several ways a deliberate, but misguided attempt by Thai filmmakers to break into the international market. As it turned out, even the Thai audience was underwhelmed by this film which attempts to graft a superhero story with Muay Thai boxing. What is of interest is that the political aspects of the Mercury Man narrative goes into a direction that most American filmmakers would be nervous to follow. This is a post 9/11 superhero movie with terrorist bad guys after a sacred Sun amulet and Moon amulet that if combined will enable them to destroy the United States. What may make the film more troubling to a non-Thai audience is that the story is also one of Buddhists versus Muslims.

Putting this into some kind of context may be tricky. Even though most Thais are Buddhists, it is not a state religion. Still the Muslim versus Buddhists plot is questionable considering that there is a sizable Muslim minority primarily in southern Thailand. Those more familiar with Buddhism will recognize that the Buddhism displayed in Mercury Man is both generic and exotic, the with the kind of sage advice uttered by Sam Jaffe in Lost Horizon. This world view is somewhat more comprehensible based on the point of view of most Thais which is that the world is divided between ethnic Thais and everyone else.

Even a homegrown superhero movie with Muay Thai Boxing is less interesting than it should have been. Produced by Prachya Pinkaew, the boxing and the wire work are extraordinarily ordinary from the team behind such martial arts fests as Ong-Bak and Dynamite Warriors. In the title role, Wasan Khantaau is pallid next to that gravity defying force of nature that is Tony Jaa. With his Spiderman inspired costume, Wasan gets hot and kicks ass, and is a nice guy out of costume, but lacks the inspiration or sense of humor of the best superheros. Seen way to briefly as a supervillainess is Matinee Kingpoyom. After it is discovered that Wasan became Mercury Man after being stabbed with the Sun amulet that was absorbed into his body, Matinee stabs herself with the Moon amulet. She becomes Mercury Man's unnamed nemesis, freezing cold to his fiery heat. If this character had a name, would it be Ice Girl? Frigid Woman? In any event, I was reminded that I saw this very beautiful woman in another film that had was otherwise not very good, Bullet Wives. And speaking of beauty and boxing, the real Beautiful Boxer, Parinya Charoenphon, is in the cast, aptly named as the character named Grace.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:25 AM | Comments (1)

January 08, 2008

My Sassy Girl

Yeopgijeogin Geunyeo
Kwak Jae-young - 2001
Box of Fun Region 3 DVD

I'm not sure which bothers me more, that the first new film of 2008 is a Hollywood remake of an Asian horror film, or that this particular remake is of one of Takashi Miike's lesser efforts. February brings us the Tom Cruise produced remake of the Pang Brothers' The Eye. While the remakes are primarily aimed towards an audience that doesn't know, or care, that these are Hollywood remakes of Asian films, I have to wonder how many people are seeking out the original films because they are being remade?

I might not have bothered with My Sassy Girl had I not known that a Hollywood remake was due later this year. I am comforted to know that unlike The Lake House, the remake of Il Mare, which had a too old Sandra Bullock, the English language version of My Sassy Girl has the more age appropriate Elisha Cuthbert substituting for Jun Ji-hyun. But what really distinguishes Jun is her eyes which bulge out at the incredulous suggestion that as the titular character, she is to be challenged.

My Sassy Girl starts off like a Korean version of the kind of film Ashton Kutcher would have appeared in a few years ago. A young man, Gyeon-woo, spots a young woman inches away from falling into the path on an oncoming subway. While both are on the subway, it becomes clear that the girl is extremely drunk, at one point vomiting on the head of one of the subway passengers. Mistakenly identified as the girl's boyfriend, Gyeon-woo finds himself taking the girl to a love hotel for the night to get her off the street. From there the relationship, more of a chaste, idiosyncratic friendship develops.

The title literally is translated as "Bizarre Girl". Sassy may be too misleading a description. Obdurate and bossy come a bit closer in fitting the girl, who like Joan Fontaine in Rebecca, remains unnamed. Jun's performance keeps this character some might find obnoxious, endearing instead. Some of the humor also comes at the expense of Tae-hyun Cha, the frequently hapless suitor of the girl.

What little I could glean from IMDb indicates that the upcoming remake will be have changes from the original version. What may make this film of some interest is that the new version is directed by Yann Samuel, who debuted with Love Me if You Dare. The French film was about two friends, male and female, that constantly dared each other with increasingly risky challenges. In some respects, there is a similarity to the girl's challenges to Gyeon-woo in My Sassy Girl with the game playing of Love Me if You Dare. That a French filmmaker is remaking a Korean film for a primarily American audience may be typical of Hollywood - by reworking an Asian story that can be easily transposed to the U.S., with a filmmaker who has learned his craft elsewhere - risk free Hollywood continues its flight from the slightest hint of originality.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

January 04, 2008

I'm a Cyborg, But that's OK

Saibogujiman Kwenchana
Park Chan-wook - 2006
United Home Entertainment Region 3 DVD

One of the more interesting lists to come out at the end of 2007 was posted at Indiewire of 250 undistributed films. More precisely, these are mostly non-English language films without US distributors. Several of the films are available on DVD, and in some cases can be seen on US players that are not region free. It turns out that I have three of the films on the list and will write about them now that I have unlocked my new DVD player.

I almost saw I'm a Cyborg during my last week in Thailand, except that in Chiang Mai, unlike Bangkok, films from other Asian countries are usually shown in Thai dubbed versions, if they are shown at all. I am not surprised that Park's newest film hasn't been picked up even for DVD distribution. Unlike the "Vengeance" trilogy, I'm a Cyborg is less easy to classify. The ads make the film appear to be a romantic comedy, which it mostly is. There is one scene of violence that deliberately goes from the comic to the grim, and may make too many people think of the Virginia Tech incident, itself supposedly inspired by Park's Oldboy.

The story is about a young woman, Young-goon, who works at a radio factory. Believing herself to be primarily mechanical, she is institutionalized after wiring herself, creating a self-inflicted electric shock. It is there that she meets the other patience, including a young rabbit masked man, Il-sun who believes he can take away other people's character traits with his hand. Young-goon, not only believes herself to be a cyborg, but a killer cyborg with the mission to kill the hospital's staff. One extended scene shows Young-goon with bullets flying out of her fingers, and bullet cartridges falling out of her mouth. Something of nod towards Park's trilogy, before the murderous fantasy takes place Young-goon asks Il-sun to remove her sense of sympathy.

What I'm a Cyborg has in common with Park's other film is the examination of how people define themselves. A recurring motif is Young-goon search to discover the reason for her existence. The more clearly satirical moments are how mechanized work can be, as well as how dependent people are on machines. Park even finds a way to create a verbal and visual joke involving both the animal mouse and computer mouse. While Park uses CGI to convince the audience that Young-goon might actually be a cyborg, he is aided by Lim Su-jeong and her oversized eyes. The Korean pop singer Rain allows himself to look silly with his two licks of hair combed to appear like two modified rabbit ears. Rain will be somewhat better known this summer with a part in this Summer's Speed Racer.

In one interview, Park mentions as one of his literary influences, Philip K. Dick. It would seem that I'm a Cyborg is something of a twist on Blade Runner. Instead of a cyborg who believes he is a man, we have a woman who is convinced she is a cyborg. Which is still OK.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:59 AM | Comments (4)

January 02, 2008

Berlin Alexanderplatz

Phil Jutzi - 1931
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I attempted to watch Fassbinder's version of Berlin Alexanderplatz within a very short time frame. The more I watched, the more difficult it was for me to continue. I got almost half way, but will watch the rest the way a television mini-series should be viewed, spread out over several days. I did take advantage of the inclusion of the 1931 film version which at less than ninety minutes takes as much time as a single Fassbinder episode. That one of the three screenwriters is author Alfred Doblin also makes this film of interest.

Even if you haven't read Doblin's novel, and I haven't, what makes Jutzi's film remarkable is that it demonstrates that the fluid camera work and artiness associated with German films of the late Twenties did not end when Murnau went to Hollywood. True, many of the traveling shots were shot silently with post-production sound, but most of the dialogue scenes have camera movement as well. Between the use of extreme close-ups of faces, and quick cuts in some scenes, Jutzi proved himself more adept at making a visually dynamic film that some of his Hollywood contemporaries. The first few minutes of the film a virtually dialogue free as the walrus sized Heinrich George portrays Franz Biberkopf's first steps out of the the quiet order of prison life into the chaos of 1931 Berlin.

The footage of street life in Berlin is of interest simply as a record of what Berlin looked like before World War II. A couple of scenes, one staged for the film, show cheerful disregard for official postings. In the scene where Biberkopf meets Mieze, a street singer, we first see a sign indicating that singing and begging are forbidden in this particular neighborhood. Likewise, a scene at the beach is preceded by a shot of a sign stating that short swim wear is not allowed, obviously ignored by the many at the crowded beach. It is worth noting that when Jutzi's film of Berlin Alexanderplatz opened in New York in May of 1933, the title was the French Sur Le Pave de Berlin (On the Street of Berlin). Additionally, New York Times film critic mentions in his May 11 review that the original novel, "is said to have been among those tossed to the flames in Berlin yesterday."

The 1931 version of Berlin Alexanderplatz lacks any production credits. Even the booklet that comes with the seven DVD set lacks any written information. One has to go to IMDb to know that one of the producers was Arnold Pressburger. The music is by Allan Gray, who wrote music for several films that son Emeric Pressburger made with Michael Powell. Jutzi and star Heinrich George were both former Communists that stayed in Germany as Nazi party members during World War II. Of the two co-screenwriters, Hans Wilhelm wrote a couple of films for Max Ophuls and later went to Hollywood where one of his credits is Don Siegel's Ninotchka knock-off, No Time for Flowers. The other writer, Karl Heinz Martin, was a silent era director who returned to directing in the Thirties, ending his career in 1939. In a small role is the character actor Karel Stepanek. If this film is any indication, Phil Jutzi deserves some deeper English language scholarship. Fassbinder also liked the film, even though he pointed out that it was not truly representative of the novel. At the very least, Jutzi's film of Berlin Alexanderplatz has enough value of its own to merit consideration as more than a footnote to its better known remake.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:23 PM

December 24, 2007

I'll Be Seeing You

William Dieterle - 1944
MGM Region 1 DVD

Unlike too many films that take place during the holiday season, I'll Be Seeing You may be a bit more emotionally honest in depicting the most melancholy time of the year. It is for that reason that in spite of taking place during Christmas and New Year's that this film has never been dusted off as a holiday perennial. What gives I'll Be Seeing You a degree of contemporary resonance is how disconnected many of the characters are from each other.

The story is contrived, with shell shocked Joseph Cotton meeting furloughed prisoner Ginger Rogers on a train. Cotton follows Rogers to the small town of Pine Hill, where the weather is cool but snow is absent. Rogers is staying with Aunt Spring Byington, Uncle Tom Tully and voluptuous niece Shirley Temple. While Cotton gradually reveals his vulnerability, Rogers does her best to hide her criminal status due to accidental manslaughter.

The film is worth seeing for one scene that encapsulates the difference between being in war and how it is presented. Cotton and Rogers go to the movies where a war film is playing. Cotton is shown being uncomfortable watching the film, reminded as he is of his current traumas. We only see the poster of the film which suggests that it was of the kind made to encourage enlistment. Outside the theater, a couple of young boys are playing "war" with toy guns, pretending to die on the sidewalk. Cotton is reticent about discussing his war experience, and what little is revealed is of war experienced on a tiny, personal scale rather as part of a grand canvas. As such, Joseph Cotton's role anticipates the slew of post-World War II films about veterans who experienced emotional or physical problems.

While George Cukor began the film, and was fired again by producer David Selznick, I'll Be Seeing You has more in common with Dieterle's other films, especially in some of the darker moments. One of the visual high points is during the New Year's celebration with Rogers and Cotton virtually entwined in confetti. The scene provides a literal visual metaphor for two lost souls who are bound together.

Another view of I'll Be Seeing You is offered at Beyond the Valley of the Cinephiles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:29 AM

December 22, 2007

Mountain of the Cannibal God

La Montagna del dio Cannibale
Sergio Martino - 1978
Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

I guess one of my resolutions for 2008 should be to stop watching DVDs on my laptop lest they get stuck as this one did. Not to let anything go to waste, I did a few screen shots. While others discussed the nominations of the Hollywood Foreign Press gang, I watched this film starring former Golden Globe winner Ursula Andress, showing the world what was only hinted at fifteen years previously in Dr, No. Speaking of golden globes . . .

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:13 AM | Comments (5)

December 15, 2007

Chuka

Gordon Douglas - 1967
Paramount Region 1 DVD

It's the 100th birthday of Gordon Douglas, and the director who started his career working for Hal Roach may be getting the last laugh. While Andrew Sarris consigned Douglas to the "Miscellany" section of his book , The American Cinema, Douglas' craftmanship and efficiency would be an improvement over much of what passes for mainstream filmmaking today. Douglas' filmography is remarkable if only for some of the entertainers he directed, not simply movie stars, but multi-talents Elvis Presley, Bob Hope, Jerry Lewis and five films (including three in a row) with Frank Sinatra. Douglas also helmed Rio Conchos, the debut film football star, Jim Brown, in 1964. Brown returned the favor by having Douglas direct Slaughter's Big Rip-Off when Brown became a star of blaxploitation films. Douglas most beloved film involved the direction of giant radioactive ants in Them!.

Of the three films directed by Douglas in the productive year of 1967, Chuka is eclipsed by the better remembered In Like Flint and Tony Rome. In placing the film with other Douglas films Sarris has cited such as Young at Heart and Come Fill the Cup, Chuka is of more thematic interest and consistency. Even more so than Douglas' more serious films, the characters of Chuka simultaneously face both inner demons and an insurmountable outside threat.

While the main narrative is told as a flashback, Rod Taylor as the title character is first seen riding his horse in the snow. Nature is one of the uncontrollable forces in Chuka, be it snow, sand storms, fire, or the constant wind. Most of the film takes place in a remote fort commanded by John Mills, a last ditch assignment for all of the soldiers. A wagon train with two women finds that the temporary stop has been extended out of concern for an imminent Indian attack. It is revealed early on that the Indian attack has been motivated out of starvation. Chuka's sharing of some meat with a band of Indians encountered in the snow in the beginning of the film temporarily gives him some measure of protection.

As a western, Chuka was part of a general trend of films that challenged some of the genre conventions. While neither as epic as Cheyenne Autumn nor stylized as Welcome to Hard Times, Chuka was one of the films to take steps towards more graphic violence, and less obscure sexuality. The greater drama in the film is not the threat of the Indian attack, but of the characters in the fort revealing their particular truths, their strengths and weaknesses. What also makes Chuka something of a departure in the genre is the deliberately ambiguous ending - someone is buried at the fort, but the identity of the person or persons is never revealed.

The film is helped by the strong casting of Taylor, with John Mills and Ernest Borgnine as the fort commander and his loyal Sergeant respectively. Chuka also provided Douglas the opportunity to work again with James Whitmore and Louis Hayward. Curiously, Luciana Paluzzi and Mills would work together again in the proto-giallo, A Black Veil for Lisa. Chuka came and went at a time when Bonnie and Clyde was the major film of that summer. Gordon Douglas may not have had the ambitions of Arthur Penn, but there is enough visual artistry to remind one that Douglas could display his talent within the right opportunities.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM | Comments (3)

December 10, 2007

The Horror of John Brahm

The Undying Monster
John Brahm - 1942

The Lodger
John Brahm - 1944

Hangover Square
John Brahm - 1945
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

Seeing all three of John Brahm's horror films back to back was cause for me to look at his complete filmography more closely. I realized that including many of his television episodes, I have seen more work by Brahm than I thought. Considering that Brahm worked on several anthology series that specialized in suspense and horror, a complete study of Brahm should cover his contributions for the small screen. It is worth noting that Brahm's highest professional honor was a Directors Guild nomination for the Twilight Zone story, "Time Enough to Last". Without giving away the plot to the two people who haven't seen it, this is the episode with Burgess Meredith as the bookworm, whose obsession with reading is both his salvation and curse. It is another one of Brahm's television episodes that truly scared an impressionable ten year old.

In the early Sixties, I wouldn't know who John Brahm was, but the name Boris Karloff meant something. The anthology series, Thriller managed to push the boundaries of horror on television. I was too young to see most of the the series, but it was enough to know that it existed, and to read about it in "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine. One fateful night, I was staying at my cousin's house where the rules regarding television watching were a bit more relaxed. The episode, "A Wig for Miss Devore" was about an actress who wore the cursed wig of a historical figure she was portraying in a movie. Whenever the actress, Sheila Devore, removed the wig, always off the set, she became a frightening killer. The killings were all filmed from the point of view of Miss Devore. It wasn't until the end of the episode that the audience sees how hideous the actress was once the wig came off. I have remembered this episode of Thriller for forty-five years (!), but only now made the connection with the director.

The Fox horror films are linked stylistically and thematically. The fog machines work overtime to disguise the limited sets. There is a traveling shot near the beginning of The Undying Monster which I recognize as being shot on a set for a John Ford film, with only minor alterations. All three films use point of view shots of the killer, a device Brahm continued to use in his television work. The Undying Monster and Hangover Square both are about men who are unaware of their dual natures. As all three films take place at the beginning of the Twentieth Century in England, Scotland Yard comes to the rescue. The choice of actresses may have been mandated by Darryl F. Zanuck, but we have three dark haired 20th Century foxes - Heather Angel, Merle Oberon and Linda Darnell, the latter two demonstrating the importance of clean underwear. More seriously, the films demonstrate why a better availability of Brahm's films is needed.

Clearly Alfred Hitchock had no problem with Brahm's remake of The Lodger as Brahm directed episodes for Hitchcock's television series. It seems possible that Hitchcock was spellbound by Hangover Square, the camera traveling past the musicians and diving into a close up of Laird Cregar's hands at the piano, or more tellingly, the tight shot of duplicitous Linda Darnell embraced by Cregar while the music of Bernard Herrmann swells with romantic longing.

The Lodger has several shots of Cregar lunging towards the camera. There seemed to be a desire on the part of Brahm to make as close to a 3-D film as possible with objects and people coming straight towards the audience, and to play with the illusion of depth as much as possible. It would be interesting to compare Brahm's work in the Forties with his one foray into 3-D filmmaking, The Mad Magician, starring Vincent Price.

Even under the collective heading of "Fox Horror Classics", this DVD set has aided in the re-evaluation of John Brahm. The comparatively larger budgets may have made a difference as well, as the films compare favorably to the Val Lewton produced films and the Universal horror films made during those same years. While John Brahm made fewer films, and fewer personal films, than some of his contemporaries, he showed that when the opportunity arose even with work for hire on television, that he had not lost his flair for horror that served him and his audience so well in the Forties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:39 AM | Comments (4)

December 07, 2007

301, 302

Park Chul-soo - 1995
Koch Lorber Region 1 DVD

With so many close-ups of fish, meat and vegetables, 301, 302 almost becomes food porno. That may be intentional as part of the story is about a woman who substitutes food for sex. Although Park Chul-soo's film eventually goes into the territory explored in such films as Dumplings and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Park minimizes the explicit horror to just a couple of brief shots. It would be interesting to know how much of an influence Hitchcock may have been on Park as some of the shots made me think of Psycho - the frequent overhead shots of the characters, telling the story visually through the details of close-ups of objects and the faces of the characters. The use of food also recalls Hitchcock's television version of Roald Dahl's Lamb for the Slaughter and to a certain extent, Frenzy.

The film is about two women, neighbors in the "New Hope" apartment building. Song-hee is recently divorced and lives in an apartment dominated by a gourmet kitchen. She seems as addicted to the act of cooking as she is to enjoying a variety of dishes. Yun-hee's apartment is more spartan, marked by her wall full of books, enough to make Song-hee remark that that it resembles a library. The women are opposites with the outgoing Song-hee having an appetite for food and sex, while the introverted Yun-hee is a professional writer, with articles about food and sex, while rejecting both from her life. Flashbacks show the sexual abuse of Yun-hee, the step-daughter of a butcher, which explain the linking of sex and food in her life.

The story is slight. What Park does is lay on details. There are close-ups of food being prepared, calamari boiled, dumplings folded, and one very phallic looking cucumber chopped into smaller slices. Some of the close-ups of mouths while eating may be too much, and may have been so on a theater screen. There are extreme close-ups of Hwang Shin-hye - her mouth, her glasses, her eyes. Shots of her being bathed by Pang Eun-jin appear influenced by some of the more abstract compositions of Janet Leigh's face in Psycho. While Hwang is the cerebral character, with most of the shots of her face and head, Park's shots of Pang emphasize her more physical sense of being - her breasts, her legs, her hands. Even the apartments are contrasted by the use of color. While Yun-hee's apartment is almost all white, Song-hee's is marked by the colorful plates, and a wall that is the color of wine, or perhaps blood.

Whatever the more serious intentions Park may have had for 301, 302 give way to the fetishistic treatment of surfaces. The film is about alienation, about two people so disconnected from the world that their respective apartments are all the world they need. Park may be making a parable about contemporary Korean women but he is more interested in piling on bits of visual information. What is most memorable about 301, 302 are the yellow plates, blue cups, fish scales, sliced meat, steel doors, silverware, and dotted panties.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM | Comments (2)

November 29, 2007

Behold a Pale Horse

Fred Zinnemann - 1964
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

In case you hadn't read it elsewhere, Justine of "Beyond the Valley of the Cinephiles" is hosting a Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger Blog-a-thon starting December 16. And what does that have to do with Fred Zinnemann? Behold a Pale Horse is based on the novel, Killing a Mouse on Sunday by the more literary half of "The Archers".

What was even more surprising for me is that Behold a Pale Horse is Fred Zinnemann's most visually accomplished film. Thematically, it is consistent with Zinnemann's other films in which the main character is forced to face challenges to his or her most deeply held beliefs. In this film, Gregory Peck's anti-Fascist exile is almost undone by holding to firmly to his set viewpoint. As a film about the Spanish Civil War, the characters are presented a bit too broadly, disallowing subtleties of difference. The Republicans are all strongly anti-clerical, while Franco and the Catholic Church are presented as having the same goals. Politics is almost besides the point in this film.

Zinnemann is more interested in the iconography of the human face. I can not think of any of his other films being as full of close-ups. Not only is the screen filled with the more familiar visages of Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif, but of the supporting actors as well. The shots are usually lit to emphasize shadows, as if Zinnemann was discovering the geography of the human face. Frederick Rossif may have influenced the look of the film. Rossif's documentary, To Die in Madrid, about the Spanish Civil War had been released in 1963. Rossif co-directed the montage sequence that opens Behold a Pale Horse. Additionally, Zinnemann may well have been inspired by the photographers who documented the Spanish Civil War, in particular, Robert Capa.

That the politics are expressed in broad strokes could possibly be attributed to Pressburger's novel. The basic story, with Peck and Quinn as two old enemies who try to outwit each other, with the goal of trapping the other, is not too distant from The 49th Parallel. A consistent part of several of the Powell-Pressburger films is that the characters often take on challenges that are considered suicidal, not to mention how frequently characters kill themselves. Robert Kesar's piece on Zinnemann in Senses of Cinema, while only discussing Behold a Pale Horse briefly, does help put the film in the context of Zinnemann's career, with the documentary footage which is integrated with documentary style filming when Peck is first seen onscreen, establishing some sense of realism, combined with Zinnemann's combined with a story about that character, like other's in Zinnemann's films, who continually move forward, in spite of the self-awareness that at best, there is only moral victory.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:38 PM

November 27, 2007

Black Emanuelle's Box, Volume 2

Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle/Velluto Nero
Brunello Rondi - 1976
Severin Films Region 1 DVD

Black Emanuelle 2/Emanuelle Nera No. 2
Bitto Albertini - 1976
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

Emanuelle and the White Slave Trade/La Via della Prostituzione
Joe D'Amato - 1978
Severin Films Region 1 DVD

There's no beating around the bush, this set of DVDs is aimed at adolescent boys of all ages. That much is a given with the package title. And aside from the questionable racism of the English language titles, the name of the title character is inconsistent from film to film. But the real truth is, none of these films were intended to be examined seriously.

I saw the original Emmanuelle and barely remember anything about it. The three films here are just part of the several films that in some cases were titled simply to cash in on the popularity of the first film. Velluto Nero doesn't even have a character named Emmanuelle, or a plot for that matter. Albertini's film is a sexed up version of Rashomon with several men in Emanuelle's life offering different versions of her memories. D'Amato has Emmanuelle as a crusading journalist, armed with only her cigarette lighter sized camera, investigating a prostitution ring. Basically the formula requires lots of nudity, hetero and lesbian twosomes, threesomes, and shower scenes. To give those unfamiliar an idea of how these films ended up cannibalizing each other, Laura Gemser played a supporting role in the sequel to the original Emmanuelle, and there are two films that share the Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle title. Most disturbingly, Susan Scott, who only a few years earlier had made a name for herself in gialli, would later star in Emanuelle e Lolita.

For the more serious film scholar, the bigger value of Black Emanuelle's Box is to be found in the supplements. Black Emanuelle 2 features an interview with Dagmar Lassander, seen above with some bedside reading. Lassander discusses how she first became involved as an actress, and the highs and lows of a career primarily in Italian sex and horror films. Aristide Massaccesi, better known as Joe D'Amato, is filmed discussing his career over a few beers with some British guys in the supplement with Emanuelle and the While Slave Trade. D'Amato admits that in some of his films, craftsmanship takes a back seat on some of his many projects. Velluto Nero has interviews with Al Cliver, as well as Annie Belle and Laura Gemser who are both heard but not seen. Taking the long view of film history, it is important to document those who toiled in the less celebrated strata of what is the film industry.

While it's not obvious from looking at Velluto Nero, Brunello Rondi co-wrote a couple of films with Rossellini along with Federico Fellini, and collaborated on several other Fellini screenplays. Two other significant credits in Velluto Nero belong to writer Ferdinando Baldi, credited as Fred Baldi here, and the infamous Bruno Mattei, serving as editor, with his own Emmanuelle entries just a few years away. Perhaps the strangest twist to the whole Emmanuelle saga is what happened to the woman who most frequently played that role. Her background in fashion exploited by Joe D'Amato, Laura Gemser eventually shifted towards a career doing costume design for low budget films. Once famous for disrobing in front of the camera, Gemser closed her show business career by dressing others.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM

November 22, 2007

The Flesh Eaters

Jack Curtis - 1964
Dark Sky Films All Region DVD

Is there a better time than Thanksgiving to watch a film called The Flesh Eaters? This heart-warming tale of a Nazi experiment gone wrong is actually a better film than I had expected. Considering that it took about two years to actually find its way into movie theaters, The Flesh Eaters is hardly a cinematic turkey.

Of course there are plot points that make no sense. We are to believe that the story mostly takes place on an uninhabited island somewhere between New York City and Provincetown. That a Nazi scientist is alone with a huge solar generator on this island is almost plausible. On the plus side are great low tech special effects, especially the monster that appears at the end of the film that looks something like a combination of an octopus and a merengue pie on steroids.

What helps make The Flesh Eaters more entertaining than some similar films of the era is the generosity of flesh. Starting with Barbara Wilson, who loses her bikini top before becoming the first on screen victim, the film pushed the limits for a relatively mainstream release. Barbara Wilkin selflessly removes her shirt to provide a makeshift bandage for Byron Sanders. Playing an alcoholic actress, Rita Morley faces the camera with an ample display of cleavage. Sanders provides a bit of beefcake as well. Keeping his clothes on is perennial Nazi Martin Kosleck.

Aside from Kosleck, the only person whose career survived The Flesh Eaters is Radley Metzger. Had the title not been used for this film, it's easy to imagine Metzger using the title for one his own films or for one the imports he use to pick up. Aside from the wonderfully ludicrous monster, The Flesh Eaters may remind some of Roger Corman's films with the gentle mocking of other films by Rita Morley's character. The actual depiction of horror is more graphic than what was done by William Castle, but mild compared to Herschell Gordon Lewis.

And on this day I give thanks that the Denver Public Library makes available such fine films The Flesh Eaters.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:31 AM | Comments (1)

November 16, 2007

South Sea Woman

Arthur Lubin - 1953
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

When it comes to the films of Burt Lancaster, South Sea Woman is rarely, if ever, discussed. Released just two months before From Here to Eternity, this World War II comedy is more dumb and silly, as mildly amusing as an Abbott and Costello movie. Seeing this film on DVD for the first time in about forty years, I was struck at how much South Sea Woman plays like one of Arthur Lubin's films with Burt and Chuck subbing for Bud and Lou. Take, for example when Chuck Conner's, under interrogation by a police inspector, states that he's on his honeymoon. Says Burt, "I'm on his honeymoon, too."

The verbal humor includes Burt Lancaster mangling French, and Virginia Mayo pointedly addressing the proprietor of the hotel as "Madame", pronounced as one who runs a brothel rather than as a proper French woman. While South Sea Woman aims for an audience a bit more adult than that for Abbott and Costello, the film's sense of wit seems also rooted in old vaudeville and burlesque. What may be the funniest aspect to South Sea Woman is that even though it came before From Here to Eternity, in some ways the film plays as a spoof of the better known classic.

Had Joan Crawford not walked out on Fred Zinneman, we would have had two films with Burt Lancaster as a Marine romancing two Warner Brothers stars in the same year. Pearl Harbor is a significant plot point in both films, with Burt as the by-the-book Sargeant chasing after the AWOL Chuck Conners who wants to leave military life to be with Virginia Mayo. While no one is going to confuse this with Monty Clift chasing after Donna Reed, the coincidences seem more than accidental.

My own discovery of South Sea Woman was accidental, channel surfing on late night in the Sixties, back when there were no more than five channels to choose from. A couple of years later, I was able to see this film from the beginning. Even though South Sea Woman is probably the stupidest film Burt Lancaster allowed himself to be associated with, there is something fascinating about a film in which Chuck Connors single-handedly blows up a Japanese ship with a bag full of TNT. If South Sea Woman is the most easily forgotten film of Burt Lancaster's career, it may be due at least in part to the star's ability to leap from studio bound fare to controlling his own career the following year.

South Sea Woman was Chuck Connors' first big role. To what extent Lancaster was an influence on Connors I don't know. One of Lancaster's more questionable choices was to star as a Native American in Apache. Had Lancaster not made that film, would we have been spared the sight of Chuck Connors as Geronimo?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:42 AM

November 09, 2007

Faith + Film Blog-a-thon: What's Love Got to do with It?

Brian Gibson - 1993
Touchstone Region 1 DVD

More meditations on Film + Faith are to be found at Strange Culture.

As a Buddhist for over thirty years, I have as a matter of course been interested in how Buddhism has been portrayed in film. As the practicioner of a particular kind of Buddhism esstablished by Nichiren Daishonin, I have had to consider some films that have attempted to convey this form of Buddhism on film. There have been a few Japanese films that have made Nichiren and Nichiren's Buddhism the central subject. Brian Gibson's film is not about Buddhism per se as much it is about Tina Turner's life before and after Buddhism, yet Gibson has made a more serious attempt at seeking a way to visually convey Buddhism in a way that even the Japanese films do not.

Putting this essay in some context, let me first explain that all references to Buddhism will be specifically to Nichiren's Buddhism. For those unfamiliar, this is the one where people chant, "Nam-Myhoho-Renge-Kyo". This practice was established by a 13th Century Japanese priest who held that the true essence of Buddhism was to be found in the Lotus Sutra, and that the essence of the Lotus Sutra was to be found in the title. The words translate somewhat roughly to, "I devote myself to the mystic law of simultaneous cause and effect through sound". Mystic in this case means beyond normal human understanding. Unlike other forms of Buddhism which involve prayer towards statues of Buddha, the object of worship is a scroll with "Nam-Myhoho-Renge-Kyo" written with other calligraphy denoting states of existence. As the scroll is not to be reproduced, except my Buddhist priests, photography of the scroll, known as the Gohonzon, is prohibited. It is for this reason that films about this particular form of Buddhism show that practitioners chanting towards an alter, but the contents of the alter are never seen.

In his book, Transcendental Style in Film, Paul Schrader discusses how many narrative films used what he terms "overabundant means" in conveying enlightenment or a dramatic form of religious experience. While in no way unique to him, the template of overabundant means is mostly associated with Cecil B. De Mille and The Ten Commandments. The religious experience is given its filmic equivalent with the swelling chorus on the soundtrack, and the main character dramatically lit, basking in white or yellow light. Curiously, as if to indicate that overabundant means is suitable for all religious experiences, a similar tact has been used by the Japanese filmmakers of those films I have seen either about Nichiren or in the story of the lay orgination, Soka Gakkai. Kunio Watanabe's Nichiren to moko daishurai, made in 1958, is especially under the influence of De Mille. Noboru Nakamura's Nichiren, from 1979, is more restrained, but still overly reliant on special effects. Toshio Masuda's two films based on the novelized autobiography of Buddhist lay leader Daisaku Ikeda, The Human Revolution, filmed in 1973 and 1974 are no different. Imprisoned by the military government during World War II, Soka Gakkai leader Josei Toda experiences his enlightment filmed in a way that would be no different than that had it been De Mille or Wyler filming Charlton Heston. To the best of my knowledge, none of the Japanese filmmakers cited practiced this form of Buddhism. It should also be noted that in keeping with a form of Buddhism that is more engaged with present day realities, Soka Gakkei leader Daisaku Ikeda has written essays on two favorite films, Ikiru and High and Low. As is the case with Akira Kurosawa's contemporary films, these are works reflecting social consciousness. In one of his other writings during the making of The Human Revolution films, Ikeda wrote about the films' screenwriter, Kurosawa collaborator Shinobu Hashimoto.

Of the four narrative filmmakers I know to be Buddhist, Peter Werner and Linda Thornburg have not made any films that directly discuss Buddhism in any way. Alan Mak uses a more generic reference to Buddhism, especially the Buddhist concept of Hell, in setting up Infernal Affairs. while the Buddhist practice of the gang leader portrayed by Eric Tsang does not appear to be that of a specific sect. That a Buddhist film director made a film about one of America's most famous Buddhists almost did not happen.

According to an essay by Gibson published in the American Buddhist newspaper, "World Tribune", Gibson was set to direct another music based film in 1992. There seems to be some kind of comic irony that Gibson traded The Thing called Love with Sandra Bullock for What's Love Got to do with It? and the former Anna Mae Bullock.

What's Love . . . announces that the film is about faith from the beginning. Titles on the screen read, "The lotus is a flower that grows in the mud. The thicker and deeper the mud, the more beautiful the lotus blooms. This thought is expressed in the Buddhist chant: Nam-Myoho-Renge-Kyo." During the opening, chanting is heard on the soundtrack, with the camera tilting down from the sky to a church. The chanting fades out to be replaced by the sound of a chorus practicing the spiritual, "This Little Light of Mine". The elementary school aged Anna Mae Bullock is heard conspicuously over the others in the chorus. This opening simultaneously introduces the character of the future Tina Turner, primarily known for her singing talent, and letting the audience know that as much as the film is biographical, it is also about one person's experience with faith.

What needs to be noted about What's Love . . is the use of mirrors as a visual motif at each point in the evolution of Tina Turner. The first such seen is when Ike convinces Tina to spend the night in the guest bedroom. Tina's sleep is interupted by Ike's first wife, Lorraine, who first threatens Tina with a gun before shooting herself. The scene works as a forecast of parts of Tina's future with Ike. The second mirror scene takes place when Ike and Tina Turner have become a nationally popular recording act, with Tina more confident in speaking for herself. Following that scene is one of Ike beating Tina. The third mirror scene is when Phil Spector appears, wanting to record Tina as a solo act. In looking in the mirror, Tina sees a possible future without Ike. A fourth mirror image is of Tina looking at herself following what would be the last of Ike's beatings. The final mirror image is of Ike in Tina's dressing room prior to one of Tina's showcase performances as a solo act, confident in the face of Ike's threats with a gun.

The use of mirrors is put in context during the scene when Tina is introduced to Buddhism by her friend, Jackie, a fictionalized composite created for the film. Jackie likens Buddhism to a mirror that allows one to see one's self. The concept of the practice of Buddhism as a mirror is used frequently in the writings of Nichiren Daishonin. This concept is further extended in contemporary writings on Buddhism such as the book, The Buddha in Your Mirror.

What is interesting about What's Love . . . is that the visual motif of the mirror gave Gibson a way of relaying an idea about religious experience in a form that is integrated within the narrative. This is neither the over-abundant means of the traditional religious film from the De Mille template, nor is this the stylized vision of faith employed by the filmmakers cited by Schrader - Bresson, Ozu and Dreyer. At least in this one film was a visual metaphor used in such a way that most people would not be aware of just how much What's Love Got to do with It? was as much about Buddhism as it was about the life of Tina Turner.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:44 AM | Comments (1)

November 07, 2007

A Handful of Fulci

The Eroticist/The Senator likes Women/All'onorevole piacciono le donne (Nonostante le apparenze... e purche la nazione non lo sappia)
Lucio Fulci - 1972
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

The Psychic/Seven Notes in Black/Sette Note in Nero
Lucio Fulci - 1977
Severin Films Region 1 DVD

I know that there are some who will disagree with me, but the more films I see by Lucio Fulci, the less I feel enthused about his work. As Andrew Sarris would say about another director, the debits outweigh the credits. I admit to enjoying Perversion Story and Lizard in a Woman's Skin and though Fulci's version of The Black Cat was pretty good. What little appreciation I have for Fulci does not go much beyond those entries.

The Eroticist seems to have lost some of its impact as an import. The DVD interviews help put the film in context as a political comedy with quite recognizable satire, at least for the Italian audience. Between Bill Clinton and Larry Craig, the story of a senator and potential President, who has trouble keeping his hands off women's posteriors, may seem quite trivial. Even worse, when watching the film, it is hard to imagine that Fulci actually began his career with comedy.

I almost wished there was an English dubbed version of The Eroticist, only to listen to the inimitable croaking of Lionel Stander. Stander portrays a Cardinal with more than a little interest in Italian politics. Lando Buzzanca was cast in part because of his resemblance to a top politician of the day. He is much funnier in the DVD interview. Fulci's anti-Church feelings get a more humorous play with Stander's occassionally profane cleric and the semi-nude nuns that appear in the fantasy scene. The fantasy is somewhat reminiscent of Fellini, but cruder. Laura Antonelli and Agostina Belli provide the eye candy. And speaking of Belli, why isn't Dino Risi's original Scent of a Woman out on DVD? View image

The Psychic is in turn an even greater disappointment because the expectations were much higher. Quentin Tarantino has championed this Fulci film which should have made me immediately suspicious. The craftsmanship makes this one of Fulci's better films, and Jennifer O'Neill is beautifully photographed. The story of a woman who misreads her visions of murder should have been more engrossing than the dialogue heavy film at hand. The use of red is particularly interesting as the dominant color within the room where at least one murder has taken place. Fulci may have been too tasteful as there is no nudity and little blood. There were times when I actually wished for one of Fulci's eye gouging zombies to appear to goose the film from its its lumbering pace. Based on how The Psychic ends, it appears that Fulci even had The Black Cat on his brain well before he made his version of Poe's story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 AM | Comments (1)

November 05, 2007

The Curse of the Crying Woman

La Maldicion de la Llorona
Rafael Baledon - 1961
CasaNegra Region 1 DVD

Hola! You may think that I shouldn't be bothering writing about horror films on November 5. After all, Holloween was last week. I was planning to tie my review with El Dia de Los Muertos. I live in the heavily Chicano neighborhood currently known as The Santa Fe Arts District. Maybe I'm responding to very distant Ladino roots. This particular review would have been done in a more timely manner but some goblins disrupted my usually routine flow of DVDs.

Rafael Baledon's story of La Llorona is closer to the traditions found in the better known horror films from America and Europe than any folk tales. The scariest part of the film is to be found in seeing some very large rats roam though a cobwebbed cellar where where Aunt Selma keeps the decomposed remains of La Llorona on display. Given the limited budget he had to work with, Baledon's film is for the most part an effective transposition of gothic horror taking place primarily in a crumbling hacienda.

Some credit should go to producer-star Abel Salazar for stepping back and allowing the film to primarily showcase Rita Macedo and Rosa Arenas as the villainous Aunt Selma and her neice, respectively. The film is something of a family affair as Arenas and Salazar married at about the time the film was made, and Macedo's daughter appears as one of Aunt Selma's first victim's, run over by a stagecoach in the film's first scene.

Baledon takes advantage of the sparse interiors in so that they serve to function on behalf of the story. The exteriors use some strategically placed twigs and fog to create a forest that seems deeper and darker. Even the use of negative film is effective when Macedo tells Salazar the story of La Llorona. At a few moments, Baledon becomes too reliant on the zoom lens with a few too many close-ups of eyes to express shock. That Baledon's abilities as a director have been overlooked speaks more about genre and cultural prejudices. Curse of the Crying Woman has some technical flaws that could have been resolved with a few more dollars on special effects, but for the most part is as good as anything produced at this time from Corman, Fisher or Bava.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 AM

October 29, 2007

Demonic Possession - Italian Style

Malabimba
Andrea Bianchi (as Andrew White) - 1979
Severin Films Region 1 DVD

La Bimba di Satana/Satan's Baby Doll
Mario Bianchi (as Alan W. Cools) - 1982
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

I had to made sure that these were two different films. Both stories take place in huge remote castles. The nubile daughter is possessed by the angry spirit of her dead mother. Both girls have uncles confined to a wheel chair. Both films have Mariangela Giordano in similar roles, wearing almost identical nun's habits. And both films are directed by guys with the same last name, both using the time-honored tradition of signing their films with Anglo pseudonyms. If that's not enough, both films represent the single film appearances of Katell Laennec and Jacqueline Dupre in the starring roles.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, William Friedkin may still be blushing. If nothing else, these two films are evidence of the impact The Exorcist had, years after its initial release. Malabimba begins with a seance led by the wide eyed Elisa Mainardi. The name may not be familiar, but the face is one that has appeared in several Fellini films for good reason. After zipping open Enzo Fisichella's fly and ripping off Patrizia Webley's dress, the spirit takes over the young daughter played by Ms. Laennec. Not only does Laennec speak in a very low voice and run around in various states of undress, but she does things with her stuffed dolls that would probably bar her from future visits to FAO Schwarz.

In Satan's Baby Doll, Jacqueline Dupre is also possessed by the spirit of her mother. Additionally, the dead mother, portrayed by the appropriately named porn star Marina Hedman physically reappears to haunt the family. There is one nod to classic horror films when the Devil worshipping servant is killed by a reanimated mummy shortly after having chicken dinner in the manner of Tyrone Power. Satan's Baby Doll also is the only film I know of with a scene of lesbian necrophilia. And sure enough, it should be noted that Malabimba and Satan's Baby Doll were both written by the prolific Piero Regnoli. The auteur of Playgirls and the Vampire proves that when it comes to sex and horror, some things just can't stay buried.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 AM | Comments (2)

October 27, 2007

Crooks Anonymous

Ken Annakin - 1962
Wham! USA Region 1 DVD

Even without Julie Christie, Crooks Anonymous is enjoyable. Written by frequent collaborator Jack Davies, Ken Annakin has a very sarcastic comedy, funnier than many of the British films that use to play in U.S. art houses when the weren't showing La Dolce Vita or the latest film with Brigitte Bardot. The story is of a pickpocket who has trouble going straight, finding himself in a special program for reformed crooks. The scene of Leslie Phillips locked in a room full of safes, each with a special booby-trap is quite funny. Notable also is a scene of a Christmas Eve heist by six Santas.

Crooks Anonymous will probably be best remembered for featuring the debut film performance of Julie Christie as Phillips' stripper girlfriend. It's the kind of role that in earlier films would have been performed by someone like Diana Dors or Shirley Eaton. Thanks primarily to John Schlesinger, Christie has had a remarkable career showcasing both her beauty and acting talent. Still, as a longtime admirer, I have to admit to enjoying seeing Julie Christie when she was merely the latest slice of British cheesecake.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:57 AM

October 25, 2007

Contact Ponette

Ponette
Jacques Doillon - 1996
Fox Lorber Region 1 DVD

Contact
Robert Zemeckis -1997
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

A little bit of film humor that has stayed with me involves the title of a non-existent fim book titled Double Meanings in Double Features. There are some films that seem to echo each other, sometimes unintentionally. I have long thought that Ponette and Contact share some remarkable similarities. I once wrote a short note to Roger Ebert about this after reading an article he wrote about other films that seem to have unconsciously share several narrative elements. I got a rather snide response from the thumbmaster. But consider this, both Ponette and Contact are about solitary young women who feel some responsibility for the death of a parent, and in spite of the urgings of others, attempt to contact the dead parent. There are also scenes of these lonely characters staring into space. Both films are essentially about an individual's sense of faith and the proof of that faith. My own faith is that by sharing some of the images below, others might see the similarities I see between these two films.

The awkward kissing scene.

The reunion with the dead parent.

Proof that contact was made with the dead parent.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 AM

October 23, 2007

The Blood Spattered Bride

La Novia Ensangrentada
Vicente Aranda - 1972
Blue Underground Region 0 DVD

Last night I saw Vicente Aranda's film, one of several inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's story, "Carmilla". By uncanny coincidence, Kimberly Lindbergs posted her review of Blood and Roses, the first film to adapt Le Fanu's story to a contemporary setting. I cannot discuss Vadim's version as I have only seen part of it on cable, almost twenty years ago. What was probably not coincidence is that Aranda made his version of "Carmilla" within two years of release the Hammer production, The Vampire Lovers. Aranda's version takes advantage of the newly given freedom following the changes in the MPAA ratings in 1968, combining the more explicit sex and violence of the Hammer film with Vadim's contemporary setting. One also cannot discount the interest in Le Fanu's character as a reaction to militant feminism.

Additionally, Aranda was influenced by Roman Polanski's Repulsion. This is clearly indicated in the opening scene when newlywed Susan is alone in the bridal suite while her husband is parking the car. Susan peers into an empty closet, walks away for a moment, opens it again, and a man dressed completely in black overpowers the young woman in white. When the husband finally appears, finding his bride holding herself alone on the bed, we realize the attack took place in Susan's imagination. From this point on, it is established that Susan's attitude towards sex is ambivalent at best. The husband's insensitivity further pushes Susan away.

Aranda's Carmilla appears as Le Fanu's describes her in her wedding dress. Some of the dialogue of the film is also from Le Fanu's story. While there is a generous amount of nudity in the film, Aranda's most erotic moment, between Carmilla and Susan, is off camera. Additionally, Aranda has chosen to withhold enough information so that it is never clear whether Carmilla is actually a vampire, or someone who thinks she is one of the undead. Not hidden is the symbolism of the guns, knives and traps. By the end of the film, it is clear that The Blood Spatterd Bride is as much about masculine power and the fear of the feminine as it is about a vampire seeking revenge.

It is worth noting that Vicente Aranda is still making films at age 81. Considering Aranda's career has spanned the cultural and political changes in Spain, as well as making films in a variety of genres, Aranda is certainly a filmmaker who needs to be known by more than a couple of titles by English language film scholars.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:03 PM

October 22, 2007

The Double Feature Blog-a-thon: Bride of the Gorilla at Large

Bride of the Gorilla
Curt Siodmak - 1951
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

Gorilla at Large
Harmon Jones - 1954
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

One of the sillier genres of the Fifties involves gorillas on the loose with a reasonably attractive white woman in peril. What these two films also have in common is that the women in peril are both the screen wives of Raymond Burr. Any film with Raymond Burr and a gorilla will probably strike some as visually redundant. Both are tall, dark, and large. Even before he really started to pack on the pounds, Burr was virtually compared to an elephant, playing a character in Great Day in the Morning named Jumbo Means. The similarilty of Burr to a gorilla was probably not lost on anyone at the time these films were made and the films, as trivial as they are, can stand as a testament to one actor's perseverance before becoming the symbolic kind of the TV jungle with "Perry Mason".

Bride of the Gorilla has a storyline that is almost a reworked version of Curt Siodmak's The Wolfman. Lon Chaney, Jr. is in the film for good measure, oddly cast as the chief of police in the small jungle town. Filmed in the wilds of a West Hollywood backlot, Bride of the Gorilla is one of those fantasies made up of almost random cultural and geographical elements. What may raise more eyebrows than the cutaway shots of animals in this mythical South American jungle, is the dialogue between Burr and beloved bad girl, Barbara Payton.

Those familiar with the personal histories of these two actors will recognize the skill involved when Burr and Payton discuss the sanctity of marriage. Almost as convincing are the special effects when Burr, the victim of an old woman's curse, turns into a gorilla. Siodmak had the sense to minimize the shots of the guy running around in the bad gorilla costume, a lesson probably learned from his time with Val Lewton. Just as Burr and Payton were going in different directions with their respective careers, the cast also includes Tom Conway doing what he can with life after The Falcon, and Woody Strode in one of his earliest performances. Best of all are the big eyes of veteran character actor Gisela Werbisek.

Harmon Jones edited films for William Wellman, Joseph Mankiewicz and several times for Elia Kazan. During all that time, he didn't seem to learn much about film directing. There is a scene in Gorilla at Large where Jones cuts between the carnival audience, Anne Bancroft on the trapeze, and the gorilla. It took me a couple of minutes to realize that that everything was taking place in the same space. The plot involves some murders at the carnival originally blamed on a gorilla named Goliath.

What makes Gorilla at Large worth watching, if not too closely, is to see two future Oscar winners, Bancroft and Lee Marvin, plus Lee J. Cobb and Cameron Mitchell from the original stage production of Death of a Saleman, all in the same film. There may be an intended moment of recalling Arthur Miller when Cobb's paternal feelings towards Mitchell are discussed. The best scenes in the film belong to Marvin, hilarious as a clueless, sleepyheaded cop. The nod to King Kong, when Goliath tries to grab Bancroft in her bed, may elicit a chuckle. Calling to mind another tall, dark and oversized actor, there is the one scene in Gorilla at Large, a reworking of the funhouse mirrors scene in Lady from Shanghai, with a guy in a bad gorilla costume in place of Orson Welles.

Readers continue seeing double at Broken Projector.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:54 AM | Comments (3)

October 19, 2007

Vital

Shinya Tsukamoto - 2004
Tartan Video Region 1 DVD

Even though it is marketed as another J-Horror entry, Vital indicates that Shinya Tsukamoto has more on his mind than frightening his audience with another genre excersise. The scenes that could easily be played for easy screams from the squimish are quite restrained. Tsukamoto is more interested in reflecting on the alienation felt by his characters, and how memory brings some people closer while driving others apart. To a certain extent Vital even made me think of Antonioni with the beautiful would-be lovers who will never get together, the fascination with the modern city, the empty rooms and abstract looking landscapes.

On the surface, the story of a medical student who dissects the body of his dead girlfriend is not only preposterous, but probably considered unethical. Beyond the questionable premise is the exploration of a young man, Hiroshi, attempting to regain lost memories by exploring the corpse of Ryoko. In the meantime, fellow student Ikumi finds that as attracted as she is to Hiroshi, she cannot compete against the woman who reappears in Hiroshi's dreams.

Tsukamoto breaks away from his narrative to concentrate on abstract images of buildings, shadows, smoke and rain. More interested in the living than the dead, there are close-ups of the three main actors - Tadanobu Asano, Kiki and Nami Tsukamoto. Most astonishing of all is Nami Tsukamoto, unrelated to the filmmaker. A ballet dancer, she is given two scenes of brief solo dancing. The dances appear to be butoh inspired, particularly with the jerky, convulsive movements. Shinya Tsukamoto almost undermines the beauty of Nami Tsukamoto's dance on the beach with too much camera movement. The kinetic glory of this scene is so good that an except has been included in Tartan's teaser reel of their Asia Extreme films. There is enough visual beauty in Vital to make me hope that Shinya Tsukamoto might break away from the horror genre, much as David Cronenberg has, at least enough so that more people are aware of his artistry.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM

October 17, 2007

The Montgomery Clift Blog-a-thon: The Young Lions

Edward Dmytryk - 1958
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

In an inteview in The Paris Review, Irwin Shaw discusses how he originally wanted to link his three main characters in his novel, The Young Lions. It is some of the links to Montgomery Clift's life and career that are more interesting than the actual film. Aside from the fact that the two top billed stars, Clift and Marlon Brando, never actually share screen time, the film is overlong with too many dull stretches. It is almost no surprise that in alternating two or three stories over a running time of 167 minutes, the most watchable scenes almost always are those with Dean Martin.

Like From Here to Eternity, The Young Lions is based on a big, and best-selling novel about World War II by a tough guy novelist. Once again, Clift gets to demonstrate his boxing abilities. In the case of the later film, Dean Martin took a cut in pay to establish himself as a more capable actor like Sinatra before him, with the help of Clift. As it turned out, what is one of Martin's best performances is the role of Dude in Rio Bravo, a part originally offered to Clift. Too what extent Montgomery and Martin were friends off-screen has not been fully documented. I can imagine that at least on an intuitive level, Dean Martin understood that like himself, Montgomery Clift's screen persona was not that of the same person away from the camera.

Of course Clift had at least as much to prove as Martin, that he could still act, and take on a physically demanding role. It seems like more than coincidence that Clift would work on two films in a row with Edward Dmytryk, especially as their previous collaboration was Raintree County. Perhaps there was a feeling that Dmytryk, more than anyone else, would know how to film the post-accident Clift. Through most of the film, Clift is filmed in medium shot or in full shot. There is only one close-up near the end of the film.

The Young Lions also has unintended links with Clift's career past and future. The fifteen year old Clift probably paid little, if any, attention to two year old Hope Lange. It was Lange's mother, Minette, who helped coach the juvenile star when he still spoke with an English accent. And while Clift did not share the screen with Maximillian Schell in The Young Lions, that would change three years later with Judgment at Nuremburg. What is interesting in The Young Lions also is that Schell plays a character whose face is destroyed. Clift's last Academy Award nominated performance was beaten by George Chakiris is West Side Story, a film co-directed by Clift's former lover Jerome Robbins.

According to Patricia Bosworth's biography of Clift, we could have seen the two stars from Omaha, Nebraska, Clift and Brando, together had they not turned down East of Eden. The closest we have now is a shot of Clift and Martin walking away from Brando, or his stunt double, face down in a stream. Four years earlier, Brando took the part of Napoleon in Desiree, a role first offered to Clift. Because of Clift's death, Brando took the role in Reflections in a Golden Eye. Clift's own motivations. as indicated in Bosworth's biography, for doing The Young Lions, do not always come through. It is the some of the links with the talent involved that make the film an unintended summation of a career that was extremely fragmented, not always successful, but well intended.

Visit The Film Experience for more on Monty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:10 AM

October 15, 2007

Allegro

Christoffer Boe - 2005
Koch Lorber Region 1 DVD

"I liked movies so much that they became an obsession. I am still trying to kick the habit."
- Christoffer Boe

I have a preference for Alain Resnais' earlier films, which were more or less about memory, and were based on and influenced by the writings of Margarite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Jean Cayrol. Although there has been some discussion on the influence of Resnais' Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime on Michel Godry's Eternal Sunshine of the Eternal Mind, Christoffer Boe has also demonstrated that his own films take on the theme of memory as explored by Resnais. That Boe has expressed interest in French literature is a point I wish had been explored more deeply in a recent interview. Conciously or not, Allegro refers back to Resnais' Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime also by having the narrative hinge on Ulrich Thomsen's ability to declare his love to Helena Christensen.

Allegro is something of the reverse version of Boe's more widely seen Reconstruction. In the earlier film, Nikolaj Lie Kaas has memories of people, places and releationships that increasingly disappear as the film progresses. Ulrich Thomsen in Allegro is a concert pianist who has forgetten his past to the point where no only can he not recognize former friends, but is unaware when facing himself as a child. Additionally, Boe explores the idea of art not as personal expression but as a vehicle of escape for the artist from relationships.

Part of the film takes place in a small section of Copenhagen called "The Zone", a supposedly closed off and impenetrable area that appears to be just another part of town but with an invisible screen that ripples when touched. Thomsen's journey to retrieve his memories takes him into The Zone, through a maze of streets, halls and doors that never remain constant. One scene, when Thomsen opens the door of a dark hallway to find himself in a forest made me think of the novels of Haruki Murakami, who also explores art and memory. This description by Matt Thompson in "The Guardian" could well fit Boe's narrative: It is more a case of "finding something." To generalize, Murakami's main character tends to be a man who is somewhat out of touch with his own feelings. Through his encounters with women, he discovers clues as to how his sense of self became unraveled. The man is a detective, but the crime has somehow happened within himself.

As humorless as Ulrich Thomsen is in Allegro, Boe is playful. There is a deadpan sense of humor regarding The Zone, with Thomsen finding himself in unlikely places. Part of the narrative is animated, with simple black and white drawings of the pianist as a young boy, with his piano and his box of memories. I am baffled that Allegro was not as well received theatrically as Reconstruction, especially as it more easy to understand and appreciate with a single viewing. Of course it is quite possible that like Resnais's past films, especially Je T'Aime, Je T'Aime, which were not appreciated at the time of their initial release, Allegro may well find its audience in the future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:17 AM

October 12, 2007

The Close-Up Blog-a-thon: Opera

Dario Argento - 1987
Anchor Bay Region 0 DVD

For more close-ups of close-ups, visit The House Next Door.

Opera begins literally with a bird's eye view of an opera in rehearsal. In several shots the audience sees the rehearsal reflected on the eye of a crow, one of several used in the avant-gard staging of "the Scottish play". Dario Argento's film can be seen as being a dramatic account of the curse of "the Scottish play". In a roundabout way, Opera is about the act of watching horror films.

The acting of watching a horror movie is always a kind of dare. The toughest among us can look at the what happens on the screen with a sense of detachment, or better yet, amusement. The more sensitive will close their eyes, cover them with their hands or in some way hide from the on-screen mayhem. There is also the discovery that often what one actually does see on the screen is far less horrible than what one may imagine.

What has become the iconic image of Cristina Marsillach's eyes, taped with the needles to stay open, stands as the image of the audience being forced to look, with the option of not looking taken away. In the case of the character, Betty, her choice is to view the violent deaths of people close to her, or cause herself tremendous physical pain and damage. Opera is full of close-ups of eyes, as well as close-ups in general, revealing bits of information to the audience in the form of details - black leather gloves, a stray bracelet, a feather, a pair of binoculars. In addition to the taping of Betty's eyes, the narrative is about the act of seeing in identifying the killer.

The camera, of course, acts as the eyes of the audience. In this way, Argento plays with the audience by reminding them of how vulnerable the eyes are physically, as well as playing with the idea of horror as both what one sees, does not see, or imagines that is seen. Implicating the audience is not unique in itself except that Opera is both partially autobiographical, refering to Argento's own attempts to stage opera, and critical of the kind of classism that divides performing arts into highbrow (opera) and lowbrow (horror movies). In addition to the operas inspired by the plays of Shakespeare, there is the violence and spectacle in such operas as Turandot and Salome. For Dario Argento, madness is both the motivation and the result of being an artist.

As it turns out, there is another Argento involved in opera. I don't know how much either is aware of the other, but it is interesting to note that both Argentos share an interest in Edgar Allen Poe, whose own writings were about madness, art and doppelgangers. Of further coincidence is that Dario Argento's film Trauma was shot on location at Dominick Argento's home turf of Minneapolis. And in discussing Poe, Dario Argento made a statement that could well refer back to Opera - "Is it right to be obsessed with looking at terrible things and sharing them with other people, especially when many people are perturbed by them?"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM | Comments (4)

October 10, 2007

Mill of the Stone Women

Il Mulino delle Donne di Pietra
Giorgio Ferroni - 1960
Mondo Macabro Region 0 DVD

I continue to seek out films mentioned in Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs' Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies 1956-1984. Even if the artistic merits are debatable, most of the films I've seen are fun to watch. Tohill and Tombs devote a chapter to Mill of the Stone Women which I would re-read and refer to were it not currently in storage.

What makes Mill of the Stone Women striking to watch is the atmospheric color photography. Even if one can pick away at all the derivative elements of the screenplay, one can not deny the evocative lighting and use of shadows. For those who have spent too many hours watching too many horror films from this era, it comes as no surprise that the art professor specializes in the Walter Paisley school of sculpture.

Mill of the Stone Women has developed a cult in part because of Dany Carrel's brief exposure of a nipple. It seems possible that no one realized that Carrel's top was slipping until it was too late to refilm. Ferroni seemed aware that one of the big selling points of the Hammer films was the casting of well endowed young women, and answers his English competition with a shot of Liana Orfei in an impressive silhouette. While most comments about Scilla Gabel compare her to Sophia Loren, Ferroni and cinematographer Pier Pavoni light her in a way that is suggestive of Barbara Steele. Mondo Macabro helpfully includes cheesecake shots of Carrel and Gabel as part of the DVD supplements.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:41 PM | Comments (2)

October 08, 2007

War-Gods of the Deep

Jacques Tourneur - 1965
MGM Region 1 DVD

How many film directors know when they are making their last film? I had read that Nicholas Ray had a dream while filming 55 Days in Peking that his career as he knew it was over. The other point of interest is how filmmakers can still leave their imprint on films that either came about as assignments, or that were made in spite of constant interference. I have yet to read Chris Fujiwara's book on Jacques Tourneur, but am inspired to do so primarily to compare what has been documented about the making of War-Gods of the Deep with my own speculations.

That Tourneur's final work was originally written by his Night of the Demon collaborator Charles Bennett suggests thwarted promises of what might have been a better film. There is the argument that Night of the Demon might have also been better had their been no studio interference. What is certain is that in spite of some woeful casting and re-writing, War-Gods of the Deep has visual and thematic links to Tourneur's films produced by Val Lewton.

I imagine Tourneur arguing with the production executives about showing as little as possible of the underwater "gill men". The most interesting of these semi-human creatures is first seen mostly in the shadows, marked by a long Mohawk hair-do. Subtlety was rarely valued at American-International Pictures, and the film ends with more revealing shots of the monsters, looking mostly like submerged, malevelont Teletubbies. I would like to imagine that what Tourneur and Bennett had in mind were creatures indirectly related to the animal-human hybrids out of the past, the cat people and leopard men.

It is with the same spirit that this tale, told mostly in the dark, reminded me also Berlin Express in which the characters find themselves lost in a maze of ruins. Even the giant, unexplained statues are reminders of Tourneur's previous explorations into men and myths. What does not help is the casting of Tab Hunter and the blandly attractive Susan Hart as the romantic leads. Far better are Vincent Price in a well-modulated performance, and character actor John Le Mesurier in a role orignally pegged for Boris Karloff. Louis Heyward's hand in re-writing the film for the presumed American-International audience is evident in broad comedy with David Tomlinson and a pet chicken named Herbert. There is greater humor in the suggestion that Susan Hart's character, believed by Price to be the reincarnation of his dead wife, has the faintly aquatic last name of Tregillis, as if she could be an unknowing descendent of the ocean creatures.

Certainly one should consider what Fujiwara has said in describing Tourneur in putting his films in context, "Tourneur seems never to have been completely at home in America, and lots of his films are about outsiders, about being 'strange' in a place. They have a similar emotional quality to the books of Marguerite Duras: both are concerned with people remote from each other and themselves, who inhabit weird, distant realms. Yet Tourneur allows us a kind of nostalgic connection with his characters, even to fall in love with them."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:24 AM | Comments (3)

September 28, 2007

The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2

Scorpio Rising (1964)

Kenneth Anger - 1964/1965/1969/1979/1981
Fantoma Region 1 DVD

The good news is that the second DVD of films by Kenneth Anger is now available. But after years of discussion about the mythic content in Anger's films, the filmmaker's own commentary virtually reduces some of this work to glorified home movies. While some of Anger's comments about the making of his films is of interest, there are times when it seems to be better to allow the work to speak for itself.

A particular case in point would be Scorpio Rising. That Anger met some bikers in Brooklyn while staying at Marie Menken's apartment helps give the film some geographical context. I mostly liked the film for its soundtrack, a selection of pre-Beatles rock tunes that begins with Ricky Nelson's Fools Rush In and ends with The Surfari's Wipe Out. The music is used as a commentary on the preening bikers, with the best bit being excerpts from a movie about Jesus playing against Little Peggie March singing I Will Follow Him. Anger tells about how he accidentally wound up with the movie produced by the Lutheran Church, and it is a pretty funny anecdote.

Rabbit's Moon (1979)

Too often, Anger makes the point that the bikers he filmed are working class guys who spend most of their money on their bikes, and whatever is left on their girlfriends. I'm not sure who Anger is trying to convince here.

A faster, skip-printed version of Rabbit's Moon is more fun and less precious than the original version. Made for Stan Brakhage's son, the new version has a rock soundtrack. Anger also has some interesting comments on his short and funny Kustom Kar Kommandos. I don't have anything to add to what I wrote about Lucifer Rising, Invocation for my Demon Brother or The Man We Like to Hang. One has to read the comments by Martin Scorsese, Gus Van Sant and Guy Maddin to return to the myth and mythmaking of Kenneth Anger. Maybe in discussing his own films, Anger is being modest. It is in the text of the filmmakers who admire Anger that unfamiliar viewers may understand the importance of this icon from those long ago days of underground cinema.

Lucifer Rising (1981)

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:10 AM | Comments (1)

September 26, 2007

The Victim

Phii Khon Pen
Monthon Arayangkoon - 2006
Tartan Asia Extreme Region 1 DVD

The Victim is another film where great effort has been put into the visual design, but not enough into constructing the narrative. Monthon is a filmmaker who seems to be happy making what is essentially a Thai film for Thai audiences who couldn't care less about the gaping plot holes that make me wonder what kind of film was intended in the first place.

That The Victim could have been more inventive is revealed almost midway through the film when the story of a vengeful ghost turns out to be a film within the film. What could have been a parody of Thai film cliches, and the demands of the Thai film industry is instead yet another Thai horror film. The Victim is certainly inventively photographed, with an eye towards creating unease for the viewer. Monthon's debut film, Garuda, about a giant flying monster let loose in Bangkok, had a narrative that made more sense, while Monthon seemed to have fun with the genre, as well as poking fun at Thai attitudes towards Europeans and Americans. With an film industry that churns out ghost stories on a regular basis, Monthon drops the opportunity to play with genre conventions.

The film within the film starts off promisingly showing a young actress, Ting, in drama school. A policeman invites Ting to re-ennact crime scenes. During my almost five months in Thailand, I never saw any crime scenes re-staged for the police and public, although in Chiang Mai, the main crime seemed to be bad driving. Ting is concerned about offending the dead women she is impersonating. Giving the preposterous set-up a chance, Ting finds herself visited by many wandering ghosts. Ting is possessed by the spirit of a victim, one with a wrongly accused killer. Where The Victim falls apart is that the film within the film ends up making more sense than the narrative about the making of the film, with the actress May, who plays Ting, haunted by a vengeful ghost. If most Thai films can be described as vernacular, The Victim concludes by attempting to connect the dots in an extremely hasty manner. On a technical level, the montage is a dazzling display of technique. What little explanation about what was seen seems barely related to the previous events. The result is that Monthon lost his way, confused by his own film within the film, and his several dreams within dreams.

Where The Victim is somewhat unusual from many Thai ghost stories is in the choice of Pitchanart Sakakorn in the lead role. Pitcharnart as Ting almost resembles a Thai Audrey Tatou, a change from the films that usually feature actresses that look like popular Thai star Paula Taylor. What few twists are offered in The Victim are, in addition to the technical virtuosity, not enough to disguise what ends up being just another Thai ghost story.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:23 AM

September 24, 2007

Luis Bunuel Blog-a-thon: Gran Casino

Luis Bunuel - 1947
Lionsgate Region 1 DVD

I recall a line from an interview in which Luis Bunuel stated he made Mexican films for Mexican audiences. No truer words were spoken in the case of Gran Casino, any yet I have to admit that the film is enjoyable on its own terms. Except for one very brief shot of glass breaking, there is little to indicate that this is a Luis Bunuel film. Missing are the iconic images - the straight razor cutting the eye or the parody of "The Last Supper" for example. There is, however, the comic absurdity of seeing Jorge Negrete backup chorus, Trio Calaveras appear whenever Negrete bursts into song. Additionally, there is the oil field, looking like nothing but a cheap studio set, filmed as infrequently as possible.

I think that to dislike Gran Casino is an absurd gesture. Had it not been for this film, Luis Bunuel would not have had the film career he eventually was able to achieve. More likely, Bunuel would be remembered by academics for his first three films, but otherwise would be one of those filmmakers mentioned in the same breath as Jean Epstein - an interesting experimental filmmaker from a bygone era. Gran Casino was successful enough that Bunuel would make one other film before making Los Olvidados, the film that re-established him critically.

In its own way, Gran Casino thematically fits in with Bunuel's concerns. As far as the film is concerned, the real villain is not the casino owner who murders the manager of the competing oil field, but his boss, a German businessman. The dialogue pointedly suggests that the character of Van Eckerman was a Nazi. In this scene, Bunuel is allowed to make an indirect jab at Franco as well as the politics that he had always opposed.

Bunuel even seems to have paid a sort of tribute to Gilda with the performace of Meche Barba. If anything, Gran Casino, more than his two English language films, makes one wonder what kind of films we might have seen had Bunuel actually embraced making films north of the Mexican border.

More Bunuel at Flickhead.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM | Comments (3)

September 21, 2007

William Wyler and the Funny Girl

The Love Trap
William Wyler - 1929

Be Yourself
Thornton Freeland - 1930
both Kino Video Region 1 DVD

I found out by chance that there is a William Wyler blog-a-thon going on this weekend. It is purely by coincidence that my writing about these two films is at this time. My own feelings about Wyler change from film to film. I love Dodsworth and greatly enjoy The Good Fairy and Roman Holiday. The last time I attempted to watch Ben-Hur from beginning to end, I fell asleep during the much touted chariot race. Even less enjoyable is the over-long, over produced Funny Girl. As little as I like Funny Girl, that has not disuaded me from seeing other films by Wyler or even seeing one film starring the real funny girl, Fanny Brice.

Seeing The Love Trap and Be Yourself close together is instructional in seeing two films made during the transitional period from silent films to talkies. In terms of narratives, if the cliches didn't start with these films, they weren't too old either. The Love Trap is about the chorus girl in love with the boy from the wealthy society family. Be Yourself is about a champion boxer and the manager-girlfriend who loves him. Anyone who’s seen more than three films from the early Thirties can pretty much guess the story arc. What may be of more interest than either narrative is seeing, and hearing, how two filmmakers take on the challenge of sound.

The Love Trap would seem the more awkward, starting out as a silent film with titles and a synchonized music score, more than halfway shifting to spoken dialogue. Wyler appears to have instinctively understood how to film people speaking without it looking stagey, cutting from full to medium shot. Even if there is less camera movement, the use of editing allows The Love Trap to flow rather than falter.

The Love Trap features Laura La Plante as an early version of that filmic archtype, the ditsy blonde. Thrown out from the chorus because she can't dance, La Plante temporarily plays party girl for the night before deciding she has her scruples, no matter that the rent is due. Escaping wearing a robe from what appears to be a compromising position, she finds her belongings out in the street. As if that's not enough, it rains that night. La Plante is rescued by wealthy young man Neil Hamilton. While happily married, La Plante's past comes to haunt her.

Even though the dialogue is spoken in a style more suitable for stage than screen, Wyler uses that as way way of underscoring the silliness of the story. La Plante, who I have never seen before, is fun to watch because of her ability to make a fool of herself, whether stumbling drunk or literally getting mud in her eye. It may also be that Wyler, who has had a reputation for being involved with some of his leading ladies, found The Love Trap a great excuse for filming Laura La Plante frequently in her lingerie. The Love Trap is everything that Ben-Hur is not - short, sexy and funny.

Be Yourself is primarily of interest for those who might want to have a glimpse of the real Fanny Brice. While her singing voice is closer to that of Ethel Merman, Brice is not the mugging, annoying screen presence that is Barbra Streisand. While the film starts of nicely with a dolly shot of the audience at a boxing match that moves into the ring with the two boxers, too often the film is static. Director Thornton Freeland is remembered, if at all, for Flying Down to Rio. Be Yourself looks like the work of people who were intimidated by the new technology. Many of the scenes are shot as full shots, with characters entering and exiting through doors. Robert Armstrong, as the dumb lug of a boxer who wins Brice's heart is especially awkward. Better is seeing Brice sing two very different versions of the same song, once upbeat and again as a tearjerker. It is quite possible that this film played a part in the title of the musical version of the life of Fanny Brice. Twice, her character is refered to as a "funny girl".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:08 PM | Comments (2)

September 17, 2007

Il Posto

Ermanno Olmi - 1961
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

On Wednesday, Edward Copeland will post the top vote getters from from a list compiled last month. To a certain extent, the films may reflect not only critical choices but will generational as well. What has me reflecting about that viewpoint was reading an interview with Jack Nicholson where he mentioned Il Posto as his idea of a truly great film. There is very little of substance in English on Ermanno Olmi. Seeing Il Posto for the first time made me think about how inconstant the critical landscape is, with the "discovery" of newer filmmakers, or of other past films and filmmakers that at an earlier time were considered less worthy of serious evaluation.

What made the biggest impression on me in seeing Il Posto was how in subject matter, it showed how little has changed in the workplace in the past forty-five plus years. Except that employees are considered disposable by many large, and even not so large companies, much of what happens in Il Posto would be not only recognizable, but also easily identifiable, for those still in the workforce. The tests that seem remotely related to the actual job, the absurd interview questions, and the fidgety waiting for the word that one is chosen to spend one's days enclosed in an office doing something that is more about paying bills than about personal fulfillment remains. Even the office New Year's party, like many office holiday parties, is more a place of desperation than merriment. That fellow employees seems to be busy doing something other than the actual work they were hired to do is a given. Except for the technology, the office space in 1961 Milan is not too different from Office Space.

Olmi's film is an update version of neo-realism with a cast of non-professionals. In a recent interview, Olmi mentions that the "star" of the film, Sandro Panseri, was now a supermarket manager. The object of Panseri's tentative affections, Loredana Detto, left acting to become Mrs. Ermanno Olmi. The documentary flavor comes from shooting in the streets of Milan and the Lombardy countryside, and especially inside the office building with the miles of hallways, and cramped and badly lit working spaces. There is a montage that almost seems like a non sequitur until the realization comes that one is watching excerpts of the lives of some of the staff outside of the office, a reminder that one's working life is not always how one thinks of oneself.

The ending of the film is perhaps more ambiguous than Olmi intended, or at least is up for more than one interpretation. Panseri has finally been promoted from messenger to clerk, in part the result of the sudden death of one of the employees. The former employee's desk turns out to represent a degree of status and seniority, meaningful only to those who have dutifully shown up for several years. In some ways these fellow employees may remind some of Takashi Shimura's characters in Ikiru, who showed up to work every day because he was afraid that if he was absent, he would not be missed. The film ends with a close up of Panseri to the sound of a loud mimeograph machine. While Olmi has claimed that Panseri is looking to his life beyond the office, one could also read this shot as that of someone who realizes that his goal has turned out to be far less than what he had hoped for, with little promise for the future, especially if the lives of his older co-workers is any indication. Even though Il Posto is partially autobiographical, while Olmi's life as a young office worker eventually lead to a career as a documentary, and narrative filmmaker, the more typical scenario is that the promotion to low level office worker is as far into the future as many would ever see.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:31 AM

September 13, 2007

The Earth Dies Screaming

Terence Fisher - 1965
Twentieth Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

For those of us who still enjoy watching horror and science fiction films from the Sixties, the Midnight Movies label is back, with Twentieth Century-Fox joining MGM for the fun. For almost a year there was uncertainty about whether the series would continue following Sony's partial acquisition of MGM. For those unfamiliar with the Midnight Movies series, most of the films were issued as double features of generally complimentary titles. Unlike MGM, which has been issuing their Midnight Movies DVDs from films acquired from American International and United Artists, the Fox films are from their own library. While some of the films, such as The Mephisto Waltz, were main features, other films were clearly made as parts of double feature combos, or as second features.

A case in point is The Earth Dies Screaming. It's a great title for a less than great film. The movie was produced by Robert Lippert who provided low budget features for Twentieth Century-Fox for more than a decade. Clocking in at slightly more than an hour, The Earth Dies Screaming was designed to be booked on the bottom half of double features. The C list cast is topped by forgotten actors Willard Parker and Virginia Field, with Dennis Price, the star of the classic Kind Hearts and Coronets getting third billing. Hammer horror film veteran Terence Fisher does what he can within the confines of a meager budget.

The story may well have been the source of inspiration for a more critically acclaimed and commercially successful film. Consider that the film begins with people dying mysteriously. A group of survivors find each other and band together against the unknown, and unseen enemy. What they have in common is that while the air was temporarily poisoned, they were in isolated quarters with individual ventilation systems. The dead people start coming back to life as mindless zombies set to kill the surviving humans. Did a young Danny Boyle and Alex Garland see The Earth Dies Screaming? I wouldn’t be surprised if they had. The opening premise may remind some of 28 Days Later.

Contemporary audiences will more likely scream with laughter than with horror, especially at the sight of the robots sent to terrorize the earthlings. In addition to Terence Fisher's efficient direction, the film features a terrific score by composer Elizabeth Lutyens, an underappreciated film composer as well as one of the few women in this field. The Earth Dies Screaming is not exactly a classic, but it is worth a look as a film that may have inspired a couple of future filmmakers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:23 AM | Comments (3)

September 10, 2007

Virgin of Nuremburg

La Vergine di Norimberga
Antonio Margheriti - 1963
Shriek Show Region 1 DVD

I received my copy of Tim Lucas' epic study of Mario Bava last week. I hope to find the time to read this huge and heavy book sometime soon, and perhaps comment on it. In the meantime, I got around to seeing this film that was inspired by Bava as well as the Hammer films that were released in the early Sixties. There is also a nod to Rebecca for good measure. One of the related tangents is that Virgin of Nuremburg was co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi, the extremely prolific wriiter who also co-wrote Bava's Whip and the Body and served as that film's second unit director.

It is in fact some of the behing the screen credits of Virgin of Nuremburg that I found more interesting than the actual film. In addition to Margheriti, who co-wrote and directed the film under his English language pseudonym of Anthony Dawson, and Ernesto Gastaldi's credit as Gastad Green, the third writing credit went to Edmund Greville, the director and sometimes writer who began his career with Abel Gance and Rene Clair. Seeing Ruggero Deodato's name as an assistant director was no big surprise, but Bertrand Blier? Which reminded me that the last film that I had seen by him was Too Beautiful for You back in 1989.

While she does portray a newlywed, Rossana Podesta does not play the title role. The title actually refers to the torture device better known as the iron maiden. I have know way of knowing if John Schlesinger was thinking of this film with the horror film segment in Darling, but through the first hour of Virgin of Nuremburg, Podesta's costume consists of her frilly, somewhat suggestive nightgown. A spirit from the past, known as The Punisher, has come back to make use of the torture devices in the castle Podesta now calls home.

While lack of logic has never gotten in the way of my enjoying a horror film, my big problem is that trying to make this particular villain sympathetic is the most tortured element of Virgin of Nuremburg. The Punisher turns out to be Podesta's father-in-law, a former Nazi officer. In the most gruesome part of the film, we are provided with a back story that tells of how the man was one of several officers who attempted to kill Hitler rather than continue fighting. This particular officer was operated on while alive and surgically altered to look almost like Max Schreck in Nosferatu. Perhaps Virgin of Nuremburg in Italian was different regarding this part of the narrative, but in the dubbed English version, I saw a guy who never learned the lesson of karmic payback.

There is some fun to see the actor, billed as "Cristopher Lee", as a menacing presence with his scarred face. Riz Ortolani's jazzy score seems out of place when the screen image is of the iron maiden, but on its own terms makes this film more interesting to listen to than actually see.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:31 AM | Comments (3)

September 07, 2007

Django

Sergio Corbucci - 1966
Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

With The Great Silence as one of the 122 favorite foreign language films, this may signal a deeper look into the films of Sergio Corbucci. For many film scholars, Corbucci has been overlooked, his westerns in the shadows of that more famous Sergio. One of the the interesting little facts presented in the supplements to Django is that Corbucci actually filmed the first spaghetti western, beating his friend and rival Leone by several months.

Django should be mandatory viewing for those who love to gush about Quentin Tarantino. This is the film with the ear cutting scene that inspired the most notorious moment in Reservoir Dogs. Corbucci's film was considered too violent by some and never received a U.S. theatrical release. In the interview about the making of Django, the assistant director of that film, Ruggero Deodato mentions that Corbucci was himself inspired by samurai films. One can easily identify a narrative that is a variation of Yojimbo, itself the reworking of Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest.

What makes Django still interesting to watch is the ways in which Corbucci upends various conventions from more traditional westerns. The virtual ghost town where much of the action takes place is the muddiest location I can recall. No one can pass through town without being caked with dirt. Inside the combination bar and hotel, the place is so cold that it takes little effort to see the breath of the actors. The town’s prostitutes are not the most attractive of women, and one sports a faint mustache. When the bartender joins in to play his violin with one of the piano playing girls, amateur gusto replaces any semblance of musicianship. Corbucci's west is not the land of promise or of new futures, but the broke down end of the line for people who have nowhere else to go.

While Franco Nero bears some resemblance to Clint Eastwood, his character of Django is a chatterbox in comparison to the man with no name. Django also has room for sexual liaisons, coupling with Maria, the woman he saves from the two rival groups at the beginning of the film. While Leone's hero is almost all business, Corbucci's hero selectively displays his vulnerability.

While not as developed as in other films, Django shares Corbucci's interest in using the western as a political parable. The chief villain, a former Confederate officer named Jackson hopes to carve out a new Dixie for himself in the small, unnamed border town. Leading a band of red hooded gunmen, Jackson shoots Mexican peasants for sport. His rival is the leader of a group of Mexican rebels, more interested in plunder than in any real political change. Power is seen as both a corrupting influence and something transient for those who are not part of the political establishment. For Corbucci, the best his heroes can hope for is a small moral victory.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:12 AM

September 05, 2007

A few words about Carl Dreyer

Day of Wrath/Vredens Dag
Carl Theodor Dreyer - 1943

Ordet/The Word
Carl Theodor Dreyer - 1955
both Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

Even though I have pretty much made up my mind on the favorite foreign language films I would be voting for, I still felt it important to see the films others had chosen. I had avoided seeing Carl Dreyer's films in part because what I had read made his films seem like chores to sit through. Herman Weinberg actually did Dreyer no favors with his constant harangues about how Robert Altman or John Schlesinger could get millions to make another movie while poor Carl Theodor had to scrape by, as if they were financed from the same pool. I might have seen Day of Wrath and Ordet a lot sooner if someone had mentioned that Carl Dreyer had a sense of humor, used to sly effect in his films.

The contrarian in me does think that if Carl Dreyer wasn't so intent on being an artist, he could have done well in Hollywood. The big shadows and general gothic look of Day of Wrath isn't too distant from the look of Universal horror films of the Thirties and Forties. The sexual tension in Day of Wrath, even the narrative of a woman who may or may not really be a witch, is similar to the stuff of Val Lewton's horror films. In a very roundabout way, one can connect Day of Wrath to Jacques Tourneur's Cat People by way of Paul Schrader, who wrote about Dreyer in his book, Transcendental Style in Film, and filmed a remake of Cat People. As for Ordet, considering how the film ends, bringing dead wives back to life was the basic plot of two of the Corman/Poe films.

More seriously, what is interesting about the two films is the examination of faith as a devisive, as well as unifying force. Unlike some of the more recent films which present faith as a given, that falls within certain parameters, Dreyer acknowledges that nothing is obvious, and that there are no easy answers. No one may be entirely right, or wrong. Instead, Dreyer seems to acknowledge that his characters are all sincere about their respective beliefs in Ordet. The flip side is that manipulation of faith destroys the characters of Day of Wrath.

What is also interesting about Ordet is that even though it takes place well into the 20th Century, the characters live not too differently from earlier eras. The hand crank telephone and the automobile, heard but not seen, almost seem to be anachronisms.

Even though two older men almost come to blows, for the most part, discussions of faith allow characters to agree to disagree in Ordet. Seen in terms other films, especially The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dreyer's men seem to be more prone to dogmatic thinking, while the women are more flexible in how they feel faith can be expressed. The farmer's son in Ordet, who thinks he is Jesus, provides a comic commentary on both the activities in the film as well as how faith can be literally interpreted. After an unexplained absence, the son reappears, apparently himself and no longer claiming to be Jesus. That the dead woman comes back to life following his prayer indicates that, at least for Dreyer, maybe the son could have been Jesus reborn as the son of a Danish farmer.

What makes both films interesting also is that Dreyer is purposefully ambiguous so that there is no correct interpretation. It is as if Dreyer knew that by making films that took place in a past that could in some ways reflect upon present day concerns, without being too specific, that his films would still be meaningful to those who took the time to see them in the future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:45 AM | Comments (2)

August 29, 2007

Citizen Dog

Mah Nakorn
Wisit Sasanatieng - 2004
Tai Seng Region 0 DVD

While pondering my list of favorite foreign language films, Citizen Dog looks like a candidate for future favorite. While as much of a celebration of movie fakery as his debut, Tears of the Black Tiger, Wisit Sasanatieng's Citizen Dog might be more easily embraced by those who were put off by the violence of the previous film. A film about the magic of the world, of finding love in a candy colored environment, Citizen Dog is like the contemporary version of the kind of film one might have seen from Jacques Demy or Vincente Minnelli.

Even if some of the satirical aspects of life in Thailand, especially Bangkok, may be lost on western viewers, one can still identify with a story about romantic love at its most intense and misguided. The film is a fantasy where a young girl, who may or may not actually be twenty-two, has a talking, cigarette smoking teddy bear for a best friend. At the same time, Wisit pokes fun at both the consumerism of Thais and their muddled attempts to be environmental activists. And while for the most part Citizen Dog is a romantic comedy, it is also a film that recognizes that relationships are often fragile, breaking apart sometimes more easily than coming together.

Pod is a young man who decides to explore life in Bangkok where he first has a job in a sardine factory. Later, as a security guard in an office building, he meets Jin, a maid who is compulsive about cleaning. Pod's infatuation for Jin is such that while other people would see Jin wearing a maid's uniform, for Pod what Jin wears is a pretty blue dress. Wisit's film is about how love is often informed by how we see people, whether or not how we envision someone is actually true. In the same way, Jin believes a white book that fell out of the sky, written in an unfamiliar language, will provide answers to her life. Jin also, for a time, has her life wrapped up in a magazine romance novel, upset when it seems like the two lovers may not unite. Pod and Jin seem a bit too naive, often failing to connect the dots. In one scene, Jin realizes that in order to read the mysterious white book, she needs to go to a foreign language school. She does, to work again as an office cleaner, somehow not realizing that she actually would need to attend the classes.

Gorgeously photographed in Hi Def Video, Wisit's film is of a world with intense pastel colors. There are no choreographed performances, but instead some musical numbers such as one with Pod rhapsodizing about Jin's blue maid uniform, seen by the cast members, male and female, surrounding Pod. The warm narration is done by Wisit pal, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang. The subtitles are superior, having been done by Film Comment contributor Chuck Stephens and Bangkok Post film critic Kong Rithdee. For myself, there is a bit of irony that I had to wait until I returned to the U.S. to see Citizen Dog with English subtitles. Citizen Dog combines the heart and soul of a classic MGM musical with the digital technology of the early 21st Century.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:38 AM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2007

LOL

Joe Swanberg - 2006
Benten Films All Region DVD

Would the young filmmakers of LOL be angry at me for saying that the film is an updated version of an old story? It may be possible that as an aging boomer, I may have missed the point of the film film. It's almost like the Thai expression that was popular when I was there, "Same Same, but different".

What connects LOL to past films is that essentially the film is about the sense of connection, or lack of connection, that young people feel, to each other as well as themselves. That sense of connection taken to its most literal meaning with the reliance on communication by cell phone and computer. Without beating the heads of the audience, as would more likely happen in a more conventionally made film, for at least one of the characters, the online relationship becomes more important and more real than the potential relationship with the young woman who has all but thrown herself in front of him.

Further exploring connectivity of the electric kind, what struck my interest was the exploration in creating different art forms, particularly with music. The young man, Alex, composes music that is made up of electronic sounds. Tim creates videos of his friends making vocal sounds that are edited on a computer to become forms of music. It's a kind of art form that even has to a limited extent been institutionalized.

What makes LOL worth seeing is that, at the very least, it is people in their twenties telling their own story. For that reason alone, LOL should be prefered over the stuff filling the multiplexes that claims to speak to and for a generation. Was LOL made to be viewed by someone with a lapsed membership to AARP? Probably not. Still, it will be interesting to see what Joe Swanberg and company go from here. Or at least as soon as his newest film shows up at a theater reasonably near me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:05 AM | Comments (1)

August 22, 2007

The Big Broadcast of 1938

Mitchell Leisen - 1938
Universal Region 1 DVD

Last week, The Siren had asked about the status of Mitchell Leisen. If the director is remembered at all, it is because of the films written by Preston Sturges or Billy Wilder. The conventional wisdom is that once the best screenwriters also were allowed to direct the films they wrote, Leisen's career went downhill. There may be some truth to that, though Senses of Cinema presents arguments that in some ways Leisen actually improved upon Sturges and Wilder. While The Big Broadcast of 1938 is not the ideal showcase for an introduction to Mitchell Leisen, it does merit a look.

The high point is seeing sixth billed Bob Hope, in his first film, performing the duet of Thanks for the Memories with Shirley Ross. The melody is probably familiar to those who at least know Hope from when he hosted the Oscars. The song itself, which won for Best Song, is a look at how distance reshapes the view of the past, giving a romantic glow to a relationship that may have been difficult at the time. The song is more bittersweet than nostalgic, with the memories cites becoming progressively darker, coinciding with the disintegration of the marriage. More than just being a love song, the lyrics are about how fragile relationships can be between two adults.

There is also an extended musical number about how the waltz has survived the various trends in social dancing from the mid 18th Century through 1938. This is where Leisen gets to show off his background in set and costume design. He also gets to throw in a few shots of women's underwear - an abundance of petticoats and culottes, particularly in a brief Cancan number.

The almost nonexistent story line involves a race between two oversized luxury liners, the Gigantic and the Colossal. The Gigantic looks like an art deco yacht on steroids. W.C. Fields portrays two brothers which have the Gigantic as part of their shipping line. The more unfortunate brother, whose reputation for misadventures dates back to the sinking of the Merrimac is suppose to travel on the Colossal. He winds up on the Gigantic instead where disaster immediately strikes. On the way, the crew picks up Field's daughter, the even unluckier Martha Raye. One of the running gags of the film involves Raye breaking mirrors every time she sees her reflection.

The Big Broadcast of 1938 primarily serves as a showcase for a variety of performers. The specialty performances seem especially dated. I'm not sure how many people remember Tito Guizar, while Kirsten Flagstad is probably of more interest to those who are as serious about opera as some of us are about film. The Shep Fields number combines the big band performance with animated water drops credited to Warner Brothers' animation producer Leon Schlesinger.

The film may be viewed as a changing of the comic guard, made just a couple of years before Bob Hope became the top comic star for Paramount. For top billed Fields, this was his last film at Paramount. His best scenes are a sort of review of some of his best bits involving games of golf and pool, as well as traveling on a contraption that is a combination scooter and airplane. Hope's humor has always been largely verbal. Where Hope really shines is as the self-deprecating master of ceremonies, telling jokes so terrible that they are still funny, such as the one about the guy who went to the dentist with only one dollar and got buck teeth. In retrospect, it is as if Hope's performance in The Big Broadcast of 1938 was an audition for his best remembered role, hosting the Academy Awards.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:46 PM | Comments (1)

August 16, 2007

Christopher Lee: Entertainment to Die For!

Theatre of Death
Samuel Gallu - 1966
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

Circus of Fear
John Moxey - 1966
Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

I wanted to take a break from more serious film and serious writing about film to see a couple of films starring Christopher Lee. This was sort of like the filmic equivalent to comfort food. I sort of knew what to expect, and enjoyed being distracted for a couple of hours. Both films are murder mysteries rather than horror films, with Lee as the chief suspect.

Theatre of Death is actually a pretty good film, with Lee as the director of a Grand Guignol theater that seems a bit too realistic in its depiction of mayhem. The trail of a vampire-like killer leads to the theater and Lee. What may be more interesting is that it brings up the argument about what defines entertainment. Especially with the controversy over what some call torture porn, how different is something like Hostel or Saw to what played on Parisian stages? Or, if there is a difference, how is that difference defined? Maybe I can't really escape from writing somewhat seriously about film after all.

But getting back to watching Christopher Lee in the mid-Sixties, the two films were sold as being more horrific than they really are. Theatre of Death starts off with a fake decapitation on a guillotine, and ends unsurprisingly with the death of the killer. What’s fun is watching Lee as the Stanislavski of Slaughter declaiming on what theater and acting should really be about, bringing comedy out of tragedy and vice versa. There is nothing scary about Theatre of Death, but the parody of method acting is as amusing as it is incongruous.

Circus of Fear is less interesting, although it is one of the more credible films from writer-producer Harry Alan Towers. Lee is hidden behind a black mask and a faintly Eastern European accent through most of the film. Loot from a heist is hidden at a circus. Hot on the trail, detective Leo Genn has to wade his way through the various rivalries in the circus. Several people are killed by a knife of the style used by circus performers. Could the killer be lion tamer Lee? The high point is seeing Klaus Kinski as one of the gangsters who was part of the heist. The most shocking aspect of Circus of Fear is seeing how relatively healthy Kinski was during this time. Inspired by the Edgar Wallace films of the time, Circus of Fear also has a proto-Gialli touch with only the black leather gloved hands of the killer visible.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:19 AM | Comments (2)

August 14, 2007

Two films by John M. Stahl

The Immortal Sergeant
John M. Stahl - 1943
Twentieth Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

The Keys of the Kingdom
John M. Stahl - 1944
Twentieth Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

I first became aware of John M. Stahl through Andrew Sarris' American Cinema. Stahl is listed in the "Expressive Esoterica" section. In the almost forty years since publication, Stahl seems to have become more esoteric, though not less expressive. I had the opportunity to attend a screening of Holy Matrimony quite a while ago which I enjoyed. I had also seen Leave Her to Heaven though I am fuzzier about when and how I saw what may be Stahl's most famous film. What had stuck with me in reading Sarris was his description of a scene in The Immortal Sergeant.

I finally got to see The Immortal Sergeant which was quietly released on DVD last Spring. The scene in question is of Henry Fonda's desert dream. A soldier, trekking through the desert, with little water left, Fonda's mind wanders to a memory of water, actually a lake, and the woman of his dreams, Maureen O'Hara. The scene was not quite what I had imagined. But the film goes into a direction that was unexpected and satisfying.

What little is written about John M. Stahl mostly is about Leave Her to Heaven or his other so-called "women's pictures". Stahl's reputation also rests on the fact that two of his films Imitation of Life and Magnificent Obsession were remade by Douglas Sirk. Very few of Stahl's films are available on tape or disc. One key early sound film that would be most welcomed, if still preserved, would be Strictly Dishonorable, Stahl's 1931 film from Preston Sturges' hit Broadway play. What The Immortal Sergeant and The Keys of the Kingdom accomplish at the very least is that they are reminders that Stahl also made at least two worthy films about men.

Although both films were essentially works for hire, they share some key elements. Both films are about men who discover their strengths after being sent to remote parts of the world. Both Fonda and Gregory Peck are encouraged by mentors who die in the course of the film. One could also say that both films are about protagonists who seek balance between following orders and their own inner direction, and between personal beliefs and and a more expedient greater good. Also shared is a core belief of the two main characters in the inherent dignity of others, a respect given to all. Whether as soldier or priest, that respect is accorded everyone regardless of who they are, unless that person demonstrates that the respect is not mutual. Both Fonda and Peck are self-effacing, and view whatever they have accomplished as no more than the job that they were assigned.

The Immortal Sergeant is an unusual war film, especially for its time. Henry Fonda is motivated to enlist not because of patriotic ideals, but because he has seen newsreel footage of how the Nazis have imprisoned his favorite French waiter. Fonda also chooses to enter the war as a Private, playing on the notion that as a civilian his character is a very private person. Even though the Italian and German soldiers are virtually unseen, war is presented as a waste of human life. There are really no winners or losers, just the survivors and the dead. Fonda calls himself a tinpot hero. Military victory is less meaningful than developing a backbone, and considering oneself worthy to propose marriage to Maureen O'Hara.

The Keys of the Kingdom may strike some as being shockingly liberal when viewed at a time when concepts as Christianity and faith seem so narrowly defined. Gregory Peck's Father Francis chooses to have converts come to him rather than force conversion on the Chinese. Faith is something one come to out of personal conviction and sincerity. Francis comes in conflict with the church because of his pluralistic viewpoint, that how people treat each other is more important than the particular faith that is embraced. In this way, Keys of the Kingdom is as unusual a film about faith as The Immortal Sergeant undermines itself as a war film. In The Keys of the Kingdom, it is less important to be Catholic or even Christian in one's identity than it is to do good in the world.

Both Fonda and Peck are encouraged by their mentors in the form of voices that they hear from Thomas Mitchell and Edmund Gwenn respectively. That these two idiosyncratic mentors are dead almost suggests that one could almost retitle either of Stahl's films about men with a mission, "Leave Him to Heaven".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:45 PM | Comments (3)

August 07, 2007

Farr West with Delmer Daves

The Last Wagon
Delmer Daves - 1956
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

3:10 to Yuma
Delmer Daves - 1957
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

In both The Last Wagon and 3:10 to Yuma, Delmer Daves often uses long shots of his characters dwarfed by their environment. Both films can be read as being about people living with nature. In The Last Wagon, Richard Widmark tell Felicia Farr about how he prefers to sleep under the stars rather than live in a permanent home. Van Heflin is motivated to escort prisoner Glenn Ford in order to purchase water rights following a three year drought. The long shots and overhead shots might be read as commenting on how puny man's efforts are in contrast with peaks and valleys. Certainly Daves mastered the art of wide screen composition.

As Daves champion, Bertrand Tavernier pointed out in Film Comment, "What first impresses the viewer is Daves' attention to landscape, to nature, expressed in shots that intimately and sometimes inextricably mingle lyricism and realism. He actually insisted on personally supervising the kind of material many Hollywood filmmakers would leave to second-unit directors - extreme long shots, transitional moments filmed at dawn or twilight."

Daves also examines how fragile the family unit is, and how acting on behalf of one's family can have unexpected consequences. A group of young people go for a midnight swim in The Last Wagon. One of the boys accidentally is pulled by the river to death or at least injury in the rapids. In the course of being away from the main camp, the young people find that they saved themselves from an Indian massacre. In 3:10 to Yuma, Van Heflin is originally motivated by necessity for himself and his family, which by the end of the film is replaced by acting for the greater good of the community at large.

Both films have key scenes taking place during mealtimes. In the two films, Richard Widmark and Glenn Ford are prisoners. For Daves, dinner is not only a time for the family to get together, but a time to share in the sense of common humanity. In The Last Wagon, Felicia Farr and Tommy Rettig make sure Richard Widmark is fed, arguing with the sheriff that Widmark is a human being. In 3:10 to Yuma, Glenn Ford sits at the head of the table with Van Heflin and his family where he engages in friendly banter. The dinner scene in 3:10 to Yuma is played out for Ford to unbalance both Heflin's family and audience expectations about how an outlaw is suppose to behave.

Man's law, a staple of westerns, is part of both films. Richard Widmark acts according to Indian law which has put him in conflict with the laws of the U.S. government. In 3:10 to Yuma, the conflict concerns whether one is willing to sacrifice oneself on behalf of enforcing the law.

Both films also feature Felicia Farr. Farr plays a woman who brings out the more idealistic aspects of Widmark and Ford. I hesitate to say civilizing as that suggests in turn domesticating these two men who feel committed to a transient existence. In The Last Wagon, Farr inspires Widmark to lead the survivors of the massacre to a safe haven, in spite of the danger he may cause to himself. In 3:10 to Yuma, Farr is temporarily Ford's lover in the film's most wistful scene. It is during this scene that Ford sees himself not as a career criminal but as a gentleman who feels it his duty to treat a woman in the best possible fashion.

If 3:10 to Yuma is the greater film, it is because it is as much psychological drama as it is action film. Alone in the hotel room, waiting for the train, Glenn Ford tries to tempt Van Heflin with greater and greater sums of money than Heflin has known, while also reminding him of the odds he faces when Ford's gang returns, and the risk Heflin places on his family. Although the film is gorgeously photographed in stark black and white, Daves is interested in the shading of his characters. Ford's character of Ben Wade is not simply a robber and killer, but one who makes a point of being charming and likable. 3:10 to Yuma also benefits from a supporting cast of great character actors, especially Henry Jones as the town drunk who tries to redeem himself by also escorting Ford, Richard Jaeckel as a member of Ford's gang, and Leora Dana as Heflin's wife.

The scene of Ford alone in a bar with barmaid Felicia Farr is Daves at his most romantic and idealistic. Maybe one can attribute the emotional impact to the musical queues, but the scene anticipates Daves eventual sequeway to the romantic dramas that capped his career, especially A Summer Place. For Daves, the best romantic relationships provide a temporary haven from the hostility of the world at large. Men and men’s laws are transient, and people are all subject to nature and its laws. As Richard Widmark comments to Tommy Rettig in The Last Wagon, "Death's a path we're all on, son."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:54 AM | Comments (1)

August 04, 2007

A Scandal in Paris

Douglas Sirk - 1946
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

The real life of Eugene Francois Vidocq appears have been more exciting than the version of Vidocq in A Scandal in Paris. What may have interested Douglas Sirk was not the biographical aspects. A key moment that defines Sirk's theme comes near the end of the film when a former detective shoots his wife, thinking she was with another man when he sees her in the window, in shadow, with a mannequin. Setting aside the fanciful presentation of 19th Century France, what A Scandal in Paris is really about is the differences between people as they are, and how they are imagined to be.

Earlier in the film, George Sanders and Akim Tamiroff have escaped from prison. Found sleeping in front of a church, they are hire by a painter who has been commissioned to restore a painting of St. George and the dragon. Sanders poses as St. George because of his appearance of innocence. Signe Hasso falls in love with the image of Sanders as the saint. Even after meeting Sanders, and acknowledging his criminal life, Hasso expresses her belief that the image of Sanders and the real man would eventually be the same.

Deeper examinations of Sirk's themes can be found by Tom Ryan and Tag Gallagher, among others. Even viewed simply for its value as entertainment, there is Carole Landis doing her best faux Dietrich, and Sanders exchanging witticisms with the rest of the cast. Sanders seemed born to toss out bon mots like, "Women always surprise us by doing the expected." Several other German emigres contributed to the film including composer Hanns Eisler, cinematographer Eugene Shufftan, and editor Albrecht Joseph. While watching the film from a sixty year distance evoked for me the loss of a time when it was less uncommon to for a films to have dialogue actually worth listening to, what A Scandal in Paris may have meant especially for the people behind the camera was a look back at a world they once knew that was now irretrievably lost.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:27 PM

July 29, 2007

Raoul Walsh heads for the hills

Esther and the King
Raoul Walsh - 1960
Diamond Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw
Raoul Walsh - 1958
Twentieth Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

In The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw, Jayne Mansfield sings "If the Hills of San Francisco could only talk". Judging from the actresses featured in a couple of Raoul Walsh's last films, the veteran filmmaker was more interested in the geography of human body, especially the twin peaks of Mansfield and Daniela Rocca. This should be no surprise to those who recall a Walsh gag where a female character is refered to as the lay of the land. If that wasn't enough, one could imagine Walsh yelling bring on the dancing girls.

1960 was a banner year for Jewish biblical stories on film. My grandparents took me to see The Story of Ruth. I missed out on the theatrical run of Esther and the King though. My parents probably read Bosley Crowther's New York Times review which began, "The beautiful Bible story of Esther has been thumped into a crude costume charade . . ." The film is hardly vintage Walsh, but it does deserve better than the crummy pan and scan DVD release currently available. Made during the peak of Bible inspired films as well as the Italian peplums, Esther and the King is loaded with cheesecake and beefcake.

The beefcake doesn't get much beefier than Richard Egan. Between this film and The Three Hundred Spartans, I've seen more of Richard Egan's massive chest, legs and even his teeth than I ever wanted. Much of the cheesecake is provided by the plush Daniella Rocca who does a striptease ending with a display of her voluptuous chest. Physically, Rocca and Egan are a better match than Egan with Joan Collins. Compared to the many well endowed women in Esther and the King, Collins looks like a veritable waif, albeit one with an abundance of eye shadow. And although Walsh, who co-wrote the film, liked to boast about his way with the women in his autobiography, there is a discomfitting scene of a nearly nude Egan wrestling with his equally beefy soldiers.

Even though the film is based on a bible story, Walsh may have gotten it in his mind to create a post World War II allegory. When characters talk about the fate of the Jews using such key words as scapegoat, annihilation and holocaust, it suggests that Walsh was trying to give the film some deeper meaning. There is also a scene where the chief bad guy prays to a statue that looks unmistakably devilish. Esther and the King is best when it can not be taken seriously, especially in the anachronistically modern musical scenes. Some of choreography was re-used for "Walk Like an Egyptian".

Tim Lucas was gracious enough to email a response to my inquiry about how much of Esther and the King was actually directed by cinematographer Mario Bava. In his forthcoming book on Bava, Lucas has devoted an entire chapter on the making of Esther and the King. What I will say is that there are a couple of scenes that visually resemble some of Bava's future work as director, based on the use of color and lighting, especially one brief scene of a whipping, with both man bathed in red light.

The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw is more or less about the end of the West and the triumph of capitalism and industrialisation. What may be of greater significance is that according to IMDb, this was the first westerns to be shot in Spain, making Walsh the unwitting godfather of the spaghetti western. The comic peak is early in the opening scenes with Robert Morley. Walsh may have had a hand in the casting of older actors like Henry Hull and Bruce Cabot, both of whom worked with Walsh previously. It is an easily forgettable film that might have been nominally better had the film starred Jane Russell instead of Jayne Mansfield. Attending the Raoul Walsh retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art almost thirty years ago, I have not forgotten the image of Russell in The Revolt of Mamie Stover. Russell took on everybody, even Richard Egan. Walsh has a shot of Russell overlooking Hawaii, standing defiantly as if she was John Wayne surveying the west. Jayne Mansfield saves Fractured Jaw and Kenneth More, while Joan Collins saves Persia and Richard Egan. In examining Raoul Walsh's filmography, it seems like that iconic image of Russell on top of the peak was Walsh's visual acknowledgment that after The Revolt of Mamie Stover his long career would soon be entering a steep decline.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:47 PM

July 27, 2007

DVDs in your BVDs

Christina/Christina y la Reconversion Sexual
Francisco Lara - 1984
Private Screening Collection Region 1 DVD

Love Circles/La Ronde de l'amour
Gerard Kikoine - 1985
Private Screening Collection Region 1 DVD

I don't know if anyone else writing about films has this problem, but I feel that any time I get DVD screeners, I am obligated to write about them. Especially as the number of screeners I receive is relatively small, there is no reason not to write about them. What gets in the way is when the film in question is not really designed for any real critical scrutiny. This is obviously the case in these two DVDs of soft-core films produced by the unstoppable Harry Alan Towers. These two films are from the 1980s, and could have easily been left there.

Seeing Christina has confirmed what I have long suspected - that it's more fun to read about Jewel Shepard and her films. This Christina is introduced by one character as the "playgirl of the Western World". Kidnapped by a gang of lesbian terrorists known as the 10th of November group, she escapes their clutches only to be held ransom by a suave smuggler named Alain. The film is hugely padded with Shepard's couplings with various men and women. Whomever the audience is for this film, it's not me. Not only does the European cast sound badly dubbed in English, but Shepard does as well. If you miss big hair and bad disco music, you might want to take a peak at Christina. The film opens with Shepard dancing topless, and closes with her dancing nude, in what appears to be the same disco set. For me, all that was missing was for Shepard to lip synch to the Andrea True Connection.

Love Circles is dubiously even less erotic or entertaining. No one who reads this web site would confuse Love Circles with La Ronde. The film jumps from character to character, going around the world from Paris to other exotic locales before ending up in the same Parisian disco. The height of wit in Love Circles is when a man is bedded by a pair of Hong Kong twins, and is befuddled by the butterfly tattoo that seems to switch cheeks. Somewhere Arthur Schnitzler is cursing himself for not thinking of that first. Christina benefits from a modicum of imagination with a filmmaker who has an eye for the symbolic aspects of architecture. Either way, without setting the bar very high, both films make me miss the nuttiness of Jesus Franco's Venus in Furs, in its very unique way Harry Alan Towers' towering achievement.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:55 PM | Comments (1)

July 25, 2007

Jimmywork

Simon Sauve - 2004
Atopia Region 1 DVD

The first images of Jimmy Weber show him barely keeping his head above water. This is the perfect visual metaphor for a guy who seems to be living from one scam to the next, the kind of occupations Weber would call "Jimmywork". In the website statement by Simon Sauve, he suggests that Jimmywork was a documentary that eventually evolved into something different than might have been initially planned. For the most part it is deliberately unclear how much of the film is actual documentary, staged enactments or re-enactments, or pure fiction.

Shot digitally, and transfered to film, Jimmywork is primarily in grainy black and white. Kind of like The Blair Witch Project, even if what we see isn't real, it looks real. What follows is the story of a fifty year old guy who decides to unsuccessfully recreate himself as a maker of television commercials. Weber's idea is to film commercials of the rodeo in the rural Quebec town of St. Tite (sounds like "tit"), for play on U.S. television in Oklahoma and Texas. As this small community has a large stadium specifically built to host the rodeo, it is indirectly stated that the rodeo is doing fine attracting as many attendees as they can handle without additional advertising. His plan to film commercials eventually rejected, Weber comes up with a nutty scheme to "kidnap" the 12,000 cases of beer held in storage for the rodeo audience.

The film ends with a sort of happy resolution, although it uncertain whether Weber has ever really learned from anything from his past misadventures. Sauve's blend of documentary and fiction is fairly seamless. Jimmywork seems almost like a con job on the part of the filmmaker, the story of a fabulist as told by a fabulist. That may have been the point of the creation of Jimmywork.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:31 AM

July 21, 2007

Frank Tashlin: Day after Day

The Glass Bottom Boat
Frank Tashlin - 1966
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Caprice
Frank Tashlin - 1967
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

It was fitting that the last film to be produced in Cinemascope was directed by Frank Tashlin, with cinematography by Leon Shamroy. The two worked together on The Girl Can't Help It prior to the two Doris Day spy films. Ideally, Fox and Warner Brothers will be inspired to give DVD releases to two much better examples of Tashlin's work, Bachelor Flat and The Alphabet Murders, respectively. What the two films have in common aside from the star and espionage premise, is how Tashlin was able to inject personal touches into films that were projects for hire.

In The Glass Bottom Boat, Dom DeLuise seems to be doing his best to impersonate Jerry Lewis as a bungling sound sytem installer. This is not only with the pratfalls, stepping on a cake and getting his foot stuck in a vase, but also with the verbal schtick of incomplete phrases. Like many of Tashlin's other films, there are references to other movies as when Doris Day more or less mimics Greta Garbo as Mata Hari. Day also sings a couple of stanzas from "Que Sera, Sera", her signature song that was in The Man who knew too Much. Better are some of the asides as when Rod Taylor's goofy sidekick, Dick Martin in caught in bed with General Edward Andrews and comments about the two shopping for furniture in the morning. Where Tashlin's hand is most apparent is in Rod Taylor's kitchen of the future, especially with the mechanical vacuum cleaner that pops out like an eager puppy to clean any messes on the kitchen floor. The Glass Bottom Boat, while not unawatchable, is not particularly funny either.

Judging from the fact that Tashlin had a co-writing credit on Caprice, he seems to have had more freedom with his second Doris Day vehicle. Visually, this is the stronger of the two films based on some of the more unusual camera angles Tashlin and Shamroy employ. Setting aside the inconsistent comedy, Caprice suggests that had he wanted to, or had been given the opportunity, Tashlin could have done well shooting relatively straight action thrillers, or at least something along the lines of one of the Matt Helm films with Dean Martin. In this story about industrial espionage between cosmetic companies, Day and Richard Harris walk into a studio where a commercial is being shot by Shamroy making a cameo appearance. One might assume that Harris is speaking for Tashlin with the line, "If you've seen one studio, you've seen them all", a line that might refer to Tashlin's own career in the Sixties. The setting, with the various bathing beauties on behalf of adverstising easily recalls Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?.

The two ski scenes are genuinely thrilling to watch, each featuring monochrome figures, one pursuing the other. The more serious tone of Caprice is unusual for a Tashlin film, although as a part of Day's filmography is not so out of place with The Man who knew too Much or Midnight Lace. One of the best gags of Caprice involves Day following a model to a movie theater where the film playing is Caprice. And although Day was game enough to do the physical comedy Tashlin is known for, and gives an interesting double reading from Hamlet, the best verbal and visual joke of Caprice, one winces anytime Day, looking every bit her forty-two years, is refered to as "young woman".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 PM | Comments (1)

July 20, 2007

Hell to Eternity

Phil Karlson - 1960
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

While I am glad that Warner Brothers finally got around to releasing Hell to Eternity on DVD, I wish someone would have had the foresight to interview Guy Gabaldon or better, had him do a commentary track, before he died last August. While Gabaldon loved the movie about his life enough to name a son after Jeffrey Hunter, even a superficial examination reveals discrepencies between Galbadon's own experience and the version filmed by Phil Karlson. A closer look also reveals that in spite of any good intentions on the part of the filmmakers, Hell to Eternity is as conflicted about whatever it is trying to say about racism as Gabaldon is shown being conflicted about his own sense of identity.

While Hell to Eternity is one of the first of the few films that addressed the treatment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, the film simultaneously ignores that Gabaldon was of Mexican descent. One of the constant themes of the film is the idea of being "all American". As shown in Hell to Eternity, speaking English and adopting the culture was not enough for Japanese immigrants or their children. With the narrative and casting of Jeffrey Hunter, there is no discussion of the discrimination that Gabaldon faced as a Latino in the Marines.

And yet . . . overlooking that Jeffrey Hunter was the same age as Guy Gabaldon in 1960, and too old to play the eighteen year old war hero, and giving a pass to the fictionalization of Gabaldon's life, Hell to Eternity remains a moving, and sometimes heartbreaking film. Through Hunter, the film addresses the contradiction of the U.S. government specifically interning Japanese-Americans though not those of German or Italian descent, as well as the initial rejection of Japanese-Americans in the military. Gabaldon is presented as a person who, if not in some kind of conflict with others, is conflicted within, an outsider who finds himself identifying not only with the Japanese family that adopted him, but with by extension, the Japanese. On the battlefields of Saipan, Gabaldon identification with his military family is such that he becomes a virtual killing machine after witnessing the murder of a Marine Corps buddy played by David Janssen. In a scene in Hawaii, where there was no internment of the Japanese, Hunter ends up with a caucasian reporter portrayed by Patricia Owens, while Janssen and Vic Damone are with two Japanese women. If Gabaldon is not battling his darker impulses or other men, he is depicted here in a battle of the sexes, conquering the unattainable white woman. Karlson cuts directly from a shot of Hunter and Owens in embrace to footage of naval cannons blasting away, as if to say love, as well as life, is a battlefield.

What the real Guy Gabaldon may have seen in Jeffrey Hunter's performance that struck him as true was the intensity that Hunter projects, the flashes of rage provoked from witnessing discrimination or the death of his best friend in the Corps. Sessue Hayakawa brings his considerable dignity to the role of the Japanese general who commits ritual suicide in front of his troops after ordering them to surrender. Hayakawa's wife, silent star Tsuru Aoki made her last film appearance as the woman Gabaldon called "Mama-san". There is a bit of coincidence that approximately five years after they appeared together in Hell to Eternity, Jeffrey Hunter starred in the pilot episode of "Star Trek", while George Takei, who played his "brother" George, went on to co-star in the series. They is much to admire about Hell to Eternity, but there is still room for the true story of Guy Gabaldon to be told.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:22 AM | Comments (1)

July 17, 2007

Attack of the 50 Foot Woman

Nathan Juran - 1958 (signed as Nathan Hertz)
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Does anyone know if Pedro Almodovar saw Attack of the 50 Foot Woman? The poster from the original film has an erotic promise of an ordinary sized man with the giant, beautiful Allison Hayes. This promise is even discussed in Christopher Guest's 1993 remake, an offer made by the giant sized Daryl Hannah. In Amodovar's film Talk to Her there is the depiction of that erotic fantasy at its most graphic. When looking at the 1958 poster, I have to wonder how many of those tiny men are actually running away from the giant Allison Hayes, and if any took the chance to peak under her very short skirt.

Rewatching the first Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, it seems that there was always a self-knowing sense of humor in Mark Hanna's screenplay. What has helped elevate the film to cult status is Nathan Juran's craftsmanship, with better cinematography and lighting used creatively to disguise the limited budget. While the double exposures showing an almost transluscent giant as big as his spaceship betrays the cheap special effects, the scene inside the spaceship with the faces of two men distorted against glass globes is a triumph of imagination with limited funds.

I hadn't intended on seeing the HBO remake, but the rental company twice sent me that version in an envelope describing the first version. The second version gives the story a feminist slant as well as playing up the comic possibilities of the first film. Even so, the first version remains the funnier, and more entertaining film. Unlike the remake which attempts to be both a spoof of Fifties sci-fi movies and a social critique, the first film clearly articulates its theme of unfulfilled, and impossible sexual desire. This theme is both stated verbally when a one of the doctors treating the giant Allison Hayes describes her irrational love of unfaithful husband William Hudson as similar to that of a middle aged man "longing for a twenty year old girl". More eloquent is the distaff parody of King Kong with Hayes peering through a window in search of the two-timing lout.

Fifties bad girl and Playboy Playmate, Yvette Vickers, provides a commentary track with film historian Tom Weaver. Laughing her way through the film, Vickers discusses the making of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman as well as her own career. Clearly enjoying the recognition received from a film her agent assured her "no one would see", the voice belies a woman who will be seventy-one in August. The best special effect of Attack of the 50 Foot Woman is the sight of Vickers, wearing one of her form fitting dresses, doing her rock and roll tribute to Rita Hayworth as Gilda.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:50 AM

July 16, 2007

Miss Barbara Stanwyck's 100th Birthday: Roustabout

John Rich - 1964
Paramount Region 1 DVD

According to several sources, the part of Maggie Morgan, the carnival owner in Roustabout was originally offered to Mae West. Aside from the part being a supporting role, it should be no surprise that West turned down this opportunity for a "comeback". In Myra Breckinridge, West received top billing, playing another version of her on screen persona. That Barbara Stanwyck took the role may have been as a favor to producer Hal Wallis as well as an admission that at age 57, her choices of roles in theatrical films was limited. However the casting worked, Stanwyck also shares the film with Leif Erickson, the co-star of the Wallis production, Sorry, Wrong Number. In her second to last theatrical film, Stanwyck could be viewed as doing a warm-up for her role as the matriarch of television's "The Big Valley". The role of Maggie Morgan probably could have been taken by one of Stanwyck's peers without any major difference to the film. Stanwyck's performce is primarily as testament to her sense of professionalism.

Lifelong movie fan Elvis Presley was reportedly happy to share the screen with Stanwyck. As a Presley vehicle, the film is fairly entertaining, although any attempts to make Presley more in tune with 1964 America seem to confirm Bob Dylan's lyrics that something was happening, but neither Elvis, Tom Parker nor Hal Wallis seemed to know exactly what that was. Roustabout was filmed around the time that Beatlemania took over the United States in March of 1964. By the time the film was released in November, A Hard Day's Night would help make Presley, as well as Presley movies, look like squaresville.

With the screenplay written during the peak of the folk music revival of the early Sixties, Presley's character of Charlie Rogers is introduced as a controversial folk singer. This being a Hal Wallis production, Presley's role is a variation on the short tempered loner of Loving You. Singing to an audience of college students, Rogers sings a protest song about . . . legacy students! The song, "Poison Ivy League" is closer to Tom Lehrer than Bob Dylan. There is the punning mention of "the sons of the rich" in this song. Offended students including perennial lunkhead Norman Grabowski gang up on Rogers, who is advised by the police to leave town. Riding his motorcycle, wearing a black leather jacket, I kept on expecting a replay of The Wild One with Presley in the Brando role, and one of the actresses to run up and ask Elvis what he was rebelling against. (And of course the patented Elvis sneer with the response of "Whaddya got?")

Driving Stanwyck and screen daughter Joan Freeman in a jeep, Leif Erickson causes Presley to get into an accident, damaging the motorcycle. Presley falls in love with Freeman, gets talked into working for the carnival by Stanwyck, and keeps on getting on Erickson's bad side. Elvis works initially as a roustabout, doing the various jobs needed to get the carnival set up and running until Stanwyck discovers that her new hire can sing, and even better, attract crowds to the carnival. Rival carny owner Pat Buttram decides that if he can't buy out Stanwyck, he'll try to get her new singer. Presley does one carnival related song about hula girls "shaking their grass". Better is his cover of Leiber and Stoller's "Little Egypt". In the Elvis filmography this is one of the more watchable films although television veteran John Rich maintains a sit-com style of two-shots and group shots.

The role of Maggie Morgan was essentially thankless. The billing Stanwyck received belies the relatively small part she has in Roustabout. Taking on the burden of running a carnival, and adding to it unwavering loyalty to the alcoholic Erickson, this is Stanwyck at her most self-effacing, with the possible exception of her last big screen role in The Night Walker. At least compared to some of the films her contemporaries were doing, Stanwyck was able to end her screen career with a modicum of dignity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:30 AM | Comments (2)

July 15, 2007

My Belated Bob Clark Double Feature

Black Christmas
Bob Clark - 1974
Critical Mass Region 1 DVD

She-Man
Bob Clark - 1967
Something Weird Video Region 1 DVD

Some of the more serious writings about Bob Clark following his death last April suggested that his earlier films were worthy of reconsideration. What connects these two earlier films with Clark's later work is the penchant for bawdy humor. Although most of Black Christmas is a straight forward thriller, the scenes with Margot Kidder are given to exchanges concerning that most prominent part of male anatomy. The dialogue is such that the infamous locker room scene in Porky's is virtually inevitable. Made at the same time as giallo horror films were made, Black Christmas is quite restrained, with Clark seeming to have studied Psycho so that in the one scene depicting a murder, we only see the glass unicorn getting bloodier in the hand of the unseen killer. One side note - Olivia Hussey is beautifully photographed throughout most of this film.

She-Man is a much earlier effort that Bob Clark probably would have preferred to leave off his resume. Fortunately this obscurity has been rescued by the maniacs over at Something Weird. The preposterous story is about a former Army officer, Albert Rose, who is kidnapped by the AWOL soldier who served under him. The soldier has become some kind of transgendered secret agent who blackmails various people into service, usually forcing them into cross dressing roles. It takes our "hero" the length of the film to figure out that Dominique, the soldier from his past, is now Dominita, the blackmailing dominatrix. Albert Rose becomes Rose Albert, forced to serve as a maid. One of Dominita's victims is a lesbian named Ruth who falls in love with Albert, or more likely with Rose. Either way, the film is bookended with a doctor who explains that there is nothing wrong with being a transvestite as long as it's kept indoors, or words to that effect. Curiously, Clark made an unreleased film the previous year according to IMDb titled The Emperor's New Clothes that has a similar story, concerning a cross dressing soldier.

She-Man is actually less interesting to see than its description might indicate. There is one hilarious moment with three dancers in oversized top hats that suggested that even if Bob Clark's future as a filmmaker was uncertain, he could be counted on to provide at least one good laugh.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:23 PM

July 14, 2007

Sir Arne's Treasure

Herr Arnes Pengar
Mauritz Stiller - 1919
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Not being able to go to the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this year, I settled for watching a silent film on DVD. I had seen a couple of films by Swedish pioneer filmmaker Victor Sjostrom, but none by his friend and sometimes filmmaking partner, Mauritz Stiller. Sir Arne's Treasure was probably appropriate for the night of Friday the 13th with its violence and ghosts.

I don't have my copy available to quote, but Andrew Sarris suggests that Sjostrom and Stiller may have been great filmmakers before D.W. Griffith. One aspect of Sir Arne's Treasure is that should be noted is that Stiller was adept enough at conveying much of the story visually that there is less dependence on titles to follow the action. I have to compare this to my experience seeing Ernst Lubitsch's The Oyster Princess made the same year, with German titles. Much of humor of Lubitsch was lost, based as it was on verbal jousting of the characters. It is only towards the end of Sir Arne's Treasure that Stiller resorts heavily towards titles.

Based on a novel by Selma Lagerlof, the bare bones of the story have become something of a template for other films. Taking place in 16th Century Sweden, three Scottish mercenaries escape prison, and find themselves at Sir Arne's remote castle where they murder all but but Elsalill, a young woman who successfully hid herself during the mayhem. Finding that they can't escape with Sir Arne's heavy box of coins, the three go to nearby town where they live off the loot. The treasure is supposedly cursed, and the three mercenaries find themselves trapped by the frozen ice surrounding the coast.

With cinematography Julius Jaenzon, Stiller does not stay still with his camera, either in the studio or on location. One of the more amazing traveling shots is of a prison guard marching towards the camera, which moves continually along the side of a curved wall. A helpful supplement to the DVD version of the film is an introduction by Peter Cowie who notes that one of Jaenzon's students was Sven Nykvist.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:43 PM | Comments (1)

July 11, 2007

Seven Thieves

Henry Hathaway - 1960
Twentieth Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

Seven Thieves is not a bad caper film, but it is the kind of film that could have been better. The mistake was to entrust Henry Hathaway with the direction. Hathaway's talents have never been the consistent, but Hathaway diminishes the suspense by keeping his distance from the actors and their activities. This is the kind of film that demands an occassional close-ups of faces and hands, of details. Part of the pleasure of the heist film is when the filmmaker makes the audience feel like they are participating in the crime, which is why Hathaway fails where directors like Hitchock, Dassin, Verneuil or Melville succeed. Hathaway has always been his best with films that are largely set in the great outdoors like True Grit and Nevada Smith. Not only does Hathaway seem uncomfortable with a film that takes place in confined interiors, but what little is shown of Monte Carlo is perfunctory.

What pleasure is to be found in Seven Thieves is primarily in seeing Eli Wallach's sax playing hepcat and Joan Collins', er, "performance artist". This being a film for general audiences, Collins' stage act is a clothed bump and grind. Even with Collins dancing and shaking in front of the camera, Hathaway frustratingly keeps a gentlemanly distance from the action.

The robbery of the casino will strike some as quaint by standards now set with the Ocean's Eleven remake and its sequels. Rod Steiger and Michael Dante basically have to keep to the floor to avoid a few electric eyes, and assume no one hears their noisy power tools. Leading the gang is Edward G. Robinson, playing a former academic gone bad, although the details a deliberately left fuzzy. What can be said is that in this film, the tenderest moments do not involve Collins, but are between Robinson and Steiger. I am not familiar with Max Catto's novel, but producer-screenwriter Sidney Boehm's screenplay flirts with homoerotic feelings, both to explain why there is no sexual relationship between Collins and Wallach, and also in the initial framing of the relationship between Robinson and Steiger. Nothing in Seven Thieves is as dramatic or as tense as it should have been. Even the final twist comes as no surprise. In a way, the film reflects the basic plot in that everything was in the plans, but no one really has the heart to try and get away with it.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:16 AM | Comments (2)

July 07, 2007

The Performance that Changed My Life Blog-a-thon: From Russia with Love

Terence Young - 1963
MGM Region 1 DVD

Like many of my junior high friends at the time, From Russia with Love was our introduction to James Bond. And like many people my age, this was the film that first cemented in our minds that there is only one James Bond on film, and that is Sean Connery. I was twelve at the time that I first saw From Russia with Love and at the time required permission from my parents before I saw any movie. The permission from one parent being sufficient, this was one time I had to ask my father, helpfully noting that Lotte Lenya was in the film. I don't know if he saw through my ruse, or if I really need to try so hard to justify why I was going to see a spy film.

While I remembered that a film called Dr. No had come and gone about a year ago, it was not until that late Spring that I "discovered" James Bond. By the Summer of 1964 I was collecting the Signet paperbacks that cost fifty cents each. What made James Bond so irresistable for most twelve year old boys was not the adventure, but the sex. We wanted to be James Bond not to fight SPECTRE or SMERSH, but because James Bond got laid, and often. Since we couldn't be James Bond, the James Bond movies were the sexiest films available to us at the time.

Daniela Bianchi's brief glimpse of nudity was considered quite risque once upon a time. It wasn't until Goldfinger when I had my first crush on a Bond girl, Shirley Eaton. For a part of my life, one of the pleasures of seeing a James Bond film was the chance to look at attractive women with a much skin as could be revealed in a mainstream film.

Even though I had seen Sean Connery in Darby O'Gill and the Little People a few years previously, I did not remember him from that film, probably because he wasn't one of the title characters. Connery did become the first movie star in my life that hadn't had a career that was well established by the time I was paying attention to actor not in servitude to Walt Disney. Unlike parental favorites like Gary Cooper or Bette Davis, Connery was one of the first movie stars that as far as we were concerned, did not exist prior to the Bond films. One of my other reasons for liking From Russia with Love more than the other Bond films is due to Robert Shaw. What probably made the difference is that this is the one of the few films where Bond has an adversary that is his equal, where he is required to have a true duel to the death, in this case within the confines of a train. Lotte Lenya will mostly be remembered for her shoes with the knife blade toes. And even though James Bond saves the world at the end of the film, what was never sufficiently explained to me was who is Matt Monro and why is he the one singing the title song?

For more life changing performances, go to Emma's blog, also known as "All About my Movies".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:00 PM | Comments (2)

July 05, 2007

The Taste of Tea

Cha no Aji
Katsuhito Ishii - 2004
Viz Pictures Region 1 DVD

The Taste of Tea seems like the title of a film by Yasujiro Ozu. What it has in common with Ozu is that it is a film that centers on a family, and there is a bit of tea drinking when everyone gathers at home. There is even a death at the end of the film which brings the family members closer together with a greater sense of happiness.

That the special effects of a The Taste of Tea look like they were done on someone's home computer adds to the charm of this whimsical tale. A little girl, Sachiko, is followed around by her giant doppelganger. Her uncle was once trailed by a yakuza ghost. Mom is an anime artist who uses Grandpa as her model for her super heroes and monster. Dad is a hypnotherapist, while his brother is a manga artist who wishes he were a pop star. This is a quietly comic film about artists and eccentrics crossing each other's paths.

Katsuhito Ishii looks at the odder qualities of Japanese pop culture, with men dressed as robots, a Japanese reality television show with a woman who thinks she is a sabre tooth tiger, and a pop song so simple, and simple minded, that a producer is sure it will be a big hit. Ishii himself is best known for his anime contribution to Kill Bill, Vol. I. Unlike his work for Tarantino, The Taste of Tea is more contemplative, and rarely frenetic.

The Taste of Tea should ideally be seen on a large screen. Ishii makes use of some extreme long shots with the characters seen in the distance. Ishii also more typically films his characters as part of a group, or at least as several characters sharing a specific space. It may be his way of suggesting that strange environments are the home of strange people.

The one cast member that may be most familiar to western audiences would be Anna Tsuchiya, the growling teen punk from Kamikaze Girls. In this film, she plays Aoi, the Go playing new girl in school, the high school crush of bicycle riding Hajime. Following an after school game of Go, Aoi and Hajime walk in the rain, the two seen in long shot under a shared umbrella, walking on a road surrounded by fields. Hajime tosses his umbrella to Aoi who is inside a bus, just as the bus door closes. The gesture is romantic, yet understated. Like the surrealism and whimsy of The Taste of Tea, Ishii knows how much is enough without overwhelming his characters or the audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 AM

July 04, 2007

The John Ford Blog-a-thon: What Price Glory?

John Ford - 1952
20th Century Fox DVD

As much I like, or even love, some of the films directed by John Ford, I choose not not embrace all of Ford's films as some of my peers have. I have given Donovan's Reef at least three viewings and have never found the film to be particularly funny or charming. What Price Glory? is one of Ford's films that eluded me over the years, never seeming to appear on any late night telecast, nor in any kind of revival screening. With the film's availability on DVD, I was able to add another notch to seeing as many Ford films as possible. To some extent, I wish I hadn't bothered.

I'm not familiar with Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stalling's original play or the earlier 1926 film version from Raoul Walsh. Even disregarding that Ford essentially jettisoned the authors' original intentions, What Price Glory? still comes off as a too boisterous, overacted and false celebration of military life. The falseness of the film is evident from the opening shot of a French battlefield that is clearly a studio set. It could be the choice of working with Technicolor betrays whatever serious intentions Ford had, especially comparing What Price Glory? with the much better They were Expendable. Even setting aside Ford's views of men and war, What Price Glory? pales next to such idealized portraits of military life as The Long Gray Line or The Wings of Eagles.

While Ford briefly acknowledges the original message of the play, of youth sacrificed in the name of some abstract ideal, he is more interested in portraying men, perhaps more accurately, over-aged boys, who who would rather fight each other when not fighting the designated enemy. Fisticuffs aside, James Cagney and Dan Dailey are more in love with each other than either of them are with Corrine Calvet. Given the opportunity to run off with Calvet, they both choose to go off together to fight the Germans. Even military lifer William Demarest ignores the discharge papers he finally receives, choosing male comradeship and possible death.

There is one effective scene in What Price Glory? The soldiers are finally marching into battle, observed by the French civilians. In a long shot, Marisa Pavan is seen running up to Robert Wagner, grabbing a brief kiss before letting him go back into formation. Pavan runs up towards the camera, stopped by an MP who sticks his left arm, acting as a barrier between her and Wagner. Pavan looks over the arm which she is able to lower, expressing the foreboding that she may never see Wagner again.

Ford's Madonna/whore dichotomy is unmistakable in What Price Glory? as the film ends. Pavan is seen with a shawl over her head, a virgin in mourning, unsullied by sex. Calvet is shown making herself available to virtually any man in uniform, officers preferred. For Ford, Calvet's character is only good for two things, one being laundry. Neither Cagney nor Dailey is serious in their marriage proposals to Calvet. As soon as it's convenient, they would rather be caught dead with their comrades-in-arms rather than alive in the arms of a woman of questionable reputation.

More on Ford can be found at Inisfree.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:33 PM | Comments (4)

June 28, 2007

Hot Rods to Hell

John Brahm - 1967
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Twenty-one years before they were reunited for Hot Rods to Hell, Dana Andrews and Jeanne Crain starred in State Fair for Twentieth Century Fox. At another part of the Fox lot in 1945, John Brahm was filming Hongover Square. In 1966, the three were probably happy to be working, even if it was on behalf of schlockmeister Sam Katzman. That the veteran actors would be the stars of a film titled Hot Rods to Hell is but one indication of how hilariously out of touch Sam Katzman was in his waning years. If Katzman wasn't so cheap, the film might not have broken even.

The only reason to have seen Hot Rods to Hell then, as now, is to watch Mimsy Farmer and a bunch of fast cars. As Gloria, Farmer comes of like a combination of Marlon Brando in The Wild One and Natalie Wood in Rebel without a Cause, the small town bad girl always looking for kicks. Riding with bad boys Paul Bertoya and Gene Kirkwood, and sometimes playing them against each other, Farmer joyfully is unapologetic for her misbehavior. Farmer brings a feral energy that was never fully appreciated or taken advantage of until she moved to Europe to act, most notably for Barbet Schroeder and Dario Argento.

This almost disasterously unhip tale is about Dana Andrews as the square from Squaresville, actually Boston, who seems to be a magnet for car accidents. Farmer and her gang of hot rodding kids try to drive Andrews, Crain and family off the road. The most wrong-headed error of Hot Rods to Hell was to make a film aimed for the teen market, with stars of their parents generation. The producer of up-to-the-minute films starring Bill Haley and Chubby Checkers could do no better this time around then to feature rock music performed by Mickey Rooney, Junior, and his combo.

There are times when John Brahm seems to really care about what he's doing, especially in the shots of Laurie Mock, who plays Andrews and Crain's daughter. Mock's acting career was short lived, while Farmer proved to be more than a low budget Tuesday Weld once she got out of Hollywood. Hot Rods to Hell is a reminder that stardom can come and go even faster than a souped up car.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:28 AM | Comments (1)

June 22, 2007

The Film Music Blog-a-thon: Invitation to a Gunfighter

Richard Wilson - 1964
MGM Region 1 DVD

David Raksin will probably be firmly linked with the title song and movie Laura. What has me wanting to investigate his music further though is seeing Invitation to a Gunfighter. Raksin scored three films for former Orson Welles' associate Richard Wilson. Of the three films, only Invitation to a Gunfighter is available on DVD. Al Capone shows up on television once in a while. I have yet to see Pay or Die which seems to be hidden in someone's vault.

Based on the two films I have seen, it would suggest that Wilson, more than any other director Raksin worked with, was given greater freedom in composing his film music. There was a time in American film when composers were able to incorporate the influence of such contemporaries as Aaron Copland or older avant-gardists as Nadia Boulanger. Raksin had worked with Stravinsky and studies under Arnold Schoenberg. Raksin's music for Wilson's films is more idiosyncratic, breaking away from conventional film music.

More specifically, Raksin has a score that uses minor chords, as well as occassional dischordance, particularly in his main themes. Rather than use music as illustration or as background, Raksin scores for Wilson's films are meant to evoke the psychological and emotional conflicts of the characters. The music fits in with a period primarily in the early Sixties with film scores by Alex North (The Misfits, Elmer Bernstein (The Caretakers) and David Amram (The Manchurian Candidate).

Invitation to a Gunfighter is a post-Civil War parable with Yul Brynner as the gun hired to shoot returning rebel soldier George Segal for the benefit of town boss Pat Hingle. Being produced by Stanley Kramer, the film tries to justify itself by being a statement about racism and hypocrisy. What the film is really about is how the Russian born, faintly exotic, Brynner was always the coolest looking guy in a cowboy hat. Not only does Brynner out shoot everyone, but he's always much better dressed.

For those more interested in David Raksin's career in music, he spoke at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

For more film music, go to Windmills of my Mind.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:28 AM | Comments (2)

June 21, 2007

Panic in Needle Park

Jerry Schatzberg -1971
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Especially in my first few years of living in New York City in the early Seventies, I had my own panic about the area known as "Needle Park". The closest I came to that neighborhood was when I took subway rides to the Upper West Side, for visits to the New Yorker or Thalia theaters. Just as I avoided being caught in or around West 72nd Street, I also avoided seeing Panic in Needle Park at the time it was released.

Growing up reading the Sunday New York Times, I actually knew a little bit about Al Pacino, having seen a photo of him from one of the plays he did, written by Israel Horovitz. Seeing him in his first starring role in a film though did clarify why Hollywood studio executives were resistant about casting Pacino in films. Even Jerry Schatzberg does Pacino no favors with framing that emphasized Pacino's appearance as a pasty faced runt, dwarfed by Raul Julia, and barely the same height as Kitty Winn.

This in one film that would have benefitted from a commentary track from Jerry Schatzberg and/or screenplay writer Joan Didion. The narrative is filled with ellipses, while the acting appears improvised. There is also no music sound track which also adds to the appearance of naturalism. Panic in Needle Park often looks like it was shot off the cuff, but I suspect that much of the spontaneous look of the film was well planned.

The film sheds no new light on drug addiction, nor does it make any kind of judgment on its characters whose lives are a series of bad choices informed by the overwhelming need for heroin. The film is probably of greater interest in seeing Pacino in his first major film role, as well as watching early appearances by Raul Julia and Paul Sorvino. Schatzberg appears to have been smitten by Kitty Winn as indicated by the many close ups of her face. One of the best things about Panic in Needle Park is simply watching the faces of a cast of primarily New York based actors who appear to have been filmed without make-up. What may be most amazing about Panic in Needle Park is to look back, knowing that this film came from a major studio. Even today, the so-called independents would be nervous about making a film as downbeat or as marginally experimental.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:22 AM | Comments (1)

June 20, 2007

Dance, Girl, Dance

Dorothy Arzner - 1940
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

While the DVD release of Dance, Girl, Dance is part of a set of films starring Lucille Ball, top billed Maureen O'Hara gets most of the screen time as well as the close-ups. The best parts of the film are with Ball demonstrating comic ability well established before she teamed up with Desi Arnaz. Ball plays a dancer named Bubbles with enough of a suggestion of promiscuity that those who have grown up loving her might punningly rename her "Loosey".

O'Hara and Ball are friends and competitors. Introduced as part of a nightclub dance troupe in Akron, Ohio, the two return to New York City to try their luck again as ballet dancers under the tutelage of a very butch looking Maria Ouspenskaya. Ball gets a job as a burlesque dancer because, as Ouspenskaya puts it, she has "oomph". Ouspenskaya decides O'Hara has what it takes to be in Ralph Bellamy's ballet company but inconveniently gets run over by a car taking her protegee to the audition. Meanwhile Louis Hayward pops in and out, caught between O'Hara, Ball and ex-wife Virginia Field. The story is by Vickie Baum, and is almost as hilarious as her Grand Hotel.

There are a couple of scenes of the serious, modern ballet that O'Hara wishes to join. Someone thought it would be a swell idea to have the male dancers dress like the guys from the planet Mongo in the old Flash Gordon movies. Another dance sequence seems to anticipate the title dance from An American in Paris in terms of the dance style, costuming and the music which faintly is similar to Gershwin.

Ball gets two musical numbers which appear to have been largely inspired by Gypsy Rose Lee. One number involves parts of Ball's clothing blown away. There's enough show of leg, plus a hint of cleavage to make one temporarily forget the housewife and mother that became a television institution.

Dance, Girl, Dance was one of the couple of Hollywood films produced by Erich Pommer, who seemed to have a weakness for show biz stories. According to IMDb, Roy Del Ruth was originally handed the assignment to direct the film. Pommer had him replaced with Dorothy Arzner who may have had a hand in certain elements that seem markedly progressive for a film made in 1940. Del Ruth did get to work with Lucille Ball in the film that introduced her as a redhead, Du Barry was a Lady.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:41 AM

June 17, 2007

The Man from Colorado

Henry Levin - 1948
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

For those who haven't seen it, click onto DVD Panache to check out my "Screen Test" with the man from Idaho, Adam Ross. With the second year of "Coffee Coffee and more Coffee", I've decided to celebrate with a film about Colorado. Not that The Man from Colorado was actually filmed anywhere near Colorado, as shooting was done at Ray Corrigan's ranch outside of Los Angeles. For one who has spent most of his adult life here, a passably generic Colorado is less bothersome than watching films that are set in Denver, and are filmed on sets and locations that look nothing like the place I've called home for a substantial part of my life.

The Man from Colorado really has little to do with Colorado for that matter. The "man" could have been from New Mexico. Considering the history of Colorado during the Civil War, a lot of potentially interesting stories were ignored in favor of a fictional account. That the film takes place right after the end of the Civil War can be viewed as a fiction, as the film could be be interpreted as actually being about the psychological disintegration of soldiers following World War II.

With his whitened temples, Glenn Ford may remind some of the aged John Wayne in Red River. Both films came out in the same year, and have Borden Chase as author of the original stories. In the beginning of The Man from Colorado, Ford plays a Union officer who disregards the flag of surrender flown by the Confederate Army, and shoots down all but one. In his diary, Ford recognizes that he has some kind of pathology regarding killing, but dismisses it to "the war". Returning as a war hero, Ford is offered the job as a judge who finds that one of the perks of his new position is that he can legally hang assorted criminals at will. Ford's strict understanding of the law eventually alienates best friend William Holden, wife Ellen Drew, and town big shot Ray Collins.

While The Man from Colorado is presented as a Western, it's more interested in Ford's inner darkness than wide open spaces. By the time the film moves to the shadowy hideout of Holden and his gang of disenfranchised former soldiers, the film could be more accurately described as cowboy noir. The film is ultimately less interesting than it could have been in part because Henry Levin is not a filmmaker of the caliber of someone like Anthony Mann, and Ford is more surface, without the undercurrents of anger and resentment that informed much of James Stewart's performances in such films as Bend of the River and The Far Country. Bleach blond William Holden seems to be marking time until Billy Wilder tosses him into Gloria Swanson's swimming pool in another two years.

The film ends with Ford killed by the inferno of his own making, conveniently allowing widow Ellen Drew to eventually get together with Holden, the guy she always really loved. Maybe someone like Anthony Mann couldn't have done much better had he directed The Man from Colorado, but based on his other films written by Borden Chase, it's easy to think otherwise.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:14 AM

June 16, 2007

Shutter

Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom - 2004
Tartan Region 1 DVD

The last movie I saw in Thailand was Alone, the second film by the team of Banjong and Parkpoom. I had to wait to see Shutter with English subtitles in the U.S. Shutter is currently being remade, in an English language version, in Japan, with Japanese horror specialist Masayuki Ochiai serving as director. From what little I've been able to glean, the story will not be quite the same as that of the original film. Banjong and Parkpoom's debut film is pretty good, but nowhere near the the achievement of Alone.

If I like Alone better, much of the reason is that the film seemed directed more towards an adult audience, with its casting of Masha Wattanapanich in the lead role. Shutter is more clearly aimed towards the traditional Thai audience of young people who want to see actors about the same age or a little older. Some of the narrative elements are staples of the Thai ghost story including the long-haired female ghost seeking revenge, the students who bonded at college, and the secret that ties seemingly unrelated events together. While Shutter avoids making fun of any fat people, there is a moment given to that other cliche of Thai films, the comic transvestite.

The initial premise is interesting, about a photographer who discovers a ghost making appearances in his photographs. The best moments in Shutter involve the discovery of strange streaks of light and shadows that appear in the photos. A scene with the photographer caught in his darkened studio, with the lights flickering on and off is effective.

A major plot point hinges on the act of photography. As such, Shutter is something of a critique of the male gaze. What Shutter suggests about how photography is used is addressed superficially, raising more questions than answers, which is to say that there is the hint of seriousness to distinguish Shutter from other Thai ghost movies, but not enough to slow down the film. The scene in question, as I have belatedly discovered, was reused for more offensive effect in Haunting Me, another Thai film I wrote about earlier this year. As may be appropriate for a film titled Shutter the strength of the film is not the story, but some of the imagery. The final shot of the ghost and the photographer offers one very disquieting resolution.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:41 AM

June 14, 2007

The Two of Us

Le Vieil homme et l'Enfant
Claude Berri - 1967
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I never had the opportunity to see The Two of Us during its initial theatrical release. Had I seen the film then, I would have probably focused more on Claude Berri's on-screen alter ego, portrayed by Alain Cohen. I would have also more likely felt more outrage at the anti-Semitism of the old man played by Michel Simon. In the forty years that have passed, there has been a parade of lovable and not so lovable film curmudgeons, making Simon's character less outrageous in retrospect. What has also happened, at least for me, is that the story is less important than the pleasure of watching Michel Simon on screen.

Simon always seemed larger than life, and in The Two of Us, his added girth would give him extra weight both physically, and with his presence on screen. What makes The Two of Us fun to watch now is to see the star of Boudu Saved from Drowning and L'Atalante goofing off in his early Seventies. Whether spoon feeding his dog, or kicking up his heels on a swing, Simon's old man suggests a less agile Boudu combined with a less wise Pere Jules. Simply watching Simon's face which suggests a well-worn old shoe is a reminder of the many engaging turns in so many earlier films.

The DVD includes Berri's short film, Le Poulet, which won the Academy Award in 1966. The film is about a young boy who adopts a chicken as a pet, saving it from becoming Sunday dinner. The inclusion of the short is helpful in that his frequent theme, about the importance of family, is already in place. The Two of Us is the story of a young boy with two families, his biological family and his adopted family.

Inspired by Berri's own experiences in World War II, his debut film is about a young Jewish boy who stays with an older couple in the country. The couple are not told of Claude's true identity, assuming that he is a French Catholic boy. There is tension due to the old man's periodic outbursts of anti-Semitism. Claude is asked by the old man, the day he moves in, to call him Grandpa. Claude and the old man develope a relationship that is warmer than that of Claude with his real father. At times taking his disguised role to the hilt, Claude goads the old man to explain his anti-Semitism. Claude finds ways to humorously throw the old man's arguments back at him.

While Berri felt that his film was making a statement about racism, the old man's attitudes seem more like minor character flaws than major failings. Watching Simon chase Alain Cohen with a garden hose or introducing the young boy to the pleasures of alcohol makes some of the dramatic concerns besides the point. The one time the dramatic and comic merges best is a scene with young Claude making sure he bathes privately. In one of the DVD supplements, a grown up Alain Cohen notes that the relationship he had with Michel Simon extended off screen, with the veteran actor protective of his young co-star. The two remained in contact until Simon's death in 1975.

A few years younger than the filmmakers that emerged with the initial Nouvelle Vague, Claude Berri's films seemed stylistically old fashion in comparison. Berri's lack of trendiness served him best with Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring, another tale of families in a pastoral setting. Still, the main reason to see, or re-see The Two of Us is to watch Michel Simon filling up the screen with his last major role.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:27 AM | Comments (1)

June 12, 2007

Action Heroine Blog-a-thon: Cat Ballou

Elliot Silverstein - 1965
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

As much as I like Cat Ballou, the film never quite lived up to the promise in the animated pre-credit scene. The Columbia Pictures torch bearer sheds her robe to become a cowgirl with a six-shooter blazing from each hand. Even in the posters and publicity pictures, Jane Fonda appears ready to shoot her way through the film. While Fonda remains firmly the brains of her bunch of outlaws, as the title character, she's mostly the foil to the guys who have most of the fun.

There is a bit of proto-feminism, especially in a scene where Fonda tells Michael Callan that she's not interested in marriage. Mostly Cat Ballou fails to take full advantage of Jane Fonda, one of the few actresses who could have, and should have been able to follow in the boots of Barbara Stanwyck in Forty Guns or Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar. The film might have been different had it been made when Fonda was more politically conscious, in terms of Cat Ballou not only calling the shots but firing them as well, but it's also probable that Cat Ballou would have been less fun. It should be noted that Cat Ballou and Johnny Guitar are both based on novel by Roy Chanslor. Fonda helps out in a train robbery, and ends up accidentally shooting the industrialist responsible for her father's death in a later scene. Fonda is mostly an observer while the train robbery takes place, while in her encounter with the industrialist, she is dressed as "woman of the evening". For the character of Cat Ballou, the feminine overwhelms any suggestions of the feminist.

It has to be recognized that although Cat is the title character, the story actually belongs to the gunfighter, Kid Shelleen. Producer Harold Hecht bought the rights to Roy Chanslor's book as a possible vehicle for Burt Lancaster. As an independent producer, Hecht offered the role to Kirk Douglas and Jose Ferrer. Lee Marvin was director Elliot Silverstein's choice. In the transition from book to film, Hecht changed the story from a straight western to a comic tale of revenge. It was also Hecht's idea to have the narrative partially relayed by the two itinerant minstrels. The most inspired bit of casting was pairing Stubby Kaye with Nat King Cole to provide the musical commentary. Ann-Margret reportedly was offered the starring role but turned it down. Certainly, given the chance, Ann-Margret could have imaginably been a rough-and-tumble cowgirl, had the filmmakers allowed her to be one.

Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman provide a somewhat informative commentary on the DVD which informs us that Roger Vadim hung around the set, the western town was filmed on the same set as High Noon, and that Cat Ballou was a relatively low-budget film as far as Columbia Pictures was concerned that turned out to be a major hit.

Jane Fonda later became the "Queen of the Galaxy" in Barbarella. As far as Hollywood and Europe were concerned, the rare times a woman could be an action star would perhaps be in a spy film. Even then, seeing Monica Vitti as Modesty Blaise, or Honor Blackman stealing Goldfinger was unusual. Only a few people were paying attention to the Hong Kong movies starring Connie Chan Po-chu and Cheng Pei-pei. There are at least a couple of reasons for Jane Fonda not becoming an action heroine - that action films then as now were seen primarily as the province for boys, and that the films were not where one usually found serious acting opportunities. On its own terms, Cat Ballou is an enjoyable film. But there was also an opportunity lost, had Jane Fonda done a bit more than look good in her form-fitting jeans.

For more action, check out The Film Experience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM | Comments (5)

June 10, 2007

The Bridge

Un Pont entre Deux Rives
Gerard Depardieu & Frederic Auburtin - 1999
Fox Lorber Region 1 DVD

The images of Carole Bouquet riding her bicycle made me think back to Bernadette Lafont on a bicycle in Francois Truffaut's short Les Mistons. The opening shot of The Bridge is of the matinee audience leaving the town's movie theater, where Jules and Jim is playing. Truffaut is also recalled when two teenage lovers are bicycling down the road. The Bridge is certainly the type of film Truffaut could have done, with its dual portraits of young love, and a marriage falling apart due to infidelity. The film takes place in 1962 and for several of the characters, Ideas of love are informed by movies and popular culture.

When Bouquet meets the man who will be her lover, Charles Berling, in the theater, West Side Story is onscreen. The billboard outside the theater announces the film as an "evenent", an event. It was at that moment that I thought back how American filmmakers have shied back from love stories, once a staple of mainstream cinema. This may in part explain why Titanic was so popular. In the pursuit of an audience of young men, romance, especially serious romance, has been left for to be explored by the so-called indie filmmakers. When the teen boy and girl discuss The Misfits, one can not imagine any recent film that could carry the mythic weight of Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable, together, and in what turned out to be the final film for both actors. It seems odd to think that at a time of frankness about sex, contemporary filmmakers and much of the audience is uncomfortable with unabashed declarations of love.

Heard but not seen, is an excerpt from Henri Verneiul's A Monkey in Winter. As he ages, Gerard Depardieu has developed the kind of lived-in face and experience with the world that makes him the successor to Monkey's Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo. Depardieu has always had an iconic presence, but seeing him age, the sense is that both he and French cinema share a mutually dependent existence. Depardieu and Bouquet have worked several times before, most famously in Too Beautiful for You. As a woman of "a certain age", Bouquet reminds me of Romy Schneider in that the youthful prettiness may have faded to be replaced by a sense of knowing conveyed in the smile.

The title is ironic in that while Depardieu helps build the bridge that Berling works on as an engineer, a bridge serves to link people whereas the bridge in this film destroys several relationships. Bouquet and the teenage lovers look to run away from their respective homes. Houses are not homes, but temporary shelters for people who have chosen to be transient. That several of the characters feel the need to escape in the name of an ideal relationship suggests the title of another Truffaut film, Love on the Run.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:08 PM

May 29, 2007

Mackenna's Gold

J. Lee Thompson - 1969
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

I finally got around to see This Film has not Been Rated a couple of days ago. One of the interesting points mentioned by Kirby Dick was that the MPAA ratings board did not consider how films were rated in the past when rating current films. With the release of Dick's film, and some changes with Dan Glickman in charge, MPAA precedent is allowed into rating appeals. I am hoping filmmakers can force the MPAA to reconsider the M rating. In the evolution from M to GP to PG, a rating that more or less said, "this movie is not for children, but OK for teens and adults" has become a rating that now says, "this is a family film with a couple of naughty words".

In looking at the M rating for movies, what is interesting is to see that there is no consistent re-rating for the home video release which the studios have allowed for their films. A Man called Horse was rerated R, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid gets a PG, while Hang 'Em High gets a PG-13. Consider an older film, Psycho, which was released for general audiences back in the pre-rating year of 1960. In 1968 Psycho was given an M rating, but in 1984, rated again for home video, Psycho got an R. Given how arbitary the ratings appear, no wonder the MPAA makes filmmakers, to put it bluntly, psycho.

I don't know if any filmmakers, or anyone from the MPAA ever bothers to visit this site. But to put things in clearer historical perspective, I am including these screen grabs from Mackenna's Gold. There may be some more alarmed by the thought of a film with Omar Sharif as a Mexican bandit, and Julie Newmar as an Apache. This scene at an oasis is a reminder that there was a time when mainstream films celebrated their newly given freedom.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:20 PM | Comments (3)

May 28, 2007

Terror and Black Lace

Terror y Encajes Negros
Luis Alcoriza - 1985
Desert Mountain Media Region 1 DVD

I stumbled upon this film by chance. What initially attracted my attention was the title, similar to Blood and Black Lace. The film is about a middle aged man with a fetish for women's hair. With a straight razor, he cuts off a fistful of locks from women with long hair, placed later with his collection in a wardrobe. If the plot sounds closer to Bunuel than to Bava, it may be because Luis Alcoriza was a co-writer on several films by Luis Bunuel. Of Bunuel and Alcoriza's collaborations, I was immediately reminded of El. Keep in mind that Bunuel dismissed some of his past work by stating that he made Mexican films for a Mexican audience. That goes double for Alcoriza.

What little Alcoriza thinks he is saying about misplaced machismo and liberated Mexican women is made inconsequential by the sight of Maria Guardia running around in her underwear. I can't think of a better reason to watch Terror and Black Lace than to enjoy a cast of generously voluptuous women. The girls just want to have fun, while the men get frustrated by anything, especially women, that they can not control. Cesar, the man with the mane fetish, constantly gets upset by the loud music played by the three female travel agents in the apartment below. The black lace clad Isabel feels imprisoned by her husband, who finds his own life out of control due to random events. If flirtatious young Coquis was aware of Cesar's specific needs, she would have kept her panties on.

It is the scene with Claudia Guzman attempting to seduce Claudio Obregon that explicitly is a reminder of Bunuel at his most darkly comic, with Coquis offer of sex rejected in favor of a substitute taken by force. A similar moment is when Obregon admires his large collection of hair, taking his newest trophy and caressing and combing the hair before rubbing it on his face. Terror and Black Lace might have worked better if Obregon didn't seem like a junior version of Fernando Rey. Based on what little has been written about Alcoriza, he may be a filmmaker worth investigating further.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 AM

May 27, 2007

Cahill: United States Marshal

Andrew V. McLaglen - 1973
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

I hadn't seen Cahill at the time it was released theatrically. Now that I have seen it on DVD, including a second time with a commentary track from the director, I am hoping that an earlier film from Andrew McLaglen gets a much needed DVD release. A couple of years before Cahill, McLaglen directed Fools' Parade, based on the novel by Davis Grubb. Like Night of the Hunter, Fools' Parade is a story of innocence versus evil, with children caught up in extreme circumstances. The best parts of Cahill have a similarity to Grubb's work, particularly in the scenes of Gary Grimes and Clay O'Brien being alternately threatened and cajoled by chief villain George Kennedy.

Grimes and O'Brien are the two sons of John Wayne, the Cahill of the title. Feeling neglected by a father who travels extensively, the pair get involved with a bank robbery that has serious consequences beyond what the two anticipated. I am not certain how much credit goes to McLaglen, or to cinematographer Joe Biroc, but what makes Cahill more interesting than the plot description might suggest is the visual style of the film. There are many shots from a child's eye level, emphasizing the difference in size between the men and the boys. Terror is conveyed with shots of Kennedy emerging from the dark, or in a scene in a graveyard where the boys are photographed from above. McLaglen's previous films were usually shot by William Clothier. In Cahill there is a precision about the framing of shots and blocking of actors that does not appear in McLaglen's earlier films with John Wayne.

As a John Wayne vehicle, Cahill is of more limited interest. There is amusement in seeing actors from previous films associated with Wayne or McLaglen such as Hank Worden, Harry Carey, Jr., and Denver Pyle. It also doesn't take a sharp eye to spot Chuck Roberson doing much of Wayne's stunt riding. Kennedy and his gang of thugs have the most fun, a group of good ol' boys who happen to be bank robbers and killers on the side. George Kennedy has the best lines in Cahill which suggest his kinship to Robert Mitchum in Night of the Hunter. At one point finding that he cannot come to an agreement with one of the Cahill sons, Kennedy declares, "The trouble with you, boy, is you have no grace. You should allow a man his illusions."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:00 AM

May 26, 2007

The John Wayne Centennial: The Big Trail

Raoul Walsh - 1930
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

In spite of top billing, the young actor seen in The Big Trail is not quite John Wayne. Filmed nine years before Stagecoach established him as a top star, I felt like I was watching an amateur actor playing at being John Wayne. It is as if Marion Morrison was practicing the gestures and speech patterns, but was still to grow into what would be his established screen persona. The still adenoidal voice undermines the physical presence. It isn't that the laughter or the arm movements are too broad, but that the actor is not big enough to be the John Wayne we enjoyed The Searchers or Rio Bravo.

The Big Trail is one film I wish now I had seen on a large movie screen. Raoul Walsh composed many of the shots with an emphasis on depth of field. Most of the film was shot outdoors which was a technical challenge at the time. Often when Wayne is seen in conversation with someone else, there is very distinct activity in the background. In long shots there are several focal planes. The black and white images resemble 19th Century lithographs. There is a sense of space that I have previously not associated with a Walsh film. After establishing the perception of great space, Walsh has the audacity to film Wayne stalking the bad guy in the snow, two characters barely visible in shades of gray and white. The final shot, which must have been astonishing for movie audiences, is of Wayne and Marguerite Churchill dwarfed by giant redwood trees.

While he has no screenplay credit, the dialogue displays Walsh's boisterous sense of humor. Wayne comments on the trail boss, "What does he know about water? He's never taken a bath in his life." One of the pioneers, when told he is the father of twins, if they are both his. Made before Hays Code took effect, Wayne utters a very rare damn. With the frequent title cards, The Big Trail sometimes appears as if it was originally planned as a silent film.

The Big Trail offers the opportunity to see Tyrone Power (Sr.) as the wagon master. The big, bearded Power resembles Popeye's arch nemises, Bluto, only with an alarming need of dental work. El Brendal provides much of the comedy. Marguerite Chapman is blandly attractive, but it is not surprising that her acting career was short-lived.

The best parts of The Big Trail are purely visual. One such moment is showing the pioneers lowering their ox-carts down the side of a mountain using primitive pulleys. There is a thrill to the images of indians gathering on a hillside, or rushing on horseback towards a camera looking from the ground up. As it stands, the 35mm cinematography by Lucien Andriot is wondrous to look at even on a television screen. It is unfortunate that Fox has not bothered to make the 70 mm version photographed by Arthur Edeson available for comparison, as well as to take advantage of large home theater screens.

As for John Wayne, it only takes a few minutes to see why he had to practice his craft in programmers before being called by John Ford to play the Ringo Kid. For the big trail that was John Wayne’s film career, the star's performance can be viewed as a rough, but definitive beginning.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:00 AM | Comments (1)

May 25, 2007

The Star Wars Blog-a-thon: Two by Ken Annakin

Ken Annakin

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
Ken Annakin - 1965
Twentieth Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Third Man on the Mountain
Ken Annakin - 1959
Disney Region 1 DVD

Before there was Anakin Skywalker, there was Ken Annakin. And before there was Star Wars, there was Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. There is general agreement that Anakin was named after Annakin. The only discussion of a specific Ken Annakin film I have found was of George Lucas reworking part of Swiss Family Robinson for use in Return of the Jedi. I am also assuming Lucas had grown up watching other films by Ken Annakin, such The Story of Robin Hood and Third Man on the Mountain, the kind of adventure films designed primarily for boys growing up in the Fifties. In Star Wars, Lucas had his characters fly through a vast, if known galaxy. Annakin's film of flight could be seen as a comic look at the adventure of people and aircraft.

TMMitFM is about a fictional air race from London to Paris that takes place in 1910. A group of pilots representing different countries and different character types compete for the big money prize. In Annakin's film, everyone speaks English, but there are scenes with the characters at odds with each other based on nationalism. Lucas takes the concepts of language and society further in his films. While the young people in American Graffiti all speak English, it is in an idiomatic form that is not shared with the largely unseen adults. Lucas looks at the different groups of teenagers, with their own dress codes and rules of membership. The cantina scene in Star Wars allows for Lucas to create a place where different aliens can meet, allowing for the audience to be aware of different languages and groupings of the various space beings. TMMitFM has a scene of all the pilots together in a restaurant the night before the race. Lucas' scene, as his whole film, also intergrates the concept of archtypes from Joseph Campbell. Ken Annakin was more likely working from a more intuitive framework, but within one tracking shot reminds the audience of how different his pilots are from each other.

What Lucas' film also shares with Annakin's film is the fascination with the mechanics of flying. The aircraft in TMMItFM are all reconstructions of actual aircraft that existed in 1910. A variety of airplanes of differing shapes and sizes in from the early Twentieth Century are contrasted with the different pilots. Similar to that are the different space craft and aliens in Star Wars, or the variety of cars and drivers in American Graffiti. Much as it was emphasised that the Millenium Falcon was an old and vulnerable spacecraft, Annakin presents airplanes that were rickety when they were new.

The young woman played by Sarah Miles shares some similarities to Princess Leia. There may have been more in common had Lucas made his heroic character a woman as in earlier screenplays of Star Wars. Miles' feminism is announced with her entrance riding a motorcycle. In a shot of Miles putting the motorcyle away, one sees that the inner door of a shed has a suffragette poster, a written declaration for female equality. Through much of the film, Miles tries to find a way to fly, originally with fiance James Fox, and successfully with Stuart Whitman. As a pilot from Arizona, Whitman’s character could be viewed as the prototype for the "space cowboy", and a distant cousin to Han Solo. As the daughter of wealthy publisher Robert Morley, Miles portrays a sort of princess who tries to prove herself as capable as any man. And like in Star Wars, the princess finds herself happily in the arms of a rough outsider whose sense of the greater good outweighs his personal needs.

Ken Annakin has declared that his primary purpose in making films was to entertain. His directorial career was long, spanning over forty years. Published in England, Annakin wrote a book about his filmmaking career titled So You Wanna be a Director?. The book's introductions are by Richard Attenborough AND Mike Leigh. As their are only a few of Annakin's films available to review on DVD or video, re-examining his career in full is more difficult. While the comparison is admittedly superficial, Annakin's films share Raoul Walsh's spirit of fun and adventure for its own sake. One moment that might be considered defining of Annakin is at the end of Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines when the air race is over, and Sarah Miles and Stuart Whitman appear ready to walk off into the sunset. The quiet of the end of the day is interrupted by the sound of jet planes, and the film cuts first to an overhead of jets flying in formation, followed by a pilot's point of view shot. Annakin's audio anachronism brings the audience back to the present day, but also anticipates the kind of adventures in flying that would be manifested most successfully in Star Wars.

Third Man on the Mountain, while less a personal film for Ken Annakin, has some narrative elements that are repeated in Star Wars. The protagonist is a young man with the goal of living up to the legacy of his father. James MacArthur, at the time Disney's serious teen actor, portrays the son of a legendary mountain guide. Working as a dish washer, his goal is to climb the mountain where his father lost his life. Janet Munro, the girl who believes in him, has a brief moment where she goes mountain climbing with MacArthur. Again, as with Sarah Miles in TMMitFM and Lucas' original Princess Leia, the female character is, to a limited extent, able to take on the same physical adventure as the men. Michael Rennie, as the world famous mountain climber and mentor to MacArthur prefigures Alec Guinness, with both not coincidentally being tall and British. Much like Star Wars, Third Man on the Mountain is about a young man who takes life-threatening risks to prove to others as well as himself that he is indeed a capable man and not a boy. Additionally, there is a scene somewhat similar to Star Wars' cantina, and TMMitFM' restaurant where an international group of climbers speak of national pride before deciding that being part of a brotherhood of mountain climbers is more important. In Annakin's films as in those of Lucas, language barriers are transcended by unity of purpose.

For other entries in the Star Wars blog-a-thon, Edward Copeland has the force.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (1)

May 24, 2007

Moon over Miami

Walter Lang - 1941
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

With my last week of living in Miami Beach coming up, I decided to seek out DVDs at the Miami-Dade Library system using "Miami" as a keyword. This studio film is about as close to Miami as an episode of C.S.I. Miami. There is some second unit stuff that is unmistakably Miami Beach, but that's about it. At the end of the film the credits mention location shooting in Ocala and Winter Haven, both over two hundred miles away. There isn't even a fake shot of the moon over the beach, as if the title would be enough.

The basic story is one that Darryl Zanuck seemed to love as it appeared in several Fox productions. Two attractive young women decide to leave the Texas hamburger stand for Miami in search of millionaire husbands. Just off the top of my head, this is the basic plot for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, How to Marry a Millionaire and Three Coins in a Fountain. At least one of the young women will decide money isn't everything and marry some guy purely for love, but no one in the audience and certainly no one at the studio really believes that. The biggest weakness of Moon over Miami is not that it's fake, but that it cannot transcend its' fakeness.

Betty Grable and Carole Landis are the two sisters who take aunt Charlotte Greenwood to Florida. Betty has to make up her mind between the truly wealthy Bob Cummings, Cummings' broke best pal, Don Ameche. Betty and Carole also find that pretending to have money can be very expensive. The point of the film was to come up with enough reasons to show off Betty Grable's legs.

Hermes Pan's choreography is filmed much in the way that Fred Astaire is filmed dancing, using full shots so the audience can see the entire dance. Whether it's a small bit such as in the beginning of the film, or a more elaborate number with the Condos Brothers, Grable is filmed so that no kick or arm movement is missed. Even though Grable is in virtually every scene in the film, there are suggestions that she could have been used better. Betty Grable's gift at physical comedy is only hinted at, as if Zanuck and company decided that it was not appropriate for a lead actress. Moon over Miami is the kind of film that once you've seen it, is mostly forgotten. What is memorable are not the songs, not even the dances, but the sight of Betty Grable tripping over the extended leg of a sleepy Don Ameche.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM | Comments (1)

May 23, 2007

The Atomic Brain

Joseph Mascelli - 1964
Genius Entertainment Region 1 DVD

With the release of Grindhouse has appeared what might be called grindhouse nostalgia. Most of this is devoted to theatrical revivals of some of the films that played in grindhouse and drive-in circuits over thirty years ago. There are also articles and postings discussing some of the films now available on DVD. All well and good, but when it comes to trash movies, what I really miss is that publicly available archive known as late night network television. What I miss is the ability, at least on weekend nights, to be able to count on watching a magnificently schlocky horror movie or two beginning around eleven p.m., airing on a local television station. A film starring Lon Chaney, Jr. would usually fit the bill, but a film made with people you never heard of, with poverty row budgets, were even better.

There are several DVD versions of The Atomic Brain. I'm not sure how much more complete they are then the version I have. In addition to being a smeary transfer, my copy appears to have be run a few too many times, with missing frames that chop off parts of the dialogue. This may not say much for film preservation, but the sloppy qualities make for a great duplication of watching a cheap, thowaway horror movie on late might televison, back in the pre-cable days when you could count the number of channels on one hand.

The original title of the film was Monstrosity. Just like the Frankenstein monster, this film is a nutty hybrid of parts of other, better films, such as Metropolis, Island of Dr. Moreau and The Bride of Frankenstein. The unfortunately named Dr. Otto Frank works in a basement laboratory in the mansion of the wealthy Mrs. March. Three young cuties are lured to the March mansion on the premise that they will be working as household help. The three soon encounter Dr. Frank's failed experiments, including one bulky guy with the teeth of a wild boar. The elderly Mrs. March's plan is to have her brain transplanted into the body of one of the three young women, a plan that does not sit well with Mrs. March's slightly younger gigolo, Victor.

I have no way of knowing how much was intentional, but The Atomic Brain is the kind of film that is perfect for a smart alec audience, as well as the Mystery Science Theater drubbing it also received. This is a film where cats and women have their brains exchanged, and in the process manage to anticipate a famously gross scene involving Tom Cruise and a rat in Interview with the Vampire as well as the title of a film by Lucio Fulci. Based on the version of the film available, there is the suggestion that there might have been a version with slightly more nudity, primarily for the European market. What little is seen here is quite brief, using flashing lights to offer quick glimpses of female flesh and graphic horror.

The biggest name to be involved in The Atomic Brain is that of uncredited narrator, Bradford Dillman. The film was co-written and co-produced by brother Dean Dillman, Jr. With the exception of the actors who played the villainous Mrs. March and Dr. Frank, Marjorie Eaton and Frank Gerstle, the film seems to have been a career killer for most of the cast and crew. The Atomic Brain was the final credit for the three featured starlets. If there is a reason to wish for a perfect print of The Atomic Brain, and more serious scholarship regarding this film, it would be related to the career of Joseph Mascelli. Although his career in theatrical films was brief, and extemely off-beat, Mascelli did literally write the book on cinematography.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:50 AM

May 20, 2007

Solo con Tu Pareja

Alfonso Cuaron - 1991
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

It is a testament to Alfonso Cuaron's critical and commercial acclaim that his debut feature has received a belated release in the United States. Those interested in Cuaron's career will be interested to know that Solo con Tu Pareja was co-written by brother and frequent collaborator Carlos Cuaron, and that the cinematography is by the esteemed Emmanual Lubezki. While the sex and social criticism make the film seems closest to Y Tu Mama Tambien, Solo con Tu Pareja is lighter and more optimistic.

Beginning with an e. e. cumming's poem about a man who loves all kinds of women, except those that are green, Cuaron presents a contemporary (1991) Mexican lover, a writer of advertisements, whose insincerity get him into trouble. Tomas Tomas is Cuaron's version of Don Juan, or Don Giovanni as the Mozart heavy soundtrack would indicate. Unable to come up with a new ad campaign for a brand of peppers, Tomas fakes a continual fever by warming a thermometer with a light bulb. Persuaded by his doctor, and neighbor, to get an exam, Tomas also allows himself to get tested for AIDs. That night, Tomas finds himself engaged in simulaneous affairs with the nurse he just met, and his female boss at the ad agency. The nurse finds out by chance what had happened and deliberately marks Tomas' AIDs test as positive. And yes, this is a comedy, and yes, it is funny.

In one of the DVD supplements, Alfonso Cuaron discusses being influenced by Ernst Lubitsch and Blake Edwards. Whatever Lubitsch touch is found in Cuaron might be found in the characters attempting to hide relationships from each other. Some of the biggest laughs are to be found in gags that would be in bad taste to describe, but are no more audacious than the concentration camp humor in To Be or Not To Be. The pratfalls more easily recall Blake Edwards' work with Peter Sellers. When Tomas Tomas is caught nude in public, which occurs twice, one might recall the humiliation of Sellers and Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark. When Tomas Tomas runs up, down and around between nurse Silvia Silva and boss Gloria Gold (the names in this film are often alliterative), I thought of Dudley Moore in Edwards' Mickey and Maude.

One name surprisingly not mentioned in Billy Wilder. One of the big scenes involves characters attempting to commit suicide on New Year's Eve, head stuck in an oven. The difference between The Apartment and Solo con Tu Pareja is that sticking your head in a microwave oven is simultaneously more pathetic, and more hilarious because of its extreme desperation. That Tomas Tomas works in advertising like Jack Lemmon in The Apartment also makes the similarities seem less coincidental. Wilder was also known for his scabrous humor and gags of dubious taste. Also, like Wilder, Cuaron pokes fun at contemporary life and finds humor in topical subject matter.

Perhaps Cuaron is genuinely unaware of the similarities he shares with Billy Wilder. At the very least, with Solo con Tu Pereja, we have a more complete look at a filmmaker who before making Children of Men began with the story of a man frequently acting like a child.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:34 PM

May 14, 2007

Exiles

Exils
Tony Gatlif - 2004
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Francis Ford Coppola was in Miami Beach last night to talk a bit about filmmaking with students, and to present a new documentary about his filming Youth without Youth. The full article is posted at GreenCine Daily. One point Coppola stressed was the idea of using film to learn about other cultures, as a means for different people to communicate with each other. The consequence of the blockbuster film culture that currently exists in the U.S. is manifested in the general lack of interest in other cultures as well as the inability to imagine differing ways of life. One reason why I have been seeing the films by Tony Gatlif since Latcho Drom is because of his look at marginalized people.

Exiles is different from the previous films I've seen by Tony Gatlif. The sense of joy that is usually present has been replaced by a more serious sense of purpose. Like Gatlif's other films, the narrative follows a road trip involving gypsy and nomadic cultures. Unlike earlier Gatlif films, there is a pervasive sense of alienation, of the main characters, like the film's viewers, always being outsiders. One of the characters even states, "I'm an alien wherever I go."

A young couple, Zano and Naima, decide to go to Algeria from Paris, walking, sneaking train rides, stowing away on a boat. For Zano it is an opportunity to visit the home of his parents and grandparents, French settlers in Algeria. Naima, French of Arabic descent, feels more ambivalent about visiting the area. As the couple works their way south, the land becomes less green, ultimately giving way to a rocky desert. Along the way they encounter Algerians seeking their fortune in Paris, a gypsy family, and flamenco musicians in Seville.

Music has always been a crucial part of Tony Gatlif's films. His characters are often musicians. In addition to co-writing and directing, Gatlif collaborated on the score with original music that incorporates rap, folk and Arabian classical themes. If people are not singing or playing music, they are listening to music, lost in their own world with headphones. In Algeria, the couple observe a trance in which Naima participates.

The original intent of Exiles was based on Tony Gatlif's own desire to revisit Algeria. The film took on an extra layer of drama as there was an earthquake in Algeria while the film crew was in Seville. The real life event echoes the sense of impermanence, transience and fragility. People, places and relationships come and go. Exiles questions the concept of home as a destination and a physical place. As Gatlif also discovered in revisiting Algeria, the connections between people are what is most important.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:07 PM

May 13, 2007

Madhouse

Jim Clark - 1974
MGM Region 1 DVD

One of the films I was thinking of writing about for the Shakespeare blog-a-thon was Theater of Blood starring Vincent Price. The DVD was not forwarded to me in time. Kimberley of Cinebeats also had Vincent Price in mind which was a pleasure to read. Now that I do have the DVD, I was able to see the companion feature, Madhouse.

While Theater of Blood gave Price a last opportunity to perform Shakespeare on screen, Madhouse serves as a retrospective of his work with American International. The film is not as good as it could have been, but was deserving of better treatment than than the shabby release the film was given. This was Price's last starring role where ironically he co-starred with Robert Quarry, the actor American International had intended to be their new horror star. It was Quarry's last film for AIP as well. Madhouse was also the last film directed by Jim Clark, who found greater acclaim as an editor.

Price portrays horror film star Paul Toombes. Several people close to Toombes are murdered by someone dressed as Toombes screen alter ego, Dr. Death. The story allows for clips of Price's films, primarily his work with Roger Corman, to be shown. Dr. Death bears strong resemblance to Price's character of Dr. Phibes. It could be that the film was hobbled by a limited budget or a hastily written script, but much of Madhouse suggests that there could have been more cleverness that no one had the time or interest to explore.

In addition to the films within the film, the act of seeing is further touched on in other ways. Clark employs several shots of Price looking at his reflection. There are also some shots looking through the lens a television camera. The film is about Paul Toombes possible confusion between himself and his screen character, as well as the perception audiences may have of actors to closely aligned with a specific character. The ideas are familiar ones, but the problem with the film is that more could have been done. Madhouse seems to have been made with the idea that a few in-jokes, like seeing Peter Cushing dressed as a vampire, would be sufficient to entertain the fans. Madhouse almost gets it right with the scenes of Adrienne Corri as the deranged wife Cushing keeps in his basement. The biggest horror of Madhouse is that it is ultimately a film comprised of missed opportunities, from a studio that never fully appreciated the star that helped bring them substantial financial success.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:01 PM | Comments (3)

May 12, 2007

Roy Scheider Day: The Russia House

Fred Schepisi - 1990
MGM Region 1 DVD

Above is a screengrab of Roy Scheider literally phoning it in, in The Russia House. I had read about James Wolcott's declaration of Roy Scheider Day, this coming Monday. I do have All that Jazz, but my DVD is in storage. There wasn't much to choose from at the Miami-Dade Public Library system, and I wasn't about to go buy any more DVDs for now. Having found out that my one job that paid me pocket change to write about films was ending, I have to be more frugal. I also justified getting The Russia House because I hadn't seen the ending of the movie. I was at a preview screening, and with about ten minutes more to go, the house lights went up, attributed to some technical glitch in the theater.

In spite of being third billed after Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, Scheider doesn't do much. As a C.I.A. officer, Scheider is never seen outside his office, either talking in person or the phone to operatives. Watching the film again, I wondered what had happened to the guy who starred in the biggest movie in the world fifteen years previously, and was one of the top stars of the Seventies. Maybe Scheider mouthed off to the wrong person, but his career took a steep dive after the box office failure of 2010. Whatever happened, there is still the legacy of films Roy Scheider starred in from The French Connection through All That Jazz, a span covering almost exactly the last extended period of consistent creativity from mainstream Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:49 PM | Comments (3)

May 10, 2007

Shikoku

Shunichi Nagasaki - 1999
Adness Region 1 DVD

Sometimes I see films and feel like I have nothing of substance to say about them. There are also those films that may not warrent more than a few words, such as this Japanese horror film. Shikoku is closer in spirit, pun intended, to such films as Village of Eight Gravestones from 1977, depending primarily on mood and suggestion, with no graphic violence. The two films have somewhat similar premises of a person returning to a remote village where they discover an ancient curse. In the more recent film, a young woman returns from Tokyo to the island village to take care of some family business. She also discovers that her best friend, who she accidentally discovered to work as a child medium, drowned about ten year previously under mysterious circumstances.

Shikoku was the first major screen appearance by Chiaki Kuriyama, the actress best known for as the yo-yo wielding schoolgirl in Kill Bill, Vol. 1. That may be reason enough for some to want to see this film. Unlike most recent Japanese horror films, Shikoku is played resolutely without any humor. A little bit of philosophy is tucked into this story of ghosts, animism and Buddhism. While the basic premise of the film is inspired by the actual island, there seemed to be little interest by the filmmakers in exploring that location. What is nice about Shikoku is that it is a reminder that one can still make a horror film that does not rely on violence or gore.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:05 PM

May 08, 2007

Night Tide

Curtis Harrington - 1961
Genius Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Had it not been for the online connections made by people who write about film, many of us would have been unaware of the death of Curtis Harrington on May 6. There are a few articles and interviews with Harrington that can be found online. Tim Lucas has an overview of Harrington's life that I recommend. My thoughts on Harrington were joggled last week when I saw the Kenneth Anger films on DVD. Harrington photographed Anger's Puce Moments and appeared in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.

Around 1974, I was a student volunteer at the Film Department of the Museum of Modern Art. Charles Silver, Associate Curator, was generous in allowing me to see any 16 mm film in the Museum's collection. I wrote a paper on Harrington's 1949 short film, On the Edge. Thanks to Silver, I was able to watch the film several times on the flatbed Steenbeck viewer. I don't remember what I wrote other than that I did a shot by shot breakdown. Harrington's film is about a man, an old woman, and a runaway ball of yarn. I am hoping that someone collects Harrington's short films onto a DVD. Sadly, it is too late for a filmmaker's commentary.

Because it is part of a low budget DVD collection of horror films that I picked up, I have Harrington's first feature, Night Tide, on hand. If you haven't seen it, there is a DVD version that is of higher quality. Additionally that DVD has a commentary track by Harrington and star Dennis Hopper. Made in 1961, Harrington's film is closer in spirit to the films produced by Val Lewton in the Forties. The plot is similar to The Cat People, but with Hopper as a sailor in love with a woman who believes she is a mermaid. There is a scene where Hopper runs through a run down section of Santa Monica, pursuing a mysterious woman. The scene made me think again of the man running in On the Edge.

A devotee of Edgar Allan Poe, Harrington named his first feature from a line in Poe's "Annabel Lee". Harrington's first personal short film was based on The Fall of the House of Usher. His final work was a personal film from the same source, titled Usher. That Harrington returned to Poe one last time provides a symetry for one of the few people to straddle both experimental filmmaking and Hollywood productions.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:43 PM | Comments (2)

May 05, 2007

The Red Shoes

Bunhongsin
Kim Yong-Gyun - 2005
Tartan Video Region 1 DVD

There are times when it seems that certain titles should belong exclusively to one movie. I'm not even refering to remakes, but to films that share titles with established classics. When I see O Lucky Man I think of the film by Lindsay Anderson, and not a recent Thai comedy. I was startled and then amused to discover another Day of Wrath which bore no relation to the film by Carl Dreyer. The Korean horror film titled The Red Shoes has more in common with the films of the Pang Brothers than those of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. But there is enough in the new film to suggest that Kim is familiar with the work of The Archers. Kim does admit to being inspired, as Powell and Pressburger were, to the story by Hans Christian Anderson. To avoid confusion, I will refer to Kim's version by the Korean title.

Bunhongsin is about a cursed pair of shoes that bring out the worst in the women who find them. Kim's film centers on an optometrist and her pre-pubescent daughter. The sexual symbolism of the shoes is made obvious when both mother and daughter don red lipstick. That the mother sees her young daughter as a sexual competitor is indicated by two scenes reminiscent of Brian De Palma's Carrie when blood pours out between the legs of the terrified girl, and when a ceiling cracks open drenching the mother in blood. Kim's narrative also three scenes of sexual betrayal, one of which provides the back story to the curse of the shoes. The daughter is an aspiring ballet dancer. The origin of the red shoes takes place among ballet dancers in Japanese occupied Korea, in 1944.

Kim makes use of lots of visual symbolism, ranging from a large Japanese flag with the red and white that used throughout the film, to having the optometrist office include a version of Rene Magritte's "False Mirror". Eyes also figure prominently in Bunhongsin. Two of the women are optometrists, while the main male character is an artist. The occupations are complementary as they both depend on the ability to see to do the work. Part of the film contrasts the act of seeing, and interpreting what one sees. In this film, the optometrists see a subjective reality because of the shoes, while the artist is the first to see the truth of the curse.

Bunhongsin succeeds in spite of itself. There are many of the trappings of other Asian horror films - lots of flickering lights, ghosts that suddenly drift in and out, a dilapidated apartment that people who should know better move into, and an explanation defies logic. What does work are the shots of empty subway stations, and the performances by the wide-eye Kim Hye-Su as the mother and precocious Park Yeon-Ah as the daughter. What Bunhongsin lacks in originality is compensated by Kim Yong-Gyun obvious craftsmanship. Much of Bunhongsin appears to be the results of genre requirements. The varied frames of reference to other arts, and the pyschological underpinnings of Bunhongsin indicate a thoughtfulness not often found in contemporary horror films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 PM | Comments (2)

May 04, 2007

Gilda

Charles Vidor - 1946
Columbia Region 1 DVD

A couple days after what would have been Glenn Ford's 91st birthday, I had the chance to see Gilda again. I'm not sure if I can really articulate Ford's appeal other than that he was, at least on screen, a likable guy in generally likable films. I would not be surprised if a good portion of the most recent Oscar audience had faint idea who Ford was when the memorial montage played, his last major film appearance being in the 1978 version of Superman. Sure, there was respectful applause, but most viewers and not a few Academy members were probably aware that there was a time, about forty-five years ago, when signing Glenn Ford was a guarantee of getting the green light from the studios.

On the downside, Ford managed to star in three major flops almost in succession. The films in question, Cimarron, Pocketful of Miracles, and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, were all big budget remakes helmed by directors at or near the close of their careers. Anthony Mann's was hurt least by the last and least of his Westerns, Capra's film barely earned a pocketful of money, and Minnelli's film was such an expensive catastrophe that after a second film with Ford, and a re-teaming with Elizabeth Taylor, he no longer made films for MGM, his contract fulfilled grudgingly by his longtime studio.

Gilda is of course famous for Ford's first teaming with Rita Hayworth. What had interested me was that the film also marked Ford's first work with Rudolph Mate, working here as a cinematographer. I had written about two films Ford and Mate made together with Mate as director last year. I'm not familiar enough with Charles Vidor to identify themes or visual styles. What is interesting about Gilda, visually, is the use of putting the characters in shadow. One fantastic image is of George Macready seen in silouette. I had forgotten that Gilda takes place almost entirely at night. George Macready's mansion is filmed to resemble a gothic castle. The size and emptiness of the mansion is conveyed when the tiny figure of Rita Hayworth walks away from Ford and Macready to her bedroom.

Ford still looked a bit to baby-faced to convincingly play the grubby, unshaven gambler in the opening shots of Gilda. Even shaved and dressed in a suit, Ford looked a little too fresh to portray someone as cynical as the character of Johnny Farrell. Gilda could be seen as Glenn Ford practicing his screen persona. That practice payed off in the films Ford starred in, particularly in the period between The Big Heat and The Money Trap. Rita Hayworth had a cameo appearance in The Money Trap, but it's hard to watch her without thinking about her torturing Glenn Ford with the removal of one glove in their first film together.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:26 AM | Comments (1)

April 29, 2007

Semen: A Love Story

Semen: Una Historia de Amor
Daniela Fejerman & Ines Paris - 2005
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

There was this routine by the Sixties comedy act, The Smothers Brothers. Dick described as song as being poignant. Tom, playing dumb, asked what poignant meant. Dick's explanation of the word was "pregnant with feeling". Tom introduced the song as being about a girl who was nine months poignant. With the Smothers Brothers definition in mind, Semen is a poignant comedy about artificial insemination.

Actually the film is a bit more than that. Fejerman and Paris' previous film, My Mother likes Women was a bit of fluff that could be described as "Almodovar-lite" in its look at three sisters dismayed by their mother's unexpected choice in love. Even though this new film sidesteps several serious issues concerning medical ethics, the romance between a clumsy doctor and a trapeze artist is given a sense of both literal and symbolic gravity by the lead actors.

The story gets progressively more preposterous. This is the kind of whimsical story telling that European filmmakers are more adept at making. Argentinian actor Ernesto Alterio plays the young doctor who literally falls in love. Leticia Dolera charms as the trapeze artist and her twin sister. The filmmakers who both write and direct as a team are interested in comic explorations of not only family dynamics, but in alternative families. Even if certain plot points collapse under casual scrutiny, there is a sincerity about the proceedings, so much so that I feel too much respect, prefering to avoid the puns one can easily shoot off with a title like Semen.

Daniela Fejerman and Ines Paris

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM

April 27, 2007

Platform

Zhantai
Jia Zhang-Ke - 2000
New Yorker Video Region 1 DVD

What I liked about Platform is the way history unfolded. Jia has most of the action taking place with full shots, almost constantly from a distance. The passage of time is announced through the changes of clothing that the characters wear, and the songs they listen to or sing. The film's title is from a Chinese song about emotional and physical distances.

Taking place between 1980 and 1990, Jia's film is about the cultural changes in China during those years. A group of perfomers, "art workers" go from town to town with a repetoire of songs praising Chairman Mao. As China changes, so does the group, evolving from government sponsored performers to a band performing their own verson of rock music. Platform is a portrait of a country that was as marginally aware of the world outside its borders, as many were unaware of what life was truly like within China.

Even though the Cultural Revolution has been over, the Chinese are shown stumbling over what it means to be a good party member or an artist. Being an artist, even when it is done solely in the name of Mao is suspect. A son tell his mother that her mind should be liberated - the mother's response is that the son should practice self-criticism. A father reads from the introduction of a comic book version of Camille that indicates that Dumas' story was made available as a critique of Western politics and culture, alarmed that his son is reading about Paris and prostitutes.

Simultaneously to the changes in art was the change of the purpose of art, in this case, music. The first song, performed presumably for an audience that was required to be there, was meant to raise nationalistic pride. As the decade progresses, the songs become more personal. Love of the state is replaced by one person's love for another. What links several of the songs is that they are about travel, going to a particular destination, or knowing someone is at a distance, both literally and metaphorically. No longer a government entity, the group finds itself in a quandry of having the benefit of total control of their art, but dependent on needing to sell themselves to an audience that doesn't understand or want them. Platform is about people who are fueled by the dreams of worlds beyond their province, who sing about travel, but ultimately never leave home.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:22 PM

April 25, 2007

Perversion Story

Una Sull'altra/One on Top of the Other
Lucio Fulci - 1969
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

Lucio Fulci always wanted to be the thought of as the Italian Alfred Hitchcock. This film may have come closest to that dream. The San Francisco setting and the story of a woman who resembles another who died under mysterious circumstances obviously brings to mind Vertigo. There are other plot points that will remind one of Hitchcock, with virtually every character under suspicion. The last name of the main characters is Dumurrier, which sounds almost like Du Maurier. Of the several Fulci films I have seen, Perversion Story stands out as a smart mystery thriller.

Unlike the horror films Fulci is known for, there is no graphic violence. While Fulci uses extreme close ups of the eyes of his characters, none are gouged as in The Beyond or Zombie. There is much nudity, with Fulci taking advantage of both the new rating code and San Francisco's famed strip clubs. Fulci's cinema has almost always been of excess, but I'll take scantily clad or completely nude women over bloody body parts any time.

The basic story, about a doctor possibly framed for the murder of his wife, is familiar. Fortunately, Fulci kicks into high gear in the last half hour with a few unexpected twists. Marisa Mell is the femme fatale. Also in the cast are former screen godess Elsa Martinelli and former Howard Hughes' starlet Faith Domergue. Perpetual supporting actor John Ireland plays the dogged police investigator who seeks the truth about pretty boy doctor Jean Sorel.

Concerning the title, Perversion Story was also given to another film by Fulci. One on Top of the Other is the translation of the Italian title. I am not certain what Fulci intended with his title, although it could possibly refer to the layer of lies the characters tell each other.

The DVD comes with a CD of the score by Riz Ortolani. A former jazz musician, Ortolani's music combines several of the jazz styles that would be heard both in film music in the late Sixties, both formal and improvised.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 AM

April 23, 2007

The William Shakespeare Blog-a-thon: Omkara

Vishal Bhardwaj - 2006
Eros Internation All Region DVD

I have not seen Bhardwaj's version of the "Scottish play". That film was critically and commercially successful enough to encourage Bhardwaj to try adapting Shakespeare again with this version of Othello. While Omkara has its faults, I always find it interesting to watch any kind of attempt to transpose Shakespeare into a different time and culture. In this example, the action takes place in contemporary India, filmed primarily in the countryside of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. Othello is renamed Omkara, usually refered to as Omi, and is the gangster chief in his region.

What may be a problem for Shakespeare scholars is how this Othello is presented. Unlike the Moor of traditional productions, Omkara is refered to as half-caste. His mother is described as a slave, which may or may not be an accurate translation from the Hindi dialogue. This brings up the question as to whether what marks the Othello character as an outsider needs to specifically be racial, or is the spirit of the play primarily in the narrative of a trusted adviser manipulating people for his own benefit, making his declared best friend lose trust in his wife before murdering her?

What may also be considered a problem with this film, but may well be a problem with almost any production of Othello is that Iago is the more interesting character. Here renamed Langda, Saif Ali Khan (seen above) takes his part and runs away with the film, fully enjoying his villainy. In the other productions of Othello that I've seen, the Moor is something of a stiff, trying his best to be one of the guys, but inhibited by his sense of nobility. The Iago here relishes pulling strings and pushing the buttons of those who trust him. The scenes of Langda setting up the machinery of tragedy are laced with black humor. Too often the scenes of Omkara with his Desdemona, here named Dolly, are dull.

This being a Bollywood version of Shakespeare, there are scenes of singing and dancing. As is often the case in a Bollywood film, the musical portions are the best part of the film. The film stops to allow Bipasha Bisu two opportunities to sing, dance and show off her belly button in her role as Billo, Shakespeare's Bianca. One good thing about DVDs of Bollywood films is that if you want to skip the story but simply enjoy the musical numbers, that option is available. At one point in the film, Dolly, the Bollywood Desdemona, sings an off-key version of a Stevie Wonder song to Omkara. Had I had my way, this Desdemona would have been smothered so much sooner.

Of the other screen Othellos I have seen, Orson Welles knew how to dominate the screen. His is the only filmed performance that I would bother to see again. Laurence Fishburne did a good job in the 1995 version directed by Oliver Parker, but Kenneth Branagh had all the fun as honest Iago. My introduction to Othello almost put me off to the play altogether. Laurence Olivier may be the greatest Shakespearean actor of my time, but in film he was sometimes still playing to the audience in the balcony, overacting when he should have toned down his performance. I could not stop laughing when I first saw Olivier in blackface in the 1965 film of Othello. Not only did I think that the make-up was a stupid idea at the time when Martin Luther King, Jr. was making news, but I kept on waiting for Olivier to bend on one knee and belt out "Mammy". An honorable mention goes out to Ronald Colman who played a murderous actor playing Othello on stage in A Double Life.

Links to this blog-a-thon will be added during the day. If you wish to contribute a link, write to me at lensdarkly@yahoo.com.

Links: The Shamus investigates Branagh's Henry V
Flickhead - The Bard vs. The Shatner
Odienator discusses actors who should not do Shakespeare
Edward Copeland covers the book The Shakespeare Riots
Daniel Eisenberg on Olivier's Henry V
Windmills of my Mind looks at Shakespeare behind bars
Filmsquish does Tromeo and Juliet
All about my Movies' Emma lists her favorite Hamlets
Ogg's Movie Thoughts are about Hamlet goes Business
The Film Experience loves Lady Macbeth
Jurgen Fauth comes to praise Brando as Marc Antony
Cinebeats takes on Vincent Price and Theater of Blood
Bleeding Tree gushes forth on blood Titus
Andrew Bemis on Polanski's version of "the Scottish play"
Jerry Kutner at Bright Lights After Dark shares a clip from Chimes at Midnight
while Noel Vera takes a good look at Orson Welles and Falstaff
George Thomas looks at the Bollywood Maqbool
Brian Darr takes on Bugs Bunny and the Bard
Bohemian Cinema shows Shakespeare as the ultimate ad man

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM | Comments (2)

April 22, 2007

Two Evenings with Marian Marzynski

This month, the Miami Beach Cinematheque devoted the majority of their screenings to Eastern European films. The past Friday and Saturday evenings were given over to filmmaker and teacher Marian Marzynski. A peer of Roman Polanski's, Marzynski created his own version of cinema-verite in Poland in the Sixties, and established himself as an unconventional teacher of filmmaking in the U.S. in the Seventies. The presentations were both of reunions.

The Friday evening show was of Marzynski's Polish documentaries. As Marzyinski left Poland as a political refugee, the fate of his documentaries, shown on Polish television, was unknown to him. Not only had the films been saved, but Marzynski was invited back to Poland to present his work to a new audience. The Polish television station, Kino Polska, not only preserved the films, but created a showcase collecting the work. Marzynski received copies of his films in exchange for providing commentary before each film.

Using a telephoto lens, Marzinski allowed his subjects to speak for themselves, sometimes exposing their own folly. The first film documented the reunion of Polish-Americans visiting Poland in 1962, some seeing family members for the first time in decades. A competition between two towns, shows the absurd lengths one may go for civic pride. What was most interesting about documentaries on gymnastic performers and a bicycle race were extreme close-ups of the action, of hands and faces. Marzynski complained about the bicycle race being boring, yet his use of creative angles occassionally gave the film an abstract quality, almost like Leni Reifenstahl on two wheels.

Saturday was for the presentation of Marzyinski's work-in-progress, the autobiographical Life on Marz. Primarily devoted to the years spent teaching filmmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design, the film includes excerpts from the films by his students. There are also several reunions with those students, in Hollywood, on shooting locations, and in Providence. Marz is the nickname given to Marzinski by his students. Among the graduates whose students work is shown are Jean de Segonzac, Bob Kensinger, and Gus Van Sant. Listed among the Marzinski's students is Mary Lambert. It is Marzynski's own story that is of the most interest, getting his first teaching job when someone at RISD assumed that the filmmaker was part of the Czech new wave of the late Sixties and was fluent in English. Marzynski follows up on students that made interesting work as students but had differing career paths, not always art related. Both life and art are presented as the results of circumstance and accident, as well as determination.

* * *

Speaking of The Miami Beach Cinematheque, I will be introducing Tears of the Black Tiger on April 28. Additionally, I will speak a bit about Thai film in general and my four and half months in Chiang Mai.

The big news is that Francis Fold Coppola will be presenting a special screening on May 13 in Miami Beach. The film, Coda: Thirty Years Later is about the production of Coppola's forthcoming Youth without Youth, while the title refers to the thirty years since the making of Apocalypse Now.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:43 AM

April 20, 2007

Films of Kenneth Anger, Volume 1

Eaux d'Artifice - 1953

Does anybody know if Roberto Rossellini saw Kenneth Anger's Eaux d'Artifice? There is some imagery that is too similar to be coincidental. Film at the Tivoli fountains, Anger has several shots where the camera moves in on the stone faces, the sculptures in the fountain. In a later moment, Anger's female character runs into a grotto that is also an ancient tomb. The similarity to similar images in Voyage in Italy is too much to dismiss. In him commentary, Anger mentions talking with Federico Fellini prior to shooting Eaux d'Artifice, so it seems possible that if Rossellini had not actually seen Anger's film, it could well have been described to him. What is established is that Rossellini's film came out a year later.

It has been over thirty years since I've seen any of Kenneth Anger's films. I had the opportunity to meet Anger in Telluride in 1975. He screened a collection of his films starting at midnight and treated those who stayed for the entire show to breakfast the next morning. While keeping a respectful distance from them, I watched Anger and Stan Brakhage, two old friends, conversing. I felt like I was a privileged observer of two artistic giants. For Anger and Brakhage, it was a personal moment, while for myself it was witnessing the reunion of the two most revered names in personal filmmaking.

In the past thirty years I've become more aware of Anger's visual humor, as in this shot above. Of the films in Volume 1, the only film I do recall seeing is Fireworks. I liked listening to Anger give a historical context to this film, not only as a cinematic recreation of his dreams, but specifically in reaction to reading about the Zoot Suit riots. While Anger's original intention may have been to shock audiences with scenes of sadomasochism, and document his own homoeroticism, Fireworks turned out to be funnier than the film I remembered.

The commentary is helpful in pointing out the the lady in the cage seen above is Anais Nin, one of the revelers in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Anger not only tells who his players are, but also which mythological characters they portray. Of some personal meaning to me was seeing Anger's friend Curtis Harrington made to look like the sleepwalker from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Harrington is one of the few filmmakers who began making personal films before transitioning into relatively mainstream work. I did a shot by shot analysis of Harrington's short On the Edge for one of my classes.

While others have perceptively written about Kenneth Anger, it's nice to be able to see or re-see the films with Anger himself discussing his work. Even if the subject matter or filmmaking style seems remote for contemporary viewers, Anger's influence exists in the use of rock music as a soundtrack and audio commentary. Even if one finds a film like Rabbit's Moon too precious, Anger has the wit to add classic doo-wop songs to his vision of a sad French clown.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:02 PM | Comments (3)

April 18, 2007

Who's Camus Anyway

Kamyu Nante Shiranai
Mitsuo Yanagimachi - 2005
Film Movement Region 1 DVD

The first shot in Who's Camus Anyway is a single traveling shot that is six and a half minutes long. During this time, characters who are film students discuss similar shots in Touch of Evil, The Player and Shonben Rider. The discussion continues on to Mizoguchi's preference for long takes with minimal cutting, while the talk of a film teacher being nicknamed after a Thomas Mann character sparks students to name their favorite film by Luchino Visconti. Unlike the name-dropping in Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof, Yanagimachi's dialogue is smarter in its references, more interesting to listen to, and organic to the narrative. There are moments that convey the sense of exhilaration felt in watching certain films or in making films as a student.

One could name the influences of several filmmakers in Who's Camus Anyway. The film most frequently refered to is Truffaut's Story of Adele H.. The young director of the student film, Matsukawa, is pursued single-mindedly by his former girlfriend, Yukari. The students' professor, Nakajo, a former director now teaching film at the university, acts out his own version of Death in Venice, obsessed with a female student. The film the students are making is the recreation of the murder of an old woman by a high school student. The students debate the young murderer's motivation, with the actor studying Albert Camus' The Stranger, perhaps not so coincidentally filmed by Visconti.

What Yanamagimichi seems to be interested in how people feel connected, or disconnected with other people, and how either of those feelings can be channelled into artistic creation or killing someone else. In one scene, a student is reading from a non-fiction book that describes the mind of a murderer, only to have one student think the details fit him, while another student continually, and unconsciously, displays one of the supposed symptoms by talking to himself. At one point in this same scene, the non-fiction book is read aloud at the same time as the actor is reading from The Stranger, a way of expressing that the conflicting ideas may be equally true, or false.

The intertwining of film and reality is explored in the final scene. Shots of the student film alternate with shots of the students in the process of making the film, setting up each take. The shifts between the film within the film, and the students with their actors are so subtle that at the final shot in the film is both ambiguous and disquieting. Who's Camus Anyway begins as a cheerful celebration of films and filmmaking, but concludes as an inquiry into how art and reality collide, affecting our selves and each other.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:29 PM

April 17, 2007

The Game is Over

La Curee
Roger Vadim - 1966
Wellspring Region 1 DVD

I'll never know how accurate Roger Vadim's vision of the future in Barbarella will be. But the first shot of Jane Fonda in The Game is Over, showing her exercise, seems prescient. Fonda is even wearing white leg warmers along with her t-shirt and panties. Almost twenty years after Fonda left Vadim, people were paying money for Fonda to excercise in front of a camera.

The Game is Over is essentially another Roger Vadim film that was sold on the basis of showing as much female skin as the censors of the time would allow. By taking a narrative from classic literature, be it Schnitzler, or in this case Zola, Vadim could allow audiences that wouldn't be caught dead at a "skin-flick" to justify that they were watching an art film. The first half of this film has brief glimpses of Fonda partially nude. A scene of her making love with Peter McEnery is made up of shots against a mirror that reduces the two bodies to abstract blobs. This was fairly hot stuff back in 1966 in the last years before the MPAA introduced a new rating code.

I'm not sure which meaning was intended in the French title. According to one dictionary, curee translates as meaning "scramble for the spoils". The other translation is quarry, as in a stone pit. Both meaning are applicable for this narrative. Fonda plays the wife of a businessman, in a sexless marriage of convenience. Husband Michel Piccoli benefits more from this arrangement as Fonda's money supports his business. Fonda falls in love with stepson Peter McEnery, a college student dependent on his father's largesse. This being a story about love and money by Emile Zola means the conclusion is not unexpected.

What was unexpected was the second to last shot in The Game is Over. I don't know whether the credit goes to Vadim or to cinematographer Claude Renoir. The shot that I have attempted to convey with several screen grabs is a smash-zoom of Jane Fonda. A smash-zoom is a shot in which the camera simultaneously tracks out and zooms in on a character. The first and most famous example of this kind of shot is in Vertigo, shots from the point of view of James Stewart. I recall that Claude Chabrol used that shot at the end of La Femme Infidele, which excited several of my fellow film students at the time. To the best of my knowledge, no one was aware that Vadim had employed the smash-zoom, indeed what little serious writing about Vadim is primarily about who he filmed, but not how he filmed.

That could also be the way Vadim prefered to be remembered. The Game is Over is worth looking at for its images of swinging Parisians dancing to the tunes of Arthur Brown before he became the God of Hellfire. The film also suggests that Vadim as a filmmaker was a bit more than the sum of his leading ladies voluptuous parts. This quote from Vadim indicates an emphasize of his actresses over his filmmaking style: "One would not ask Rodin to make an ugly sculpture, nor with me to make a film with an ugly woman. It is my style, it is my nature."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:23 PM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2007

Cattle Queen of Montana

Allan Dwan -1954
VCI Entertainment All Region DVD

I wasn't planning on writing on another western. My DVD viewing is currently based on whatever I get next from the Miami Beach Public Library. Even more coincidental is that this film, like Riding Shotgun, is based on a story by Thomas Blackburn. What inspired me to take a look at Cattle Queen of Montana was thinking about Nathaniel R's Action Heroine Blog-a-thon. The oldest of the films Nathaniel refers to is Alien. I'm sure there are other actresses I am overlooking at this time, but among American screen actresses, Barbara Stanwyck provides a great example of a woman as action heroine.

Especially at a time when demographics determine everything in a Hollywood film, Cattle Queen in retrospect seems almost remarkable as the work of a mature cast and crew. Barbara Stanwyck was 47, and just three years away from the even tougher role in Forty Guns. Allen Dwan was still directing films at age 69. Dwan's directorial debut was in 1911, while his final film came out fifty years later. A film like this helps counter the notion that action films should be restricted to younger filmmakers and actors.

The only thing truly authentic about this western is that it is indeed shot on location in Montana. The film was made at a time when it was common to cast actors like Lance Fuller, Anthony Caruso and Yvette Dugay as native Americans. Of more interest is seeing a supporting cast that includes Sam Fuller regular Gene Evans, Jack Elam, Morris Ankrum and Burt Mustin. Ronald Reagan manages not to get in the way of the fun. Essentially, if the western is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, than this is a nice, simple, well made hamburger, modest but satisfying.

The main reason to see Cattle Queen of Montana is to watch the petite Stanwyck jump on and off horses, fight off bad guys with her two little fists, crack a whip or fire a six-shooter. Doing a little bit of online research I came across this pictorial of action heroines and this examination of of "action babes". I am hoping that contributors to Nathaniel's blog-a-thon do more than superficial searching for the films and actresses. While I cannot be positive that Barbara Stanwyck was the first female action star, she set a standard that could challenge actresses far younger and much taller.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:00 PM | Comments (4)

April 09, 2007

Andre De Toth and Randolph Scott - Two Films

Thunder Over the Plains
Andre De Toth - 1953

Riding Shotgun
Andre De Toth - 1954
both Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

I was rifling through the DVDs at the only store in my end of Miami Beach, looking for a film for the previous blog-a-thon. In the bargain box was this DVD with three films starring Randolph Scott, with two films directed by De Toth. In the almost forty years since Andrew Sarris placed De Toth in the "Expressive Esoterica" category, De Toth have become an almost forgotten filmmaker. The two films on the DVD are part of six films De Toth made with Scott between 1951 and 1954. The was Scott's most significant collaboration with a director prior to the legendary work with Budd Boetticher. Those four years were also the most productive for De Toth, who directed a total of eleven films during that time including the original House of Wax.

The two best online examinations of De Toth are from Fred Camper and Adrian Danks. De Toth's films with Scott are usually mentioned as part of an overview of De Toth's work, but have yet to be more fully examined.

Thunder Over the Plains more easily fits into a study of De Toth's thematic concerns. Scott plays an army officer in Texas after the Civil War. A Texan who was on the Union side, Scott is seen as part of the occupying force maintaining martial law, and by default aiding carpetbaggers who are taking advantage of Texas farmers. The conflicts between professional and personal loyalties would be played out again on the larger canvas of Play Dirty. Throughout Thunder, Scott's loyalties, to the United States, to his Texan community, and to his wife are constantly questioned or challenged. Being a vehicle for Randolph Scott, there is little shading, nor could there be the pessimistic ending of Play Dirty.

Riding Shotgun

Scott's quandry in Riding Shotgun is that the members of a small town accuse him of robbing a stage coach. This is a decidedly lighter film, but visually more interesting. De Toth's compositions are more dynamic in the positioning of characters. Close-ups alternate with long shots of sometimes one or two people within the frame. Both this film and Thunder were photographed by Bert Glennon. Based on the way space is used, with characters frequently barging in front of each other, it seems possible that Riding Shotgun was originally planned to be filmed in 3-D. Of possibly more interest for contemporary viewers may be the casting of a short actor as one of the bad guys, Pinto. The nasty little guy is billed in Riding Shotgun as Charles Buchinsky.

Riding Shotgun

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:46 PM | Comments (1)

April 05, 2007

The Trashy Movie Celebration Blog-a-thon: The Brain that wouldn't Die

Joseph Green - 1962
Genius Entertainment Region 1 DVD

There are at least a couple of reasons to re-evaluate The Brain that wouldn't Die. One of those reasons is that it was a groundbreaking film in terms of on-screen horror. Made in 1959, but not released until 1963, the graphic horror was considered extreme for its time. Made before Herschell Gordon Lewis showed how to cook an Egyptian feast, and George Romero unleashed zombies in Pittsburgh, Joseph Green horrified the censors, and some in the audience that bothered to see his film. Stuart Gordon has stated that The Brain that wouldn't Die was influential on his own Reanimator. Time has proven that with several DVD and a downloadable version available, this is "The Film that wouldn't Die".

For those unfamiliar with the story, Dr. Bill Cortner proves to his surgeon father that he can revive the dead with a serum he has created. Cortner also hints that he has been working on experiments with this serum at the family's country home. Driving a bit to fast to his weekend getaway with his fiancee, Jan, Cortner crashes into a guard rail. While he is tossed out of the convertable, Jan is burnt in the flaming car. Cortner wraps her head in his jacket, and runs to his country home, actually a small castle, where he places Jan's head in a pan, connected with tubes with the special serum. The basement laboratory is maintained by Kurt, a former surgeon with one bad arm, a failed transplant attempt by Cortner. Also in the basement is a monster in the closet, a collection of body parts pieced together and made alive with the serum. Cortner has no more than forty-eight hours to take Jan's stil living head, and place it on a new body. In an attempt at one-stop shopping, Cortner looks for Jan's replacement body at a strip club. Meanwhile, Jan not only wishes she had been left to die, but additionally starts communicating with the monster in the closet.

There is a small bit of visual wit. Most obvious is a scene of two strippers fighting over Cortner, the camera tilts up to two pictures of cats, with the sound of fighting cats literalizing the action on the floor. Overlooked is the inclusion of a bust in Cortner's house, the sculpture of a head, that prefigures Jan's fate. While I have no way of knowing Green's intentions, the scenes of horror could be appreciated for their black humor. The monster in the closet tears off Kurt's good arm, leaving the loyal assistant to smear his blood-soaked smock against the laboratory walls. The monster bears a strong resemblance to Mr. Potato-Head, particularly as seen in Toy Story when he declares that he's "a Picasso". There is also shot after shot of Cortner interviewing possible victims, frequently with his hands around their necks.

The most famous line uttered by Herb Evers as Bill Cortner is, "Do I look like a maniac who goes around killing girls?" Part of Jan was played by former Fox contract player Virginia Leith. Leith was the step-mother of filmmaker Mary Harron. One could argue that the seedlings of Harron's feature films could be found in The Brain that would't Die. Certainly Cortner's words could have been easily said by American Pyscho's Patrick Bateman. The strip club scenes recall the milieu of The Notorious Bettie Page. And what to make of the facially scarred model, Doris, a self-declared "man-hater", perhaps not too distant in attitude from Valerie Solanas of I Shot Andy Warhol. Cortner is somewhat like Harron's male characters, self-absorbed and transgressive, while the female characters are objectified by men, sometimes by choice.

The Brain that would't Die may not be a good film in the conventional sense, but it should not be mistaken for a bad film, or so bad it's good, or camp. Bad films are never as perpetually entertaining as this. Can it be taken seriously as an examination of mad science or sexism? Somethings are better left at the surface. Be that as it may, The Brain that would't Die is the results of an idiosyncratic imagination that deserves to be valued for its shamelessness and audacity. In other words, this is truly what should be meant when one discusses an independent film.

Links to other entries in this blog-a-thon can be found at The Bleeding Tree.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 PM | Comments (4)

March 26, 2007

Bewitching Attraction

Yeogyosu-Eui Eunmilhan Maeryeok
Lee Ha-jung - 2006
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

Out of the eight films made with Moon So-ri, I have now seen four. If talk about the best contemporary screen actresses wasn't pretty much limited to those who speak English, Moon would be considered as good, if not better than a number of her Anglo-American peers. Her performance as a woman with cerebral palsy in Oasis is the kind of stuff Academy Awards are made of. Following that film was Moon's acclaimed role as The Good Lawyer's Wife, a married woman having an affair with a teenage boy.

Moon's character in Bewitching Attraction is almost a blend of those two films. Moon portrays Eun, the lone female teacher in a design school, with five male faculty members competing for her favor. Eun is first seen standing still, looking out at the ocean while a priest and a large group of nuns are seen staring at Eun. When Eun begins to walk, it is clear she has a limp, something one of the male characters mentions that he finds arousing. If for no other reason, Betwitching Attraction should be seen simply for the wonder of watching Moon So-ri play a beautiful woman with a limp, roaring drunk, wearing stiletto high heels.

There is a Gallic quality to Lee's debut film. That may be simply due to the music, often a duet of guitar and accordian. The film is observational, with the camera at a distance allowing the viewer to watch the characters interact with each other. There are echoes of Truffaut in the narrative, most obviously with Jules and Jim with men fighting each other for a woman who could well live without any of them. There is also a scene that recalls a visual joke from Shoot the Piano Player. One of the men swears on the life of his mother that he is telling the truth. The mother suddenly dies. Lee's film is much darker in its humor than anything Truffaut made, while the sex is more explicit. Additionally, Eun is reunited by chance with someone from her youth, with the two sharing a secret that makes their relationship more volatile. Again, this recalls several of Truffaut's films, usually with former lovers forced together by circumstance.

While the men act foolishly in the name of love, Eun is looking for ways to advance herself beyond her teaching career. Everyone does the wrong thing for the wrong reason, in a variety of acts of self-destruction. In the end of Bewitching Attraction, Eun compares herself to a red flower. Unlike flowers, Eun is more resilient than fragile. But like some flowers, Eun is best appreciated observed from a safe distance.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:48 AM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2007

Here be Pirates!

The condo I'm living provides only a handful of channel on television. Even worse, since I don't get cable or satellite, I don't get any of the channels dedicated to English language movies. The theaters have an extremely limited choice of films here in Chiang Mai, and my significant other has absolutely no interest in seeing Dreamgirls, Rocky Balboa or Pursuit of Happyness. The nearby VDO stores have a limited selection of English language films, although the guy at the closer of the two stores is nice enough to help point out the new English language VCDs. While I'm usually up for seeing a film in any language, my SO demands cinematic entertainment without subtitles, preferably weighted towards action, with big name Hollywood stars.

Especially as some films simply will not recieve a theatrical run in Chiang Mai, we've seen some films on DVDs made available through street entrepreneurs. Quality varies from copies made from other DVDs, to obvious copies shot in a movie theater. In some cases, a good quality dub is more than the film deserves.

The Good Shephers (Robert De Niro - 2006)

The Good Shepherd is one film that has been promised release in Thailand, but has yet to be released. I read a review that complained that director Robert De Niro learned nothing from Martin Scorsese. That isn't quite true - The Good Shepherd has a longer running time than Scorsese's last three films. The story about the creation of the C.I.A. and the corruption of ideals and power is still in search of a better movie than this one. It's not enough to have the star power of Matt Damon, Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin and a host of others. De Niro should have handed the footage to Thelma Schoonmaker or at least somebody with a sharper eye to have picked up the pace and tightened the narrative. The Good Shepherd has the lethargy and flab of Jake La Motta in his later years.

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (Steven Shainberg - 2006)

Much better is Fur. With the explanatory title An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus, Steven Shainberg's film is placed in a context other than biographical. As the mysterious upstairs neighbor, Robert Downey, Jr.'s fabulous furry freak resembles Jean Marais in Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. Although Patricia Bosworth is listed as a producer, the film only tangentially seems connected to her biography of Arbus. More of the narrative combined elements of Cocteau, Tod Browning and Lewis Carroll to create Diane's adventures in Wonderland.

Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast

The DVD was shot in a theater, so that the dialogue was muffled, while the color was off. A constant flicker on the screen almost induced a headache. From the beginning with cropped off credits, it was obvious no one cared about copying Fur with the correct aspect ratio. This is one film I plan to see again to judge more accurately. My SO was surprised to know that Fur didn't rate any Oscar nominations, deeming Nicole Kidman's performance as good as that in Eyes Wide Shut. Certainly Shainberg's closing shot, a close up of Kidman, echoes Kubrick's adoring shot of his final
muse.

On the minus side again, is Dragon Tiger Gate. My SO and I both enjoy a good martial arts film. This is one of those movies that doesn't live up to the trailer. The film was directed by Wilson Yip with fight choreography by star Donnie Yen. The film does get visually inventive, especially in one scene that views the action looking down on several rooms from straight above, a formal approch that recalls the overhead shots from Van Trier's Dogville, or the open side house from Jerry Lewis' The Ladies' Man. Other fight scenes seem clearly derivative of Uma Thurman against the Crazy 88s in Kill Bill. Even worse, the film grinds to a halt in between fight scenes. I fell asleep after an hour, not caring about the missing plaque or if the two brothers reunite. Of course it didn't help that the subtitles were totally missing during a key scene that set up the story. Maybe the film should be retitled Crouching Tiger, Snoring Viewer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:03 AM

March 06, 2007

Mekhong Full Moon Party

Sibha kham doan sib ed
Jira Maligool - 2002
Mangpong Region 0 DVD

During the time that my computer was in the shop, I saw the film Mekhong Full Moon Party on DVD. The film is instructive to watch during this time of controversy over James Cameron's documentary on the tomb that may belong to Jesus.

One of the biggest problems I have regarding discussions about films and faith, as I have previously addressed, is that the films are almost always Western, and the faith, Christian. While Mekhong Full Moon Party is a Thai film, about Buddhism, it brings up an issue that is more universal regarding religion. As Graham Greene may have put it, the heart of the matter is whether faith depends on the preservation of certain beliefs that may be mythic or symbolic, rather than factual. The story concerns the investigation of fire balls that shoot out of the Mekhong river at the end of a Buddhist holiday. Are the fireballs created by a dragon, or a freak accident of nature, or an entirely man-made phenomena? The film takes place in a small town in Northeast Thailand that hosts the increasingly popular annual event which for some participants is evidence of the power of Buddhism. The film is also inspired by true events.

This dramatic comedy has its share of problems, primarily with a sprawling story line that meanders away from the main narrative. Where the film succeeds is in its joy and respect of the chief characters. The grandmother with her folk remedies for every ailment is no more or less eccentric than the doctor and scientist who investigate the fire balls, or the teacher who argues that to question the miracle is to show a lack of religious faith. Even when the fire balls are explained, neither characters nor their particular beliefs are in any sense diminished or ridiculed. Nor should they be.

What Mekhong Full Moon Party has is the idea that scientific inquiry or factual knowledge is fully compatible with the sense of the mystical or magical. Not surprisingly, the film was awarded a FIPRESCI Prize - Special Mention at the 2003 Hong Kong International Film Festival, "For the joyous dialogue with one's own folk traditions and its accessible representation of Thai-Laotian mythologies to the international audience." That one sentence concisely explains the difference between Jira's debut film, and those films that equate faith with visual and verbal shouting.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:45 AM | Comments (1)

February 25, 2007

Catching up with the Oscar Nominees in Chiang Mai, Thailand

As it turns out, being in Thailand has not been an obstacle in seeing several Oscar nominated movies before the awards show. Several of the films are now out on DVD, even before they have their theatrical run. These are not the kind of DVDs that are the work of someone who snuck a camera into the theater. What I've seen are quite watchable. I am watching the DVDs like the average Thai, on an old twenty inch screen TV with monophonic sound. This is hardly the ideal way to see any movies, although with the inflated reputations of some of these films, they are quite literally cut down to size.

One film I will probably see again to evaluate better is Volver. To coin a phrase, the subitles were lost in translation. While I could recognize certain visual motifs, primarily using the color red, based on imagery alone, Volver was less interesting than Talk to Her among Almodovar's more recent films. My biggest problem was trying to follow what came off as a Spanish language talk fest, with subtitles written by someone not fluent in English. Between questionable choices of words and syntax, trying to watch Volver turned out to be so laborious that I fell asleep during the last half hour. I've seen all of Almodovar's films and enjoyed most of them to want to give Volver a second chance.

Pan's Labyrinth had better subtitles, although my significant other questioned the English language title as there is no Pan. "Labyrinth of the Faun" is certainly more accurate. With a narrative tied to the Spanish Civil War, del Toro has created a film that works as a companion piece to his The Devil's Backbone. With a young girl as the main character, Pan's Labyrinth can also be viewed as taking the themes of Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, with a concrete presentation of the fantasy elements. Erice was inspired by James Whale's Frankestein, particularly the scene where the Frankenstein monster encounters the young girl by the lake. For all three filmmakers, the worst monsters come in human form. Del Toro and Erice's films are linked by characters who believe in the power of story telling. In Erice's film of two very young girls, the older one convinces her younger sister that the Frankenstein monster that they glimpsed on the movie screen now lives just outside their small village. Del Toro's film begins with Ofelia more interested in her books than the outside world, reading to herself, and telling the stories to her unborn brother.

Pan's Labyrinth also, perhaps unintentionally, reflects the changes in fantasy film in the past thirty years which brings up some questions: Are films that rely on computer generated special effects the result simply on the availability of the technology or customer demand or both? Conversely, would a film that suggests a fantasy world such as Curse of the Cat People been made had there been different technology available? Would a person who grew up with CGI even ask these kinds of questions? I sometimes wonder about the loss of the sense of magic when special effects are no longer special, and there is so much seen, denying the audience the ability to imagine.

The ability to exactly reproduce a filmmaker's vision is what hobbles Apocalypto. I liked the film's opening zoom lens shot, closing in on some bushes in a jungle, followed by the hunt for a wild boar by a group of Mayans. After that were a couple of scenes that were lifted from Mel Gibson's book of practical and humiliating jokes. Following these light-hearted moments are scenes of people getting spears through their stomachs, an arrow through the mouth, beheadings, burnings, a swarm of angry bees, a jaguar who bites off someone's face, and a woman giving birth while stuck at the bottom of a pit filling with water while her young son looks on helplessly. As a filmmaker, Mel Gibson has a great eye for detail and dramatic camera angles. When it comes to scenes of torture, both with the films he stars in, and those he has directed, the concept of restraint is lacking. Where I will also give Gibson credit is that I could not imagine anyone else as having made Apocalypto. I could easily see Gibson playing every part in the film with every grin, gimace, laugh and scream. It may also be a backhanded compliment to say that based on what I saw in Apocalypto, Mel Gibson would be the perfect director to make a dramatic film about Abu Ghraib.

Until I saw The Queen, I did not realize how enormous the public display of grief was in response to the death of Princess Diana. The most most impressive image in the film was an overhead shot of the thousands of flowers in front of Buckingham Palace. Helen Mirren was good, but is a gap between what's been nominated, and what I have actually seen of films that would have qualified. Two memorable performances not nominated belong to Gretchen Mol as Bettie Page in The Notorious Bettie Page and Diane Lane as Toni Mannix in Hollywoodland, again women dealing with public scandal.

What I thought interesting about The Queen was the examination of power. The film could have been easily retitled "The Seduction of Tony Blair". The evolution of Blair from a would-be revolutionary to virtually an apologist for the Royal family had greater intrigue, and timely interest considering the current state of British politics. I also liked the sympathetic portrayal of Prince Charles, caught between his sense of the changing times and his obligations to tradition, and conflicting family loyalties.

I did my shoppping today, with fresh expresso and breakfast pastries. If all goes well, I will live blog while discovering what it is like to watch the Academy Awards from a far different time zone in another country.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:07 AM | Comments (4)

February 08, 2007

The Host

Gwoemul
Bong Joon-ho - 2006
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

Am I missing something here? I finally saw The Host, the critically praised monster movie that's played at prestigious film festivals. Throughout a good part of the film I kept asking myself one question: Have these festival programmers never watched the Sci-Fi channel?

Sure, The Host is smarter and sharper than the typical Sci-Fi channel creature feature, as is the monster. But I still felt like I was watching the movie Roger Corman might have made had he been willing to spend more money on special effects and was Korean. I scanned a couple of reviews that pointed out how the film was a parable and satire of Korean politics and the SARS scare and those old standards, arrogant scientists and government cover-ups. And I agree that the giant tadpole-fish-monster was impressive for a CGI creature. But even a film like Frankenfish has its moments of pretense. I'm not certain if there isn't a monster movie that doesn't make the claim that it's really a parable about science gone wrong, man versus God, or the evils of big business and/or big government.

Part of me is thrilled at the idea of a monster movie playing the art house circuit. That's where one could see Asian horror films like Ju-On and The Eye before the films were remade by Hollywood. The problem with The Host has more to do with the impossible expectations created by showcasing the film in places like Cannes and Toronto. To be fair, I still plan on seeing other films by Bong such as Memories of Murder. I also need to stress that I enjoyed the film, even the totally anticipated killing of the monster.

It might be that the festival programmers are film lovers whose guilty pleasures include such works as Eugene Lourie's Gorgo, Larry Cohen's Q, or even John Frankenheimer's The Prophesy. I feel uncomfortable knowing that The Host premiered in New York City alongside films by Alain Resnais and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. There's no fun in watching a monster movie if its been given the seal of approval from Gilles Jacob or Richard Pena. One can only hope that these highbrow programmers will have learned their lesson once and for all, and start planning career retrospectives for Bert I. Gordon and Inoshiro Honda.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:15 AM

February 01, 2007

Lady Look-Tung

This DVD got trapped in my Macbook. I figured that the best thing to do would be to post some screen shots before going on hiatus while my laptop is in the shop. Playing the young "folk singer" is Suleeporn Tuntrakool. The film came out in 2004. I need someone to give me a transliteration of the director's name as certain information on the film is in Thai script only. The cost of the DVD was 59 Thai baht, or $1.65 in US dollars. I guess I got my money's worth. Look-tung, also known as luktung, is a form of Thai regional music. While called "folk music' in the film, it is different from the music westerners would associate with that term. I had my own experience seeing a variation of this kind of music when I visited an Akha village in Northern Thailand last month.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:21 AM | Comments (3)

January 16, 2007

A Battle of Wits

Muk Gong
Jacob Chueng Chi Leung - 2006
Huayi Brothers Region 0 DVD

Just a week or so after it came and went in its Chiang Mai run, I was able to purchase A Battle of Wits on DVD. There will be other DVD versions that will have bigger, more readable English subtitles than the version available from my local street vendor, and it is a film that ideally should be seen on as large as screen as possible. The film is full of great battle set pieces that fully use the wide screen, and make use of the desert and mountain locations.

Taking place approximately 370 B.C. in China, the story is about a lone warrior, Ge Li, who shows up to help one of the warring kingdoms. Ge Li uses strategy that keeps the kingdom from being defeated in battle, and minimizes the casualties on both sides. The lord who benefits from having his kingdom saved allows his pride to take over, jealous over the Ge Li's popularity. The lord is also distrustful of Ge Li's humanity. In one key scene, enemy soldiers are killed once they are captured, in disregard of Ge Li's orders. One scene that has an unintended echo with current events shows Ge Li in conversation with an enemy general. The general wants to go to battle in the name of his 5000 soldiers who have been killed. Ge Li emphasises an life with honor over an ultimately meaningless death.

This is only the secong film I have seen by Jacob Cheung. Previously I had seen Midnight Fly, an intimate drama starring Anita Mui that had a storyline that follows an unexpected path. A Battle of Wits is based on narratives established by a Japanese manga which in turn inspired a novel. Cheung is as interested in the smaller moments as he is in staging battle scenes with hundreds of archers, and soldiers in low-flying balloons. Some of the best moments in the film involve the interplay between Andy Lau as the always forthright Ge Li, and Fan Bingbing as the female cavalry officer who pursues him. The French title of the manga, which translates as "Strategy" would more inclusively describe the activity in the film, ranging from the planning and execution of military battles, the personal philosophical discussions, and the internecine fueds.

Andy Lau has been developing nicely from matinee idol to character actor, and as ably stepped into the kind of role that Leslie Cheung might have taken in the past. What makes A Battle of Wits more interesting than some of the Chinese epics that have been more visible for Western audiences is that Jacob Cheung is more interested in the relationships between his characters than in any displays of technique. There are no martial arts acrobatics, nor any obvious displays of CGI technology. Instead, there is an emphasis on the physical, emotional and moral toll of war. More than dramatizing the oft-stated, "Pride comes before the fall", Cheung shows the confused loyalties of generals and slaves, royalty and serfs. The story, about recognizing the humanity in others, especially those designated as enemies, may seem like a cliche. The obvious similarities between what occurred in China over two thousand years ago, and the events currently in Iraq make A Battle of Wits worth seeking out. Even without those similarities, A Battle of Wits announces that Jacob Cheung has been more than ready to be recognized as one of Hong Kong's more talented filmmakers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:28 AM

January 04, 2007

Toni

Jean Renoir - 1935
Eureka! Region 2 DVD

I've been making a point of seeing Jean Renoir's films as they have become available on DVD. While I have seen several of his films theatrically, I have only recently begun to truly appreciate Renoir's work. The turning point may have been a few years ago when I attended a screening of La Marseilles and marvelled at the interactions between characters in a lateral tracking shot. I understood that to create such a shot required a lot of planning and coordination between the technical crew and the actors. What makes Jean Renoir different from someone like Ingmar Bergman or Andrei Tarkovsky, is that Renoir's style of filmmaking usually doesn't call attention to itself or the act of directing.

While I liked Toni, I've been thinking about it more in terms of how it influenced Renoir's assistant, Luchino Visconti. In their commentary track, Philip Lopate and Kent Jones note that Renoir encouraged Visconti to film The Postman Always Rings Twice. With Toni, one can see the seeds of both Ossessione and La Terra Trema.

Some of Cain's characters are similar to those in Toni in that they are poor, working people living hard-scrabble existences. While Lopate and Jones mention the similarities of plots, with the love triangles and murders, neither mentions that Cain wrote about Okies and people like those in Toni who either travelled to find work, or like the diner owner in Postman and the uncle with the small vineyard in Toni have achieved modest dreams working for themselves rather than an exploitive boss. As in Cain's novels, most of the characters in Toni are looking for better lives for themselves, and are involved in questionable relationships based on emotional, if not financial, gain.

Like Toni, La Terra Trema was filmed on location, is about the working poor, used non-professionals as actors, and has a narrative about a worker seeking a way to work for himself instead of being an abused employee. Much has been written about how Toni influenced the creation of Neo-Realism. It is because of the Sicilian location shooting and casting of non-actors that I feel that La Terra Trema could not have been made had Visconti not worked on Toni. A quote from Visconti about a very different film, the elegant Death in Venice could easily apply to the film he worked on as an assistant: "I prefer to tell stories of defeat. I have a soft spot for lonely souls and destinies beat by reality."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 AM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2006

Brothers of the Head

Keith Fulton & Louis Pepe - 2006
Pacific Marketing & Entertainment Region 3 DVD

It may be one of several jokes of Brothers of the Head that the film is from the team of Fulton and Pepe, best known previously for documenting other filmmakers, most famously Terry Gilliam. Their newest film is a fake documentary that owes some of its spirit to Gilliam as well as Rob Reiner's This is Spinal Tap and Tod Browning's Freaks. There is also a fake, uncompleted film credited to the very real Ken Russell, who appears as himself, as well as an appearance by Brothers author Brian Aldiss portrayed by actor James Greene. The songs are by Clive Langer, who also composed the songs for the sorely under-appreciated valentine to rock music, Still Crazy. Former Buzzcock Pete Shelley also contributed to the original music. Giving the various elements of rock documentary, comedy and horror a sense of visual unity is cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, the real hero of Dogme. The film spins from dramatic to comic to what was once called experimental film, and back again, yet remains of one piece.

The story concerns the very brief rise and fall of a rock band created around two conjoined twin brothers. The head is the Anglicized name of the remote part of England the twins are from. The band is the creation of rock entreprenuer Zak Bedderwick with brother Tom studiously learning how to play guitar, while brother Barry becomes the reluctant, and ultimately defiant, voice of the band. The narrative can be interpreted as a variation of the Frankenstein story in that what begins as someone else's creation takes on an unexpected life and consciousness of its own.

Watching a rock band self-destruct on screen is nothing new. Watching Luke and Harry Treadaway, two real-life twins, is fascinating in how easily they function while joined at the chest. With arms sometimes wrapped around each other, the two run, perform somersaults, and sing and dance while Harry plays guitar. The two function so smoothly together that every act of coordination seems strangely natural. It's those magic moments of the brothers by themselves that provide a bit cinematic wonder to Brothers of the Head, while the story of the rise and fall of a rock band is pretty much the same old song.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:39 AM

December 29, 2006

Running Wild

Ya-soo
Kim Sung-su - 2006
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

Running Wild is more proof that some of the most stylish action films are currently made in Korea. The narrative is a familiar story of a well-intentioned prosecutor and a volatile cop joining forces to bring down the mob. The film is made with such visual flair that whatever lack of originality is in the story is compensated for brisk pacing that barely relaxes in the two hour running time. The Korean title translates as "Beautiful Beast", which is more evocative a reference to the angry cop who propels the narrative.

The film dives into the action with a chase scene, the pursuer on a motorcycle, the pursued in a car, going the wrong way on a busy one-way street. The film alternates between the cop, Jang, the prosecutor, Oh, and a mob boss, Yoo. The concept of family is explored - one scene shows Yoo having dinner with his wife and children, cut with a scene of Yoo with his crime family. Jang's family is fractured by a younger brother involved with the mob and their mother hospitalized in critical condition. Oh is told by his wife she wants a divorce because Oh is married to his job. The characters on both sides of the law are undone by their particular codes of honor. With corruption in the upper spheres of government, the line between cop and criminal is eliminated.

The mob boss, Yoo, is hides his criminal activity under the most obvious displays of respectablilty, declaring his new found faith in Christianity on television, and getting elected to a government position. As long as the status quo is not challenged, perception is reality. Most of Running Wild was filmed using a blue filter which emphasises the pessimism of the film. Using contemporary film-making techniques and classic story elements, Running Wild can be seen as another example of a young Korean filmmaker remaking film noir. This is the debut directorial effort of Kim Sung-su, not to be confused with the same named director of Musa the Warrior. If there is a flaw to this film, it is that in making a film critical about appearance versus reality, Kim has made a film where more often than not, style trumps substance.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:11 AM

December 26, 2006

The Wind that Shakes the Barley

Ken Loach - 2006
J-Bics Region 3 DVD

Winner of the Palme d'Or at Cannes last May, The Wind that Shakes the Barley seems to have been forgotten at the end of the year. The film's critical fortunes may revive when it gets a somewhat overdue release in the U.S. but the newest film from Ken Loach should have been released earlier. That the memory of the Cannes win would be much fresher is one reason. The other argument for an earlier stateside release is because of the themes explored in the film.

One can argue about the parallels between Ireland in the 1920s with present day Iraq, Afghanistan, West Bank and Gaza Strip, or even the present day U.S. and England. While V for Vendetta and Children of Men look at the present through a fictional future, Loach looks back at a past that remains contentious and not clearly understood. Just as a look at Ireland, The Wind that Shakes the Barley also can be viewed as a companion piece to Loach's Hidden Agenda, a contemporary examination of the British occupation of Northern Ireland.

One example of the contemporary parallels is early on the film. A group of British soldiers demands that several young men, about the same age as the soldiers, stand against a wall to be questioned. One of the young Irishmen response to questioning in Gaellic causing the soldiers frustration at his refusal to answer in the language the soldiers understand. The soldiers establish a sense of control by beating the Irish youth to death. Later, refusing to accept that some women may not have the information they seek, the British soldiers burn down a house and humiliate a young woman by shearing off her hair. For some of the soldiers, fighting the Irish is simply a continuation to the battles fought in "The Great War". Some of the younger soldiers seem bewildered by their mission much as many young soldiers in future wars.

Anyone who has seen previous films by Loach can anticipate where his sympathies lie. Loach and writer Paul Laverty may be against the British presence in Ireland, but they also show how divided the Irish were (and are) in not only dealing with the British but each other. In one scene there is an argument about a shop owner who exploits the poverty of his customers, but also has supplied guns on behalf of the rebellion. The film concludes by showing that the Irish who accepted the treaty with Britain being as brutal as the occupation army they had previous fought, distinguishable only by the change of uniform. As in Loach's other films, the real enemy is the one who profits from war, and Civil War is never, ever civil.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:18 AM | Comments (1)

December 21, 2006

Romy Schneider: Two Early Films

Madchen in Uniform
Geza Von Radvanyi - 1958
Galileo Medien AG Region 2 DVD

For reasons I can't even articulate to myself, I miss Romy Schneider. What I do know is that as overwhelmed as I was by the exhibits at the Berlin Film Musem, nothing touched me like the small section devoted to Schneider's career. I was mesmerized by excerpts from the "Sissi" series, when the teenaged Schneider became a major star in Germany. I knew I couldn't leave the Film Museum without buying the Romy Schneider box set which includes five of her films, two from the late Fifties, when Schneider was transitioning to more adult role, and two from the Seventies, as well as her final film. What is significantly missing from this set are any of the films made during the peak of her stardom in the early Sixties, when her vivacity and knowing intelligence were showcased by Orson Welles, Otto Preminger and Clive Donner. I know that what I miss most about Romy Schneider is her smile.

I have not seen the 1931 version of Madchen in Uniform. While the original film looks back at the German culture that preceded World War I, the second version clearly was made with the girls' school representing Germany fueled by misquided ideals. The lesbian signifiers may be obvious, Lilli Palmer's teacher wears relatively short hair and a tie, while student Schneider, portraying Romeo, is ever eager to kiss a variety of Juliets. More emphasized is the concept of the German molded by discipline and order, and the role of the German woman to be wife and mother of soldiers. Director Geza von Radvanyi directed what could be best described as "a well-made movie". Color is used for dramatic purposes - Palmer's purple hat is striking against the gray and black uniforms of the students and teachers. The film certainly alerted Europe, if not the world, that Romy Schneider, at age 20, was ready for more challenging films.

Ein Engel auf Erden
Geza Von Radvanyi - 1959
Galileo Medien AG Region 2 DVD

The screen credit for directing Ein Engel auf Erden goes to someone named Argyle Nissot. No one has explanation for this one-time psuedonym, even though Geza von Radvanyi is credited for presenting the film. Almost as strange is seeing the normally dark-haired Romy Schneider as a blonde. Schneider plays the part of an angel who is disguised as the stewardess who has been pining for race car driver Henri Vidal. Vidal, in turn, has been dumped at the altar by devilish Michele Mercier. In a case of life following art, Mercier actually married a race car driver. The silly story line and the use of color, especially the eye-popping reds, suggest the kind of trifles MGM produced in the Fifties that were directed by Charles Walters. Some of the visual and verbal gags would have been too risque for MGM at that time. One bit involves a manniquin of Schneider, stripped down to bra and panties. Because this is the German dubbed version of a French-German co-production, one isn't able to enjoy the voice of the young Jean-Paul Belmondo as Vidal's best friend. The word "frothy" comes to mind as an appropriate adjective. While the film may have lacked the artistic challenges that Schneider sought, it did enable her to transition from German stardom to a wider European base.

As if to anticipate some of Schneider's personal life, both films have characters who almost commit suicide in the name of thwarted love. Men are not reliable, while women are competitors, with only an older woman mentor to be trusted. If these two early films starring Romy Schneider are any indication, they hint at an actress who seemed to know that her best chance for artistic and personal survival were to follow her own path.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:10 AM | Comments (1)

December 19, 2006

Bloody Tie

Sasaeng Gyeoldan
Ho Choi - 2006
J-BICS Region 3 DVD

Bloody Tie synthesises an eclectic mix of American film and music black. Black both as in "film noir" and in "blacksploitation". This is like a Quentin Tarantino film without a lot of the pretense from a Korean filmmaker who should be better known stateside.

The appropriation of Black American music is heralded by the wah-wah pedal guitar score at the beginning, the kind of music made me think back to the glory days of Black Caesar and The Mack. The film closes with Korean rap music, another reminder of global culture and that what comes around, goes around, and around and back in a continuous dialogue. This should not be surprising considering how many of the rap artists of today have been inspired by the "black" films of the early Seventies, some of which were reworkings of film noir from the Fifties. With a narrative that recalls the Hong Kong films of John Woo, Bloody Tie could also be seen as an almost parallel companion piece to The Departed.

The film centers primarily on the relationship between Lee (Ryu Seung-beom on the right), a drug dealer who fancies himself a venture capitalist, and Doh (Hwang Jeong-min on the left), a rogue cop who allows Lee to continue his occupation in exchange for information on other dealers and cash payments. How the film recalls classic film noir is the exposure of all of the characters as corrupted, from the small-time pusher to the higher levels of government. In this respect, it is especially fitting that one of the most shocking moments in Bloody Tie is reminiscent of a similar moment in Fritz Lang's The Big Heat. The concept of family also proves to be corrupting and corruptible, Lee's uncle is presented as both a former drug addict and dealer, while Doh lives with the wife of his dead partner. Like the classic noir films, everyone has his or her price.

Visually the film is indebted to Martin Scorsese who has famously cribbed from so many older filmmakers. There is also some split-screen work which recalls Brian De Palma. As in the above scene, there are shots (literally) from unusual angles. While Scorsese and De Palma's movies of the early Seventies incorporated obvious tributes to the old masters who inspired them, one could look at Bloody Tie as a Korean homage to the American "film generation".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 AM | Comments (2)

December 11, 2006

The Banquet

Ye Yan
Feng Xiaogang - 2006
Media Asia Region 3 DVD

Is it possible for a film to be too beautiful? There is much to admire about The Banquet, the color, the cinematography, and the score by Tan Dun immediately come to mind. There is much attention to detail, especially with close-ups of hands. While some of the plot elements are similar to Hamlet, as has been mentioned by others, The Banquet also owes quite a bit to Zhang Yimou's Hero with its swordsplay as well as court intrigue. That the film is also made from the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon template is made official by the presence of Zhang Ziyi.

There are echoes of other films and filmmakers as well, with nods in the direction of Akira Kurosawa and Orson Welles, not surprising considering their respective ties to Shakespeare. In a scene recalling Citizen Kane the emperor stands applauding alone for a moment until his courtiers join him. Blood spurts everywhere, rendering parts of the screen like a Jackson Pollack painting.

Feng emphasizes the balletic aspect of sword fighting. So much of the action is seen in slow motion, whether it's knights galloping in battle, or with overhead shots of flowing, billowing robes. This is great looking stuff, but Feng seems unaware of the concept that there may be too much of a good thing. Better are the scenes involving masked actors in white, a visual conceit that may be from 10th Century China, but also appears modern.

While Hamlet has been cited, Zhang Ziyi's character is closer to a more powerful Lady Macbeth. The Prince is more of a supporting player in this reworking of the story. Zhang's Empress Wan, more like Lady Macbeth than Gertrude, discovers that she loves power more than she loves either of her husbands and schemes her way to consolidate her position on the throne. With her top billing, The Banquet also serves as a metaphor for Zhang's ascent as the leading Chinese actress.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:08 AM | Comments (1)

December 07, 2006

Headless Hero 2

Phii hua khaat 2
Komsan Treepong - 2004
Pranakorn Films Region 0 DVD

Going to a DVD/VCD rental store is something of an adventure. As I can't read Thai, I need to pick up every cover to see if there is an available title in English or a title transliterated into Western characters, plus see if the film has English subtitles. Even when I get a film that is of generally unknown quality, it is not that big a gamble when you consider that my rental cost is about half a U.S. dollar.

My sense of adventure led me to renting the DVD for a film titled Headless Hero 2. My research has not uncovered a first Headless Hero film making me wonder if somebody had the idea of selling a sequel that lacked the prequel. In any event, this is one strange, and sometimes hilarious film that merges the Thai tradition of ghost stories, with the film tradition of lesser Abbott and Costello vehicles that combined horror with slapstick.

The film begins with a couple of incompetent would be grave robbers who uncover the tomb of the Headless Corpse. Awaken from his sleep, Headless does something to one of the robbers that is best left to proctologists. The film is full of sight gags such as this with amateur rectal exams accounting for much of the humor. Headless is frequently seen with his head and body in two separate places, and one shot shown during the credit sequence at the end involves oral sex, the head giving head as it were. By some standards, this may all sound pretty tasteless, but Headless Hero 2 can inspire belly laughs when it is not simply being dumb.

The biggest problem with the film is that after a very promising beginning, the film jumps to the present-day story which turns out to be an elaborate set-up for the return of Headless. Most of the time we are watching a couple of guys who are trying to get the attention of a couple of rich girls. One of the guys is the grandson of the man who defeated Headless twenty-five years ago. The grandson invokes a magic spell that brings about a prank loving ghost. A good part of the film is devoted to the ghost creating embarrassing situations, pulling chairs from under people, causing food to fly, kind of like many of the sight gags we've all seen in other comedies involving ghosts. One of the staples of Thai humor involves a short, chubby transvestite who wants to be known as "Marilyn". She is kind of funny to see in a blonde wig with the white dress. The filmmakers also deemed her disposable as she dies in a way both gory and unnecessary to the narrative.

What works in this film is the sight of Headless, played by Toe Rae Chermyim when he bears his fangs, cackles with insane laughter, fights off guys with Thai boxing moves, or surfs through the woods on a flying log. For all of its deficiencies, there are things in Headless Horseman 2 I have never seen on film, and in some cases hope to never see again.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:54 AM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2006

The Savage Innocents

Nicholas Ray - 1960
Eureka! Region 0 DVD

Seeing The Savage Innocents twice, the second time with the commentary track, I am struck by how much stronger the film is visually. The stilted English language dialogue and the off-screen narration almost undo what is good about what turned out to be one of Ray's last, more personal, films. Thematically, the film has elements in common with They Live by Night with its fugitive lovers, as well as Rebel without a Cause with its protagonist who finds himself caught between societies and unmet needs.

In terms of films about Eskimos or Inuit, the accuracy of the film is a matter of faith. While author Hans Reusch based his book on research and plot points from the 1933 film Eskimo, Ray actually visited the Arctic before shooting. While it is also not clear how much of a hand Franco Solinas, some of the concerns of the film are also consistent with the writer who collaborated most famously with Gillo Pontecorvo and Costa-Gavras. The use of Asian actors to portray native North Americans wasn't really used again until Little Big Man, while the plot point of the Inuit men offering their wives as an act of hospitality was also used in Philip Kaufman's under-appreciated The White Dawn. At the very least, the DVD of The Savage Innocents is the opportunity to see Ray's film in the most complete version available, unlike the eighty-nine minute version that was released theatrically in the U.S.

The casting of Anthony Quinn is problematic primarily because Quinn was Hollywood's ethnic or primitive man, or both, throughout much of his career. This is a very physical performance with displays of brute strength. The animality of the the character Quinn portrays is seen in the first few minutes, leering at a couple snuggling in their igloo, and grabbing some nearby meat. As cute as Yoko Tani may be, her costume, among the tailored furs worn by the cast, suggests white fur hot pants, again inspiring some disbelief about any veracity claimed by the film. The main narrative is about the conflict between Eskimo culture and the laws and rules imposed by "civilization". While the dialogue and narration hammer the audience with the idea that Eskimos are unlike the presumed audience, the visuals sometimes suggest that everyone, whether white or Eskimo, is some kind of alien.

According to the commentary, The Savage Innocents was originally made in a 70mm version. Certainly this is a film that would benefit from being seen on a huge movie palace screen. The film is full of long shots, vast expanses of snow, ice and an almost white sky. Characters are often filmed from a distance, dwarfed by nature. In his perceptive New York Times review, Eugene Archer likened The Savage Innocents to a film by Antonioni. Nicholas Ray was one of the few directors who instinctively understood how to use the wide screen and was always comfortable with that format. With The Savage Innocents Ray shows his comfort also with a seemingly empty screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:03 AM

October 30, 2006

The Vampire Blog-a-thon: Brides of Dracula

Terence Fisher - 1960
Universal Studios Region 1 DVD

There are no brides. There is no Dracula. Looking past the misleading title, this is one of my favorite Hammer films. As I understand it, Christopher Lee decided he didn't want to be typecast as everyone's favorite vampire, forcing the film to be re-written. Not everything in the script was revised as a film titled The Vampire's Fiancee would have little marquee value.

Brides remained vivid in my memory as a film I had to see following a preview at a "kiddies' matinee" back in 1962, in Hackensack, New Jersey. Preceding the double feature of Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters and Herod the Great, I saw the previews of several horror movies. Dr. Blood's Coffin and The Leach Woman looked pretty thrilling, but nothing hooked me like the glimpse of those buxom Hammer girls. For a ten year old boy, this was about as hot as possible. As I had moved from New Jersey just a week or so later, I never was able to go to that theater, instead waiting over thirty years, when Brides of Dracula was available on videotape.

Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and company fudge things a bit by having the chief vampire named Meinster. I guess the name was chosen since it sounds like monster, and muenster would have been, well, too cheesy. I also have always wondered if this film inspired Roman Polanski's Fearless Vampire Killers. David Peel's Baron Meinster is an effete dandy compared to the towering malevolence of Christopher Lee. While Baron Meinster is resolutely heterosexual in his choice of victims, his refined appearance suggests the movies' first metrosexual vampire.

While Meinster's victims provide the eye candy, the best performances belong to Martita Hunt as the Baron's mother, and the hilarious Mona Washbourne as the clueless head of a girls' boarding school. One may think of the derogatory term, usually directed at older women, "You old bat".

I don't know whether credit goes to Terence Fisher or to Production Designer Bernard Robinson, but Brides of Dracula is worth noting for its use of color. Between the sets, costumes and use of colored gels, the film is awash in reds, blues and purples. The story arc is somewhat routine because we all know that Peter Cushing's Van Helsing will vanquish the vampires at the very end. Having the shadow of a windmill become a crucifix is a neat trick. But overlooking any deficiencies in the narrative, Terence Fisher would never be quite as stylish a filmmaker as he was with Brides of Dracula.

For more "Children of the Night", click on The Film Experience link.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM | Comments (1)

October 28, 2006

Holloween Candy from Jesus

Macumba Sexual
Jess (Jesus) Franco - 1983
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

Mansion of the Living Dead/La Mansion de los Muertos Vivientes
Jess (Jesus) Franco - 1985
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

Just in time for Holloween come two erotic horror films from Jesus Franco, with a greater emphasis on the erotic. Signing the films as Jess Franco, the films mark Franco's return to Spanish language filmmaking, shooting on location at The Canary Islands. Both films also star Franco's wife and muse, Lina Romay, in blonde wig under the name of Candy Coster, and feature another Franco stock company star, Robert Forster (Antonio Mayans). The two films are linked by characters who stay in seemingly deserted hotels, love slaves complete with chains and dog collars, and women who would be naked at the drop of a hat, except they don't even have hats.

Much of the attention to Macumba Sexual is devoted to the top billed Ajita Wilson (seen above). In the DVD interview, Franco compares Wilson to Christopher Lee, both as tall, menacing presence on screen. Much of the interest in Wilson is due to her history as a post-op transexual who primarily appeared in erotic, if not strictly pornographic, films. What is more interesting about Macumba Sexual is the constant motif of folk art from Senegal, often of animals and much of it sexual. The film is a mobius strip of dreams within dreams, with Romay as Alice Brooks having nightmares about the mysterious Princess Obongo (Wilson). It's not Wonderland, but a remote desert paradise and prison that this Alice discovers. Mayans appears as the writer husband to our Miss Brooks, with a scene that seems taken from Kubrick's The Shining. Much of the film is padded with scenes of Alice's various sexual encounters, but the film also contains nicely framed images of statues and folk art. Franco also appears in the small role of a peculiar hotel desk clerk. For Franco, the majority of Macumba Sexual is his celebration of Lina Romay in full. Who else would make a film in which an international real estate agent makes a sale wearing the smallest, tightest pair of cut-offs, displaying much of Romay's fleshy assets?

Candy Coster (Lina Romay) in Macumba Sexual

Because of their similar appearance, the living dead of Mansion of the Living Dead have been assumed to be the temporarily revived version of The Blind Dead. In the accompanying DVD feature, Franco explains what he had in mind when he made the film. Romay is part of a quartet of German strippers whose vacation destination turns out to be a large, virtually empty hotel. The previously used Horror Hotel might have made for a more accurate title. Romay and her plump, self-described "hotties" jump into bed with each other while waiting for the hotel's other guests to show up. Each of the women becomes the victim of the living dead, Devil worshipping priests who have been cursed with immortality. Gang rape is the preferred method of worship. Romay discovers one other hotel guest, a woman chained to a bed, craving food that is just out of reach. The story makes as much lunatic sense as any in the Franco oeuvre. Instead of logic, Jesus Franco delights in those outsized eyes and lips of the uninhibited Lina Romay.

Candy Coster (Lina Romay) in Mansion of the Living Dead

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:28 PM

October 27, 2006

I Vampiri

Riccardo Freda - 1956
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

While waiting for the Vampire Blog-a-thon scheduled for October 30, I had the opportunity to finally see I Vampiri. Cited as the first Italian horror film of the sound era, the film is perhaps better known for being the work of credited director Riccardo Freda and cinematographer Mario Bava. In spite of the title which translates as "The Vampires", the film is not a true vampire film. The story concerns a duchess who temporarily assumes a much younger identity through the transfusions of blood from younger women. Her reverse aging is courtesy of her cousin, a doctor with a basement laboratory similar to those found in the Universal Frankenstein films from the Forties.

The film plays devotes more time to the persistent reporter investigating the "vampire killings". What is worth seeing are the subtle special effects used to make Gianna Maria Canale age, or get younger, on screen. The film also follows Wandisa Guida (seen above), in her film debut, as a schoolgirl who stumbles upon the horrors of the Duchess' castle. Of more interest than the story are the CinemaScope black and white images of secret passageways, scientific paraphernalia, the family crypt and other shadowy goings-on. Both Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava made some more interesting, and in Bava's case, great films. There are times when I Vampiri seems like the first draft of a genre film, unknowingly waiting for the discovery of Barbara Steele.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:54 PM

October 26, 2006

One Venus, One Inch, and Towers

Black Venus
Claude Mulot -1983
Private Screening Collection Region 0 DVD

Lady Libertine/Frank and I
Gerard Kikoine - 1983
Private Screening Collection Region 0 DVD

I first became aware of film producer Harry Alan Towers when I attending a critics' screening of his production of Dorian Gray in 1970. This is the version with Helmut Berger in the title role, including a scene that I don't recall was in Oscar Wilde's book, with Gray cruising for companionship in a public toilet. My second Towers production was as an in-flight movie, Treasure Island, with Orson Welles as Long John Silver. The Towers formula would be to take public domain titles and make films that usually belied their modest budgets. Towers own life would make for an interesting movie as he has always managed to take the money and run, several times, and in the process remake some of his films. I don't know if Towers wrote the two screenplays while flying between film locations and angry bankers, as he has been reputed have done, but both films here were written under his psuedonym of Peter Welbeck.

Black Venus and Lady Libertine are the debut DVD releases of a company called Private Screening Collection. Their initial films are both productions that Towers did on behalf of the Playboy Channel over twenty years ago. Private Screening Collection has two more Towers produced Playboy Channel films scheduled for November. Both films are polished productions that almost look like what would happen if Merchant-Ivory made soft core erotica. Both films boast literary sources, Lady Libertine from the anonymous Edwardian era narrative, while Black Venus gives credit to that chronicler of hot lesbian couplings and group sex, Honore de Balzac.

The films themselves are not really meant for serious analysis. Black Venus has the advantage of having the more attractive Josephine Jacqueline Jones, Miss Bahamas 1979, as the star. The film was directed by the filmmaker also known as Frederic Lansac, best known for his film Pussy Talk. The DVD cover for Lady Libertine features future French TV hostess Sophie Favier on the cover. Jennifer Inch as "Frank" does not disguise her feminity with that Dutch Boy hair cut, and is otherwise less alluring than the other female cast members. As the story is about a man who takes in who he thinks at first is a runaway boy, there is a homoerotic aspect to the story that the filmmakers, pardon the pun, skirt.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:07 AM

October 25, 2006

The Cabinet of Caligari

Roger Kay - 1962
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Based on the reputation of the original Dr. Caligari, I had wanted to see this 1962 remake in its initial release. Thankfully, my mother convinced me to see Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters instead. I did see Robert Wiene's film about seven years later as part of my first official film history class. Those kooky sets are great, but I never really liked The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari as a film. Still, once again, curiousity got the better of me, and I finally saw the remake on DVD.

Roger Kay's version uses a slight variation of the title, but his Caligari is a hectoring, mysterious therapist who seems to be holding Glynis Johns prisoner against her will. Only near the end, during the promised "nerve-shattering thirteen minutes" do we see anything that slightly resembles Herman Warm's settings. This second Caligari has more in common with Psycho and the films of William Castle with its psychological concerns. This visual links to German Expressionism almost seem coincidental.

Opening the film with a scene of a woman driving alone, finding herself trapped in the only house visible from a lonely road, screenwriter Robert Bloch seems to be borrowing from himself. The cinematographer for this second Caligari is John L. Russell, whose previous film was, yes, Psycho. Alfred Hitchcock spent some time in Germany, so whatever expressionism is displayed in his films was from direct learning at UFA. Glynis Johns is no Janet Leigh, and though she has virtues as an actress, being seductive is not one of them.

That may have been the point once the film arrives at its "twist" ending. The attitude towards women by this revised Caligari is misogynistic. Roger Kay and Robert Bloch's conclusion it that there is no greater horror than to be a middle-aged woman.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:45 AM

October 24, 2006

A Bell from Hell

La Campana del Infierno
Claudio Guerin Hill
Pathfinder Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Juan, or John in the English language version, has just been released from a mental institution. Whether he was rightly committed in the first place is uncertain, although his relatives stand to benefit by inheriting his mother's estate. Nothing stands in the way of a good practical joke as far as John is concerned. An example is his appearing to have gouged his own eyes out. A Bell from Hell has moments of extremely dark humor, as well has moments that are simply dark.

This is a French-Spanish horror film that I would not have known about had I not read Tohill and Tombs' book Immoral Tales. The only information was simply a still of Renaud Verley in the dark, illuminated by a flashlight below his head. While the plot may seem familar, what makes Guerin's film different is following the pranks that John creates, ranging from the childish to those with more serious, and deadly ends. Near the beginning of the film, John is told that the cards he was dealt at birth were "a bad hand". His response is to play with what he has. The film ends with a not totally surprise twist on getting the last laugh,

The caustic view of humanity is stressed in scenes in a meat slaughtering plant. In full color, the shots of cows butchered on screen could be a supplement to Georges Franju's Blood of the Beasts. John works briefly as a butcher before deciding that he has 'learned all he needs to know". While hardly in the league of Hamlet, John continually teeters between conscious and unconscious madness. This internal disunity is reflected in both the images of cows being cut up into parts and also the photographs in John's bedroom which include extreme close-ups of eyes and lips. The title refers to a very large church bell, paid for by the townspeople John is in conflict with, people whose hypocracies are pointed out by John. As it turned out, life had a way of playing a practical joke on Claudio Guerin Hill. A Bell from Hell turned out to be the final work of the filmmaker, who died falling from the bell tower on the final day of filming.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:47 AM

October 21, 2006

Phone

Pon
Ahn Byeong-ki - 2002
Tartan Video Region 1 DVD

The image that you see on your computer is an apparition seen by Ha Ji-won on her computer in Phone. This Korean horror film is similar to other Asian horror films in that there is some very nice imagery and obvious craftsmanship, but the story doesn't make a whole lot of sense. In this case there is a cursed phone number, causing the person answering to hear strange sounds and get extremely upset. The phone number has been associated with several people who died under suspicious circumstances. There is also a ghost that plays "Moonlight Sonata", and a little girl who seems to be possessed. Some of the mystery is explained, while the rest remains unanswered. At least director Ahn is honest enough to admit that he was inspired by Ringu.

English may not be their first language, but certainly someone should have talked to the filmmakers who named their company "Toilet Productions". Phone might have been better had more time been spent on the screenplay. The initial premise is that Ms. Ha is getting harrassing calls as a result of her work as a journalist. As she has written articles exposing, as it were, sexual predators, the set-up becomes nothing more than a lurid gimmick quickly forgotten after the film concentrates on the possessed young girl. Even the concept of ghosts appearing on computer screens or speaking over the phone, while creepy, has been done better by Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Takashi Miike. Based on what I've been able to find out about Ahn's most recent films, Ouija Board and APT., originality is not his strong suit. Phone is so totally derivative that it can serve as the Cliffs Notes version for most of the cliches of the contemporary Asian horror film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:58 PM

October 20, 2006

The Most Beautiful Wife

La Moglie Piu Bella
Damiano Damiani - 1970
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

The title is deliberately ironic. Damiani's film is based on the true story of a Sicilian woman who was raped in 1965. The rapist was a small time mafioso, and based on the cultural rules that prevailed, the victim would have married her assailant. The woman, Franca Viola, instead pressed charges leading to the conviction of the rapist, going against Sicilian tradition, and became a feminist icon. The fictionalized film is about Viola, but is also about the ingrained traditions in a small town where the mafia has overwhelming influence on everyday life.

The film is also notable as the debut for Ornella Muti in an assured performance that belies her fourteen years. The Most Beautiful Wife is worth seeing just as a document of this preternatural beauty who unsurprisingly became a top star in Italy just a few years later. Much of Muti's performance is in her eyes which convey a sense of understanding of the forces that try to manipulate her into conformity.

One scene in particular conveys the horror that Muti endures. Dragged to what is to be a wedding celebration, she is surrounded by her "fiance" and his mafia family, gorging on food, indifferent to her physical and psychological pain from the rape. There is a brief shot of Muti's parents, sitting alone in a corner, small and afraid. While the rape itself is not depicted, and there is relatively little graphic violence, The Most Beatiful Wife conveys Muti's sense of isolation, and the hostility of her environment.

The DVD comes with a booklet containing for historical background on Franca Viola, as well as the cast and crew. The DVD extras includes interviews with several crew members including Damiani, a director perhaps best known for A Bullet for the General.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:00 PM

October 19, 2006

Dark Waters

Mariano Baino - 1994
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Not to be confused with the Japanese Dark Water or its American remake, this is a film about some very strange nuns on an isolated island, complete with unusual rituals and some kind of creature in a locked room. Dark Waters begins with a young woman going on a trip to a very remote place by bus. Even without cross-cutting to the bizarre happenings at the monastery, there is enough to suggest that no good will come of this particular voyage.

Dark Waters begins with impressive scenes of a church besieged by water, a few steady drops growing into a destructive flood. There is very little dialogue in the first third of the film, perhaps echoing British actress Louise Salter's own sense of dislocation, filming in remote Ukraine. This is again an example where it is not the story that is of interest, renegade nuns has been established as a sub-genre, but Baino makes the film worth watching for the images. There is a sub-plot involving a painter in the monastery, and the film, like the paintings is awash in reds and blues.

Of as much or perhaps more interest is the story of the making of Dark Waters. NoShame includes among the extras a fifty minute documentary with Baino, Salter and several crew members recounting their misadventures making the film in Odessa and Kiev. Among the problems were missing cameras, not getting the scheduled studio space, securing film stock and mistranslations. For the hardcore collector there is a special edition DVD available that includes a replica of the amulet that is part of the story, plus a 48 page booklet. Mariano Baino also contributed a commentary track along with a video introduction that appears before his film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:25 AM

October 18, 2006

Red Angel

Akai Tenshi
Yasuzo Masumura - 1966
Fantoma Region 1 DVD

One of my favorite actresses is Ayako Wakao. While it's not received that attention of other new DVD releases, I had to give priority to this film by Yasuzo Masumura. Wakao can be seen to better advantage in Masumura's Manji, Kon Ichikawa's An Actor's Revenge and Kenji Mizoguchi's Street of Shame. In Red Angel, Wakao is primarily filmed in medium and full shots, often in shadow.

Red Angel works primarily as a showcase for Masumura's themes, or perhaps, fetishes. Wakao plays a military nurse with Japan's army, sent to China in 1939. Making her rounds late at night, Wakao is raped by one of the patients while others watch. From the military hospital, Wakao is sent to a field hospital. Treatment primarily consists of the amputation of arms and legs. While there's none of the gushing blood of M*A*S*H, the sounds of legs sawed off and the crunching of bones is cringe inducing. Wakao falls in love with a morphine addicted Army doctor, and also provides sexual relief for an armless soldier.

Wakao also thinks herself responsible for the deaths of the three men, as well as a nurse who she broght with her to the field hospital. Masumura's films, based on the few I've been able to see, have been about the irrationality of love. Death is likewise presented as having no logic with soldiers dying from disease if not bullets. One of the officers describes soldiers as not humans but weapons. Masumura shows war as reducing everything and everyone to commodities. Soldiers are reduced to missing body parts, at the end of a major battle Wakao discovers the dead stripped of all clothing and weapons. Wakao is valued, or perhaps more correctly, devalued, as an object for sexual release. There are no conventional scenes of sex which is in keeping with the exploration of lesbianism in Manji, or the focusing on women as a collection of parts in Blind Beast.

The film's anti-war stance is clear when the armless soldiers discusses how another double amputee was institutionalized to avoid letting the Japanese citizens know how terrible war is. Masumura's critical eye extends to the blind patriotism is his characters, with the nurses taking up arms in a hopeless battle. For Masumura, war is hell, but being a survivor is of no comfort.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:50 PM

October 17, 2006

The Woods

Lucky McKee - 2006
Sony Pictures Entertainment Region 1 DVD

One would hope that Lucky McKee would get luckier in the theatrical release of his films. May, his contemporary take on Frankenstein, has had more life on cable and DVD following a brief appearance in theaters. More people probably saw McKee's entry in the "Master of Horror" series, Sick Girl, something of a lesbian feminist take on The Fly. Even though McKee did not write The Woods, the film remains thematically consistent with his earlier work. That this film did not play at a theater near anyone has more to do with the studio politics of Sony's releasing films from MGM and United Artists, than with the quality of The Woods, a film far better than Sony's own horror entries.

The story has debts to other films, primarily Suspiria with its setting of a girls school run by witches, and Carrie with the girl who discovers she has psychic powers that she cannot quite control. There is no outstanding reason why the film takes place in 1965 except that it allows for the use of three songs performed by Lesley Gore, including the proto-feminist "You Don't Own Me". According to the legend told in the film, the school is located next to a wooded area that was cursed by witches, and students are sacrificied to the woods. New student Heather (Agnes Bruckner) unknowingly has the power to stop the curse.

Look past the story, and McKee reveals himself to be one of the more interesting visual stylists working in film today. Lots of extremely tilted camera angles, such as the shot above, and a use of space to accentuate Heather's sense of isolation demonstrate the kind of creativity seemingly forgotten by filmmakers with more substantial budgets. The color palette is a muted collection of browns, blacks and grays. McKee even has killer trees that are actually kind of scary, with long sinewy branches that look like veins. The violence is more graphic than in a Val Lewton produced film but like thematic concerns of McKee could be seen as new variations on such films as The Seventh Victim and even Curse of the Cat People with its blending of dreams and reality.

This talk of Lewton is not coincidental. Will McKee need to make a film with a big budget to get the kind of critical attention he deserves? At this point the cult interest developed from McKee's films is genre based. That in itself is not a problem, but most so much writing about film is blind to visual style. In the way that one sees a film that was given little regard when it came out, like Joseph Lewis' Gun Crazy, or Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly twenty or so years later and wonder why no one noticed what these dynamic filmmakers were doing, so I have to wonder if it will take years for the artistry of Lucky McKee to be more noticed. Manny Farber's Termite Artist is alive and well, and those who notice should consider themselves lucky.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:30 PM

October 16, 2006

The Robert Aldrich Blog-a-thon: Hustle

Robert Aldrich - 1975
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

Near the end of Hustle, police detective Burt Reynolds explains to grieving father Ben Johnson, "Don't you know where you live, Marty? Can't you smell the bananas? You know what country you live in, you live in Guatamala with color television." Thirty years after I saw Hustle in its initial theatrical release, that speech stayed with me.

In a collection of interviews, Aldrich discussed his political views which ran counter to his privileged family background, related to the Rockefellers. If film was to do more than entertain, it allowed Aldrich to speak on behalf of those people for whom the American Dream seemed elusive. In Hustle, the ever nostalgic Reynolds mentions John Garfield as a favorite actor. Aldrich was an Assistant Director on Body and Soul and Force of Evil, and stayed a lifelong friend of writer-director Abraham Polonsky. Throughout Hustle, there is repeated dialogue on how easily people can be bought and sold - one of the characters is named Leo Sellers. Like the earlier films that Aldrich worked on as an assistant, Hustle is about people trying to maintain their sense of integrity in the face of easy financial gain.

Going back to Reynold's declaration that the U.S. is a banana republic, I had to wonder what Aldrich would make of the current state of our union. At the time Hustle was made, the United States had its first unelected President, and Aldrich's cousin was serving as Vice-President. Some of the issues raised in Aldrich's The Twilight's Last Gleaming turned out to be prescient, particularly the idea that it really didn't matter who was in the Oval Office because he never really was the person in charge. Aldrich would probably laugh at the news that there would be a time when U.S. military leaders would be the voices of reason, at least compared to the civilians giving the orders. One can easily guess at Aldrich's outrage had he lived during the last two Presidential elections.

Hustle is something of an homage to Aldrich's film noir roots. Even the few scenes that take place in the sunshine of Los Angeles are darkened by the discovery of a dead young woman, or discussions of death and violence. Most of the action takes place in shadowy interiors. The characters are all flawed, either living the "good life" such as Eddie Albert's crooked lawyer or Catherine Denueve as a high priced call girl, while other characters make mistakes in the pursuit of material gain. Like the most pessimistic noir films, being honest can cost someone their life.

There is also discussion of how "the game" is played. Aldrich, who also assisted Jean Renoir, introduces Ben Johnson attending a football game. Several times, Johnson is refered to as "a nobody" in discussing the importance of investigating the death of his daughter. Hustle is about class distinctions and how rules apply within differing hierarchies. For Johnson, justice and a sense of fair play are not allowed by those who make the rules - wealthy lawyers like Eddie Albert, or the percieved gatekeepers, like Reynolds and fellow cop Paul Winfield. While the film is called Hustle because, as Reynolds puts it, everyone is hustling for something, The Rules of the Game would hardly be inappropriate.

Even family life is suspect. Burt Reynolds is a divorced policeman living with prostitute Catherine Denueve. Ben Johnson's marriage to Eileen Brennan is revealed to be fragile. In both cases, the relationships are based on dishonesty and self-denial.

Song and film serve as metaphors for regret and nostalgia. At a couple of points we hear Charles Aznavour sing, "Yesterday, When I was Young". Over a car radio, mention is made of a 1955 version of the song So Rare, released the year that Johnson's daughter was born. Among several film clips used is John Huston's Moby Dick, with Ahab's pursuit of the White Whale as destructive as Johnson pursuit of truth and justice. Denueve and Reynolds take time to see A Man and a Woman, a brighter, idealized portrait of love. Even filmmaking is seen as corrupted as the clip from Claude Lelouch provides a counterpoint to the porno film featuring the dead daughter.

Based on the novel and screenplay by Steve Shagan, Aldrich, who was active in shaping the screenplays of all of his films has made a film that reflected many of his concerns. Hustle could also be seen as symbolic of Aldrich's own life and his stuggle to make films that were as honest and as honorable as possible.

For other postings on Robert Aldrich, please click on the link at right for Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2006

Frailty

Bill Paxton - 2002
Lionsgate Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Especially relevant in these times are the questions that Frailty brings up about the concept of faith. The characters are of no identified demonination which pretty much is the point. While the narrative can be viewed as being about one particularly blessed, or perhaps cursed, family, the themes of Frailty can also be stretched more broadly into that of the so-called culture wars in the U.S., and the wars in the Middle East.

The central narrative, about a man a sees visions that he claims are from God, seems common enough. The man receives messages that he is to kill certain people that God has identified as demons. The man's two young sons are enlisted in the cause, one son believing his father's story, the other son remaining skeptical and fearful about his father becoming a murderer. The family is seen in the still above, the book on the dashboard is titled "Holy Visions".

Frailty can also be viewed as a revision of Night of the Hunter, had the two children been a bit older and Robert Mitchum layed down his bible and took up an ax (not the guitar kind). Without giving away the plot twists, Frailty is intelligent enough to ask not only if an unimaginable expression of faith was sincere, but also very real. These questions are raised through Bill Paxton's character, known only by the name his sons give him - Dad.

One of the few critics who really looked beyond the horror movie trappings of Frailty is Stephen Holden of the New York Times: "(Frailty) is a meditation on faith of several different kinds. Religious faith and a belief in the miraculous is one. Faith in oneself and one's convictions is another. But by far the most important and troubling faith the movie explores is the instinctive faith children place in their parents."

It is quite possible that I am also reading more into Frailty than writer Brent Hanley or director/star Bill Paxton ever intended, but the film has a special meaning at a time when so many killings are done in the name of God.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 AM

October 12, 2006

Frankenstein Created Woman

Terence Fisher - 1967
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

As much as I usually like Hammer films, I have found the Frankenstein series to be rather anemic. While the Hammer Frankenstein monster was always bigger, badder and often uglier than Boris Karloff and his clones at Universal, he (it?) was never as compelling a screen presence for me compared to someone like Glenn Strange in House of Frankenstein. Even with the various films that claim faithfulness to Mary Shelley's vision, nothing has been in the cinematic incarnations of Frankenstein that hasn't been done best by James Whale. Even Kenneth Branagh's version with Robert De Niro as the monster pales next to Ernest Thesiger toasting an era of "Gods and monsters".

This is my roundabout way of saying that as attractive as Susan Denberg may be, she's got nothing on Elsa Lanchester's permanently fashion forward, white streaked beehive hairdo in The Bride of Frankenstein. Even though Frankenstein Created Woman takes place in Hammer's version of somewhere in Germanic speaking Europe, Denberg's costumes are the most horrifying part of the film. Instead of having Denberg appear as she does in a publicity photo, this former Playboy playmate is forced to dress like Heidi.

The film itself tries to get philosophical about how long a soul exists in a dead persons body. As the good doctor, Peter Cushing makes his first appearance coming out of a 19th Century freezer. Clinically dead, Cushing insists that he still had his soul for an hour, and no one can really argue with him about that point. Through some sort of psuedo-scientific hocus pocus that writer Anthony Hinds dodges in off-screen activity, Cushing somehow transfers the soul of his decapitated assistant Hans to the recently deceased Denberg. Denberg goes about murdering the young idlers who killed Denberg's father and pinned the rap on Hans. There is a plot point which was borrowed from Night Must Fall. The final shot of Ms. Denberg plunging into a river could serve as a metaphor for the personal and professional dive she took when she retired from acting.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:40 AM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2006

The Day of the Triffids

Steve Sekely - 1962
Allied Artists Classics DVD

I'm not sure how fair I can be in discussing Day of the Triffids based on the DVD currently available. The company operating under the banner of Allied Artists Classics offers a full screen version of a CinemaScope film, the color so garishly off that I thought it was a poorly colorized black and white film, rather than an abysmal reproduction of a film shot in Eastman Color. So much for the treatment of a film being sold as a classic.

I never read the book by John Wyndham. My understanding is that the film is not very faithful to its literary source. For those unfamiliar with the story, large, mobile killer plants from outer space have taken over the world. Most of the world's population has been blinded by a meteor shower that takes place before the triffids take over. The book was a critical and commercial success, perhaps because some things are better kept to the imagination. Killer plants are more silly than scary in the movies I've seen.

Based on some of the credits, I was expecting a better film. The special effects are by Wally Veevers, who would soon go on to do special effects for Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and most importantly, 2001. The cinematography is by Ted Moore, responsible at least in part for the look of the Sean Connery James Bond films. Maybe the movie looked this way, but the DVD makes the triffids look like big, evil seaweed with huge, gaping maws.

Fans of Rocky Horror may want to see Triffids for Janette Scott, seen in the above still. Day of the Triffids is also the answer to the question: what became of Howard Keel when MGM stopped making musicals?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:37 AM

October 05, 2006

Imprint

Takashi Miike - 2005
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

When the list of directors involved with the Showtime cable series, "Masters of Horror", was announced, I was intrigued by the inclusion of Dario Argento and Takashi Miike. Argento at his best has been able to sustain an intensity that can be unbearable, as in the opening sequence of Suspiria. As it turned out, Argento's contribution to "Masters of Horror", Jenifer, had some of its violent imagery trimmed before its cablecast. While Jenifer was one of the better received episodes, I had to wonder if Showtime and an unaware American audience was ready for Miike. Those of us who are familiar with Miike were not surprised when it was announced that that for Showtime, there would be no show time for Imprint.

Miike is not a filmmaker one watches unprepared. While some films are better than others, what is consistent throughout his work is how Miike loves to deliberately provoke the audience. Even the relatively benign Gozu features a low-level gangster taking a supposed "Yakuza attack dog", really someone's small pet, by the leash, and smash it against the sidewalk. The scene is absurd and brutally funny. For Miike, nothing is taboo either as subject matter or as something to be depicted on film.

Imprint is based on a novel, Bokke Kyote by writer and actress Shimako Iwai, who has a small role in the film. Screenplay writer Daisuke Tengen is the son of Miike's mentor, Shohei Imamura. The story, about an American man, Christopher, who finds himself in a brothel in a Japanese island in the late 19th Century. A scarfaced prostitute tells Christopher about her life, also revealing the fate of Christopher's lost love, Komomo. The film is elegantly photographed with beautiful use of color, such as a long shot of a bare tree draped with red banners, or a river bank bordered with pinwheels. At the same time, Imprint features excruciating scenes of torture, involving long needles stuck under fingernails and in the mouth. While not as extreme as Miike's Ichi the Killer, it is still ugly to watch. What may have ultimately forced Showtime's hand was the depiction of a back country abortionist who disposes of fetuses in a river. At the beginning, Imprint had the promise of being as elegant and has horrifying as Miike's best film, Audition. Given a free hand, as it were, Miike undermines his art with increasingly over-the-top imagery that is less scary and more silly.

There is also the question as to whether Miike should have made Imprint in English. Youki Kudoh, the prostitute with the deformed face, has appeared in such films as Memoirs of a Geisha and Snow Falling on Cedars. The rest of the Japanese cast often is clearly struggling with English and requires close attention to what is said. Billy Drago may have had a better modulated performance had Miike understood English and the inflections of the language. I have mixed feelings about Imprint primarily because I was hoping that Miike would be introduced to a broader audience. Miike made exactly the kind of film he wanted to make, but lost an opportunity to make himself better known to those unfamiliar with this very unique filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

October 04, 2006

The Devil Rides Out

Terence Fisher - 1968
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

A film about black magic in the British countryside. Non-believers are convinced by the end of the film that devil worshippers are to be taken seriously. I have to assume that when Christopher Lee and company made The Devil Rides Out, they were hoping to make the equivalent to Night of the Demon or Burn, Witch, Burn. Like the older films, The Devil Rides Out tries to rely more on mood and psychological suspense, but also like the other films, terror ends up being conveyed using special effects. Unfortunately, Devil is less successful in suggesting horror, and more dependent on some obvious and unconvincing screen trickery.

One aspect of Devil that remains worth watching is the opportunity to see Lee as the hero in a film. Lee's height and deep voice give him immediate authority in every scene he's in. While Lee remains watchable, the story itself is never as compelling as it could have been. Even though Devil is more scholarly in its uses of symbols and mythology, there is never any sense of uncertainty that Lee could possibly fail. Someone better versed in British culture might have a better idea, but if one was to summerize the theme of the Hammer horror film, one could say the films symbolize the triumph of Christianity over Britain's Pagan past. The Devil Rides Out starts off as a more thoughtful type of horror film which disintegrates into another variation of Dracula without blood or Dracula.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 AM

October 03, 2006

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin

Una Lucertola con la Pelle di Donna
Lucio Fulci - 1971
Media Blasters Region 1 DVD

There are some people who are much more enthusiastic about Lucio Fulci than I am. I am willing to read serious evaluations of his work. I even saw The Beyond at a midnight show. While I was impressed by the final imagery of hell in The Beyond, I was also convinced that Fulci relied too heavily on eyeball gouging and not enough time creating a story that could transcend some astonishing gaps of logic. A Lizard in a Woman's Skin is a Fulci film that can probably be appreciated by those who normally place Fulci well behind such giallo specialists as Dario Argento, Sergio Martino and Aldo Lado.

I don't know how much credit should go to cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller, but there is greater care in the visual compositions. There is a nicely composed shot of a detective, Stanley Baker in conversation with Florinda Bolkan, while the statue of an angel bears witness. Bolkan, seen above left, has surreal nightmares about Anita Strindberg which anticipate an unsolved murder. The film is something of a Eurosoup hallucination of hippies, lesbians, orgies,LSD and bloody knives. The title comes from a comment one of the hippies makes about Bolkan which does not make much sense, but is in keeping with the moment when gialli was notable for having titles refering to animals.

While the narrative in primarily about Baker and company trying to identify a couple of murderers, and stop whomever is chasing after Bolkan, it is the dream sequences that are memorable. The film opens with Bolkan, clad in a fur coat, squeezing her way through a crowded train. The passengers are the normal group of people, Fulci cuts to Bolkan, still on the train, pushing her way through corridors of naked people before falling into a black void which contains a red bed. Fulci also distinguishes the film through the soundtrack, with a periodically atonal score by Ennio Morricone, and having Stanley Baker with audible tic of a whistle that sounds like the shriek of a teakettle.

A Lizard in a Woman's Skin will be screened as part of the Giallo Series at the Miami Beach Cinematheque.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:11 AM | Comments (2)

October 02, 2006

Phantom of the Opera

Terence Fisher - 1962
Universal Pictures Region 1 DVD

Seeing the Hammer version of Phantom of the Opera again, I have to wonder if anyone seriously thought they could equal, if not better, the 1925 version starring Lon Chaney. I also feel a bit puzzled as to why the story by Gaston Leroux is has been remade so many times. It should be noted that the Chaney version actually was the second filming, the first version being made in Germany in 1916. Of the several versions of Phantom, I have seen four versions, and the ending of one. One version I have avoided is Andrew Lloyd Webber's.

Would Hammer's version of Phantom been any better had it starred Cary Grant? Approached by Hammer to be the romantic lead, Grant probably would have distracted from the narrative of the Phantom, and might have been regarded as too old opposite aging ingenue Heather Sears. Far better had Grant enough of a sense of humor to hide his famous face, if not his voice, behind the mask of the Phantom.

This version of Phantom involves the phantom seeking revenge for the theft of music he has composed. As the Phantom, Herbert Lom is not very scary, and suspense is disappated when he unmasks himself. This Phantom also loses sympathy by slapping Heather Sears around during her singing lessons. The musical thief who takes credit for the opera is played by Michael Gough, who steals the film with his constant smirking, innuendo and indignation when not getting his way.

Edwin Astley's music is certainly more listenable than that from Andrew Lloyd Webber. What is not clear from any information I have found is if he had written the actual opera in the film. The music is a bit too modern for the time when the film takes place, and Joan of Arc was not yet made a saint, but I much prefer it to Nelson Eddy in the 1943 version. One bit of opera humor, and a wink towards Hammer's vampire films, involves a singer auditioning with a song from Die Fledermaus. This may not be the definitive Phantom, but how appropriate that a film about opera be filmed at Bray Studios.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 AM

September 30, 2006

Bettie Paged Twice

The Notorious Bettie Page
Mary Harron - 2006
HBO Video Region 1 DVD

Bettie Page: Dark Angel
Nico B - 2004
Cult Epics Region 1 DVD

When it comes to Bettie Page, the photographs say all I really want to know about her. In terms of knowing the facts of Bettie Page's life, the "E True Hollywood Story" gave enough information about her life as a pinup model, the accusations of pornography by Congress, and Page's retirement to a reclusive life devoted to church work. There are two films about Bettie Page, but neither of them gets it right, although one tries harder than the other.

If there is a reason to see The Notorious Bettie Page, it's for the faces. While Gretchen Mol passingly resembles Page, it's the rest of the cast that is noteworthy simply for how they seem to represent an older era. Setting aside anything else about the film, the faces crammed into the hour and a half are as vivid as those of Walker Evans' Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The strength of Mary Harron's film is also its weakness, which is to say that The Notorious Bettie Page is so visually beautiful it is like a museum piece with any sense of spontaneity drained out.

Harron and screenplay writer Guenevere Turner seem to have jammed as much about Bettie Page's life as possible within a relatively compact running time, alternating black and white New York City with colorful Miami Beach. Brutal incidences in Page's life before New York are conveyed effectively, especially with scenes in which her trusting nature puts her in dangerous situations. The actors are all quickly vivid, especially David Strathairn as Senator Estes Kefauver and Jared Harris as John Willie. The film also respectfully attempts to grapple with Page's inner conflicts, between her life as a pin-up model and her committed Christian faith. And yet for all the obvious effort, the film is unable to explain the simultaneous naughty but nice attraction that made Page a magnetic personality.

Bettie Page: Dark Angel is an extremely low budget attempt to tell Page's story from the time she was already working for Irving and Paula Klaw, through her retirement following the Senate investigation. The film is mostly recreations of Page's bondage movie shorts, strung together with poorly acted incidences in her life. The sets are a scant step up from the production values seen in Ed Wood, Jr.'s Plan Nine from Outer Space. Bondage and porno star Paige Richards looks vaguely like a more well fed version of Page. If The Notorious Bettie Page looks overpopulated with its lively characters popping all over the screen, Bettie Page: Dark Angel tries to get by with usually no more than four or five people in a given scene.

If you have to see one movie about Bettie Page, see Gretchen Mol's impersonation. For viewing pleasure, you're better off seeing the actual Bettie Page on DVD.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:19 AM

September 27, 2006

Three Times

Zui hao de shi guang
Hou Hsiao-hsien - 2005
IFC Films Region 1 DVD

I was hoping to see Three Times in a theater. The only Hou film I have seen in a theater, Millenium Mambo, is my favorite. I'm not certain whether this is due to seeing the film on the big screen, although slower, more deliberately paced films do seem to play better in a theatrical setting than on a televison screen which almost demands more visceral types of entertainment. Is it some kind of cultural misunderstanding? I have to admit that for all of the reverence accorded Hou, I feel like I'm missing something when I see his films, and I have seen about eight of them.

The premise of Three Times is interesting - with Shu Qi and Chang Chen portraying three couples in three different time periods - 1911, 1966 and 2005. Hou shoots each period in a different visual style. What links the stories in addition to the actors is that the stories primarily take place in interior settings, creating a sense of restriction of space. Additionally, each narrative hinges on communications between Chang and Shu. The letters received in 1911 and 1966 have been replaced by text messages in 2005.

The 1911 sequence is the most problematic. Except for singing in the beginning and at the end, this section is silent, with titles indicating the dialogue. Hou is reported to have chosen to this format because he could not accurately reproduce the Taiwanese dialect of that time. The sequence pretty much works, but Hou's motivation to make it a silent film makes me think of William Faulker who complained when writing Land of the Pharoahs, that he didn't know how ancient Egyptians talked.

The 1966 sequence is both the most accessible and the most successful. Chang portrays a soldier on leave who travels from city to city in search of Shu, a girl he met once when she worked at a pool hall. The film is bridged by pop songs from the era, most notably "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".

The 2005 sequence is the most visually adventurous I've seen by Hou. The camera roams around more actively, with Hou cutting into extreme closeups. Usually viewing action from a polite distance, this sequence is more intimate than what I have seen from Hou's previous films. This final sequence suggests a reflection of the lack of space in Taipei, that the crowding of people will force us to look at them more closely, while the pursuit of physical and psychological space becomes more difficult.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:16 PM

September 24, 2006

Two by Lou Ye

Suzhou River/Suzhou He
Lou Ye - 2000
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

Purple Butterfly/Zi Hudie
Lou Ye - 2003
Palm Pictures Region 1 DVD

With Lou Ye in the news a couple of weeks ago, it seemed like a good time to re-see Suzhou River and also see Purple Butterfly. While the two films have some shared thematic elements, especially regarding the nature of love, the two films have different narrative foundations, with Suzhou River advancing through a character's voice-overs, while Purple Butterfly minimizes dialogue in favor of images to tell its story. Lou's uses popular songs to express the thoughts of his characters. This becomes more incisive in using the period songs in Purple Butterfly which additional comment on how the characters view Shanghai.

Suzhou River contains an unexpected blend of Vertigo and Disney's The Little Mermaid along with the most extensive use of point-of-view shots since Robert Montgomery's film of Lady in the Lake, and narration the resembles that from Francois Truffaut. Lou records his two narratives with a shaky camera in available light. Jorg Lemberg's music strongly resembles a reworking of Bernard Herrmann's romantic themes for Hitchcock's film of lost love. In addition to Moudan/Meimei having Little Mermaid dolls, Meimei appears as a little mermaid, swimming in a large glass tank. For Lou, not only can one not depend on what one thinks has been seen, but people are not always who they appear to be.

The deceptiveness of appearances is further explored in Purple Butterfly with a decidedly non-glamourous Zhang Ziyi as a young woman fighting against the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Lou takes his narrative of love, espionage and treachery, and has it loop around itself. Unlike the small scale Suzhou River, this follow-up is played against an epic, historical background. The film jumps back from time to time in repeating an incident from the point of view of another character, so that what is assumed about relationships and events is undermined and re-ordered. Lou's camerawork is sometimes like that of a nervous onlooker, trying to figure out where to focus and make sense of the chaos. Much of the film is shot using a blue filter adding to the visual darkness of activity that takes place often at night or in the rain.

Lou has upset Chinese authorities by incorporating documentary footage of Tianenmen Square. Again the story is about love against large historical events. While it may not be fully accurate to describe Lou as the Bernardo Bertolucci of China, he is the only other filmmaker I can think of that seems consistently interested in exploring the junctures where politics and erotic love meet.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:58 AM

September 22, 2006

Come and See

Idi i Smotri
Elem Klimov - 1985
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Campaspe, the Self-Styled Siren had an interesting post at Cinemarati. Just as some of us have gotten through various forms of higher education without actually reading some of the classics of Western literature, so there are those film critics, historians, bloggers, etc., who have gaps in seeing certain films, and in some cases whole filmographies of some directors. Titles from IMDb's top 250 that I have not seen more than part of would be Grave of the Fireflies and Harvey. For the first, while I recognize the artistry of Japanese anime, I still find the films put me to sleep, while with Harvey, I don't find drunks amusing, with or without invisible six foot tall rabbits. I also have not been able to rouse myself to see Sling Blade because I dislike Miramax's sentimental man and boy love stories on general principle. A title that popped up frequently in the comments was Come and See, currently ranking at #207 in IMDb's top 250.

As an examination of the horrors of war, Come and See is unrelenting. The film follows a boy, Florian, in his descent into hell. Enlisted to join the partisans of his village in Byelorussia in World War II, his mother is assured that "it will be like summer camp". Instead, Florian finds himself in a world of ever increasing violence and degradation. At the end of Come and See, titles appear explaining that the Germans burned 628 Byelorussian villages including the inhabitants. The Germans, who over a loudspeaker claim to the villages that they are civilized, prove to be the opposite in the extreme. In comparison, the portrayal of Nazi attrocities in a film like Schindler's List is timid and too polite.

While the film begins simply, seemingly a straight forward view of war from the point of view of children, Elem Klimov incorporates sound, and later, visuals, reflecting some of the subjective changes in Florian. Caught in a bombing of a forest, Florian temporarily becomes deaf. The soundtrack becomes a sonic montage of the ringing in his ears, Florian's garbled speech, and the barely heard words yelled at him. Seeing a girl dancing the Charleston during a quiet lull, we hear the music imagined by Florian. Near the end of Come and See, enraged over what he has endured and witnessed, Florian shoots a portrait of Hitler. With each shot is a montage of documentary footage run backwards, with Florian perhaps imagining what could have been prevented had he been able to kill Hitler. The sequence ends with Florian realizing that at a certain point in the past, one cannot predict the future.

Although a simple reading of Come and See would be anti-Nazi, Klimov's story should be understood to be more universal. Much of the horror is muted, seen from a distance, or suggested by the screams of unseen victims. As grim as Come and See is, the final images of the sky seen from the forest indicate a stubborn glimmer of hope and rebirth.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:01 PM | Comments (3)

September 21, 2006

The Quiet Duel

Shizukanaru Ketto
Akira Kurosawa - 1949
BCI Region 1 DVD

Akira Kurosawa's ninth film seems to have been released this week without much fanfare. While it is admittedly not one of his best films, for me, the release of any vintage Kurosawa is still cause for celebration. The Quiet Duel is one of Kurosawa's early films that is relatively unseen. The film had not received theatrical distribution in the United States until 1979. While the title seems to suggest a story about samurai, this is again Kurosawa examining post-war Japan.

Toshiro Mifune portrays a doctor, Kyoji, who has contracted syphilis through an accident while operating on a patient. After the war, Kyoji goes back to join his father, also a doctor, in his medical practice, keeping his illness a secret. Even though Kyoji is treating the disease, he pushes away his fiancee rather than explain why he has broken off their engagement. By chance, Kyoji meets up with Nakada, the soldier who infected him. Nakada has dismissed the warnings of treating his syphilis and how it could affect others, and is now with a pregnant wife. While The Quiet Duel can be categorized with Kurosawa's other socially concerned films, looking beyond the narrative is a critique of Japanese manners, especially the custom of indirectly addressing a concern in conversation, as well as the misplaced sense of shame.

The Quiet Duel has become even more interesting to watch in these times when safe sex is mandated. Later in the film we see Narada become more deranged from the effects of his untreated illness. There is also discussion about how syphilis has effected Narada's unborn baby. There is a scene where Mifune is anguished over his enforced celebacy since becoming infected. I had to wonder if condoms were not available in Japan during this time. The title of the film refers to Kyoji dealing with his conflicts as calmly as possible.

Even if certain aspects of the narrative are questionable, The Quiet Duel shows Kurosawa under the influence of Ford, Wyler and especially Welles, with an emphasis on depth of field cinematography. In the DVD supplement, a cinematography crew member explains how a special lens was created for use in the film. Keeping in mind that Japanese studios lacked the film stock or equipment that was standard in Hollywood at this time makes the visuals in The Quiet Duel even more astounding. The composition of shots, such as above, resemble that of Wyler's Dodsworth in the use of a literal framing device.

The film, which co-stars Kurosawa favorite Takashi Shimura, suffers from moments of bathos - just a bit too tearful, too sentimental, and at times too noble. This may have been due to the producers' demands as this was made before Kurosawa had complete control over his films. Still, a minor Kurosawa film is still a Kurosawa film, which should be reason enough to see The Quiet Duel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:01 PM | Comments (1)

September 20, 2006

Or (My Treasure)

Mon Tresor
Keren Yedaya - 2004
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Or may be one of the bleakest films I've seen. Stylistically, the film could be described as Bressonian, with little camera movement, no music, shooting in what appears to be available light. Far from being the "land of milk and honey", Tel Aviv appears as a dark, dingy city of little promise and less opportunity.

Or is a teenage girl who lives with her mother, Ruthie. The two scrap along, with Or as the primary financial support, selling bottles to be recycled and working in a restaurant, in addition to going to school. It is gradually revealed that Ruthie has been working as a low-rent prostitute, continuing her trade in spite of Or's pleas for her to quit. Seemingly the more responsible of the two, Or is shown to be promiscuous. Whether out of simple economic need or because of her own sense of self-worth, Or decides to join an escort service, effectively following in her mother's path.

Keren Yedaya has mentioned that she sees the film both as speaking out against prostitution, as well as a parable about Israeli-Palestinian relations. While I don't feel that Or can easily be understood this way, it is clear that the film is about the gaze of the observer and the role sex plays as a tool of survival for women. Or is old fashioned feminist filmmaking, at least thematically, without the hectoring. The film is also about choices and consequences, about present needs subverting a more meaningful future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:01 PM

September 17, 2006

Coming Soon: The Robert Aldrich Blog-a-thon!

Catherine Denueve is seen above enjoying a "Coffee, Coffee and more Coffee" moment in anticipation of the Robert Aldrich Blog-a-thon scheduled for October 16. Those interested in participating should contact Dennis Cozzalio of Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule. We look forward to more than a Dirty Dozen participants. All form of opinion will be welcome, not just that of The Choirboys. The Frisco Kid is as welcomed as The Big Leaguer. While October 16 is longer than Ten Seconds to Hell, you may still want to Hustle to make sure your piece gets published before The Last Sunset, or at least The Twilight's Last Gleaming.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:08 PM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2006

The "Gipper" Saves the Day

Storm Warning
Stuart Heisler - 1951
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Law and Order
Nathan Juran - 1953
Universal Studios Region 1 DVD

Storm Warning is like an alarmist editorial that thinks its saying something, but close analysis reveals that after the sound and fury, nothing much is said at all. Lauren Bacall was originally to play the travelling dress model caught in a murder conspiracy. She turned down the role because she wanted to be with Humphrey Bogart while he was shooting The African Queen, at least officially. Instead we have the less slender Ginger Rogers, looking all of her forty years, playing a model, as well as older sister to a prematurely haggard Doris Day. Rogers walks down the dark streets of a small town in "the South" where she accidentally witness members of the Ku Klux Klan dragging a man out of jail and shooting him. One of the two men Rogers can identify turns out to be her brother-in-law. Rogers has to choose between telling laid back D.A. Ronald Reagan the truth, or protecting Doris Day who loves Steve Cochran in spite of his hard drinking, trigger happy ways.

The indictment of "the Klan" in Storm Warning is primarily that it is used as a money making tool by some of the town leaders to dupe some fellow citizens, and to keep others in line. The victim in the movie is a white reporter. Except for some crowd scenes, there are no blacks in Storm Warning, nor is there mention of what the Klan represents. I recalled the book City of Quartz by Mike Davis, which mentioned that Chester Himes was on the Warner Brothers lot as a potential screenwriter, until Jack Warner order him from the studio. Storm Warning was co-written by Richard Brooks, who's novel The Brick Foxhole, about the murder of a gay soldier, was filmed as Crossfire, about the murder of a Jewish soldier. Ronald Reagan is so easy going throughout the film, as if he alone understood that while the actions of the Ku Klux Klan may be criminal, ultimately nobody in Hollywood really gives a damn.

Law and Order may have turned out to be the most appropriate title, given Reagan's post Hollywood career. His second film after his tenure at Warner Brothers expired is a remake of a film of the same title starring Johnny Mack Brown. The narrative is almost similar to Storm Warning as Reagan uses his position to enforce laws in protecting others from mob rule and keeping an eye on unscrupulous capitalists. While not as artistically as interesting as Storm Warning with its dramatic black and white photography, the colorful Law and Order at least has the courage of its modest convictions. The primary pleasures are in seeing a brunette Dorothy Malone as the bar owner Reagan loves, an early perfomance by Dennis Weaver as a tough talking bad guy, and Russell Johnson as Reagan's volatile youngest brother. By most standards, Law and Order is a forgettable film. History has made the image of Ronald Reagan in this film iconic.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:24 PM

September 15, 2006

Murder a la Mod

Brian De Palma - 1968
Something Weird Video Region 1 DVD

While most critics are weighing in on The Black Dahlia, I've been able to see Brian De Palma's second feature which was just released on DVD. More polished than The Wedding Party, Murder a la Mod is a mobius strip of a narrative, packed with the elements that De Palma would revisit again and again with his thrillers. Had this film been re-released following the success of Greetings and the comedies that had followed, it may have helped putting De Palma's so-called Hitchcockian films beginning with Sisters into a clearer context.

While there are parts of Murder that recall Psycho and Rear Window, De Palma crams in references to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom, Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace, and Antonioni's Blow Up. The familiar De Palma themes of the artist as voyeur, dreams confused with reality, and sexual conflicts are here, along with the first explorations of violent slapstick. The film begins with stills of a model, part of a photo-biography by Chris, the photographer-director. We see several young women undressing in front of the camera, the voice of an unseen male coaxing them to shed their clothing. The women repeat a scripted line in which they say they are making this film to help out the director, who needs the money to pay for a divorce. Deliberately unclear is whether we are watching a movie in the process of being made, or if this is a movie within a movie.

De Palma repeats his narrative, going forward and then leaping backwards, from different points of view. Are the murders real or imagined? The question is probably besides the point as far as De Palma is concerned. That the film is an elaborate joke should be indicated by the title song, written and presumably sung, by William Finley. One of the plot points concerns the confusion between a prop ice pick and a real one, with superimposed titles helpfully distinguishing the two for the audience.

Within a limited budget, De Palma has the means to do some more interesting visuals than in his first film. In addition to the shot seen in the above still, Murder has De Palma's first use of extensive travelling shots. One of the best is when a woman pursues Finley, who has a mysterious trunk, through a graveyard. A later scene looks like a rough draft in anticipation of filming Sissy Spacek wreaking havoc in Carrie.

One fan of Murder a la Mod was Vincent Canby of The New York Times. In his review, Canby noted: "There is a limit as to just how far this sort of playfulness can be carried. In the context of most of today's moviemaking, however, it's fun to see directors who are willing to acknowledge the movie form, and who do not try to convince us that what we see on the screen is necessarily "real." When they don't try — curiously — we often do believe, which is what movies are all about."

Murder a la Mod is enjoyable on its own terms, but also should prove to be a key film in viewing the career of Brian De Palma.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:24 PM | Comments (1)

September 11, 2006

Hellcats of the Navy

Nathan Juran - 1957
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

On this Fifth Anniversary of 9/11 I decided it would be fitting to watch a film starring the only movie star (so far) to become President of the United States. I am certain there are those who are certain about what Ronald Reagan would have done had been President on that day. There is also the possible evidence based on his actions in past films. Being a blog about movies, I choose to write about the reel Ronald Reagan, rather than the real Ronald Reagan.

Hellcats of the Navy is the only film that Reagan made co-starring Nancy Davis, better known as Mrs. Ronald Reagan. The film takes place during World War II, with Reagan as a submarine commander grappling twice with the decision to save one life at the expence of his crew. Davis is a nurse stationed at Guam. When Davis questions Reagan's choices, he reminds her, "You have to live with people. Work with them. Fight besides them. That's what matters." Reagan overcomes his anguish to get to the work of winning the war.

Orders are broken while Reagan and crew conduct a sneak attack on the Japanese, and follow a freighter through waters filled with submerged explosives. This being a Hollywood film, the mission is accomplished. While Hellcats is not entirely a gung-ho war film, it must have seemed even more dated in its attitudes compared to Robert Aldrich's Attack and Kubrick's Paths of Glory. The only reason why anyone bothers seeing Hellcats at all is for the novelty of the two leading roles. Reagan was often thought by others to confuse his real life with his reel life. While history can't be changed, there is some, if perhaps false, sense of assurance of watching Ronald Reagan as a character who fully acknowledged his sense of personal responsibility even if it cost him professionally, literally diving in and taking action even if it cost his his life, all on behalf of a greater good.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:33 PM

September 09, 2006

Sommer Time

Daniella by Night/Zarte Haut in schwarzer Seide
Max Pecas - 1961
First Run Features Region 1 DVD

Sweet Ecstacy/Douce Violence
Max Pecas - 1962
First Run Features Region 1 DVD

I was twelve years old when I first became aware of Elke Sommer. First exposure came through surreptitious examinations in the pages of "Playboy" magazine. Not to long after that came two Hollywood films which had put Ms. Sommer in similar situations where she and her leading man were caught nude on film. Actually what The Prize and A Shot in the Dark had was the suggestion of nudity, no clothing seen, and just enough flesh seen onscreen to excite adolescent boys of all ages. Not that some Hollywood filmmakers were adverse to showing that they were willing to go where European directors had gone before. George Cukor was unlikely to blow Darryl Zanuck's money filming Marilyn Monroe swimming in her birthday suit had he not thought it would actually be seen in theaters somewhere. Robert Aldrich reportedly shot tests of Ursula Andress and Anita Ekberg for 4 for Texas. We had to wait for Gus Van Sant to show Anne Heche in a remake of the shot Hitchcock cut of Janet Leigh in Psycho. Even Burt Kennedy managed to get a bit playful with Glenn Ford and Henry Fonda gallantly using their hats to cover the backsides of Sue Ane Langdon and Hope Holiday. But at this time I was too young for films I could only imagine, reading their often lurid titles in the newspaper.

The two films by Max Pecas seem typical of what was forbidden to me in my youth. Incidentally, both films have music co-written by Charles Aznavour. Daniella by Night is a bit of cold war nonsense about spies and fashion models. Elke portrays a young model named Daniela who finds herself caught between several men who aren't who they claim to be, and a wisp of a plot involving microfilm hidden in special lipstick. The film became popular because of a scene in a nightclub. Elke is stripped on-stage by some thugs and the scene is thought to be an act by the audience. The nudity is hidden by a light curtain. While more brazen than what Hollywood was doing at the time (see Joanne Woodward in The Stripper for example), this was a hot scene for 1961.

Sweet Ecstacy has Elke playing a college student named Elke, running aroung St. Tropez with some hedonistic trust fun kids. She's pursued by an earnest young man who admits to being put off by the free love philosophy of Elke and her friends. Elke borrows Brigitte Bardot's hair and eye make-up for part of the film, while Pecas freely borrows from From Here to Eternity with Elke and Pierre Brice making out on the beach. There is no nudity in this film, but Elke is seen wearing form fitting hiphuggers, showing off her belly button. This is one of those films that entices the audience with the promise of a vicarious experience with European jet setters, concluding with a moral lesson that wild, uninhibited sex is less fun than it seems. In this case, Elke and Pierre decide that a life of pleasure has nothing left to offer, the only thing left to do is get married.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 AM | Comments (1)

September 08, 2006

Princess Racoon

Operetta Tanuki Goten
Suzuki Seijun - 2005
Mei Ah Entertainment Region 0 DVD

"Seijun Suzuki is a director who seems to have known the future before it happened. Certainly in terms of his ability to draw from a palette of popular and classic culture and engage those colours in an inventive use of the medium. In doing this he creates works that are not observational in terms of truth but that are committed to the pursuit of a singular and larger truth. His latest film 'Princess Raccoon' to the non-Japanese viewer such as myself, who undoubtedly will miss some of the more direct cultural references, is nonetheless relentlessly compelling in it's surprise invention and theatricality. The generation of filmmakers to whom I belong owe much to the fearless work of Seijun Suzuki." - Baz Luhrmann

In what he says is his final film, Suzuki Seijun, once again manages to defy expectations. After establishing his reputation primarily with gangster films that undermined the genre, followed by the deliberately paced "Taisho Trilogy", Suzuki surprises us one last time with a fairy tale fantasy. As if to also say that you can teach an old dog new tricks, the film makes extensive use of digital technology, almost the Japanese answer to octogenarian Eric Rohmer's Lady and the Duke which also had a veteran director embracing new filmmaking tools. One odd bit that ties to past films - Suzuki worked several times with actor Jo Shishido and this last film stars Jo Odagiri (happiness is a guy named Jo(e)?).

The story, about an exiled prince in love with a racoon disguised as a human, as some similarities to Midsummer Night's Dream. Beginning with a an actor introducing the story like as if on a stage, remarking that it is the "13th night", Suzuki bounces around various settings that are linked by their arificiality. Suzuki has taken some of his ideas from Shinoda's Double Suicide and amplified them with a riot of anime colors. The effect is almost of a live action cartoon governed by its own laws of time and space.

In addition to also starring Zhang Ziyi, Princess Racoon, like Wong Kar-Wai's 2046 is a dream of Asia without language barriers. Chinese and Japanese speak to each other in their respective languages. At a time when Japan and China still have some serious unresolved issues, it is as if the artists are looking towards overcoming cultural differences.

I feel like I can only discuss Princess Racoon at this time with some relatively random thoughts that occurred while watching this film. Like Luhrmann, I feel like I missed a lot due to my own limited knowledge of Japanese culture. Nonetheless, it is a fun film to watch, unlike virtually anything else on any screen. At the very least, there is satisfaction in seeing Suzuki Seijun, a filmmaker who was considered washed up thirty years ago, ending his career on his own idiosyncratic terms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:49 PM | Comments (1)

September 05, 2006

The Overture

Hom Rong
Ittisoontorn Vichailak - 2004
Kino Films Region 1 DVD

In preparation for my anticipated visit to Chiang Mai, I am currently reading Culture and Customs of Thailand by Arne Kislenko. It's not a very good book, but it is the only one on Thailand in general that I could get from the Miami Public Library system. The essay on the history of Thai cinema makes it seem like only a handful of films were made that are only of historical value, but nothing of serious interest occurs until the release of Iron Ladies. Still, there is value in reading the book at this time because I also got to see one of two Thai film in Miami Public Library, and to appreciate The Overture some knowledge of Thai culture and history is helpful.

What needs to be understood about The Overture is that this is an idealized self-portrait of Thais. The film is loosely based on the life of Luang Pradith Phairao, master of the ranard-ek, a wood instrument similar to the xylophone. The Overture is primarily a fictionalized account of the challenge to preserve Thailand's musical culture through the life of a master musician named Sorn. Western culture is tolerated, as illustrated by Sorn engaging in a duet with his piano playing son. The bigger battle is against the Japanese who attempted to eliminate much of Thai culture during World War II as being obsolete. I have to suspect the main reason why Thailand essentially changed sides during World War II was because the Allies had there own culture to import, they also allowed traditional Thai culture to continue.

It should be no surprise that The Overture was chosen over Tropical Malady and Citizen Dog to represent Thailand for Best Foreign Film of 2004. In addition to being about the effort to save traditional Thai music, the film represents a traditional Thai view of the world. The main characters are all male, and there is an emphasis on respect for patriarchs - fathers, mentors, and royalty. The few women in the film are wives, mothers or servants, and barely register as ciphers in the narrative. The biggest problem for a non-Thai viewer may be to sustain interest in a film about a musician who plays the xylophone, even one as dazzling as Sorn.

Maybe this reveals a cultural failing on my part. I could recognize the musicianship and the mastery of technique, yet I have to admit that watching a xylophone face-off is less compelling than the Steve Vai-Ralph Macchio dueling guitars in Crossroads. For me, a film about competiting xylophone players is to films about musicians almost analogous to a film about bowling to most sports movies.

And that other Thai film in the Miami Public Library system? Last Life in the Universe may not be how official Thailand would like to be seen, but it is the better, more inventive, film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:22 AM | Comments (2)

September 02, 2006

Two War-time films by Volker Schlondorff

Coup de Grace/Der Fangschuss
Volker Schlondorff - 1976
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

The Ogre/Der Unhold
Volker Schlondorff - 1996
Kino Films Region 1 DVD

I've been thinking about a couple of Volker Schlondorff's earlier films because of recent events. The news about Gunter Grass admitting to Nazi activity in World War II probably sent some film scholars scrambling to re-examine Schlondorff's film of The Tin Drum. The recent war in Lebanon made me think of Circle of Deceit, Schlondorff's film shot in civil war torn Beirut in 1980. The two films I saw, Coup de Grace and The Ogre are in some ways complimentary, if reversed stories about Germans in war. Coup de Grace is about a German woman living in one of the Baltic states in 1920, an outsider in a country experiencing civil war between nationalists and German settlers against Bolsheviks right after World War I. The Ogre is about an outsider, a French prisoner of war, who temporarily identifies with his German captors. Again Schlondorff looks at the theme of identity and morality during wartime, particularly what it means to be a German.

Schlondorff dedicated his films to this mentors. Coup de Grace is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Melville, while Louis Malle is honored at the end of The Ogre. The connection to Melville is made clearer in the DVD interview where Schlondorff discusses working with minimal materials, although there is also a hazy thematic connection in the examination of the characters' conflicting codes of morality and loyalty. The Ogre has ties most clearly with Au Revoir, les Enfants, with its boys' school setting, and Lacombe Lucien in having the protagonist be a young French man who works on behalf of the Nazis for his own personal gain, but is otherwise apolitical.

The image above of Margarethe von Trotta kicking back against the table in Coup de Grace made me think of the somewhat similar image of Henry Fonda in My Darling Clementine. Was Schlondorff thinking of John Ford at the time? Maybe I'm pushing a point here, but Schlondorff also worked with Ford actors Woody Strode and Richard Widmark in A Gathering of Old Men. There is a distant similarity in Ford and Schlondorff's themes, using historical events as backdrops to their films, and the exploration of national identity.

In The Ogre, John Malkovich has taken the role of Pied Piper, leading young German boys to dedicate their lives to Hitler. A scene of athletic events is unmistakably shot in the style of Olympia with images of boys defying gravity. The scene is neither an outright homage, nor is it fair to call it a parody of Riefenstahl. Perhaps Schlondorff hoped to at least partially remake Olympia as a critique of Nazi ideals, twisting Riefenstahl's original intent. This would be consistent with the filmmaker who made it his mission to reclaim German cinema by shooting his first feature in the style of Fritz Lang, and rebuild the Babelsberg Studio. For Volker Schlondorff, the history of Germany and German film are closely intertwined.

In discussing filmmaking in general, Schlondorff stated: "I don't really know whether films can change society. But I feel we need those films with a conscience to enrich our lives, that movies can do. To put things into perspective, and to all of a sudden see that in other places and in other times people had similar struggles as we have right now, is enlightening, is enriching and is encouraging. So we simply need that. I think art in general is a great help for us to survive."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:41 PM | Comments (2)

August 29, 2006

Story of a Cloistered Nun

Storia di una Monaca di Clausura
Domenico Paolella - 1973
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

As far as exploitation movies about nuns go, The Story of a Cloistered Nun is quite pretty to look at. The film combines the expected contents of a film by Jesus Franco, with nuns getting whipped, naked, or hot and heavy with lovers of both sexes, with the sumptous costuming and colors of something from Merchant-Ivory. This may be an oxymoron to describe this as a tasteful exploitation film. This isn't the delirious trash of Killer Nun or Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, but neither is it as serious as Rivette's The Nun.

Eleonora Giorgi is the young woman banished by her family after refusing an arranged marriage. As Carmela, Giorgi finds herself pitted between the hedonistic Sister Elizabeth (Catherine Spaak) and the Mother Superior (Suzy Kendall). Carmela also sneaks out of the convent to resume her affair with Julian who gets the novice pregnant. Word gets back to the Vatican that an unidentified nun has given birth. The scene where the nuns all claim to be the mother to protect Carmela plays almost as a parody of the hundreds of slaves claiming to be Spartacus.

The DVD includes interviews with Giorgi, arguably more attractive now as a "woman of a certain age", as well as supporting actor Umberto Orsini. Along with two trailers, and liner notes about "nunsploitation" films, I have to suspect that NoShame realizes The Story of a Cloistered Nun should be regarded primarily as an entertaining trifle compared to many of their other releases.

Coincidentally, I should note that Giorgi, Spaak and Kendall all starred in films by Dario Argento. I guess that when one portrays a bad nun, one also has to give the devil his due.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:53 PM

August 26, 2006

Ong-Bak

Prachya Pinkaew - 2003
Twentieth Century Fox Region 1 DVD

With the hype I was reading about the upcoming The Protector (the U.S. title for Tom Yum Goong), I made a point of seeing Ong-Bak. Even those who don't make a point of watching martial arts films should check out Tony Jaa in action. Sure, he's been compared to Bruce Lee, Jet Li and Jackie Chan. Let's add to that the acrobatics of Burt Lancaster, the grace of Gene Kelly and the ability to defy gravity like Nijinski. Admittedly the screen capture above shows Jaa as a blurry presence, but most of Ong-Bak is a perpetual motion machine, with Jaa in one set piece after another. Jaa's athleticism delivers in spades what other films and action stars have promised.

Certainly much of the credit for the film should also go to writer-director Prachya Pinkaew. That the operative word for staging fight scenes is choreography is not lost on Pinkaew. The fight scenes are filmed in the same way that Astaire or Kelly are filmed dancing, with Jaa's body fully in frame to capture all of his movement. Everything is shot so that the viewer has a clear sense of the action at all times. Pinkaew occassionally will edit a specific moment so that it is seen repeated in three shots from different angles. What makes the action set pieces more amazing to watch is that there is no wire work or special effects involved. Pinkaew outdoes even the best Hong Kong action directors with his ability to film and edit, and should be required viewing by Hollywood directors who failed to understand that it's not enough to have Chow Yun-Fat, Jackie Chan or Jet Li in front of the camera. Pinkaew, like Corey Yuen, knows that fight scenes are most meaningful when filmed like a musical number. Even a scene involving the little Thai taxis called Tuk-Tuks has eye-popping stunt driving.

The action scenes take up so much of the film that it is sometimes easy to forget the story everything hangs on, with Jaa as a countryboy in search of the stolen head of a statue revered by the villagers. An underwater scene involving the discovery of ancient statues as a dreamlike quality. There are Buddhist underpinnings to the narrative which can be viewed as an allegory about the defense and protection of Thai culture. Most people will simply enjoy Ong-Bak has an action film that doesn't dawdle with too much exposition. For those who can appreciate the choreography of fight choreography, this is like watching Fred and Ginger, only with deadlier kicks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:04 AM | Comments (2)

August 25, 2006

Do You Like Hitchcock?

Ti Piace Hitchcock
Dario Argento - 2005
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

In retrospect, there is a certain irony that the most famous film by Alfred Hitchcock is one of his least characteristic. When Dario Argento was supposedly fighting with Lucio Fulci over who was more deserving to be called the "Italian Hitchcock", the argument was based on which filmmaker had outdone Psycho. What has been usually overlooked is that when Hitchcock made Psycho, he wasn't trying to be Alfred Hitchcock. After the box office failure of Vertigo showed that the "Master of Suspense" was unable to be the American Clouzot, Hitchcock settled on making a William Castle-style horror movie better than Castle had produced.

Do You Like Hitchcock is a decidedly minor film that Dario Argento made for Italian television. Filmed in Torino, the film shows Argento in a much lighter mood. Elio Germano, an actor who resembles a younger Argento, portrays a film student named Giulio, a name that perhaps not coincidentally sounds like giallo, the genre of Italian horror movies. Giulio believes he has stumbled upon a murder plot inspired by Strangers on a Train carried out by Sasha and Federica, two women who meet at the neighborhood video store that Giulio frequents.

Someone with even general familiarity with Hitchcock should recognize elements of Rear Window, Vertigo, Dial M for Murder and Marnie. There are times when I felt that instead of watching Argento imitate Hitchcock, Argento was also recalling De Palma's Body Double. The De Palma connection is reinforced by the use of music by Pino Donaggio, with his score that takes its cues from Bernard Herrmann. Giulio is also seen watching Murnau'sNosferatu and Paul Wegener's The Golem. Giulio's apartment is overdecorated with movie posters, which like those in the video store almost distract from paying attention to the film's story.

Signature elements of Argento's style include extreme close ups of lock mechanisms, traveling shots observing people through windows, and a gloved killer. The violence is toned down, possibly due to the film serving as a pilot for a proposed television series. For those unfamiliar with Argento, go directly to Suspiria or Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Those who are waiting for the completion of the "Three Mothers trilogy" just need to know that Do You Like Hitchcock is far less traumatic than Trauma, and neither deep nor red.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:01 AM

August 24, 2006

Stay

Marc Forster - 2005
Twentieth Century Fox Region 1 DVD

In an early interview, Marc Forster mentions several of his favorite filmmakers. Reading this after seeing Stay certainly adds to a critical perspective of this film, a box office failure following mixed reviews. It is of little surprise that the most positive, or at least respectful criticism, was by those critics I knew were familiar with most of the films by Kubrick and Bunuel, as well Nicolas Roeg. Stay could also be read as a reworking of the themes of memory as filmed by Alain Resnais, with the literary roots of Jean Cayrol and Marguerite Duras. One could even think of Stay as a kind of tribute to the Twentieth Century Fox of thirty years ago, the company that brought the cinematic dreams of Louis Malle and Luis Bunuel to the U.S.

What I am certain frustrated audiences, and not a few "critics" was that Forster dives directly into a narrative stuctured around the act of dreaming without giving the viewer a context to distinguish dream from reality. Based on my own admittedly flimsy memories of dreams, the narrative of Stay reasonably reflects the seamless jumping around from place to place, people who may have the names of familiar people but might not look like them (or vice versa), and settings that shift for no identifiable reason. Forster maintains the appearance of a linear narrative by linking his scenes visually, so that it may appear that a characters sees himself outside a window, or one shot digitally blends in with another shot. One scene, of Ewan McGregor chasing Ryan Gosling (seen above) down a seemingly endless spiral staircase recalls The Believer, with Gosling running up a staircase with no end. One of the other interesting visual touches is the motif of twins and even triplets who occassionally appear in some shots in the background, as well as the use of some of the supporting actors in more than one role. Stay may remind some of the writings of Borges, where identities are not always certain, and there is sometimes no difference between dreams and reality.

A piece by Jason Kaleko, commented on by Kim Voynar at Cinematical discusses the lack of originality in Hollywood films. The usual suspects, Hollywood producers and the desired young audience, are declared guilty again. What passes for film criticism in most mainstream outlets has been less than helpful. One could also blame those optimistic executives at Fox who thought there was an audience for a 50 million dollar art film, forgetting that the stars of Star Wars and The Ring were the movies themselves, not Ewan McGregor or Naomi Watts.

I am glad that chances were taken, and Stay was made. Those few times a big budget Hollywood production goes against the grain of sequels, remakes and comic book adaptations need to be appreciated, though hopefully not in retrospect.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:35 AM

August 21, 2006

The Friz Freleng Blog-a-thon: Hi Diddle Diddle

Andrew L. Stone - 1943
Animated sequences by Friz Freleng
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

Credited to "Leon Schlesinger Productions", Friz Freleng's work on Hi Diddle Diddle has something of the spirit, if not the look of his work with Warner Brothers. The film it is a part of is a cute, if dated, farce by Andrew Stone that in recent years has been championed by Quentin Tarantino. There are a few chuckles to be had. This is one of those comedies that must have seemed funnier in conception than in actual execution. Freleng's work is first seen in the title sequence involving a lovebird with a roving eye. The stills featured here are from the last two minutes of this 72 minute film.

One of the film's several running gags involves Pola Negri as a less than talented opera singer who specializes in Wagner. In the final scene, Negri, Billie Burke, June Havoc and others have joined in a chorus from "Tannhauser". Negri's husband, Adolph Menjou (seen above) looks at the cacophony with resignation, while the characters painted on the wall take on life, and flee in horror.

While the howling pups look similar to those in a Warner Brothers' cartoon of the same era, the humans, such as the character below could have been refugees from something out of the Van Beuren Studios of the Thirties. While the animated sequence is essentially a work for hire, it is appropriate that the animator responsible was the person who had the longest tenure at Termite Terrace. If Freleng's work never was a distinctive as the work of Tex Avery with its play on words, Frank Tashlin's spoofs of Hollywood or Chuck Jones' reducing the cartoon to simplicity and nearly abstract backgrounds, one could almost always count on some manner of silliness for its own sake such as Bugs and Yosemite Sam taking a moment to demonstrate their dancing ability.

That the animated sequences were considered the high point of Hi Diddle Diddle at the time of release is suggested by this excerpt from the New York Times' review from September 24, 1943: "Mr. Stone has demonstrated his craftsmanship heretofore, so there's no doubting that he started out with an idea this time, one which was to result in a new type of screwball comedy. But there is no telling what he had in mind from "Hi Diddle Diddle." The film has a novel introduction, beginning with a cartoon sequence and ending on an even more unusual cartoon note."

For more celebrations of Friz Freleng's 100th birthday, check out the links at Hell on Frisco Bay.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM | Comments (3)

August 19, 2006

The Friz Freleng Blog-a-thon: A Pictorial Preview

This Monday will be devoted to the Friz Freleng Blog-a-thon as proposed by Brian Darr of Hell on Frisco Bay. Below are some images from "The Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 2" from the animator also known as I. Freleng.

Little Red Riding Rabbit - 1944

Bugs Bunny Rides Again - 1948

Hyde and Hare - 1955

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:24 PM | Comments (1)

August 18, 2006

The Wedding Party

Brian De Palma, Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe - 1969
Troma Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In part because of the entries written by Girish on his blog, and because I like to be a completist with some filmmakers, I finally saw Brian De Palma's debut feature. Filmed in 1964, with a copyright dated 1966, the film did not receive theatrical play until the release of Greetings, De Palma's first film to get significant distribution following its December 1968 opening. The evolution of Brian De Palma will probably be better evaluated by the scheduled DVD release of his first solo directorial credit, Murder a la Mod from 1968.

What importance The Wedding Party has is largely based on its being the first film for several participants in the cast. Cast primarily with actors and friends from Sarah Lawrence College, the film includes Jill Clayburgh, as well as three actors who would collaborate several more times with De Palma - Jennifer Salt, and William Finley, seen above to the left of Charles Pfluger and future De Palma star Robert De Niro. Had none of the actors or the co-writer/director gone to greater acclaim, The Wedding Party would probably be another forgotten student movie.

This is not to say that the film is bad or unwatchable. The Wedding Party is the kind of cute farce that students from the Sixties would make primarily for an audience of their peers. Having been an NYU film student at the end of the decade, I speak from experience. De Palma's taste for satire and sight gags would be developed in future films. The rich white people teased gently here would be treated more savagely in films like Greetings and Hi, Mom. Some of the visual humor is inspired, if not by silent films, then second-hand by Godard, Truffaut and quite probably, Richard Lester.

De Palma has become something of the Rodney Dangerfield among the so-called Film Generation directors. Instead of giving his films fair evaluations, De Palma has too frequently been written off for imitating Alfred Hitchcock. I have to wonder why Claude Chabrol is not held to the same standard, especially as his films have become increasingly formulaic. More than any other filmmaker from the Nouvelle Vague, Chabrol has made films that are similar to the French "Cinema of Quality" that Cahiers du Cinema had rebelled against fifty years ago. De Palma, at his best, including the maligned Femme Fatale, still manages to take his narrative into unexpected places, often with startling images. While Chabrol sometimes is too refined for his own good, De Palma is unafraid to shock, jolt and above all, entertain.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:00 AM | Comments (1)

August 16, 2006

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Doppelganger Double Feature

Seance/Korei
Kiyoshi Kurosawa - 2000
Home Vision Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Doppelganger/Dopperugenga
Kiyoshi Kurosawa - 2003
Tartan Video Region 1 DVD

The recent release of the American version of Pulse inspired me to catch up on a couple more films by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. As it turned out, Seance was based on the novel Seance on a Wet Afternoon, filmed in 1964 by Bryan Forbes. Kurosawa's film isn't so much a remake as it is a twisted reworking of key plot elements. While Kurosawa admits to no direct literary or filmic influences for Doppelganger, the film shares with Dostoevsky the notion of a "twin" who appears to create havoc on one's life. As it progresses, Doppelganger takes on the resemblance to some of the films of Brian De Palma. While Kurosawa is unable to sustain a comic mood for more than a few seconds, he is consciously aiming for a dark comedy with moments of slapstick. What is also shared with De Palma includes several scenes using split screens, and De Palma's thematic obsession with twins or doubles. Seance also has a De Palma connection by having Koji Yakusho play a sound recordist, a job somewhat similar to that of John Travolta in De Palma's Blow Out.

Both of Kurosawa's films here begin similarly with an explanation of doppelgangers including the explanation that one who sees their "twin" will die soon. At its best Seance is like a contemporary version of the kind of horror films produced by Val Lewton in the Forties. Kurosawa creates a sense of creepiness and unease with lights, sound, wind and those unknown horrors that are just outside the camera frame, if not behind a door or under a blanket. Showing the ghosts, faceless people who suddenly appear and disappear at will, undermines the mood of Seance, perhaps the fallout of viewing Japanese and American versions of The Ring, The Grudge and Dark Water. The J-Horror ghost, especially the screaming kid, has quickly become another film cliche. The appearance of doppelgangers aside, Seance maintains its suspense as several coincidences add up to tragedy, and a middle-aged couple who think of themselves as ordinary find themselves in an extraordinary situation made worse by a every attempt to outguess fate.

Doppelganger is unusual in that Kurosawa is in a more playful mood, and the usually somber Yakusho even cracks a smile as his character's mischievous alter ego. The doubles in Doppelganger are twins who are opposite selves. In some ways, Doppelganger could be seen as having Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde share the same space. The film is also a critique of how scientific altruism and a demand for perfection get corrupted by capitalism. The split screen is sometimes used to show Yakusho as the twins in two different places at once, while at other times the technique indicates the character's sense of split personality. While the narrative goes into unexpected directions when Yakasho's scientist and his double co-exist in an uneasy truce, Kurosawa is by nature too serious even for the blackest of comedies. Displaying humor in brutality and violence takes a special talent that eludes this Kurosawa. No matter how funny Kurosawa tries to be, it's as if he were on automatic pilot to make the kind of serious-minded horror films that first gained him attention. Another critic mentioned that Doppelganger might represent Kurosawa's conflicts of his demands as an artist with the demands of Japan's film industry. If the conclusion of Doppelganger is any indication, it can be seen as symbolic of someone who creates and then destroys his own art because of the impossibility of offering it to the public on the artist's own terms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:51 PM | Comments (3)

August 14, 2006

Beautiful Boxer

Ekachai Uekrongtham - 2003
TLA Releasing Region 1 DVD

I've been watching more Thai films in anticipation of a possible extended visit to Thailand. One side advantage of Beautiful Boxer is that it was largely filmed where I will be staying, in Chiang Mai. My partner, who has spent time there has verified how much the film is accurate in showing life in Thailand based on her Chiang Mai experience. One major point worth noting is seeing the difference in a society where attitudes are informed by Buddhism, especially in the attitude towards transexuals.

The film is based on the true story of Parinya Charoenphol, also known as Nong Toom. Seen in the still above in various phases of her life, the film follows Toom's life from a female-identified boy through his career as boxer, ending with sexual reasignment surgery. While I do not know enough Thai to recognize the word used to describe Toom, and it is not the pejorative "kathoey", the English word used, transvestite, is certainly inaccurate to describe a man who desires to be a woman, rather than one who dresses for sexual pleasure. The only other glaring fault to this film is the overuse and sometime inappropriate use of graduated colored filters, as if no one trusted that the Thai countryside looks beautiful enough.

The film is neither as lurid nor as exploitive as its subject matter might suggest. Uekrongtham gives equal time to the Boxer as he does to the Beautiful. A good portion of the film is devoted to showing Toom's training in Thai boxing. One scene showing an advanced class in training is balletic, similar in some ways to capoeira, martial arts as dance. That Toom grows and evolves with the support of family and friends, and transitioned as a teenager, is a more positive presentation of a transgendered person on film than appears in most Western films. The film is critical of the show business aspects of sports, and to some extent the violence of boxing, as well as some of the attitudes shown to transexuals and "ladyboys". The scene showing Toom's father expressing concern prior to the sexual reasignment surgery may be one of the best moments in a movie to illustrate "family values".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:30 PM | Comments (3)

August 13, 2006

Otto Preminger: A Girl in Trouble is a Film Noir Thing

Whirlpool
Otto Preminger - 1949
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Bunny Lake is Missing
Otto Preminger - 1965
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

" . . . read masses of noir novels and see film noirs in abundance. As long as you only do your killing in your imagination, we'll be able to to sleep in peace. It's the blessing I wish for us all."
Marcel Duhamel from the preface for A Panorama of American Film Noir by Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton.

I've been reading Borde and Chaumeton's book on Film Noir. Duhamel published crime novels as part under the banner of La Serie Noire (Series Black). While the literary roots of film noir are explored, I had to think of the other color, yellow, and how much of what Borde and Chaumeton write could easily be applied to Giallo, both in print and on the screen. The relationship between noir and giallo has yet to be fully explored. It would be facile to say that giallo is a less polite version of noir, a more obvious display of noir's sex and violence. Neither of the Preminger films that I saw could be defined as giallo, but some of the more lurid aspects to Whirlpool and especially Bunny Lake is Missing suggest these films could be viewed as transitional links.

Both films are about women in peril, in situations that defy rational explanation. Both women are also made to doubt their sanity by both well-meaning and not so well-meaning men. While Whirlpool is the more conventional film, from Guy Endore's novel, Methinks a Lady, an examination of Endore's bibliography suggests a greater interest in sex and horror than could be accommodated in an American film in the late Forties. The narrative of the "crazy" young woman would be explored by such giallo filmmakers as Mario Bava and Sergio Martino. Both of Preminger's films have Gene Tierney and Carol Lynley as the victims of men who are revealed as crazier than is alleged of either woman. In the Preminger films, as is often the case in giallo, the plot hinges on a psycho-sexual secret.

Being the Forties, one of gorier parts of Whirlpool is described, leaving its vividness up to imagination of the audience. In the more open Sixties, Preminger could openly mention abortion and hint at incest. The scene of a doll set on fire in Bunny Lake is not far removed from Dario Argento's troubled characters haunted by childhood trauma. Sado-masochism, a frequent staple of giallo, is also clearly suggested in Bunny Lake by the whip wielding Noel Coward. Bringing things to a sort of circle, it should be noted that De Sade was the subject of a book by Guy Endore. In the Preminger films, like the giallo films, the villain isn't just crazy, he's "let's lock the door and throw away the key" nuts.

Because of the crumbling restrictions of the Production Code, it may be that Preminger took on Bunny Lake not only to make a smaller film in the midst of his larger scale works of the Sixties, but also to make the kind of film he could not make in the Forties during the period between Laura and Angel Face. A tentative connection to horror films is made by the inclusion of the British invasion band, The Zombies, most famous for their song, which would have been fitting for Bunny Lake, "She's Not There". What is interesting about Bunny Lake is that there is what could be described as a subjective breakdown of the narrative during the scene of adults playing childrens' game such as "Hide and Seek". The transition is initially jarring. At the same time the scene anticipates some of the subjectivity that would appear in giallo films which would reflect the disoriented and disorienting worlds of villains and victims. Preminger, unlike someone like Argento, would still have one foot in the "real" world, returning within a few minutes to a more objective view. This scene, plus the explanatory scene that precedes it are not only key to Preminger's film, but suggest that Bunny Lake is Missing could be re-examined as a transitional link. Preminger may have been reworking Film Noir for a post-Psycho audience, but Bunny Lake also contains some of the seeds that would grow wildly, colorfully, and often with little inhibition, in Giallo.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:00 AM

August 11, 2006

Two by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Mysterious Object at Noon/Dokfa nai meuman
Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2000
Plexifilm Region 0 DVD

Tropical Malady/Sud Pralad
Apichatpong Weerasethakul - 2004
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

This Saturday, I will be initiating the first of several films presented at the Miami Beach Cinematheque in conjunction with "Coffee, Coffee and More Coffee". If there are readers of this blog in the Miami metro area, I hope you come by and say hello. Dana Keith, director of the cinematheque will also offer free coffee.

* * * * * *

Of the handful of Thai filmmakers known in the west, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is probably the most acclaimed and, for me, the most difficult to fully understand. Unlike Pen-Ek Ratanaruang or Wisit Sasanatieng, Weerasethakul is not interested making films with obvious narrative structures. The two films currently available on DVD are the work of someone more interested in observing human activity from a distance. There is a narrative of sorts in both films, but of the sort that requires the audience to look and listen, essentially demanding more than passive viewing.

It is not surprising that Weersethakul's films are not popular in his native Thailand, where horror movies frequently rule the box office. With his company Kick the Machine, Weerasethkul and other like-minded film-makers are exploring ways to redefine the concept of Thai cinema, both looking toward the future and honoring the past. Weerasethkul's films are specifically about being Thai, with a narrative structure that is indirect, seemingly meandering.

Weerasethakul has stated that Mysterious Object at Noon was inspired by the Surrealists' "Exquisite Corpse". Weerasethakul bills himself as a story editor rather than a director on this film. Several people narrate a story about a young boy, elaborating on different parts of the story or the characters. The film is not quite a documentary as much as it could called an assemblage of different narrators alternating with observations of life in the Thai countryside. While the first woman who begins the story needs to be prodded, the film ends with children who enthusiastically add detail on top of detail.

The more widely seen Tropical Malady is somewhat more conventional, but also achieves direction by indirection. There is an early scene where one of the characters, Tong, is flirting with a young woman on a bus. From there the film emphasises the soldier Keng's flirtatious pursuit of Tong. Weerasethakul wanders between scenes of Keng wandering through Bangkok and Tong with his country neighbors. Most of the first half of the film takes place during the day, ending with Tong and Keng kissing each other's hands and Tong seen disappearing into the night. This ending provides a kind of seque to the second half which takes place almost entirely at night. Weerashethkul uses Thai folklore as a beginning point with Keng hunting, or being hunted by, a tiger that may have the spirit of Tong. The second half also owes some of its visual style to Henri Rousseau with its people and creatures barely seen peeking out of the jungle, while Weerasethakul also cites Jacques Tourneur. In spite of the idiodsyncratic and personal nature of Weerasethakul's storytelling, Tropical Malady is understood more on an intuitive than intellectual level.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:39 AM

August 09, 2006

Three by Daniel Burman

Waiting for the Messiah/Esperando al Mesias
Daniel Burman - 2000
TLA Releasing Region 1 DVD

Every Stewardess goes to Heaven/Todas Las Azafatas van al Cielo
Daniel Burman - 2002
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Lost Embrace/El Abrazo Partido
Daniel Burman - 2004
New Yorker Films Region 1 DVD

In the most recent issue of "Film Comment" is an article on the films of Daniel Burman. I had a couple of his films in my rental queue and quickly hiked them up to the top. The most immediate theme to emerge is that of the meaning of personal identity, in particular what it means to be Argentinian. Messiah and to a lesser extent, Lost Embrace, also explore what it means to be Jewish in Argentina, with both starring Daniel Hendler as a young man named Ariel, though as two different characters in the two films.

It is worth noting that while Buenos Aires has the largest Jewish community in Latin America, significant acts of anti-Semitism have also occurred there, including the bombing of a community center in 1994. I bring this up only because, with the main exception of something like Schindler's List, Jewish identity is closeted in Hollywood entertainment. When someone is clearly identified as Jewish, it is primarily for comic effect. Not that Burman's films are humorless, which is certainly not the case, but his characters feel more at ease about mentioning their Jewish identity than anyone on "Seinfeld". One of the funniest lines in Waiting for the Messiah is when Ariel thinks he has misunderstood a new female acquaintance and asks himself if she said she was "Goy or gay?"

In one way or another, Burman's characters have been knocked off-kilter by a traumatic event. Waiting for the Messiah takes place against economic crisis in Argentina, with a former banker suddenly becoming homeless, and others looking to survive as best as possible. Stewardess is initially about a doctor who finds his existence meaningless following the death of his wife. The characters find themselves stranded in a remote town due to threats of "terrorists". Ariel in Lost Embrace is conflicted about the disappearance of his father soon after his birth, and the father's reappearance over twenty years later. While Stewardess has a more conventionally happy ending following its melancholy beginning, the Messiah and Lost Embrace conclude with Ariel in a tentative peace with himself.

The idea of displacement and alienation is also presented in the environment. Messiah takes place during the Christmas holiday season while Ariel Goldstein and family celebrate Hannukah. Stewardess takes place in Ushuaia, cold and remote. Lost Embrace primarily takes place in a small shopping mall standing for multicultural Buenos Aires.

Hopefully someone will be able to interview Burman in depth about his filmic influences. Not only is the title similar to Fassbinder's Mother Kusters goes to Heaven, but the film ends with the same manic samba used in Water Drops on Burning Rocks, Tony Holiday singing in Francois Ozon's film, while Burman uses Rafaella Carra. Burman seems to have an afinity for Italian cinema with the casting of Stefania Sandrelli in Waiting for the Messiah, while Lost Embrace includes a clip from the DeSica tearjearker, Sunflower.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:10 PM

August 05, 2006

My Late Mario Bava Birthday Celebration

Knives of the Avenger/I Coltelli del Vendicatore
Mario Bava - 1966
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Mario Bava: Maestro of the Macabre
Garry S. Grant - 2000
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In anticipation of Tim Lucas's book on Mario Bava, I've made a point of seeing as many films as possible. Like most people familiar with Bava's work, I prefer his horror films, especially Black Sunday and The Girl who knew Too Much. In filling in the gaps, I even took in a late night cable showing of Roy Colt and Winchester Jack, Bava's one attempt at making a Western.

I found Knives of the Avenger a bit more rewarding. I don't know how much Bava's heart was into making a Viking film, but certainly one can see his hand in the framing and composition. Some of the costuming made me think of a furry version of the peplum, the sword and sandal genre that was popular in the early Sixties. The story could have easily been remade as a Western, with elements that strongly recall Shane. Certainly the mask Cameron Mitchell wears has similarities to the mask forced on Barbara Steele in Black Sunday, a similarity Bava emphasises in a scene of Mitchell raping Viking queen Elissa Pichelli. Without the mask, Mitchell is a bit distracting to look at with his dyed blond hair contrasting against his dark stubble filled jaw. What I did like about Knives of the Avenger is that it is a reminder of a time when adventure films that took place in a distant past were a common staple of filmgoing. If Bava was not overly concerned with the story, the film is filled with several loving gazes at the sea, something of a visual continuation from Whip and the Body.

The documentary on Bava is somewhat worthwhile as an overview of Bava's career. Part of the hour is wasted on proving how much Alien was influenced by Planet of the Vampires and how Friday the 13th is a remake of Bay of Blood. I would have prefered to see some example of Bava's work as a cinematographer to get an idea of stylistic similarities between his work for others and for himself. Roberto Rossellini and Raoul Walsh are mentioned, but not the films (La Nave Bianca and Esther and the King respectively) that Bava filmed. There are no clips from Bava's non-horror films, but also no clips from Blood and Black Lace, Whip and the Body or the little seen Rabid Dogs. Maybe the Bava documentary I would ideally like to see is too specialized but it would includes clips that illustrate Bava's sense of composition and use of color to demonstrate his artistry. In terms of Bava's playful side, the anecdotes are cute, but Bava's humor is best seen in the end of the Italian version of Black Sabbath. The film concludes with a shot of Boris Karloff, seen in a medium shot, riding his horse through the woods. The camera pulls back to reveal how the shot is actually done, an example of one of cinema's magicians revealing how he does one of his tricks.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:16 PM | Comments (2)

August 03, 2006

Pretty Poison

Noel Black - 1968
Second Sight Region 2 DVD

Back in 1968 when Pretty Poison was originally released, no less than Pauline Kael compared Noel Black's directorial debut to that of Orson Welles for Citizen Kane. It is worth mentioning that Black's short film, Skaterdater not only won the Golden Palm at Cannes in 1966, but that Black also won a Technical Grand Prize, along with Orson Welles for Chimes at Midnight. For all of his troubles, Orson Welles managed to make several memorable, and even great films, over the course of his career. For Noel Black, one of the first film school grads to become a Hollywood director, he would never again get the critical kudos of Pretty Poison. To the best of my knowledge, the only critical examination of Black's films was the one I wrote for the magazine, "The Velvet Light Trap", published in 1974. Six years after the release of Pretty Poison, Black's following films, Cover Me Babe and Jennifer on my Mind came and went while Black was eclipsed by newer film school grads including Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and Steven Spielberg.

While Noel Black managed to work fairly consistently, primarily in television, Pretty Poison has managed to be a venerated, if little seen, film. The most recent screenings that I'm aware of were in Los Angeles, sometimes with Black in attendance. Twentieth Century Fox, which bungled the release of the original film, recognized that there was some kind of cult value and produced a made for television remake in 1996. It has taken until just recently for someone at Fox to figure out that there would be interest enough in the original film to warrant a DVD release in the U.S. The British DVD may still be the choice of serious film scholars primarily because it also contains commentary by Black with German film scholar Robert Fischer.

For those unfamiliar with Pretty Poison, it is essentially the story of a young man, recently released from a mental institution, who still has an overly active imagination. A young woman he meets by chance seems entranced by his imagined career as a spy until she finds herself able to manipulate her lover to fulfill her own murderous fantasies. One can argue that Anthony Perkins and Tuesday Weld, while effective in their roles, were too old. The film still intrigues, especially the title sequence with the combination of music by John Philip Sousa and images of the American flag and girls with guns, a high school marching band. The pretty poison of the title refers most obviously to Tuesday Weld's character, seen marching in the title sequence, but also to the red chemicals spilled into the river from the factory where Anthony Perkins works. Pretty Poison could be seen as a parable about the United States in the late Sixties and the violence we do to ourselves, each other and to nature.

The commentary is worth listening to in terms of understanding how the film was developed and filmed, as well as what aspects Black will take credit for or credit others. Fischer, in turn, has an eye for the possible influence Pretty Poison may have had on other filmmakers, especially David Lynch. The influence, and the avoidance of imitation, of Alfred Hitchcock is discussed at several points. I should note that when I first met Noel Black, he told me of his preference for Hitchcock's British films. Even though Pretty Poison is not the earth-shaking debut on par with Citizen Kane, it is still a marvel of economical story-telling. The narrative concerns are still in some ways more meaningful following constant news stories of kids with guns. If for no other reason, Pretty Poison is worth viewing or re-viewing for the image of Tuesday Weld and her killer smile.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:54 AM | Comments (2)

July 30, 2006

Two Westerns by William Wellman

Yellow Sky
William A. Wellman - 1948
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Track of the Cat
William A. Wellman - 1954
Paramount Region 1 DVD

On the basis of Yellow Sky and Track of the Cat, one could argue that William Wellman was a closet formalist. Certainly not a consistent filmmaker in his visual compositions like Ozu or Dreyer, but there are moments where the care within the frame are obvious. This care about purely visual concerns is what distinguishes Track of the Cat, one of the few times Wellman made a film with almost total freedom. With the exception of the characters' skin and Robert Mitchum's red jacket, the film was deliberately made to appear shot in black and white.

Yellow Sky and Track of the Cat are linked by both being films about a small group of people in an isolated setting. Nature proves to be almost overwhelming. Yellow Sky begins with Gregory Peck and his outlaw gang riding, then walking, eventually crawling across almost sixty miles of desert, a vast area that appears white on the screen. In Track of the Cat, Robert Mitchum rides through snow covered mountains with trees providing some sense of perspective and space, and fog disguising the same area. House and home are the same in the two films, providing refuge, if not full protection, from the anarchy of nature and the outside world.

William Wellman could also be said to explore the nature of masculinity. In Yellow Sky, Peck's gang stops at a saloon where they longingly admire a woman in the painting behind the bar. The lone woman in the film, Anne Baxter, becomes an object of the men's desire, pursued in manners both courtly and crude. Richard Widmark, with the fitting name of Dude, uses his gentlemanly dress to disguise his venality. John Russell attempts to force himself on Baxter. Peck even blames the way the men act on Baxter, who through most of the film goes by the nickname of Mike. The desire for female company is one of several manifestations of a kind of animal hunger by gang members. During the bar scene, the oversized Walrus fills his canteen with whiskey only to find himself wanting to trade it for much needed water while crossing the desert. Throughout the film, Peck and Widmark are at odds about the gold in an abandoned mine, with Widmark finally undone by his greed.

Track of the Cat is a relatively experimental film for a Hollywood production. Not only did Wellman work with an extremely limited choice of colors, but he also never shows the cat, actually a mountain cougar, from the title. That decision may have been based on Wellman's respect for the novel by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. Filming an actual cougar or panther would reduce the story to its most literal elements, while Wellman was hoping to create a filmic equivalent to Clark's psychological terror and symbolism. In Track of the Cat, the house may be a refuge from nature, but the conflicted family within, particularly matriarch Beulah Bondi, are people one wants to escape from. Considering the destruction of the family, the ending of Track of the Cat is too pat for the previous scenes of death and conflict. The effect is one of a director who has the opportunity to make his most meaningful, personal statement on film, only to ultimately show distrust either of the audience, or even worse, distrust of himself.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:21 PM

July 27, 2006

Invasion of the Cine-oids: A Double Feature

Creation of the Humanoids
Wesley E. Barry - 1962
Dark Sky Films Region 1 DVD

Sins of the Fleshapoids
Michael Kuchar - 1965
Other Cinema Region 1 DVD

There is that old joke stating that the future isn't what it use to be. These two flashbacks from the Sixties express concerns that would appear in later, far more costly films. An extremely low budget film and its no budget parody, both far lessed polished than Blade Runner prove a lot more fun than I, Robot. The two films begin with a premise of taking place in a post-apocalyptic future, with human-like robots programmed to serve humans. The sets are sparse, there are usually no more than five people on-screen at once, the acting uneven, yet the films are triumphs of imagination over limited resources.

Creation is a parable about Kennedy era prejudice as well as a thriller about some very human -like robots on the loose. One can laugh at the examples of early robot technology, guys in awkward cardboard costumes flailing their arms. Some of the dialogue can be atrocious - a future cop is told to leave by the politically influential hero with the words: "Beat it before you don't have a beat to beat."
Some of the earnestness expressed in the film reminded me of Ed Wood, Jr. at his most grandiose, and the films cast includes Dudley Manlove, Eros from Plan Nine from Outer Space. Creation manages to be both ridiculous and sublime, often simultaneously, in its view of what it means to be a human being.

The film also is one of the last films by several notable film veterans. Director Wesley Barry began as a child actor in the silent era. Cinematographer Hal Mohr has only two more films before he finally retired. This was also the second to last film for make-up artist Jack Pierce, most famous for the creating the look of the Universal monsters of the Thirties. Mohr should have known better than to photograph several of the actors looking straight up their noses in close-up. What makes Creation of the Humanoids better than some similar films with better casts and budgets is the sense of imagination and plot twists in one very economical package.

Mike Kuchar's Sins of the Fleshapoids takes some of the same ideas about robots with human feelings and goes in its own hilarious tangents. The film begins with actor/narrator Bob Cowan announcing off-screen, "It is a million years in the future!". This is a future where robot slaves take care of their human masters, and Clark bars, Wise potato chips and Carvel ice cream cones are still available. Two of the robots rebel and make love - their hands touch, and the screen is ablaze with hand drawn bolts of electricity. While the film is primarily the work of Mike Kuchar, twin George contributed a scene of Kuchar star Donna Kerness, seen above, admiring her beauty. The robot love comes with a hilarious conclusion that Hollywood would never have touched forty years ago. Worthy of admiration are the wall paintings, done by Mike Kuchar, in a style that can only be described as Greco-Roman-Alien.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:17 AM

July 23, 2006

Felicity

John D. Lamond - 1979
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

Even without listening to the commentary track for Felicity, director John Lamond clearly identifies his source of inspiration. Glory Annen is seen with two books from Just Jaeckin's library, The Story of O and Emmanuelle. Another literary reference is Erica Jong's Fear of Flying. A scene of Felicity with another school girl recalls the erotic photography of David Hamilton. I was unfamiliar with Felicity prior to seeing the DVD, but ultimately not surprised that the film enjoyed life as a staple on Cinemax about twenty years ago.

Emmanuelle may have also inspired the choice to have this story of a young woman's coming of age take place in Hong Kong. By some standards this is vanilla erotica that is not too different from the stuff piped on cable nowadays except that none of the performers have been nipped or tucked. Toothy, chipmunk cheeked Glory Annen would probably not be considered star material by contemporary standards. Other reminders of the film made in a totally different era are a total disregard for anything resembling "safe sex", and even more shocking, a shot of a man smoking on an airplane.

Compared to the films of Russ Meyer or Radley Metzger, Felicity is a light-weight trifle with no greater ambition than to be entertainment at the drive-in. It's not the kind of film meant for serious analysis nor should it be. The commentary by Lamond and Annen virtually makes the film seem like a filmed holiday, with an emphasis, in their words, on "innocent fun".

For those who prefer something a bit darker and kinkier, Severin Films is promising two films from the industrious Jesus Franco and his muse, Lina Romay.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:44 PM

July 21, 2006

Two films by Francesco Maselli

Open Letter to the Evening News/Lettera Aperta a un Giornale della Sera
Francesco Maselli - 1970
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Fragments of the Twentieth Century/Frammenti di Novecento
Francesco Maselli - 2005
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Francesco Maselli is yet another forgotten Italian filmmaker re-introduced by NoShame. A former assistant and writer for Antonioni, Maselli is represented here by the film that undid a promising career and with a subjective, autobiographical look at his life from his youth through the late Sixties. While I am not familiar with Maselli's other films, what has been written about them suggests that the two DVDs available are anomalies, and may serve better as supplements to understanding Maselli's life and career as well as adding to the cultural history of Italy.

Open Letter to the Evening News stands in sharp contrast to Maselli's previous film, the English language comedy A Fine Pair with Rock Hudson and occassional Maselli muse, Claudia Cardinale. The film is shot on deliberately over-exposed 16mm, with amateurish framing to create a cinema verite look. Most of the film consists of conversations between a group of friends, men who came of age during World War II who identify as Communists. It should be noted that their wives and mistresses all are younger. For these men, nothing in their lives matches the excitement they had as members of the resistance. As a joke, and as a way of protesting the war in Viet-Nam, the men send a letter to a newspaper stating that they will go to North Viet-Nam to fight the U.S. The letter is published and taken seriously by other leftist groups and temporarily by the Viet-Nam government. The men debate the choice between living their lives as professionals and intellectuals in Italy, or actually taking up arms in the name of peace.

While a bit more topical, Maselli's film fits in with the zeitgeist of films by Bertolucci and Bellochio from the Sixties. Unlike films like Partner and China is Near, Maselli's men are all a generation or so older. Not only are these men who dream of being boys again, but their closest manisfestation is to create an impromtu game of "kick the can".

Fragments of the Twentieth Century features Maselli (seen above) looking back at a life that constantly intersected with some of the top artists during a forty year span. The genesis of this film was the discovery of a home movie featuring Maselli as a child with his godfather, Luigi Pirandello. Maselli discusses growing up with a family of anti-Fascist intellectuals and artists in his home surrounded by great pieces of modern Italian art. While the names of many of the artists may not be familiar, the paintings and sculpture are all museum worthy. For film scholars, Maselli describes his first encounter with Michelangelo Antonioni, and has interviews with several of the actresses he has worked with. In addition to Cardinale, there is a brief discussion of Maselli's working methods with a still beautiful Virna Lisi. Also of interest is an interview with Betsy Blair highlighting the blacklisted Hollywood community in Paris.

One gets another glimpse of Maselli's artistry with a montage of his photographs. Hopefully we will be able to see a few more of Maselli's films in the near future to gain a better view of this relatively unknown filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:42 PM

July 10, 2006

Getting Hammered with Oliver Reed

Curse of the Werewolf
Terence Fisher - 1961
Universal Region 1 DVD

Night Creatures
Peter Graham Scott - 1962
Universal Region 1 DVD

Paranoiac
Freddie Francis - 1963
Universal Region 1 DVD

In an early scene in Curse of the Werewolf, 18th Century Spanish nobleman Anthony Dawson is hosting a party for his new bride, with his fellow noblemen as guests. The animality of these men is suggested by their behavior towards the begger that appears naively looking for a handout. Elements of this scene made me wonder if it had been a source of inspiration for Neil Jordan and Angela Carter's film, Company of Wolves in which the dinner guests turn into wolves before running off into the forest. Almost as much as in Carter's short stories, Curse of the Werewolf keeps its Freudian themes of sexuality and primal urges at a continual boil near the surface.

More clear in retrospect is that Oliver Reed's performance, at least briefly, was Hammer Studios' attempt at combining horror with a kind of James Dean-Marlon Brando hipness factor. Near the end of the film when Reed is in full werewolf make-up, wearing a ripped shirt, I was ready to hear him bellow, "Stella!". One could argue that I was a Teenage Werewolf got there first, but Oliver Reed, more than Michael Landon, nailed the inarticulate rage of Brando and Dean within the context of a horror movie, a kind of "Monster without a Cause".

Reed probably didn't help himself with his constant drinking, fighting and belligerant attitude, but he was only in one other truly good film during his time with Hammer. As the leader of a biker gang in Joseph Losey's The Damned, Reed anticipates the outlaw antics of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. Even though he is the title character, Reed doesn't appear in Curse of the Werewolf until the halfway point. It was his performance that dominates the film and suggested that Reed was capable of more than being a supporting player. Even though the pacing gets a bit sluggish at times, Curse of the Werewolf also manages to be one of the few Hammer films that actually holds up to multiple viewings with its handsome use of color and set design, to the inevitable, tragic ending.

Night Creatures is actually one of Hammer's few non-Horror films from the early Sixties, and primarily a vehicle for Hammer mainstay Peter Cushing. The original title, Captain Clegg had no commercial value for American audiences. The basic narrative, about 18th Century smugglers in the south of England, was also used in Disney's Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. Reed has a supporting role as a smuggler in love with Yvonne Romain. Reed is often called to appear earnest when he would be more comfortable glaring at someone with his patented smirk. It should be noted that publicity photos to the contrary, while Reed and Romain are both in Curse of the Werewolf, they never share the screen as Romain plays Reed's mother, and dies soon after his birth.

Paranoiac has a Psycho inspired title, family plots, and seemed written with Reed in mind. Not only is Reed the title character, but in addition to sneering and smirking his way through the film, he declares his love of alchohol. A better cinematographer than director, Freddie Francis was creative with the atmospheric imagery, particularly the shot above of Reed seen from the point of view of his drowned victim. The various resolutions to the lunacy of Paranoiac are not unexpected. As silly as the film gets, the ending is still satisfying, similar to the satisfaction of a really good cheeseburger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:30 PM

July 09, 2006

Roma Citta Libera

La Notte Porta Consiglio/Rome Free City
Marcello Pagliero - 1946
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

The original title to this film, translated as "The Night Brings Wisdom", is more accurate than the title that suggests another neo-realist drama. The title is an obvious nod to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City. Marcello Pagliero's film is his tribute to Rene Clair, and is closer in spirit to such films as The Fantastic Night or After Hours. The story originated from screenwriter Ennio Flaiano and elements of Rome Citta Libera anticipate his early collaborations with Federico Fellini.

Taking place over the course of one night, the film portrays life in the margins of post-World War II Rome. Valentina Cortese, seen above trying to stay within the straight and narrow path of eking out an existence as a typist, compares her situation with Marisa Merlini, who finds ways to augment her earnings as a nightclub singer. The films other characters are similarly down if not out, usually looking for the next break or scam in order to get by. The narrative is held together by a pearl necklace that changes hands going from character to character while the film explores night in a more humble section of Rome.

One of the several nameless characters is portrayed by Vittoria De Sica, appearing as a seemingly delusional drunk in a shabby tuxedo. With his sense of grandeur and nobility, De Sica's appearance here makes for a fitting companion piece to his performance as the conman who discovers his greater self in Rossellini's General Della Rovera. His performance here is a reminder that at 44, De Sica still had his matinee idol looks even while making films like Shoeshine.

The DVD includes an interview with assistant director Luigi Fillipo D'Amico who candidly admits to family connections in what was one of his first, if not the first film assignments. D'Amico is the nephew of the prolific co-writer, Suso Cecchi D'Amico. There is also a brief interview with Italian film historian Oreste DeFornari.

Without putting too fine a point on it, the value of Roma Citta Libera is as a newly available film showcasing the above mentioned talents, plus that of co-writer Cesare Zavattini, cinematographer Aldo Tonti and composer Nino Rota. While not a rediscovered masterpiece, this is a film that helps fill a missing piece in the overall history of Italian cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:59 PM | Comments (1)

June 30, 2006

100 Year Old Mann

Railroaded
Anthony Mann - 1947
Kino Film Region 1 DVD

T-Men
Anthony Mann - 1947
VCI Entertainment Region 1 DVD

"1947 . . . is important for me . . . it marks my first critical and commercial success." - Anthony Mann
from Anthony Mann by Jeanine Basinger

As my way of celebrating the 100th birthday of Anthony Mann I finally got around to seeing two of Mann's noir films. I've seen all of the James Stewart films which are generally acknowledged as the most consistent of his best work, but have only recently seen the earlier films from the Forties. As a person who grew up in the Fifties, this double feature also has the distinction of featuring early performances by Beaver's dad and Lassie's mom.

Railroaded takes place in the dark throughout most of its length. Mann and screenwriter John Higgins immediately upend expectations by opening the film in a threadbare beauty parlor that serves as a front for a bookie joint with female clientele. The proprietor Jane Randolph has set up a robbery of her place by boyfriend John Ireland. The robbery is photographed with Ireland and partner Keefe Brasselle peaking out of the dark, or with the characters seen as shadows. Guns blaze directly at the audience. Even when detective Hugh Beaumont finally has enough evidence to arrest Ireland, his timing is off and he is almost too late to rescue the sister of the wrongly accused cop killer.

Part of what makes Railroaded so fun is that not only was there effort to add some twists to what could have been a routine story, but the dialogue is both terse and caustic. This is a film where the top bad guy quotes from Oscar Wilde. There is a gag about Ireland's character known as "Duke", the namesake of Humphrey Bogart's early major role, with a floozie responding, "I'm petrified." Most often Anthony Mann is discussed because of his pictorial qualities, but Railroaded has dark snappy wit that bests many bigger budget noirs.

T-Men is famed for Mann's first collaboration with cinematographer John Alton. The imagery is certainly more consistent with many deep focus shots of people running in and out of shadows, and more use of expressionistic angles. Lots of framing devices are usedsuch as windows, doors, lampshades. Like Railroaded, Mann again has close-ups of guns shooting at the audience. The film does get bogged down with its official narration by Reed Hadley and introduction by government talking head Elmer Lincoln Irey. Dennis O'Keefe gets beat up in a couple of scenes anticipating the kind of masochism that James Stewart would go through in Mann's westerns. The punishment O'Keefe goes through made me think that had Mann lived long enough, Mel Gibson might have made a perfect Mann hero.

That O'Keefe looks for a crook known as "The Schemer" by visiting several bath houses, and that women barely figure in the narrative add to a homoerotic element. Like the Alton filmed Big Combo and Sam Fuller's House of Bamboo, male relationships and partnerships are emphasised. T-Men is about false images - government agents pretending to be hoods, counterfeit money, and the top gangster posing as a philanthropist. Of the two significant woman in the film, one is essentially a "beard" for the real mastermind, while the other inadvertently uncover's an agent's disguise.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

June 29, 2006

The Lana Turner Blog-a-thon: The Sea Chase

John Farrow - 1955
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Of the many films starring Lana Turner, The Sea Chase is atypical, but it is representative of the state of her career at the time. By the early Fifties, Lana Turner had been a MGM star for over ten years. A consistent box office draw in the Forties, her home studio assigned her to increasingly sillier films following The Bad and the Beautiful. The Sea Chase was the first of several films Turner made for other studios during a period when MGM still kept her under contract. The film belongs primarily to star John Wayne. Turner is essentially along for the boat ride.

The story is about a German freighter captain whose ship is chased by the Australian Navy during the early days of World War II. Not only has the ship illegally slipped out of port, but one of the freighter's officers has shot several unarmed civilians at an island port, a criminal act of which the captain is originally unaware. Unlike his appearance in The Long Voyage Home as Ole Olsen, John Wayne does not use an accent as the German captain, Karl Ehrlich. None of the other actors have German accents either, although one is treated to the sight of supporting players James Arness, Claude Akins and Alan Hale, Jr. as Aryan blonds. The politics are fuzzy with these apolitical and "good" Germans, save for Lyle Bettger as the mandatory villainous Nazi who tries to get away with murder.

As the lone woman on Wayne's ship, Turner plays a mysterious woman from Wayne's past, Elsa Keller. Turner may have brought some star power to the role, but one could imagine that Gail Russell or Susan Hayward would have done just as well. Turner fits in with the casting short hand of bottled blond Germans. It may have been part of her contract, but Turner first appears wearing a fur coat. Later she is seen wearing some form fitting sweaters, a reminder of what made her a star in the first place. While the ship's crew gets grubbier as the film progresses, Turner remains her glamorous self no matter how primitive the conditions around her.

The Sea Chase was the second of two films John Wayne did with director John Farrow. It may reflect his failing health, but Farrow's last films lack the snap of films he had made just a few years previously. While not as petrified as John Paul Jones, The Sea Chase often feels stodgy compared to the compact Hondo. What The Sea Chase needed most was the sarcastic humor that informs such adventures as His Kind of Woman and the Wayne produced Plunder of the Sun. One of the few moments that is similar to those films is when a German government official, asking Wayne to cover-up the murder, states: "I wouldn't think of asking you to lie... you haven't had the proper diplomatic training."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:49 AM | Comments (1)

June 25, 2006

Dumplings

Gaau Ji
Fruit Chan - 2004
MegaStar Region 0 DVD

At a time when Hollywood is prone to remake an Asian horror film rather than come up with something relatively original, I almost feel confident that Dumplings is one film that Hollywood will leave alone. I may be cynical, but Dumplings subject matter may be extremely challenging given the so-called "culture of life" as expressed in the U.S. The film is extension of the shorter version that was part of the anthology Three Extremes, three short horror stories by three different Asian filmmakers. The story, by Hong Kong writer, Lillian Lee, examines the lengths that women to renew their beauty.

The DVD has the advantage of a statement by director Fruit Chan explaining his intent as well as how his film fits into the cultural history of China. The film begins with industrial sounds which reinforce the motif of "youth" as a product. This motif has its visual equivalent with eggs, a product made available through the industrialization of farming. An early scene shows Tony Leung Ka-Fai eating the undeveloped chicken from an egg, while a latter scene shows Miriam Yeung (above) stomping on an egg carton with one unhatched chicken. Chan looks at the contradictary state of being female in China in particular where unborn females are frequently aborted, yet young women in their twenties are coveted by men of all ages.

The full length version of Dumplings has more scenes concerned with the relationship between Yeung and Leung, a married couple who spend little time together. Leung's character, an executive with a young mistress, is a more important character in the longer version, not only in illustrating his relationship with his wife and mistress, but also having an encounter with the woman who makes the sought after dumplings. The film also expands the story of the dumpling maker, played by Bai Ling, a woman whose life traverses Hong Kong and China in a variety of ways. Too often nothing more than eye-candy, Bai shows the range of her talents as woman who is detached and clinical about her work and life. Dumplings has some disturbing imagery yet unlike films with dismemberment or torture which pass as entertainment, is more horrifying for what is suggested than actually shown. When Fruit Chan does get briefly graphic with his subject matter, Dumplings goes from horror to the depths of Greek tragedy.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:17 PM | Comments (1)

June 23, 2006

The last films by Massimo Dallamano and Luciano Ercoli

Colt 38 Special Squad/Quelli della Calibro 38
Massimo Dallamano - 1976
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

La Bidonata/The Rip-Off
Luciano Ercoli - 1977
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

The best moment in Colt 38 Special Squad happens about an hour and a half into the film. Marcel Bozzufi (seen above), takes a small hatchback to chase after villain Ivan Rassimov. In the terrific show of stunt driving, the car hops onto a moving freight train that normally tranports cars, and drives across the length of the train before hopping back onto the road. It's an extraordinary moment in a film that would otherwise be merely better than average.

In addition to featuring one of the villainous Frenchmen from The French Connection, Colt 38 Special Squad is full of chase scenes. That the film is about a special squad of policemen who sometimes operate in ways not by the book brings to mind Connection producer Philip D'Antoni's The Seven-Ups. Bozzufi leads a group of four young men who are taught to be cool under fire, shoot bad guys at the knees, and use motorcycles to get around. Most of the film concerns the team attempting to discover who is behind several acts of terrorism using remote control dynamite.

Music is an important part of this DVD presentation. Composer Stelvio Cipriani noodles around on his piano before introducing Colt 38, and has a half hour interview discussing his music and working with director Massimo Dallamano. The film also features the then little known Grace Jones, seen here as soul singer and far from the intimidating presence she would become.

The Rip-Off has a few comic stunts, but is more labored than funny. The story behind the film is actually more interesting than the film. Life duplicated life when the producer of this film about a kidnapping scheme was kidnapped himself. The Rip-Off was officially shelved and considered lost following this incident, althought the producer was released unharmed. The DVD by NoShame is the first time this film has publicly become available in any format. Director Luciano Ercoli was more effective with his Death Walks giallo films. Similarily, star Walter Chiari has been in much better films. There is some cleverness as Chiari, seen above with his two partners, follows the kidnappers with assorted trucks and cars, but more often The Rip-Off is the kind of film that is funnier in description than what actually on screen. Had the filmmakers achieved their aspirations, The Rip-Off would have succeeded as a blend of The Italian Job (the original version) and Big Deal on Madonna Street.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:00 AM

June 22, 2006

One, Two, Three: Billy Wilder's 100th Birthday!

Billy Wilder - 1961
MGM Home Video Region 1 DVD

"But we had to go with Cagney, because Cagney was the picture. He really had the rhythm, and that was very good." from Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe

I decided to celebrate Billy Wilder's 100th birthday with One, Two, Three. While the film can not be ranked with Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, The Apartment or Some like it Hot, my most recent viewing had me thinking about how it fits with Wilder's overall career. Made during the time when Wilder experienced both great commercial success and the freedom to make the films he wanted to make, One, Two, Three has some unique strengths and weaknesses.

I was more conscious of the ghost of Ernst Lubitsch hovering throughout Wilder's film. The three comic Russian businessmen that James Cagney negotiates with are clear reminders of the three Russian envoys from Ninotchka, Lubitsch's film co-written by Wilder. The treatment of Germans in general and the World War II jokes recall Lubitsch's To Be or not to Be, in particular the jokes about ex-gestapo members, and Arlene Francis' referring to film husband Cagney as "mein Fuhrer". While Cagney's heel clicking assistant, played by Hanns Lothar, is funny, the character's name, Schlemmer, lacks punch. While there is humor is seeing Cagney's Coke executive shock at finding a bottle of Pepsi in a Coke machine, his shouting the name "Shlemmer" just does not provoke the laughter that occurs after Lubitsch's inept "Concentration Camp Ehrhardt" fails to shoot himself and we hear him, behind closed doors, yelling for his aide, Schultz.

I suspect that One, Two, Three fizzles out frequently for younger audiences. So much of the humor is topical, referring to events that were current in 1961, or have a cultural frame of reference for adults of that era. While it is fascinating to see a film that takes place in a divided Berlin before the wall went up, gags about Nikita Kruschev probably require explanation for some. Jokes about Adlai Stevenson and Chet Huntley may seem obscure. Too many of the jokes concerning Pamela Tiffin's ditzy character of Scarlett refer to Gone with the Wind, although the jokes about Southern contempt for Yankees are still funny. Lilo Pulver, the tall, blonde, gum chewing secretary, remains sexy and funny, periodically recalling Marilyn Monroe in Some Like it Hot, especially in a scene where Hanns Lothar has to wear her clothes for a temporary disguise.

The film is pretty much carried by James Cagney from beginning to end. There are a couple of jokes about Cagney's gangster persona, including a moment where he re-enacts his grapefruit scene from Public Enemy with Horst Bucholz standing in for Mae Clark. Cagney also has a line that is a variation of Edward G. Robinson's famed words from Little Caesar. By making a film with Cagney, Billy Wilder worked with the three top stars from Warner Brothers "gangster" films - Robinson in Double Indemnity and Humphrey Bogart in Sabrina. Even though the circumstances for working with these three actors were different, the three are known for their unique voices and speech patterns. There is a roundabout kind of logic with Wilder working with Cagney, Bogart and Robinson, the gangster persona is not to far removed from the artist who made a point of pushing boundries, especially with the United Artists films.

At this time, I should take my queue from Billy Wilder himself who was noted as saying: “If there's anything I hate more than being taken seriously, it's being taken too seriously."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:29 AM | Comments (1)

June 19, 2006

Gwendoline

Just Jaeckin - 1984
Severin Films Region 0 DVD

I was recently surprised to find that I had been added to the screeners list for a new company, Severin Films. At this point, based on the two films that make up their catalogue, it appears their specialty is soft-core adult entertainment. The photo of the staff with Senior Jesus Franco suggests there may be some interesting titles to be offered in the future.

Severin Films' debut is curiously, the last film by Just Jaeckin. My only previous . . . um . . . exposure to Jaeckin, was with his debut, Emmanuelle, made back in that point in time when a major Hollywood studio, in this case Columbia, had no qualms about releasing X-rated films following the success of Last Tango in Paris. I haven't seen Jaeckin's other films, but my significant other assures me that his version of The Story of O is quite good. Gwendoline features an unexpected link with the French New Wave by featuring Bernadette Lafont (above left) as the queen of an underground amazon society. Lafont made her acting debut with Francois Truffaut's short film, Les Mistons. For those who get their French filmmakers confused, keep in mind that Truffaut later made Un Histoire d'Eau, while Jaeckin filmed Histoire d'O.

Jaeckin's film here is based on the erotic comic by John Willie. Jaeckin, as indicated by the shot above, has an eye for composition, but the DVD supplement of his photos of star Tawny Kitaen indicates that his strength is with the still camera. Jaeckin begins Gwendoline with some spectacular travelling shots that were elaborately planned, yet the film ultimately is at best cute if not silly. Jaeckin's photo essay of Kitaen for the French magazine "Lui" overflows with the eroticism that is missing from the film. Kitaen is the selling point of this film, and certainly there is more to see of her than in the Tom Hanks' vehicle, Bachelor Party. The biggest difference between Jaeckin's film and John Willie's cartoon, based the few examples of his work that I've seen, is that the cartoon characters, especially the women, are larger than life with exaggerated features. As attractive as the young Tawny Kitaen was when she made Gwendoline, neither she, nor the other actresses, save Bernadette Lafont, have the ability to dominate the screen with their presence. Even worse, while John Willie's cartoons embrace and celebrate his idiosyncratic universe, Just Jaeckin's film suffers from timidity and too much good taste.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 AM

June 18, 2006

Coming Soon: The Lana Turner Blog-a-thon!

For those who haven't heard the call of the Self-Styled Siren, this postman is ringing twice to remind everyone of the Lana Turner Blog-a-thon scheduled for June 29. Hopefully the Siren herself will be able to sit still long enough to do her own posting and set up linkage from wherever she may be at that time. Ms. Campaspe's last posting was from Paris, but she may be back in Toronto or at her new home in Brooklyn. My own plan is to write something today for future posting as I am also scheduled to move from the beach to a new, if temporary, home. I want to thank Flickhead for his posting of a reminder at his site. The date was chosen as the anniversary of Ms. Turner's death in 1995. I hope this gives everyone time to readjust their rental queues, visit your local library or do whatever it may take to participate in celebrating this classic Hollywood star.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:47 PM

June 17, 2006

Convoy Busters

Today marks one year since "Coffee Coffee and more Coffee" first was launched. First to be thanked is my significant other who encouraged me to write publicly and write often, did the work to create this site, and helped guide me in learning some of the technical aspects of running a blog site. I also want to that Joyce Shen of NoShame who put me on the screeners list before I even had the site up. I want to that the people who have taken the time to check in, whether to anonymously read or also leave comments, and engage in dialogue about film. Also, I want to thank those who have taken the time to create a link to this site. If I have failed to reciprocate please let me know and I will be glad to correct this as soon as possible.

Un Poliziotto Scomodo
Stelvio Massi - 1978
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

The literal translation of the title for this Italian thriller is "The Inconvenient Cop". Whether this refers to the inconvenience created by the lead character of Inspector Olmi, or that Olmi seems to be out of place no matter where he is, I'm not sure. The title of Convoy Busters seems to have been chosen to capitalize on that brief moment when truckers with citizen band radios ruled popular culture. While trucks figure as a plot point, the most seen on the road are two - one following the other - as much of a convoy as one person following another is a parade.

Convoy Busters is a vehicle for Maurizio Merli, an actor who specialized in cop roles similar to Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry. Convoy Busters even ends with Inspector Olmi throwing down his badge at the end of the film. Essentially, Olmi is the kind of cop who makes a habit of getting on virtually everybody's bad side in the name of Justice. Frustrated with the bureaucracy of Rome, Olmi gets transfered to a small coastal town where he uncovers a smuggling operation involving firearms.

What Stelvio Massi's film lacks in coherent story telling it makes up for with bravura set pieces. One of the more spectacular scenes involves Olmi in a helicoptor chasing down and shooting some escaping bad guys with a pistol. That Olmi is such an accurate shot at great distances is hardly realistic, but it is a fun moment for the film.

The DVD supplements are primarily composed on interviews with Merli's son and several professional associates who discuss Merli's life and career. Merli was most famous in Italy during the Seventies for his resemblance to Franco Nero, and was typecast as the hard-edged cop. Rather than offering the usually scholarly notes on the film and crew, NoShame has included a small graphic novel, "Crime Story: The De Falco Solution", done in the style of Italian comic books from the Seventies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:20 AM | Comments (3)

June 11, 2006

Fong Sai-Yuk

Fong Sai-Yuk
Corey Yuen Kwai - 1993
Universe Laser & Video Region 0 DVD

Fong Sai-Yuk II
Corey Yuen Kwai - 1993
Universe Laser & Video Region 0 DVD

I've seen both of these films on cable. Like virtually every martial arts film they've got their hands on, the Weinstein Brothers cut and dubbed the two Fong Sai-Yuk films, retitled as The Legend. While the alterations for American audiences wasn't significant to either film, it was still nice to see both as originally intended by Jet Li and Corey Yuen. The first of this two part series was the first collaboration between Li and Yuen, capitalizing not only on Li's martial abilities, but also his comic charm and balletic grace.

The second film is a variation of the first. Li portrays a young man with proven martial arts skills who fights on behalf of the rebel Red Flower Society against the hated Manchus. In the first film there is a search for a secret list, in the second film it is a special box. Fong's mother, also a kung-fu champion alternately causes confusion and joins in the heroics. The films also share scenes of mistaken identities, women dressed as men, free for all fights, and Fong saving one of his parents from execution. While the films look somewhat crude compared to the CGI enhanced extravaganzas that mark similar films made now, the films also are marked by sense of humor that is missing in the current bid to impress audiences.

Although I enjoy Jet Li's films, the main reason to see either of the two Fong Sai-Yuk films is for Josephine Siao. The goofy facial expressions and ability to take pratfalls are reminiscent of Lucille Ball. Siao portrays the kind of character who is virtually unimaginable in Hollywood films, both a comic foil and a capable heroine. One aspect of Hong Kong films that is too often unremarked is the tradition of female martial arts heroes. While much of the humor is at the expense of Siao's character, her ability to fight is recognized with same kind of respect shown to the male characters. In the first film, Sai-Yuk beams in admiration knowing that his mother, disguised as a man, has been the only person to beat Sibelle Hu in a martial arts display to win the hand of Michelle Reis. Fong Sai-Yuk may be the only film with mother and son cross-dressing scenes, followed by the pair performing "Invisible Hand" kung-fu. Filial loyalty is both honored and gently satirized. Mom might not alway know best, but she can sure kick your ass.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:41 PM

June 10, 2006

New York Doll

Greg Whitely - 2005
First Independent Pictures Region 1 DVD

Even though I lived in NYC at the time, I never saw The New York Dolls in concert. Like a lot of people, I got put off by the clothes and make-up, and figured that if that's what the band looked like, I was nervous about who would be in the audience. Although my taste in rock was fairly wide, embracing Lothar & the Hand People and James Taylor, I couldn't be persuaded to go the short distance from my dorm room to The Mercer Arts Center. Except for a subway ride uptown to a club called Ungano's to see Captain Beefheart and Ry Cooder, my concert going was limited to whomever was appearing at the Fillmore East.

I was mostly interested in seeing New York Doll after reading about the film. The documentary of bass player Arthur Kane, above left, would seem almost too cliched for fiction. The narrative would read: a former minor rock star eventually falls into obscurity following the disolution of his band that has become a cult item over the past thirty years. Following battles with drugs and alchohol, the former rock star finds a modicum of meaning and happiness in religion, working on behalf of the church that has embraced him. His best years behind him, the musician still dreams of a triumphant return to the stage. His heartfelt prayer is answered, and the musician, for a few days, gets to live a life of glory as a revered rock star. Unknown to the musician, he is suffering from a fatal illness and dies soon after what turns out to be his final concert.

For me, the most interesting part of New York Doll was it's portrayal of Kane as a person of faith. The members of the Mormon church that Kane works with, as well as those who have provided religious guidance reveal a sense of humor and a generous spirit towards Kane's past persona. One of the church members explains that co-workers and church members collected funds to allow Kane to get his guitars out of hock prior to the New York Dolls reunion.

That generousity of spirit extends to Kane's relationship with David Johansen, above right. The one former Doll who has had the most success, Johansen shows up a day late when the reunion band is rehearsing. While teasing Kane about his ten percent tithing to the church, I had to wonder if Johansen may have denied Kane profits in New York Dolls merchandise. There is palpable joy in the scenes where Kane is overwhelmed by living in a London hotel room that is larger and more luxurious than his tiny Los Angeles apartment, and later enjoying a meal otherwise impossible in his normally frugal life. The film conveys Kane's total immersion and sincerity with his faith, a sincerity that is shown as affecting those around him. At a time when people are supposedly clamoring for films that extol Christian ideals, New York Doll's true story is more meaningful than any reenactment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:38 PM | Comments (2)

June 08, 2006

Shaw Brothers Double Feature

Raw Passions/Law Huet
Lo Chen - 1969
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

The Lark/Xiao yun que
Hsieh Chun - 1965
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

I need to note that for the next couple of months, entries will be sporadic. I finally sold my condo last Sunday and am now figuring out the logistics of where I will be moving to, as well as when. As soon as I am settled, I should be getting back to a more consistent pattern of writing. As I may be using other computers, there may not be film stills for a while. Keep watching this space for future news and developments. In the meantime, here are a couple of films I did catch . . .

A woman is stalked and murdered by an assailant, unseen by the viewer except for a gloved hand and a bloody knife. Raw Passions transposes some of the motifs associated with Mario Bava to Hong Kong, with strenuously bizarre camera angles, psychedelic opening credits and garish color schemes. The film is about two men caught up in a blackmail scheme involving nightclub performer Sasa, seen above, played by Suzy Meng Li. Director Lo Chen may have also taken a few pointers from Jesus Franco in filming Sasa's solo dance with the lens concentrated on her breasts and nether region. I have no idea what the original lyrics say, but Sasa's torch song about being a drunken slut, has this translated line:"That light, is it red or yellow? Beside you, I'm a drunken fellow."

The songs in The Lark don't have any hilarious (mis)translations of note. Like all of the other Shaw Brothers musicals from the Sixties, it stars Peter Chen Ho, this time as a hapless reporter posing as a music promoter to get close to Mandarin pop star Carrie Ku Mei, known as "The Little Lark". This is the Hong Kong equivalent to a musical starring Connie Francis, with the state of pop music represented by young women singing with serious emoting and many tears. The film is signficant as a vehicle for Carrie Ku Mei, a popular singer, but one who also was the singing voice for other stars, Hong Kong's Marni Nixon. The closest the film comes to anything resembling rock music is one of the big musical numbers near the end of the film. On a rooftop set, a bunch of "juvenile delinquents" perform a number that combines the social concerns of West Side Story with the sunny joy of Bye Bye Birdie. As boggling as that number is, I missed the brio of Russ Tamblyn and the sassiness of Ann-Margret.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:56 PM | Comments (1)

June 06, 2006

The Cry of the Owl

Le Cri du Hibou
Claude Chabrol - 1987
Allday Region 1 DVD

Claude Chabrol is a filmmaker I've been following as best as possible since I saw La Femme Infidele opened in NYC in 1969. During the time I lived in NYC, I was able to see several of Chabrol's older films and saw most of his current films through the release of Nada in 1974. For me, Chabrol's early period holds the most interest. Of all of the filmmakers who established their names as film critics for "Cahiers du Cinema", Chabrol has become the most prolific and the most consistently commercial. While I have enjoyed some of his latter films, particularly, Merci Pour le Chocolat, I feel like Chabrol has become frequently formulaic.

Like his admired Alfred Hitchock, Chabrol has made a film from a novel by Patricia Highsmith. The film is about observers and the observed, and an innocent man who is guilty of the deaths of several people. A plot by two jealous ex-lovers goes out of control. Among the visual motifs are rooms filled with photographs and paintings and people observing other people through picture windows. Much of the action takes place at night or in the dark, much like nocturnal animals in pursuit of their prey.

My main motivation for seeing this Chabrol film was due to the commentary on the DVD. An friend of mine from NYU, Ric Menello discussed aspects of Chabrol's filmmaking style as well as information on the making of the film. Ric's commentary was both informative and fun to listen to which was no surprise, as he was always a great story-teller when I knew him. I would recommend checking out Cry of the Owl for the commentary track, although this brings up a point of discussion. Most commentary tracks are by the filmmakers and cast members. A frequent complaint is that they are sometimes not very informative. I have listened to some directors commentaries that were sometimes better than the movies, for example, Peter Medak explaining what he was doing on Species II. I've had to stop DVDs where the commentary consists of droning non-information, often simply describing what I am watching on the screen. I just have to wonder why there aren't more films with commentaries by film critics and historians who are entertaining speakers. As much as I've learned from Donald Ritchie, I nodded out while listening to him discuss Crazed Fruit. Rate That Commentary would be more helpful if there were reviews in addition to the ratings. Otherwise, commentary tracks seem to be a hit or miss affair for everyone involved which is too bad. Done right as in Cry of the Owl, the commentary can be a valuble tool for film scholars. Otherwise, it's just another time waster.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:19 PM

June 04, 2006

Four Sided Triangle

Terence Fisher - 1953
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

Four Sided Triangle invites a couple of different readings. The film is an example of the kind of low budget science-fiction produced a few years before Terence Fisher and company reinvented Dracula and the classic Universal horror film. One can also view the film as being a symbolic retelling of the life of star Barbara Payton.

The narrative begins with two young boys, Robin and Bill, infatuated with a slightly older girl, Lena. The girl pits the two boys against each other in fun but is clearly more attracted to Robin. The two boys grow up to be scientists who invent a machine that can duplicate objects by creating matter out of energy. During this time, Lena, who has left their little English town, has returned. Not knowing who Albert Einstein is, or indicating thoughts of suicide do nothing to keep the Robin and Bill from falling in lover with Lena again. Just when Bill gets nerve enough to ask Lena for a date, Robin and Lena get married. Bill's solution is to create a duplicate Lena. Of course this second Lena is a duplicate in every way, including her desire for Robin.

According to IMDb, the alternate title for Four Sided Triangle is Monster and the Woman. This raises the question of who the monster is suppose to be, the second Lena or Bill? One can also look at the story as a variation of James Whale's Bride of Frankenstein with the second Lena, known as Helen, feeling a sense of horror at living an unasked for life and rejection of her lover. While not using Whale's extreme angles in the cinematography, the black and white shots evoke Whale's two Frankenstein films with the electronic gizmos and the expressionistic lighting. Looking past the sci fi and horror trappings, Whale and Fisher have made films about the desperation of unrequited love.

Provoking men into fighting over her was a hallmark of Barbara Payton's life. Without forcing it too much, there are some parallels between Payton's recent life caught between Franchot Tone and Tom Neal with Lena's relationship between the genteel Robin and the more impulsive Bill. One has to wonder if Payton was cast in the role of Lena because of the similarities to her life, as well as the obvious attraction of getting a Hollywood star, albeit a rapidly falling one, for a bargain. When Lena returns to England, it is to sell her mother's belongings, enough to support herself for three or four months. When asked what she will do past that time, Lena remarks that she has no purpose in continuing her life as she has failed at everything she has tried. While Lena proves to easily regain her sense of self-esteem from being a help-mate to her two admirers, Payton's own life prefigures Lena's hinted at appetite for self-destruction. Even a random selection from Payton's ghost-written autobiography, I Am Not Ashamed almost describes what happens in Four Sided Triangle: "I had a lot of electricity in me and men didn't just hit and run with me. They usually came back for seconds and with their tongue dragging."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:01 PM | Comments (3)

June 03, 2006

The War Lover

Philip Leacock - 1962
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Early on in The War Lover, Philip Leacock conveys the sense of fragility in war. One of the crew members is seen drinking some kind of stomach medicine that he mentions was never previously needed. The airplanes, described as flying fortresses, shake and rattle. The crew members in the machine gun turrets appear as the most vulnerable, but the shell of the bombers look ready to fall apart any any time. Philip Leacock's film takes place during World War II, with concerns about the psychological fragility of warriors still worth examining.

The role of the title character was something of a brave choice by Steve McQueen. Especially considering that The War Lover was done at a time when McQueen's stardom was on the ascent in modest budget films, McQueen's character of Buzz Rickson has moments where he is totally unsympathetic. Rickson is a pilot who takes chances with himself and his crew, impressing most, but not all with his bravado. At the same time, Rickson loves being destructive, both in his military capacity with enemy targets, and in relationships with other people. Leacock allows for Rickson to be viewed ambiguously, admired for his bravery under fire, occasionally repugnant at other times. One moment that captures both sides of Rickson's character suggests sexual release during combat.

Also ambiguous is Rickson's relationship with his co-pilot, Bolland (Robert Wagner). While Bolland early in the film is shown to admire Rickson, later scenes indicate Rickson's jealousy, almost a possesiveness, when Bolland develops his relationship with Daphne (Shirley Anne Field). Rickson is not only more comfortable in his role as a warrior, but as an admired man in the company of men. Rickson's relationship with women are indicated to be superficial, brief sexual liasons. Rickson's sense of masculinity and immaturity towards women are indicated when he tries to force his youngest crew member onto a plain looking barmaid. The War Loveris a low key twist on John Ford's celebration of military men, with the camaraderie shown as increasingly puerile. McQueen is later shown calmly drinking whiskey during an air raid, feeling as invincible on the ground as in the air.

The young crew member with the high pitched voice is played by Michael Crawford, a couple years before starring in several films by Richard Lester, and many years before becoming Andew Lloyd Webber's original "Phantom of the Opera". The main reason to see The War Lover is Steve McQueen just a year before he cemented his star status with The Great Escape. An officer describes Rickson as bordering between the heroic and the psychotic. This was a different kind of role for Steve McQueen, hinting at ambitions of an actor that were never fully explored.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:34 AM

June 02, 2006

Champagne for Caesar

Richard B. Whorf - 1950
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

To paraphrase the most famous statement by Art Linkletter: "Kids see the darndest things!" In this case, I refer to this somewhat unlikely film that had something of a cult following back when I was in Junior High school, back in the early Sixties. While Linkletter, seen at the left as Happy Hogan was for most of us a more meaningful star than Ronald Colman, what made Champagne for Caesar popular was primarily the game show milieu.

Champagne for Caesar fully anticipates real-life characters like Jeopardy winner Ken Jennings, as well as placing American Idol results as front page news. Ronald Colman's character, the over-educated, under-employed Beauregard Bottomley can be seen as a proto-slacker, albeit one much better dressed than his contemporary equivalent. While scenes of people flocking in front of store windows to watch television are archaic, some of the film's satire is as true today as it was over fifty years ago.

The film is a featherweight comedy primarily pitting Colman's money winning know-it-all against comic villain Vincent Price as the corporate sponsor chief. The humor becomes broader and funnier during the last half hour with Colman wooing Celeste Holm, a "fan" planted by Price to cause mayhem and discover possible gaps of knowledge. Broader still is the reunion between Caesar, an inebriated, foul mouthed parrot, and Price, his former owner. The scene of Colman in an ultra-modern reception area briefly resembles that of Jacques Tati's Mon Oncle, while the set design of arms sticking out of walls, holding soap bubbles seems like a parody of the candle holding arms in Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast. This is no lost classic, but a decidedly minor film with a star who chose to slowly retire from movies following his Academy Award in 1947. Champagne for Caesar is more like Cold Duck than Moet or Korbel - light, sweet, and good for some giggles.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:14 AM

May 29, 2006

Gemini

Soseiji
Shinya Tsukamoto - 1999
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I wasn't looking to add another Japanese horror film to my list of films to see until I read that Gemini was based on a short story by Edogawa Rampo. Certainly the story of a twin or doppelganger has its direct inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe's William Wilson. Like other Japanese horror films, the emphasis is creepiness, on making the viewer unsettled with unexpected shifts of action.

The story is about a well-respected doctor with a new wife with a mysterious background. The doctor's life is disrupted by the appearance of an identical stranger who takes over his life. The doctor is forced to confront his condescending feelings towards the poor, as well as his sense of self. While the film takes place during the end of the 19th Century, the slum dwellers are anachronistically presented as proto-punks with dyed hair and phosphorescent colored rags.

The feeling of dislocation is first created by the soundtrack by Chu Ishikawa with distorted vocals and industrial percussion. Shinya Tsukamoto's first images are of maggots, followed by two rats feeding on a dead animal. What is presented is a discomforting world where everyone is reduced to an animal state, feeding off of each other. The actors, particularly Ryo as the new bride, Rin, appear other-worldly with their shaved eyebrows. The narrative serves as a critique of Japanese society during the Meiji Period. Historical concerns aside, Gemini is about the discovery that people are not always who or what you may believe them to be, even those closest to you.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:48 PM | Comments (1)

May 27, 2006

The Hidden Blade

Kakushi-ken: oni no tsume
Yoji Yamada - 2004
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Seeing how inconsistent theatrical distribution is for foreign language films, especially here in Miami Beach, I chose to see The Hidden Blade on DVD. If you live in a major city where the film will be shown theatrically next month, it is worth seeing on the big screen. Yoji Yamada's film can be seen as a continuation of some of the themes of Twilight Samurai, but can also be appreciated by those who have not seen that earlier film.

Unlike a big budget American film that came out a couple of years ago, this is the real "Last Samurai". Taking place mostly in 1861, the film is a study on the destruction of samurai culture. The conflicts illustrated are how social protocols were maintained based on traditions, and how members of the warrior class had to face being anachronisms with guns replacing swords. One scene shows the frustrated teacher of gun warfare yelling at the samurai to stop the practice of bowing while trying to load a cannon.

The title refers to a sword-fighting technique of striking the opponent when one's back is turned towards him. The hidden blade is also a small knife used for murder and buried near the grave of a former samurai's wife. Yamada is more interested though in showing details of the mundane life of a samurai. The main character, Munezo, points out that while he has trained in swordfighting, he has actually never had to use his sword. Yamada also investigates how the class system was still in effect in Japan, keeping would-be lovers Munezo and Kie apart through enforced social positions.

The contemplative feeling of the film is set by the score of Isao Tomita, and a screen of changing solid colors. While Masatoshi Nagase carries the dramatic arc of the narrative as Munezo, Takako Matsu as Kie is the heart of Yamada's film. First heard off-screen, Yamada delights in photographing Takako in close-up, smiling and politely fighting the urge to burst out laughing. Yamada has made a truly romantic film about a chaste couple with impeccable manners.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:09 PM

May 26, 2006

Overnight

Tony Montana & Mark Brian Smith - 2003
ThinkFilm Region 1 DVD

I saw The Boondock Saints a couple of years ago, based on the recommendation of a co-worker. My own feeling was that it was not a bad film, nor particularly original with the exception of the casting of Billy Connolly's unexpected turn as a gangster known as "Il Duce". This was the kind of film that seemed to appear frequently following the success of Quentin Taratino's Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. I was prompted to see this documentary on the quick rise and fall of writer-director Troy Duffy based on the heavily promoted re-release of Boondock Saints on DVD.

The documentary about Duffy exists because of some strange serendipity. In 1997, Duffy, his brother Taylor, and two other friends had a band called "The Brood". Smith and Montana were initially hired to shoot videos of the band and act as management. During this same time, a screenplay Duffy wrote found its way to Harvey Weinstein, probably hoping to nab the next Taratino, through a contact Duffy had made while he was a bartender. Duffy received $300,000 for the screenplay and was to direct a $15 million dollar film. Miramax was also to buy the bar Duffy worked at as an additional bonus, with ownership going to the two brothers.

Smith and Montana filmed both the initial hoopla when Duffy seemed to be living a rags-to-riches fantasy, making his directorial debut and having "The Brood" signed to a record deal without anyone hearing the band. While there is no official declaration as to why Harvey Weinstein had buyer's remorse, once the screenplay is placed in "turnaround" and the production cancelled, everything else in Troy Duffy's career as a filmmaker and musician leaves him scrambling to regain traction.

The footage of Duffy's prodigious and nightly habit of getting drunk with his new Hollywood pals indicates what made Miramax concerned about how reliable Duffy would be on a film set. Even though Duffy boast of showing up at meetings following a nightly drinking binge, appearing in overalls would most likely be seen as being too casual, even by Hollywood standards. At the very least, Overnight is worthwhile for budding filmmakers in terms of understanding a bit more about the business of filmmaking, how contracts work, and the various pitfalls of independent productions. Even when things seem to go right for Duffy, success is extremely limited. Boondock Saints was produced for less than half of Miramax's announced budget, and went straight to video where it became a cult film, with Duffy shut out of profit participation. "The Brood" changes their name to "Boondock Saints", cuts an album for an Atlantic Records subsidiary, but only sells 690 CDs in six months, promptly getting dropped by Atlantic. It's a lesson that in show business there is a lot of show and a lot of business, but there are absolutely no guarantees.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:52 PM

May 24, 2006

Padre Pio

Carlo Carlei - 2000
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Padre Pio is one of two Italian mini-series about saints to be made available in the U.S. by NoShame this month. The film is the first work by Carlo Carlei since Fluke came and went in 1995. I have not seen that film, but I have previously seen Flight of the Innocent, the film that established Carlei's reputation as a promising filmmaker.

Padre Pio is best in the scenes when Carlei is showing the lives of the poor farmers of rural Italy. Like in Flight of the Innocent, Carlei's visual strength is with pastoral lyricism, gravity defying crane shots sweeping over the countryside. There is a sweetness to the scenes with Sergio Castellitto, especially in the first half of the film, as a young, self-effacing friar, such as in the above still.

The structure of the film is challenging at almost three and a half hours. Castellitto, an old man near death in 1968, is interviewed by a priest portrayed by Jurgen Prochnow. The visiting priest, who has no name, also wants to disprove Padre Pio's miracles as well as the stigmata Pio previously manifested and has kept hidden. Pio's own reaction to having the same stigmata as Jesus is one of shame, forcing him to question himself. The film alternates between scenes of Castellitto and Prochnow, with long flashbacks of Pio's life from boyhood at the end of the 19th Century until the time his health ultimately fails. More problematic for myself was Pio's conflict with evil. While there are no horned devils, Carlei shows Pio fighting voices of temptation, spontaneous eruptions of flames, a seemingly possessed young woman and a some barely identifiable entity in the confession booth. While this is not quite as literal as in a film like The Exorcist, such scenes are dependent on the viewer having the same kind of sense of faith to be effective. While films about religion or persons are usually directed towards an audience that shares similar beliefs, the most interesting films usually are those that can convey some kind of universality that can be appreciated by a larger audience. For one who may not share specific theoligical beliefs, aspects concerning Padre Pio's sainthood may be of limited interest. Where Carlo Carlei succeeds is in conveying the humanity of Pio and the sense of joy in a sometimes hostile environment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:55 PM

May 20, 2006

Ten Reasons why 1958 was the best year for American Film

The common wisdom among various film fans and scholars is that 1939 was the greatest year for American film. I like to call 1939, "Victor Fleming's lucky year". The guy gets full credit for two films other people started, plus an Academy Award. I will admit there are a lot of good films from that year, but the only films I really like revisiting are Stagecoach and Ninotchka. If 1939 was the peak of the pre-World War II film, my argument is that 1958 was the year that Hollywood figured out wide screen and color. Not all of the films listed are wide screen and color but they are a subjective list of films from one extraordinary year before the challenges of a new generation of filmmakers primarily in France, England and Italy.

1. Vertigo. Now it's considered a given that this is one of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest films, if not the best. The film was not a hit when originally released, in spite of respectful reviews. Always conscious of the bottom line, Hitchcock eyed the competition of that year which included a low-budget high profit thriller by William Castle and . . .

2. Touch of Evil. Bright Lights makes a good argument that there may not have been a Psycho, or at least the one we know and love, had Orson Welles not stranded Janet Leigh in a lonely motel, or left a dead Akim Tamiroff under a swinging light bulb. That opening shot is pretty good, too. Touch of Evil was produced by Albert Zugsmith who also produced . .

3. Tarnished Angels. Will anyone discuss the teaming of Douglas Sirk with Rock Hudson they way they discuss Scorsese and DeNiro, or Kurosawa and Mifune? Sirk must have enjoyed taking a break from the gloss of Ross Hunter in this film about itinerant barnstorming pilots in the Depression era South, based on a story by William Faulkner. Currently, the only way to enjoy the CinemaScope black and white cinematography is when the film shows up on TCM.

4. Bitter Victory. The image of dummies used for bayonet practice looks abstact as filmed by Nicholas Ray. Orginally twenty minutes short in its original release, the DVD is the complete film. Among the offbeat moments in this film about the futility of war is former scholar Richard Burton shrugging off interest in some ancient ruins by declaring that they are "too modern" for him.

5. Bonjour Tristesse. Otto Preminger introduced Jean Seberg as a very forward looking French girl in two films, Saint Joan and this film. Jean-Luc Godard cast Seberg as an American in Paris. What Godard knew before the rest of us was what a gift Preminger gave us that was never appreciated until it was too late.

6. Bell, Book and Candle. The other film to star Kim Novak and James Stewart. One of my favorite Christmas films also stars Ernie Kovaks and Jack Lemmon and a cat named Pyewacket. In these days of hysteria over "Harry Potter", could there be a film about a friendly witch who celebrates Christmas made today?

7. The Big Country. A big, long, sprawling western with Gregory Peck asserting himself against Charlton Heston when they're not fighting Burl Ives and Chuck Connors. The reputation of William Wyler's last western is rightfully on the rise, aided in no small part by the music of Jerome Moross.

8. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. If Richard Brooks didn't have to tamper with the play, this might have been the best film adaptation of Tennessee Williams. As it is, it may be one of the best cast. There have been challengers, but there is no question that Elizabeth Taylor is Maggie the Cat. Not to mention Burl Ives as "Big Daddy", Jack Carson as Gooper, and Paul Newman as Brick.

9. The Reluctant Debutante. Kay Kendall was gorgeous and funny. Vincente Minnelli finally won an Oscar for Gigi, released the same year. The Reluctante Debutante is the better of the two films. And damn it, I miss Kay Kendall.

10. Night of the Demon. Dana Andrews goes to England and meets the Devil and Peggy Cummins. If Jacques Tourneur had his way, the film would have been more like his work with Val Lewton, with fewer special effects shots of the titular demon. If you haven't seen it, reserve this for next Holloween. A spooky but not scary film about the battle between white and black magic is engrossing and above all, fun.

An alternate list can easily be made as other films from 1958 include John Ford's The Last Hurrah, Richard Fleischer's The Vikings, J. Lee Thompson's Ice Cold in Alex, Arthur Penn's The Left-handed Gun, Anthony Mann's Man of the West, Ronald Neame's The Horse's Mouth, Donald Siegel's The Line-Up, Budd Boetticher's Buchanan Rides Alone, and Frank Borzage's China Doll, plus other films by Sirk, Ray and a couple by Frank Tashlin that I haven't mentioned. Again, this list is subjective, but hopefully persuasive that there was some extraordinary filmmaking between the alleged "Golden Year" of 1939 and the so-called "Silver" era of the early 1970s.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:09 PM | Comments (3)

May 18, 2006

Swing Girls

Shinobu Yaguchi - 2004
AG Entertainment Region 0 DVD

I've read a couple of articles pointing out to the decline of interest in foreign language films both by audiences and film distributors here in the U.S. I know that some of my interest in foreign films was from encouragement from my parents. I forgot how old I was when I saw The Red Balloon, but I grew up with an awareness that there were some interesting films, usually coming from France, Italy or Japan. I don't have children of my own but I have tried to plant seeds in my young neice by sending her DVDs of Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and Miyazaki's Kiki's Delivery Service. While I don't know the best way of resolving this issue on a larger scale, I do know that future audiences for world cinema need to be encouraged.

Would U.S. high school students be interested in seeing a film about Japanese kids? I don't know. What I do know is that Swing Girls is a very accessable film that could be a great icebreaker given the chance.

I had seen Shinobu Yaguchi's Adrenaline Drive about five years ago. Swing Girls is much less frenetic. The film begins with a scene of high school girls, generally distracted, sitting in summer school classes. The effort to deliver lunches to the school band gets undone when the lunches are delivered late and spoiled, causing the band members to get sick. A half-hearted effort by the girls to form a swing band that summer turns into a more serious effort during the school year. The girls are bratty to their parents, teachers and each other, yet find a bond of greater value than designer clothing or immature boyfriends. Of interest is that the girls actually learned to play their own instruments for the film and toured following the release of Swing Girls.

Except for a scene of the girls attacted by a wild boar, shot as a parody of action films with the action frozen while the camera moves around the characters, stylistic flourishes are kept to a minimum. The humor is mostly friendly with scenes of old musical instruments falling apart in the hands of the girls, a scene of a snow fight, and a shot of the girls rushing from railroad tracks to muddy rice fields when they realize a train is right behind them are indicative of this kind of non-aggressive comedy. The recent American films I've seen about high school kids had stories about murder, sex, hate crimes and such. Not to deny that particular reality, but one gets the feeling that it's the only one that Hollywood thinks exists, or that audiences want to see. Swing Girls may not be the truest portrait of Japanese youth, but it allows the girls to be smart and dumb, but mostly show kids actually enjoying their lives.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:22 PM | Comments (3)

May 17, 2006

A Hen in the Wind

Kaze no naka no mendori
Yasujiro Ozu - 1948
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

Of the half dozen or so films I've seen by Yasujiro Ozu, this may be the most unique. Taking place following World War II, the film is about a young mother whose soldier husband has not yet been repatriated. Selling old kimonos to scrape enough money for herself and her son, Tokiko is financially devastated when her son requires hospitalization for his illness. Refered to be several characters, but not seen, Tokiko turns to a one-time act of prostitution to cover her debts. Her husband, Shuichi returns soon after the son has recovered. Tokiko explains what happened to her less than understanding husband. While Shuichi can feel empathy towards another young woman in a similar situation, he is initially unforgiving of his wife.

Visually, the film has the classic hallmarks of an Ozu film. There are geometric patterns in the arrangement of three houses or shots looking through large, abandoned pipes. This particular area outside of Tokyo resembles a ghost town until the end of the film with no one on the streets save for Ozu's characters. The interior shots are identifiably Ozu's which is to say from the point of view of a person kneeling on a tatami mat.

Less typical of Ozu is the frankness of A Hen in the Wind. Even more than the illicit lovers of Tokyo Twilight, this is a film with some venal and cruel characters. Unlike the overly polite and frequently stoic Satsuko Hara taking care of Chishu Ryu, are characters who don't hide their feelings and express themselves in the bluntest terms. Conversely, when Shichi reunites with Tokiko and their son, the son is afraid of his father, and husband and wife do not touch each other in any way. Most atypical of Ozu is a scene where Shuichi throws Tokiko down a flight of stairs. His understanding of her situation at the time does not prevent his outburst, and even after Shuichi is aware of his action and runs down the stairs, he simply stands above his wife. Tokiko is seen standing on her own, limping back up the stairs. The finally shot is of the couple embracing, vowing to move forward and forget the past. Ozu focuses on Tokiko's arms, wrapped around Shuichi, her hands clasped as if in a form of prayer.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:04 PM

May 15, 2006

St. Francis

Francesco
Michele Soavi - 2002
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Prior to seeing Michele Soavi's version of the life of St. Francis, I saw three other films in the past week. In addition to Roberto Rossellini's Flowers of St. Francis which I wrote about, I also saw Franco Zeffirelli's Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Michael Curtiz' Francis of Assisi. While Soavi's is the most complete in covering Francis' life from childhood to death, it is still interesting to see different points of emphasis and filmmaking style from the four directors. Curtiz' version suffers from being the most Hollywooden with the traditional overwrought excesses of Biblical films from the Fifties. It also has one of the funniest (intentional?) lines when a character states, "It takes stones to build a church." Curtiz' film also has the unintended depth from the knowledge that the actress who played Clare, Francis' friend and first female follower, Dolores Hart, left Hollywood to become a nun at the age of 25.

What makes Soavi interpretation distinguished is his inventiveness with the camera. The film begins audaciously with a point of view shot with young Francis looking at the world upside down. Soavi's camera tilts skyward and down, spinning and still. There are frequent subjective shots, such as Francis seeing his reflection in a basin of water, or shots of Francis and Clare (Chiara) looking at each other at play. Soavi also makes use of extreme close-ups of faces in particular, but also hands and feet, often framing them partially and at odd angles.

Soavi also incorporates elements from previous St. Francis films. Ginepro, the "holy fool" from Rossellini's film appears near the end, while the scene of Francis undressing in the town square recalls Zeffirelli. Curtiz' film touches on how the Franciscan order became something different than intended by Francis following his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This part of Francis life is more fully explored in Soavi's film with Francis struggling with the idea of codifying his ideas of religious life.

The film depicts how having a copy of the Bible in Italian, rather than Latin, was considered heretical by the Church. Soavi not only examines the difference in faith as expressed by Catholic Church of the 12th Century with that of Francis and his original followers, but suggests that Francis' message may have been corrupted with his group recieving Church recognition, as well as growing large enough to require formal organization, something Francis eschewed.

Considering that Soavi previously made a horror film taking place in a church, St. Francis may seem in some ways an uncharacteristic choice for the filmmaker. What this film shares with Soavi's earlier work is the theme of the difference between the world as it is, and the world as it is imagined.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:32 PM

May 14, 2006

They Caught the Ferry

De nåede færgen
Carl Theodor Dreyer - 1948
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In the ten years between Two People and Ordet, Carl Theodor Dreyer made a driver's safety film. A guy with his girlfriend go very fast through Denmark from one port to another on his motorcycle. On the way, the guy gets distracted and runs into a tree. This short film is based on a story by a Nobel Prize winning author. Dreyer made the film for the Danish government which for some unknown reason had no established speed limits on public roads. And while Dreyer scholars may try to convince me that this is the greatest driver's safety movie every made, it is still, a commissioned project and a public service message.

I have to wonder if Carl Theodor Dreyer followed the Hollywood careers of former collaborators Rudolph Mate, Karl Freund or Walter Slezak. Throughout the eleven minutes of They Caught the Ferry I felt that Dreyer could have had a Hollywood career if he really wanted one. He might not have made the ambitious ilms he wanted to, but he might not have gone ten years between films either. Based on the evidence of We Caught the Ferry or any of his other films, had Carl Theodor Dreyer gone to Hollywood, would he have made one of the following films? Check the titles below, and write your answers in the comments section.

1. The Wild One

2. Vanishing Point

3. Le Mans

4. Clear Last Chance

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:46 PM

May 13, 2006

Hong Kong Nocturne

Xiang jiang hua yue ye
Umetsugu Inoue - 1966
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

Hong Kong Nocturne can't be faulted for trying to be ambitious. It's probably not fair to judge it against more polished American musicals. Inoue obviously wanted to equal Vincente Minnelli's creativity in Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon. Being a Shaw Brothers production, the budget was more appropriate for the equivalent of an Elvis Presley film like Harum Scarum. There are so many things wrong in Hong Kong Nocturne yet you end up liking the film for its embrace of its hokiness.

The first indication that something's not right is in the beginning with the montage of neon signs. Someone needed to know that there is such a thing as too many superimposed shots at one time. The story is about three sisters and their magician father. The "magic" in the film is crude even by the standards of George Melies. The "go go" dancing of the Hong Kong teens is as graceless as the gyrations of Jody McRae, the resident lunkhead of the Beach Party movies. Every half remembered cliche finds its way to the screen. One can either fight it, or simply enjoy the formula, knowing for example that Cheng Pei-Pei has seen husband Peter Chen for the last time when he has to catch a last minute flight to Japan and a typhoon hits Hong Kong minutes after he's out the door.

Not only is the film a Cantonese version of the "show must go on" musical, but it there are bits and pieces, usually from MGM musicals, that one could make a game of guessing which film Inoue has cribbed from. A rooftop number resembles something from West Side Story only with an obviously fake set, and a cast of six. The one brief moment that would not have passed in an American musical is a number performed by Lily Ho inspired by Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Seen taking a bubble bath in a giant clam shell, Ho is seen from the distance exiting the bath, her nude backside visible through a sheer nightie held by two dancers. This bit is actually a variation of a very similar scene in the Joe Mankiwicz version of Cleopatra. My significant other always wonders why I bother watching movies through their entirety. Sometimes when watching a film, it's like being a miner who digs through all sorts of muck to uncover that little chip of gold.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:01 PM | Comments (5)

May 11, 2006

The Valerio Zurlini Box Set: The Early Masterpieces

Violent Summer/Estate Violenta
Valerio Zurlini - 1959
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Girl with a Suitcase/La Ragazza con la Valigia
Valerio Zurlini - 1961
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

If there is a reason why Violent Summer and Girl with a Suitcase should be made mandatory viewing for virtually all contemporary filmmakers, it is to study how Valerio Zurlini uses popular music in film. While most films use pop and rock songs as a form of short-hand often indicating artistic laziness, Zurlini seems to have known which is the precise song to both comment on a scene and to add dramatic heft. Girl with a Suitcase uses music constantly, heard from radios, jukeboxes and record players, ranging from Verdi to The Champs, each piece of music adding more than aural wallpaper.

Both films share narratives about a younger man in love with an older woman, crossing various social barriers in the process. Both films also end with the main characters going their separate ways. Violent Summer explores these themes against the backdrop of World War II. Jean-Louis Trintignant, the playboy son of a local Fascist leader falls in love with Eleonora Rossi Drago, the aristocratic widow of a Naval Captain. The film takes place in Riccione, a town along the Adriatic Sea relatively untouched by the war until the summer of 1943. In an early scene, the beach is crowded, a typical summer day, broken by the unexplained appearance of a low flying German fighter plane that causes everyone to panic. In showing Italians who for the most part are living their lives in relative comfort prior to the fall of Mussolini, Violent Summer can be viewed as a companion piece to De Sica's Garden of the Finzi-Continis. Both De Sica and Zurlini conclude their films by showing how no one living in Italy could escape from either the war or Mussolini's policies.

Violent Summer has a perfectly realized scene almost mid-way through the film. During an air raid blackout, Trintignant has invited his friends to his house. Searching for music to dance to, one of the guys finds a copy of the American pop song, Temptation by Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown. The men and woman form couples, with Trintignant dancing with an insistant Jacqueline Sassard. Drago is dancing with one of Trintignant's friends. Zurlini cuts between the two would-be lovers glancing helplessly at each other, each in the arms of someone else, while the soundtrack underlines their mutual frustration in maintaining something other than a socially correct relationship.

A dance scene is also significant in Girl with a Suitcase. A 16 year old boy from a well-to-do family, Lorenzo, tries to make up for his older brother's mistreatment of a young, itinerant night club performer, Aida. Lorenzo follows Aida, who with a couple of other young women are entertaining three older, professional men. Lorenzo watches the three mature men dancing with their much younger partners. I cannot identify by composer or song title, but the musical themes virtually anticipate what would be heard in a few years in spaghetti westerns. Again, Zurlini films people dancing with music used as a form of counterpoint to emphasize the tension between characters.

Zurlini two films here share a similar visual style. Most of the shots are of two or more people, with characters reacting to each other while sharing the same screen space. Violent Summer has two exceptionally composed scenes, one with Trintignant seen just outside the room overhearing Drago and her mother meeting with a sailor who served with Drago's husband. A later scene following the dance shows Trintignant and Drago kissing with the camera pulling back to show Sassard off to the side, witnessing the lovers. Zurlini rarely cuts between characters, choosing medium and full shots, with the camera tracking in, out and around his players.

Girl with a Suitcase is the better known film. This is mostly due to the stardom of Claudia Cardinale, baby-fat cute at the time, but not quite the beauty she would be in 1963, the year of Eight and a Half, The Leopard and The Pink Panther. (I am hoping that year's Bebo's Girl by Luigi Comencini gets rediscovered.) For me, Violent Summer was the revelation. It was unfortunate that the film was originally released in the U.S. following the one-two punch of La Dolce Vita and L'Avventura, which could not have helped Zurlini establish even a toehold with even the most serious film critics. Both DVDs come with discussions about Zurlini from several professional associates adding some knowledge to Zurlini's working methods and unrealized projects. NoShame's films are pristine, a point reinforced by a brief supplement comparing the opening scene of Girl with a Suitcase in a previous DVD version with NoShame's complete, Italian language version. As the set subtitle is "the early masterpieces", along with their previous release of Desert of the Tarters, I hope this means NoShame will be releasing other Zurlini films in the near future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:53 PM

May 10, 2006

Love and Sex in Korea

A Good Lawyer's Wife/Baramnan Gajok
Im Sang-soo - 2003
Myung Region 1 & 3 DVD

Woman is the Future of Man/Yeojaneun Namjaui Miraeda
Hong Sang-soo - 2004
Bear Region 0 DVD

I sometimes see films that I don't feel like I can discuss with the kind of insight that will add to the understanding about the film or filmmaker. For a deeper understanding of these two films from Korea, I encourage reading the analysis from Filmbrain twice. What I am seeing in general is that at least for now, Korean films do something that you don't have much in U.S. films which is study relationships between adults.

Part of it is the sex. Ignoring all the hysteria regarding Brokeback Mountain, American movies depicting consenting heterosexual couples are pretty much relegated to the ghetto of late night CineMax. Setting aside the nudity in A Good Lawyer's Wife, an American movie about a woman's declaring control of her sexuality would be labelled and dismissed as a "chick flick". Even a commercial and critical success like Unfaithful can be considered the exception that proves the rule being a remake of a French film. I have seen three films with Moon So-ri and consider her one of the bravest actresses working in cinema today.

What makes Woman is the Future of Man more interesting than its American equivalent, Sideways for example, is how messy the relationships are. The two main male characters get together to eat, get drunk and talk. What Hong shows is the competitiveness and distance that marks relationships. It may be called friendship, but what Hong films are closed entities bumping into each other before going off in their own orbits.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:20 PM

May 09, 2006

The Flowers of St. Francis

Francesco, Giullare di Dio
Roberto Rossellini - 1950
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

One day after the 100th birthday of Roberto Rossellini, I had the opportunity to view The Flowers of St. Francis. For contemporary viewers, Rossellini is difficult to evaluate properly with relatively few of his films available on DVD or even tape. I have to date seen ten of Rossellini's films representing different periods of his career, from an early feature, La Nave Bianca (1942), to a couple of his biographical films made for television in the late Sixties and early Seventies. For some filmmakers this would be enough for a general overview, yet I feel like I am barely scratching the surface in understanding why Rossellini was embraced by the critics at Cahiers du Cinema, and how he influenced other directors. While the impact of Rome, Open City and neo-realism is part of the traditional film school canon, I feel that I don't always grasp the import of the films made beginning with Stromboli.

Part of why I chose to see The Flowers of St. Francis is because I will be reviewing Michele Soavi's television film on St. Francis shortly. Not having seen any of the several films, I like to compare different filmmakers' takes on the same subject. Also, this is one of the Rossellini films I had not seen that is currently available on DVD.

Having recently written about films expressing religious faith or being about religious subjects, The Flowers of St. Francis provides an interesting contrast to the films cited at the Tribeca Film Festival. Specifically, this is a film that demonstrates that a film with religious subject matter does not have to be a solemn film. Several people have attributed the humor in Rossellini's film to co-screenwriter Federico Fellini. The Italian title of the film translates as "Francis, God's Jester". Keep in mind that religion, specifically the Catholic faith, is not ridiculed, nor are Francis or his followers. The humor is generated by the childlike innocence and literalness of the Franciscans, as well as Francis' approach to his disciples. An example is Francis' treatment of Ginepro, a follower who manifests humility in its extreme. Ginepro makes a habit of offering his own shabby robe to anyone dressed more poorly than himself, leaving himself naked. Francis "commands" Ginepro not to offer his clothing to the poor, yet his eyes move to the side, a look similar to Bob Hope uttering a double entendre. Later, when the disciples are to walk to separate destinations to spread Francis' message, they are uncertain where to go. Francis orders the men to spin around until dizzy and travel in whichever direction they land. Faith is expressed as youthful devotion to a man and a spiritual philosophy.

To a limited extent, neo-realism informs The Flowers of St. Francis. With the exception of Aldo Fabrizi in a brief role, all of the other actors are non-professionals. The Franciscans of the film are real Franciscan brothers. While the titles that precede each vignette refer to Francis as a saint, Rossellini films him as the other characters. There is no dramatic emphasis, special lighting, music or other devices used. That non-professional actors were used is more amazing in the case of the person who portrays Ginepro. There is a scene with "barbarians" in which Ginepro is tossed about between several very burly men before being dragged on the ground by a horse. The men who portrayed Francis and Ginepro all perfomed without screen credits, perhaps out of their own humility as Franciscans, but also diminishing any difference between their personal identities and those of the believers on-screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:37 PM

May 08, 2006

Belated Glenn Ford Birthday Double Feature

The Green Glove
Rudolph Mate - 1952
Alpha Video Region 1 DVD

The Violent Men
Rudolph Mate - 1955
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Even before I knew that Glenn Ford's 90th birthday was coming up last May 1, I was planning to see The Green Glove. This was a film I vaguely recalled seeing on television when I was maybe seven years old. There was have been something about the title, more than the actual movie, that stayed in my memory. Whatever mystique Glenn Ford may have had seems to have dissipated over the years. In retrospect, it seems difficult to realize that not only was Ford a top star in the Fifties and early Sixties, but his name was enough to get films the greenlight, as illustated in Frank Capra's autobiography. While Ford's appeal as a star seems to be that of the reliable everyman, his filmography is interesting for the number of films he did, sometimes back to back, with the same director. Ford's peak as a star is bracketed by his pair of films with Fritz Lang in 1953, and two films with Burt Kennedy about 11 years later. In between are the two films with Rudolph Mate, two with Vincente Minnelli, and several with George Marshall. With The Green Glove planned, I thought it would be interesting to compare it with a second Ford film directed by Mate. It should also be noted that Mate was the cinematographer for Gilda, the film that elevated Ford to stardom. Given that Mate worked essentially as a director for hire, viewing his two films with Ford suggest that there are stylistic and thematic elements in Mate's films worthy of deeper consideration.

Rudolph Mate is remembered primarily as a cinematographer. Like several of his peers, his best work was for other directors. Mate was mostly a journeyman director. If he didn't have a distinct visual style, his films reveal touches that are reminders of some of his work with Carl Dreyer in particular. I am thinking of how often Mate places the camera to look up at his characters, or how he finds the opportunity to photograph the action in silhouette. Somewhat analagous to Dreyer, the characters Ford portrays for Mate are both outsiders in hostile environments. While The Green Glove has quasi-religious elements that make the theme more obvious, both films are about men who find redemption by placing a greater good above self-interest.

The Green Glove also boasts a Hitchcock connection with the screenplay by Charles Bennett. Ford is a down on his luck American who returns to France to recover a crusading knight's gauntlet, the green glove of the title, that he stumbled upon in World War II. Informed of the glove's great monetary value by the art collector (smuggler?) working for the Germans, Ford acquires the glove in the confusion of an attack and allows a French partisan to store the glove on his behalf. The film bears some similarity to The 39 Steps as Ford is pursued from Paris to Monte Carlo and southern France by the police who suspect Ford of murder, and the art collector's thugs seeking out the gauntlet. Ford is accompanied by Geraldine Brooks, and like The 39 Steps, there is a scene involving the unmarried couple comically forced to pose as husband and wife. Filmed on location in France, the cinematography is by Claude Renoir. The visually qualities would be better evaluated on a DVD made from a good quality print rather than a video tape transfer. Especially interesting is the scene of Ford being chased through a rocky trail by villainous George Macready, his former Gilda nemesis. While Ford is filmed scrambling against the rocks, it is Macready who is filmed almost heroically as a shadow against the sky.

The Violent Men starts off fairly routinely. Ford is cattleman ready to sell his ranch to the man who has been buying out, or forcing out, other ranchers to gain monopoly on "the valley". The basic premise is one seen in too many Westerns. Ford is a former civil war captain who doesn't wear a gun. The film hits high gear with the sub-plot involving the land-grabbing rancher, Edward G. Robinson, a cripple with legs shot following a shootout against some other ranchers. Robinson's wife, Barbara Stanwyck is secretly carrying on with Robinson's younger brother, Brian Keith. The shades of villainy within one family make for perverse entertainment. Added to the mix is Richard Jaeckel, virtually reprising his role from The Gunfighter as the punk who doesn't know when to back down. What makes The Violent Men an interesting moral tale is that when Ford decides to literally fight fire with fire, the film becomes a study of violence spinning out of control with unexpected consequences. Ford, who has moved to town to recuperate from the Civil War, is still described as a stranger even after living there for three years. "The valley" that the ranchers are fighting over is arid and rocky, a hostile environment. Even though the ending is formulaic, The Violent Men offers the pleasure of a film where Glenn Ford is not an entirely good guy, and Robinson, Stanwyck and Keith display varying degrees of humanity.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:23 PM | Comments (2)

May 07, 2006

Day Watch

Dnevnoy Dozor
Timur Bekmambetov - 2006
1VK Region 0 DVD

Last August, knowing that Fox Searchlight was dithering with its U.S. release, I saw the Russian DVD of Night Watch. If you want to read my review, it's in the August archive. Considering that Fox failed to capitalize on whatever "buzz" had been generated from Night Watch, I figured that I could see the sequel on an import DVD long before the film appears in any U.S. format. One good thing about the Day Watch DVD is that the set-up instructions are also in English. With Night Watch it took me about fifteen minutes of trial and error to figure out which setting to hit for English subtitles.

Pretty much, whatever I wrote about Night Watch is true about the sequel. The second film begins with a new prologue, again taking place in the Middle Ages. A character named Tamerlan leads his army on horseback, crashing through the walls of a castle, for the chalk of fate. Imagine, if you will, Frodo and Bilbo and the gang fighting not over some magical rings but a mystic piece of chalk. There is a spectacular battle with body parts lopped off with swords, and flying crows that turn into warriors clad in black. With the special chalk, you can literally rewrite your fate. Day Watch ends with an apocalyptic vision of Moscow that is equally enthralling to watch. The narrative in between the beginning and end of the film must have been written in chalk, and then erased just as quickly, because it makes very little sense.

A common complaint about Night Watch is that the story was hard to follow. Once again we have the forces of Light versus the forces of Dark. There are also characters who are in something called "The Gloom". One of the guys from Light, Anton, tries to rescue his son, who is with the Dark. As best as I could figure, the Dark included vampires who stuck unsuspecting people with long needles, and drank blood out of the same kind of little box containers used for Juicy Juice. While several of the characters from Night Watch are in Day Watch, it almost doesn't matter whether one has seen the first film.

Day Watch is almost like watching a film with all of the action sequences of a Joel Silver production as reimagined by Terry Gilliam with the retro-future of Brazil and Twelve Monkeys, with bits of Luc Besson's Fifth Element, the cold weather fashions of Aki Kaurismaki, and a moment of soft-core lesbian porn reminiscent of Russ Meyer. Day Watch was built for speed, not logic. People chase each other, trucks and cars race through the streets, action follows action with little time given to any meaning or explanation. This is a movie where a woman with a devil's horns hairdo drives her car on the side of an office building, breaks through a picture window, and accelerates down the hallway. This is a movie where a parrot is transformed into an extremely manic human being. If you want a movie with meaning and character motivation, let me recommend Swordfish. Day Watch stops for nothing, hurtling from one scene to the next without pause.

Amazingly, Day Watch was reportedly produced for a little over four million dollars. Again, the speed of the film keeps one from seeing how so much was done with a fraction of the resources. Slowing down the film, especially frame by frame indicates that to compare Day Watch with, for example, Return of the King is almost like comparing classical Walt Disney animation with Huckleberry Hound. When you have scenes of a guy chasing down a baby with spider legs, and a party that suddenly is populated by medieval mercenaries with swords, and you have absolutely no idea what to anticipate, you're too dazzled to care how it was done. If Day Watch was a thrill ride, it would be that old, rickety roller coaster that is more fun and exciting than the high tech ride because part of the fun is the suspicion that it will fall apart from under you at any moment.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:00 PM | Comments (1)

May 03, 2006

Viva Maria

Louis Malle - 1965
MGM Region 1 DVD

Viva Maria is a reminder of how inconsistent Louis Malle was when evaluating is work. Unlike some of Malle's other films which can withstand critical analysis, Viva Maria is a lightweight entry in Malle's filmography. While certainly better than Crackers, it's almost as if Malle realized he really had nothing to say beyond achieving the task of pairing Brigitte Bardot with Jeanne Moreau. The operative word to describe the film is burlesque, both in subject matter and level of humor.

Taking place in 1907, the intertwining narratives are about two women, both named Maria who are both involved in revolutionary activities, and work together as stage partners and rivals. Maria I, Bardot, is the French speaking daughter of an Irish revolutionary who's career consists of bombing the British wherever they may be. Alone in a fictional Central American country, Maria I stumbles upon Maria II, Moreau, an itinerant stage performer with a small time traveling circus. Bardot accidentally tears her costume on stage, developing a stage act with Moreau that becomes more elaborate as more clothing is shed. The new act becomes the main attraction at bigger venues, becoming progressively more risque.

In this fictional country, the peasants are enslaved by a landowner, Rodriguez, who is in cahoots with the Church. While Bardot has placed her revolutionary activity behind her, Moreau swears to the dying George Hamilton that she will take up his cause to fight against Rodriguez. There is one somewhat funny scene with Bardot and Moreau about to be tortured by priests. The tools of the inquisition have not been used for so long that the tongs and racks fall apart in the hands of the would-be torturers, rusty and rotten after so many years. Most of the humor is heavy-handed with bomb dropping pidgeons and a running gag concerning a young man constantly slapped by his mother. The plot device of a peasants' revolution may be a cliche worth spoofing, but Malle and co-writer Jean-Claude Carriere seem ambivalent about taking viewing it either seriously or as satire. Whatever energy was put into creating the relationship and stage routines of Bardot and Moreau disapates in a lazily thought out narrative. It's as if Malle and Carriere had intended to make some points about love and political action, and lost interest along the way.

The first hour of Viva Maria is fairly entertaining. Bardot is totally gorgeous and Moreau looks the best she ever has on film. With the talent involved, one would expect a better film. After Le Feu Follet, Malle probably wanted to make a something fun and more entertaining. Viva Maria is so light that it easily is blown away by even some of Malle's lesser films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:55 AM

April 29, 2006

Seven Swords

Chat Gim
Tsui Hark - 2005
Deltamac Company Region 0 DVD

While I was initially pleased by the commercial success of Crouching Tiger/Hidden Dragon, it now seems that several Chinese language filmmakers are intent on topping Ang Lee for diminishing rewards. Tsui's newest film is even more of a disappointment because he had previously set the bar for Hong Kong filmmakers in the 90s. Previously counted on to be both commercial and idiosyncratic, alternating between epic story telling and screwball comedy, sometimes in the same film. Tsui's most recent films have become less interesting perhaps as a result of the greater commercial demands placed on them. Even Tsui's best film since his misadventures in English with Jean-Claude Van Damme, Time and Tide was the work of a director in search of direction, sythesizing the "bullet ballet" of John Woo with some of the abstact imagery of Wong Kar-Wai. The madcap drinking contest and general antagonism between Nicholas Tse and Candy Lo leading to an uneasy relationship were the few reminders of Tsui's earlier work. One could almost describe Seven Swords as resembling Once Upon a Time in China with digital effects added, minus the heart.

In terms of the martial arts sequences, Tsui hasn't really changed that much in the fifteen years since he began that Jet Li trilogy. That's not necessarily a bad thing as wire work and characters held in mid-air suspension have become the current cliches of action films. But what Tsui seems to have forgotten is the intimacy and interaction of the characters is what makes his films worth seeing, and indeed seeing again. The strength of the first two Once Upon in China films is in the delicate relationship between Jet Li and Rosamund Kwan. Likewise, the unrestrained buffoonery between Leslie Cheung and Anita Yuen sets the stage for The Chinese Feast.

Tsui has been quoted as saying that he wants Seven Swords to be his equivalent to the Lord of the Rings films. The story of six swordsmen and one woman travelling through China, fighting for the Chinese and Koreans enslaved by the Manchurians, has the hallmarks of a national, and nationalistic, epic. The problem is that Tsui has devoted more energy towards the technical side at the expense of characters who are unaffecting and barely distinguishable from each other. It is the bad guys, dressed to look like a deadly version of the KISS army that are identifiable by their make-up and names like Hell-Sting and Mud-Trot. It is the actress who plays the sadistic Kuolo, seen above, who could have stolen the film had she not been killed off about midway into the story.

Some of the actors in Seven Swords are familiar faces both in Hong Kong film and previous Tsui films, like Leon Lai and Donnie Yen. The women seem cast at least partially for their resemblance to actresses associated with Tsui. With the exception of the actress identified as Chen Jiajia as Kuolo who takes on a part that would have been played by Brigitte Lin twenty years ago, the other actresses recede in the memory of such Tsui team players as Maggie Cheung, Sally Yeh and Rosamund Kwan. Only Korean actress Kim So-yeon comes close to making an impression as the conflicted former slave to the war chief, Fire-wind.

It may be telling of the state of Chinese language films in the U.S. that Seven Swords has not been picked up for release here. Time and Tide was Tsui's last film to get theatrical distribution here, failing to attract much of an audience even by foreign film standards. Zu Warriors was bought and shelved by Miramax. The English language Black Mask 2 a film even sillier than Tsui's work with Van Damme, went straight to video. Tsui's pursuit of being the making films that represent the state of the art in technology has again forgotten that a compelling story is the greatest special effect.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:50 PM

April 27, 2006

Ladyhawke

Richard Donner - 1985
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Today's entry is part of Nathaniel R's Michelle Pfeiffer Blog-a-thon. Other links are to be found at his site Film Experience. And on behalf of The Self-Styled Siren who is busy moving herself and her family from Toronto to NYC, another reminder that June 29 has been marked for the blog-a-thon date with another blonde icon, Lana Turner.

Ladyhawke is significant to Michelle Pfeiffer's filmography almost in spite of the film. Pfeiffer has the title role, and her face dominated the posters. Even though one usually thinks of Pfeiffer first among the stars of Ladyhawke, she actually has less screen time than Matthew Broderick or Rutger Hauer. More than Into the Night, released the same year, Ladyhawke marked Pfeiffer's transition to top line movie star.

This medieval fantasy is of two lovers separated by a curse. Isabeau is a woman at night, but a hawk during the day. Navarre is a wolf at night. Acting as an intermediary between the hawk and the wolf, is a young pickpocket, Phillipe, known as Mouse. The most memorable and poignant scene is of Isabeau and Navarre together right before sunrise, he still as a wolf while she is in human form. As the sun rises the two undergo their metamorphoses, he to human, she to hawk. For a brief moment they are able to see each other as humans and just barely can touch each other's fingers. While the scene ends with Hauer screaming in anguish, it also recalls an earlier scene where Mouse first meets Isabeau. He asks is she is flesh or spirit. Isabeau replies that she is sorrow.

The film could have been Richard Donner's masterpiece. Certainly their was no problem with the casting. Donner has been ably assisted by Vittorio Storaro's cinematography although there is sometimes a bit too much reliance on gradient tinting. With three credited writers, the script is occassionally witty and seems truer in spirit to 13th Century Europe than some films that try to graft in contemporary anachronisms for the sake pandering to the presumed audience. Even the pre-CGI special effects work for the most part because little time is spent with them. Where Ladyhawke shows its age is in Alan Parson's bass heavy progressive rock score. It is unfortunate that no one could persuade Donner to use different music. An interesting comparison in music scores can be made with Bertrand Tavernier's medieval Beatricemade two years later, with a score by jazz musician Ron Carter.

As for Michelle Pfeiffer, I am one of the many who "discovered" her in Grease II. It is interesting that three of her roles were of her either literally or symbolically playing predatory animals, in the films Ladyhawke, Batman Returns and Wolf. All three of these films explore the idea of love being limited by an identity that hides ones humanity. The ending of Wolf could be considered the reverse of Ladyhawke with the lovers accepting animal identities in order to fully realize their relationship, while Batman Returns concludes with the would-be lovers in an uneasy truce between animal and human. It is a tribute to Michelle Pfeiffer that no matter who she plays, whether hawk, cat or wolf, there is never a reason not to fall in love with her.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:00 PM | Comments (3)

April 26, 2006

L'Atalante

Jean Vigo - 1934
New Yorker Films Region 1 DVD

What better way to celebrate Jean Vigo's 101th birthday than to see one of his films? The obvious answer is to see all of his films, the two shorts and two features. As it was, I saw L'Atalante for the first time in over thirty years. One benefit is that the DVD release is closer to the version of the film Jean Vigo had in mind, rather than the edited version I had seen previously.

I was struck by how most of the shots in the film use either high or low angles. Only briefly is the camera positioned facing straight ahead. At times the shots appear as if the viewer were huddling with Dita Parlo, Jean Daste or Michel Simon. Vigo also employs ground level shots with the characters running from or to the camera. To describe the visual quality of L'Atalante in this way to those who have yet to see this film suggests that the film is disorienting to watch. Instead L'Atalante is not only quite watchable, but visually cohesive even three different cinematographers. As Jacques Rivette wrote about Vigo: "He suggests an incessant improvisation of the universe, a perpetual and calm and self-assured creation of the world."

At the time I had first seen L'Atalante, Vigo was experiencing renewed popularity both with this film, but more so with Zero for Conduct. Linday Anderson's If . . . was acknowledged as being influenced by Vigo's first feature, and at the end of the Sixties, any film about children in revolt could not be timelier. I had first seen Zero in a double feature with Duck Soup in the summer of 1969 at Wayne State University in Detroit, with the films under the banner of "Revolution '33". I use to have a copy of the first major study of Vigo, published in 1971, written by P.E. Salles Gomes. At the time, Vigo was something like the James Dean of French Cinema. There was an assumption that Vigo's death at twenty-nine deprived the world of a great film artist. Considering how difficult it was for Vigo to get financing, and with Zero for Conduct banned for being "anti-French" and L'Atalante a box office disaster, one has to question what would have happened had Vigo survived his tuberculosis. Even Jean Renoir struggled throughout most of his career to get financing. On the other hand, had Vigo made more films, would the Cahiers du Cinema crowd dismiss him as they had Marcel Carne and Rene Clair?

Setting aside questions about Vigo's reputation, L'Atalante should be enjoyed for its various pleasures. Michel Simon's Pere Jules shares some of the boisterousness of his performance as Boudu. Vigo's sense of humor includes shots of Simon working on the barge with a kitten holding on for its life on Simon's shoulders, and a scene where Simon thinks he is able to make a record play with his finger on the disc. Quite beautiful are the shots of Jean Daste swimming under water looking for Dita Parlo in spirit as seen in the above still, the work of Boris Kaufman. Francois Truffaut and Julien Temple have both discussed having their eyes openned by Vigo. L'Atalante is "poetic realism" at its dreamiest.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:33 PM

April 25, 2006

Owner of a Lonely Heart

Close Your Eyes and Hold Me/Me wo tojite daite
Itsumichi Isomura - 1996
Asia Pulp Cinema Region 1 DVD

Transfixed/Mauvais Genres
Francis Girod - 2001
Picture This! Entertainment Region 1 DVD

My significant other, who as a matter of course is very opinionated on all sorts of matters, refuses to see Transamerica because she feels that having a biological woman portray a transgendered woman is dishonest. I can see her point in that one can argue that as good as Felicity Huffman may be, and I am certainly a fan of hers, it's similar to having white actresses in biracial roles such as in Pinky or Imitation of Life (1959). For my S.O., the right thing would have been to given the starring role to Calpernia Addams. Short of having a transgendered person portraying a transgendered person, my S. O. thought one of the bravest performances was that of Steven Mackintosh in Different for Girls. I still plan on seeing Transamerica and Breakfast on Pluto eventually, but in the meantime I caught up with two films I had previously read about.

What Close Your Eyes and Hold Me and Transfixed have in common is that both are about transgendered women who perform in nightclubs and are unhappy in love. With it's empty, industrial settings and sense of alienation of Antonioni and constant play of sexual and gender dynamics resembling Fassbinder, Close Your Eyes and Hold Me teeters between art film and exploitation. Young professional, Amane, accidentally hits Hanabusa with his car. Seeking her out to maker sure she has recovered from an injury, Amane begins an obsessive relationship which challenges his sense of self. Juri, a receptionist in love with the obvlivious Amane, seeks out Hanabusa only to get involved with her as well. The elegiac music suggests that love is doomed, though the ending hints at a resolution based on mutual needs.

Hanabusa is portrayed by Kumiko Takeda. As gorgeous as she is, I had to wonder if there was another actor such as Shinnosuke Ikehata, or if such casting would commercially limit the film as had happened with Funeral Parade of Roses. The film's story is by Shungiku Uchida, whose writing is getting wider recognition.

One literal translation of the French title for Transfixed is "Bad Family". Francis Girod's film is about the poisoned relationships between fathers and sons. Robinson Stevenin won a Cesar award for portraying a troubled transexual accused of the murder of several prostitutes, some also transgendered. While there is an obvious nod to Rear Window, Transfixed also has similarities to DePalma beyond Dressed to Kill, as well as the tales of murderous families of Claude Chabrol. One bright spot in this otherwise bleak story is seeing Stevenin taking on Francoise Dorleac while his stage partner channels Catherine Denueve. Girod tries to explain and simplify using psychological short cut for simple cause and effect. While it also has its flaws, what Close Your Eyes and Hold Me understands better than Transfixed is that affairs of the heart are never simple.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:44 AM

April 20, 2006

A Plateful of Spaghetti Westerns

Shoot First . . . Ask Questions Later/Il Bianco, il Giallo, il Nero
Sergio Corbucci - 1975
DVD Storm Region 0 DVD

Have a Good Funeral, My Friend . . . Sartana will Pay/Buon Funerale, Amigos!... paga Sartana
Anthony Ascott (Giuliano Carnimeo) - 1970
X Rated Kult Region 2 DVD

Sometimes there are gems to be found when exploring Italian westerns not made by Sergio Leone. Sometimes the films turn out to be less than promised. The two films I saw today attest to Leone's inescapable influence. At the very least the existence of these films on DVD allows for a greater sense of a genre that received spotty distribution and often indifferent critical reception in the United States.

Shoot First is the last Western by Sergio Corbucci. At the time of release, the Italian western genre was primarily comprised of comic spoofs. The best of these was the Leone produced My Name is Nobody. The Italian title translates as the colors white, yellow and black. The colors refer to the colors of three locks on a trunk full of money, as well as to the three main characters. The white is a conman known as "Swiss" in the English language version, but also as Blanc de Blanc, European audiences being more familiar with Mont Blanc. The yellow is a would be samurai portrayed by the Cuban Tomas Milian, more Jerry Lewis than Toshiro Mifune. The black is Eli Wallach's sheriff, known as Black Jack. The orginal Italian title recalls Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, reinforced with the casting of Wallach from the earlier film. Corbucci's film is also something of a takeoff on Red Sun, a film more popular in Europe than the U.S.

Corbucci's film starts on a promising note, literally, with a folk-country theme by the De Angelis brothers, a shift from the imitation Ennio Morricone scores one often expects. Perhaps Corbucci and company try too hard, as Shoot First gets dragged down by too much heavy-handed humor, whether it's Wallach calling his wife "My darling Clementine", or Milian closely examing the back end of a horse. It could also be that Corbucci is more suited to the more serious subversiveness of Companeros, The Big Silence and even Navaho Joe.

Coincidentally, the Sartana film also features an Asian character. In this case George Wang portrays the Chinese owner of a local gambling hall. Not so coincidentally, bankers are the chief villains of both films. Funeral is the third of the Sartana series, and the first that I've seen. Sartana is a well-dressed gambler who travels around playing cards. In this installment he's seeking the murderers of an old prospector. Compared to Clint Eastwood's man with no name character, Sartana is a regular chatterbox. Sartana is clever with cards, whether gambling, or using them as in more creative ways such as snuffing out candles. Giuliano Carnimeo stages a variety of unusual gunfights and keeps things moving in little more than an hour and a half. Having seen three films by Carnimeo working in three different genres, I can say that he's not a bad filmmaker. But no matter which genre, there's always someone better.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:54 PM

April 19, 2006

Sam Whiskey

Arnold Laven - 1969
MGM Region 1 DVD

Today's entry is part of an Angie Dickinson blog-a-thon. Other links are to be found at Flickhead and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

While Sam Whiskey is primarily a vehicle for then-rising star Burt Reynolds, it is also significant in terms of Angie Dickinson's career. The screenplay is by William Norton. Five years later, Norton wrote the cult favorite Big Bad Mama, one of the few films featuring Dickinson as the title character. The film is also the first to take advantage of the new ratings code, allowing Angie Dickinson's fans to see what they could only previously imagine.

Like most of the films she was in, Angie Dickinson's role here is small, but pivotal. She portrays the widow of a man who stole gold bars from the Denver Mint sometime around the period of the Civil War. Reynolds, along with Ossie Davis and Clint Walker, have taken the job of retrieving the gold bars and sneaking them back into the mint in place of the gold painted lead bars. It's a preposterous plot, but a relatively entertaining hour and a half. As someone who has lived in Denver for most of my life, I didn't mind too much that the nothing in the film resembled Colorado or the pictures I've seen of early Denver, and I've walked by the Denver Mint many times.

Part of what makes Sam Whiskey an amiable diversion is the direction of Arnold Laven. While most of his work has been in television, Laven has made some stylish, economically shot films. In addition to the wonderfully titled Monster that Challenged the World, the minor classic Slaughter on Tenth Avenue is most in need of a DVD release. Laven has also collaborated with Sam Peckinpah, both on the beloved television series, The Rifleman and the Peckinpah scripted The Glory Guys. Laven and company also were responsible for Geronimo, infamous for jokes about Native Americans jumping out of airplanes, shouting "Chuck Connors".

Laven is artistically ambitious, using framing devices like bed frames and branches in many of the shots. The break-in isn't quite Rififfi but Reynolds and company are seen trying to operate silently, avoiding noisy disaster.

Burt and Angie had a cinematic reunion with a film called The Maddening in 1995, but I'm sure they would prefer you saw them when they were young and pretty.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (3)

April 18, 2006

Two by Emilio P. Miraglia

The Night Evelyn came out of the Grave/La Notte che Evelyn uscì dalla Tomba
Emilio P. Miraglia - 1971
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times/La Dama rossa uccide Sette Volte
Emilio P. Miraglia - 1972
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Those wild and crazy folks at NoShame have come up with an interesting marketing tool for selling their newest release. If you click on the link, you can see the action figure, one of 7000, which is part of the Emilio Miraglia Killer Queen Box Set. Even without a "Red Queen" of your very own, the films are worth checking out. A previous DVD release of Evelyn looks like it was done from a 16mm print found in somebody's dumpster. Not only is the new DVD done with the correct aspect ratio, but also from a pristine source from a complete print. Red Queen is also a beautiful transfer that includes a deleted prologue among the extras.

What is interesting is seeing the two films together because of narrative elements shared between them. Both titles are misleading in that they both refer to characters who seemingly come back from the dead to seek revenge for their untimely deaths. Red Queen's murderous ghost is the similarly named Eveline. Characters are often not who or what they appear to be, and everyone is motivated by greed. While Red Queen also has a greater variety of locations, family castles and mental institutions are featured in both films. Both films also have their head-scratching moments where logic seems besides the point.

Evelyn is about a wealthy man, Alan Cunningham, who has gauzy hallucinations about his dead wife, Evelyn. Most of his flashbacks involve seeing Evelyn running through the woods in a sheer nightgown that falls easily off her body. Not helping matters is Alan's habit of hiring similar looking prostitutes for unrestrained sado-masochism topped by his imagining Evelyn as the victim of his whip. A clueless psychiatrist convinces Alan to marry again, so Alan hooks up with the first blonde he meets. Various members of the household die mysteriously, with clues leading to the supposedly dead Evelyn. There is a tip of the hat to the literary inspiration for Evelyn with a character named Aunt Agatha. The high point is a combination strip-tease go-go dance done by Erika Blanc emerging from a coffin, part of a night club routine.

Red Queen is even better with more gratuitous sex and violence and nudity, plus more imaginative photography and set design. The story is about a family legend involving internecine sisters who are seen in a 17th century portrait. Murders are attributed to Eveline, whose recent death at the hand of her sister Kitty has been hidden from the police. One fantastic set piece involves Barbara Bouchet having a nightmare, with a tracking shot of her in bed shot from a long hallway, actually a set created in Rome's National Library. Red Queen also features Sybil Danning making the most of her supporting role. The film shows the influence of Dario Argento both in the narrative and visually, but is also the more satisfying of the two films here even though the "hero" looks and dresses like Monty Hall.

It should be noted that while the IMDb filmography for Emilio Miraglia is not complete. The NoShame booklet adds a bit more information. A previous film that actually received a major release in the U.S., The Vatican Affair features the unlikely pairing of Walter Pidgeon and Klaus Kinski. It would seem that there might be more of interest should other films by Miraglia be unburied from their studio vaults.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:21 PM

April 16, 2006

Maggie's Form

Days of Being Wild/A Fei jing juen
Wong Kar-Wai - 1991
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Dragon Inn/Xin long men ke zhan
Raymond Lee - 1992
Mei Ah Entertainment Region 0 DVD

I read parts of the New York Times on-line on an irregular basis. By chance, after reading a news story, I checked out the Arts section. There is an article today about Maggie Cheung, primarily in relationship to her ex-husband, filmmaker Olivier Assayas, and their most recent collaboration, Clean which is finally getting a U.S. theatrical run in N.Y.C. The article is somewhat informative, but Assayas made a questionable statement. From the article by Charles Taylor: Mr. Assayas believes that so little was asked of Ms. Cheung in many of the genre films she made in Hong Kong that "she has really learned to be on her own and to struggle for her character and to recreate in her own way the emotions of the character. And at a very late stage in her career she started understanding that everything she learned in making those movies could be put to use in more ambitious films, like the films of Stanley Kwan, the films of Wong Kar-wai."

I'm not sure what Assayas means by "a very late stage in her career". Based on the IMDb filmography, Maggie Cheung began her screen acting career in 1984 at the age of 19. Her first film with Wong, As Tears Go By was made in 1988, four years and eighteen features after her debut. Chueng's first film with Stanley Kwan, Full Moon in New York was just one year later. Centre Stage, the Kwan film that firmly established Cheung as a major star as well as award winning actress, was made in 1992. By the time Maggie Cheung made her first film with Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep, she was was thirty-one years old with almost seventy films to her credit. Cheung as slowed down considerably after the fifteen month shoot for In the Mood for Love, with only three films since winning both the Golden Horse Award and Hong Kong Film Award for best actress in 2000.

It took a while for Maggie Cheung to make a deep impression on me. I had seen her in two Jacky Chan vehicles that played theatrically, Supercop and Twin Dragons, but at the time I had little idea who the actors besides Chan were. Cheung was also in The Heroic Trio, a film I caught at a midnight screening. It's a fun film starring three of the top Hong Kong actresses of the time, with Cheung sharing the screen with Michelle Yeoh and the late, great and frequently hilarious Anita Mui. When I saw In the Mood for Love, I was convinced that one of the reasons why cinema was invented was to film Maggie Cheung from behind, wearing a form-fitting Cheongsam dress. A few months after seeing In the Mood for Love, I bought my first DVD player and began catching up on Hong Kong cinema.

Days of Being Wild looks somewhat like a sketch for Wong Kar-Wai's subsequent films. Two violent scenes indicate the influence of Martin Scorsese which permeated As Tears Go By. The themes of time and memory, love and loss, are explored here with lots of shots featuring clocks or watches. One of the dates in the film is April 16, 1960. Several of Wong's titles indicate some kind of chronology, most literally Ashes of Time. The film takes place in 1960 and 1961. Several of the characters are each given individual moments to provide first person narration. Leslie Chueng meets Maggie Chueng at a food stand, similar to the set up of Chungking Express. Latin dance and Hawaiian (?) guitar music suggest foreign destinations. In Days two men are in the Phillipines, in Happy Together two men are in Buenos Aires. Wong's characters find that travel is usually not an escape from unhappiness. Maggie Cheung portrays Su Li-zhen, a character she would repeat in In the Mood for Love and 2046. Days also marks the first collaboration of Wong with cinematographer Christopher Doyle. Providing confusion for those unfamiliar with Hong Kong cinema, Days of Being Wild also stars Jacky Cheung, who like Leslie Cheung is no relation to Maggie Cheung. Jacky Cheung did however star in the similarly titled but differently plotted Days of Being Dumb.

Dragon Inn is the Tsui Hark produced remake of a film by King Hu. It was Hu's film that was on the theater screen in Goodbye, Dragon Inn. The film is about two warring factions in Ming era China. A group led by Brigitte Lin who is initially disguised as a man are protecting two royal children from a powerful eunuch. Cheung portrays Jade, the owner of the Dragon Inn, a hotel in the middle of a vast desert. It's not enough for Cheung to sell her loyalties to the highest bidder, in her restaurant she serves "spicy meat buns" with a recipe from the Sweeney Todd cookbook. This is a film where there is little difference between foreplay and hand-to-hand combat. Whether throwing sharp objects at each other, or simply exchanging verbal barbs, the sparks between Lin and Cheung are palpable. There are two action set pieces involving elaborate sword play and gymnastics, as well as scenes with grisly humor. With Lin, an actress famed for several gender bending performances, the best scenes are with Cheung, where the boys aren't.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:29 PM

April 15, 2006

It Happened to Jane

Wonderwall
Joe Massot - 1968
Rhino Video Region 1 DVD

Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye/La Morte Negli occhi del Gatto
Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M. Dawson) - 1973
Blue Underground Region 1 DVD

One time when I didn't have any DVDs demanding to be viewed, I stumbled upon a documentary about Jane Birkin. At the time, I was unaware of how extensive her singing and acting career really had been, or had knowledge about her political activities. Even though I had seen her in more films than I recalled, Birkin's most memorable performance is one of her earliest, as one of the two teenage girls photographed by David Hemmings in Blow Up. My knowledge of Birkin's musical career was limited to her infamous duet with husband Serge Gainsbourg.

My curiousity concerning Wonderwall preceeded knowledge of Birkin's involvement. The film is most famous for having a soundtrack composed by George Harrison. More people have heard the music than actually saw the film, which was very briefly released in the United States in 1969. The slight story by Gerard Brach concerns an absent-minded scientist who becomes obsessed with the hippie chick/model he discovers is living in the apartment next door. The title refers to the brick wall dividing the two apartments. Jack MacGowran, the scientist, is first seen observing life under a microscope. He observes Jane Birkin in somewhat similar fashion through accidentally discovered holes in the wall. What little the film has to say is about the difference between being a participant or an observer of life. If I saw Wonderwall back when it was originally made, I probably would have said it was one of the best movies I had seen that year.

It's probably unavoidable that the hipness that oozes all over Wonderwall now looks like a quaint muddle. Birkin's apartment is a combination of Peter Max design and color with posters of Valentino, Harlow, Mae West and Garbo. Harrison's score is a mixed bag of inauthentic raga, bluegrass and jazz, with some unmemorable rock. Comic ideas include subtitles to indicate what MacGowran is trying to say over the din of a vacuum cleaner, and a shot of MacGowran filmed in black and white when a colleague tells him that he "looks off-color". The director, Joe Massot, later earned the wrath of three members of Led Zeppelin after making The Song Remains the Same, a film marked by an abundance of shots with the camera gazing up on Robert Plant's crotch. Wonderwall should also be noted as the first of several films with a character named Penny Lane. It may have been obtuse product placement, but Jack MacGowran has several scenes involving apples.

Seven Deaths in a Cat's Eye is based on a story by Peter Bryan, the British screenwriter. The film is firmly similar to other earlier Margheriti films with its haunted castle setting, murderous relatives, lesbians, vampires and nods to Edgar Allen Poe. Instead of a walled in black cat, the title animal is fat and yellow. Seven Deaths also features a gorilla as fake as was seen in Konga a few months back. Berkin portrays a young woman who returns to the family estate only to find that her mother died under mysterious circumstances. Serge Gainsbourg briefly appears as a police inspector. More so than previous Margheriti haunted house films, this one is punctuated by violent slashings, signified by splashes of blood that resembles red paint. There is one particularly disturbing image of a corpse in the basement that serves as a feast for a nest of rats. In one of the several plot points that's glossed over, no one ever bothers to chase the rats out and remove the body. It may be significant that Seven Deaths, a hybrid of gothic horror and giallo, was Margheriti's last film in either genre. The rotting corpse could well symbolize a part of Italian cinema that by 1973 was reduced to the remains of earlier, livelier films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:10 PM

April 13, 2006

Two Voyages with Richard Fleischer

The Vikings
Richard Fleischer - 1958
MGM Home Video Region 1 DVD

Fantastic Voyage
Richard Fleischer - 1966
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

In looking over Richard Fleischer's filmography at the time of his death a last March 25, I realized that I had only seen a handful of his films. Several of the films I had seen were in no way as Fleischer intended, full screen, edited, and on black and white television. One of those films seen that way was The Vikings.

This is old school Hollywood doing what it does best - a big costume epic with real movie stars. In the DVD supplement, Fleischer discusses the efforts made to be accurate with the sets and costumes, and I'll take him at his word. The accuracy stopped with the casting as 41 year old Ernest Borgnine plays father to the one year older Kirk Douglas. And while Tony Curtis will probably always be known for his youthful spirit, he hardly looks like the 21 year old man that the script calls for. Janet Leigh is totally gorgeous as an English princess. A director less trusting of his material like Rob Marshall would fret about the fact that no effort is made to disguise actors' natural speaking voices, or that the Vikings and the English characters all speak English to each other. Fleischer, like some of his characters, just dives in for the sake of adventure and spectacle.

The DVD of The Vikings may be worth studying on how to direct an action set piece. Fleischer explains how the swordfight between Douglas and Curtis was created using shots of no more than three sword strokes. The cinematography is by Jack Cardiff who used creative angles is shooting the final duel, as well as creating the luminous shots of Janet Leigh. The commercial success of The Vikings may have contributed to Cardiff making his own Viking film, The Long Ships. Screenplay writer Calder Willingham worked previously for Douglas as one of the screenwriters for Paths of Glory as well as contributing to Spartacus. Screen story writer Dale Wasserman's most famous association with Douglas came with the play version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Between the action and some sly humor, what's best about The Vikings is that it is a reminder that one could make a big costume epic without being bogged down with too many pretensions of self-importance.

Briefly in Fantastic Voyage, rival brain surgeons Arthur Kennedy and Donald Pleasance briefly debate evolution versus intelligent design. The debate effectively ends when the micoscopic sized Pleasance is consumed by a while corpuscle. The discussion is a small portion of the film that may have been no more than a thought provoking blip forty years ago, yet unintentionally acts as a reminder of more recent events. The story of a group of doctors shrunk so small that they take a voyage in a man's bloodstream to do brain surgery is silly. The shrinkage can only last for sixty minutes. Even within the logic of the basic premise, my significant other and I wondered why the tiny medical team wasn't injected into the ear or brain in the first place instead of taking the long way to their destination. It was probably written that way, but the film is crafty enough to have the sixty minutes of shrink time last exactly that long in screen time. The best moments of Fantastic Voyage are pre-CGI special effects of blood, tissue, bacteria and other microscopic matter that in their own way anticipate some of the psychedelic wonder seen two years later with 2001.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (3)

April 12, 2006

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Irwin Allen - 1961
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Based on the premise, I thought Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea would be kind of like The Day After Tomorrow, only about global warming rather than a new ice age. Allen's film is hardly prescient, but instead uses an unexplored explanation that the Van Allen Belt has caught fire. If the Van Allen Belt can be seen as the MacGuffin of Allen's film, it should be no surprise that the screenplay was co-written by Charles Bennett, a writer most famous for his work for Alfred Hitchcock. Allen's film seems primarily made to prove that after making dinosaurs walk the earth in The Lost World, he could create a contemporary Jules Verne style adventure that could equal Walt Disney in the special effects.

There is some psuedo-science going on concerning whether the Van Allen Belt will burn itself out, or if the only solution is to blow it into space with a nuclear missile. Most of the film plays like variation of The Caine Mutiny with various people questioning the sanity of Admiral Walter Pidgeon, and the voyage interrupted by accidents or sabotage. It's probably a good thing I missed this movie as a kid, I don't think I could sleep knowing the fate of the world was in the hands of Pidgeon and Peter Lorre.

Peter Lorre, one of the stars of Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is perhaps cast for that Disney connection. Looking back after forty-five years, it seems like science fiction to recall a time when Walter Pidgeon could be the top billed star, or that the name of Robert Sterling would mean anything except to those of us who watched re-runs of the "Topper" television series. Joan Fontaine probably deserved better than to fall into a pool, an unintended dinner for Lorre's pet shark. Of course, Barbara Eden looks cute with that stylish beret. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is untimately a boy's adventure film, featuring a former starlet who knew how to keep boys watching for the rest of her lengthy career.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:25 AM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2006

All the Wrong Clues

Gui ma zhi duo xing
Tsui Hark - 1981
Deltamac All Region DVD

I'm certain that most people who saw All the Wrong Clues would never believe that twenty-five years later Tsui Hark would be a major force in Hong Kong cinema. Although compared to Steven Spielberg for bringing in higher quality special effects to his film, Tsui is some ways closer to Luc Besson with his writing and producing films directed by proxy, in addition to his own formidable output as a director. All the Wrong Clues was Tsui's fourth film as director, and first commercial success.

What distinguishes this film is how Tsui stretches his limited resources, as well as how All the Wrong Clues anticipates some of Tsui's future work in content and style. The film is a screwball and slapstick detective story, closer to the Three Stooges than Nick and Nora Charles. Tsui begins with a very funny visual joke: what appears to the audience as one man walking through a shadowy alley is revealed to be three men, one closely behind the other, each man markedly taller than the man in front. Visual gags include a conversation conducted with a skeleton sitting between two characters, a barroom brawl that becomes a dance scene with a change of music, and a detective discovering several different women hiding in different rooms, including the bathtub, in his apartment. Tsui demonstrates a fondness for the ridiculous that would be honed to better effect in Peking Opera Blues and The Chinese Feast.

The action scenes are created by clever editing, creating the illusion of movement and otherwise unaffordable stunt work. Like the "B" directors of earlier eras, Tsui also shoots close-ups and disguises minimal sets. Tsui also plays with silhouettes at different times, an effect he would revisit with a beautiful shot of Jet Li appearing to kiss Rosamund Kwan in Once Upon a Time in China. The main reason to see All the Wrong Clues is for Tsui's anything for a laugh approach to comedy which includes naming a character Ah Capone, having one of the women dress like Lana Turner with a white turban, and including a couple of nuns in a car chase. All the Wrong Clues may also have the distinction of being possibly the only Chinese language film where you'll hear "Hava Nagila".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 AM

April 07, 2006

City of Angles

Crash
Paul Haggis - 2005
Lions Gate Entertainment Region 1 DVD

Higher Learning
John Singleton - 1995
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

I hearby call a moritorium on films based in Los Angeles that attempt to impart life lessons for the rest of us, especially with stories concerning racial diversity. Don Cheadle, I know your heart was in the right place as it almost always seems to be, but you should have known better. I'm speaking as one, who like Mr. Cheadle, is a graduate of East High School in Denver, Colorado. East High School was integrated even before it was mandatory throughout Denver high schools, and was considered such a nationally acclaimed school that children from Denver's wealthiest families made it a family tradition that their children went there. I might as well add What's Cooking by Gurinder Chadha while I'm at it. I'm suppose to believe that none of the four families at one intersection knew each other at all? I guess my question should be: have I lived an exceptional life or is there something about Los Angeles that perpetuates a sense of isolation from other people and the concept of other realities?

My biggest problem with Crash is how schematic it is. One could almost describe Crash as being like a Robert Altman film without any sense of humor. Showing how different people are connected with each other isn't new, Altman wrote the book as it were with Nashville. Guy Ritchie's films are essentially variations of Altman in the guise of crime capers. With Crash though, it is a little too neat and clean to have Matt Dillon grope Thandie Newton one day and save her the day after. Similarly having Ryan Phillippe encounter Terrence Howard two days in a row is just too coincidental. My other problem with Crash is that Paul Haggis seems to be perpetuating stereotypes even while he asks the audience to look beyond them. My memory of 2005 includes a film that had had a racially diverse cast, a smart script, dynamic cinematography, and attempted to ask some big questions, particularly what it truly means to be human. That film was Land of the Dead.

Higher Learning has its moments of unbelievability. I cannot believe that a neo-Nazi student who trashes his room-mate's section of the dorm and flashes a gun would not have been arrested or at least barred from returning to the campus. John Singleton's film is about a group diverse students who cross each others paths. The diversity in question is racial, financial and sexual. It is also a much more ambitious film than Crash. Singleton wants his Los Angles college campus to stand in for the United States and constantly uses visual motifs of the American flag, statues and paintings of Chistopher Columbus and the founding fathers, as a way of illustrating the gap between the ideal and the reality of the United States. Singleton also visually quotes Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia. Lapses of logic aside, Higher Learning may be the best photographed and edited film by John Singleton. I hope that he will make another film that fulfills his early promise.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:28 PM

April 06, 2006

Three Extremes

Saam gaang yi
Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan and Park Chan-Wook
Mega Star Region 0 DVD

Anthology films can be a bit of a challenge to evaluate because sometimes one or two parts are better than the whole. Also, they are assembled so that the best sequence is usually the last one. Many times, just knowing who the director is can be enough of a clue as to the quality of the segment. Even though the episodes filmed in The Twilight Zone were probably familiar to those who grew up watching the television series, there should have been no surprise that George Miller outdid the other contributors for sheer panache. Spirits of the Dead not only proves that no one can top Federico Fellini, but that there was really no other reason to see Vadim or even Malle's contributions.

My reaction to Three Extremes is a bit different. The three directors are different in style from each other, but I don't feel that one has necessarily topped the others. I may be a bit hobbled in adequately judging the film in that while I am fairly familiar with Takashi Miike, my only only exposure to Park Chan-Wook has been Oldboy. I have not seen anything by Fruit Chan. I will not extensively analyze the trilogy, but a few words are in order.

Miike's episode, "Box", is unlike the other films I have seen. Unlike previous films with their manic energy and transgressive activities, "Box" is extemely formal and austere. Most scenes have no more than three people in environments that seem removed from the rest of the world. The film follows the dream, or perhaps it is a dream within a dream, of a young woman haunted by memories of her sister. More so than Audition, this is the quietest film I've seen by Miike with shots of Kyoko Hasegawa running through snow covered fields, or simply standing in a sparsely decorated office. A shortcut description would be to imagine a J-horror film directed by Robert Bresson with a twist ending courtesy of Brian De Palma. For those interested in Miike, he has a translated blog in Japan Film News.

Dumplings is my first exposure to Fruit Chan. While the film has allegorical underpinnings, one can also enjoy it as a warning that sometimes it's better not to know all the details about the food one eats. The story originated from a novella by Lilian Lee, a prolific Hong Kong author best known for Farewell My Concubine. "Dumplings" also features a credible performance by Bai Ling which won her Best Supporting Actress from the Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards. Christopher Doyle's cinematography features loving close-ups of boiling water, translucent dumplings, and eyes and lips.

Park Chan-Wook's "Cut" is about a filmmaker trapped in a real life nightmare on a movie set. Park plays with the notion of cinematic reality so that in a couple of occassions, what appears to be real within its context, turns out to be action on a film set. The title refers to both the director's command when shooting a film, as well as the action with a knife or ax. Park refers to Korean filmmaking as well as having scenes acting both as figurative and literal mirror images, both as straight reflections and as fun house images twisted around. Based on Park's discussion of future projects, "Cut" might be considered a preview of things to come.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:15 AM

April 04, 2006

The Promise

Wu Ji
Chen Kaige - 2005
Deltamac Region 0 DVD

Considering the history concerning The Promise being promised to North American viewers, I decided that catching the film on DVD would guarantee that I would see a version of the film closest to Chen Kaige's vision. To make matters somewhat more confusing, the Internet Movie Database lists running times of 128 minutes and 102 minutes for The Promise. The DVD version released in Hong Kong is 121 minutes long. From what I understand, Warner Brothers will be releasing the shorter version of the film.

The Promise is another epic following on the template established by Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Like Ang Lee and Zhang Yimou, Chen has made a Chinese film geared towards an international audience who may unfamiliar with older, modestly budgeted films made for the local market. A tale of ghosts, revenge and misdirected love, The Promise made me think of Ronny Yu's The Bride with White Hair as reimagined by Michael Bay. Peter Pau's camera never seems to stay still, and there is much reliance on computer generated special effects. Appearing after Hero and House of Flying Daggers, one cannot avoid seeing a formula at work that increased budgets and beautiful cinematography cannot disguise. Of course it is no coincidence that cinematographer Peter Pau shot both Crouching Tiger and Bride.

The pan-Asian cast features Cecila Cheung stepping into what were previously Zhang Ziyi's slippers. Cheung portrays a princess who makes the promise of the title. As a very young orphan, she accepts a life of wealth in exchange for having no love in her life, an offer made to her by a goddess. As a young woman, Cheung is the object of love for several rivals, including Nicholas Tse, Jang Dong-Kun and Sanada Hiroyuki. If the cast is relatively unfamiliar for American audiences, the story appears to similar to preceding Chinese epics. Battles are fought, hearts are broken, gravity is defied.

Aside from the sumptuous look of the film, The Promise has a couple of intriguing set pieces that probably benefit from being seen on a large movie screen. One scene involves a battle featuring a bull stampede. A sword fight takes place in an oversized, circular cage. Almost every visual aspect of The Promise, the sets, the exteriors, the fights, is oversized. One significant difference is that Chen's film features characters who are not platonic, with scenes involving partial nudity and sex with explitness more common to Hong Kong and Korean films. While nothing is as graphic as Chen's maligned Killing Me Softly, the inclusion of sexual dynamics has been part of several of Chen's previous films, particularly Farewell, My Concubine.

For me, Chen's best film is still Emperor and the Assassin. Big in scope and ambition, with a literal cast of thousands, the film's heart is in the relationship between the main characters. With The Promise, Chen occassionally loses his characters and the story to the pile-up of special effects. For all of its surface pleasure, one hopes Chen's next film depends less on artifice and more on honest story-telling.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:28 PM

April 03, 2006

I See a Dark Stranger

Frank Launder - 1946
Home Vision Region 1 DVD

Frank Launder is associated with one nearly perfect film. That film is The Lady Vanishes. Of three films directed by Carol Reed, I have only seen Kipps, but I suspect the other two films are at least as watchable. I See a Dark Stranger was one of several films that Launder made with filmmaking partner Sidney Gilliat that attempts to show that they could make a Hitchcock style film without Hitchcock. Not surprisingly, they couldn't. Stranger is nowhere near as bad as Gilliat's Endless Night, but it is a film that could have been better. There is even a scene involving an old woman met at a train by two authority figures that is clearly reminiscent of The Lady Vanishes, indicating how badly Gilliat and Launder were hoping to make lightning strike twice.

The premise was certainly interesting: Taking place in 1944, a young Irish woman, raised on the legend of the Irish Republican Army's fight against British rule, attempts to join the IRA soon after her 21st birthday. In her anti-English zeal, ignoring Ireland's official neutrality, Bridie Quilty (Deborah Kerr) allows herself to work on behalf of a German spy. Bridie is subsequently pursued by a British intelligence office (Trevor Howard). Where Gilliat and Launder blunder twice is in motivation. While Bridie's anti-English sentiments are clear, her reasoning for working on behalf of a German spy and her change of mind are tenuous at best. Worse, is the heavy-handed humor that includes close-ups of eyes rolling as a reaction to dull conversation, a funeral procession that is revealed to be a disguise for a smuggling operation, a den of spies defeated by slapstick pratfalls and jokes concerning Oliver Cromwell. Where Hitchcock moves quickly leaping over gaps of logic, and never lets a joke get in the way of narrative momentum, Launder loses his way. If Hitchcock is elegant penmanship, Launder is the guy who writes with big letters, underlined three times for emphasis.

One bit of business that meanders from the narrative is actually funny. The scene involves two supremely incompetent British officers with their leggy secretary. It's the kind of scene that anticipates one of Launder and Gilliat's better films, The Belles of St. Trinian's.

The main reason to see Stranger is for Deborah Kerr. This is only one of two films available on DVD to showcase Kerr before she was signed by MGM, although it should be noted that Love on the Dole is available in PAL format. As nicely as Kerr is photographed, as above, by Wilkie Cooper, Kerr is one of those few actors who looks better photographed in color. Kerr's screen presence is such that it demands playing opposite someone like Cary Grant or Robert Mitchum. Trevor Howard, never a likely leading man, looks even more foolish as an action hero, fist-fighting Nazi spies. As prolific as they were, Gilliat and Launder, with their oddly named company, Individual Pictures, would never hit the target as well as rivals Powell and Pressburger, also known as The Archers. Both teams of filmmakers made films starring Kerr in succession, with Black Narcissus following I See a Dark Stranger. The Gilliat-Launder film may not have the classic status given to Powell and Pressburger's film, but it worth a glimpse of the actress who briefly ruled over British cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:31 PM | Comments (1)

April 01, 2006

The Girl Can't Help It

Frank Tashlin - 1956
Second Sight PAL Region 0 DVD

April 1, also known as April Fool's Day seems like a good time to celebrate a comedy.

I'm an unapologetic fan of Frank Tashlin. This is a filmmaker who needs to have his films seen in their theatrical aspect ratios to be fully appreciated. Tashlin not only made a point of trying to utilize the widescreen as much as possible, but also created visual jokes. The opening of The Girl Can't Help it begins with Tom Ewell filmed in black and white, with the "Academy" screen ratio, with the screen stretching to full CinemaScope with color fading in. This is the kind of imagery I would have loved to have seen on a huge theater screen.

At least part of the storyline is attributed to Garson Kanin's novella which was made into a Broadway musical four years later. Tashlin and co-screenwriter Herbert Baker took Kanin's story as a starting point, changing the names of characters and focusing more on the developing youth culture of the mid-Fifties. While the film is a comic version of the "overnight success" of early rock musicians, what makes The Girl Can't Help It continue to be watchable is that Tashlin allows the music to speak for itself.

What I mean by that is that the film isn't saddled with a story about a misunderstood kid and well-meaning parents. There is no authority figure explaining to the audience that rock and roll is just good, clean fun. Unlike other filmmakers at the time, Tashlin ignored most of the template established by Sam Katzman. While The Girl Can't Help It benefits from solid Hollywood production values, Tashlin both celebrates and parodies popular culture, particularly when Edmond O'Brien, nobody's idea of a hipster, takes the stage.

Perhaps the best testament to Tashlin's artistry is in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers. There is a scene where the characters watch The Girl Can't Help It in a theater. The scene is doubly nostalgic for having characters in 1968 watch a movie made in 1956. Tashlin cuts from shots of The Platters singing to shots of the audience swaying to the music. Bertolucci in turn filmed his audience swaying along with the film within the film. The song, You'll Never Know serves as a commentary for Tom Ewell and Jayne Mansfield's feelings towards each other. For Bertolucci the song and Tashlin's film provide contrast between the past as represented by Tashlin and the Bertolucci's characters acting out a temporary nostalgia for that imagined past. If The Girl Can't Help It represents romance and innocence, The Dreamers is pointedly about sex replacing romance and the loss of innocence.

One of the more famous scenes in The Girl Can't Help It is of Tom Ewell imagining lost love Julie London. London is heard singing "Cry Me a River". Ewell can not escape her voice or image, with London appearing in different rooms with different outfits. Even when she is not seen or heard, London, playing herself, haunts Ewell's character, the entertainment agent, Tom. The night after I saw The Girl Can't Help It, I saw V for Vendetta, a film with the title character declaring that there are no coincidences. Well maybe it wasn't a coincidence but for the second night in a row I watched a film that included "Cry Me a River" as part of the soundtrack. And I was really hoping that when Natalie Portman was peaking into the different rooms that the ghost of Julie London would make a cameo appearance. The difference between the Wachowski Brothers and Frank Tashlin is that while the Wachowski's enshrine popular art, Tashlin isn't afraid to be totally immersed in both its absurdity and glory.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:13 AM | Comments (2)

March 29, 2006

The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus

Michael Lindsay-Hogg - 1996
Abkco Films Region 1 DVD

I probably would have been more enthusiastic about the Rock and Roll Circus had I seen it at the time of its intended release. Filmed mostly on December 11 going into the early morning of December 12, 1968, Circus now looks like a relic from a bygone time when hippies roamed the earth. It may also be possible that I feel removed from music that use to be the center of my life.

Talkin' 'bout my generation, I'm one of those people who became seriously devoted to rock music when The Beatles wanted to hold my hand. For my friends and myself, the only music worth considering came from England. The first major band I saw in concert was The Kinks, on Ray Davies' 21st birthday no less. The second major band I saw was, and this is kind of embarrassing to say now, Freddie and the Dreamers. The first concert I saw as an NYU freshman was the Fillmore East engagement of The Who. This does not even account for my record buying habits in those days. But it puts into some kind of perspective the how I may have felt about Mick Jagger's circus at the time it was filmed.

For me, it doesn't really matter why the film was never seen until almost ten years ago. What matters is how the performances hold up now. A few years ago I saw Monterey Pop. Bands that I loved in 1967 like Jefferson Airplane and Country Joe & the Fish could no longer command my attention. My response to Otis Redding reflected my change in attitude towards what was at the time called "Soul Music". (And if you ever visit Memphis, I recommend the Stax Museum.)

The first question I have about Circus is who came up with the stupid idea of having the audience wear orange and yellow ponchos with floppy felt hats? If anything gets in the way of enjoying the show, it's seeing how ugly hippie fashions look in retrospect. And what was I thinking when I bought those striped bell-bottoms? At least in this film, The Rolling Stones manage to be less interesting to watch and listen to than even compared with a recent concert on HBO. With Rock and Roll Circus, even if it's not the best filmed performance of The Who, they still manage to be more interesting than anybody else. Yoko Ono looks silly hiding under a big piece of cloth while John Lennon performs "Yer Blues" with Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell and Keith Richards. Ono's singing performance is titled "Whole Lotta Yoko" which is more than enough. This is not to dismiss Ono's art, but to say that within the context of the show it looks at best silly, and at worst like a pretentious intellectual's idea of improving rock music. I did get a chill when Keith Richards sang the opening lyrics to Salt of the Earth. It was also nice to see a young, pretty Marianne Faithful wearing a sleeveless dress.

Even if Rock and Roll Circus failed to be seen, it proved to help the careers of those behind the screen. Sandy Lieberson went on to produce Performance among other films. Michael Lindsay-Hogg documented the last days of The Beatles, and directed a nice, underseen film, Frankie Starlight. Cinematographer Anthony Richmond filmed the Stones again, this time with Jean-Luc Godard, but also The Who again for The Kids are Alright.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:36 PM

March 28, 2006

Woman in the Moon

Frau im Mond
Fritz Lang - 1929
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Woman on the Moon seems to be ground zero for many of the cliches and story elements found in future science fiction films. The characters include a nutty old professor with unruly hair, a stowaway kid, and two guys in love with the same woman. The trip to the moon includes scenes of the space travellers adrift inside the space ship with no gravity, and confronting the fact that there is not enough oxygen for the voyage home to earth. Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou not only anticipated some of the realities of space travel, but also plot points that would appear in such films as Destination Moon, Outland, Space Cowboys, and Stowaway to the Moon.

Lang and von Harbou also refer to the popular culture of the time. The boy, Gustav, who sneaks onto the rocket ship, has his dreams of space travel fueled by pulp literature. What is featured on the magazine cover is that the stories are by the author of Nick Carter adventures. The film's authors may be poking fun at themselves as Woman on the Moon is primarily a pulp adventure story. The first half of the film concerns a mysterious character, Walt Turner, who steals documents concerning moon travel and works on behalf of a cabal seeking monopoly of the moon's gold. The first half of the film, involving espionage and sabotage, thematically anticipates future Lang films, particularly Cloak and Dagger, as well as looking back at the previous year's Spies. In another future cliche,it is the professor who theorizes that there is gold on the moon, and Turner, who claims the gold for the cabal, who are destroyed by their greed.

If the story is trivial in the face of Metropolis, the film is visually consistent with other Lang films. Many of the shots incorporated geometric patterns, particularly rectangles. Doors and windows are used for framing devices. A scene shot in a cave literalizes the idea of the professor and Turner's own darkness. Gerda Maurus personifies the Teutonic ideal with her blonde hair and idealistic spirit, as the title character. At almost three hours, Woman on the Moon spends too much time on a story with little substance. When it comes to Fritz Lang's films, his best films concern down and dirty dealings on Earth.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:14 PM

March 27, 2006

Cat Chaser

Abel Ferrara - 1989
Artisan Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I suspect that even if a "director's cut" of Cat Chaser were to be made available, I would still conclude that the dominant force behind this film was still Elmore Leonard. Along with The Moonshine War, Cat Chaser is one of only two films based on a Leonard novel that also has a screenplay by the novelist, in this case in collaboration with James Borrelli. The first hour of the film is a faithful, if abreviated, version of the novel. The last half hour has three significant changes: two characters are killed off, a there is a scene that takes place in the movie that is not in the novel, and the off-screen narration functions adds a tone to the film that is not in the novel.

The story is about a former soldier whose chance reunion with the wife on an acquaintance turns into an affair. The soldier, George Moran, was stationed in the Dominican Republic in 1965 and dreams about his experience there. Mary, the wife, is married to Andres DeBoya, a former Dominican general now living in South Florida. Because of his affair with Mary, Moran is assumed to be involved in a plot against DeBoya to steal his stash of two million dollars. The film was produced by Vestron, a small distribution company that had a major hit with Dirty Dancing, followed by a production slate of too many movies that made too little money. Ferrera made China Girl as well as Cat Chaser for Vestron. Both films were released in versions that Ferrara disowns. The available version of Cat Chaser is full-screen, with a running time of ninety-minutes.

In the third-person narrative of the novel, the tone is relatively neutral save for some commentary about life in South Florida. In 1981 when Leonard wrote the novel, the Atlantic Ocean was being hidden by giant condominiums. (As a Miami Beach resident, I can tell you the process is almost complete.) The tone of the narration in the film is rueful, if not outright regret, in the past tense. I do not know if the narrator exists in Ferrera's version of the film. The narration seems out of character for Leonard based on the other novels I'm familiar with. Usually in a Leonard novel, no matter what happens, the protagonist goes along for the ride, making the best of bad, unlikely or impossible situations. A Leonard "hero" may be amused or bemused, but rarely regretful.

Leonard also will occassionally have characters from one novel make an appearance in another novel. In the case of the novel Cat Chaser, the mention of Marshall Sisco had extra significance.

That a couple of supporting characters get killed early may have been a way of reducing some of the narrative threads. This was probably done for the sake of narrative clarity for the film. Or quite possibly Leonard felt he had a different way of telling his story.

The most significant change is when DeBoya rapes Mary after confirming her infidelity. In the novel, Mary has been beaten and observes herself in a mirror, overwhelmed physically and emotionally by her husband. In the film, DeBoya humiliates Mary by forcing her to undress at gunpoint, followed by placing the gun barrel at her mouth and moving the gun down Mary's nude body to her vagina. From what I have read, this is one scene that was edited without Ferrera's approval. As Leonard is credited has the co-screenwriter for the film, I am hoping he or Ferrera will in some way make available information concerning these changes from the novel.

Where Ferrera leaves a bit of his signature is in the interiors of DeBoya's house. Some of the artwork on display reflects Latin American expressions of Catholicism. While not emphasised, Mary depicts the Madonna-whore schism. While Mary is engaged in an illicit affair, her marriage is sexless, as is that of a "bride of Christ". While less obvious, the rape scene and the portrayal of Mary echo some of Ferrera's recurring themes.

Leads Peter Weller and Kelly McGillis are acceptable, if bland, in their roles. More notable for their screen presence are supporting actors Phil Leeds, Charles Durning, Thomas Milian and Frederick Forrest. Weller later directed the film version of Leonard's Gold Coast.

The Latin jazz tinged music is the only feature score by Chick Corea, featuring the distinctive, sometimes mournful trumpet of Mark Isham.

Those with interest in either Leonard or Ferrera would hope that a DVD is released of Cat Chaser that more closely resembles the intentions of the literary and film authors. The official version currently available is a disservice to both artists.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM

March 24, 2006

Castle Creep

Homicidal
William Castle - 1961
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Mr. Sardonicus
William Castle - 1961
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

William Castle was causing me nightmares even before I saw any of his movies. I was a very gullible seven year old who was frightened by kids next door convincing me that I would be the next victim of The Tingler. It was another couple of years before I was finally allowed to see any horror movies in a theater which meant I was the only person I knew who missed 13 Ghosts. A friend with far more permissive parents thrilled me with his recounting of Homicidal. I never actually saw a William Castle film until my parents were away and I finally saw The House on Haunted Hill on late-night television.

For those who haven't seen it, The House on Haunted Hill is about five people who have been invited by Vincent Price to spend the night in a haunted house, with the survivors to get the princely sum of $10,000.00. When you're in Junior High, you watch the film to see people fall into large vats of acid. More puzzling when you are an adult is how Castle got away with combining the exterior by Frank Lloyd Wright with a Victorian mansion interior.

Homicidal and Mr. Sardonicus are the first two films Castle made following the release of Hitchock's Psycho. Hitchcock must have felt very insecure if he thought he was being challenged by William Castle. It sound almost like John Coltrane worried about Kenny G. Hitchock took the bait and made what was essentially a William Castle film with a bigger budget and much better music. Castle, in turn, did his own version of Psycho and recycled the scary parts again in Mr. Sardonicus. Hitchcock gave his television dramas darkly funny introductions with deadpan humor. Castle's on screen introductions to his films were both darker and droller, with Castle's cheerful countenance a reminder that his movies were essentially a shared inside joke.

Aside from the obvious title, Homicidal takes the plot twist of Norman Bates' identity further with the casting of "Jean Arliss". The film is about a clueless group of relatives who never stop to notice that Emily and Warren are never seen at the same place at the same time. Warren is introduced as a creepy young boy who takes a doll from his step-sister. The rest of the film is about Warren's return from Denmark just before his 21st birthday when he is to inherit his parents' millions. Warren's wife, Emily, has been making a habit of killing several people important to Warren's birth. Castle's Psycho-bits include the unexpected knifing of the justice of the peace during a marriage ceremony, the decapitation of an old woman, and lots of ominous shots looking up and down a staircase. At the end of the film a sort of explanation about Warren that mentions, "whatever happened in Denmark, we don't know". Columbia Pictures has it right in their DVD supplement by renaming this film "Psychette".

If Homicidal is Psycho for slightly sophisticated teenagers, Mr. Sardonicus is Eyes without a Face for ten year olds. If the white mask is reminiscent of Georges Franju, seeing Guy Rolfe without the mask is a reminder of Lon Chaney and Conrad Veidt. Castle's film is about a man who realizes too late that the winning lottery ticket is in the jacket worn by his father, dead and buried several months ago. Digging the grave to retrieve the lottery ticket, the man freaks out at the sight of his father's remains. With his face marked by a permanent rictus grin, Mr. Sardonicus is very rich, but very ugly. Taking place in 1880, Castle, in a one-time step into the past, skitters into Corman and Bava country. The first big shock is the sight of Oscar Homolka placing leaches on a maid's face, and later stringing her up by her thumbs. Castle teases the audience with fleeting glimpses of the face of Sardonicus. The main Psychobit concerns the secret behind the locked door. Not only did Sardonicus unbury his father, he kept him in the house. The preservation techniques for Daddy were as effective as those employed by Norman Bates on his beloved mother. Keeping your mother preserved in the basement may be classic, but preserving your father after cashing in his lottery ticket is just sick!

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:06 AM | Comments (2)

March 21, 2006

The Touch

Tian mai chuan qi
Peter Pau - 2002
Mega Star Video Region 0 DVD

Michelle Yeoh had hoped to capitalize on the success of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by producing an English language vehicle for herself. Miramax bought the U.S. distribution rights only to decide that there was no market for The Touch. The film is now a casualty of the Miramax changeover. Considering the quality of some of the action films currently, or recently, in theaters, The Touch is as good, if not better. I don't know if there is an actual bias against Chinese films with contemporary settings compared to the costume epics like Hero. I also have to wonder if there is a reluctance to sell a film featuring a female action star, but one who is Chinese and not young. It should be noted that Yeoh grew up speaking clear, British accented English.

This is not to say that The Touch is masterpiece, but it is beautifully photographed by director-cinematographer Peter Pau, with entertaining action sequences directed by Philip Kwok. If some of the CGI effects are a little weak, consider that the film cost about a sixth of the budget for Van Helsing. The most spectactular part of The Touch is the location shooting throughout Malaysia and China, particularly in the desert on the way to Tun-Huang.

The convoluted story concerns a family of acrobats, a Buddhist monk with a secret treasure in the Tun-Huang cave. A very wealthy bad guy, Karl, (Richard Roxburgh) with a house full of antiquities, steals the map from the family, led by Yin (Yeoh). Caught in the middle is Eric (Ben Chaplin), a former acrobat who was adopted by Yin's family, but has lately worked as a thief for Karl. The good guys and the bad guys get into a couple of martial arts scuffles and chase each other into the cave. Buddhist trappings aside, the story line is not disimilar to those found for Indiana Jones or Lara Croft. Even if the Buddhism portrayed in the film is bogus, the existence of the caves is real. For those with more interest in the subject, I recommend the novel Tun-Huang by Yasushi Inoue.

Even though Yeoh is the star, Dane Cook steals the film as the doofus brother of Karl. I'm not sure how much of Cook's dialogue was improvised, but it is as funny has some of his stand-up material. Cook elicits laughs with physical humor with the kind of bumbling ineptitude associated with Jerry Lewis, trying to keep his composure while everything around him falls apart.

Some of the desert scenes made me wish I was watching The Touch on a large movie screen, especially with long shots of Yeoh and Chaplin's car seen against a great expanse of sand. Sometimes even a sixty inch television screen is not enough. With Yeoh involved in other high profile projects and Dane Cook's rising star, The Touch has enough going for it to hope that someone will at least make a U.S. DVD release available.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:29 PM

March 20, 2006

Les Uns et Les Autres

Claude Lelouch - 1981
Image Entertainment Region 1 DVD

About a month ago or so I saw a short film by Claude Lelouch. C'etait un Rendezvous is nothing but a celebration of the visceral pleasure of speed, or at least speed as seen from the comfort of a movie theater or one's home. That the film ends with a young lady running up the stairs at Montmatre gives those who need it the pretense of narrative. What makes C'etait un Rendezvous ultimately satisfying is that what little is said is said quite simply and compactly.

Les Uns et Les Autres is one big sprawling mess that tries to cover about thirty years of history, three generations, and four countries. To the best of my knowledge, this film did not get a release in the U.S. At three hours, Les Uns would have been a tough sell. The box office failure of New York, New York was probably still in potential distributors memories. The various story lines are so loosely strung together that the ending is forced and highly contrived. One can compare this with the equally long, multi-character Nashville which juggles several narratives, yet brings the disparate charachters and story lines together into a relatively coherent whole.

The title comes from a quote by Willa Cather: "There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before." Lelouch's idea of repeating human stories is to have several of his stars portray a character and their child. This includes seeing James Caan and Geraldine Chaplin as both a big band conducter and his singer wife, and popular singer-actress (seen singing in the rain above) and her manager brother. Near the end of the film, Sharon Stone appears briefly as the trophy wife of the aging Caan.

Lelouch attempts to touch on various historic events, reducing the holocaust, the battle of Stalingrad, and the occupation and liberation of France into little five minute vignettes, accompanied by singing and dancing. Some of the scenes were designed to comment on each other, such as a staged "wedding number" against the wedding of two of the characters. Lelouch also tries to link characters with long takes, particularly in one seen with the camera traveling from one end of a train station to another showing concentration camp survivors arriving in Paris while German prisoners of war are departing. About midway through, any attempt at structure seems to be forgotten and the film jumps from one story line to another for no clear reason other than that Lelouch is trying to finish what he started. Maybe it's besides Lelouch's point, but it bothered me that too often the male actors had shaggy hair styles that were not modified for playing World War II era characters. At one point characters are in a musical number that recaps various points in the narrative.

A more successful Lelouch film is And Now My Love which switches between two characters who seem to exist independently of each other until the big payoff at the end when they meet. Lelouch never really has a lot to say, and has often repeated his messages from film to film. The title almost seems like the filmmaker's justification for a career of films that are frequently self-referential.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:19 PM | Comments (2)

March 18, 2006

Two in Turin

Torino Violenta/Double Game
Carlo Ausino - 1977
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

Tony, l'altra faccia della Torino Violenta/Tony:Another Double Game
Carlo Ausino - 1980
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

Film history includes filmmakers with short filmographies. There are many reasons why these filmmakers may not have many films. Some of these English language directors may be found in the "Miscellany" or possibly "Oddities, One-shots, and Newcomers" of Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema. Film scholars will have their own reasons to see the works of Arch Oboler or Burt Topper. With a filmography with a sporadic output, Carlo Ausino is an obscure name in Italian cinema that may be due for a reassessment. The number of films made is greater than listed at IMDb. The new NoShame release includes two features and three shorts, plus two trailers.

Ausino's main claim to fame is that his films have been shot in his native Turin. The two features are crime dramas taking place in "violent Turin". Ausino wrote, directed and photographed his films. Based on what I've seen, Ausino's narratives border on the incoherent, while his visuals are sometimes inspired. Double Game stars George Hilton as a vengeful cop, a sort of Turin Dirty Harry. Unlike Clint Eastwood, Hilton doesn't distinguish between gangsters and petty crooks, shooting anyone in the name of crime busting. Tony features Ausino pal Emanuel Cannarsa as a sometimes day worker who sees a friend participating in a kidnapping. Tony maintains an uneasy alliance with the police in order to solve the kidnapping. Ausino's second major feature manages to be more assured visually while the story telling elements are even choppier. The DVD of Tony was made from the only surviving print which may account for some of the gaps in the narrative.

Ausino's strengths are in the short film. The Trailer, something of a tribute to Stephen King and John Carpenter's Christine is about a woman trapped in a car with a mind of its own. The film is one of the two shorts Ausino made with muse Kristin George. Their other collaboration, A Modern Fairy Tale is Ausino version of his discovery of George, and how she suddenly went from a supporting role to star while a film, Sahara Killing was in mid-production. The DVD includes the trailer for Sahara Killing, although the actual feature remains uncompleted. The third short, Christmas Tale is an excercise in visual story telling concerning a suicidal young woman and her encounter with an older street person. Because of the quality of his short films, I feel that Ausino's works need to be seen in full for a fair judgement.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:26 PM

March 17, 2006

The Day Time Ended

John "Bud" Cardos - 1980
Full Moon DVD

For your St. Patrick's Day viewing pleasure, here is a film that needs to be seen with a Guinness or three. John "Bud" Cardos made this film not long after the releases of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film's heart seems more in the Fifties, when science fiction usually meant low budget silliness with more weight on the fiction than on the science. The Day Time Ended has some of the ambition of a Steven Spielberg, with a budget only Ed Wood, Jr. would envy.

The action takes place over the course of one day when aliens decide that the desert house of Jim Davis would be the perfect site for a rumble. Prior to this, Davis' perpetually cheerful grand-daughter makes friends with a little green alien who lands in a much larger green pyramid. Later that night, Davis and his wife, Dorothy Malone spot two U.F.O.s that look kind of like French doughnuts. Just when everyone thought it was safe to be inside, there's a knock on the door. Even if one of the battling space creatures appears for no logical reason, it at least has the etiquette to announce its presence. While the little green alien made me think of George Pal's puppetoons, I'm sure that the guys who created the space monsters were trying their darndest to equal Ray Harryhausen.

Living in a house powered by solar energy apparently gives Davis the authority to declare near the end of the film that the night's events were caused by a "time-space warp". Davis even figures out that his daughter and grand-daughter have disappeared into a "vortex", although no one seems that upset about this turn of events. The characters are hardly surprised to see a futuristic city in the distance, with Davis doggedly stating something to the effect that this turn of events was inevitable. I may have made a mistake watching this film sober because if I have to choose between drunk and stupid, I'd rather be drunk.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:56 PM

March 16, 2006

The Trouble with Hairy

The Big Tease
Kevin Allen - 1999
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

An Everlasting Piece
Barry Levinson - 2000
Dreamworks Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

The connection is a bit tenuous, but I have to think there is no coincidence concerning the number of movies about barbers and hair stylists that have emerged in the past few years. In addition to the rise of Jon Peters from stylist to producer, The L Word features a character who worked briefly for a producer. Maybe Hollywood executives are even more apt to listen to someone standing behind them with open razors and sharp scissors. I'm not sure if there are enough films to consitute a genre, but there is a small cluster of films about characters with tonsorial talent.

The Big Tease badly wants to be the Spinal Tap of hair stylist comedies, and does so, badly. I'm assuming some of it was funny in the screenplay stage. Ferguson makes fun of Scottish national pride, the sanctimonious side of American culture, and the silliness of hair stylists as celebrities. Even feeble chuckles are sparse, making one appreciate the gifts of Christopher Guest. I haven't seen Ferguson on his late night television show, but I thought him consistently funny on The Drew Carey Show which suggests that Ferguson works best making a bigger impact within a more restricted format. The film was directed by Kevin Allen. Since his debut film, Twin Town, Allen career as director has quickly dissapated. In spite of the often incomprehensible dialogue, Twin Town remained fascinating in its audacity. At least The Big Tease is honest with its title - a come on with no delivery.

An Everlasting Piece also features a Scotch comic turned U.S. sitcom star - Billy Connelly. Connelly portrays a former hair piece saleman known as The Scalper, and not for selling concert tickets. The story concerning the theatrical release of this film stands in contrast to Steven Spielberg's posturing for Munich. Inspired by his barber father, star Barry McAvoy wrote about two barbers, one Catholic, one Protestant, who attempt to win the sole hair piece franchise for Northern Ireland in the 1980s. The film is certainly not incendiary as Paul Greengrass' Bloody Sunday, but between the laughs, tensions quickly arise, reminders of ingrained attitudes. In some way, An Everlasting Piece is closest to Levinson's Liberty Heights as an examination about the conflicts between cultural and national identity.

The main, or perhaps, mane reason to see An Everlasting Piece is for the humor, much of it verbal and joyously rude. Characters spend several minutes trying to clarify whether they are discussing "hair piece" or "herpes". The Scalper's idiosyncratic sense of theology includes reciting a letter St. Paul wrote to some hermaphrodites, and the declaration that, "The scrotum is the devil's tobacco pouch." The competing hair piece sales company is called "Toupee or not Toupee". The message is heartfelt, if obvious, but it is the weaving together of comic incidences that makes An Everlasting Piece fun to watch. Barry Levinson is inconsistent, with films like Diner, Tin Men and Wag the Dog on one end of the scale, and Sphere and the painfully unfunny Envy at the other end. Levinson's better films are generally the smaller projects, such as An Everlasting Piece. Even if Levinson can't be called a stylist, the good films prove he is no hack.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:01 PM

March 14, 2006

Two films starring Linda Lin Dai

Love without End/Bu liao qing
Doe Chin (Tao Qin) - 1961
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

The Last Woman of Shang/Di ji
Yueh Feng - 1964
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

After seeing and writing about Les Belles last July, I got around to seeing a couple more films starring Linda Lin Dai. I had compared her at the time to Doris Day, but Lin was also Hong Kong's equivalent to Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. This is based on not only the magnitude of her stardom in Chinese language film, but aspects of her dramatic personal life.

Of the two films here, The Last Woman of Shang is the real treat. I was not familiar with director Yueh Feng but his filmography at IMDb is very incomplete. The film is part of the time-honored genre of films about an emperor and a woman who causes his downfall, usually a courtesan. Lin is the last queen of the Shang Dynasty. The film resembles the big budget epics of the early sixties usually produced by Samuel Bronston with the hundreds of extras in the battle scenes. Joseph Mankiewicz' Cleopatra certainly had an influence with a scene of Lin taking a bath while surrounded by her hand-maidens, and in a scene in which she wears a diaphanous gown. Everything you would want in a movie is here: singing, dancing, sword fights, a decapitation, whippings, and a flaming arrow in the back. The bad guys are easy to identify because they are the ones who are always laughing and having a good time. Even when his palace is burning around him, the emperor is chuckling over his good fortune to have conquered neighboring states, hoarded more jewels than he would ever need, and have a couple of attractive wives. The running time is 103 minutes, but there may have been at least two longer versions when The Last Woman of Shang was initially released.

Love without End is so beloved that the title song is a Mandarin pop standard, and the film was remade less than ten years later. The film is something of a Dark Victory retread with Lin as a nightclub singer bravely facing an incurable disease while trying not to disappoint boyfriend Shan Kwan. The film is resolutely old-fashioned beginning with shots of a confused looking Lin superimposed over shots of the neon Hong Kong nightclub signs. The passage of time is indicated with superimposed shots of a calendar. Tao Qin must have sat through a couple of Warner Brothers "weepies" from the Forties before writing his screenplay. The film's ending is sillier than that of Bette Davis and Paul Henreid's awkward cigarettes and poetry in Now, Voyager. The love might be without end, but for me the end was with laughter.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:01 PM

March 13, 2006

Two recent films by Chantal Ackerman

La Captive
Chantal Ackerman - 2000
Kimstim Region 1 DVD

Tomorrow We Move/Demain On Demenage
Chantal Ackerman - 2004
Kimstim Region 1 DVD

Tomorrow We Move begins and ends with the image of a piano hoisted mid-air, being moved to and from a Parisian apartment. Even though I wasn't there to witness any part of the process, I thought of my mother, who had her baby grand piano transported from Denver to Jerusalem, and from a fair sized house to a third floor walk-up loft. I also was reminded of my own move from Denver to Miami Beach, with the film's mother and daughter moving into an apartment that is immediately too small for the two of them and their belongings.

Chantal Ackerman is a filmmaker I have only known about through her reputation. I had only previously seen Je, tu, il, elle on tape, and A Couch in New York on cable. While her two most recent narrative films are available on DVD, Ackerman's most acclaimed film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles is not currently available in any format. These two recent films illustrate Ackerman's movement towards films that are more accessible for mainstream audiences, as well as less visually formal. Both films star Silvie Testud and Aurore Clement.

Tomorrow We Move mostly centers on Charlotte (Testud), a writer who finds that living with her mother (Clement) gets in the way of her writing and sleeping. When Charlotte decides their new home is clearly inadequate, the apartment is placed on sale. Part of the film can be described as a very gentle kind of screwball comedy with potential buyers entering and exiting the apartment, spending more time discussing real life than real estate. The comings and goings make one think of a Marx Brothers movie as reimagined by Eric Rohmer. There is also a nod to Proust with the discussion of memories evoked by the eating of chicken spiced with Thyme (I guess there's a lingual pun there). Testud sometimes mugs her way through the film, eavesdropping on conversations to be converted to her unintentionally comic erotic novel.

Testud's performance, and the newer film, are both in contrast to La Captive. The film is adapted from Proust's La Prisoniere. Unlike the lush Time Regained by Raoul Ruiz, Ackerman's film is stark in comparison. When we first see the obsessive Simon (Stanislas Merhar) following Ariane (Testud) in his car and on foot, the assumption is that he is stalking her. Gradually it is revealed that the two are living together and that Simon's tracking of Ariane, and her accounting for all unseen actions, are part of their relationship. Although Ariane appears to have the submissive role in the relationship, the film reveals that the pair excercise control over each other in varying degrees. Simon's Proustian sensitivity is indicated by his allergies to pollen. By being formally dressed throughout the film, Simon reminds everyone of his class. Simon and Ariane have a relationship that simultaneously involves physical intimacy and barriers, be it a glass wall or clothing. In the DVD and in other interviews, Ackerman cites the influence of Hitchcock. While perhaps not intended, the opening scene of Simon watching home movies of Ariane echoes the home movies of Powell's Peeping Tom. Although Ackerman, in her DVD interview mentions that Simon is also a captive or prisoner, even though the book and film titles in French refer specifically to a female character. What is understood is that with his suits and overcoat, Simon appears tightly wrapped up, bound by desires that he doesn't fully understand, and unravelled by the randomness of life.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:51 PM

March 12, 2006

Uno Bianca

Michele Soavi - 2001
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

I don't know if the DVD release of Uno Bianco represents a new direction for NoShame but it is one of their best films to date. Originally made for Italian television, this is the fictionalized story of two policemen who identified a gang of criminals identified by their continued use of stolen White Fiat Unos in 1991. That the criminals are revealed to also be policemen, and the two honest cops find themselves periodically hindered by bureaucracy, reminds on of some of the better films of Sidney Lumet, particularly Q & A and Prince of the City. The difference is that Michele Soavi is a more natural, fluid filmmaker.

This film represents a shift in genres for Soavi, best known for his horror films, especially Dellamorte Dellamore, released in the U.S. as Cemetery Man. While there is some graphic violence, this is the kind of film that were it in English, could easily be shown on cable with no other changes. Where Soavi indicates his background in horror films is in brief cuts, extreme close-ups of eyes, and a quick shot of a uniformed policeman wearing the mask of an Uno Bianca member. Such effects are used both to put the viewer on edge, and to indicate the uncertainty of good cop Valerio in his search for the true criminals.

The crime narrative is balanced against the interplay of the two cops on a mission, the cerebral Valerio (Kim Rossi Stuart), and the more physical Rocco (Dino Abbrescia). What makes Uno Bianco compelling is that there is as much energy in the procedural scenes, even when the characters are simply sitting around a table, as there is during the execution of the robberies or car chases. The film has few brief moments where the viewer can relax. The characters and camera are almost constantly in motion.

The DVD includes an interview with the script's final writer, George Eastman who discusses the evolution of the screenplay, and changes made from actual events. While the beginning of the interview is specifically about Uno Bianco and Eastman's working relationship with Soavi over the years, Eastman digresses into a discussion of his work with extremely prolific Joe D'Amato. Producer Pietro Valsecchi provides an introduction to the film and adds a few comments. Cinematographer Gianni Mammolotti discusses some of the shooting techniques to create the film's visual style.

An interview with Soavi would have been ideal, especially considering the twists his own career has taken. After the release of Dellamorte Dellamore in late 1994, Soavi took five years off to devote time to his family. Having established his name with theatrical horror films, Soavi has since made his reputation primarily with television criminal dramas. Soavi has his first new theatrical film in release, again working in the crime genre. At a time when so few new, or relatively recent, Italian films are seen in the U.S., it's a pleasure to see Michele Soavi back in action.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:03 AM

March 09, 2006

The Misfits

John Huston - 1961
MGM Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

During the scenes in Brokeback Mountain after Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) has been knocked off his horse at a rodeo, he is walking around with a bandage on his head, covered by his coyboy hat. It took me a while to remember why that image seemed familiar to me until I finally recalled Montgomery Clift in The Misfits. For several reasons, it was a good time to revisit this film.

In this time of chatter about the significance of Ang Lee's misfits, one has to wonder how a younger audience would react to Huston's films. Especially at this time is the irony of Clark Gable portraying a man named Gay. Montgomery Clift, perhaps the inspiration for Jack Twist, was gay according to biographer Barney Hoskyns. One also has to wonder about the fact that Huston had planned to cast Clift as the closeted Army officer in Reflections in a Golden Eye.

Clift had past his boyish stage and was 40 when he shot The Misfits. His character, Perce, is somewhat similar to Jack Twist in that, until Twist gets married, both are estranged from their families, and are essentially transient, travelling the rodeo circuit or taking temporary work. For both Perce and Jack, the thrill of the rodeo outweighs the physical danger and limited financial rewards. Riding in spite of injury is an easy way to broadcast machismo.

Whatever weight Arthur Miller thought he had in his screenplay was increased by the death of Clark Gable and later, Marilyn Monroe. The characters constantly talk about death and nature as if it was pre-ordained that this would be the last film of Monroe and Gable. The Misfits could well have been Clift's last film as he was rapidly deteriorating until his death in 1964. The final two minutes of The Misfits may be among the most poignant in film, with Monroe and Gable driving off together, the sensitive Monroe asking how one can find there way in the dark, while the self-assured Gable replies that one follows the big star, as the film closes with a shot of the night sky.

Marilyn Monroe's name is still meaningful even to those who haven't seen any of her films. There is an exhibition of photographs of her at the Bass Museum, here in Miami Beach. The photos are of Monroe from the age of 18 through her photographic sessions with Bert Stern in July of 1962. The photographs include work by Eve Arnold, Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstadt, and Philippe Halsman as well as the Tom Kelley photograph that graced "Playboy" magazine. Also in the exhibit are various magazines with Monroe on the cover, plus the issue of "Life" from 1950 about several promising actresses that gave Monroe, June Haver and Eleanor Parker individual portraits, while a black and white group shot features Debra Paget, Phyllis Kirk, and in the back, Debbie Reynolds. The television screens feature trailers and documentaries, including Marilyn singing "Happy Birthday" to President Kennedy. The actress who struggled for a modicum of respect in her lifetime has been canonized in our cultural institutions.

Reading this piece on wild horses in Nevada also made re-seeing The Misfits more vital. The sub-plot of the film, concerning the capture of wild horses for sale for dog food has become more timely again. The characters discuss the possibility of the extinction of the mustangs for commercial purposes. In the end of the film, humanity and idealism win over temporary financial gain and the illusion of pragmatism. Should the wild mustangs be eliminated in real life, as is now threatened, it will add a new layer of tragedy to this heart-breaking film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:59 PM

March 08, 2006

Going Home with Michel Piccoli

French Can Can
Jean Renoir - 1955
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I'm Going Home/Je Rentre a la Maison
Manoel de Oliveira - 2000
Milestone Film & Video Region 1 DVD

That's Michel Piccoli underneath that mop of black hair as Captain Valorguei in Renoir's French Can Can. It took me a little while before I realized it was him. I was unaware that he was even in the film until the credits rolled in the beginning. His presence provides an additional link to seeing Renoir's ode to show business with de Olivera's film about an aging actor. That Piccoli is in both films may also be appropriate considering that his career began just after World War II, and he has worked with several of the greatest filmmakers in French language cinema.

French Can Can was Renoir's return home, his first film shot in France since Rules of the Game. It's the fictionalized story of the producer who created the Moulin Rouge. Jean Gabin is the producer who fleetingly falls in and out of love with a variety of women, continually struggling to pay his bills and keep his show going. The story is less important than the imagery and color which take many of the cues from Toulouse-Lautrec as well as a nod to father Pierre-August Renoir. As Peter Bogdanovich points out in his introduction to the DVD, Jean Renoir uses the art, especially the poster art of the period, as a starting point for his use of color and composition, rather than doing something similar to An American in Paris where Vincente Minnelli and Gene Kelly dressed and posed dancers to resemble the artwork. Renoir may have missed France, but even more so, he missed a France that disappeared during his childhood.

There is a moment when most of the characters stop to sing "La Marseillaise". This may have been Renoir's way of showing his sense of love and patriotism for his country. It may also have been included to remind his French audience that he had also previously made a film about the French Revolution and the creation of the national anthem.

French Can Can was cut by about fifteen minutes when it originally was released in the United States. For a film of its time, it is quite risque with a couple of scenes of semi-nudity as well as a couple of bedroom scenes, one of which shows that while Jean Gabin wore a nightshirt to bed, Maria Felix had nothing between her and the covers. In an indirect way, Godard's Contempt is the new wave version of French Can Can, again linked with Piccoli in both films. Instead of using the national anthem, Godard bathes Brigitte Bardot with Piccoli in red, white and blue lighting, the color of the French flag. But setting show business stories and intellectual concerns aside, for Renoir and Godard, the essential reason for the invention of cinema was to film hot French babes in their underwear or as nude as possible.

I'm Going Home is a film of quiet glories. De Olivera steps back to observe Piccoli going through his routine at his favorite cafe, or signing autographs for fans. While conversing with his agent, the camera focuses on Piccoli's feet, clad in a new pair of shoes. Parts of the film are seeing Piccoli performing excerpts from Ionesco's Exit the King and Shakespeare's The Tempest, plays featuring older men of royalty in decline. De Olivera is still active at age 96. The film was inspired by an incident in de Olivera's career. If Piccoli's aging actor may be shaky in his performances, de Olivera displays a sureness of cinematic expression of a filmmaker at his peak.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:15 PM | Comments (1)

March 07, 2006

Two later films by Yoshitaro Nomura

Village of Eight Gravestones/Yatsu Haka-mura
Yoshitaro Nomura - 1977
Panorama Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Writhing Tongue/Furueru Shita
Yoshitaro Nomura - 1980
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

I wrote glowingly about Yoshitaro Nomura's The Castle of Sand last July. I would still hope to see Nomura's earlier films based on what I have read on his career. If the two films I saw are any indication, Nomura was in serious decline following The Castle of Sand.

Village of Eight Gravestones is the better of the two films. It's something of a genre mash-up of romantic melodrama, murder mystery, ghost story and gore film. The long lost son of a wealthy family is found. This rather large family has their eyes on inheriting the family fortune. Unfortunately various family members are dispatched with various violent deaths. The young man learns that the family fortune was established by an ancestor who helped kill several former samurai in exchange for land and wealth. The young man finds that he has two creepy old aunts who may be poisoning family members. Imagine Arsenic and Old Lace with flashback scenes involving samurais and severed body parts. At two and a half hours, the film is longer than it should be. Even though the narrative descended into nonsense at the end, it offers some perverse satisfaction.

Writhing Tongue made me think of the possibly apocryphal story about Val Lewton. An executive at had misunderstood when he heard that Lewton was a "horror writer", when Lewton was described as a "horrible writer". Trust me when I say Writhing Tongue is a horrible film and not a horror film. The story is about a young girl who gets tetanus poisoning from sticking her hands in mud. Most of the film takes place in the hospital where the girl, about five years old, is treated while her parents keep vigil. Because of the effects of the toxins, one is treated to an extreme close-up of a cut finger, and more sadistically, a scene with a doctor pulling out some of the little girl's teeth during a seizure. At one point the father has a vision of the toxin in his daughter manifesting as some kind of butterfly ghost. Of course a full-screen, faded transfer of a wide-screen film works against whatever Nomura may have achieved.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM

March 05, 2006

Behind Locked Doors

Oscar Boetticher - 1948
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

It's too bad no one at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences had the sense of humor to present an award to a filmmaker named Oscar. While there may be a few who remember the guy who directed Twist Around the Clock, more will choose the man better known as Budd. If Behind Locked Doors isn't as sublime a film as The Tall T, it is quite an entertaining film in its own right.

The basic narrative is about a private detective (Richard Carlson), hired by a reporter (Lucille Bremer), to discover if a judge is hiding in a mental institution. Yes, the basic premise sounds very similar to Samuel Fuller's Shock Corridor. Curiously, one of the writers of Behind Locked Doors, Eugene Ling, had a hand in the screenplay of Phil Karlson's Scandal Sheet, based on the novel, The Dark Page by Samuel Fuller. The big difference between the two madhouse mysteries is that Fuller's film is an allegory about the United States in the early Sixties, while Boetticher made an economical film noir with no greater aspirations than to be a genial time waster.

Although Boetticher's best films usually involved Randolph Scott adrift in relatively deserted locations, Behind Locked Doors shows Boetticher capable of being visually expressive indoors. There is much use of depth of field, with characters coming in and out of big, deep shadows. Most of the exteriors are also dark and shadowy. Expressionism is not a word usually associated with Boetticher, but its in full display here. Light and shadow are used in tight close-ups of Carlson and Tor Johnson behind bars.

Behind Locked Doors slightly hints at Boetticher's themes. Somewhat like in the Scott westerns, Carlson plays a character who finds himself in a situation for personal gain in the beginning of the film, only to have circumstances force him to be the protector of a helpless person and perhaps seek a greater justice for society at large. The real enjoyment in this film is seeing character actors Herbert Heyes, Douglas Fowley and Thomas Browne Henry seen above scheming to make life miserable for Richard Carlson. Boetticher's films are grossly unavailable on tape or DVD. Until Columbia Pictures realizes there is a devoted audience for the Boetticher-Scott westerns, Behind Locked Doors is a worthy glimpse at the director previously known as Oscar.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:02 AM | Comments (3)

March 03, 2006

Vincent and Theo

Robert Altman - 1990
MGM Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In the supplementary featurette to Vincent and Theo, Robert Altman talks briefly about his use of overlapping dialogue. I had to smile when Altman not only cited Howard Hawks, but specifically seeing The Thing, and thinking that "this is how dialogue in film should be". While Vincent and Theo is one of the most somber of Altman films, there are still "Altmanesque" moments. One such scene in near the beginning with Theo van Gogh and one of the gallery owners looking for each other between gallery walls, followed by two simultaneous conversations. While not on the level of M*A*S*H or Nashville, some of the dialogue is spoken in an off handed manner giving the effect that one is eavesdropping on the characters. (One may wish that Altman remembered The Thing with his own excursion into snowbound science fiction, Quintet, a film that might have benefitted from a few laughs and possibly an "intellectual carrot".)

Altman's film was released to coincide with the one-hundred year passing of Vincent van Gogh. At that time, I saw Maurice Pialat's film Van Gogh, but not Altman's. The film opens with footage from an auction at Christie's with one of the sunflower paintings sold for over twenty million pounds. Altman then cuts to footage of van Gogh, while the auctioneer is heard in the background. The obvious point is the irony between van Gogh's failure to sell his artwork while he was alive, and the immense monetary value his artwork has today. By making the film about the artist, Vincent van Gogh, and his art dealer brother, Theo, Altman has tried to say something about the conflict between art as personal expression and its commercial value.

Altman probably saw something of himself in the story of van Gogh. Vincent and Theo came out ten years after Altman's last major Hollywood film, Popeye. Prior to that film, Altman made five idiosyncratic films for 20th Century Fox, beginning with Three Women and concluding with Health which met with varying degrees of critical success. The commercial viability Altman had in the first half of the Seventies had disappeared by the end of the decade. At one point in Vincent and Theo, Theo tells Vincent that there is no market for his work, to which Vincent response that it is Theo job to create the market. One can imagine similar discussions between Altman and studio executives. Vincent and Theo was Altman's last theatrical film before being "re-discovered" with The Player, where Altman had the opportunity to publicly bite the hand that grudgingly fed him.

No film about van Gogh can escape from the shadow of Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life. Altman has a grubbier, more sinewy van Gogh in the form of Tim Roth. Both films fail for similar reasons - an assumption is made that the film viewer is familiar with at least the outlines of van Gogh's life, and that the viewer understands already what makes van Gogh significant as an artist. Altman does a slightly better job in having a character mention the influence of Japanese art on van Gogh, and conveying van Gogh's identification with workers as well as his interest in lower-class people as subjects for art. Altman also improves on presenting the fractious relationship between van Gogh and Paul Gauguin. If one has limited knowledge about art and artists, Vincent and Theo reinforces the idea that the film was made simply because the artist was famous, leaving why he is famous unanswered. By presenting van Gogh as the proto tortured and starving artist while ignoring the meaning of his artwork, Vincent and Theo becomes a film about a person who is famous for being famous, a celebrity biography with claims to higher aspirations.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:00 AM | Comments (3)

March 01, 2006

Walk the Line

James Mangold - 2005
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Conspicuous in his absence in Walk the Line is Bob Dylan. Dylan is mentioned once by Johnny Cash in a conversation with his father. Cash and June Carter sing "It Ain't Me, Babe" in a rousing duet. Later Cash is seen hanging photographs while "Highway 61 Revisited" blasts on the stereo. A final mention of Dylan by a record executive seems designed for the benefit of an audience totally unaware of the state of popular music in 1968. Not only was Johnny Cash aware the Dylan had "gone electric" but The Beatles and The Byrds were electric rock bands to begin with. One has to see No Direction Home, the recent Dylan documentary to get a clearer idea of Cash's relationship with Dylan. One depending on Walk the Line would be unaware that not only did Johnny Cash have his own weekly television show in 1969, but that Dylan made an extremely rare television appearance as Cash's first guest.

Maybe I'm being a nit-picker here. Most biographical films are known for their "truthiness" rather than absolute truthfulness. For me, Walk the Line hit several false notes, ranging from playing with the facts to questionable casting. I'm usually fairly good at recognizing imposters, yet it wasn't until I read the credits that I realized that the guy who looked like Buddy Holly was suppose to be Roy Orbison. Joaquin Phoenix somewhat looked like Cash, though it took about an hour before the singing voice became passable.

Even though she looks nothing like June Carter, Reese Witherspoon is the life of this party. Her singing voice is higher than Carter's but she tries to mimic Carter's inflections and growls. With her voice and chin, Witherspoon actually is a little closer to rockabilly party girl Wanda Jackson. When Witherspoon steps out to sing her first number as Carter, she brings the spark of life to the film. Based on Witherspoon's performance, as well as his success with the actress driven Girl, Interrupted, James Mangold might want to reconsider his strengths as a director.

The film opens with faux Ford images of poor white sharecroppers on the cotton field. Later, an unmoored camera follows Phoenix as he goes on a rampage in his dressing room, tearing out a sink and falling on the floor. Even disregarding the inconsistent visual style, Walk the Line feels less authentic than such films as Coal Miner's Daughter and the fictionalized Sweet Dreams, and is certainly less visually consistent. The high point for Walk the Line is hearing the real Johnny Cash and June Carter sing behind the final credits. The real story of Johnny Cash and June Carter is told through the singers' own songs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:23 AM | Comments (1)

February 26, 2006

Brothers

Brodre
Susanne Bier - 2005
Universal Studios Region 1 DVD

After reading the news about Muslim rioting sparked by a Danish cartoon published last September, seeing a film about Danish involvement in the Middle East seemed more timely. This is not to say that I would have greater understanding of world events, but when you live in the United States, the news concerning military activity ignores or marginalizes the allied troops. Call me naive, but I wanted to express my support for Denmark.

Susanne Bier begins Brothers with a close up shot of an eye, a rippling pool of water, and a field of long grass. The film is about how reality is based on what is seen as well as not seen, both looking outward and inward. In addition to the first abstract shots used to open the narrative, Bier often shoots her characters using extreme close ups that reveal part of the face, again usually the eyes. Some of the stylistic influence of Dogme 95 can be readily seen, although the film thematically shares the concerns of family dynamics as in Breaking the Waves and The Celebration.

Brothers is in part about to brothers, the "good" brother in the Danish army, sent to Afghanistan, and the younger, unsuccessful brother. Bier primarily looks at the shifting relationships within the family, between spouses, siblings and parents. The title also can be taken in its usage signifying relationships between soldiers. Part of the narrative shifts locations, between cool blue Copenhagen and the hot brown Middle East, with Spain standing in for Afghanistan. Bier and writing collaborator Anders Thomas Jensen are interested in how traumatic events affect people individually as well as the impact within the family unit. Characters are at war with themselves and each other, at home and abroad.

Connie Nielsen is something of a revelation in Brothers. Nielsen is given more of a chance to dominate a film as the young wife and mother fighting to keep peace within her family. One would hope she is given a similar opportunity in an English language film. Although Brothers shares some similarities with The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, the film plays out on a smaller, more intimate field making it the more effective, and affecting, film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:57 PM

February 25, 2006

Jerry Lewis - Deux Fois!

The Stooge/Le Cabotin et son Compere
Norman Taurog - 1953
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

The Delicate Delinquent/Le Deliquant Involontaire
Don McGuire - 1957
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

I admit to being a fan of Jerry Lewis. Not an uncritical fan. One of my literary treasures is a copy of Bonjour, Monsieur Lewis by Robert Benayoun that I got in 1975. Benayoun is the French film critic that Andrew Sarris refers to in The American Cinema in Sarris' essay on Lewis. I am extremely limited in my knowledge of French but the book is a great source in terms of its catalogue of Lewis work as an actor and director, including such unrealized projects as The Worst Robber who ever Lived (and We Don't Mean Maybe) and H-Bomb Beach Party.

The two films I just saw reinforce the opinion that the best Jerry Lewis films are those directed by Frank Tashlin or Lewis. The King of Comedy and Funny Bones aren't true Lewis vehicles, though they are both worth watching. The two Tashlin directed Martin & Lewis films, Artists and Models and Hollywood or Bust, as well as some of the Tashlin films starring Lewis have yet to received DVD releases. For unknown reasons, these lesser Lewis films have recieved priority. While neither film will change the mind of those who think appreciation of Jerry Lewis is a French aberration, they do provide interesting commentary to the legend of Dean and Jerry.

One has to wonder if Martin and Lewis would have been in better films sooner had The Stooge not been shelved for almost two years. Even though the film is about a fictional team in the 1930s, The Stooge strikes quite close to some of the realities of Martin and Lewis both publicly and privately. This was the third film following At War with the Army in which Martin and Lewis received top billing, with Hollywood sensing Lewis' value as a star, and Lewis demanding better quality films. This was the first of several films Martin and Lewis did with director Norman Taurog, a filmmaker whose best films were well behind him. Martin and Lewis may have had long simmering issues well before their breakup, or writer Fred Finklehoffe wrote a prescient screenplay. I was reminded of the quote attributed to Martin where he tells Lewis that he is ". . . nothing but a meal ticket".

The Delicate Delinquent has a few chuckles. Don McGuire must have hoped to achieve mythic filmmaking by naming his characters Damon and Pythias. At least McGuire may have gotten a last laugh with Tootsie at the end of his career. Lewis, as Sidney Pythias is hardly a delinquent, and more of a guy who finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time. Darren McGavin is street cop Mike Damon, the part originally marked for Dean Martin. The only singing is by Lewis doing "I'll Go My Way By Myself", a song better associated with Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon. The few pleasures of The Delicate Delinquent are from seeing the young Frank Gorshin and perennial badass Richard Bakalyan as street punks. Shot one year before a famous broadway musical, the choreographed rumbles and jazzy score seem to anticipate some other delicate delinquents.

P.S. 2/26/06. This morning I read that Darren McGavin died. I feel somewhat awkward with the timing of my writing about The Delicate Delinquent. After doing a name link search at IMDb, I was reminded that McGavin and Don Knotts actually worked together on two Disney productions in the 70s, No Deposit, No Return and Hot Lead and Cold Feet. One could also point out that the legacy of McGavin and Knotts are linked in the most unsettling episode from The X-Files. The series, inspired by McGavin's Kolchak: The Night Stalker included the episode titled "Home", with small town sheriffs Andy and Barney.

One other bit of wild coincidence, with one degree of separation - the actress playing Lewis' mother in The Stooge is none other than Frances Bavier, best known as Aunt Bee to Don Knott's Barney Fife.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:31 PM

February 24, 2006

Two by To

Running on Karma/Daai Chek Liu
Johnny To & Wai Ka-Fai - 2003
Mei Ah Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Election/Hak Seh Wui
Johnny To - 2005
Panorama Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Johnny To is one of the handful of Hong Kong filmmakers I am trying to get better acquainted with. The first of his films that I saw was The Heroic Trio which starred Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung and the late, wonderfully hilarious Anita Mui. To's filmography lists both films on which he received solo director credit as well as those films where he shared credit. Based on what I have seen so far, To's solo films are consistently better.

Whether working solo, or in collaboration, To is esteemed in Hong Kong, where his films very consistently are nominated for the Hong Kong Film Awards as well as Hong Kong critics prizes. Election has been nominated for several Hong Kong Film Awards (disregard the typo on the year). While To is working with familiar subject matter, the Hong Kong Triads, the film is stylistically very disciplined and muted. The change in style is announced immediately with the guitar score by Lo Tayu. Beginning with the guitar solo, To presents a very domestic scene of older men sitting around talking, while their wives are playing mah jong in the background and children are occassionally running around. It isn't until the police enter to arrest the men for suspected Triad activity that one gets the first clue that Election is about gangsters.

What makes Election even more interesting is the context. The film is an indirect criticism of the handover of Hong Kong to the Peoples' Republic of China in that while self-rule has been curtailed in the Hong Kong government, the Triads have made a point of having elections of their chairmen for about one-hundred years. One could say that when elections are outlawed, only outlaws will have elections. To focuses on a Triad facing internecine conflict when Big D (Tony Leung Ka-Fai) attempts to undermine the election of Lok (Simon Yam). To concentrates more on the relationships between several generations of leaders within the Triad, and the twists and turns in expressing loyalty to certain people as well as the group in full.

While the film does have scenes of violence, To either films it from a distance or darkly lit. This choice is to keep Election more cerebral than visceral, to keep the viewer from easy identification with the characters. As the film progresses, one sees that To is critical of the Triads and the ideals they claim to represent, especially in regards to "family". Election is a very smart, character driven film.

Running on Karma is somewhat similar another film To made with Wai, My Left Eye sees Ghosts. In the newer film, Andy Lau is a former Buddhist monk with the ability to see peoples karma. By literally bumping into an escaped killer, he gets involved helping policewoman Cecilia Cheung catch some criminals. Lau feels conflicted about how to save Chueng after seeing her karma several times. Although he won a Best Actor award, Lau goes through most of the film wearing a bulked up body suit. Adding to the distraction of seeing Lau appearing with an outsized physique, are several nude scenes showing off his fake body. The concept of karma and references to Buddhism are relatively generic here. As a Buddhist, this kind of stuff is admittedly of major interest to me. Even within the context of the film, some parts of the narrative don't make sense. The best parts of Running on Karma involve a contortionist killer who can hide in very small spaces. In other words, what is requested here is the suspension of disbelief.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:23 PM

February 21, 2006

Jon Stewart: The Oscar Host on Screen

Playing by Heart
Willard Carroll - 1998
Miramax Home Video Region 1 DVD

Death to Smoochy
Danny DeVito - 2002
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

Ever since I saw one of his specials on HBO, I've wanted Eddie Izzard to host the Academy Awards. Not only was he truly funny during the course of his show, he actually looks better in a dress than Whoopi Goldberg. For some reason, the producers feel they need a "name" to host the award show, while I have always assumed that the show itself was the reason you watched.

Having both credentials as a screen actor and a stand-up comic, the Academy chose to give Jon Stewart a chance to host the Oscar show this year. I'll probably miss Chris Rock, but I'm willing to give Stewart a chance based on my occassional viewing of The Daily Show. Stewart is insightful and makes me laugh at times. I figured that prior to seeing him host the awards show, I would take a look back at a couple of the films he acted in, just to make sure I hadn't missed anything.

I first reviewed Stewart's filmography. I forgot that he was in Big Daddy, a film a caught one night on cable. (Am I the only one who thinks the basic premise was barrowed from Nick Hornby's About a Boy?). The films I did see were not better, and Stewart, enjoyable as he can be cracking wise on the state of the U.S.A., is not very memorable as an actor. In Playing by Heart, Stewart has the task of holding his own against Gillian Anderson. The film is even more of a chore to watch with overly theatrical dialogue that gets in the way of enjoying Angelina Jolie, Sean Connery and Gena Rowlands. Anderson portrays a stage director with movie posters throughout her house. Playing by Heart was pretty much over for me when I found myself gazing wistfully at the poster for Peyton Place, a much more watchable film.

The critical consensus that Death to Smoochy is unfunny is correct. DeVito has proven himself with black comedy primarily with War of the Roses. There are a few interesting connections to note: Smoochy was written by Adam Resnick, a staff writer for former Oscar host David Letterman, and writer of Cabin Boy. DeVito directed Billy Crystal in Throw Momma from the Train. Stewart and Chris Rock appeared in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. While Vincent Schiaveli blows away Stewart in his few minutes of screen time, hopefully Stewart will have a few zingers for the Academy Awards.

In doing research, I noticed that in his only film appearance, Johnny Carson appeared as himself in the forgotten Sixties musical Looking for Love. In these times when we will be inundated with Brokeback Mountain jokes, it's awkward to look back at a time when, without irony, there could be a film with a character named Gaye Swinger.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 PM

February 18, 2006

Death Walks Twice around the Block

Death Walks on High Heels/La Morte Cammina con i Tacchi Alti
Luciano Ercoli - 1971
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Death Walks at Midnight/La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte
Luciano Ercoli - 1972
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

Death walks at a somewhat leisurely pace in both of these films. Both films share the same cast and crew, although the characters are different. While both films have elements of the giallo genre, there is a greater emphasis on relationships between killers and victims that are seemingly unrelated. Both films were co-written by the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi, and actually have twist endings following careful explanations about who did what to whom.

Luciano Ercoli has a nice sense of composition, and makes use of wife Susan Scott's expressive eyes as the films' damsel in distress. High Heels has a somewhat more original story involving missing jewels, with Scott as a stripper on the run with kindly doctor Frank Wolff. The narrative digresses long enough for us to see Scott perform two different striptease acts. The scariest part of the film is not the brutal and graphic murder, but a scene depicting eye surgery. It's not Un Chien Andalou but whenever there's a scene involving eyes and surgical instruments, I'll always tense up.

Death Walks at Midnight owes a bit to Mario Bava with elements from The Girl who Knew to Much and Blood and Black Lace forming the basis for the film. Scott has accidentally witnessed a murder and can't convince the police of what she has seen. The ending resolves several seemingly unrelated plot strands fairly cleanly. Ercoli is evocative in the locations - Scott's apartment dominated by a huge photo of Scott as a fashion model, an artist's studio cluttered with his wooden sculptures, the empty apartment directly across from Scott's, and the gallery where the artist friend is showing his work.

Both films are stolen by character actor Luciano Rossi. Merely creepy in High Heels, Rossi delights as a manic killer in Midnight, cackling with laughter in almost all of his scenes, a performance that reminds one of Klaus Kinski.

The two movies are part of a package that includes a CD of film music by Stelvio Cipriani. Unlike the other NoShame releases, there are no interviews. There is, for the completist, a television version of Death Walks at Midnight which pales against the color correct and wide screen original film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:41 PM

February 16, 2006

Forgive Me

Vergeef Me
Cyrus Frisch - 2001
Reel 23 PAL Region 0 DVD

In the brief biography that comes with Forgive Me, Cyrus Frisch is compared with Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier. Not even close, but give Frisch a couple of points for chutzpah. Frisch, seen in the above still, is interested in confrontational film and theater in the name of some kind of abstract truth. At the very least, he is the only filmmaker I am aware of who has been filmed running through the streets naked with a camera.

In the beginning of his film, the Dutch Frisch is filmed discussing the impact of information and visual overloads on television viewers. Frisch's goal is to make a film so transgressive that he changes Dutch viewing habits. In his statement he writes: " By vigorously and openly exceeding the borders of the acceptable, I hoped to get some understanding of the exploitation of human suffering on film and television and stir up the opinions. Something like that." While the proclaimed goal of ending violence and misery on television is praiseworthy, Frisch fails absolutely.

The drug and alchohol addled characters that Frisch films become part of the spectacle that Frisch claims to criticize. In the first sequence, two people fall out of their chairs in documented stupor. Frisch mounts a stage production titled "Jesus/Lover" which includes a mentally impaired man undressing and masturbating in front of the audience. In terms of using the stage to directly address and interact with the audience, Frisch seems unaware of Peter Brook or The Living Theatre. In spite of his intentions, Frisch makes a fool of himself and his "actors". In terms of transgressive cinema, what history has shown is that there is always a filmmaker willing to go beyond previously established limits not only of good taste but of bad taste. Anyone who thinks Frisch is extreme would probably be unfamiliar with Takashi Miike or the Guinea Pig series of films.

Frisch's confused sense of mission includes the incorporation of clips from Murnau's Faust. Not surprisingly, Murnau's images are the best part of Forgive Me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:53 PM | Comments (1)

February 15, 2006

Two Shylocks

The Merchant of Venice
Michael Radford - 2004
Sony Pictures Region 1 DVD

Le Grand Role
Steve Suissa - 2004
First Run Features Region 1 DVD

In Le Grand Role, struggling actor Maurice Kurtz is asked by director Rudolph Grichenberg to name other actors capable of playing Shylock. One of the actors mentioned by Kurtz is Al Pacino. That Pacino is cited twice in Le Grand Role is a curious coincidence linking these two films.

Michael Radford prepares the audience for a sympathetic Shylock with informative titles briefly explaining the life of Venetian Jews in the late 16th Century. The historical context is helpful in this interpretation of the play. While he has shown his interest in Shakespeare with Looking for Richard, about Richard III, the problem with Al Pacino doing Shakespeare is that he cannot totally transcend being Al Pacino. There are times when I felt totally aware that I was watching Al Pacino with what sounded like a light Yiddish accent. Even more distracting was the choice of Lynn Collins as Portia. Collins looks remarkably similar to Laura Prepon that while Collins was on screen, I was wondering why she looked so familiar.

As films based on Shakespeare plays go, this is still quite watchable. Worthy especially is the performance of Jeremy Irons as Antonio, the title role. The language is, for the most part, spoken in conversational style. Radford takes advantage of location shooting with shots in and around Venice. Even if Pacino is not the definitive Shylock, he still grabs attention, especially with the famous speech. Shylock and Othello may be Shakespeare's most problematical characters given both contemporary political repercussions, artistic interpretation and controversy over Shakespeare's intended meaning(s). The worst version of Othello is by Laurence Olivier, in ill-advised blackface. Aside from tending to recite Shakespeare as if to the far balcony of a theater, Olivier looked like he was ready to break out and sing an Al Jolson number at any moment. While Radford is to be commended for recreating 16th Century Venice, one may want to hurl Shakespearean epithets at the MPAA for rating Merchant with an "R" for some brief shots of Venitian women exposing their breasts. As far as adaptations of Shakespeare go, Merchant would be considered quite accessible for high school students if certain cultural guardians hadn't gotten in the way.

Le Grand Role refers both to the French actor's taking on the part of Shylock as well as his role as the part of a loving husband to his cancer-stricken wife. Director Suissa touches on secular and religious Jewish life in contemporary France as well as theories about Shakespeare's hidden Jewish past. The bittersweet comedy-drama also is a gentle satire of Steven Spielberg with Peter Coyote as a well known director who decides to make a film of Merchant in Yiddish. A not-so inside joke is that Coyote acted in Spielberg's E.T.. Perhaps it is the power of Shakespeare's text, but certainly Stephane Freiss' reciting of Shylock's speech in Yiddish, with subtitles, is still affecting. Even if the film adds nothing to the understanding of Shakespeare, Le Grand Role takes its cues from the oft quoted line from As You Like it, "All the world's a stage . . . "

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:47 PM

February 12, 2006

Three by Martin Ritt

The Black Orchid
Martin Ritt - 1959
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

The Brotherhood
Martin Ritt - 1968
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

The Molly Maguires
Martin Ritt - 1970
Paramount Pictures Region 1 DVD

Crawling up my queue of films to see were these three titles directed by Martin Ritt. I saw Hombre at the time of its theatrical release and found it pretentious. As Andrew Sarris did not consider Ritt worthy of even a sentence in The American Cinema, and only listed three of his films in the bottom rungs of their respective release years, I saw no reason to make a point of seeing his films. The only reason I saw Sounder had to do with my religiously seeing every film nominated for Best Picture. I saw Ritt's debut film, Edge of the City in a class at NYU and had to admit to myself that it was pretty good. I saw The Front due to my interest in the Hollywood blacklist, knowing that co-star Zero Mostel was blacklisted, but not knowing how personal the film was for Ritt and screenplay author Walter Bernstein. The later films with the unlikely muse of Sally Field as well as Cross Creek with Mary Steenburgen brought out the best in Ritt's filmmaking abilities.

I don't know how much of what's best in The Molly Maguires is due to screenwriter Walter Bernstein or cinematographer James Wong Howe. There are several dialogue free scenes with the fluid camera visually informing the audience about the life of Pennsylvania coal miners in 1876. Several shots take advantage of framing devices such as windows and fences. Released in early 1970, The Molly Maguires was a major flop, regarded as old-fashioned and unfashionable. The casting of Richard Harris and Sean Connery made no difference to the box office. Like several of his films, Ritt examines the "American dream" for those whom it is out of reach. In this film about Irish immigrants, Connery is the rebellious worker seeking justice for those who are both literally and socially at the bottom. Harris is the undercover detective who finds himself caught between sympathy with the miners' goals and his own need for success, even at the expense of others. Thematically, The Molly Maguires is most obviously similar to Norma Rae as a look at labor in America. It is also one of Ritt's best films in terms of visual composition, both in positioning of actors and use of color.

Right after The Black Orchid, screenwriter Joseph Stefano wrote the screenplay for Psycho, while cinematographer Robert Burks shot North by Northwest. The Black Orchid looks much worse in comparison to those two Alfred Hitchcock assignments. The only reason to watch the film now is to see two forces of nature, Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren, together. Loren is the widow of a small-time criminal pursued by Quinn, overcoming the obstacles involving his daughter and her son. The film comes off as a contrived look at Italian-Americans, that tries to be a slice of life, but looks more like a slice of baloney.

Did Mario Puzo see The Brotherhood? The film came out the year before Puzo's bestselling novel was published. The failure of the earlier film made Paramount uneasy about the prospects for Francis Ford Coppola's film with its expanding scope and budget. One can see several elements that are shared in both films. Lewis John Carlino continued to explore organized crime in other screenplays. Even with location shooting in Sicily and New York City, the film is not particularly involving. This is a tourist's view of organized crime families, distant and faintly exotic. I don't remember which documentary used clips of The Brotherhood to explain how it inspired the use of a cast and crew of Italian descent for The Godfather. If it has no other value, it seems that at least once, with The Brotherhood, Hollywood proved it could learn from one of its mistakes.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:16 PM | Comments (3)

February 11, 2006

That Fiery Girl

Gong la Jiao
Yan Jun - 1968
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

At the 2002 Denver International Film Festival, several vintage films from The Shaw Brothers were screened in advance of the Celestial Pictures DVD releases. Cheng Pei-Pei attended the showing of Come Drink with Me. Like many people in the audience, the only previous film I had seen with her was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. While my knowledge of Chinese language films was limited to a few titles, I could recognize that Ang Lee had essentially made a bigger budget version of a King Hu movie. Until I had checked Ms. Cheng's filmography, I was unaware that she was a Hong Kong star who paved the way for her younger Crouching Tiger co-stars, Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi. More than thirty years before Crouching Tiger's sword, Green Destiny, was fought over, Cheng appear as "Red Chili".

That Fiery Girl doesn't have King Hu's religious and mystical motifs, and the fight choreography and wire work are somewhat clunky compared to the pyrotechnics initiated by Tsui Hark. The film is good-natured silliness beginning with an overly literal title sequence filmed in a building in flames. That Fiery Girl is the swordfighting equivalent of a B Western, the kind one enjoys because of the familiarity of the actors, the plot and even the twists in the plot. Reinforcing that the film is entertaining, if not original, is the music. I wouldn't be able to identify how much of the score was from other films, but at one point Elmer Bernstein's familiar themes from The Magnificent Seven popped up. With Asian martial arts films and American westerns informing each other over the years, one could say the quoting of Bernstein was a musical reminder that what goes around, comes around.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:04 PM

February 10, 2006

Oasis

Lee Chang-dong - 2002
Life Size Entertainment Region 0 DVD

The best reason to see Oasis is for Moon So-ri's performance. Until she stood up in the train, I had thought I was watching a film of someone who actually has cerebral palsy. The facial and physical contortions that Moon goes through are almost unwatchable. I have not found an in-depth interview with Lee in English concerning this film. That it is difficult to watch Moon is the point. Oasis is about a mentally handicapped young man in love with a young woman with cerebral palsy.

The lovers aren't the lovable savants of Hollywood (The Other Sister, Forrest Gump, Rain Man). The young man, Jong-du, played by Sol Kyung-gu, constantly sniffles and seems devoid of common sense. Because of their respective handicaps, the couple are taken advantage of by their respective families. A scene critical of society at large depicts the two attempting to get served at a restaurant. The young woman, Gong-ju, is imprisoned due to her limited physical abilities and the accompanying difficulty in verbal speech. Jong-du's brothers frequently mention that they do not understand "what is in his head". Jong-du and Gong-ju take the time to communicate with each other. More so than Jong-du, Gong-ju is marginalized by family members who claim the ability to speak on her behalf, and treat her as a victim for their convenience.

As mentioned at the beginning, Moon So-ri breaks from her performance of having cerebral palsy. The shift is one of presenting the inner self that cannot be articulated in reality. Lee plays with Gong-ju's sense of self and her environment with the reflected light from a hand-held mirror becoming butterflies, and having her room turn into the oasis of a story, complete with a small elephant. Some of have written about Oasis previously have refered to these moments as "magic realism". I guess that term is a reasonable close approximation of Lee's symbolic shifts in the narrative.

Moon's performance is also remarkable when compared to the frequent presentation of physically and mentally challenged women in Hollywood. As portrayed by such actresses as Juliette Lewis, Yvette Mimieux or Patty Duke, to mention a few, Hollywood essentially fetishizes being mentally or physically handicapped with a gallery of babes. Light in the Piazza is especially offensive with its conclusion that if you look like Yvette Mimieux, it doesn't matter if you have the I.Q. of a turnip. Lee films close-up after close-up of Gong-ju's twisted face, hands and limbs. In her fearless performance, Moon is unafraid of making herself appear ugly. When Moon as Gong-ju momentarily steps out of Gong-ju's contortions, her physical transformation bests any state of the art special effects.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:46 PM

February 09, 2006

Russ Meyer or Bust!

Supervixens
Russ Meyer - 1975
Arrow Films PAL Region 0 DVD

Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
Russ Meyer - 1979
Arrow Films PAL Region 0 DVD

In the summer of 1975 I had the opportunity to meet Russ Meyer. What made this somewhat strange is that it was with my mother. She was an entertainment reporter at the Denver Post at the time. Unlike my mother, I had actually seen a couple of Russ Meyer's films. While I had read about his films but wasn't actually old enough to see any until the release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. I had also seen The Seven Minutes, Meyer's most mainstream, and least characteristic film. Having seen two Russ Meyer films gave me enough knowledge to assist my mother in her interview.

As this happened about thirty years ago, I don't remember very much. I can verify that like everyone else, we found Russ Meyer fun to converse with, whether it was about his career or war-time experiences. I do remember he was thinking about doing a spoof of Dick Tracy possibly re-titled as "Dick Racy". As enjoyable as Meyer is in person, he is much less engaging in his commentary tracks. I never thought I would be lulled to sleep by the sound of Russ Meyer's voice, but I kept nodding off while watching Ultra-vixens. Some may be interested or amused by Meyer's stories of his escapades with his star, "Kitten" Natividad. Others may even give "thumbs up" to a discussion of screenwriter Roger Ebert's predilections. With his constant euphemisms for female body parts, I started to feel like I was in the company of the world's oldest horny teenager. After a couple of winks and nudges, I just want to slap that annoying elbow.

Letting the films speak for themselves wasn't much of an improvement. Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens and Supervixens have aged badly. Maybe Meyer was creatively spent after his stint with 20th Century Fox. A couple of years ago, I stumbled upon a showing of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls on cable. I was watching the last hour or so, and was surprised that there was a note that the film was edited for cablecast, as I felt I wasn't missing anything. Even this third time around, Beyond remained fun to watch. A midnight screening two or three years ago of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! was also entertaining. The story of Russ Meyer is of a filmmaker who helped change the movie marketplace, only to find himself displaced by that same marketplace.

Beneath, which turned out to be Meyer's last theatrical film, fails as an erotic comedy because it is neither funny nor erotic. Having a character named Martin Bormann or using the song Stranger in Paradise during a gay seduction scene are tired jokes from past films. Seeing a woman singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers" while having sex may make for a brief chuckle as a Playboy cartoon, but becomes increasingly less inspired after its first use in the film. Until a very late scene appeared with square-jawed Charles Napier tossing dynamite to his would-be victims, I completely forgot that I had seen Supervixens in a theater thirty years ago. Even The Seven Minutes, seen four years earlier, has managed to be more memorable. As it happens with some filmmakers, Russ Meyer kept on making films that were shadows of past successes, as meaningful today as 8-track tapes and quadraphonic sound.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:33 PM | Comments (1)

February 05, 2006

The Ghost

Lo Spettro
Riccardo Freda - 1963
Retromedia Entertainment DVD

There is one person who I will see in anything - good, bad, indifferent, and that is Barbara Steele. For all I know, she has a way of hynotizing people watching her films with those big eyes usually seen in paintings by Margaret Keane. Mario Bava has been noted as remarking that when Steele's face was lit a certain way it resembled a skull. Proof that she mesmerized teenage boys who were old enough to see Black Sunday when it was first released is evidenced by films by Jonathan Demme, David Cronenberg and Joe Dante. For my periodic fix of Barbara Steele, the DVDs available are filling in where one once could depend on late-night local television.

The Ghost was directed by Riccardo Freda under his English-language psuedonym of Robert Hampton. As was frequently done at the time, this Italian production was released with the cast and crew taking on British sounding names to better market themselves at a time when Hammer and Roger Corman's Poe films were at the height of their popularity. Freda is certainly due for a more complete review, his reputation having been eclipsed by Bava who took over directing I Vampiri, the first Italian horror film made in the sound era. In The Ghost, Steele portrays Margaret, the wife of Dr. Hitchcock (!), a doctor suffering from a paralysis that his best friend, Dr. Livingstone (!!) is suppose to cure. As it turns out, Margaret and Dr. Livingstone have been having an affair. The lovers connive against Dr. Hitchcock who tries to prove that you can take it with you.

The bar was raised pretty high with Black Sunday. No film since then has come close to being a genre masterpiece although there have been some honorable attempts. The Ghost is a bit sluggish in spots but is nicely photographed. This was the first of Steele's Italian horror films to be shot in color. Even if the narrative can be anticipated after years of watching Italian horror movies, the twists and turns lead to a satisfying conclusion. Sometimes cliches can be reassuring, which is why for me, a horror movie with Barbara Steele is like the cinematic equivalent to comfort food.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:13 PM

February 04, 2006

The Battle of Blood Island

Joel M. Rapp - 1960
Something Weird Video Region 1 DVD

Philip Roth called his autobiography The Facts. Even though it covered the years from his birth through the publication of Portnoy's Complaint, Roth omitted several facts. While Roth mentions that a short story published in a small literary magazine received national attention, he does not cite the title, "The Contest for Aaron Gold", or that the story was adapted for Alfred Hitchcock's television show. Roth mentions being drafted in the late Fifties, but discusses nothing about his time in the Army. Why this is important is that Roth did write two short stories with military settings, although they are set in World War II which occurred when Roth was still a teenager.

When it comes to spotting nascent talent, Roger Corman gets mentioned in association with a slew of actors and directors. I don't know how Corman discovered Philip Roth, but he should get some credit for producing the first feature based on a Roth story. As the IMDb listing does not name the short story or more than the first names of the characters, a little research was required. The Battle of Blood Island is based on a short story titled Expect the Vandals which was published in Esquire, December 1958. This was several months before the publication of Goodbye, Columbus. Expect the Vandals remains as an uncollected short story. While the short story is unavailable, there are a couple of brief mentions of the story which were enough to verify that this was the basis for The Battle of Blood Island. The copyright on the film is for 1959, while IMDb lists 1960 as the release date.

As best as I can tell, the film is faithful to Roth. The story is of two G.I.s, Moe and Ken, the only survivors on a small island occupied by a small group of Japanese soldiers. Moe Malamud is casually Jewish. At one point he refers to his mezuzah as "a good luck charm". While Malamud could be descibed as a secular Jew, he rightly takes great offense when Ken calls him "Jew" in anger. The film title is misleading as the majority of the film is of Moe taking care of the wounded Ken. This is a dialogue driven film, with the only battle being verbal sparring by two guys who think they may be abandoned somewhere in the Pacific.

Joel Rapp has had several careers. The Battle of Blood Island is actually pretty good for a film made on a tiny budget. How small a budget you may ask? To save a few dollars, Roger Corman even has a bit part near the end of the film. While a new DVD version has commentary by Rapp, the Something Weird version is in wide screen. As far as film adaptations of Roth go, it may not have the prestige of The Human Stain or even Goodbye, Columbus, but neither can one complain about the film being miscast, as those films were with Anthony Hopkins and Ali McGraw respectively. It would be nice if one could persuade Philip Roth to face facts and do a commentary track for The Battle of Blood Island, or at least get Expect the Vandals republished.

Check Long Pauses for some thoughts on The Human Stain.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM

February 02, 2006

Moira Shearer 1926 - 2006

The Red Shoes
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 1948
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I was surprised to learn that Moira Shearer had actually only appeared in a handful of films since her debut in The Red Shoes. Three of the six theatrical films were directed or co-directed by Michael Powell, while Black Tights was obviously inspired by The Archers. As far as Shearer was concerned, she was a dancer first, while acting was secondary. As far as I'm concerned, Moira Shearer is the reason for the invention of technicolor.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:01 AM | Comments (2)

February 01, 2006

Turkish Delight

Turks Fruit
Paul Verhoeven - 1973
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

At the time of the Showgirls blog-a-thon of January 11, I felt the need to see an early Paul Verhoeven film I had previously missed. I have to conclude that had more critics had taken the time to see Turkish Delight, than nothing in Showgirls would have been particularly surprising. Sure, Turkish Delight is the better film, and even has the bragging rights of an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, but somehow Showgirls manages to be a model of decorum in comparison.

The film opens with Rutger Hauer clubbing a guy to death and shooting a woman in the head which turns out to be a dream, followed by his running around his house wearing only a t-shirt, jerks off to a photo on the wall, followed by picking up and bedding three women. That's all in the first five minutes of the film! The character of Erik, a sculptor, has moments of extreme anti-social behavior that make Showgirls' Nomi appear almost refined. Verhoeven is uninhibited in his filming of erotic activity and bodily functions. While the Farrelly Brothers may get laughs at Ben Stiller's expense in There's Something about Mary, Verhoeven makes sure we see Hauer's problems with zipping his pants to hastily. In Andrew Sarris' The American Cinema is a comparison between "the Lubitsch smile and the (Preston) Sturges guffaw". I may be stretching an analogy here in describing the approaches to gross-out humor as comparable between the Farrellys and Verhoeven.

Most of Turkish Delight is about Erik's volatile relationship with Olga (Monique Van de Ven), Erik's lover, muse and wife. The pair continually rebel against middle-class values and propriety, frequently as personified by Olga's mother. Erik turns down the offer to take over his in-laws' television store, travels by bicycle instead of owning a car, and takes art commissions on his own terms. Erik's art is as fully erotic as his life.

This unity of life and art in the main characters is what makes Showgirls something of a companion piece to Turkish Delight. Both films center on sexually active characters who are involved in art based on objectifying women. Turkish Delight is the better film because the characters are ultimately humanized by Verhoeven rather than remaining as the cartoons that populate Showgirls.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:41 AM

January 31, 2006

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

My Summer of Love
Pawel Pawlikowski - 2004
Universal Pictures Region 1 DVD

L'Effrontee
Claude Miller - 1985
Wellspring Region 1 DVD

Every once in a while one sees films that almost mirror each other, if unintentionally, either within a short period of time, or in this case, back-to-back. In addition to both films in this article being primarily about the relationship between a working class girl and a girl from a background of wealth who is also a musician, both films have scenes involving a globe, and borrowed clothes. Both films refer to The Exorcist, reminding us how deep the cultural impact is after thirty years. Both films also have the overly idealized relationship ending badly, but with the girl who's left behind still finding a personal victory.

My Summer of Love, like Pawel Pawlikowski's first film, The Last Resort is concerned with the idea of home. The title for that film is a pun with a Russian woman finding herself stranded in an English vacation community off-season after not being met by her fiance. My Summer of Love begins with Mona feeling displaced from her home, an apartment she shares with her suddenly born-again brother who has converted their parents' pub into meeting place for fellow believers. After a chance meeting with Tamsin, Mona finds herself living as a houseguest and eventual lover with the worldlier girl. The faith Mona's brother, Phil, displays is as overwhelming as Mona's belief that she and Tamsin will actually run away to live together. Throughout the film, characters are confronting each other in the name of an illusive and subjective truth. Even when Mona and Tamsin laugh at Phil, Pawlikowski displays respect for the sincere act of faith, whether it is Mona and Tamsin "communicating" with a dead spirit, or Phil and a group of Christians carrying a very large cross up a hill to overlook their small town. For Pawlikowski, the conclusion is that before attempting to be honest with anyone else, one needs to be honest with one's self.

Being about somewhat younger girls, L'Effrontee details a deep infatuation of one girl for another. A former associate to Godard, Demy and Bresson, Claude Miller has made a film that self-consciously invokes the spirit of Francois Truffaut. The Nouvelle Vague connection is further stressed with the casting of Bernadette Lafont and Jean-Claude Brialy. The distaff Antoine Doinel is Charlotte, played by the then 13-year-old Charlotte Gainsbourg. The long-legged, awkward Charlotte sees the blonde and conventionally pretty Clara, a piano prodigy, on television. The daughter of a tool-maker meets Clara by chance when Clara is staying near Charlotte's provincial village. For Charlotte, Clara would provide a means of escaping the perceived limitations of her home. For Clara, normally surrounded by adults, Charlotte provides temporary friendship with a girl of her own age. In trying to establish her independence and sense of attractiveness, Charlotte also gets involved with a young sailor who is also in town briefly. Used in the film's opening credits is a song that conspicuously sounds like Cindy Lauper's big hit. The DVD also includes an interview with a very shy Gainsbourg who could not imagine being the respected actress she is today.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:00 PM

January 30, 2006

Boys of Summer 2005

Wedding Crashers
David Dobkin - 2005
New Line Region 1 DVD

The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Judd Apatow - 2005
Universal Pictures Region 1 DVD

"Hilarious" said Clay Smith of Access Hollwood about Wedding Crashers. "Hilarious" stated Paul Clinton of CNN about The 40-Year-Old Virgin. And so I have to ask myself, are these guys more easily amused, or is it possible that I am "humor impaired"? There may also be those who argue that these two very popular comedies from last summer were made for a demographic that revoked my membership card back in the Reagan years. I would like to think that funny is funny, if you don't mind a little tautology here. To put this concern in context, I should explain that the last film that really made me laugh out loud was Jean Renoir's Boudu Saved from Drowing, made in 1932.

Of the two films, I liked Wedding Crashers because it was fairly amusing for the first hour or so. When it stopped being funny, I had to at least give director David Dobkin credit for maintaining something like a visual style with some attractive tracking shots. The point is made of being location specific, in this case Washington D.C., with the Washington monument given appropriate Freudian attention. The main reason to watch Wedding Crashers is for the repartee between Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. They seem to enjoy playing off each other to the point where the narrative gets in the way. What I also found satisfying is that even after the Wilson and Vaughn have their respective and obligatory "life lessons", they didn't totally change from the characters they were at the beginning of the film.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin had a couple moments of mild amusement, like the chest waxing scene, and a scene depicting speed dating. I was troubled by the way the film tried to simultaneously make a joke out of Steve Carell's virginity with the narrative lurching from one bad date after another, and scenes of misguided male bonding, and at the same time present the virginity as a badge of honor. That the film was less visually interesting may due to writer-director Judd Apatow's background in television. But back to my original questions, I know that there are people who find Michel Simon uproarious seventy-three years after he was filmed stumbling around the Left Bank. Will there be anyone as similary enthused about the virgin and the crashers seventy-three years from now?

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:30 AM | Comments (1)

January 29, 2006

O.C. and Stiggs

Robert Altman - 1987
MGM Region 1 DVD

Robert Altman will be honored with an honorary Academy Award after five nominations for Best Director. Including his forthcoming Prairie Home Companion, he has directed over thirty-five theatrical films, plus a greater number of television films, episodes for television series and industrial documentaries. As part of the perpetually failing efforts to keep the Academy Award broadcast within a reasonable length, the Altman salute will by necessity have to be limited to clips from career highlights. It is a good bet that O.C. and Stiggs will be one Altman film left unmentioned.

After seeing this film I had to wonder why MGM made a point of releasing it on DVD while the much better, and funnier, Brewster McCloud remains on the shelf. The DVD includes a brief interview with Altman explaining his intentions, and what what a good time he had with the actors. Even though as a director for hire, Altman personalized the film with his use of overlapping dialogue, O.C. is only an intermittently funny, but mostly sour vision of Americana.

The film is based on a story published in National Lampoon. The producers convinced MGM that the story could be made into a film for teenagers. Altman doesn't mention any films, so I don't know if he is thinking of Porky's and similar films, or perhaps one of the films from John Hughes. Altman thought that he was making a satire of teenage films. One of the first rules of any good teenage film is that the adults have to either be non-existent, peripheral or at worst, supporting characters. O.C. and Stiggs fails as a teenage movie or even a satire of teenage movies because Altman spends too much time with the grown-ups. Additionally, scenes that may have seemed funny on paper, such as the boys floating on inner tubes on their way to Mexico, aren't funny on screen.

There are a few inspired moments - O.C. (Daniel Jenkins) doing a Fred and Ginger dance with the young Cynthia Nixon and Dennis Hopper in a couple of enjoyably goofy moments spoofing his role in Apocalypse Now come to mind. More often, O.C. and Stiggs is marred by attempts at humor that are smug, if not outright racist or homophobic.

That Altman even attempted to do his own version of a "teenage film" is logical in viewing his overall career. A film student friend of mine thought of Altman as the "revisionist Howard Hawks". What he meant by that was that both directors tackled different genres and had a way of making their films unique. While that may be oversimplifying the similarity of the two filmmakers, it is probably no coincidence that Hawks filmed Raymond Chandler's first Philip Marlowe novel while Altman filmed the last, and both had screenplays by Leigh Brackett. (I should clarify that Brackett co-wrote The Big Sleep screenplay with Jules Furthman and William Faulkner.) Among the films I am thinking of here in addition to Altman's version of the detective film (The Long Goodbye) are the western (McCabe and Mrs. Miller), the musical (Nashville), the war film (M*A*S*H) and the screwball comedy (Brewster McCloud). Howard Hawks had his misfires. I don't blame Cary Grant for running away after reading the script for Man's Favorite Sport?. For Robert Altman, among some great films and several that are merely good, there is O.C. and Stiggs.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:38 PM | Comments (3)

January 27, 2006

War - Italian Style

Massacre in Rome/Rappresaglia
George Pan Cosmatos - 1973
NoShame Films Region 1 DVD

Desert of the Tarters/Il Deserto dei Tartari
Valerio Zurlini - 1976
NoShame Films Region 0 DVD

NoShame likes to pair their releases somewhat thematically. In this case, taking a break from their usual genre offerings are two lesser known war films from the Seventies, both international co-productions with some very big stars. While Massacre in Rome represents the first major film by the uneven action director, George Pan Cosmatos, Desert of the Tarters carries the burden of being the only decent DVD available by Valerio Zurlini, a respected filmmaker in Italy virtually unknown in the U.S.

I have read that Cosmatos' best film is Of Unknown Origin. Having an admitted phobia concerning rodents, I'll never know, but I did like Tombstone. Even the awkwardly titled Rambo: First Blood Part II had some rousing moments. The main reason to watch Massacre in Rome is simply to see Richard Burton and Marcello Mastroianni together in the same film. The film is based on a true incident during World War II in which 320 Italians were to be rounded up and executed by the Nazi SS following an attack by partisans that killed 32 German soldiers. Burton portrays the SS Colonel Kappler who in the film has a conflict of conscious in carrying out the orders. Mastroianni is the fictional character of a priest who attempts to stop the massacre by appealing to Burton and the Pope. Character actor Leo McKern outshines everyone in his hammy performance as the piano playing German general who orders the mass executions. The best moment in the film is scene of the partisans carrying out their attack on the soldiers, expecially the nervous moments of anticipation before the troops are heard marching up the street. While Massacre in Rome is not overly distinguished, it isn't the campy embarrassment of Cosmatos' following film, the all-star disaster The Cassandra Crossing.

Desert of the Tarters is the only Zurlini film I have seen at this time. The story is somewhat comparable to Jarhead in that it is about soldiers who dream of military valor, only to see that their terms of service were spent waiting for battles that never happen. The film needs some historical context for American viewers, as the time period begins in 1907 and the soldiers are part of the Astro-Hungarian army. In addition to Max von Sydow pictured above, the film includes Fernando Rey, Francisco Rabal, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Philippe Noiret and Vittorio Gassman. The film was shot in a desert town in Iran that had been abandoned following an earthquake. The exploration of how men define themselves and how military life and rules can be absurd is sometimes less than compelling. Where Zurlini shows his abilities is in his images, many which were made to be seen on a movie screen, and which need to be seen on a large screen to be fully appreciated. There are several long shots where one sees very small characters in the vast desert, a lone rider on horseback, a stray white horse, or distantly seen reflections. One wonderfully composed shot is of a group of soldiers marching in the snow, away from the camera, fading into the vast whiteness. The huge fort looks like nothing less than an oversized sand castle.

As often with NoShame, it is the extras that make their DVDs worthwhile. In the case of Massacre in Rome two disc set, there is a hilarious interview with Cosmatos fumbling with his microphone, followed by an almost Felliniesque interview of Mastroianni walking through a hotel bath surrounded by older men in towels or less. More serious are the interviews with two of the partisans from the actual incident, and an interview with an Italian historian, all of which puts the film into a clearer historic context. Desert of the Tarters has a terrific interview with Luciano Tovoli in which the cinematographer discusses his lengthy career. Unfortunately, the subtitles have errors in English grammer as well as confusing director Vittorio De Seta for the similarly sounding Vittorio De Sica, and rendering Truffaut as "Truffo". The Desert DVD also comes with the original soundtrack album CD by Ennio Morricone, a pensive, piano driven score.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:03 PM

January 24, 2006

Made in Asia, remade in Hollywood

Pulse/Kairo
Kiyoshi Kurosawa - 2001
Universe Laser & Video Region 3 DVD

Il Mare/Siworae
Lee Hyun-Seung - 2000
Spectrum Region 0 DVD

It would be hypocritical of me to be totally against American remakes of Asian films. I admit to having John Sturges' Magnificent Seven in my collection. I am bothered by the frequency of remakes in the past few years. To me, it's an admission of creative laziness on the part of Hollywood, as well as a cultural laziness on the part of American audiences. My significant other would argue that part of the problem is that foreign films should be dubbed into English, just as Ango-American films are dubbed in other countries. She may be right. The other challenge is that the few Asian films that get U.S. release are shown in other than the large cities, or those venues dedicated to foreign films. The ideal situation is that there would be greater support of Asian artists by those have supported appropriations such as Quentin Tarantino's films and Gwen Stefani's Harujuku Girls.

Opening in a couple of weeks is the Weinstein Company remake of Pulse with Kristen Bell. The Region 1 DVD of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's version will be available on February 21. While not as disturbing as Cure, Pulse does maintain a sense of dread throughout the length of the film. The spookiness is created with underlit and backlit scenes, and empty environments. The film begins somewhat like other J-Horror ghost stories with the dead coming back to haunt the living. Kurosawa's existenstial concerns slowly take over. In the short-hand summing up of Sartre's No Exit is the conclusion that "Hell is other people". Kurosawa concludes that one person connecting with another person is extremely difficult and rare, and is a situation to be appreciated. The dreamlike imagery owes a debt to F. W. Murnau and Japanese author Edogawa Rampo. One of Rampo's most famous short stories is "The Human Chair". Kurosawa may have been making a nod to Rampo with the chairs as frequent props, sometimes appearing in unexpected places. There is no gore, the violence is generally muted, and nothing leaps out unexpectedly in Pulse. Had Daniel Clowes not used it, the film could easily be titled Ghost World. For Kurosawa, the greatest horror is loneliness.

The remake of Il Mare is currently titled The Lake House. Scheduled for a June release, it will undoubtedly be seen by a larger audience than the original Korean film. The title, Il Mare translates as "The Sea". The story is about a young man and young woman who lived in the same unique house in a coastal area. The woman, Eun-Ju, who lived in the house in 2000, left a letter that mysteriously gets picked up out of the mailbox by Sung-Hyun, who lived in the house in 1998. The two continue to write to each other via the magic mail box. The biggest obstacles to the film aside from a storyline with some major plot holes are the badly translated, and frequently garbled English subtitles. It should be no surprise that the would-be couple overcomes space and time, logic, and a couple of plot twists. Il Mare is a bit of good-natured cinematic fluff. That it's being remade as a vehicle for Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock makes me wonder about about the heart of Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:16 PM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2006

The Boy with Green Hair

Joseph Losey - 1948
Terra Entertainment DVD

While I have generally been a fan of the films of Joseph Losey, I realized that my familiarity was exclusively with his British films, beginning with Time Without Pity. Losey's debut feature, The Boy with Green Hair is the only one of his American films available on DVD at this time. For a film that was shot in technicolor for the major plot point, it is unfortunate that the version available is a lousy transfer done from a washed out videotape. As Losey will probably be remembered best for films starring Dirk Bogarde tossing off dialogue by Harold Pinter, a film taking place in small town America seems odd until you remember that Losey was originally from La Crosse, Wisconsin.

It is worth noting that The Boy with Green Hair was released in November 1948, about a year after the House of Un-American Activities investigation of Communist influence in Hollywood began. The film was produced at RKO, which was owned by Howard Hughes. In spite of the obvious liberal sentiments of Boy, the film was released as scheduled unlike other RKO films of that time that Hughes would temporarily shelve (They Live By Night) or re-worked (Vendetta).

While the title gives away the major plot point, the film is an anti-war parable. Dean Stockwell is the orphan who discovers a greater sense of self, and takes it upon himself to remind everyone he meets about how war victimizes children. The film's sentiments are indicated early in the film when the camera pans across a series of posters reminding us not to forget the children of Yugoslavia or Greece. Stockwell encounters these poster children in a dream. Except for an Asian baby, this vision of misery is Euro-centric. If the vehicle for the message is dated in some ways, the message itself is still worth remembering. To the best of my knowledge, the only Hollywood filmmaker who tried to pick up where Losey's film ended was Angelina Jolie with the undervalued Beyond Borders. (I am giving Ms. Jolie auteur credit here based on her humanitarian activities.

In addition to Losey, screenwriter Ben Barzman was blacklisted a couple of years following the release of Boy. The cast includes Pat O'Brien, the up and coming Robert Ryan, future Perry Mason gal Barbara Hale, the future Dobie Gillis, Dwayne Hickman, and perennial sidekick Regis Toomey. The film begins oddly enough with a chorus singing Nature Boy.

One can see bits of future Losey in his first film. Dean Stockwell's sense of peril would be revisited in Losey remake of M and Mr. Klein. Political idealism versus pragmaticism would also figure in several Losey films such as King and Country. Losey's last major commercial and critical success, The Go-Between would feature a boy who acts as a messenger in the adult world.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:07 PM

January 22, 2006

The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant

Die Bitteren Trnen der Petra von Kant
Rainer Werner Fassbinder - 1972
Wellspring Region 1 DVD

This past month, the Miami Beach Cinematheque has been featuring a retrospective of some of the latter films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In conjunction with the films, has been the presentation of a stage version of Petra Von Kant by The White Orchard Theater. Seeing the two versions points out the extreme differences between stage and film, in terms of where the viewers direct their gaze, the use of space, and placement of characters.

Reviewing the play is problematic for several reasons. Petra Von Kant was originally written as a play. The theater company chose to make several changes, using the film's ending with Marlene leaving after Petra attempts to make their relationship for equitable, but not using the prop of a doll made to look like Petra's lover Karin. Different music was used, with disco replacing The Platters and The Walker Brothers. What makes this seemingly minor point important is that it throws the time period out of kilter. The music is to function both as a comment on the action and as a reference to Petra's past. The music in the film is appropriate for a character in her mid-thirties in a play or film taking place in the early Seventies. If disco music is used because the character is updated, than the scene with Petra Von Kant dictating a letter to Joseph Mankiewicz would need to be revised. The biggest obstacle to best evaluating the stage production though is that the production on the same floor level as the audience, making is difficult to view much of the action, especially with several of the characters sitting or reclined on the bed that is the center of the action.

The still chosen above illustrates the difference between film and stage. While we hear Margit Carstensen and Katrin Schaake discussing their lives, the camera is focused on Irm Hermann, isolated both literally and symbolically, yet seen as part of the same visual field as the other two actors. In the stage production, the audience would be more likely focussed only on the two characters in conversation. Fassbinder is able to emphasize certain points by shifting the camera angle, or by having characters seen but not heard, or heard but not seen.

Even though the film takes place in one location, the set is photographed from several different angles, as are the actors. The use of dolls and mannequins in the set echo, Petra's transformation of Karin into a model, or more literally a living doll. Petra is seen transforming herself with the use of several wigs. Fassbinder also has a visual gag in one scene with two nude female mannequins embaced on a bed, while a third mannequin stands "observing" the action, a play on the relationship of the three main characters.

In research, I have found an opera and a television production of Petra Von Kant. The themes of class and use of power in the original work still make Petra Von Kant of more than casual interest. One of Fassbinder's quotes is: "Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It's a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other." With multiple productions of Petra Von Kant one may wonder if Fassbinder, the filmmaker who wanted an Academy Award, would have approved his play being canonized as it were, or if the perpetual rebel would complain that he was being exploited in the name of art.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:21 PM | Comments (1)

January 20, 2006

Let Me Die a Woman

Doris Wishman - 1978
Synapse Films Region 0 DVD

There is a rather humorous anecdote told by the singularly named Leslie, pictured above, the star of Let Me Die a Woman. Leslie was to have been paid following the completion and sale of the film. Doris Wishman kept putting her off, never paying the promised amount or following through on any of the other promises made. Leslie feels she got the last laugh by running up a bill for as much as she could get away with during a promotional appearance, and learning that Doris was herself cheated by the distributor who eventually bought the film. If there is a conclusion here, it is that virtually everyone gets exploited making exploitation films.

I've seen a couple of "roughies" that Wishman made in the mid-Sixties, and excerpts from her nudie films on the television show Reel Wild Cinema. Wishman has been the subject of serious critical evaluation. I'm not ready to jump on that particular bandwagon. If anything, Wishman may be something of a negative example of gender equality.

This film's obvious precedent is Ed Wood's Glen or Glenda. Wood's film features himself as the title character, the beloved and befuddled Bela Lugosi, shots of stampeding buffalos, some unintended laughs as well as wistfulness, knowing that a supremely naive filmmaker exposed a part of his life that most would keep hidden. The best features of Wishman's film are that in color, it is prettier than her earlier black and white films. Leslie is certainly more attractive that Ed Wood in his angora sweater splendor. But Wishman has made a film that is even less cohesive that Wood's autobiographical piece.

Cobbled together over a span of seven years, the film is perhaps mostly of interest to those interested in Wishman, or in seeing a fairly well preserved "gindhouse" film. Even Wishman archivist Michael Bowen has stated he isn't sure who the audience for this film was suppose to be. One could describe it as an outdated psuedo-documentary on transgenderism. Some of the footage can be described as educational, as well as truly clinical, explaining to process of male to female surgery as well as including actual footage of an operation. But the film is a hodgepodge, padded with footage of pre-Deep Throat star Harry Reems with an unidentified woman, and a scene of Seventies porn star Vanessa Del Rio. Leslie is mostly seen in as above, discussing herself, while those transexuals who permitted themselved to be photographed nude are subjected to Wishman's lingering "money shots" of breasts and genitalia. In her commentary, Leslie notes that had she known about the pornographic content, she would never have participated in this film. That Wishman released the film without her name on the credits suggests that she may have wanted this "lost" film to stay that way.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:20 PM

January 19, 2006

The Last of England

Derek Jarman - 1987
Second Sight PAL Region 0 DVD

I have a hope that some of the people who have only recently discovered Tilda Swinton will explore her formidable career more deeply. At the very least, there would be more exposure of films not seen at most neighborhood multiplexes. What would those who condemn Brokeback Mountain or Transamerica make of Orlando, The Deep End or The War Zone? Arguments about agendas are specious, and not exclusive to a certain group of filmmakers. It doesn't matter whether you are discussing a box office hit or a visibly gay filmmaker.

The Last of England is a highly fragmented vision of England under Margaret Thatcher. Homes are burned down, there are soldiers or are they mercenaries on the streets, and people trying to survive in the rubble. Jarman shot the film in Super 8mm transfered to video tape which was transfered to film. The soundtrack includes voiceover readings by Nigel Terry comprised of poems and letters, including a quotation from Allen Ginsburg's "Howl", a radio speech by Hitler, and songs from Marianne Faithfull and Diamanda Galas. Some of the footage includes Jarman's home movies, shot when he was a child. This is a film created from anger. In one of the supplements on the DVD, Tilda Swinton mentions how a critic complained about the image of England created by The Last of England, Raining Stones, and Sammy and Rosie get Laid.

And while Jarman made his film about his own country twenty years ago, The Last of England has resonance for contemporary American viewers. The shots of homeless people huddled together, watched over by paramilitary men with machine guns is not disimilar to events in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Jarman is critical about a very questionable war. The film's vision of a land of the wealthy few and the disenfranchised many may be seen as a slight exaggeration of life under conservative rule.

In addition to Tilda Swinton's reading of her tribute to Derek Jarman, the DVD includes a brief interview with Jarman shot about a year prior to his death, and Jarman's ten minute silent short, A Journey to Avebury (1971).

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:27 PM

January 18, 2006

The Shop on Main Street

Obchod na Korze
Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos - 1965
Criterion Collection Region 1 DVD

I made a point of seeing The Shop on Main Street after reading J. Hoberman's book on Yiddish Cinema. I completely forgot that I had actually seen Ida Kaminska on film, in Jan Kadar's The Angel Levine. I was totally unaware of Kaminska's stage career or that she was a star of Yiddish theater. As it stands right now, none of Ida Kaminska's five previous films are, to the best of my knowledge, unavailable on tape or DVD. Considering the precarious state of film preservation, her two silent films may no longer exist. One could easily excuse war and politics as well as other outside forces, but Poland realized that the Kaminska family, an equivalent to the Barrymores of Yiddish theater, were a national treasure well after the surviving family members left Europe. The Shop on Main Street is a reminder of a career that survived tremendous obstacles, with world wide acclamation while Ida Kaminska's skills were still vital.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:17 PM

January 17, 2006

Dedicated Followers of Fashion

Tony Takitani
Jun Ichikawa - 2004
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

Kamikaze Girls/Shimotsuma Monogatari
Tetsuya Nakashima - 2004
Viz Media Region 1 DVD

I've only read two novels and a collection of short stories by Haruki Murakami. The short story Tony Takitani is similar in being the first person narrative of a man alone, although the short story is more downbeat and firmly rooted in the real world. Jun Ichikawa's film slightly expands upon Murakami's short story in the conclusion while condensing some parts of the beginning. Murakami often refers to movies, especially film noir in his novels, naming titles and actors. While there is no specific reference in Tony Takitani, the film could be seen as a reverse of Vertigo, as if James Stewart decided not to pursue and remake Kim Novak.

Ichikawa doubles the doubling by having the same actor portray Tony Takitani and his jazz musician father, and the same actress as Tony's wife, Eiko, and Hisako, a woman Tony almost hires as an assistant based on her resemblance to Eiko. The film contrasts Tony's utilitarian view of the world with Eiko's appearance of superficiality. Tony's career as as commercial artist, reproducing objects with precise drawings and paintings is posited against his father's jazz which seems more spontaneous but is ultimately formulaic. The designer clothes that Eiko obsessively purchases function more as collected artwork, bought more for appearance than for actual use.

The film is extremely austere. Color is desaturated so that much of the film almost looks black and white, if not a palette of shades of gray with a dash of browns and blues. Ichikawa mostly uses long and medium shots, with extensive lateral tracking from one scene to another. The imagery is complimented by a solo piano score by Ryuichi Sakamoto which is somewhat repetitive, and reminiscent of George Winston's music.

If Tony Takitani concludes that following one's own path ultimately is a kind of trap or prison, Kamikaze Girls states that freedom is found only by following one's own path. The two films work together as cinematic yin and yang. While Tony Takitani is almost Bressonian, Kamikaze Girls is fully post-Tarantino, with some of the whimsy of Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Nakashima's film bursts with super saturated colors, loud rock music and anime. The two girls, Momoko and Ichigo, define themselves by very specific clothes that represent distinct youth sub-cultures. The film's Japanese title refers to a town, Shimostuma, known for growing cabbage. The town is sixty miles from Tokyo, which makes it a remote Disneyland of fashion and culture. Nakashima makes fun of small town life, centered on shopping at the Wal-Mart type store and playing pachinko. While Eiko in Tony Takitani buys designer clothes, many of Kamikaze Girls characters are happy scrambling to purchase cheap knock-off t-shirts, oblivious to the mispelled "Versach" in big letters. Momoko is as obsessed a consumer of "Lolita" style clothing.

Momoko wishes she was in 18th Century France, sticking to herself until Ichigo, a biker girl with the mouth and attitude of Sonny Chiba, imposes herself on the skeptical Momoko. The two aren't exactly friends but create an alliance based on rebellion against their small town. Clothing serves as both a statement of identity and a shield, until the two girls take on aspects of each other. At one point when the pair are in one of Tokyo's fashion districts, Momoko, in voice-over states: "Fashion was my teacher. It taught me how to live. When I see clothes I want to become worthy of them." In Kamikaze Girls, at least for Momoko, the sense of fashion that isolated her in her small town is also the vehicle for her freedom to live on her own terms.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:20 PM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2006

Betty Blue

37.2 Le Matin
Jean-Jacques Beineix - 1986
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

It's been almost twenty years since I saw Betty Blue in a theater. I can't really point out the differences between the complete three hour version and the two hour version I saw other than that the film feels more leisurely than I recall. There is more time devoted to the other characters. I can't even say if this version on DVD is more sexually explicit that the theatrical version. The question going through my mind during much of the film was, what ever happened to Jean-Jacques Beineix.

Beineix made his initial splash with Diva. The biggest surprise may have been that an exciting film could be made concerning a rabid opera fan and bootleg tapes. Moon in the Gutter turned out to be a disappointment in spite of starring Gerard Depardieu and Nattasja Kinski. That Betty Blue was sexually explicit even in its initial release did not prevent it from being an Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as a multiple nominee for the French Cesar Awards. Based on the descriptions of his films made since then, Beineix has not lived up to the promise of his earlier films. Still, one is surprised when a filmmaker who is the subject of critical praise falls off the radar so quickly and completely as Beineix has following Betty Blue.

The English language title is somewhat misleading as the character played by Beatrice Dalle is simply known as Betty. The film is about that favorite French subject, l'amour fou or "crazy love". Jacques Rivette even made a film titled L'Amour Fou. Truffaut's Story of Adele H. is covers the same emotional territory. Marco Bellochio's Devil in the Flesh, which I wrote about earlier, is similar in being an explicit film about mad, obsessive love. Beineix follows Dalle, as Betty, a waitress who moves in on Jean-Hugues Anglade, as Zorg, a handyman at a low-rent beach resort. Over time, the couple take on greater risks being with each other, with Betty's volititily initially counterbalanced by Zorg's reticence, which eventually gives way to responding to Betty with increasing extremes in taking risks or with anti-social behavior.

If Betty Blue isn't quite the masterpiece I remember, it is still worth watching as an examination of the outward and inward destructive impulses motivated by love at its most extreme. This was also the film that introduced Beatrice Dalle to the world. Beineix may not have had the career that he or his fans anticipated. Still, even if the name of the filmmaker is not remembered directly, the face of Beatrice Dalle guarantees that Beineix will not be totally forgotten.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:57 PM | Comments (4)

January 13, 2006

The Five Obstructions

De Fem Benspnd
Jorgen Leth and Lars von Trier - 2003
Koch Lorber Region 1 DVD

I had heard of Danish filmmaker Jorgen Leth previously in relation to his documentary A Sunday in Hell, about a French bicycle race. Von Trier has been familiar since Breaking the Waves. I was intrigued by the premise of how the younger filmmaker would challenge the older in remaking a short film based on several specific, if arbitrary, rules. Leth proves to be of stronger stuff than some previous collaborators, with an immense sense of humor about himself and von Trier.

The original Leth short is an interesting piece of black and white formalism. The off-screen narration with the pointing out of body parts and rhetorical questions make the film seem like the work of an observer from outer space. The two people observed are seen wearing only black and white, or totally white, clothing against an infinite field of white. This creates a clinical quality, as if the couple in the film were part of a professional study.

The "rules" that von Trier places on Leth might be said to be a parody of Dogme 95. Of the challenges, the most ingenious response was to the rule to remake The Perfect Humna as a cartoon. While it is not explained how Leth got connected to Bob Sebiston, the animator best known for his work on Richard Linklater's Waking Life, this resulted in a happy collaboraton with a filmmaker who stated that he hates cartoons. The film concludes with Leth having faced all the obstructions von Trier can throw at him.

What The Five Obstructions points out is how the "rules" of filmmaking are abitrary. This was proven by Gus Van Sant's version of Psycho which was a literal shot-by-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's film. There is a quality to Hitchcock that withstands multiple viewings that is missing in the Van Sant film even when one is essentially seeing the same movie photographed in the same way. Andrew Sarris, in his Towards a Theory of Film History had the example of " . . . the strength of a John Ford is a function of the weakness of Robert Z. Leonard . . .". With Leth continually frustrating von Trier's attempt to force Leth into making a bad film, one also has to ask if the imposition of any rules forces the filmmaker to be more creative. Joel Schumaker's Tigerland certainly had several serious film observers wondering if other Hollywood directors might benefit from having the rules of Dogme 95 imposed on them. One can choose the advice of Frank Capra, a filmmaker who would probably have little patience with Dogville - "There are no rules in film making, only sins. And the cardinal sin is Dullness."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:44 PM

January 11, 2006

Showgirls

Paul Verhoeven - 1995
MGM Region 1 DVD

What is it about Gina Gershon? It really didn't take much for her to steal Showgirls from Elizabeth Berkley. Berkley's character manages to be unlikable from the beginning of the film. Of course it doesn't help that the explanation for her hard attitude isn't offered until Showgirls last ten minutes. Berkley's appearance is also hard, as if she was dipped in body shellac. It's Gershon who pours on the charm, calling everyone "darlin'", showing off a great big smile between two very full lips.

Viewing the DVD today was my first time with Showgirls since its initial theatrical release. I may be pushing a bit here, but Gershon made me think of Barbara Stanwyck. Neither woman is conventionally attractive, but both are compelling as screen personas. It's more that the fact that Stanwyck also played a kind of showgirl in Lady of Burlesque. Even in her role as Cristal in Showgirls, I could easily imagine Gerson palling around with the professors of Ball of Fire, or riding around the old west with a whip in her hand in Forty Guns. Too few films have taken advantage of Gershon, notably Bound, Demonlover and Prey for Rock & Roll.

Which brings me to screenplay writer Joe Eszterhas. In the "Making of . . ." featurette, Eszterhas describes Showgirls as "a rock and roll musical". This is a pretty astonishing statement. Sure, the soundtrack is composed by David A. Stewart, and a song by Prince is used but, Eszterhas, a former staffer at "Rolling Stone" should know better. A rock and roll musical is Jailhouse Rock, A Hard Day's Night, or even Rocky Horror Picture Show. What is also suspect is that Showgirls main character is Nomi, and Eszterhas' wife's name is Naomi. Be that as it may, Showgirls combines Eszterhas' fantasies about professional dancing in Flashdance with a topping of his sapphic fantasies from Basic Instinct. Unlike the superficial and silly films he is best known for, it is notable that Ezsterhas's best, and most personal work, is titled Telling Lies in America.

The America of Showgirls is about consumerism. Others have noted that aspect of the film. Cocaine, champagne, double-patty hamburgers, designer clothes and cars all are prominently featured. The film also suggests that behind the glitter, are much humbler lives of the supporting players. Nomi's friend Molly lives in a trailer park, while would-be choreographer James lives in a run down neighborhood.

And is it just me, or does anyone else think that William Shockley looks like an American Idol?

Paul Verhoeven may not have made his best film here, but Showgirls fully anticipates an America where image, no matter how false, is the only reality.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:16 PM | Comments (5)

January 10, 2006

Two early films by Ingmar Bergman

To Joy/Till Gladje
Ingmar Bergman - 1950
Tartan Video PAL Region 0 DVD

Summer Interlude/Sommarlek
Ingmar Bergman - 1951
Tartan Video PAL Region 0 DVD

There's a moment in Summer Interlude where Maj-Britt Nilsson asks her young suitor, "Do you like wild strawberries?". While there is unintended humor in that line, Summer Interlude also has scenes of intentional humor. One surprising example of this is a scene with Nilsson drawing a cartoon picture of herself and Birgir Malmsten on a record sleeve. The picture becomes animated, somewhat like the early work of Max Fleischer, with the characters being physically elastic and shapes shifting from one form to another. While I have seen most of Ingmar Bergman's films from Summer with Monika, I figured I owed it to myself to see some more early films that are now available on DVD.

In some ways, the two films are not surprising. Themes regarding the meaning of life and art are explored. Relationships are volitile and combustible. Bergman uses several of the same actors in both films as he was to constantly throughout his career. Some of the images would be repeated in other films, such as the use of silhouette long shots. A scene of people dancing outside at night, underneath paper lanterns and fireworks anticipates Smiles of a Summer Night. Even bits of dialogue would appear in future films, such as when Nilsson, following the accidental death of her lover, declares in her anger that "God is dead".

Both films are about artists. To Joy follows a violinist's crisis both as a musician and husband. Early in the film, the violinist, Stig (Stig Olin) gets drunk and insists that the only good art is totally serious. If Olin seems to be speaking on behalf of Bergman, Philip Strick's notes with the DVD explain how biographical To Joy is. In the role of Stig's mentor and conductor is Victor Sjostrom, who was occassionally Bergman's mentor in filmmaking. The film seems to reflect Bergman's uncertainties as a filmmaker. Stig's desire to be a soloist and to achieve greater professional recognition was not disimilar to Bergman's desire for greater artistic and commercial success. In the case of To Joy, the film was not released outside of Sweden until Bergman began achieving greater critical recognition, although it was never released theatrically in the U.S. Taking the use of music as a stand-in for film, Sjostrom reminds Olin that "music is the goal, not the means".

Summer Interlude is one of Bergman's films about memory. In this case, Nilsson plays Maria, a ballet dancer who receives the diary of her first lover. Most of the film is about Maria's meeting with Henrik, a university student, and the evolution from friendship to love. As he would do so in later films, Bergman contrasts the lives of people on and off stage. The linking of love and death is echoed in the featuring of Swan Lake as the ballet, expertly framed by cinematographer Gunnar Fischer. Both To Joy and Summer Interlude offer similar conclusions. In both films, the main character reflects on the tragedies of lost love, and affirm themselves by immersing themselves in their art.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:34 PM | Comments (2)

January 09, 2006

A Tale of the Cinema

Geuk Jang Jeon
Hong Sang-soo - 2005
Woosung Entertainment Region 3 DVD

I jumped into seeing a film by Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-Soo without being familiar with any of his previous work. This has to do with my continued interest in any movies that are in some way about movies.

The film is made up of two parts. The first is a story about a young man who decides to commit suicide with a young woman, a former high school classmate. The second part of the film is about a young man who has watched the film and his attempt to make his life parallel art. There are small reminders of the French New Wave with a title that recalls some of Eric Rohmer's films, first person narration frequently found with Truffaut, and a narrative that somewhat Godardian without name dropping.

In the first part, after a night of awkward sex and much drinking, the young man, Sang-Won, and the young woman, Yong-sil, attempt suicide by ingesting a lot of sleeping pills. Yong-sil can not hold down the pills and calls Sang-Won's home to let them know of his condition. Sitting with his family, Sang-Won explains his motivation is due to his inability to communicate with his mother. Sang-Won is last seen running out to the rooftop of his apartment, standing by the edge. The music from the final scene in the first part is continued, with the sound muffled, as the film cuts to a shot of a movie theater lobby. The first film has become a film within a film, and the subject of the second part of A Tale. The second part follows Tongsu, a former film student and his encounters with the actress who plays Yong-Sil, also named Yong-Sil. While some scenes in the second part are variations of the first part, the second part also works as a critique of the linking of art and life.

With the second part of the film, Hong seems to be criticizing notions of misplaced romantism, in particular the romance that is linked with suicide. Also, Hong deflates the concept of life reflecting art and vice-versa. Sex is awkward, relationships of any kind are uncomfortable, and characters seek opportunities to avoid each other. Creating art may be important, but creating one's own life is of the greatest value.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:49 PM

January 08, 2006

Clouds

The Wayward Cloud/Tian Bian Yi Duo Yu
Tsai Ming-Liang - 2005
Deltamac Region 0 DVD

Drifting Clouds/Kauas Pilvet Karkaavat
Aki Kaurismaki - 1996
Sandrew Metronome PAL Region 2 DVD

"I've looked at clouds from both sides now." - Joni Mitchell

Yesterday I saw Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice by Paul Mazursky. In the DVD supplement, Mazursky talks about how little silence there is in current American films. Bob and Carol, released in 1969, is loaded with silent moments, usually those awkward moments when the characters are not sure what to say to each other. The high point of Mazursky's film is near the end when the four title characters find themselves in bed together only to come to the realization that they are more comfortable with certain traditions regarding marriage and relationships.

I bring this point up because Tsai and Kaurismaki make extensive use of silence and scenes with lack of dialogue. There is also some similarity in their sense of the absurd, and deadpan sense of humor. I am a bit more familiar with Tsai having seen most of his films, primarily on DVD, although I did see What Time is it Over There? theatrically. I am just beginning to know Kaurismaki's films.

Tsai's films are less concerned with a dramatic arc. Lee Kang Sheng, the street vendor from Time returns as a part-time porno actor involved with two women. What makes the film memorable is not the episodic narrative, but Tsai's extreme and unanticipated imagery. The film opens with Lee, a woman, and a large half of watermelon between her legs. One of the several musical numbers combines the music of Tennessee Ernie Ford and fashion sense that Madonna might have found extreme. One very funny number could almost be called "The Umbrellas of Taipei". There are others who can discuss Tsai with greater articulation than I can. Even though I don't have the enthusiasm for Tsai's films that some other have, I still appreciate certain moments in his films that make me glad I took the time.

Kaurismaki is more conventional, but not by that much. In this and Man without a Past, we have stories of people who find themselves virtually down and out. Drifting Clouds is about a middle aged couple who find themselves unemployed. Kaurismaki's couple is expressionless, whether briefly looking at their new color television before going to bed, or realizing that what little money they had is gone after visiting a casino. At one point the husband yells for his money back in a movie theater until the cashier reminds him that he came in for free. The wife takes a job at a small restaurant where she takes the order, yells to an unseen cook, only to walk in the kitchen to do the cooking. Kaurismaki has affection for his characters, in spite of their pride and silliness. In a Kaurasmaki film, even the least photogenic of characters deserve lives with happy endings.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:36 PM | Comments (1)

January 07, 2006

Yiddle with a Fiddle

Yidl Mitn Fidl
Joseph Green and Jan Nowina-Przybylski - 1936
Ergo Media DVD

My mother was the second-string film critic for The Denver Post about twenty years ago. Being the kind of person who almost never turns down the chance to see a movie for free, I'd see films with her as my schedule would permit. One of the films we saw was Cannonball Run, back when Burt Reynolds was the top star in Hollywood. We both liked the previous film Reynolds had done with director Hal Needham, Hooper, a tribute to movie stuntmen. The description of the new film sounded funny, with an all-star cast in a cross-country car race, featuring Roger Moore as Seymour Goldfarb, Jr., a guy who thinks he's really James Bond. Then we actually saw the movie.

It's been almost twenty-five years so my memories of Cannonball Run are a bit faint. But what I do remember is that after a sort of dumb but sort of funny beginning, there is a scene with Moore and his mother, played by Molly Picon. I recall Picon doing the stereotypical nagging mother bit, ending with Moore turning around to say, "Mother, you're too Jewish". A few people in the audience laughed. I wasn't one of them. My mother stayed in her seat out of professional obligation. As hard as he tried, Dom DeLuise as masked superhero Captain Chaos, couldn't save this movie.

At the time I saw Cannonball Run, I really had no idea who Molly Picon was, other than as a character actress seen in the film versions of Come Blow Your Horn and Fiddler on the Roof. I learned much more about her in J. Hoberman's book, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. Not unlike Bruce Lee, who went to Hong Kong in order to be a movie star, or Selena, who had to learn Spanish before "crossing over" with her first English language hit song, Molly Picon went to Europe to establish herself as a star of New York City's Yiddish theater. At the height of her Yiddish theater stardom, Picon turned down invitations to work on Broadway.

Yiddle with a Fiddle is one of two Yiddish features that Picon made. While I don't know enough about stories of girls disguised as boys being typical of Yiddish literature, the film shares some similarities with Yentl and was released not long after the first novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer. As Hoberman explains, Yiddle was something of a showcase for Picon as part of her stage act was to pretend to be a boy, do broad physical comedy and of course, sing. The slight story concerns Picon pretending to be the son of her poor musician father. Homeless, the two strike out as traveling musicians who form a quartet with two other musicians. Picon falls in love with the handsome Froym who thinks his new friend is an effeminate male. Yiddle is silly and sentimental, with an ending that can be anticipated not long after the movie starts.

The reason to watch Yiddle is to get a glimpse of Picon as a performer. The film is also something of a documentary, having been shot on location in Poland. With parts of the film taking place in the country, where horse drawn carts were the only mode of transportation, I almost forgot that Yiddle was taking place in what was then the present day Poland. The DVD includes audio interviews with Picon and co-director Green, most of which are included in Hoberman's book.

Bridge of Light is simultaneously a history of Yiddish language films and a history of those Jews who primarily spoke Yiddish in Eastern Europe and New York City. In part, I felt like I was reading about the history of my maternal grandparents who continued to speak Yiddish to each other. (When I made her upset, my grandmother would share a few choice Yiddish words with me.) If there is a lesson from Hoberman, it would be that even films thought marginal for artistic or commercial reasons can still be of great value as part of one's own history.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:39 PM

January 05, 2006

"The Last" of Michael Caine

The Last Valley
James Clavell - 1971
MGM Region 1 DVD

Last Orders
Fred Schepisi - 2001
Columbia Region 1 DVD

A few days ago, GreenCine Daily noted that the British Film Institute was presenting a retrospective of films starring Michael Caine. I already had a couple of films in my Netflix queue representing two different points in his career. The films are also contrasts in extremes, the historical epic and the intimate character study.

I didn't bother to see The Last Valley theatrically for a couple of reasons. Like a lot of film students at that time, my film choices were frequently based directors that Andrew Sarris considered worthy. His description of James Clavell as a director was hardly flattering - "sub-Fuller, or super-Kramer". Additionally, the film seemed very old fashioned at a time when the "new" Hollywood represented by Arthur Penn, John Cassavetes and Bob Rafelson were in release. Although The Last Valley is flawed by questionable casting, the issues raised and actions depicted are especially interesting given our current political and religious climate.

While The Last Valley takes place in Germany during the Thirty Years War, the casting probably reflects international financing. In addition to Egyptian Omar Sharif, and Swede Per Oscarrson, there is Florinda Balkan a Brazilian star of Italian movies. Caine slips in and out of a Cockney-German accent as The Captain, the leader of a band of soldiers of varied Christian beliefs. What makes The Last Valley in some ways more vital now than it may have been at the time of release is that Clavell has plainly questioned Christianity in its various manifestations based on the conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, as well as the factions that divide Protestants. In 1970, when the film was made and released, it was more certainly seen by the makers and the intended audience as an expression of pacifism, if not a parable about Viet-Nam. At a time when international conflicts and concepts of culture are defined and informed by absolutism in faith, The Last Valley seems strikingly fearless in being critical of the relationship of Church and State, irregardless of which church and which state. In one of their several philosophical discussions, Sharif, the pacifist looking to survive by avoiding conflict, learns that he may have lost his family to soldiers lead by Caine. Caine further explains that he also lost his family, and that the war has been a series of revenge based actions in an unending cycle, based initially on different expressions of Christian faith, but now on behalf of church leaders and royalty seeking land and influence. While some of the dialogue including Caine's expressions of non-belief may be too modern for a film that takes place in the early 17th Century, Clavell's view of the Thirty Years War is somewhat as symbolic as it was portrayed in the play Mother Courage. The Last Valley also provides are radical contrast to Ridely Scott's Kingdom of Heaven. The two films reflect the times and production conditions under which they were made. But The Last Valley, Clavell's last film that he directed before becoming a full-time novelist, is also the more personal film. Clavell as an artist, like his characters, prefered to answer to no one but himself.

The main joys of Last Orders are seeing three screen icons from the Sixties: Caine, David Hemmings, and Tom Courtenay together. Caine's Mona Lisa co-star, Bob Hoskins, and Helen Mirren are relative newbies in comparison while Ray Winstone is the baby of this group. The film is about three friends meeting to dispose of the ashes of the fourth friend, Jack. The narrative is interspersed with scenes showing the friends lives from 1939 through 1989 in relation to Jack based on emotional, rather than chronological, cues. While Caine has evolved into a comforting presence in this stage of his career, he also does more actual acting in Last Call, than in something like Batman Begins. Sometimes you watch a film for no other reason than to see a group of actors enjoy their craft and sharing the screen with each other.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:01 PM

January 04, 2006

Dead of Winter

Arthur Penn - 1987
MGM Region 1 DVD

After almost twenty years after the initial theatrical release, I decided I should get around to seeing the last film Arthur Penn made that received a decent release. My excuses for not seeing Dead of Winter when it came out were in reaction to the negative reviews for this film. As I recall, Roger Ebert was particularly upset about part of the film which seemed very uncharacteristic of Penn's films. While Dead of Winter seems out of place in a filmography that includes The Chase, Bonnie and Clyde and Little Big Man, in some ways the film is not too distant from Mickey One.

Maybe I am being a bit facile here, but both films share protagonists, a stand-up comic and an actress, who are best marginally successful, who are put in life threatening situations that force them to take on alternate personas, that is, to pretend to be other than who they really are. The big difference is that while Warren Beatty was running loose throughout Chicago, Mary Steenburgen is limited to the confines of a large house and part of the surrounding woods. Steenburgen thinks she is auditioning for a independent movie to be produced by her host, Jan Rubes, and his assistant, Roddy McDowell. As the film progresses, Steenburgen realizes she is unknowingly playing a part in Rubes' play.

Dead of Winter strongly resembles a Hitchcock film, albeit less slavishly than had Brian De Palma directed. The film opens with a scene of a woman driving with a suitcase of money, presumably ill gained, stopped by the police only to be informed that a headlight is out. Mary Steenburgen is supposedly hired to replace an actress that she resembles. There is even a close-up of a suspicious glass of milk delivered by McDowell to Steenburgen. Even if a visual reference to Notorious was missed by the audience, the cribbing from Psycho and Vertigo can't totally be obscured by having a brunette for the female lead, or by hiding the dead body in the attic. Many of the shots include various kinds of mirror images and doubling. Fortunately, Richard Einhorn's score does not include shrieking violins.

Even if Dead of Winter does not look like an Arthur Penn film, the acting is sustained by what is essentially a cast of three. Rubes and McDowell are suitably creepy. If Steenburgen lacks the kind of beauty associated with a Hitchock or Hitchcockian film, she does have the ability to play three roles with enough shading to distinguish them. Arthur Penn may have been a hired gun on Dead of Winter, but in spite of what the characters do to each other, Penn cannot be accused of hackwork.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:41 PM | Comments (4)

January 03, 2006

The Duel at Silver Creek

Don Siegel - 1952
Universal Region 1 DVD

Darn that Ang Lee! Brokeback Mountain will probably do more damage to westerns than anything Leslie Fiedler ever wrote. Still, there are bits and pieces that may or may not have been intentional, but they are certainly suspect.

While Deborah Allison has not included anything on Duel in her analysis of Siegel in Senses of Cinema, the film is certainly consistent as a Siegel film. Even more so than Invasion of the Body Snatchers, no one can be trusted. This distrust begins by having most of the characters known by nicknames and aliases which to a certain degree can be interpreted as a form of disguise. Illegal acts are committed in the name of upholding the law. Alliances are formed and broken based on misreadings or misrepresentations. Even if the audience knows that Audie Murphy is the good guy because he is after all Audie Murphy, he still has to prove himself to Marshal Tyrone (Stephen McNally), better known as Lightnin'. Murphy and McNally are after a gang of claim jumpers who have murdered miners after forcing them to sign over their claims. As the villains, Faith Domergue and Gerald Mohr are the kind of siblings who possibly gave inspiration to Dirk Bogarde and Sarah Miles.

Not to mistake this film for an undiscovered classic, but there Duel has its moments crammed into the brief seventy-six minute running time. Lee Marvin is initially unrecognizable with dark hair and mustache, taking insult at being called "Sheep Dip" by Murphy. Stephen McNally demonstrates how he upholds law and order by calling a hired gun "Rat Face" before tossing him into a large window. One has to wonder if someone is joking with the audience by having an old gunslinger named "Pop" Muzik.

Now it should be noted that through most of this movie, Audie Murphy is wearing an unusually fashionable leather jacket. Mohr makes a comment to Domergue about Murphy being "very attractive". Murphy and McNally also have confrontations with Eugene Iglesias as Johnny Sombrero, a would-be bad-ass in gaudy clothing and a very big hat. The character and the clothing virually anticipate a future screen cliche. Some may argue that McNally's change of gun hand was an innocent plot point, but one could also argue that this may be an intentional signifier of another kind of switch. The film closes with Murphy smooching tomboy Susan Cabot in the outlaws' hideout. When McNally peaks in to say that he and his posse are "pulling out", I was thankful that whatever they were doing was safely off-screen.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:04 PM

January 02, 2006

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Xiao Cai Feng
Dai Sijie - 2002
Empire Pictures DVD

Dai Sijie's film from his autobiographical novel slowly found its way to limited U.S. theatrical distribution and finally to DVD. I remember seeing a clip of the film almost three years ago when it was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. This is one of those times when the Hollywood Foreign Press would actually prove to have better taste than the Academy Awards, especially considering the consistently awful choices for Best Foreign Language Film. For some reason, Balzac did not get distribution in the U.S. until this year, even though the novel has been a critical and popular success. Even though the film is adapted from his novel, Dai, with co-screenwriter Nadine Perront, made several changes so that Balzac is not an exact filmic transcription.

The film takes place in 1971 during the Chinese cultural revolution. Luo and Ma, the seventeen year old sons of intellectuals have been sent to a remote mountain village to work and live among the peasants for their "re-education". The community that Luo and Ma are in is so remote that most villagers are illiterate, and anything unknown is likely to be from the bourgeoise West. Ma explains that Luo's "toy", a violin, is a musical instrument, and the sonota by Mozart is actually "Mozart thinking about Chairman Mao". After literally stumbling upon the discovery of a group of young women bathing, one of the girls, the seamstress (no name is given) tells Luo and Ma about a secret cache of Western books. The books are found, and the boys secretly read Balzac, Dumas and Dostoevski as well as secretly read to the seamstress. Additionally, the seamstress learns to read.

Dai very obviously states through his characters that his theme is the transformative power of art. Still one is intrigued because of the portrayal of a controversial part of Chinese history, and because Dai explores how culture is presented and valued. Dai is interested in the meaning of the narrative, whether it is in a novel, a film or a folk song. One of Ma's responsibilities is to see a movie in the larger village and report back to local community. The movie is usually a tale of the proletariat from North Korea. The seamstress comments on how Ma's retelling of the movies, which eventually become disguised retellings of the forbidden novels, are better than the movies themselves.

Dai's novel was originally written in French. The romantic triangle was created by Dai for the novel. A filmmaker before he became a novelist, Dai's story bears some resemblance to Jules and Jim in showing a relationship that is only sustainable as a trio. Luo and Ma's education of the seamstress not only frees her from viewing life only from the confines of her tiny village and the teachings of Chairman Mao, but also gives her a sense of freedom from her "liberators". The film concludes with the remote villages being submerged by a new artificially created lake. It's as if to say that while China may try to hide or wash away parts of its troubled past, it is the role of artists to preserve history.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:16 AM | Comments (1)

January 01, 2006

Radio Revolution: The Rise and Fall of the Big Eight

Michael McNamara - 2004
Markham Street Films Region 0 DVD

Happy New Year! I am inaugurating 2006 with a new DVD that was released last week.

There was a time when rock radio was very important to me. This began in the early Sixties when it seemed like every kid had there own transistor radio. That radio was usually tuned in on one specific radio station. When I started listening, in the summer of 1963, sometimes for hours at a time, I would listen to WLS which was the major Chicago radio station. A couple of years later, when I moved to Denver, the radio station was KIMN. The playlists were a bit broader then, sometimes reflecting regional tastes, and the disc jockeys were regarded like major stars. I switched to the FM dial and "free-form" rock radio in late 1968. For my first couple of years at NYU, I had the opportunity to be a disc jockey on the school radio station. I happily played Jackie Lomax and Captain Beefheart, while my loyal listeners, a group of fellow dorm Freshmen would regularly call to request the Mick Jagger parody, "I Can't Get No Nookie" by The Masked Marauders.

I still enjoy movies and television shows about radio stations and disc jockeys. Radio Revolution is a documentary that originally was made for Canadian television. Even if one takes some of the statements made about radio station CKLW with a grain of salt, it is still a worthwhile reminder of a time when one heard a broader range of pop and rock music that was shared with a wider audience.

The majority of the film is about CKLW during during the radio station's most popular years from about 1965 through 1978. "The Big 8" refers to the station being on AM 800. Based in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, the majority of listeners were in the Detroit metro area. CKLW became THE station in the mid-Sixties after adapting a format created by Bill Drake which emphasised playing more music, with less banter from the disc jockeys. One of the more interesting stories within the film is about Rosalie Trombley, a part-time secretary who rose to become a music director of such acute taste that other radio stations would follow her lead. Ms. Trombley was reportedly immune to payola, unless you want to count being treated to lunch by The Guess Who. As a show of unquestionable integrity, CKLW was the only station not to play Bob Seger's song about Trombley, "Rosalie". The other interesting story is about the news unit, which had an exceptionally large staff of twenty-four, covering Windsor and Detroit. The delivery of the news was formatted into a hyper style to integrate it as a piece with the music and on-air personalities. There was emphasis on alliteration and colloquial verbage, including one reporter's appeal for news tips, be they "birdbaths or bloodbaths".

The station's popularity declined due to a government mandate to play at least 30% Canadian music. Even without the sales of the station to Canadian owners and changes in the playlist, it is still pretty likely that CKLW would have joined other AM stations with the all-talk format. Still, it is entertaining to watch a parade of talking heads that includes Alice Cooper, Wayne Kramer, and Tony Orlando. Most of the extras are padded versions of scenes in the film, though there is one funny deleted scene involving Rufus Thomas and his song and dance, The Funky Chicken.

Based on the clips from their other films, Radio Revolution is one of several idiosyncratic documentaries from Markam Street Films.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:54 PM | Comments (1)

December 29, 2005

Mimsy! Mimsy!! Mimsy!!!

Two Men in Town/Deux Hommes dans la Ville
Jose Giovanni - 1973
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

The Perfume of the Lady in Black/Il Profumo della Signora in Nero
Francesco Barilli - 1974
Raro Video PAL Region 2 DVD

The Black Cat/Il Gatto Nero
Lucio Fulci - 1981
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

A while back, Flickhead did a piece on Mimsy Farmer. He primarily wrote about her in one of her early films, Riot on the Sunset Strip. The film has become something of a staple on the Flix cable channel. While Farmer starred in four films for American-International, I didn't become a fan until I saw her in her European film debut. I was a Freshman at New York University, and around the corner on Eighth Street near University was a movie theater that was actually named the "Art" theater. More was playing right around the corner from the dorm I was living in. I probably saw the preview which is what intrigued me in the first place. The name of director Barbet Schroeder meant nothing to me. Maybe I was lured by the combination of a Pink Floyd soundtrack and some "psychedelic" imagery. In any case, I saw the film, twice in a row. I'm not sure how I would judge More now but the film certainly impressed this seventeen year old guy. I later saw The Road to Salina. I was at an advanced screening of some other film in a theater and figured I might as well stick around to see a second free film. Best of all was Four Flies on Grey Velvet which was also my introduction to Dario Argento.

Since her turn with Argento, Farmer's films virtually stopped getting theatrical releases in the U.S. With DVDs one can do some catch-up with her career. Unlike some actors who have gone abroad, not only has she chosen to stay in Europe, but she has actually learned French and Italian. Much of the work has been with journeyman directors, although Farmer did work with Marco Ferreri, Raoul Coutard and Roger Vadim for her last performance to date. The films I saw on DVD recently are probably more representative of Mimsy Farmer's film career throughout the Seventies.

Two Men in Town is the third and least interesting of the three films Alain Delon made with Jean Gabin. Delon plays an ex-con who can not escape being under suspicion, especially when his girlfriend, Farmer, works at the bank next door to where he works. Gabin is the advocate lawyer who attempts to work on behalf of criminal reform. Farmer doesn't even appear in the film until almost the last half hour. The film is an interesting look at the French judicial system, but for a much better film with Delon and Gabin, I recommend Any Number can Win.

The Perfume of the Lady in Black is a giallo with a narrative that even within its context makes no sense, but is visually interesting to look at. The director, Francesco Barilli, has had a sporadic career as both a director and actor. That Barilli has concentrated primarily on painting is no surprise. The set design and use of color are the best aspects to Perfume along with glimpes of Barilli's artwork. Farmer is haunted by the ghosts of her past and several friends and acquaintances meet untimely deaths. The DVD interview with Barilli sort of helps explain what he was attempting to do with this film. Perfume was produced by Giovanni Bertolucci, Bernardo's cousin.

In the opening credits for The Black Cat it actually reads "freely adapted" from Edgar Allen Poe. Even with a couple of illogical plot points, this is actually one of Lucio Fulci's better films. Farmer is a photographer in a small English town that is terrorized by a killer cat. Patrick Magee is a creepy medium who goes to the village graveyard to record conversations with the dead. Fulci films lots of close-ups of eyes, but credit for the film's success should be shared with animal trainer Pasquale Martino and a very talented stunt cat. One can only hope that the rights snafu that's holding up a DVD release of Four Flies on Gray Velvet is resolved soon. Mimsy Farmer is more fun to watch as the deceptively innocent looking bad girl.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:30 PM

December 27, 2005

The Monster who would be "King"

Godzilla/Gojira
Ishiro Honda - 1954
Eastern Eye PAL Region 4 DVD

Konga
Peter Lemont - 1961
MGM Region 1 DVD

I was six years old in 1957. I had finally persuaded my parents that we needed a television set. One day my fellow First Graders were talking with much excitement about someone or something called "King Kong". I found out it was a movie about a giant gorilla. Since I hadn't quite understood all of the mysteries of how television worked, it was up to my mother to make sure that I made my appointment with this "King Kong". As it turned out, I missed the beginning of the film, but turned on just in time to see Fay Wray and the crew make it to Skull Island. This was probably just as well because even now, I find the set-up sequences for King Kong a bit dull. When the movie was over, I asked my mom how they were able to teach a giant gorilla to climb that really tall building. She mentioned something about "special effects", and that what I saw was not a real gorilla.

Even though I have greater understanding about how films are made, I still like to watch a good, and sometimes not-so-good, monster movie. I haven't yet seen Peter Jackson's version of King Kong, although I did see the 1976 version that almost killed Jessica Lange's acting career. Thanks to Jackson's film, studios are releasing some of their monster movies onto DVD. Among the films newly available on DVD is Gorgo. While this film does not quite answer the oft pondered question, "What would a monster movie directed by Jean Renoir look like?", the film is one of several directed by frequent Renoir collaborator Eugene Lourie. It is also quite possible that Lourie should be reconsidered for his role in popularizing the monster movie.

Even though it is often mocked for putting a guy in a rubber costume, the original, Japanese version of Godzilla is a pretty good film. Without Raymond Burr, the film just has one big guy lumbering around Tokyo. The original narrative is a straight-forward account beginning with several ship mysteriously vanishing. Without Burr, we get to see more of Kurosawa superstar Takashi Shimura as the scientist who explains the origins of the giant monster, and then, in a plot point borrowed from The Thing, pleads for the life of the creature for future studies. Memories of the destruction of Tokyo, as well as the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are not far from the surface. Much of the success for Godzilla belongs to Eiji Tsuburaya. While some of the special effects are obvious, there are several reasons why the original Godzilla works better then the sequels. Much of the special effect work is disguised by having much of the film take place at night, so that Godzilla is frequently an inky black presence wandering through darkness. The care in creating the best special effects given relatively limited resources combined with the earnest story telling make Godzilla the classic Japanese monster movie. And while the film did not succeed in being the the anti-war statement that director Ishiro Honda intended, Godzilla probably introduced more people to Japanese cinema than any other movie.

On the opposite end of the quality spectrum is Konga. At the time of its initial release, this movie didn't play at a theater near me, so I settled for reading the comic book based on the film. The film was produced by Herman Cohen, a name associated with several beloved, if dubious cinematic achievements. Maybe I'm reading more than intended but Konga begins with Michael Gough vigorously stroking his monkey. As the scientist looking for a link between animal and vegetable life, you know that Gough is questionable when it is revealed his relationship with his female assistant (Margo Johns) is platonic. Even more alarming are the man eating plants Gough has brought back from Africa along with the monkey. In addition to the usual venus flytrap type plants, some other plants resemble giant black veiny penises. For reasons not made clear, Gough wants to experiment with the monkey Konga to make him larger. His lab assistant accidentally spills some of the formula and the house cat catches a couple licks. Gough grabs a conveniently placed pistol and shoots the cat, insuring that Kong will be in the PETA Hall of Fame. Gough finally tests his formula, and we witness the monkey grow into a baboon and eventually into a man in a really bad gorilla costume. Gough hypnotizes the gorilla to strangle various people that are in his way. Gough also has designs on making a young student played by Claire Gordon his new lab assistant. Gordon's feelings for her teacher are hardly reciprocal as indicated when Gough tries to swallow the tonsils of the object of his unwanted affections. Johns, the jilted non-lover, gives the gorilla a heavy dose of the growth formula only to become the first victim of the ever growing ape. Little effort is made to disguise the fact that Johns is replaced by a dimestore doll in some shots. The giant Konga bursts out of the basement lab, snatching Gough in one hand. Gordon is last seen having an arm chewed up by a man-eating plant. Gough takes on the Fay Wray role, being squeezed like a tube of toothpaste, while casts of dozens run in panic on the London Streets. King Kong has the Empire State Building, while Konga has Big Ben, not to climb on, but just as part of the scenery. The giant Konga, who doesn't appear until the last fifteen minutes, is killed by a hail of bullets after tossing down a "Ken" doll that substitutes for Gough. How bad are the special effects? Let me just say that I had a newfound appreciation for the magic of Bert I. Gordon.

If I ran Hollywood, I would immediately remake Konga with a bigger budget, but again with a mature male star. My first choice has always been Warren Beatty, with his character keeping the same name. This proposed film would end with a variation on the closing line of King Kong, with the declaration that, "It was Beatty killed the beast."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:54 PM | Comments (1)

December 26, 2005

The Best of Youth

La Meglio Gioventu
Marco Tullio Giordana - 2003
VII Pillars Entertainment NTSC Region 3 DVD

If one were to watch The Best of Youth back-to-back with Bertolucci's 1900 one could have a cinematic overview of the history of Italy in the 20th Century. There is also the possibility that Marco Giordana may be making his own prequel. What makes The Best of Youth succeed is that the longer the film progresses, the more intimate it feels. If the film is more than epic length with a running time just passing six hours for the entire film, the experience of viewing the film is less difficult and certainly more absorbing than many shorter films. If the span of almost forty years makes one think of 1900, the new film also is reminiscent of Francesco Rosi's Three Brothers as well.

Unlike Bertolucci or Rosi, Giordana's statements on the state of Italy come across more fully integrated as part of the film. More so in Rosi's film, but also in Bertolucci's, the characters seemed to exist more as symbols to express certain points of view than as people. While characters do express opposing political opinions, there is little sloganeering. The emphasis is primarily on the family dynamics with the historical activity taking a subsidiary role.

The narrative is essentially about the lives of two brothers from 1966 to 2003, there interactions with each other and other family members, and how their lives are effected by key events in relatively recent Italian history. The film is also about memory, or more precisely, the preservation of memory. The narrative for the brother Matteo involves personal and public libraries, the preservation of books, and the act of photography both as a means of documentation and as a form of artistic expression. The brother Nicola's work as a psychiatrist is to primarily heal people by addressing their memories of traumatic experiences. Nicola's daughter studies art restoration, while the mother, Giulia, works as an archivist. Characters meet and part during major events like the 1966 flood of Florence and the student strikes of 1968, and cross paths with storylines involving the Red Brigades and the Mafia activity in Sicily. None of the historical action is as important as simply wanting to know what will happen next to the family members.

Giordana uses an eclectic range of music throughout the film as well both as signifiers of certain time periods and as emotional shorthand ranging from The Four Tops, J.S. Bach, Astor Piazzola and Benjamin Britten. Giordana also refers to Truffaut's Jules and Jim by using a one of Georges Delerue's themes. There is also a brief mention of Roberto Rossellini film of tragic love, Stromboli. The title comes from a poem by Pasolini, the subject of an earlier film by Giordana.

The filmography of the woman who plays the family matriarch, Adriana Asti, includes work with key Italian directors over the past fifty years, including Visconti, Pasolini, Bertolucci, and De Sica.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:39 PM | Comments (2)

December 25, 2005

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

George Lucas - 2005
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

Even though I've seen all of the Star Wars films, I have not been a fan of the series. Of the six films, the only one I really liked was The Empire Strikes Back. I'm not sure what it says about me or the Star Wars series that the best film in my estimation was directed by one of the more interesting Hollywood directors of the Sixties, Irvin Kershner, from a screenplay originally written by a science fiction author best known for her screenplays for Howard Hawks, Leigh Brackett. One of my big problems with the Star Wars cult is that so many of the people who love the series so much refuse to acknowledge certain facts about the film that kicked off the series. For some fans I may as well be saying there is no Santa Claus when I ask them if they have seen Hidden Fortress, the film that even Lucas admitted provided much of the basic story. In Peter Biskind's book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, Biskind notes that the screenplay for the first film was actually co-written with Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, who were paid off so Lucas would have solo writing credit. Lucas himself is quoted by Biskind in saying that after the battles making his first two films, he wanted to make a movie that was as commercial as possible. Or to put it another way, George Lucas went over to the "dark side".

One can only speculate on what Lucas' career would have been like. If one includes the first Star Wars film with Lucas' first two films, the films share the theme of language and societies. While much of THX 1138 is purely visual story-telling, it is telling that when the robot cops trap the escapees, they repeat the question, "Are you now or have you ever been?", a variation on the infamous question posed by the House of Un-American Committee in the Fifties. American Graffiti furthered the theme by positing the teenagers against all adults and authority figures, except for the mythical Wolfman Jack who spoke in a language and with messages specifically for the teens. Lucas also showed how teenage society had its own sub-groups, hierarchies and coded language. Star Wars also emphasised language and society, with the various hierarchies and specific languages given various creatures, particularly in the cantina scene.

The further Lucas got into telling the Star Wars story, the less interesting a filmmaker he became. The technology continued to overwhelm the story telling. I never cared for the too cute Ewoks and after the advent of Jar Jar Binks, I stopped seeing the rest of the second trilogy theatrically. One of the problems with the Star Wars films was that the computer generated special effects became both state of the art and simultaneously, less special. Even worse, after The Matrix, released just a few months previously, The Phantom Menace looked hopelessly old-fashioned. Less encouraging was that when I got around to seeing Attack of the Clones, I fell asleep during the light saber battle that closes that film.

I had trouble staying awake during Revenge of the Sith. For me, if you've seen one light saber fight you've seen them all. I recognize that a lot of effort was put into the film technically, but emotionally I was not engaged. More attention should have been given to the actual acting as was given to placement in front of the green screen. Christopher Lee gives a better, more vivid performance in his few minutes than either Samuel L. Jackson or Ewan McGregor.

Lucas has stated plans to return to more personal filmmaking. We can only wait to see if he returns to his rebel roots or feels forced to maintain his empire.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:35 PM | Comments (1)

December 23, 2005

The Velocity of Gary

Dan Ireland - 1998
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Are Dan Ireland's films too modest to be picked up by auteurist film critics? Does he have to make a few more films? Ireland has proven consistent thematically with three films in a row about impossible love. Unlike some other relatively new filmmakers that have gained attention, Ireland is neither pretentious nor a stylistic show-off. One could fairly easily apply what Andrew Sarris wrote on Frank Borzage in discussing Ireland in that both directors show ". . . a genuine concern with the wondrous inner life of lovers in the midst of adversity." Not too overpraise Ireland either, but to at least call attention to a currently underappreciated filmmaker.

The one Ireland movie that received something like a wide release was The Whole Wide World with Vincent D'Onofrio and the then relatively unknown Renee Zellweger. While the character of Conan the Barbarian was popular enough to make two movies, there was little attention paid to the movie about Conan's creator Robert E. Howard. The film is about a deep friendship between an aspiring writer and an established author that is unable to evolve into something more intimate due to the writer's battling of his personal demons and his sense of devotion to his mother. This is counter-balanced by the dichotomy of the writer's personal life, what could be called a "mama's boy" living in a small town in Texas, contrasted against the writer's works, best known for heroic characters in exotic locations.

The Velocity of Gary is carried by the bravura performances of the actors. Again Ireland is working with D'Onofrio who in this film plays Valentino, a bisexual part-time porno actor who lives with his girlfriend, Mary Carmen (Salma Hayak). Valentino is also smitten with Gary (Thomas Jane) who supports himself as a phone sex actor. Filmed in New York City, the film offers the kind of characters that have appeared on film since Midnight Cowboy. What makes Gary unique is that in addition to being a portrait of the search for love in a hostile world, Ireland shows his characters achieving their own respective states of grace. The characters are a jumble of flaws and strengths, and Ireland loves them all including those who appear briefly like the transexual vamping to Patsy Cline's "Walking after Midnight", and Ethan Hawke as a Jewish tatoo artist.

Ireland came to Passionada, his third film as director, as a hired gun. While a much lighter film than his previous films, Ireland again made a film about the challenges of romantic love. As he describes the film: "It's the most simple film I've made as far as story is concerned, but to get it right was a tough, tough thing. It has a universal message of second chances, being open to love, being open to life. The hope and the heart."

These thoughts are presented at the conclusion of Gary. Valentino dies of AIDs, leaving a pregnant Mary Carmen. A healthy baby girl is born. Mary Carmen names their daughter Hope.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:52 PM

December 22, 2005

Catching up with 2005

Me and You and Everyone We Know
Miranda July - 2005
MGM Region 1 DVD

The Beat that My Heart Skipped/De battre mon coeur s'est arrete
Jacques Audiard - 2005
Wellspring Region 1 DVD

Head-On/Gegen die Wand
Fatih Akin - 2004
Strand Releasing Region 1 DVD

We're at tail end of the year when many other critics, bloggers and others who discuss films have issued their respective lists of the best films of the year. I use to do lists myself. I won't this year for a couple of reasons. Most of the films I see are seen on DVD. The seating is more comfortable, the volume not ear-splitting, the food is better, and the picture is always in focus. Plus, for what I paid for a 60 inch screen, I'm going to make sure I get my money's worth. My other reason is that the advent of the DVD has sometimes made release dates somewhat arbitrary.

Let me explain that further: Most top ten lists are based on when a film is released in the respective critic's country. Head-On was released in its country of origin, Germany, in 2004. The film has made some U.S. lists based on its 2005 theatrical release. This works well when the only films discussed are films seen in theatrical or festival release in a given year. The release date as the only frame of reference becomes questionable when one sees a film on DVD prior to its U.S. release, as I have done with the Russian Night Moves, or when one sees a film that may not get a U.S. theatrical release or be available as a Region 1 DVD such as Spider Forest. Charles Chaplin made his film Limelight in 1952. The film was did not get a Los Angeles theatrical run until 1972. Based on Limelight's Los Angeles release date, Chaplin was nominated for his musical score against The Godfather and Napoleon and Samantha. For those reasons, I feel that creating a "2005" list would be impossible.

Nonetheless, I felt somewhat obligated to catch up with some films that have appeared on other lists of the best films of 2005. What I did like about You and Me and Everyone We Know was that the film had real looking people with crummy apartments and dead-end jobs. One scene that worked quite well was when Miranda July sees the man she's infatuated with from to far a distance to know what he is saying to his ex-wife. We see the couple from July's point of view, with each person speaking July's imagined words of romantic banter. A second shot of the couple shows us what they are really saying to each other. While I found the use of a young boy as an internet lover questionable, July did make an interesting exploration of the difference between private and public personas, and the quest for reciprocal love.

The Beat that My Heart Skipped is less of a remake of Fingers than a reworking of James Toback's film. The character of Tom, played by Romain Duris is more fully developed than Harvey Keitel's Jimmy Fingers. Audiard adds more to the father and son relationship so that the film is about more than a part-time gangster with aspirations to be a concert pianist. While Audiard repeated several scenes almost as they were in the original, one major change is that he eliminated the character of the mother who is refered to but not seen. In both films, the mother was a concert pianist who has inspired her son to pursue music professonally. The deeper exploration of the dynamics between father and son, as well as scenes showing Tom's struggle to attain professional level musicianship distinguish the new film.

Head-On is an appropriate title for a film where one of the characters drives into a wall, and characters dive into love, hate, drink and drugs, without thoughts of the consequences. The film begins with two characters meeting in a mental hospital, both Turks living in Germany. Sibel insists on marrying Cahit primarily to get out of her parents' house. As expected, the two fall in love with each other in spite of themselves. After that, the film goes in several unexpected directions. The concept of direction by indirection was both literally and humorously explored in Alin's In July. Akin discussed Head-On in Indiewire. The actress who played Sibel, Sibel Kekilli has a promising career in spite of news about her previous screen roles. I was more shocked and saddened to read that this uniquely beautiful woman used her Head-On earnings to pay for a nose job.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:23 PM | Comments (2)

December 19, 2005

That's (German) Entertainment!

Titanic
Herbert Selpin - 1943
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

Munchausen
Josef von Baky - 1943
Kino Video Region 1 DVD

I finally got around to seeing these two movies after reading about them several months ago. I was frankly pretty curious as to what the state of German filmmaking was like as well as what kind of propaganda would be in these films. It should be no more surprising that big budget entertainment would be produced in Germany in 1943, than in the U.S., the year of Shadow of a Doubt and Heaven Can Wait. Both films could not avoid being affected by Nazi policies in different ways.

While the essential history of the ship Titanic is well known, it still interesting to see how differently the story is told. Alfred Hitchcock was suppose to do a version as his first film for David O. Selznick, but for technical and budgetary reasons ended up doing the landlocked Rebecca instead. E. A. Dupont actually shot three versions of the Titanic story in 1929 - German, English and silent. The Nazi high command was supposed to have loved film, yet I would think that if they had seen Dupont's film, and thought about history, they would not have gone ahead with the creation of their own oversized ship. If the 1943 German version blames the catastrophe of the Titanic on British greed and speed, one could say that the British got their cinematic revenge seventeen years later.

At eighty-five minutes, this Titanic is less than half the running time of James Cameron's version, and there's no Celine Dion wailing at the end. A good part of the film is devoted to White Line President Bruce Ismay trying to manipulate While Line stocks to his advantage prior to the launching of the Titanic and while on the ill-fated voyage. The one German officer on the ship, Petersen, attempts to tell anyone who will listen that there may be a problem with possible icebergs. As if that wasn't enough, Petersen (Hans Nielsen) has his own love problems with an independently wealthy woman (Sybille Schmitz). There is also a subplot involving a young couple who meet cute, Monika Burg playing Ann Dvorak to Hermann Brix's Dick Powell. Had this been a Hollywood production, the role of the hot, garter displaying dancer in steerage would have probably been played by Rita Hayworth. Titanic features the one-time performance by Jolly Bohnert as the temptress men fight over. As it turned out, director Herbert Selpin was arrested by the Gestapo before completing the film, and died in prison. Selpin's crime was that he was overheard complaining about the German army which had caused a slowdown of second unit photography. The film was completed by Werner Klinger. Goebbels subsequently banned the film officially because of the scenes of shipboard panic. Titanic was seen in Germany after World War II after thought to have been lost. While there may be argument on which is the best version of the sinking of the Titanic, this German version offers its own particular pleasures.

The 1943 version of Munchausen also offers pleasures as well. In this case, Goebbels looked the other way after being convinced that Erich Kastner was the only writer capable of writing the screenplay. The film was also legendary German production company UFA's 25th anniversary celebration of itself, a means of showing to German's, and the rest of the world, that the Third Reich could equal Hollywood. The film isn't quite the special effects extravaganza of Terry Gilliam's Adventures of Baron Munchausen. This film about the fabulous 18th century liar is striking in other ways, primarily in it's raciness. This Munchausen is such a ladies' man that even Casanova is jealous. A scene with Brigitte Horney as a Russian princess scampering in her royal underwear was surprising. A later sequence in Turkey resembles nothing less than an Arabian nights fantasy from Universal, only with three times the extras for the exteriors, and lots of topless starlets. (Thank goodness for the ability to freeze frame.)

If Americans are familiar with Erich Kastner at all, it's as the author of Emil and the Detectives. Ideally more of his literature and films would be available. Director von Baky and Kastner collaborated again in 1950 on the film Das Doppelte Lottchen. The story is much better known in the Walt Disney version(s), The Parent Trap.

Kastner also was a poet. Most of his writings are currently unavailable in English, so to make up for this gap, I will share a short poem from the anthology, Let's Face It.

The Light-hearted Muse

Slick art;
Sick art.
Pure art:
Poor art.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:46 PM

December 17, 2005

Two Angels of Death

Destiny
Der Mude Tod
Fritz Lang - 1921
Image Region 1 DVD

Black Angel
Roy William Neill - 1946
Universal Region 1 DVD

Both of these films are linked by death and love. One of the stars of Black Angel, Peter Lorre first gained fame in Fritz Lang's M. Black Angel, being classic film noir with the cockeyed camera angles, downbeat subject matter and fatalism is in some ways more Germanic than the made in Germany Destiny. Both films share plots involving women who will do anything on behalf of the men they love.

Lil Dagover, a bit mature at age 36, portrays a newlywed on a honeymoon trip with her husband, played by Walter Janssen. Death hops on board the stagecoach they are traveling in. Death in this film is a no-nonsense guy with no time for chess games. Stepping away briefly during lunch, Dagover discovers that Death and Janssen have disappeared. Realizing her husband has prematurely died, Dagover is about to commit suicide. She finds herself in an othewise impenetrable place with Death who takes her to a room full of candles. As obvious as the symbolism may be, the image the two characters surrounded by candles is still impressive.

Continuing with the flickering candles as lift metaphor, the film continues with three stories of characters represented by three candles. Taking place in renaissance Venice, and extremely imaginary Persia and China, Dagover portrays three women trying to change the fate of her doomed lover, again portrayed by Janssen. Co-scripted by Thea von Harbou, the two latter episodes remind one of how, for better and worse, Lang was the Steven Speilberg of his time. The Persian episode has a proto-Indiana Jones character wooing the Caliph's sister. The Chinese episode is uses the most special effects including a miniature army emerging from a box, a scroll that takes on the characteristics of a snake, and a flying carpet. While Dagover is motivated by the biblical phrase that "love is stronger than death", the lesson learned is not the one expected. Destiny is both cornball and moving, made a year before Lang started making his best silent films, starting with the first Dr. Mabuse.

Black seems to have been a favorite color for Cornell Woolrich. The film Black Angel may not have been true to the novel, but there are still recognizable elements such as an innocent man accused of murder, the search for the real murderer, and a character suffering from amnesia or alcoholism or both. Universal cupcake du jour Constance Dowling is the victim. Dan Duryea and June Vincent are the pair trying to prove that bit player John Phillips is innocent.

Black Angel was the final film for Roy William Neill who died at age 59. Mostly known for directing the series of Sherlock Holmes movies starring Basil Rathbone, Black Angel demonstrates an artistry that never had the opportunity to fully develop. Still there are enough unexpected twists and turns, plus humor, intentional and not, with Broderick Crawford as a laidback police detective, perennial creep Lorre plus professional lug Freddie Steele. Constance Dowling's role in Black Angel is brief, as was her career. Dowling's relationship with Cesare Pavese is certainly the stuff of legend. Dowling may have been a victim in Black Angel but she also proved to be a real life femme fatale.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:42 PM

December 16, 2005

Hondo

John Farrow - 1953
Paramount Region 1 DVD

If the commentary for Hondo is not quite as informative as I would want, there are still nuggets of information that make one wonder about how the film would have been different. Film historians Leonard Maltin and Frank Thompson discuss the film, with former child actor Lee Aaker piping in. The big new that may have some film scholars scrambling to re-examine and revalue Hondo is the information that in addition to second unit work, John Ford directed the closing sequences while John Farrow went to direct another movie. Certainly some of the compositions look similar to Ford's work, particularly shots panning up along the desert mesas with the Apaches gathering for battle. I'm not familiar enough with Farrow's films to recognize his visual style, but one has to also assume that visual choices were also dictated by working on behalf of producer Wayne, in a Western in a region somewhat like Monument Valley, and with the cumbersome 3-D camera. That Hondo was originally photographed using the two camera 3-D system, yet virtually only seen as a standard 35mm movie also raises some questions about seeing the film its makers intended.

In one-eyed Andre De Toth's House of Wax, Vincent Price would throw a chair towards the camera, and a character would play with a paddle ball. Such were some of the first 3-D films that would make a point of virtually attacking the audience. Only a couple of shots were done in Hondo that were obviously created to exploite 3-D, particularly in a knife fight where John Wayne and Rodolfo Acosta "stab" the audience, and later when a rifle is shot aiming toward the camera. Jack Warner had initially mandated that important films be shot in 3-D. While John Farrow notes that filming would have taken a week less using a standard camera, one has to wonder if Hondo would have looked different.

To describe the story risks making the film sound less interesting than it is. Hondo Lane, a horseless cavalry scout, stumbles upon the ranch of Angie Lowe and her young son, Johnny. The ranch has fallen into disrepair, and Hondo assumes that Angie's husband has either died or deserted her. The ranch is in Apache territory where there is a tentative peace. Hondo finds himself attracted to Angie and feeling somewhat paternal to the boy. The Apache chief, Vittorio, is also concerned about Angie and offers her several Apache suitors. At less than ninety minutes the film doesn't have the sprawling narratives of Ford or Hawks. Neither does it have Ford's vistas or Hawks' clubbiness. Would Hondo be memorable had Glenn Ford taken the role as originally offered? My own feeling is: probably not. No less than Bertrand Tavernier will sing the praises of Delmar Daves, Cowboy, 3:10 to Yuma, and Jubal, three westerns starring Glenn Ford. John Wayne in one of his lesser films (Big Jake) springs to mind more clearly imagined than Glenn Ford in a great film (The Big Heat).

One other bit of casting news was that Geraldine Page was the third choice to play Angie Lowe. In the commentary, it's mentioned that the first choice was Katherine Hepburn. The commenary also mentioned that there was concern about her politics. What would have made this casting interesting is that Hepburn and Wayne were the same age. They would eventually work together in 1975 in Rooster Cogburn, a weak follow-up to True Grit. Dorothy McGuire was considered as well. Page was even less conventionally attractive than the other two actresses. In part of the dialogue, Angie and Hondo discuss Angie's "plainess". I'm not sure what Wayne and Farrow had in mind in their search for an actress although Page did get an unexpected Academy Award nomination for her first major film role. Page also ended up working with Glenn Ford eleven years later in Dear Heart, as well as a film directed by John Farrow's unofficial son-in-law.

The DVD also contains a short documentary on the Apaches which mentions that they were a matriarchy. There are also short documentaries on screenwriter James Edward Grant and Ward Bond. Leonard Maltin diplomatically notes that Bond was very outspoken about his political beliefs. I'd love to see a biographical film that told the real Ward Bond story, but more likely, as John Wayne said in The Searchers, "That'll be the day."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:26 PM

December 14, 2005

The Coming of Sin

La Visita del Vicio
Jose Larraz - 1977
Pagan Films PAL Region 0 DVD

Have you ever read a film book and had your attention caught by a particular still? Has that particular image captured your imagination enough that you felt like you HAD to see the movie that particular still illustrated. I felt that way when I saw this image in the book Immoral Tales. (Sorry I haven't quite figured out how to do screen capture for Mac.) In any event, I finally saw this film on DVD. The Coming of Sin is not quite as strange as that one image.

The film lies somewhere between art and soft-core exploitation. A wealthy artist, Lorna, takes in an illiterate gypsy girl on behalf of her friends. The gypsy, Triana, has been bothered by nightmares involving a man riding naked on a horse. Her dream image is manifested in the form of Chico, a handsome young man with a horse, who shows up the morning after Triana's arrival. What little narrative exists is punctuated with seens of lesbian and heterosexual coupling as well as a menage a trois. It's kind of like Cinemax only with characters who can name drop Goya. Having seen John Huston's Reflections in a Golden Eye with Marlon Brando undone by the site of Robert Forster's nude horseback riding, I knew these characters would come to a bad end.

I have only seen two films by Larraz at this time, with the other film being Vampyres. Even if one questions his subject matter, what has made Larraz a favorite with some critics is his imagery. His talent can be seen in the comic strips that first gained Larraz attention. Larraz opens The Coming of Sin with the camera panning over paintings of nude and semi-nude women in Lorna's house, and also has a scene with Lorna and Chico viewing similar paintings in a museum. Larraz emphasis on the image was in part due to making this film with a very small budget and non-professional actors. In Immoral Tales, Larraz is quoted: "It was really like an album of pictures. Just beautiful frames." It should be noted that Larraz did get the opportunity to make a mini-series on Goya for Spanish television, one of his few artistically satisfying films.

The DVD includes an interview with Larraz conducted by Cathal Tohill which covers not only The Coming of Sin, but also some of Larraz' other films, plus his meeting with Josef von Sternberg. Hopefully more of Larraz' films will be made available on DVD, especially is earlier English language films. Among his countrymen, Larraz may not in the same league as Bunuel, but given what he can with limited resources, he is certainly a more cohesive and artistic filmmaker than Jesus Franco.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:34 PM

December 13, 2005

Richard Widmark Double Feature

The Street with No Name
William Keighley - 1948
20th Century-Fox Region 1 DVD

To the Devil a Daughter
Peter Sykes - 1976
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

For those you missed the news, Richard Widmark received a Career Achievement award from the Los Angeles Film Critics recently. The choice of Widmark is interesting because, while many would agree on the quality of his work, Richard Widmark is probably remembered better for a handful of films that he appeared in, such as Kiss of Death and Pickup on South Street. And while he co-starred with some film's biggest icons such as Marilyn Monroe, and John Wayne, Widmark never had that mythic aura. In examing his filmography, Widmark was usually top billed in lower to middle budget films, while frequently taking second bill in bigger productions. With the exception of his debut film performance as Tommy Udo, the giggling killer of Kiss of Death, we usually remember the film before we remember Widmark.

In his second film, The Street with No Name, Widmark plays a slightly less sociopathic gangster. Widmark's character shares the same last name, Stiles, as his character in his last film, True Colors. Bland and beefy Mark Stevens plays an F.B.I. agent who infiltrates Widmark's gang. The film is part noir, very dark, high and low angle photography, and part police procedural. The film begins with a teletype message supposedly from J. Edgar Hoover himself warning audiences that they were potential victims of crime. We next see an attempted heist at a roadhouse. From the voice-over setting up the story, we get the idea that the victims are partially to blame, drinking and dancing at an hour when good citizens are home sleeping. This first scene opens with a literal bang when a nervous woman screams and gets shot by Widmark. The film then cuts to a scene in a crime lab which could be called C.S.I., B.C. where we see a couple of technicians comparing bullets.

While the film takes place in a fictional city, it was shot literally on the streets of Los Angeles as part of the trend of documentary style crime films. Director William Keighley was a house director at Warner Brothers making crime films with Bogart, Cagney and Robinson. The film is brightened by character actors Lloyd Nolan, Ed Begley, John McIntire, and Barbara Lawrence as Widmark's eye candy and punching bag. Harry Kleiner's screenplay was reworked by Sam Fuller for House of Bamboo. While The Street with No Name is entertaining, my favorite early Widmark performance is in Jules Dassin's Night and the City with its consistently dreamlike and sometimes nightmarish view of London.

London was where Widmark filmed part of To the Devil a Daughter, his last theatrical film with top billing. Perhaps Widmark thought being in a horror film would be as good for him as The Omen was for Gregory Peck. The film also carries the distinction of being the last Hammer horror film to be made for theaters, afterwhich the studio eked out a few productions for television. Widmark plays a writer with an interest in devil worship. Denholm Elliot seeks out Widmark to rescue his daughter, Natassia Kinski, from the clutches of the evil Christopher Lee. The film is sort of like Rosemary's Baby until the end when the film gets a bit more graphic. As bloody as the film gets, the most horrifying bit of this movie is that Christopher Lee has a nude scene. The then sixteen year old Kinski is also seen to full advantage. Pussy Galore, also known as Honor Blackman stays dressed throughout her performance. The documentary on To the Devil indicates that Widmark hated making the film and almost walked out on the production. For all the problems with the production, including a constantly re-written script, the film looks good thanks to cinematographer David Watkin. The expected payoff at the end never comes, undermined by a perfunctory ending. It's a frustrating way to close a Hammer movie, as well as the Hammer studio.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:56 PM | Comments (2)

December 10, 2005

Hong Kong "Girls Kick Ass" Double Feature

Naked Weapon
Chek Law Dak Gung
Tony Ching Siu-Tung - 2002
Hart Sharp Region 1 DVD

The Inspector Wears Skirts
Ba Wong Fa
Wellson Chin - 1988
Universe Laser & Video DVD

Say what you will about Tom Cruise, if you need a reason to look forward to Mission Impossible 3, her name is Maggie Q. Not only is she cute, but as an Asian-American, Maggie Q speaks fluent English, unlike some of the stars of a big budget Hollywood film about Japan. The film she is in, Naked Weapon is actually better than what would be expected by the title, and was actually shot as an English language production primarily with Chinese and Asian-American actors.

I'm almost surprised this film wasn't made by Luc Besson. Part of the film also owes a debt to Kinji Fukasaku. The premise is that young girls are kidnapped by the mysterious Madame M to be trained as highly paid assassins. A young C.I.A. agent has been on the trail for the past six years. The action sequences are all post-Matrix with much wire work involving the kind of leaping around that Nijinsky probably dreamt about. While there are a lot of weapons, there isn't much nudity, except for a discrete shower seen involving Ms. Q and Anya, her assassin "sister".

The director, Ching Siu-Tung was the action choreographer for Zhang Yimou's Hero, and House of Flying Daggers. As a director, Ching also had a hand in all three of the Swordsman films. With his credentials, one has to wonder why he wasn't asked to direct any of the Hollywood female action movies that have come and gone. Ching, the son of Hong Kong director Gang Cheng also includes pioneer Hong Kong action heroine Cheng Pei-Pei as Maggie Q's mother. Cheng was widely seen in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the film that introduced Zhang Ziyi to the world. Maggie Q and Zhang appeared together in a film that is unspeakable in any language.

Further research indicates that The Inspector Wears Skirts was actually directed by the most popular Asian actor in the world. One would wish the film was as funny as the similarly titled The Lieutenant Wore Skirts. The film is about Sibelle Hu's organizing and training of a squad of policewomen. Cynthia Rothrock also is on hand to show Hu's trainees some real martial arts. The lowbrow humor and slapsticks are less amusing than a scene that takes place in a roller skating rink. Several policemen and policewoman perform a song and dance number that looks like a scene from Grease as directed by Corky St. Clair. The Inspector Wears Skirts managed to get less interesting as it progressed, but I had a nice little nap during the end of the film.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 PM | Comments (1)

December 09, 2005

A Town of Love and Hope

Ai to kibo no machi
Nagisa Oshima - 1959
Panorama Entertainment Region 0 DVD

"No matter what political system we live under, people at the bottom stay there."
- Nagisa Oshima

Thematically, the debut film,A Town of Love and Hope anticipates Nagisa Oshima's future. In some ways this film serves as a companion piece to Boy made ten years later in depicting the extremes families take for financial survival. Unlike Boy which had the family exploit the son, in Town of Love and Hope, the young man makes choices on behalf of his family. Of the Oshima films I have seen so far, this is his most conventional. This is understandable in that Oshima needed to prove to his studio that he was indeed worthy of elevation to the director's chair. Within a couple years, Oshima would make the decidedly uncommercial Night and Fog in Japan and establish himself as one of Japan's first true independent filmmakers.

This first film is about a junior high school student, Masao, who sells pigeons on the street as pets to make money on behalf of his ill mother and young sister. The family lives in a shack, lacking sufficient heat. What makes Masao's enterprise marginally worthwhile is that the pigeons usually fly back so he can sell them again. One of Masao's customers, the daughter of an industrialist, takes interest in Masao and attempts to get Masao hired by her father's electronics factory. Masao's teacher also tries to help Masao seek a better future, ideally by continuing on to high school, the dream of Masao's mother. While Masao understands that he may live a better life with more education, his sense of obligation to his mother and sister determine his choices.

The poverty Oshima depicts is in contrast not only with the comparative wealth of the industrialist's family, but against a backdrop of a post-war Japan that still held onto old prejudices. Masao, his family and neighbors represent those whose lives were not improved by the financial recovery of Japan. As he would do so in the future, Oshima would examine and criticize aspects of Japanese society. This was also the first of Oshima's films to feature Fumio Watanabe who would appear in several Oshima films including the aforementioned Boy.

While only a handful of films representing Oshima's forty-five year career are available on tape or disc, one can also explore his writings. Oshima not only discusses his own films, but looks at the filmmaking process in Japan, as well as a critique of film critics.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:24 PM

December 08, 2005

On the Street with Fuller and Fukasaku

Street of No Return
Samuel Fuller - 1989
Fantoma DVD

Street Mobster
Gendai yakuza: hito-kiri yota
Kinji Fukusaku - 1972
Home Vision Entertainment Region 1 DVD

In the entertaining "Making of" documentary that accompanies Street of No Return, Samuel Fuller discusses how the history of humans consists of violence and action. He could well be describing some of the films of Kinji Fukasaku. The character of Isamu, played by Bunta Sugawara is not too different from Cliff Robertson or Richard Widmark in his nihilism. Fukasaku's film was made when he was re-defining the Yakuza genre, while Fuller's film was his last film made for theatrical release.

In his autobiography, The Third Face, Sam Fuller notes that the film was re-edited by the producer, Jacques Bral (not to be confused with Jacques Brel). I'm not sure if Fuller's version would have been significantly better. The story, from a novel by David Goodis, involves a pop singer involved with a gangster's girlfriend, and a Chinatown plot involving race riots, crack and a real estate scam. I don't know if this was a coincidence but along with using a writer associated with Francois Truffaut, Streets was photographed by Truffaut cinematographer Pierre-William Glenn. Filmed in Lisbon, the film takes place in an American city. In The Nakes Kiss, Fuller would film a couple, with just a couple pieces of furniture, and manage to transcend his sparse sets to convey a dream of Venice, Italy. In Street, everything looks like it was shot on a phony set, even when it wasn't. Fuller, who witnessed race riots as a young reporter, has staged what looks more like a large street fight on a paper strewn set. One could either be generous and say that Fuller did the best with his available resources, or view the film as the misguided imagining of America by someone who's lost touch with his country.

Even if the film is disappointing, it is still fun to see Fuller talk about it in the documentary. Sam Fuller was one of Hollywood's great raconteurs. Even if his logic seemed faulty or he got his facts wrong, Fuller was always fun to listen to, rattling one story after another with his ever present cigar. One wishes that Fuller had been able to do the commentary as well, instead of Keith Carradine who seems to have trouble remembering the film. Carradine's singing and songwriting don't seem to have improved much since Nashville. Street also has the dubious distinction of having the title song co-written by Fuller. Fuller's wife and daughter have cameo performances. Sam Fuller's appearance is like a comparison of Street with his past films: he is reduced to a shadow.

Street Mobster begins somewhat like Street with No Name with street fighting. The main character, Isamu, is a thug who lacks interest in rising in the ranks of the Japanese underworld and has contempt for the elaborate rules regarding Yakuza life. The film can be viewed as a warm-up for Fukasaku's five film series, The Yakuza Papers: Battles without Honor and Humanity. Isamu and his small gang are caught up between the larger "families". In prior Yakuza films, emphasis was placed on characters living within the code. Fukasaku's gangster films are Darwinian excercises where characters continually change alliances, break promises and take whatever action is needed for self-preservation. Fukasaku undermines the genre tradition of the Yakuza cutting off his pinky finger as a form of great apology.

As Fukasaku's Yakuza films are also examinations of the cultural shifts in Japan following World War II, this quote is instructive in explaining his view: "I was working in a weapons factory that was a regular target for enemy bombing. During the raids, even though we were friends working together, the only thing we would be thinking of was self-preservation. We would try to get behind each other or beneath dead bodies to avoid the bombs. When the raid was over, we didn't really blame each other, but it made me understand about the limits of friendship. I also had to clean up all the dead bodies after the bombings. I'm sure those experiences have influenced the way I look at violence."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:54 PM | Comments (1)

December 06, 2005

Inner Journeys with James Mason

Journey to the Center of the Earth
Henry Levin - 1959
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Lord Jim
Richard Brooks - 1965
Columbia Region 1 DVD

Between 1959 and 1962 I lived in Teaneck, New Jersey. Pat Boone, at the height of his stardom, also lived in Teaneck. I never got to see him although some of my elementary school friends reported sightings. I didn't see Journey to the Center of the Earth because I was still restricted by my parents to only seeing movies with the name "Walt Disney" attached to the title. Once again, thanks to the miracle of the DVD, I can fill in those gaps of childhood.

The man who made Fats Domino and Little Richard safe for the suburbs has two semi-nude scenes, one with a sheep! Of course the couple of songs don't sound like anything from the late 19th Century. James Mason is on hand mostly to provide a bit of gravitas to a film that co-starred the ephemeral Arlene Dahl and Diane Baker. Mason was previously in the Disney version of 20,000 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but it was after this film that one could expect at least one Jules Verne film adaptation every year in the early Sixties. Journey was also the last screenplay written by Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch. A couple of wisecracks slip in to remind us that former collaborator Billy Wilder didn't write all the jokes.

Although the film special effects and sets were considered state of the art at the time, the years have been less than kind. There is one set which looks like a maze of twisted white roots that still looks good. One set looks like it was constructed with Bloomingdale's gift boxes and aluminum foil. The dinosaurs appear to be lizards photographed with extreme close-up lenses. It probably wasn't mean to be symbolic, but there is also a shot of Pat Boone hammering a big spike into a dinosaur's tongue. Bernard Herrmann brought the heavy brass and woodwinds for his score. By Herrmann standards it's O.K. but one is easily reminded of memorable music and a far better movie, as Pat Boone's character has a fear of heights and his own version of vertigo.

A little research shows that forty years before Richard Brooks' version, Victor Fleming made a much shorter, silent version of Lord Jim. It probably was no more successful than this big budget flop that was probably Brooks attempt to meet or beat David Lean with a "thinking man's epic". Joseph Conrad has always been a challenge for filmmakers, but Lord Jim, with its narrative made up of multiple viewpoints and chronologies is the least filmable. Even at two and a half hours, Conrad's novel is pretty much reduced to an adventure movie with philosophical moments. Peter O'Toole looks somewhat like the character that Conrad decribes, but Brooks' filmic language to convey the psychology of Jim is awkward at best and more often heavy handed. James Mason shows up quite late in the film as Gentleman Brown, the character who forces Jim to face himself. Brooks also proved capable as anyone else in miscasting a foreign actress by having Israeli Delilah Lavi as "the girl" from Southeast Asia. The final word on this filmed version of Conrad should go to Orson Welles, who stated: "If I were police commissioner of the world, I would put Richard Brooks in jail for what he did to Lord Jim."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 PM

December 04, 2005

As Tears Go By

Wong Gok Ka Moon
Wong Kar-Wai - 1988
Kino Video DVD

It was impossible for me not to think of Martin Scorcese during the first brawl in Wong Kar-Wai's debut film, As Tears Go By. As the film progressed, I kept on thinking of Mean Streets. After doing a bit of Googling, I found that other critics saw similarities as well. Wong has even spoken of his admiration for Scorsese.

Andy Lau plays Harvey Keitel to Jacky Cheung's Robert De Niro. Maggie Cheung has an easily treated lung disease compared to Amy Robinson's epilepsy. There is none of the conflicted Catholicism of Scorcese. While Lau and Cheung talk about leaving the gangster life behind, it would be a few years before Wong would present characters exploring their existential delemmas, such as Tony Leung's cop in Chunking Express. While Keitel's relationship with Robinson was fragile because of her illness, the biggest problem Lau has with Cheung is primarily geographic. The emphasis is on Lau's relationship with Cheung, and their relationship with the local "Godfather" and another small time gangster. The volitility of the male characters is more characteristic of Scorsese than Wong.

Visually the film hints at the future stylization of Wong's films. Cinematographer Lau Wai-Keung, also known as Andrew Lau, later worked on Chunking Express. Much of the visual influence here is Sam Peckinpah by way of John Woo, with a slow motion bullet ballet. The music used was contemporary 1988 Canto-pop, featuring a Chinese language version of Berlin's "Take My Breath Away".

There was a shock in seeing Maggie Cheung look almost embryonic. She was 24 at the time, with several films to her credit. She looks not quite formed, her face appearing like a blank slate yet to be better defined by the roles about to come her way. At 27, Andy Lau was still somewhat babyfaced, and sometimes looked too delicate to be a street hood.

1988, the year that the Scorsese influenced Tears was released, was also when one of Martin Scorsese's most personal projects, The Last Temptation of Christ his theaters. While it is something of a generalization, one could argue that Scorsese, who has mentioned John Cassavetes as an influence, would make films that tended to be less personal and more stylistically classical in his films following that date. Conversely, Wong took up Cassavetes' mantle to make films with greater degrees of improvisation and less regard to the traditional narrative.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:58 PM

November 30, 2005

Between Calm and Passion

Calmi Cuori Appasionati
Reisei to Jonetsu no Aida
Isamu Nakae - 2001
Marvel Entertainment Region 3 DVD

I'm one of those people who questioned the casting decisions behind Memoirs of a Geisha. In a piece dated November 29th, Dave Kehr points that Gong Li and Zhang Ziyi both had to learn their lines phonetically. I know it's too late now, but in case anyone is looking, Kelly Chen speaks fluent English and Japanese. In Calmi Cuori Appasionati, she also speaks Italian. Ms. Chen is, at least in my estimation, at least as attractive as Hollywood's biggest female star.

The film at hand is a romantic drama, somewhat reminiscent of past films where the love affair spans continents. One of the plot points, with the couple planning to meet at a landmark in Florence, Italy, harkens back to Leo McCarey's lovers planning to meet at the Empire State Building. In this case Chen and Yutaka Takenouchi meet and break up as college students in Japan, only to cross paths in Florence and Milan. Unlike their Anglo-American counterparts who frequently seem to feel that romantic love needs to be leavened with comedy, everyone here is unashamed to play it straight. The narrative is mostly concerned with the emotional baggage that keeps people apart, making the ending not quite so inevitable. This is the kind of film that could have easily gotten quite sappy, but the characters are intelligent, Florence and Milan look nice, and the filmmakers keep the proceedings from being totally manipulative.

Calmi Cuori Appasionati is to be sure, an imperfect, but very watchable film. What it achieves is what contemporary Hollywood usually fails to do, which is to make a love story that cares about the intelligence of the characters and the audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:49 PM

November 29, 2005

Street Walkers - Italian Style

Adua e le Compagne
Adua and Company
Antonio Pietrangeli - 1960
C'est La Vie PAL Region 2 DVD

Mamma Roma
Pier Paolo Pasolini - 1962
Criterion Region 1 DVD

I was totally unaware of Adua and Company until I saw it listed among Italian films at Nicheflix. The film had won the Silver Lion at Venice and according the the DVD notes was the given Italy's equivalent to the Oscar for best film of the year. This is noteworthy when one considers that 1960 may have been the best year ever with several classics released that year. Adua and Company falls in that category of films that may have seemed important at the time, but have since receeded to the status of a footnote in film history.

Certainly Antonio Pietrangeli has an interesting filmography, including apprenticeships with Visconti and Rosselini. Among the several writers who had a hand in the screenplay were Ettore Scola and sometime Fellini collaborator, Tulio Pinelli. One of Pinelli's most famous credits is for the film Adua probably aspired to, Nights of Cabiria. The film stars Simone Signoret, Sandra Milo and Emmanuelle Riva who were all at career peaks at this time. Unfortunately, no amount of talent can disguise that the film is dull and shopworn. Even the presence of the greatest Italian actor fails to liven this film up. Essentially, the brothels have shut down and a group of prostitutes attempt to open a restaurant near a small town. The various turn of events are not surprising, and the inevitable conclusion undermines any sense of tragedy one is suppose to feel.

My main reason for seeing Mamma Roma was primarily to be as complete as I can with the films of Pier Paolo Pasolini. I guess that if one is going to make a film titled Mamma Roma than the obvious star would be Anna Magnani.
I have to admit that after seeing several films, I can understand why some people would be attracted to this force of nature who seems ready to burst out of the screen. I find her outsized personality overbearing. Once again we have a film about a prostitute attempting to go straight. In this case Magnani cannot escape from her former pimp, and feels obligated to extend herself in order to provide for her uncaring son. The film was made, like Accatone, in the slums on the outskirts of Rome. Some of the elements were also used in Pasolini's 1959 novel, A Violent Life. Near the end of the film, Pasolini repeats shots of Mamma Roma's son strapped to a table in a psychiatric ward, the Christ-like imagery unmistakable.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I realize that after seeing seven of his films, I really don't like Pasolini's films. It's not that I don't recognize the artistry. Maybe this fall under the "art as Spinach" theory that you know it's good for you but you hate the taste. (Actually, I like spinach.) I realize this is totally subjective, but I feel like watching a Pasolini film is like doing homework. The one film that I like is, perhaps not coincidentally, one of his most comic films, Hawks and Sparrows. Keep in mind that the very serious Robert Bresson is one of my favorite filmmakers. Still, the import given to Pasolini by other critics and filmmakers may be enough reason for me to be familiar with his works. Anyone who says, "Truth lies not only in a dream, but in many dreams,"�should get respectful consideration.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:47 PM

November 28, 2005

La Parfum d'Yvonne

Patrice Leconte - 1994
Second Sight PAL Region 0 DVD

Why was a movie this good not given theatrical distribution in the U.S.? Made after The Hairdresser's Husband and before Ridicule, La Parfum d'Yvonne stands with the delirious Girl on the Bridge as one of Leconte's best films. Those familiar with Leconte's other films would not be surprised by the quality of this film. What did surprise me is how this film is also an example of life following art.

Like several of Leconte's films, the narrative is initiated on a chance meeting. Victor and Yvonne "meet cute" when Yvonne's huge Great Dane falls asleep at Victor's feet in a hotel lobby. The film contrasts Victor and Yvonne's l'amour fou during the summer of 1958, with scenes of Victor looking back while in the same Swiss town during the winter of 1961. Her film debut about to be released, Yvonne states to Victor that she is not a dedicated actress. Similarly, the beautiful actress who portrayed Yvonne, Sandra Majani, has not appeared in any other film.

While this film is peripherally about movies, Leconte has two key scenes that take their cues from Hollywood. While not a direct lift from Funny Face, there is a scene of a fashion show involving girls, dogs and cars with a lush color palette that recalls Stanley Donen. Totally breathtaking is Leconte's variation on the most famous image from Billy Wilder's Seven Year Itch. Yvonne is seen standing at the railing of a boat wearing a simple white dress. She deftly slips off her white panties to give as a remembrance gift to Victor. Leconte places the camera at a discrete angle while the wind billows in and under the dress.

I am baffled that Leconte is unappreciated in his own country and not considered an auteur. While avoiding the obvious repetitions of someone like Woody Allen, Leconte's films are frequently about chance meetings that evolve into relationships, and love affairs based on impulsiveness. Frequently Leconte's characters are marked by self-destructive tendencies, whether social, physical, or both. For Leconte, being estranged from mainstream society can sometimes be a survival tactic one chooses for oneself. In an indirect way, Leconte has created a narrative that recalls the scene in Citizen Kane where the character of the aging Mr. Bernstein recalls a girl he saw only once, but never forgot. If La Parfum d'Yvonne doesn't conclude with the optimism of Girl on the Bridge, Leconte ends this film with the acknowledgement that love can be ephemeral, and that the person we may be in love with may only remain as a memory or image.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:48 PM | Comments (2)

November 27, 2005

Shatter and Spun

Shatter
Michael Carreras (and Monte Hellman, uncredited) - 1974
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

Spun
Jonas Akerlund - 2002
Columbia Region 1 DVD

These two films don't really compliment each other in terms shared stories, stars, genre or any of the usual criteria that I would normally use to link films. What is interesting to me is that these films present arguments both for and against directors commentaries. Sometimes the commentary can be informative. Conversely I will sometimes let the movie "speak for itself" as it were. In the case of Shatter, I went straight to the commentary track, while with Spun, just watching the film seemed to be the wisest course.

In part of the Shatter commentary, Monte Hellman discusses the film he was previously planning to make in Hong Kong, an adaptation of Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Maison de Rendez-Vous, ideally with previous collaborator, Jack Nicholson. I don't remember exactly how it happened, as this was over thirty years ago, but as a result of my writing to Hellman, he called me up at New York University to set up a conversation between him and Robbe-Grillet, who was teaching at NYU at the time. As Hellman recounts in his commentary, financing on the proposed film fell through twice. Shatter mark the shift in Hellman's career from promising auteur to obscure journeyman.

The commentary is also interesting in explaining not only Hellman's problems as a director for hire on this film, but also why the teaming of Hammer Productions with Hong Kong's Shaw Brothers didn't work. While Hammer's reputation is mainly with their horror movies, they began with crime dramas. On paper, the idea of making a movie about a hitman in Hong Kong, with scenes involving the newly popular kung-fu genre, must have seemed like a good way for merge the respective studios' talents. As it turned out, this film and the marginally more successful Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires, marked the beginning and the end of this merger. Hellman's biggest problem was working with a crew that had to be shared with other Shaw Brothers productions, causing Hellman to be constantly behind on his shooting schedule. The working conditions for the Shaw Brothers cast and crew are documented elsewhere, but essentially amounted to indentured servitude for much of the staff. Hellman also had frequent clashes with producer Michael Carreras concerning what was felt to be an underwritten script. As it turned out, Hellman's three weeks of footage was stretched to create possibly as much as three quarters of Shatter. Carreras ended up spending six months shooting the other footage used fulfill feature length requirements. In the commentary, Hellman also mentions his several connections with Sam Peckinpah, including information that was new to me: Hellman turned down the offer to shoot Junior Bonner which turned out to be Peckinpah's warmest film, and Hellman had originally developed Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid which Peckinpah rescued from the shelf, only to have his own problems making the film his way. Even with Hellman identifying his own work, Shatter has no resemblance either in story or style to his previous films, although his composition and lighting are generally better than the work of Carreras.

The Shatter DVD includes an overview of Hammer crime thrillers made in 1990. Oliver Reed narrated this piece. While Reed can now be seen in DVD releases of Curse of the Werewolf, Night Creatures and Paranoiac, the best of the Hammer films, Joseph Losey's The Damned is only available on tape.

I saw Spun on DVD after a couple of attempts to watch it cable. The DVD is unrated which meant that certain images were not digitally altered and the characters spoke more freely. I think the film was meant to either a "stoner" comedy or a lesson explaining that lots of drugs plus a lack of sleep are not good for you. While Jonas Akerlund has a good eye, developed from several years of making music videos, I would like to see him use his talents on something of greater substance. What I did like about Spun was the attention to details, although some could argue that there may have been too much attention, such as the exteme close-ups of Mena Suvari's rotting teeth. The animated images that were digitally blurred make much more sense being seen uncensored, used as they were to convey extreme sexual fantasies of one of the characters. Without getting graphic myself, one can describe the images as being similar to what one might find in the most adult Japanese manga. While the DVD for Spun also comes with a director's commentary, I found myself having no patience for Akerlund's long pauses in discussing the film. In this case, even with what little it had to say, the film proves to be more eloquent than the filmmaker.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:26 PM

November 26, 2005

Siberian Lady Macbeth

Sibirska Ledi Magbet
Andrzej Wajda - 1961
Kino Video DVD

According to the Internet Movie Data Base, there are over 600 movies based on the plays of William Shakespeare, directly or indirectly. Several of the films were done by Orson Welles who based a substantial part of his career on the Bard. While I knew about Sci-Fi Shakespeare, Cowboy Shakespeare, and Punk Shakespeare, I even found Horror Movie Shakespeare and Porno Shakespeare. I've seen several films that were either based on the "Scottish play", including films by Kurosawa and Polanski. The play also inspired a comedy about small town ambitions.

If Shakespeare was one reason to check out this movie, Andrzej Wajda was the other incentive. I had seen two of his classic films, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds, as well as his later films made during the advent of Solidarity, such as Man of Iron. Seeing his version of Macbeth was another step in filling in the gaps I have regarding one of Poland's greatest filmmakers. What I hadn't anticipated is that while this film announces its Shakespearean source in the title, the other inspiration is clearly James M. Cain.

Officially, Wajda made an adaptation of the Dimitri Shostakovich opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. The songs were eliminated while the musical themes remained. Katerina is an unhappy wife of a prosperous peasant. A serf, Sergei, shows up looking for work. Katerina's boorish father-in-law hires the man to be a swineherd. Barely settled on the farm, Sergei flirts with Katerina. Pure animal passion follows, with the two making John Garfield and Lana Turner look like a model of decorum. Unlike Turner or Barbara Stanwyck, Katerina does the actual heavy lifting in dispatching her husband and father-in-law. Like in Cain's novels, the characters' greed leaves them with nothing in the end. Even some of the interior shots suggest Film Noir.

Wajda has an official website where he discusses Siberian Lady Macbeth. This is a film that the critics admired, but that the filmmaker found wanting. While not quite on the level of John Ford, Wajda's exterior shots are worth mentioning for conveying hostile environments, with the farm seemingly adrift in a sea of fog, and close-ups of bare feet marching on rock, snow and mud to Siberia. The story makes a brief nod to Richard III and is titled after Shakespeare's woman who would be queen. By the end of the film, Katerina made me think of another tragic character of film and literature, Mildred Pierce.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:41 PM

November 22, 2005

French Twists

Melo
Alain Resnais - 1986
MK2 PAL Region 2 DVD

Les Kidnappeurs/The Kidnappers
Graham Guit - 1998
Warner Brothers (France) PAL Region 2 DVD

Ever since I started really taking film seriously, I have consistently been puzzled by the abitrariness regarding the distribution of foreign films in the United States. The more I learned about different filmmakers, the more I learned of filmmakers or films that I couldn't see because they had no U.S. distributor. My assumption that certain filmmakers automatically would get shown because of their reputation proved false, even when I should have known better, when films by Fellini, or films with American stars failed even to get picked up by the smaller distributors. Even with the advent of DVDs and tape, there is no consistency. While I have seen some films that either did not get U.S. distribution, or were shown briefly in certain cities, other films remain unavailable. In the case of a foreign film being available on DVD, even if one has a region free DVD player, one still has to either purchase the film or, if available, rent a copy. While some rental companies are filling the gap with non-U.S. DVDs, the selection is often limited.

I was glad to see at least one newer film by Alain Resnais, even if the film proved to be a dissapointment. For U.S. audiences, Resnais would seem to have dropped off the map after Mon Oncle d'Amerique. I could understand why Melo wasn't picked up for showing in the U.S. The film is essentially a filmed play. Resnais' familiar themes of love, trust, betrayal and memory are there. The sets are gorgeous, and one can't fault the actors who have been part of Resnais' repertory company - Fanny Ardant, Sabine Azema, Andre Dussollier and Pierre Arditi. The wife of a musician has an affair with the musician's friend, a celebrated concert violinist in Paris, 1926. Resnais reminds us that the film is adapted from a play by beginning three sections with a shot of a red screen. There are films with people sitting around talking that hold your attention, as well as effectively filmed theater. As much as I recognize the formal qualities of Melo, I found myself impatient for the film to end. Even the DVDs trailer for I Want to Go Home, written by Jules Feiffer provided more pleasure.

I wasn't familiar with Graham Guit when I picked The Kidnappers for my rental list. I have been a fan of Elodie Bouchez since seeing The Dreamlife of Angels and wanted to see other films with her. I did see part of Pact of Silence on cable, but it was on at a too late hour for serious viewing. I would have thought, now that I've seen it, that even one of the smaller distributors would have envisioned a market for The Kidnappers.

The screenplay is credited to Guit and Eric Neve. The story and characters seem very influenced by Elmore Leonard. For anyone reading this who is not familiar with Leonard, many of his novels involve small time criminals who are either incompetent, or incompetent and psychotic. In this film, Bouchez and three young men attempt to steal money from some Lithuanian gangsters on behalf of a French mob boss. Of course the carefully planned heist goes wrong at every step. The gang of four snatch a package in a safe and the unlucky man who appears at the wrong place at the wrong time. The milieu even resembles Leonard's with sunny Cannes and Nice in place of Miami and Key West. For me, this is a film that could easily be appreciated by those who like Tarantino's Jackie Brown and Soderbergh's Out of Sight, as well as the darker films of the Coens.

Guit discusses some of the acting inpirations here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:25 AM

November 21, 2005

Two Hong Kong Dreams

The Blade
Dao
Tsui Hark - 1995
M.I.A. Video Region 2 DVD

Dream of the Red Chamber
Jin yu liang yuan gong lou meng
Li Han-Hsiang - 1977
Celestial Pictures Region 3 DVD

The Blade is unlike Tsui Hark's other period films. Where the action is clear and easy to follow, such as in the Once Upon a Time in China series, here it is more difficult to follow. Tsui's visual choices are deliberate and make sense at the conclusion of the film. Unlike the other films that can be read from the point of view of an objective observer, the visual motifs of The Blade are very subjective, even without the use of point of view shots.

The point of view is expressed by voice-over narration by Ling, the daughter of a master sword-maker. Her love of two younger sword-makers, On and Iron Head, is counterpointed with On's search for the man who killed his father. The story is secondary to the cascade of imagery. Much of the film is shot with tight close-ups or quick medium shots that render the action as a series of abstract images. Dark blue, brown and black dominate the color scheme with period splashes of red and orange. Often the characters are shot in shadow, or are seen distantly as indistinct shapes. Much of the action takes place at night. If it is sometimes difficult to tell who is fighting who, the action on screen replicates the sense of a disoriented person caught in mayhem.

Ling seeks a clearer sense of self, a sense of belonging. This quest for identity, for being part of a family or country is a common theme for Tsui, identified as a Hong Kong filmmaker, although culturally an outsider having been born in what is now Viet-Nam. Of the dozen films that I've seen that Tsui either fully directed or supervised as a hands-on producer, The Blade is visually unique in its representation of events seen through the haze of memory, or opium dreams.

Dream of the Red Chamber is more like the technicolor dreams of Vincente Minnelli. The camparison is not too far off as the film belongs to the Huangmexixi genre, a regional form of Chinese opera, with a story of the heartbreak of love, family discord, and concerns of social standing. Between the themes of the narrative and the lush use of color, Dream of the Red Chamber shares elements of Gigi, Meet Me in St. Louis and Home from the Hill.

The story is about two cousins in unrequited love. The female cousin, Lin, is of fragile health. Her suitor, Bao Yu, is an impulsive young man. The film was the last of the genre, a victim of changing tastes in the Hong Kong market. Li's films were expensive by Hong Kong standards, and Dream of the Red Chamber has an undeniable polish that equals Hollywood productions. If the film represented old style Hong Kong filmmaking, two of the stars became associated with Hong Kong's new wave of film school trained directors, particularly Tsui Hark. The actress who played Lin, Sylvia Chang, also is a screen writer and director. Bao Yu was portrayed by Brigitte Lin, the first of several male roles she essayed.

I am hoping to find some text or texts explaining gender roles in Hong Kong films. In films like Come Drink with Me (1966) with Cheng Pei-pei, or Dragon Inn (1992) with Maggie Cheung, a female character is temporarily disguised as a man. Lin also stars in this version of Dragon Inn, and the sparks are quite palpable in the scenes where she flirts with Cheung. Lin appears as a somewhat delicate young man in Dream of the Red Chamber, but it seems almost inevitable that she would play a character named Asia the Invincible.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:40 PM

November 19, 2005

Two by Dario Argento

Jenifer
Dario Argento - 2005
Showtime cablecast

The Card Player/ Il Cartaio
Dario Argento - 2004
Anchor Bay DVD

Except for the first episode which I missed, I've been watching the new Showtime series, Masters of Horror. The title is kind of generous considering the range of directors involved. As much as I liked
May, it's way to soon to declare Lucky McKee more than a promising new filmmaker. While Stuart Gordon's revisiting of H.P. Lovecraft was an intriguing series entry, but Tobe Hooper put me to sleep with a tale of punks after the apocalypse. I was very much looking forward to Dario Argento's American television debut. For those unfamiliar with Argento, his episode is not the best introduction.

Unlike Argento's other films, this is one project he did not originate. Visually, this film does not resemble Argento's other films with their extended, gliding camera work. Upon further research, Jenifer is shot to resemble a filmic version of the comic book story. The actual story is somewhat predictable, as well as supportive of the cliche that hot sex trumps everything else with some guys. Argento's frequent composer, Claudio Simonetti, contributed a score which strongly resembles Bernard Herrmann's music used in the opening credits of Psycho. While Argento pushed the limits of sex and gore on cable, there are still nine more episodes of Masters of Horror to go, and one is by the consistently transgressive Takashi Miike.

The Card Player is, by Argento's standards, a very restrained film. The film is closer in type to Argento's early features, a mystery thriller rather than a horror film. Some of the scenes play like a particularly graphic episode of C.S.I. The scenes of violence are shot and edited elliptically. The film concerns a female police detective who is seeking a serial killer who kidnaps young women. The women are potentially able to be freed if the detective wins at games of on-line poker. Argento spends more time with his characters doing detective work out in the streets, unlike some films involving computer shenanigans. While I'm not buying the "poker is life" metaphor that is expressed by the detective, The Card Player is engaging, and certainly better than Argento's previous film, Sleepless.

In addition to not dwelling on the violence, The Card Player visually is different from other Argento films. In one of the several supplements, Argento discusses shooting with available light, and using specially created street lights for some of the night time shoots. Even the narrative is stripped down with a brief psychological explanation for character motivation, without the childhood traumas of Deep Red or Tenebre. There is a history on the development of The Card Player at Dark Dreams. Argento's trademark black gloves are used once again as what the viewer sees identifying the killer. Unlike Jenifer, The Card Player has enough fingerprints to be a recognizable Argento film.

A postscript here: The Fangoria article title is a little joke. Michael Brandon next starred in Argento's Four Flies on Gray Velvet.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:24 PM

November 17, 2005

Last Days

Gus Van Sant - 2005
HBO Video Region 1 DVD

The same day that I viewed and wrote about Where the Truth Lies, the Self-Styled Siren (see link at right) posted a blog concerning biographical movies. While the major part of the siren's piece concerned actors who may not have physically appropriate to impersonate the real life characters, one aspect concerning virtually every film is the question of factualness. Where the Truth Lies avoids many of these problems by changing the names of characters, having them share some aspects of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, but also being more concerned with using the characters as a tangent from which to explore the nature of truth and paired relationships. Gus Van Sant tries to play it both ways by including a statement at the end of Last Days stating that his film was inspired by Kurt Cobain and is also a work of fiction. The fictional aspects of the film were out of necessity as there is very limited information concerning Cobain's activities prior to his suicide. As Van Sant is more concerned with the mood of the character, rather than reportage, on could call this an impressonistic biography.

Like his previous films, Elephant and Gerry, this is a very formal, sparse film. Van Sant frequently uses literal framing devices - window frames, door frames, television screens, and a fire place as part of his visual motifs. Also used are window reflections. One could say that while the characters in Last Days can sometimes observe each other, they are not capable of looking at themselves. Two key scenes are of the Cobain character, Blake, seen from a distance through windows, first playing guitars and a drum kit, and at the end when his dead body is discovered. Van Sant also uses the window pane frames as a ladder which Blake's ghost climbs. The ghost also resembles a reflection on a window.

Like Elephant, which was inspired by the student shooting at Columbine, Colorado, Van Sant does not offer explanations for Blake. We see Michael Pitt as Blake, virtually stumbling through a wooded area, his house and a guest house, mumbling to himself. A word or two may be picked up, but the bigger clues to the state of Blake's like are relayed by the people who talk to him, or talk about him. Visual clues to Blake's state of being are conveyed by the deteriorating interiors of his houses. The only time that Blake seems to be in control of his life is when he plays his music. Like some other artists, Blake can express himself more clearly through his art than he is able to verbally.

In an interview in The Guardian, Van Sant comments about Last Days being the last of a trilogy about death. While Last Days can not be called entertaining, it is for me, the most watchable of Van Sant's recent films. I do feel that as an artist, he is at a standstill. Perhaps this is a reflection of my own prejudices, but I realized while watch Last Days that Van Sant has never really made any films about adults. Virtually every protagonist has been an adolescent or post-adolescent male. Even Psycho's Norman Bates was adult only in age and not behavior. Maybe one can argue that Van Sant, as an artist, has chosen to live in his own private Idaho. To which I say, get out of that state, Gus.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:35 PM | Comments (1)

November 15, 2005

Belated Birthday Bash with Rene Clair

Under the Roofs of Paris
Sous les Toits de Paris
Rene Clair - 1930
Criterion Region 1 DVD

It Happened Tomorrow
Rene Clair - 1944
Kino Video DVD

Last Friday was my birthday. Like everyone else, I share my birthdate with lots of famous and not so famous people like the King of the World, Buddy Holly's doppelganger, a girl, interrupted, and the last guy who took on King Kong. Of the few filmmakers I share a birthday with, the one I like best is Rene Clair. I was hoping to see a couple of films by him on what would have been his 107th birthday but the films got delayed in transit.

I first got acquainted with Clair as a student at NYU when I saw a private screening of The Ghost goes West and I Married a Witch. I don't remember either film too well now except that it was pretty obvious that the second film was the inspiration for a famous television series. While some critics may carp on the fact that Clair was no longer the innovative filmmaker that he was in the silent era and early thirties, what makes Clair worth watching is his sense of fun. At a time when too many alleged comedies are ham-handed scenes of name calling and verbal abuse, Clair's gentle good humor is especially to be appreciated. Cute might be even be a good adjective for Clair's films.

Under the Roofs of Paris may be technically out of date, but the story could still be contemporary with some adjustments. The basic plot involves a street singer competing with a small time gangster for the love of a Romanian girl. The singer, Albert, also has a friendly rivalry with Louis. The girl, Pola, plays hard to get, but proves to be relatively easy in her affections. One could easily imagine the story reworked with a current urban setting involving a rap artist, Les Garcons dans le "Hood". I don't know the history of the making of the film but it is a hybrid, part talkie, part silent. Clair plays with the sound track by having an accordian player play The Wedding March after Albert announces his "engagement" to Pola. In a later scene, a record player gets stuck playing during a fight. Clair also has Pola and Albert arguing in a dark room, with their shadows partially visible. While the humor is not raucous, and the story hardly important, Clair loves his crooks and schnooks enough to elicit smiles throughout the film. I also enjoyed seeing, as Louis, Edmond Greville, who later became a director of some note.

It Happened Tomorrow is enjoyable on its own terms. The story, told in flashback, is of a newspaper reporter in 1894 who is given a copy of the next day's newspaper by a mysterious co-worker. The film's lesson is that knowing the future can have unanticipated problems and not be the advantage one may imagine. This makes the film kind of like Paycheck, only with fewer chases and much fewer guns. Dick Powell is amiable enough as the ambitious reporter, but one winces when he is called "young man". More fun are Linda Darnell as a fake psychic, and Jack Oakie, sporting an Italian accent and facial hair.

Rene Clair's career is one that went quickly from being the future of filmmaking to a symbol of the past. Still, those who have seen his films, such as Vladimir Nabokov always seem to remember this filmmaker with a smile.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:49 PM | Comments (2)

November 12, 2005

A Fistful of Poliziotteschi

Emergency Squad/Squadra Volante
Stelvio Massi - 1974
NoShame Region 1 DVD

The Last Round/Il Conte e Chiuso
Stelvio Massi - 1976
NoShame Region 1 DVD

A Man Called Magnum/Napoli Si Ribella
Michele Massimo Tarantini- 1977
NoShame Region 0 DVD

About a day before I left Miami Beach to avoid Hurricane Wilma, this latest shipment from NoShame arrived. While I had electricity to see the DVDs, my internet connection has still been inconsistent. I wasn't sure it I would be able to post reviews before the release of these titles this Tuesday.

Until I saw these films, I was not familiar with either Stelvio Massi or Michele Tarantini. These two filmmakers actually crossed paths professionally with The Case of the Bloody Iris, with Tarantini serving as the assistant director, and Massi as cinematographer. Tarantini even credits Iris director Giuliano Carnimeo with elevating him to the director's chair. Otherwise, Massi's best known credits would be as camera operator for A Fistful of Dollars, as well as cinematographer on a couple of Django and Sartana spaghetti westerns. The only familiar title on Tarantini's filmography for me was Sergio Martino's Torso.

Emergency Squad features Tomas Milian as a grubby, independent detective who goes after the gangster who killed his wife five years earlier. The gang has just committed a payroll heist, and one of the bullets is identified as being from the same gun as was used on Milian's wife. The gangster, known as Marseilles, obviously feels more attached to his firearms than to the rest of his gang who he kills off as part of his plan. An even less believable plot point has Milian shooting at the gang from a helicopter chasing their car at high speed. The DVD features an interview with Massi that was conducted just prior to his death. His wife is heard off-screen sometimes filling in where Massi's memory fails him. The interview with Milian, who began his career studying under Lee Strasberg, reveals an actor who often felt superior to the films he starred in, and often was.

Even the liner notes with The Last Round DVD fully admit that the basic story is a variation of Red Harvest/Yojimbo/Fistful of Dollars. What I didn't know was that the skinny guy who's the hero of the film, Carlos Monzon, was a World Middleweight boxing champion in the 70s. The other casting twist is to have Luc Merenda, usually cast as the hero, play the charismatic crime boss of one of the two rival families. Monzon's real life mistress, actress Susana Gimenez plays a stipper with an unusual, interactive performance. The film is enhanced by Luis Bacalov's score which uses pan flutes and harps. The DVD features Luc Merenda showing off some of the items in his antique store. Retired from acting since 1992, the 63 year old Merenda seems both pleased and bewildered by the renewed interest in films he made thirty years ago. The DVD also includes a CD titled The Eclectic Ultimate Cinedelic Experience (Funky Cops and Hard Boiled Girls) performed by a group called Entropia. With snippets of dialogue from the films, this is something for the hard core fans to enjoy.

Merenda is seen to better effect in A Man Called Magnum. According to the DVD notes, director Michele Tarantini had an uneven career. Be that as it may, Tarantini certainly put his creative energies to full use in this film. Visually, Tarantini alternates between low angle shots, extreme close ups, and shots from the level of a child, kind of like a mash up of Ozu, Leone and Truffaut. Merenda plays the no-nonsense Milanese cop sent to Naples to bust the mob. The short, balding Enzo Cannavale provides comic relief as Merenda's Neopolitan partner. The gorgeous Sonia Viviano is also featured. While Merenda and Cannavale are after the mob, the mob boss wants to know who stole the latest shipment of dope. The action is punctuated with several chase scenes including one in a greenhouse, as well as a couple of well done car chase scenes with stunts one never thought one would see performed with humble Fiat sedans. The DVD looks great, and with an Italian language track in 5.1 Dolby probably sounds better than the film did in its initial release. Also worth mentioning is a subtitled commentary track by Tarantini. While Tarantini doesn't have much to say about A Man Called Magnum, he is interesting to listen to in discussing the history of his own career as well as discussing other little-known or forgotten Italian directors. One interesting bit of news is that he mentions being the cousin of Sergio and Luciano Martino. As the old joke goes, sometimes the family that plays together, slays together.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:53 PM

November 09, 2005

Initial D

Tau Man Chi D
Andrew Lau & Alan Mak - 2005
Media Asia Region 3 DVD

Maybe my expectations were unfounded. Initial D is the newest film from the team of Lau and Mak following their Infernal Affairs trilogy. This new film was also one of the big hits of the past summer in Asia, besting such fare as Mr. and Mrs. Smith to the surprise of those following the business of entertainment. I suppose that based on its success, that Lau and Mak achieved the goal of creating another franchise. As films on race car drivers go, this one could be titled, "Fast, but not Furious".

The title refers to a racing style called "drifting" which essentially means driving around tight corners at about 100 miles per hour, or roughly the same speed as most motorists here in Miami Beach in my neighborhood. The film is based on a very popular Japanese manga, and the film is a Japanese-Hong Kong co-production. The manga has already been the source of an anime series, and at one point Initial D was to have been directed by Tsui Hark. The film is centered on a young man, Takumi, who drives through a mountain highway, very fast, in a 1986 Toyota AE86, a car that is somewhat like a Corolla hatchback. No matter how fast he drives, Takumi usually has his head in his hand, resembling a bored high school student sitting through yet another soon to be forgotten lecture.

More effort was put into special effects including computer animation and multiple screen shots, than in creating an interesting story. Going through the credits, it became apparent that the film was also set up to be a, pardon me, vehicle for Taiwanese star Jay Chou, who not only plays the sullen hero, but also sings much of the rap inspired soundtrack. The actress playing the would-be girlfriend, Anne Suzuki, is blandly attractive. Even the usually reliable Anthony Wong is wasted as Takumi's perpetully drunken father.

Unlike Rob Cohen's Fast and the Furious and similar American films, Initial D seems addressed for a younger audience. The level of broad humor is at best adolescent. The young actors look like they could still be in high school. Even the racing sequences fail to impress although again one can see the influence of Cohen's popular film. Even the studio fabricated car chase of Don Siegel's The Line-Up was more suspenseful. It was pretty much a given that Jay Chou would win his races, making me almost as bored as Chou looks thoughout the film. Even Renny Harlin's supremely silly Driven had more visceral pleasure. Jay Chou may be a very popular young star in Asia, but when it comes to racing films, I'd rather it be fueled by Vin Diesel.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:27 PM | Comments (2)

November 08, 2005

Spider Forest

Geomi Sup
Song Il-gon - 2004
Universal (Korea) Region 0 DVD

First, a shout out to Filmbrain, who wrote about Spider Forest in his own blog, and has been a great source for reading up on Korean Cinema. I have been doing some exploration on my own, but he has clued me in on some films and filmmakers I might otherwise have overlooked.

I may be exaggerating a bit, but for me, Spider Forest comes close to what one would get if Alain Resnais made a ghost story set in Korea. More than anything, this is a film about memory, about the real and imagined past. The narrative is similar to Je t'aime, je t'aime and Providence. Because of the circular construction of the narrative, the storyline remains unresolved, as if to suggest that there could be multiple variations of the main character's dreams and memories.

The main character, Min, is a documentary filmmaker. After being found nearly dead after being hit by an SUV, a police detective attempts to piece together the events that led to Min's hospitalization. Both documentary filmmaker and police detective have jobs based on the collecting and communicating facts. The conclusion of Spider Forest is that facts are subjective and subject to contradiction by other, possibly subjective, facts. Relationships are frequently tentative, based on shifting needs and outside influences. Even if people do not undermine others for possible individual advantage, several of the characters undermine themselves in big and small ways, such as Min's reliance on his faulty memory, or the detective forgetting to turn off his cell phone, which rings the French Can-Can song, moments before a bust.

The mood of Spider Forest graduates to an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss. On a very basic level, the film is a mystery and horror thriller. More important though is the question of how we remember people and how we may want them to remember us. The legend of the forest is that the many spiders are the souls of the forgotten deceased. As in the films of Resnais, memory can be both a self-constructed prison and a means of liberation.

More on Song can be found in Senses of Cinema.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:36 AM | Comments (1)

November 07, 2005

One Missed Call

Chakushin Ari
Takashi Miike - 2003
Tokyo Shock Region 1 DVD

I couldn't go through October without one horror film from Takashi Miike. One Missed Call is somewhat atypical of Miike. Most of the film is slow and deliberately paced, with bits of flash cutting at several key points, but closer in style to Audition. Though there is some graphic horror, it is relatively restrained, especially compared to Ichi the Killer. There is even an absence of the gross out humor that one finds in films like Citizen Q or even Gozu.

One Missed Call is somewhat closer in spirit to Ringu and Ju-On. A group of college students receive messages on their cell phones that are dated a couple of days in advance. The messages are preceded by a ring-tone that does not belong to the phone. The students hear there own voices with their last words just before they die. The next person to die is someone listed in the previous victim's cell phone address book.

The main character is a college student, Yumi, who is studying Child Psychology. Eventually it is revealed that she was a victim of child abuse who is forced to address her past in order to seek out the source of the deadly phone calls. As interesting as Yumi's story is, and as intriguing as the mystery of the calls is, the story makes little sense when attempting to tie the various threads together. I've seen several J-Horror films and know that they have their own kind of logic. Even on their own terms, films like Ringu or Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films do not require an extreme amout of suspension of disbelief. Where One Missed Call doesn't work is that it tries to say something serious about child abuse, suggests that the dead have their own separate heaven, but can't take the time to explain the connection between the "killer" and the first victim. I can accept a "dead" cell phone receiving a call, but I have trouble with sloppy story telling.

Even if the narrative does not hold up, Miike's imagery is consistent. Miike constrasts crowds of people, with shots of characters alone or with one other person. The contrasts are also between spiritual and physical isolation, as well as the sense of connection between people, through bonds created by family or technology. While not on the level of Audition, Miike creates a sense of dread with slow tracking shots with people in very lonely places.

Miike's own take on One Missed Call fron an interview in The Film Asylum: "At present there are a lot of Japanese movies about ghost stories which are becoming popular on an international level. This film takes the ghost story format in a different direction. A ghost is always challenging the main female protagonist but at the last they have a meeting point. Therefore it offers a difference to other movies of this type as the two come together."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:16 AM

November 06, 2005

Castle of Blood

Castle of Blood/Danse Macabre
Anthony Dawson (Antonio Margheriti) - 1964
Synapse Films DVD

My internet is working very intermittently. I am trying to play catch up with some films I saw starting last week when I returned home. I wrote about several films but have done no postings until now.

Castle of Blood is the kind of film that use to appear on late night broadcast television back about thirty years ago. It's not particularly scary but it is spooky. Stylistically the film is based on the template established by Mario Bava's Black Sunday including the casting of Barbara Steele. The film is so visually dark, with minimal light resembling illumination by a candle or two, with much of the screen in shadows or totally black, that one can imagine the unease of watching this film in a movie theater.

The basic premise is that a mid-19th century journalist, Alan Foster, bets that he can live through the night at a supposedly haunted castle. The people who previously died in the castle are to come back to life on this night. In setting up the story, Foster meets up with Edgar Allan Poe, visiting London, and the castle's owner, a gentleman with a dark secret. Foster takes the bet to disprove Poe's assertion that his stories are all factual. Most of this business was just a roundabout way of cashing in on the popularity of the Roger Corman films based on Poe's stories. Amazingly, the film was written by Sergio Corbucci under the name of Gordon Wilson Jr., one of the more credible Anglo pseudonyms used in this movie.

Margheriti gets a lot of milage out of the aforementioned use of light, as well as some cobwebs and dry ice. With her huge eyes and gaunt face, Steele is photographed in such a way that emphasises her skull-like appearance. The DVD was taken from a French version of the film which was apparently the most complete version available. I saw the film with a primarily English language track which jumped into French at certain moments. The advantage was seeing what scenes were edited for the American release including a couple of shots more clearly indicating off screen sexual activity, a suggestion of lesbianism, and a brief topless scene. Sometimes there is an advantage to waiting forty years to see a film on DVD.

A very smart essay on Margheriti can be found at Senses of Cinema

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:29 AM | Comments (1)

October 19, 2005

Invaders from Mars

William Cameron Menzies - 1953
Image Region 1 DVD

Last July, I wrote about The Red Shoes in response to reading a list created by Martin Scorsese of films featuring the best use of color.

This is his list:

English Language Films (in alphabetical order)

Barry Lyndon (1975, Dir. Stanley Kubrick; Cin. John Alcott)
Duel in the Sun (1946, Dir. King Vidor; Cin. Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan, Hal Rosson)
Invaders From Mars (1953, Dir. William Cameron Menzies; Cin. John F. Seitz)
Leave Her to Heaven (1946, Dir. John M. Stahl; Cin. Leon Shamroy)
Moby Dick (1956, Dir. John Huston; Cin. Oswald Morris)
Phantom of the Opera (1943, Dir. Arthur Lubin; Cin. W. Howard Greene, Hal Mohr)
The Red Shoes (1948, Dir. Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger; Cin. Jack Cardiff)
The Searchers (1956, Dir. John Ford; Cin. Winton C. Hoch)
Singin' in the Rain (1952, Dir. Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly; Cin. Harold Rosson)
Vertigo (1958, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock; Cin. Robert Burks)

International Films (in alphabetical order)

Contempt (1963, Dir. Jean-Luc Godard; Cin. Raoul Coutard; France/Italy)
Cries and Whispers (1972, Dir. Ingmar Bergman; Cin. Sven Nykvist; Sweden)
Gate of Hell (1953, Dir. Teinosuke Kinugasa; Cin. Kohei Sugiyama; Japan)
In the Mood For Love (2000, Dir. Wong Kar-Wai; Cin. Christopher Doyle, Mark Lee Ping-bin; Hong Kong)
The Last Emperor (1987, Dir. Bernardo Bertolucci; Cin. Vittorio Storaro; Italy/United Kingdom/China/Hong Kong)
Red Desert (1964, Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni; Cin. Carlo Di Palma; France/Italy)
The River (1951, Dir. Jean Renoir; Cin. Claude Renoir; India/France/United States)
Satyricon (1969, Dir. Federico Fellini; Cin. Giuseppe Rotunno; Italy/France)
Senso (1954, Dir. Luchino Visconti; Cin. G.R. Aldo, Robert Krasker, Giuseppe Rotunno; Italy)
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1964, Dir. Sergei Paradjanov; Cin. Viktor Bestayev, Yuri Ilyenko; Russia/Ukraine)

I never saw the original Invaders from Mars, but I did see the previews to Tobe Hooper's remake about twenty years ago.

If the story seems cliched, this is probably the film that provided the template for future science fiction films. While nobody thought to control the phone lines in this film, allowing the military to save the day, there were a couple of little twists with the characters that were interesting. A major plot point is that people who have encountered the Martians turn into emotionless slaves, doing subversive work on behalf of the invaders. Menzies shows in close-up, the wicked smile of a young girl who has just set fire to her own house. Conversely, it is revealed that her seemingly emotionless scientist father is exactly that, an emotionless man untouched by the Martians.

I had no idea who Helena Carter was, other than that she was not the wife of the director of Mars Attacks. Those who love Fifties television may get a chuckle out of seeing uncredited cameos from the future Mel Cooley or Lumpy's dad and yes, Beaver's mom. One of the "mutants" was the same actor who played Gort, the giant robot, in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Menzies, who was the production designer on Gone with the Wind, has shots of a small bridge that are framed to look similar to shots of Tara. A sense of unreality is created with some sparsely decorated interiors and long hallways. In terms of use of color, much of the film is in shades of dark blue, black and brown, with the Martian and his "mutants" in green with ray guns that emit a red light. Even though care is shown in the color and composition of the film, some of the effects are spoiled by the screamingly obvious zippers on the back of the "mutants" rubber suits.

Maybe I'm missing something that Scorsese appreciates, but I would cite other films for their use of color instead of Invaders from Mars. A film I would nominate for best use of color is William Wellman's Track of the Cat, a film that appears to be in black and white except for the extremely limited use of other colors. The film, a commercial failure, was John Wayne's gift to Wellman after the success of The High and the Mighty. A boy's nightmare about Martians is somewhat amusing, but the real goods, both in story and artistry, are seen in the figure of Robert Mitchum, a dark figure in a red coat, almost lost in a white plain of snow.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:29 PM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2005

Two "Without a Face"

Eyes Without a Face
Les Yeux sans Visage
Georges Franju - 1959
Criterion Region 1 DVD

Fiend Without a Face
Arthur Crabtree - 1958
Criterion Region 1 DVD

I'm back in Holloween mode today. I live only a couple of blocks from the main Miami Beach branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library, and have been trying to take advantage of viewing the Criterion DVDs in their collection. It has been close to thirty years since I saw Eyes Without a Face, and figured that while I was at it, I would check out the film with the similar title.

Probably more people have heard Billy Idol's song than have, or will, see this film. Georges Franju is a filmmaker one could read about but was rarely shown even in revival houses. Even when I lived in New York City, I had an easier time seeing Judex, which I saw twice. Aside from seeing Eyes once theatrically, I saw a special screening of Thomas the Imposter. Even now, his films have yet to be available on DVD in France. One would assume greater care and attention would be given to the co-founder of the Cinematheque Francaise.

I had to wonder if Alfred Hitchcock had seen the film prior to Psycho, due primarily to the script contributions of Boileau and Narcejac. I also had to wonder how a younger audience that grew up watching more graphic horror would judge Eyes. It seemed odd to think that a film considered too horrifying for film audiences shows so much less than the typical episode of Nip/Tuck on basic cable. What makes Eyes Without a Face a film worth seeing again is watching Edith Scob wearing her mask, a smooth, doll-like face without lines or expression, trapped in the cliche that beauty is literally only skin deep.

The DVD also includes Franju's documentary about Paris slaughterhouses, Blood of the Beasts. I still remain an unapologetic carnivore, but for vegans or members of P.E.T.A this film may seem like Resnais' Night and Fog, with disturbing frankness rendered in artistic imagery. The DVD contains two interviews with Franju discussing Eyes, and interviews with Boileau and Narcejac where they explain their history of collaboration and working style. Criterion even included that American trailer from 1962 when Eyes Without a Face was released as Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus. At the time, United Artists paired the film with The Manster (half-man, half-monster!). With both films available on DVD, one could recreate this double feature, but it may be like pairing a fine, Parisian meal with a bottle of Sprite.

I tried watching Fiend Without a Face a couple of times on television without success. Invisible creatures killing farmers and soldiers didn't hold my attention. I watched the film with a commentary track conducted by a writer, Tom Weaver, with executive producer Richard Gordon. It was through the commentary that I was clued in to wait for the last fifteen minutes which were said to have appalled censors and film critics. The fiends, when they finally materialize, are big brains with spinal column tails, antennas, and feelers. The stop motion photography looks a little primitive, even compared to special effects of that time. Still, there is a thrill watching these creatures fly in the air, crawl on trees, and terrorize Marshall Thompson and company. Reportedly, the shots of the creatures oozing blood and other sticky matter following gun shots and axings set a new standard for gore in movies. I guess paving the way for the future of horror films is a good enough criteria for Criterion.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:28 PM

October 14, 2005

Clean

Olivier Assayas - 2004
Edko Region 3 DVD

Having seen all of Olivier Assayas' films since Irma Vep, I made a point of seeing Clean. Also, my significant other is a fan of Assayas after seeing Demonlover, so much so, that I got her the special edition DVD of that film. Palm Pictures has the U.S. rights but I don't know their release plans. This is not a visceral film like Demonlover. While more downbeat, Clean has more in common with Assayas earlier films about the dynamics of family relationships.

Maggie Cheung plays the widow of a former rock star who died from a heroin overdose. Cheung also is a junkie. Following her six month in prison, she attempts to clean up her life in order to regain custody of her son. The movie follows her odyssey of revisiting her past before she can create a possible future.

A summery of the narrative makes the film seem like a series of cliches. On a superficial level this may be true. Even having a heroin addict rock star and his Asian wife clearly evokes the legend of John and Yoko. Where Assayas does not take short cuts is in giving his characters their dignity as well as a sense of intelligence and humanity. Nick Nolte has the opportunity to have the kind of multifaceted performance he is denied in other movies as Cheung's father-in-law. By turns Nolte is warm, tough, pragmatic and certainly nobody's fool. Nolte even conveys his character's sense of being a bit above his head at a record company meeting, determining the marketing of his son's albums. Without having to explain himself verbally, one can see that Nolte's character is more comfortable in his remote Canadian town, than dealing with art and business in London. When Cheung's screen son repeats his grandmother's statement that drug addicts are weak, Cheung patiently explains that the reasons for addiction are complicated. Unlike most recent American film that present broad characters and disallow ambiguity, the characters in Clean have individual shadings.

As a movie about the rock music world, the soundtrack is eclectic. Tricky, who I haven't heard in quite a while, appears as himself and is filmed in performance. Three older instrumental pieces from Brian Eno are used. Maggie Cheung also sings, in character, in English, quite well. Interestingly, unlike many of her peers, Cheung isn't a Canto-pop performer such as her Heroic Trio co-star, Anita Mui.

For some comments from Cheung and Assayas at the Cannes Film Festival check here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:16 PM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2005

The Brain from the Planet Arous

Nathan Hertz (Nathan Juran) - 1957
Image Region 1 DVD

I hope that I am not doing a diservice by writing about The Brain from the Planet Arous. It's one of those films that has to be seen to be appreciated. The Nathan Juran filmography should be appreciated for films that are as enjoyable as they are trivial. While Brain is not as good as Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman or Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, it is certainly more entertaining than Hellcats of the Navy, the film that brought Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis together on screen.

Earth is invaded by a giant flying brain with eyes named Gor. Gor attaches himself to scientist Steve March, a noted nuclear scientist, with the goal of taking over Earth and going back to conquer his own planet. Gor decides that March's fiancee Sally is "exciting", providing extra incentive for taking over March's body. When Gor uses March to display his psychic powers, March looks like the guy in those commercials for male 'enhancement" products with his wide eyes and big grin.

This is one very libinous movie. Thanks to Gor, March is seen having sex on the brain, as it were. After his first encounter with Gor, he returns to have a close encounter with Sally, partially ripping off her shirt. The name of the planet rhymes with Eros, although the way March acts, the name of the planet could be Arouse. When he's not hiding in March's body, Gor is flying around in crummy superimposition shots, letting us know that he's hot for this particular Earth girl who refuses to be easy.

Sure you can see the strings, and the exploding airplanes look like models stuffed with firecrackers. There is one nice visual touch, when John Agar, the actor playing March, is talking to Sally's father. Indicating horrors to come, Agar's face is photographed distorted behind a water cooler. A similar effect was done by Frank Tashlin with Jerry Lewis in Artists and Models. Discussing his craft, Juran commented: "I approached the picture business as a business. I always did pictures for the money, and for the creative challenges. I wasn't a born director. I was just a technician who could transfer the script from the page to the stage and could get it shot on schedule and on budget. I never became caught up in the 'romance' of the movies."

Juran may have been a pragmatist with no artistic pretenses, but he produced enough cinematic fun that he was certainly more than a hack.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:00 AM | Comments (2)

October 12, 2005

Wes Craven's New Nightmare

Wes Craven - 1994
New Line Home Video DVD

I'm probably like a lot of other people who love movies in that I also love movies about movies. I even took a class at NYU where we saw Contempt and Man with a Movie Camera. New Nightmare is more self-referential than any sustained effort by Godard. To me it was appropriate to watch the film with Wes Craven's commentary which added to the film's doubling up on itself.

Made ten years after the original Nightmare, the story is essentially about the efforts to make a new Nightmare movie with Wes Craven playing himself, and original Nightmare actress Heather Langenkamp as herself. Simultaneous to Langenkamp's meeting with real life New Line staffers, she also has nightmares about Freddy Krueger. As it turns out, she's not the only one with new nightmares. Craven made this film to rescue Krueger from the sequels which reduced Krueger to the Shecky Green of serial killers.

In addition to dreams and dreams within dreams, Craven further has the "reality" of the characters blend into their screen characters. At one point, Langenkamp is not only playing "herself" but also, with self-awareness, forced play Nancy, her character in the first film when she realizes that she is no longer speaking to John Saxon, but to her on-screen father. At a couple of points, Craven shows parts of the screenplay of the scene we have just seen. Craven also plays with Freddy Krueger's celebrity status, creating the word "Freddie-isms" in his commentary. We see Freddie Krueger fans dressed in striped sweaters and fedoras at a talk show, a Warhol style series of Freddie Krueger portraits at the New Line office, and actor Robert Englund doing a parody of himself as Freddy Krueger. At several points in the film, clips from the first Nightmare on Elm Street appear featuring Heather Langenkamp.

Based on what I've read about him, I suspect Wes Craven is a lot smarter than his movies. I suspect New Nightmare didn't fare as well at the box office as the other Nightmare sequels because it was in part an examination of itself and the genre of horror movies. Less deliberately funny, Craven also created tension by contrasting reel horror with real horror, with shots from a real Los Angeles area earthquake. While not a project that Craven originated, the Scream series indicated that audiences were ready to get in on the joke of a self-referential horror movie, as long as it remained a joke for both the film makers and the audience. In some ways this was a twist on the film that established Craven's reputation, the sometimes too realistic Last House on the Left. On that film, the ads admonished the audience to tell themselves, "It's only a movie".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:29 PM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2005

The Brain Eaters

Bruno VeSota - 1958
Direct Video Pal Region 0 DVD

Back in the mid-Seventies, there was a New York City television station that use to broadcast vintage Roger Corman productions on Saturday mornings. When you really think about it, the best way of seeing a cheap little black and white horror movie is on your basic black and white television, which comprised my home entertainment system thirty years ago.

I had forgotten that I had seen The Brain Eaters those many years ago until I saw it again on DVD. The film is less lurid than its title. The creatures are parasites that look like furry snails. Attaching themselves to the back of the neck, the creatures cause humans to turn into enslaved zombies. More effort was probably expended in making the creatures, fur covered wind-up toys with pipe cleaner antennas, than in the actual story. While there was an out of court settlement with Robert Heinlein regarding the story, one could also see bits of Invasion of the Body Snatchers as well.

Overlooking the lack of originality, The Brain Eaters still has its moments of slapdash charm. One scene has a parasite point of view shot in the bedroom of Alice, the hero's girlfriend. After the parasite hops on the bed and onto the neck of the sleeping victim, we next see Alice walking out of her house in a translucent robe. We can tell Alice is in a zombie state because she gets into a car and slams the door with her robe sticking partially out. The actress who played Alice, Joanna Lee must have seen the writing on the wall when her following film was released and she concentrated her talents behind the screen.

Bruno VeSota, if he's remembered at all, is for many supporting roles, usually in various Corman films. While he only directed three films, his first, Female Jungle, was one of the earliest releases by American Releasing Corporation, the company that soon was renamed American International Pictures.
VeSota must have really loved The Third Man because there is one scene, in an office, with several shots at odd angles, such as Carol Reed used in the beginning of his classic. Either that, or VeSota and company were stuck shooting with a broken tripod. The version of The Brain Eaters I saw was from the British "Arkoff Collection", which includes an interview A.I.P. chief Sam Arkoff conducted in England about fifteen years ago. For those who really love A.I.P. movies may want to also check here.

If Bruno VeSota and Roger Corman weren't worried about the sources for their story, they certainly weren't worried about music credits either. This film has the only IMDB credit for someone named Tom Jonson. My NYU buddy, Ric Menello is certain that Arthur Honneger's Pacific 231 was used for part of the score. Maybe the filmmakers used Tom Jonson's record collection for the music.

Though he's disguised in make-up, Leonard Nimoy makes an appearance. Even in the world of Star Trek, there is one degree of separation with Roger Corman as only four years later Corman would direct a little film titled The Intruder, starring William Shatner.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:37 PM | Comments (2)

October 08, 2005

Two "Women of a Certain Age" films

The Driver's Seat
Identikit
Giuseppe Patroni Griffi - 1974
Cheezy Flicks DVD

The Mother
Roger Michell -2003
Sony Pictures Classics Region 1 DVD

There are films that I should probably have resisted pairing up. There are certainly films I should not bother to have seen. This is certainly one of those times.

The Driver's Seat may well be one of the worse films I have ever seen. Considering I see on average a different movie every day, I think that's saying a lot. This is not entertaining badness like Plan Nine from Outer Space. This is what the hell was anyone thinking, appallingly bad. Even though the film is based on a book by Muriel Spark, the film still seems like everyone made it up as they went along.

When Liz, in all her blowsy glory, complains about the fabric of a dress, or yells for service in a department store, or just walking past lines at an airport, she seemed to be behaving as the pampered person she's been most of her life. Taylor stomps around Rome, spurning several would-be admirers, declaring that she has other interests besides sex. At least when you see her demanding to go to a Hilton hotel, you know that La Liz carries no grudges against past husbands.

Astonishingly, this film had Vittorio Storaro as cinematographer, and Franco Arcalli as editor. It's hard to judge the photography on this film as the DVD version is a full frame version of a film that was shot in a wider format, and the print seems very washed out and not always in focus. Storaro and Arcalli would work to better effect a couple years later on Bertolucci's epic 1900. Wondering in and out of the film are the terrific character actors Mona Washbourne and Ian Bannen. Andy Warhol appears in a cameo for no particular reason. He's suppose to be playing the part of an English Lord, but all you can think of is that Andy Warhol appears to stop this film dead in its tracks. I guess some people will do almost anything for a free trip to Rome.

Liz Taylor could have possibly starred in the title role of The Mother had she continued to concentrate on acting rather than being a living legend. This is a heartfelt film about age and loneliness. Like other films written by Hanif Kureishi, this is confrontational in its own way. Instead of the rage of Sammy and Rosie get Laid, we are forced to consider the sexual longings of older people. Even the younger actors are drab looking. A scruffy looking Daniel Craig hardly looks like the object of lust. The film contrasts the difference between the body as seen in life and various artistic representations, life as lived in the present tense and life past in writing. The Mother is almost like being visited by a real life relative: you recognize the sincerity, you feel uncomfortable, you're glad you spent time together, and you breathe easier when it's over.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:54 PM

October 07, 2005

The Changeling

Peter Medak - 1980
HBO Home Video DVD

I finally decided to see The Changeling after twenty-five years. Part of my wanting to see it is historical. There was a mansion near where I use to live in the Capitol Hill section of Denver that was said to be haunted and the inspiration for the movie as well. That building has since been converted to several offices after being empty for several years.

The Changeling stands between Robert Wise's The Haunting and Jan DeBont's The Haunting as hauted house movies go. It's not as explicit as later horror films, but after it's not particularly subtle either. George C. Scott moves to Washington state after seeing his wife and daughter killed in an accident. A composer, he wants to move to a place where he can play his piano without disturbing anyone. He moves from a large New York City apartment to a large, haunted house about the size of the palace at Versailles. Things go bump in the night and day, basically whenever the ghost of a dead boy wants to annoy Scott.

I know that The Changeling has its fans. For me it had a couple of good moments. I have seen a fair number of Peter Medak's films. I wish I could make better sense of a career that has one classic, a cult film, and prime cheese. While there was a jolt from a scene with a shattered mirror, seeing Trish Van Devere chased by a wheel chair provoked guffaws instead of chills. The film's best performance belongs, not surprisingly, to Melvyn Douglas. In a relatively small role, Douglas fills his part with a genuine sense of anger and sadness as a very wealthy man with a very dark secret.

In the early part of his career, Douglas appeared in James Whale's The Old Dark House and The Vampire Bat. He closed out his career with The Changeling and Ghost Story. Maybe after almost fifty years, Douglas decided the time was right to revisit cinematic haunts.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:03 PM

October 06, 2005

Partner

Partner
Bernardo Bertolucci - 1968
NoShame Region 0 DVD

His Day of Glory
La Sua Giornata di Gloria
Edoardo Bruno - 1969
NoShame Region 0 DVD

I have to admit that when I see a film like Partner more than thirty years later, I feel distant from the person I was when I saw the film in its New York release. I missed the presentation at the New York Film Festival in 1968, but saw the film in a critics' screening in early 1974. At the time, Last Tango in Paris had been in U.S. distribution for a year and New Yorker Films had hoped there would be interest in his earlier work. For myself, I was a graduate student at NYU and interested in those filmmakers who were "revolutionary" both in content and style.

Partner is an admittedly experimental film by Bertolucci. It is in fact his last such film, followed first by the more classical Spider's Strategem for Italian television, followed by The Conformist. A loose version of Dostoevsky's The Double, the story is of a somewhat hysterical theater teacher and his double, a cool revolutionary activist and killer. Pierre Clementi's alternating between detached and manic, in combination with some of the comic moments, made me think of Partner as the Marxist version of Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor.

The Lewis comparison is appropriate as Lewis often make verbal and visual references to other films as does that well-known fan of Lewis, Jean-Luc Godard. Partner is Bertolucci's most Godardian film with a visual style using extensive tracking shots and pans, scenes of Clementi reading aloud from a book on theater theory, as well as uses of music and silence. Bertolucci goes so far in his visual gags to show some theater students in masks reminiscent of the Odyssey characters in Contempt, his own version of the runaway baby carriage from Potemkin, and even shows Pierre Clementi Shoot the Piano Player.

Much of the discussion of theater is based on the work of Antonin Artaud, not coincidentally the author of Theater and its Double. Partner does have its less intellectual pleasures such as my favorite moment, when Clementi is walking alone and watches his giant shadow start moving by itself, turning around to chase after Clementi.

The DVD comes with a documentary that coincided with the release of The Dreamers, Bertolucci's look back at events in Paris in May of 1968. Partner was shot during the time of the May strikes, and used some of the slogans as reported by Clementi. Bertolucci also explains how the film used in camera special effects to film Clementi twice, and used direct sound at a time when Italian films were normally shot silently and dubbed afterwards. The DVD also includes an interview with editor Roberto Perpignani, who worked with Bertolucci on several early features through Last Tango in Paris.

In an act of film scholarship that rivals Criterion, NoShame included a second feature with Partner, His Day of Glory. Seen very briefly in 1969, this film also tries to dramatise the political scene of 1968. Film critic Eduardo Bruno and students from Centro Sperimentale have used the writings and theories from Bertolt Brecht in this story about revolutionaries. A good chunk of the film is of several activists sitting around, discussing theory and action. Bertolucci donated some rushes to Bruno, who in turn redubbed the dialogue of a scene showing Clementi leading his students in street theater. If Bruno's dialogue is more dense and intellectual, the scenes by the two film makers still are somewhat similar in intent and are complimentary. The ending of the film made me think of Bertolucci and his quote from Talleyrand: Those who haven't known life before the revolution cannot know how sweet it is. The interview with Bruno that is part of the DVD is immeasurably helpful in putting this film in context and spotlighting the extraordinary efforts of NoShame in making His Day of Glory available after thirty-six years.

In viewing His Day of Glory, I had to wonder about the fate of a similar project I was involved in. Street Scenes was originally made to be credited to a collective known as New York Cinetracts. Sometime over the summer of 1970, the film was completed with individual credits. Some of those involved have since become quite famous. More or less a documentary about the student protests that followed the U.S. invasion of Cambodia and the killing of students at Kent State University, the film has, to the best of my knowledge, not been seen since its screening at the 1970 New York Film Festival. I had to reflect on the urgency felt at the time the film was made, thinking it would be seen by a much larger, national audience. I don't think a lot of time was spent thinking about who the audience for the film would be, or there was perhaps an assumption that this would speak to other students. I had to wonder how Street Scenes would look after thirty-five years. Maybe it would also be of historical interest to somebody. Would I feel nostalgia or discomfort were I to see it again? I probably will never know. I can only remember my own brief moment of being a revolutionary filmmaker, or more precisely, a production assistant revolutionary.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:46 PM

October 04, 2005

Two by Michael Powell

Ill Met by Moonlight
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger - 1957
Carlton PAL Region 2 DVD

They're a Weird Mob
Michael Powell - 1966
Roadshow Entertainment PAL Region 4 DVD

I was hoping to cover these films last week to coincide with Michael Powell's 100th birthday. Better late than never.

While I am still hoping to see as many of Michael Powell's films are are available, I feel like there is a need to review his career with a bit more balance. While Powell is rightly championed for The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Peeping Tom, some of his films are less interesting than others. For some people, this may sound sacreligious, but to put it in perspective, my love of John Ford's films does not include Donovan's Reef, nor would I force anyone to see a Frank Capra film made after State of the Union. That said, my perspective is that the more films I see by Michael Powell, the more uneven I consider his overall filmography.

Ill Met by Moonlight was the last film by The Archers, that is written, produced and directed by Powell and Pressburger. It's a World War II story about a couple of British soldiers working with Crete partisans to kidnap a German general. As a genre film, it is kind of like The Guns of Navarone or The Dirty Dozen, but with more of an emphasis on thrills and chuckles. Without being too critical, I would say the film appealed to the twelve year old boy in me.

Dirk Bogarde is fun to watch, hiding behind a mustache speaking Greek. Michael Gough, an uncredited David McCullum, and Christopher Lee as a very tall German soldier also appear. The lightness of tone virtually undermines any suspense in the story. The craftsmanship is still here, with the obvious visual motif of shots of the night sky. Beginning with Mikis Theodorakis cheerful, Greek folk style music, Ill Met by Moonlight comes off as a boy's adventure film rather than the dramatization of men on a mission.

If Ill Met by Moonlight is a disappointment, They're a Weird Mob is almost a disaster. The film is based on a novel that was purported to be the autobiography of an Italian, Nino Culotta, in Australia. As it was, the book was written by an Australian, John O'Grady. This fish out of water story made me think of Preston Sturges' The French They are a Funny Race, presenting an English gentleman's view of the French. In both cases, you have filmmakers who have done so much better work in the past that watching these films is painful. The DVD includes a television documentary on the making of the film which is both useful and horrifying. According to this documentary, They're a Weird Mob was made not only to sell Australia to the world (the film made at a time when the country was actively trying to attract immigrants like future Ozzie Mel Gibson), but also to revive the Australian film industry.

As it turned out, Michael Powell was not the one to save the Australian film industry. He did get the opportunity to make one last feature, the much better Age of Consent, in which he finally got to work with James Mason who played against the then unkown Helen Mirren. They're a Weird Mob is saddled with heavy handed humor, and almost every cliche about Australians. We see Walter Chiari struggle with the slang, lots of beer drinking, and the "boys" playing in the mud. The film also stars two men who are almost axioms of classic Australian cinema, Chips Rafferty and John Meillon. Powell's discovery, Clare Dunne, is a redhead like Deborah Kerr and Moira Shearer. Her career as a movie star began and ended here. Not only did Powell reuse some music from Ill Met by Moonlight, but further reseach reveals that the screenplay, credited to Richard Imrie, was really by Emeric Pressburger. As such, They're a Weird Mob is a reteaming of The Archers that has substantially missed the mark.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:23 PM | Comments (1)

October 02, 2005

Deep Red

Profondo Rosso
Dario Argento - 1975
Anchor Bay DVD

I always associate October with Holloween, and Holloween with horror movies. This month I will be writing more about horror movies. Some are favorites that I am now writing about, while others will be DVDs that I have seen for the first time. To start off, I am writing about one of my favorite giallo, Deep Red.

I saw Deep Red in New York City in its theatrical debut. I didn't realize that the film was cut by almost half an hour. What I do remember is feeling that sitting in the back of the theater wasn't far enough from the screen. Between the creepy music by the appropriately named group Goblin, and the unsettling imagery, I had seen a film that was more harrowing than Polanski's Repulsion, Russell's The Devils, or Cronenberg's Shivers.

I re-see Deep Red primarily because of the artistry of the imagery by cinematographer Luigi Kuveiller. What critics who can't see past the genre have failed to recognize is that Argento consistently worked with top talent. In this case, prior to shooting two films with Argento, Kuveiller worked with Elio Petri, Marco Bellochio and Billy Wilder. In Deep Red many of the shots are composed so perfectly, taking advantage of the wide screen, playing with both what is seen and unseen. There is an almost vertigo inducing simultaneous zoom and track shot near the beginning. The use of extreme close ups of objects against a black background, and close ups of eyes, hands and a sweat covered brow contribute to the fetishistic atmosphere.

The screenplay was co-written with Bernardino Zapponi, most famous for his collaborations with Fellini. The first screenplay Zapponi worked on with Fellini was the "Toby Dammit" sequence of Spirits of the Dead. Here's where things get a bit twisted: Terence Stamp was scheduled to star in Blow Up until Antonioni decided that David Hemmings was younger and hipper. As a response to the rivalry between Italy's two most acclaimed directors, Fellini cast Stamp in "Toby Dammit". Zapponi and Argento still had Blow Up in mind when they wrote Deep Red. It may also be of no coincidence that Hemmings last name in Deep Red, is Daly, the name of his former business partner, John Daly.

Argento also touches upon elements that he would explore in future films. Macha Meril's character discusses telepathy among insects, a key part of Phenomena. Another scene involving birds, both looks back as a literalization of Agento's debut, Bird with Crystal Plumage, and anticipates the crows flying in the production of Macbeth, in Opera. (Argento was originally to have had the other Blow Up star, Vanessa Redgrave, star in Opera.) The flooded basement would figure more prominently in Inferno, while the house on fire would prefigure the end of Suspiria.

One element that I have not seen discussed in writings on Deep Red is on the significance of identifying Macha Meril's character as Jewish. In the scene in here apartment, the Star of David is seen both in shadow and as the design on a glass table. There is also a Jewish funeral with the traditional Hewbrew prayers and men wearing the skull caps, yarmulkus. Virtually every horror film that I can recall has either Catholic or generic Christian funerals. I would hope a deeper investigation into Argento's work will discuss this anomaly. Googling provided no additional clues.

Among Argento's nicknames is "the Visconti of violence" is reenforced by his working with actresses most famous for working with Visconti. In Deep Red, Argento brought Clara Calamai out of retirement to play a key role. Best known as for starring in Ossessione, Argento pays tribute to Calamai by having the camera pan across a wall with stills from her films. In a French interview, Argento comments that he cast Calamai as tribute to the white telephone films of Italy. For Argento, the Italian cinema he grew up with went from light and white, to deep and red.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:32 PM

September 30, 2005

Love and Anger

Amore e Rabbia
Carlo Lizzani, Bernardo Bertolucci, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Jean-Luc Godard and Marco Bellochio - 1969
NoShame Region 0 DVD

Taken out of its historical context, I have to wonder about the value of Love and Anger. An omnibus film that tried to capture the spirit of what was happening in Europe in May of 1968, I suspect that the film may have seemed a bit dated by the time of release at the end of May 1969. The topicality and political stance as expressed make this film a cinematic time capsule of a brief moment in history when there was a genuine belief that art and politics would not only fuse, but change the world.

In the supplementary DVD, Carlo Lizzani explains his role as catalyst for this film. Originally to have several directors using the Gospels as the unifying thread, Love and Anger is a collection of shorts looking at aspects of the human condition. Because of the freedom given to the film makes, the sense that there is a theme tying the five films together is often ignored and finally lost.

I have not seen any of Carlo Lizzani's films previous to his entry here. An indictment of urban indifference, Lizzani cuts between shots of a rape observed but not reported or stopped, homeless men sleeping on the sidewalks of New York City, and an injured driver on a highway trying to get someone to take his injured wife to a hospital. The driver and his wife are reluctantly rescued by a man who turns out to be a criminal. While the film making technique is the most conventional, what ever Lizzani was trying to say is unclear.

Bertolucci's segment is not as interesting as an example of his film making as it is a record of The Living Theatre. Known for their controversial fusion of politics and theater, The Living Theatre during the Sixties stopped doing formally staged productions in favor of more interactive performance pieces that incorporated improvisation and audience participation. I had the opportunity to see them twice in Colorado when they were performing at college campuses in their return to the United States after living and performing in Europe. Especially as Living Theatre co-founder Julian Beck is best known for his last filmed performance, as the gaunt Reverend Kane in Poltergeist II, he can be seen at his intense best in Love and Anger. I will admit here that I can not be totally objective regarding The Living Theatre.

Pasolini filmed actor Ninetto Davoli walking down the street with documentary footage fading in and out. Off screen voices of God and the Devil provide commentary, and there is an Italian pop song on the soundtrack. I guess Pasolini was saying something about man's destiny but as a religious allegory, it comes off as cinematic doodling compared to The Gospel According to Matthew of Hawks and Sparrows.

Those who have read my previous postings know that I am something of a Marco Bellochio partisan. His short is of University of Rome students depicting the factionalism of the students and faculty, as well as of the differences within the left in what looks like an improvised work. In his interview in the supplement, Bellochio states that he felt he should have expressed a clearer point of view. As sincere as the politics of the students may have been, and I shared in some of these beliefs, they seem at best naive in retrospect. That students would claim to speak on behalf of workers was, looking back, extemely arrogant.

The politics in Godard's piece are also based on Marxist Utopianism. The framing narrative, a self-reflective bit of Godardian cinema with a couple discussing film in general is classic, with one of the characters declaring that true cinema is young Dreyer, or old Murnau. A second couple are suppose to be an Arab man and a Jewish woman, lovers on the verge of separation. Setting aside the politics, this is Godard again meditating on love. While I cringed at some of the "revolutionary" statements, the camera never faltered. Karl Marx may be discredited, but the image of a blonde French woman, stylishly dressed in red, smoking a Gauloise cigarette, never goes out of style.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:13 PM

September 29, 2005

Founding Fathers Double Feature

George Washington
David Gordon Green - 2000
Criterion Region 1 DVD

1776
Peter H. Hunt - 1972
Columbia Region 1 DVD

Sometimes there are titles that look like they should be part of a double feature, even if the films really don't belong together. Maybe it's a cheap shot, like pairing Breakfast at Tiffany's with My Dinner with Andre or The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend with The Ugly American. In any case, I saw the two above titles, wondering what they could say about being an American.

The junction of film and politics has made the news recently with air hostesses calling for a boycott of the film Flightplan. I haven't seen this film, and probably won't until it comes to cable. In spite of all the previous films that have shown air hostesses in less than flattering light, someone has the belief that this particular film will do serious damage to the professional standing of air hostesses. What makes this more appalling is that 9/11 is invoked. You have to wonder if the protest is actually genuine and not a way to create publicity for Flightplan. No such objection has been made following Red Eye or Soul Plane. How this relates to the two DVDs I have seen is in raising the question about what it means to be an American and what it means to represent ourselves on film.

I realize that I may be in the minority, but I was not enamored with George Washington. Perhaps I am being to facile by describing it as Harmony Korine as filmed by Robert Bresson. I can recognize and appreciate the craftsmanship and austerity. The people don't resemble any of the small town people I have met in Wyoming or Colorado. In his notes, Green talks about wondering about the historical George Washington, yet what connections he has in mind were not conveyed in the film. I am glad that the Miami Public Library has George Washington as the DVD includes the short A Day with the Boys.

Directed by Clu Gulager, this eighteen minute film was a thematic influence on Green. Made in 1969, the short is about a gang of boys, about ten years old, rolling down hills, playing "war", and generally goofing around with each other. The film was produced by Universal at a time when some theaters still showed short films before the feature. Not only did Gulager enlist Laslo Kovacs to photograph the film, but it was a nominee at Cannes. The film is dated by Gulager's overuse of the various techniques that were in vogue in the late Sixties, such as freeze frames and use of negative color. While the narrative suggests the topical Viet-Nam war, it also suggests Lord of the Flies. Among the boys is one chubby little guy, Clu's son, John, who will be heard from more this January when his feature directorial debut is released.

1776 is more interesting for its subject matter than as a film. Most of the time, the film looks stagy. Even when Abigail Adams is running out in a field, the Broadway origins of this film seem just outside the frame. I can't watch William Daniels, even in 18th Century garb, without thinking of St. Elsewhere. 1776 is valuable in this time of dubious political discourse and absence of thoughtful dialogue. The DVD is a relatively complete version of the film as I understand from the Internet Movie Data Base. The film was screened for Richard Nixon by his friend, producer Jack L. Warner. The song "Cool Considerate Men" was edited out. The song was sung by members of the Continental Congress that felt that they had much to lose in supporting a revolution, and the lyrics mention moving "ever to the right, never to the left". The basic civic lesson is that the Declaration of Independence was the result of both passion and compromise. The secondary lesson is that the founding fathers were a randy bunch that couldn't resist a double entendre.

While there are some good songs and performances, 1776 suffers from having the original stage director responsible for the film. Peter H. Hunt, not to be confused with the Peter Hunt who worked on James Bond films, went from 1776 directly to a long career in television. Hunt was unable to reconceive this play in the way that someone like Bob Fosse could make Caberet a truly filmic experience. As a musical, 1776 is of the template of the big stage musicals like My Fair Lady. Films based on Broadway musicals were well on the way out by 1972 following film flops like Hello, Dolly! and Camelot. Especially after Camelot, one would think Jack Warner would have learned his lesson. Hunt was so protective of his material that 1776 exists as a recreation of a stage musical, but has little life as cinema.

At least Thomas Jefferson has been served well by film with Blythe Danner in 1776 and Thandie Newton in Jefferon in Paris. Not only should we have films about the founding fathers, but more film makers should honor the founding babes of our country.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:09 PM

September 28, 2005

No Direction Home

Martin Scorsese - 2005
Paramount Region 1 DVD

In the song "All Across the Watchtower", Bob Dylan sings about a joker and a thief. By the end of the two discs that comprise No Direction Home, I was pretty much convinced that Dylan is both a joker and a thief. The film covers Dylan's life, growing up in Hibbing, Minnesota, through his concert tour of Europe in 1966, with titles noting the motorcycle accident of July 29, 1966. Dylan as joker can be seen in his interviews of the time, with Dylan trapped between being taken too seriously and and sometimes not seriously enough. The thief is the budding musicologist who stole hundreds of records from his friends while developing a broader knowledge of folk music and creating his style.

In some ways No Direction Home compliments parts of David Hadju's account of the creation of Bob Dylan, Positively Fourth Street. In establishing his credentials as a folk singer, Dylan was as creative as rap artists creating their "street cred". Prior to getting a recording contract, Dylan created the image of of a much traveled singing hobo, a contemporary Woodie Guthrie. Stories of growing up in Gallup, New Mexico or riding the rails were taken as fact. Part of the film explores the selling of Bob Dylan, with the song writer paving the way for the performer. In one part, Scorsese has cut excerpts from several cover versions of "Blowin' in the Wind" together. In the beginning of the second disc, Dylan is seen stating twice that all of his songs are "protest songs". The protest could be against success that was greater than that of his peers, against unwanted acclamation, against the constaint examination of every note and word written and performed.

Dave Van Ronk sums up Dylan best in pointing out how Dylan changed his image to be what he thought the public was looking for, the Zelig of folk music. With Bob Dylan, people saw what they wanted to see. With the recent interviews, there is no way of really knowing if Dylan is being any more honest now than he was in the past or if he is simply presenting a new image, the artist as a more reflective man. The bigger question may if Bob Dylan still matters and if so, why? I ask this question as one who identified himself as a big Dylan fan during the years of No Direction Home. I have to suspect that just as audience members felt personally betrayed by Dylan for picking up the electric guitar, that most of the criticism of No Direction Home will be autobiographical, based on the respective writer's sense of their relationship with Bob Dylan.

In my case, you can blame my mom for bringing home the first album and letting me know that it was by the guy who wrote "Blowin' in the Wind". I was familiar with the version by Peter, Paul and Mary, a big hit in the summer of 1963. I probably would have been blown away had I also known that PP & M was the creation of manager Albert Grossman, making them the O-Town of folk music. The first album was much like other folk albums of the early Sixties with versions of traditional songs and a couple of originals. By the time the second album came out, I was a confirmed fan. I saw Dylan in concert twice, first in Denver in 1966, and in 1974 at Madison Square Garden when he resumed performing live following the accident. I had also seen Don't Look Back, and continued buying albums up through John Wesley Harding.

Much of No Direction Home is footage of Dylan in concert in England in 1966. Maybe I'm missing something but considering that Bringing It All Back Home had been out for almost a year, the audience should have known that Dylan had changed musically. During the concert I attended in Denver, there was no problem with Dylan performing with with his band, The Band as they were to be known. Maybe people in England figured that by virtue of buying tickets they bought the right to boo, yell and complain that Bob Dylan deserted folk music. Maybe the disappointed English fans should have taken a clue from the Dylan song, "I Don't Believe You", and pretended they never met Dylan.

While Martin Scorsese is credited as the director, what he has done here has been to primarily shape hours of footage into a coherent, cohesive unit. This isn't as personal a vision as, for example, My Voyage to Italy, or Scorsese's personalized versions of film history. In a recent interview, Scorsese's usual editor, Thelma Schoonmaker notes that Scorsese let Dylan and the others "speak for themselves". Dylan points out that his electric music was never "folk-rock". Although he correctly credits Sonny Bono for this hybrid, he makes it clear that he didn't care for this style and seems annoyed that other musicians even bothered covering Dylan's songs. (Sonny Bono may seem like an easy mark, but "Needles and Pins" is one of the best pop songs ever written.) Probably the best title for a Bob Dylan album was Another Side of Bob Dylan. For Bob Dylan, there always seems to be another side.

For those looking for those other sides, check here.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:37 PM

September 27, 2005

Two Turns of the Screw

A Whisper in the Dark
Un Sussurro nel Buio
Marcello Aliprandi - 1976
NoShame Region 1 DVD

The Innocents
Jack Clayton - 1961
Umbrella Entertainment PAL Region 0 DVD

"We say, of course," somebody exclaimed, " that two children give two turns! Also that we want to hear about them."
from Turn of the Screw by Henry James

According to the Internet Movie Data Base, there are currently twelve movies with the title, Turn of the Screw. This doesn't include films like The Innocents which are based on James' story, but are re-titled. None of the many films inspired by James are counted either, which could conceivably include
Alejandro Amenabar's The Others. It should be no surprise that there is even an acknowledged television version of Turn of the Screw titled The Others. What James created was the prototype for virtually every movie about children and ghosts and to a certain extent, demonic possession, in such variations as Robert Mulligan and Tom Tryon's The Other and The Sixth Sense.

One such variation of James is A Whisper in the Dark. In this case, the film centers on a young moon faced boy, Marco, and his imaginary friend, Luca. While no entity is seen, Luca's presence is suggested by various accidents, noises, and even a stray red balloon. While the film takes place in present day Italy, the setting in a very large villa strongly suggests an earlier time. A Whisper in the Dark is better in atmosphere than in being scary or suspenseful. Pino Donaggio's music aids in setting the mood. While not indulging in the gore of the giallo film makers of this time, the film does not achieve the sense of unease of the best psychological horror films such as Robert Wise's version of The Haunting.

This is the first Marcello Aliprandi film to get a major DVD release. According to IMDB, Aliprandi worked as an assistant to Luchino Visconti on his stage productions. Of the eleven films listed in his directorial credits, I could only recognize Fraulein Doktor, with directorial credit shared with Alberto Lattuada. What makes A Whisper in the Dark interesting was the use of color with most characters primarily wearing shades of black, brown and white, and this color palette broken with large and small shades of red. The high point in this film was the scene of a masked ball. It took several moments to realize that I was viewing children in costume, viewed from overhead. This is one of several scenes to include Joseph Cotten in what is essentially a cameo appearance. His voice falters a bit, and he does little more more than a couple of magic tricks and couple of scenes in a bath tub. Cotten's brief turn seems to have brought out the virtuosity of the rest of the cast and crew.

As with other DVD releases from NoShame, this has an interview. In this case it is with cinematagrapher Claudio Cirillo. Associated with such better known films as Scola's We All Loved Each Other So Much and Dino Risi's original Scent of a Woman, Cirillo discusses some of his challenges not only in shooting A Whisper in the Dark, but a bit about his own life and career. Cirillo takes the time to discuss other filmmakers he admires, and shows off a very old movie camera that may have been used by pioneer documentarian Robert Flaherty on Man of Aran.

I figured that as long as I was to review A Whisper in the Dark, it was time to re-see The Innocents. While probably not the definitive film version of Turn of the Screw, this is standard to which the other films are compared. Andrew Sarris is accurate in describing Jack Clayton's directorial style as academic. Maybe it wasn't that way at the time of its release, but The Innocents seems like a horror movie for people who consider themselves too intellectual for horror movies. Clayton does some interesting things with the use of sound distortion, but there is a sense of distance that minimizes involvement with the characters.

As Miles, Martin Stephens has the condescending air of Dirk Bogarde in knee pants. Pamela Franklin, the film's Flora, made a career of being a young girl in peril and worked again with Jack Clayton in Our Mother's House, which starred Bogarde. As much as I usually like Deborah Kerr, at 40, she was was too mature to be playing the part of a new governess. As for Clayton, he did horror better with the under-rated and under-appreciated Something Wicked this Way Comes, produced and disowned by Disney. Although he does little more than stand around and look threatening, lean Peter Wyngarde looks more like James' character of Peter Quint than does chubby Marlon Brando. Brando portrayed Quint in the James inspired film, The Nightcomers. While The Innocents is remembered for the less than innocent kisses between Deborah Kerr and Martin Stephens, The Nightcomers most memorable moment is of Marlon Brando smooching a horse.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 11:20 AM

September 24, 2005

Infernal Affairs Trilogy

Infernal Affairs
Andrew Lau & Alan Mak - 2002
Tartan PAL Region 0 DVD

Infernal Affairs II, Infernal Affairs III
Andrew Lau & Alan Mak - 2003
Mega Star Region 0 DVD

As some people know by now, Martin Scorsese's newest collaboration with Leonardo DiCaprio is a film titled The Departed. While there are also those who know that this is yet another Hollywood remake of a Hong Kong film, fewer have seen the first film in the series, which was given a perfunctory release in the U.S. by Miramax. As the information regarding Scorcese's version is sketchy, and could possible incorporate elements from all three films from the original series, I took the time to re-see the first film, plus the second and third film.

For those not familiar with the Hong Kong movie scene, it is common to have multiple sequels for popular films. The first Infernal Affairs was so successful that some feel the film "saved" the Hong Kong film industry which has been on the verge of collapse, with much of the talent and money going either to the mainland or the West. The first film is about two "moles", an undercover policeman, Chan, who has infiltrated organized crime, and a police detective, Lau, who is actually a gangster. If the premise sounds a bit like Face/Off, co-writer and co-director Alan Mak has stated in an interview that John Woo was an inspiration. The Chinese title, Wu Jian Dao, translates as I want to be You, which makes more sense in the third film.

The English language title is both an obvious pun, but also a reference to the Buddhist concept of a hell of continuous suffering. Both Chan and Lau have to suffer because of the strain of maintaining dual roles as cops and criminals. Even the people they have to report to, the gang leader, Sam, and the police inspector, Wong, are secondary mirror images. While Sam is shown to be not entirely bad, Wong is shown to be subject to corruption. Chan's struggle is to reclaim his true identity as a policeman. Lau eventually fully embraces his false identity, at a cost to himself and others. The four main roles are played by Tony Leung, Andy Lau, Anthony Wong, and Eric Tsang, probably the hardest working man in the Hong Kong film industry. Those who follow Hong Kong filmmaking know that Andy Lau and Andrew Lau are two different people. In addition to the occassional verbal and written references to Buddhism, the film makers have visual references, such as the opening scene showing the giant golden statues at a monastary. Another visual motif is with shots of an elevator shaft, with the elevator in descent. Much of the look of the first Infernal Affairs is due to the work of Christopher Doyle, most famous for his work with Wong Kar-Wai.

The second film is in part about Chan and Lau as young men, with greater focus on the relationship between Wong and Sam. While the second part shows more of the history of Chan and Lau, it doesn't quite fit with the information established in the first film. The strength of the second film is in the narrative showing how Sam became the gang leader. A frequent refrain in the film is the saying that what goes around, comes around. The film's best set piece is a scene where the previous boss has arranged to have his rivals killed at the same time. The film alternates between characters, maintaining suspense while not losing the narrative thread. One of the two editors on the Infernal Affairs series was Danny Pang, a terrific filmmaker in his own right.

The third film is primarily about Lau eventually identifying with Chan while trying to identify a new "mole" in the police department. The film is more character driven than the first two films. I'm not sure if Hitchcockian would be accurate a description. The film is actually closer to Brian De Palma's films and I mean this in a good way. The film plays with the characters sense of reality and identity. While there are some perfect moments in this film, Infernal Affairs suffers from two major weaknesses. The narrative is suppose to overlap part of the narrative of the first Infernal Affairs. Not only is this confusing, but it doesn't always fit in a logical chronology. While Tony Leung is scruffy throughout the first film, he is clean shaven throughout the third film, further undermining this film as a compliment to the original film.

While the two latter Infernal Affairs films lack the quality and consistency of the first film, all three were commercial and critical successes, as well as award winners. Martin Scorsese and company are likely dreaming that the The Departed would do as well as the first Infernal Affairs did with the Hong Kong Film Awards.

I bought the British DVD several months before I was aware that there would be a U.S. release of Infernal Affairs. The U.S. DVD is essentially the same, except for a "director's commentary" on the Tartan version. The commentary is actually from both directors as well as the stars. Since no one introduces themselves, it is often unclear who is actually speaking. What is also frustrating is that the commentary and the featurettes do not clarify how Andrew Lau and Alan Mak work together. Previous to Infernal Affairs, Alan Mak had directed several films alone. Andrew Lau has made films both alone and in collaboration, in itself not unusual with Hong Kong films. Lau and Mak's latest film, Initial D, was a major hit in Asia, outdoing the Hollywood entries of this past summer. Lau is now set to make his Hollywood debut with Richard Gere and Hillary Swank.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:59 PM

September 22, 2005

Rock and Roll Double Feature

Rock, Rock, Rock
Will Price - 1956
Stardust Records DVD

Jamboree
Roy Lockwood - 1957
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

When reading about the nominees for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, I have to wonder how meaningful any of the musicians are for a younger generation. The reason I ask is because I like to see the movies made of rock musicians from the Fifties, for an audience that was born about ten years before me. Even though the narrative framework is silly, and the production values are often sloppy, I like these films as documentation of certain performers, particularly those who have maintained some vitality almost fifty years since the films were made.

The two films I saw were produced by Milton Subotsky and Max Rosenberg. The men eventually formed a company called Amicus which attempted to compete with Hammer in the realm of horror films through the mid-Seventies. In terms of film making, Rock, Rock, Rock and Jamboree are not memorable, and neither director is noteworthy for anything else. Subotsky and Rosenberg seemed to have gotten things right in their last rock performance film, It's Trad, Dad!, the debut feature by Richard Lester.

Rock, Rock, Rock is notable also for being the first starring film for thirteen year old Tuesday Weld. Even if her performance is not indicative of a future Academy Award nominee, she's better than the rest of the cast. Will she go to the prom with Tommy? Will she get the strapless gown she covets? Will anyone care? At the other end of the scale is Alan Freed who somehow believed his talents as a disk jockey would translate to screen stardom. While I can tolerate his introducing the performers, Freed also demonstrates his lack of any musical talent by standing in front of a big band, arrythmically clapping while croaking, "Rock and Roll Boogie". At least Tuesday Weld's singing is dubbed by Connie Francis.

The musical highlights in this film include Chuck Berry doing "You Can't Catch Me" while doing a pidgeon-toed dance, followed by his famous duck walk, rockabilly singer Johnny Burnette doing "Lonesome Train", and Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers performing "I'm not a Juvenile Delinquent". Who knew that fifty years later, the Frankie Lymons of the current generation would instead record songs boasting about their criminal activities? The fast forward button was used for Jimmy Cavallo, a musical stand-in for Bill Haley. Co-star Teddy Randazzo's songs were slow, sincere, and syruppy sweet. The film was done on the cheap, with some of the performances done on empty stages. Not helping is that the DVD seems to have been made from a worn video tape.

Jamboree is a very good transfer of a film made with a bit more money. Some of the performances were done on artfully designed sets. In some ways this film is even harder to watch because there are too few good musical numbers and too much of another lame story. Paul Carr and Freda Holloway play two young people who find their greatest success as a duo, and unhappiness as solo performers. Life seemed to imitate art as Carr has had a long career as a character actor, while Holloway seems to have retired from acting in 1964.

Instead of Alan Freed hogging the spotlight, Jamboree features a slew of now forgotten disk jockeys from the U.S., Canada, England and Germany (!) introducing the performers. The one disk jockey who went on to much bigger and better things was a young guy from Philadelphia, Dick Clark. Carr, who's character is doing a big solo tour of Europe, shown in obvious stock footage, is seen in front of an audience of senior citizens. Maybe the show was on a school night.

In between the treacly songs of Carr and Holloway are some performances worth savoring. Carl Perkins is solid. Jerry Lee Lewis is good, if restrained here. He is seen to better effect in the opening of High School Confidential singing the title song while jumping all over the piano. Seeing Fats Domino, knowing that he barely escaped from Hurricane Katrina, was a wistful moment. For fans of Mars Attacks! there is the opportunity to see future world saver Slim Whitman yodel. Even a very young Frankie Avalon makes his debut here, setting the stage for a career in which charisma won over dubious material.

Of interesting coincidence is that Tuesday Weld and Paul Carr previously were uncredited actors in the same film, Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. Of course Hitchcock would plead innocent to having anything to do even remotely with rock and roll.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:18 PM

September 20, 2005

Rebel Without a Cause

Nicholas Ray - 1955
Warner Brothers Region 1 DVD

I originally was going to write about Rebel Without a Cause next week, closer to the 50th anniversary of the death of James Dean. While the weather isn't as bad as some feared, Hurricane Rita has disrupted the flow of films from Netflix and Nicheflix. That I have Rebel as part of my DVD collection has more to do with Nicholas Ray than with Dean.

When I first saw Rebel, it was on a black and white television broadcast in the late Sixties. I had heard about James Dean but didn't really know much about him other than that he starred in this film. I had also read an article stating that MGM was going to produce a remake starring Bob Dylan. Based on what has passed as Bob Dylan's acting career, let us give thanks that the proposed remake never happened, and that no one yet has been dumb enough to try and remake Rebel. While seeing the film on television gave me the gist of the narrative, I felt like I never really saw Rebel the first time until I saw it in a theater, in CinemaScope and color.

The opening shots of Rebel need to be seen in widescreen in order for the film to be properly understood. Even though the principle characters do not meet until several minutes into the film, Ray unites Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo within the screen, even when they are separated by glass partitions. Throughout the scene at the police station, Ray groups the trio as well has having Dean with Wood or with Mineo, within the same shot. Even when the characters see themselves as isolated from others, Ray has visually placed them together, anticipating the narrative. It wasn't until a few years later that I learned Ray had spent some time studying under Frank Lloyd Wright which at least in part explains why Ray understood how to take advantage of the wide screen.

I had the opportunity to meet Nick Ray twice. The first time was at a screening of Rebel at Columbia University in 1971. The print was even more faded than the one I saw at the Thalia Theater a couple of years earlier. Even worse, the print tore during the screening, prompting Ray to yell about the lack of care given the film by Warner Brothers. I met Ray again almost a year and a half later at Portland, Oregon. I was working at the Northwest Film Study Center. Ray was going to various venues with prints of his films. We could have screened Rebel, which would have been the more financially responsible choice, but I argued in favor of They Live by Night, Ray's little seen debut feature. I admit this was selfishness on my part. The screening did not attract as many people as we would have liked, but those who saw the film enjoyed it. Afterwards, at a friend's house, a bunch of us got together for beer and pizza with Ray. What little I remember after thirty years was asking Ray about the Elia Kazan and the blacklist, and Ray justifying that Kazan gave no new names. Of younger directors, he expressed admiration for Robert Altman but seemed visibly shaken when I told him that Altman was filming a new version of Thieves Like Us, the same novel used as the basis for Ray's first film. I have a vague memory of Ray singing a folk song which would be in keeping with part of his pre-Hollywood life. Ray was of course asked about James Dean and talked about how they had planned to work again after Rebel.

What we do know about Dean is that he was set to star in Somebody Up There Likes Me and Left-Handed Gun. It makes one wonder if Paul Newman owes his career to the death of Dean. Based on Nicholas Ray's filmography, would Dean have starred in The True Story of Jesse James or King of Kings? As it turned out, Dean didn't have to pretend to be Jesus. As of September 30, 1955, James Dean became bigger in death than he was in life.

An interesting evaluation of Nicholas Ray has been written by Jonathan Rosenbaum. I also recommend an interview with Rebel screenwriter Stewart Stern at Cinematical.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:35 PM

September 19, 2005

Barbara Stanwyck Double Feature

Lady of Burlesque
Willam A. Wellman - 1943
Roan Group DVD

Forty Guns
Samuel Fuller - 1957
Twentieth Century Fox Region 1 DVD

When I first became aware of Barbara Stanwyck, it was when she was starring in The Big Valley. Eventually I learned that she use to be a movie star, but it wasn't until I started seriously watching films in New York that her name meant anything to me. I had seen her in Meet John Doe on television, but my first favorite film was Bitter Tea of General Yen, from one of William K. Everson's screening from his private stash of 16mm classics. Inspired by fellow blogger, Girish, who posted his discussion about Ms. Stanwyck a few weeks ago, I added a couple of her films to be Netflix list.

Based on Gypsy Rose Lee's ghost-written mystery, Lady of Burlesque is a mildly entertaining look at burlesque performers on and off stage. Considering that the Hays Code was still very much in effect, the film is forced to cheat the audience. Between strippers with way too much clothing and cleaned up comic routines, the police raid that takes place looks totally unnecessary. I realize this is the kind of film that requires a certain type of suspension of disbelief but I have always found the presentation of "adult" venues in so-called family entertainment awkward. Conversely, by the time the film makers could be less coy about burlesque, as in The Night They Raided Minsky's, the Gypsy Rose Lee era of entertainment was killed by the more liberated Hollywood.

Stanwyck portrays the Lee type character, Dixie Daisy, the star of S.B. Foss's burlesque house. Dixie is seen fighting off the advances of comic Biff Brannigan, as well as some of the women who are jealous of Dixie's stardom. We see Stanwyck doing a little bump and grind, as well as show off her legs, but we also see lots of reaction shots from various men. A couple of the strippers are murdered, with garter belts around their necks. The tough talking Stanwyck virtually takes over the investigation. The biggest mystery is that with overdressed strippers and unfunny comics, how Lady of Burlesque was ever popular.

On a personal level, I did enjoy seeing Pinky Lee in the cast. Back when I was very, very young, I would occassionally watch Pinky Lee's Saturday morning children's show on television back in the Fifties. The frenetic Pinky Lee was the prototype for Pee Wee Herman in his dress and mannerisms. He's hardly a laugh riot in Lady of Burlesque, but his presence in the film was cause for a nostalgic smile.

A bigger reason to smile is that Forty Guns is finally on DVD. This is one of those films that absolutely needs to be seen in the wide screen version. Fuller has several shots which were composed using the full parameters of CinemaScope. The beginning of the film shows Stanwyck's "dragoons" riding around both sides of Barry Sullivan's wagon. Another shot is an extreme close-up of Sullivan's eyes. For some reason, Twentieth Century Fox chose to make this a double sided disc with a full screen version on one side. The only reason to bother watching a full screen version of Forty Guns is to show people how much is missing when a film is made taking full advantage of the wide screen.

While I am glad that Fox finally released a U.S. DVD version of Forty Guns, I wish someone had been smart enough to have Fuller do a commentary track. Anyone who has seen Fuller in person, like I have, or read his interviews or his autobiography, knows that he was a great raconteur. One of Fuller's frequent stories was that Marilyn Monroe wanted the part of Jessica Drummond, the "woman with a whip".

It's hard to imagine Monroe speaking with the authority that came easily for Stanwyck. Forty Guns was one of three films Stanwyck made in 1957. At 50 she managed to stretch her career as a romantic lead longer than many of her peers. She did look great in her black shirt and tight black jeans. One can believe Stanwyck leading a personal army and having men humiliate themselves for her. Maybe this is coincidence, but Jessica Drummond is shown living in a very big house, in a very big valley.

The real star of any film by Sam Fuller is always Sam Fuller. His visual audacity is on display with two point of view shots. Fuller has several out of focus shots to convey the blindness of Hank Worden. There is also the famous shot through the rifle barrel when Gene Barry sets his sights on Eve Brent. When Barry is shot on his wedding day, cuts immediately from Brent in wedding white to widow black. While the happy ending was studio mandated, Fuller seems to have filmed his script without much interference. When conversing with Sullivan, Stanwyck asks, "Can I feel it?", and Sullivan replies, "It might go off in your face." This film could well be titled Freudian Guns.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:15 PM | Comments (2)

September 17, 2005

Face of Another

Tanin No Kao
Hiroshi Teshigahara - 1966
Eureka Region 2 DVD

I came across a news story that could be seen as another example of life following art. Some of the issues in this story were addressed in Face of Another, one of the best of several face transplant movies. There are some other good films, Face/Off and Eyes without a Face, and some not so good films. One could do a fairly good sized essay on face transplant movies. As it happened, I saw Face of Another just a couple of days ago.

One of several films by Teshigahara based on a novel by Kobo Abe, Face of Another is about physical appearance and identity. On a deeper level, the film is a meditation on Japanese sense of identity following World War II. The film mostly is concerned with Tatsuya Nakadai's character, a man who's face was severely burnt in an industrial fire. There is a counter-narrative of a young woman whose physical beauty has been affected by the burn scars on one side of her face. In discussing her childhood, it is revealed she was a witness to the bombing of Nagasaki. The film gets seriously symbolic in the subject matter, and Teshigahara's images are occassionally surreal. In other words, this is what made film making seem so exciting in the Sixties.

In Joan Mellen's book, Voices from the Japanese Cinema, Teshigahara discusses Face of Another:
"This movie is about the breakdown of communication between people, not only in Japan, but universally. The protagonist loses his face once and finds a new face. It is a form of irony. He thought that his isolation was a result of not having a face, having to wear a mask. When he got the new face through plastic surgery, he thought this would mean that he could communicate with people again. But he never recovers what he sought through this transformation. Not only couldn't he obtain what he wanted, but even worse, his alienation deepened. I sought to convey the magnitude of human isolation and loneliness."

Teshigahara is remembered best for Woman of the Dunes, his previous collaboration with Abe. While it is more easily available, in some ways Face of Another is more accessible, in that it can be appreciated as much for the basic narrative, even when the meanings behind the narrative are not as easily understood. Teshigahara also did a documentary on the architect, Antonio Gaudi, which is also available on DVD. Of course, this being Teshigaha, this is hardly a conventional documentary, with the filmmaker virtually allowing the fantastic buildings to speak for themselves.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:55 PM

September 14, 2005

A Story of Sorrow and Sadness

Hishu Monogatari
Suzuki Seijun - 1977
Panorama Entertainment Region 0 DVD

That Suzuki Seijun is quite a joker. Based on the title alone, one would expect a different kind of film. With someone like Mizoguchi, a film called A Story of Sorrow and Sadness would be about an unhappy geisha, probably committing suicide by a body of water. Ozu would show Setsuko Hara and Chishu Ryu stoicly enduring the domestic tragedy of somebody moving out of the house. Only Suzuki would make a film titled A Story of Sorrow and Sadness about . . . golf!

More precisely the film is about a professional woman golfer who is also a swimsuit model and television personality. I think Suzuki was trying to say something about the fleeting and mercurial nature of celebrity. In any event, this film is significant as the return to theatrical film making for Suzuki after Branded to Kill got him fired for being "incomprehensible". The ten years between these two films made no difference. If anything, A Story of Sorrow and Sadness makes even less sense than Suzuki's nutty gangster films.

That this is not a yakuza film makes it an unlikely part of the Suzuki canon. This being Suzuki, A Story of Sorrow and Sadness hadly fits into that normally unwatchable genre of golf movies. Even a comedy like Happy Gilmore has more respect for the game. Instead, Suzuki goofs with the audience with scenes of gratuitous sex and nudity (not that there's anything wrong with that), and shots of the reflection of a neighbor that indicate she may be otherworldly. This strange neighbor ingratiates herself and eventually blackmails Reiko to glom onto Reiko's celebrity status. For Suzuki, being a celebrity is a worthless goal. Reiko signs up with a promoter who informs her that she will earn thirty million yen in exchange for losing her freedom. When trying to research this film, there were no Suzuki comments on this film, and no commentary by Suzuki scholars.

I may be misreading this film, but compared to his other works, there seems to be a sense of detachment in the making of A Story of Sorrow and Sadness. Lacking the cheerful anarchy of Tokyo Drifter or Branded to Kill, or the more serious Elegy to Violence, there is no consistent attitude holding the film together. Maybe it took Suzuki a while to get his groove back as he clearly did with Pistol Opera. Only the violent finish recalls classic Suzuki. There are some brief moments of inspiration, but clearly Suzuki is more comfortable with a nine mm than a nine-iron.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:46 PM

September 13, 2005

Sergio Martino "Animal" Double Feature

Your Vice is a Closed Room and Only I have the Key
IL Tuo Vizio e una Stanza Chiusa e Solo Io ne Ho La Chiave
Sergio Martino - 1972
NoShame Region 0 DVD

Big Alligator River
Il Fiume del Grande Caimano
Sergio Martino - 1979
NoShame Region 0 DVD

The two newest Sergio Martino films to be presented by NoShame on DVD could almost be called animal revenge films. While Big Alligator River is pretty self explanatory, "Vice" is a variation of Edgar Allen Poe's The Black Cat which is actually a bit closer to the literary source than so many of the other films inspired by this particular work.

The plot to "Vice" is as convoluted as the title, which after viewing the film still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Made immediately after All the Colors of the Dark, "Vice" takes an opposite tact taking place primarily in one location and concentrating more on mood. While the film is part of the giallo genre, it is more restrained in the violence. The film takes place in a provincial villa, where author Oliviero (Luigi Pistelli) lives uneasily with his wife, Floriana (Anita Strindberg). Oliviero is obsessed with his deceased mother, and has not written anything in about three years. When he is not taking his frustration out on Floriana, Oliviero distracts himself with mistresses and parties with the local hippies. An unknown person has slashed to death two of Oliviero's mistresses. Observing the domestic discord and making mayhem is a black cat named Satan, the pet left by Oliviero's mother.

Edwige Fenech shows up as the bisexual cousin who beds Strindberg and the young stud who delivers groceries. In spite of her billing, it's really more of a supporting role as someone who distracts Pistelli and Strindberg from solving the mystery, as well as distracting me because frankly, when Edwige Fenech is nude, the plot is no longer important.

One aspect of the film that I had discomfort with was with the racial attitudes expressed by the characters in the film. One of Oliviero's mistresses is a black woman. Some of the statements may be able to be placed in the context of Italian culture at the time the film was made. Likewise, with Big Alligator River, the natives are called "savages", although the "Jungle" genre that was popular in Italy for a while can be generalized as "retro", having pretty much gone out of style in the U.S. by the late Fifties.

Martino admits in the DVD extra that he was inspired by Jaws. Big Alligator River also tips its hat to the old films and serials with characters like Jungle Jim who saved the white people from the angry "natives". Mel Ferrer portrays the operator of a resort on a remote jungle island. Barbara Bach is his assistant. She also has a background in anthropology. People mysteriously disappear, equipment is sabotaged, and in the last half hour Big Alligator River kicks into high gear. Maybe this is a reflection of my living in the tourist trap called Miami Beach, but it was fun seeing tourists trapped between "peaceful" tribe with flaming arrows and a very large, very hungry alligator (or is it actually a crocodile) reducing the hapless tourists to crunchy snacks in his own all you can eat buffet.

In addition to seeing Martino discuss shooting Big Alligator River in Sri Lanka, there is also an interview with Antonello Geleng, the production designer. Martino places this film as one of his last to get international distribution, prior to the general collapse of the Italian film industry and Martino's eventual transition to television. Geleng discusses working with Fellini as well as several giallo film makers. He is introduced with a panning shot of his collection of art and artifacts in his studio. Behind Geleng is a large abstract painting that I wanted to see more of. I googled his name which led me to Cinecitta's website where he was one of several artists who created posters for the studio.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:43 PM

September 06, 2005

Summer Things

Embrassez qui Vous Voudrez
Michel Blanc - 2002
20th Century Fox U.K. Region 2 DVD

I figured it would appropriate to catch a movie titled Summer Things as close to Labor Day as possible. What caught my eye more than the title was noting that Charlotte Rampling was the star, and Michel Blanc was the director. Probably better known in the U.S. for his acting, Blanc has also been starring in films where he has served as screenwriter and director. The one previous film that I saw in which he performed triple duty, Dead Tired, Blanc presented a comic critique of the French film industry, and played both himself and an imposter. Rampling is better known now as the mature star of films by Francois Ozon, at a respectable career plateau as the woman of a certain age after several peaks and valleys after forty years. Summer Things is basically a trifle, an almost stereotypical French movie for French audiences.

The movie follows several couples and singles on vacation. A couple that are broke, but attempt to keep up appearances, go to the same resort town as their more affluent neighbors. The affluent couple have a daughter who is secretly going to Chicago with one of Dad's employees. Dad is having a secret affair with a sexual ambiguous employee. A husband accuses his very faithful wife of having affairs. Virtually everybody is going to bed with someone other than their spouse. While their are nods to homosexuality, bondage and voyeurism, the basic framework is from the classic French bedroom farce.

The film isn't very funny. Perhaps the problem is that one can sense the effort that has been put into making Summer Things. Rampling is the best thing of Summer Things as she is the calm center, the gravity that holds the film together. My own favorite summer vacation films are still two by Eric Rohmer - Summer and Pauline on the Beach, two films that are both funnier and more meaningful than Summer Things. In terms of a vacation with Charlotte Rampling, she lost a husband in Under the Sand and found a dead body in Swimming Pool, but both are better films.

The best part of this DVD was the featurette. I was afraid this would be another, boring documentary showing Blanc putting the actors through their paces, and the actors and director voicing praise of each other. Instead we have what are like little visual haikus - stills from the production with Blanc discussing the challenges of filming actors in cars, very small trailer housing, working with babies, and bringing out the right kind of performance after twenty takes. There is a lightness and poignancy in this brief short that the feature does not achieve.

Summer Things was popular in Europe. While I do not think the film is as good as Dead Tired, some may be interested in reading an interview with Michel Blanc.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:19 PM

September 04, 2005

Saturday Night with Jesus (Franco)

The Girl from Rio
Jesus Franco - 1969
Blue Underground DVD

Blue Rita
Das Frauenhaus
Jesus Franco - 1977
VIP Region 0 DVD

Sadomania - Holle der Lust
Jesus Franco - 1981
Blue Underground DVD

"I feel that cinema should be like a box of surprises, like a magic box" - Jesus Franco

After seeing about ten films by the extraordinarily prolific Jesus Franco, nothing surprises me about his films. Franco is so agressively transgressive that he makes the films of Takashi Miike look like Merchant-Ivory productions in comparison. The word "gratuituous" is virtually meaningless. For Franco, a film's narrative is primarily an excuse to show as many women as possible in little or no clothing, having sex with each other, and humiliating men when not killing them. Still Franco fascinates because of his idiosyncratic, and admittedly idiotic, films.

In the DVD of Blue Rita, the producer, Erwin Dietrich, expresses the opinion that Franco was the original Dogme 95 film maker. I'm sure this would surprise Lars von Trier among others. If unpolished film making was all that was required, one could go on this particular tangent and argue on behalf of Andy Milligan, a guy who worked with budgets smaller than Franco's, making horror movies with a 16mm Auricon camera that recorded synch sound while shooting. Dietrich also throws out the description "post-modern" for Franco for good measure. Even most of Franco scholars will admit that Franco has more misses, than hits.

As amazing as the fact that Franco is still actively making films at 75, so is one of his former producers, Harry Alan Towers, age 80. I've seen a couple of films Towers produced with other directors, so I don't understand why the films he produced for Franco look so hastily cobbled together. Franco did one of his best, that is to say most consistently entertaining, films with Towers, Venus in Furs. Towers also produced The Girl from Rio, one of the many films based on characters by pulp author Sax Rohmer. This film was intended to be a sequel to a film titled The Million Eyes of Sumuru. However, as that particular film was laughed out of theaters in the U.S., the character of Sumuru was either renamed Sumitra or Elektra, depending on which dubbed version you saw. In any event, former Goldfinger girl Shirley Eaton portrays the villainess with her all woman army, planning to take over the world from her island fortress, Femina.

Sumuru and her army have been kidnapping rich people to finance her plans for world domination. Richard Wyler, an obscure leading man is several obsure movies, comes to Rio to rescue the kidnapped daughter and in general, save the world. Getting in the way is George Sanders, lamely camping it up as well connected shnook who attempts to steal Wyler's ten million dollar ransom. The film begins with a breathy female singer performing the title song with lyrics and melody informing the audience that Towers and Franco probably saw Goldfinger many, many times. Sumuru's army is dressed in uniform, if you were getting your uniform from Frederick's of Hollywood. Most of the women are seen wearing capes with a collar that barely covers their breasts, black tights and go-go boots. One of the torture devices looks like a dentist's x-ray machine. It may be telling that both Eaton and Wyler retired from acting after making this film. More surprising for me was to find out that co-star Maria Rohm, an actress who worked on several Franco films, has gone from acting to producing. One may consider the career change part of Ms. Rohm's real life role as wife to Harry Alan Towers. Along with Towers, who seems to have made a career of producing new versions of films he has previously done, Rohm is credited for producing a film from a couple of years ago simply titled Sumuru.

Blue Rita is one of approximately fifteen films that Franco make with producer Erwin Dietrich. The story is almost a variation of the Sumuru films, with Rita being a stripper who is actually a secret agent, leading her band of lesbians to kidnap men for their money one behalf of some secret government agency. Unlike Sumuru's army, Rita's gang just wear thigh high boots in their secret lair. Outdoor wear means wearing a blue cape and boots (and nothing else). Men are seduced in an apartment filled with clear plastic furniture. It's surreal, soft-core nonsense. While the film benefits visually from looking more polished than many Franco films, it's ultimately less interesting than the grindhouse dada Franco made in the Sixties and early Seventies.

Sadomania is one of Franco's women-in-prison films. Made with a tiny budget, the film is mostly distinguished by starring the post-op transexual porno star, Ajita Wilson. The prisoners and guards both wear very tight cut-offs, shorts so short that Daisy Duke is a model of decorum. The guards also have boots. The plot involves Wilson as the evil prison warden who has her way with the gorgeous prisoners who are also abused by the Governor and his wife. Some of the prisoners are sold to a brothel run by a short gay man, Lucas. This is the kind of film that sounds more interesting to read about than to actually see with the scenes involving rubber alligators and a very friendly German shepard. More comic in its implications is a scene with Lucas caught in bed topped by another man. In an effort to keep within the meager budget, Lucas is played by Franco. He is topped by Wilson, impersonating a man. Without the wig, and with a mustache, Wilson looks kind of like Richard Pryor.
Sadomania falls, down, down, down, into the category that can only be called, "did I actually watch that?"

Those who have bothered to take Franco seriously , such as Pete Tombs in his book Immoral Tales, have commented on his seemingly unlimited imagination. It's not that I disagree, but there are times when the films of Jesus Franco present arguments on behalf of self-censorship.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:46 PM

September 01, 2005

Seconds

John Frankenheimer - 1966
Paramount Region 1 DVD

Although John Frankenheimer doesn't say as much in his commentary on the DVD, the title Seconds is appropriate for several members of the supporting cast. The title refers to a group of people who have been contacted by a secret organization, physically transformed, and given a "second chance" at life. The narrative follows drab, anonymous businessman John Randolph who undergoes the opportunity to be mildly bohemian artist Rock Hudson. What I found interesting is that the film represented new opportunities primarily for several actors.

Frankenheimer points out that in addition to Randolph, Will Geer and Jeff Corey who both play key roles were blacklisted. While Geer and Corey had been back onscreen a couple of years prior to Seconds, the film was the catalyst that reactivated Randolph's career. In a small role at a cocktail party, there is an appearance by writer and actor Ned Young, also blacklisted. Frankenheimer's comments make it sound coincidental, which it probably was. Still, it gives the film's title a unitended meaning.

Seconds was intended as a sort of second chance for Rock Hudson. Forty years old, his lengthy contract with Universal at an end, and following a career characterized by light romanctic comedies in the early Sixties, Seconds was to be Hudson's transition to more substantial roles. As it turned out, in spite of some critical acclaim, the film was a major box office failure that ended up hurting Hudson in some ways more than Frankenheimer. Grand Prix, Frankenheimer's next film, was a major success, with Frankenheimer's career hurt more by an exclusive contract with MGM which soon afterwards was going through ownership changes. Hudson was still considered a major star through 1970, but made no other films with the artistic aspirations of Seconds. As Frankenheimer explained, the audience for a film like Seconds was almost mutually exclusive to the kind of audience that usually went to films starring Rock Hudson.

If there is a complaint to be made, one can argue that Frankenheimer's style may seem excessively European. Frankenheimer was the same age as many of the directors of the French Nouvelle Vague and probably was itching to have the same kind of artistic freedom seen in those films. Much praise is directed towards cinematographer James Wong Howe, a sixty-six year old Hollywood veteran. Rightly nominated for an Academy Award, much of the film is shot with hand held cameras. Many of the shots were done with the camera mounted on the actors, or with Howe in a grocery cart.

While I had seen the film once before on cable, I strongly recommend viewing Seconds on DVD. As Frankenheimer points out, the DVD version is his preferred version of the film. The cable version, which is the American release version has a several edited scene of revelers at a grape harvest. The DVD contains nudity which was unacceptable for a commercial American film in 1966. Seconds is a creepy, effective film which still looks good viewed more than once.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:01 PM

August 31, 2005

Fritz Lang: One by, one about

Lilliom
Fritz Lang - 1934
Kino DVD

Fritz Lang: Circle of Destiny - The German Films
Jorge Dana - 2000
Image DVD

I saw a part of Lilliom theatrically at Telluride about thirty years ago. Charles Boyer goes to Heaven amidst some hokey looking special effects. Now that Lilliom is restored and available on DVD, I figured I would see the entire film with the Heaven scene in context. The highest praise I can give Lilliom is that I did manage to see the entire film unlike An American Guerilla in the Philippines, which I gave up on after about half an hour when it was aired on AMC.

Most people would be familiar with the story of Lilliom from the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. In retrospect, it is difficult to imagine a romance between a former carnival barker who's become a loafer with a seamstress. In addition to living in poverty, the relationship between Lilliom and Julie borders on the masochistic in the way that Julie accepts Lilliom's temper and occassional physical outbursts. Heaven looks like a bad Hallmark card. More fun to look at is the star Lilliom steals from Heaven. With the firmness of jello, this obviously hand scratched piece of very low tech special effects provides a welcome moment of humor.

Made in France between leaving Germany, and before his Hollywood career, Lilliom is more interesting for its historic value. In addition to Lang, producer Erich Pommer was in transition from Germany to Hollywood. In addition to several films starring Charles Laughton, Pommer's first American film, Music in the Air had lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, future librettist of Carousel. Composer Franz Waxman and cinematographer Rudolph Mate were two films away from their respective Hollywood debuts, Waxman scoring The Bride of Frankenstein and Mate shooting the cult classic, Dante's Inferno. Mate is possibly remembered most for photographing several of Carl Dreyer's silent classics. Mate moved to the director's chair after moving to Hollywood. Sadly, his name is never mentioned in spite of the news that a science fiction classic he helmed, When Worlds Collide, is to be remade by Steven Spielberg.

While the documentary, Fritz Lang: Circle of Destiny does not add many insights into Lang, it should probably be required viewing for people who think film history begins with Star Wars. Not only was Fritz Lang the Steven Spielberg of his time with the oversized budgets and state of the arts special effects, but the shots of the futuristic city of Metropolis are still being duplicated almost eighty years later. While Patrick McGilligan's biography may be the best written source on Lang's life and films, the clips are fun to watch. The anecdotes and analysis from people like McGilligan, Volker Schlondorff, Claude Chabrol and producer Artur Brauner are all less interesting than the clip of Lang discussing his films with Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot in Contempt. That Lang ended his film making career in the same place as he began, essentially remaking films he created in the silent era, is fitting for someone who's screen characters were people unable to escape from the patterns of their lives.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:12 PM

August 30, 2005

Good Morning, Night

Buongiorno, Notte
Marco Bellochio - 2003
Artificial Eye Region 2 DVD

My original plan was to write about Good Morning, Night at the same time I wrote about Devil in the Flesh. Due to the uncertainties of the postal system, especially with Hurricane Katrina, that didn't happen. While one can appreciate either film on their individual merits, Good Morning, Night helps deepen one's understanding of the background events concerning Devil in the Flesh and the Red Brigades.

Bellochio has recreated the kidnapping of the Christian Democratic party leader Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigades. The Red Brigades were a group of left-wing terrorists that grew out of the activities in the Spring of 1968. There closest American counterpart would probably be the Weather Underground, but more disciplined. For those who may not have lived through those days, this was a time when middle class college students seriously thought they would lead a workers' revolution based on the ideals of Karl Marx. The ideas and ideals, though praiseworthy, conflicted with various realities and the complexities of politics. Moro was kidnapped based on the premise that he compromised the Italian Communist Party by forming a coalition government. The kidnappers conducted a private trial in the name of the "proletariat" that concluded with Moro's execution.

The film primarily focuses on one of the four Red Brigades members, a young woman named Chiara. Her function is to maintain the house where the three who kidnapped Moro live, to feed them and Moro, and be the conduit to the outside world. Chiara finds herself confronting the clash between the fervent belief in the Red Brigade ideals, and the reality of their activities, much like the real Red Brigade members who left following the kidnapping of Moro. A pivotal moment is when Chiara attends the memorial service for her father who died as part of the resistance fighters in World War II. Bellochio points out to the very real fight for the liberation of Italy as opposed to the more abstract notions of liberation of a different generation. Like previous Bellochio films, the Red Brigades unit stands in for the fractured family unit that is often the subject of his films, with Aldo Moro as the patriarch that the children are rebelling against.

The actors are often filmed in close-ups. Chiara, especially, is photographed in shadows, with only the upper part of her face visible. Documentary footage is integrated into the narrative, often as part of television broadcasts. Bellochio is not totally realistic with the story, allowing dream images of Moro padding quietly through the apartment while his kidnappers are asleep and even walking alone on a cold, quiet street.

The DVD comes with a documentary titled Same Rage, Same Spring. Much of the film explains the history behind the Red Brigades and the kidnapping with interviews of former Red Brigades members, as well as having Bellochio explain his motivations in making the film. The documentary also serves as an overview of Bellochio's career, with an emphasis connecting Good Morning, Night, with his first film, Fists in His Pockets. Bellochio also talks about his own family and growing up Catholic. Of particular interest is the revelation that he had a twin brother who committed suicide in 1968, giving autobiographical meaning to the film The Eyes, the Mouth. A backwards retrospective of Bellochio's feature films, each a few seconds long, is included. Bellochio is one filmmaker I care enough about to see as many of his films as possible. The recent DVD release of Devil in the Flesh, and the scheduled U.S. release of Good Morning, Night, are most welcomed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:29 PM

August 29, 2005

Devil in the Flesh

Il Diavolo in Corpo
Marco Bellochio - 1986
No Shame Region 0 DVD

Devil in the Flesh is, for me, a difficult film to evaluate. While it uses Raymond Radiguet's short novel as the basis of the film story, the adaptation is so loose that the film lacks the novel's context of a love affair as an act of rebellion against middle class mores. Bellochio's updating of the story against the backdrop of the Red Brigade trials lacks the weight of Radiguet's semi-autobiographical story which coincides with the first World War.

The original novel was about a French teenager, about 16 years old, and his clandestine affair with a young married woman only two years older than himself. The woman's husband is a soldier who is in the field fighting during most of the affair. The young man expresses cavalier attitudes towards those active in the war, and eventually mistreats the woman. Bellochio ups the age of the young man, Andrea, to 18, and has the object of his affection be the fiancee, Giulia, of a former Red Brigades member, Giacomo, on trial. Bellochio has made a film, Good Morning, Night, that is directly about the Red Brigades. In this film, the political aspects seem almost besides the point. The film works better when seen simply as an examination of what the French would call l'amour fou.

In the interview with Bellochio that is part of the DVD, Bellochio explains how he sees Devil in the Flesh as pivotal in his career. As the theatrical release of his films has been inconsistent, and there are several films still unavailable on tape or DVD, this is difficult to clearly evaluate. Certainly this film is less overtly political in comparison with such early efforts as Fists in His Pocket and China is Near. The conflicts of family relationships, usually a major theme throughout Bellochio's career, is muted in this film. Likewise, the impact of the Catholic Church is significantly less here than in the earlier In the Name of the Father or the more recent Religion Hour. Based on the descriptions of the two films made following Devil in the Flesh, Bellochio explored the theme of erotic love further.

While Devil in the Flesh is best known for an unsimulated scene of oral sex, this too is a minor part to the overall scheme of the film. The affair overwhelms the lovers' sense of responsibility. The woman risks her impending marriage which is viewed as a means of helping her imprisoned fiance gain the bourgeoise respectability needed for integration back in society. The young man ignores his school work in his crucial year before presumably attending a university. The former Red Brigades member speaks longingly about being mediocre, while Andrea's father also gives himself that identification. Devil in the Flesh concludes with Andrea in his final exams at school, ambivalently following the expected path determined by society.

The political aspects of Devil in the Flesh are remote for American audiences. The closest to domestic terrorism experienced in the United States since the Viet Nam era would probably be the Oklahoma City bombing. The kind of domestic terrorism experienced in Italy is more abstract. Bellochio shows that Giulia is the daughter of a man who was killed by a terrorist as noted on a public monument. Giulia is also engaged to a former terrorist. This seeming self-contradiction is not explained in any way, and Giulia appears totally apolitical. Again, the political concerns of the film are weak, not only within the context of the film, but in comparison with Bellochio's other work. The enclosed booklet is indespensible as it includes an overview of Italy and the Red Brigades as well as excerpts from an interview Bellochio made at the time of Devil in the Flesh which more clearly conveys his intentions.

There is a moment of visual poetry. Andrea is climbing up the rope on the side of an apartment building under some kind of construction. The roof of the building seemingly vanishes into the night sky, underneath the very big moon. The shot is composed to make it appear that Andrea is literally climbing into the night.

It is worth noting that Raymond Radiguet's novel has been filmed several times. The most famous film version, directed by Claude Autant-Lara in 1946 is unavaila
1000
ble on DVD at this time. The most recent version, made for French television in 1990 has a screenplay written by Catherine Breillat. This is somewhat ironic as the on screen sex that Bellochio briefly explored in his version of Devil in the Flesh has virtually defined the career of Breillat.

****************************
I am adding a note from NoShame's Joyce Shen:

The first 3000 copies of DEVIL IN THE FLESH include a coupon for a free poster. Well... it turns out there's been a mistake in the printing of the coupon. The coupons are still good, but as you'll see, the self-addressed sticker part was a little too much for our printers to handle. However, the promotion is still happening, so please return the coupon (with your name and address) to:

NoShame Films
P.O. BOX 5095
Hacienda Heights, CA 91745-0095

We apologize for any inconveniences and we ensure that all coupons we receive will be processed for the free poster. Thanks for your patience and understanding in this matter

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:42 PM

August 28, 2005

Blind Dead Double Feature

Tombs of the Blind Dead
La Noche del Terror Ciego
Amando De Ossorio - 1971
Anchor Bay Region 0 DVD

Return of the Blind Dead
El Ataque de Los Muertos sin Ojos
Amando De Ossorio - 1973
Anchor Bay Region 0 DVD

One of the most fun books on film is Cathal Tohill and the appropriately surnamed Pete Tombs' Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956-1984. Since the book first appeared in 1995, many of the guilty pleasures described by the authors have appeared on DVD. One of the best aspects to this book are the plentiful illustrations, primarily stills from the movies, but also posters as well. Tohill and Tombs are partially responsible for what is on my Netflix queue, with the loopy Horrors of Spider Island as one of my first rentals.

Since first reading the book, I was intrigued by the poster and still from Tombs of the Blind Dead. I can't explain it rationally except to say that there is something fascinating about skeleton-like zombies in medieval armor, riding horses. I finally saw the first two films of Spanish director Amando De Ossorio's four film series through Nicheflix.

Even though there are four Blind Dead films, each films has its own self-contained narrative. If the two films I have seen are any indication, De Ossorio likes to repeat certain scenes. The two films also shared several of the same actors. The basic narrative concerns a group of 13th Century knights who are described as Templars in the English language versions of the films. These particular knights have learned Egyptian Black Magic and have blood drinking rituals. The blood is usually supplied by scantily clad young woman who clearly isn't attending the ritual by choice. The knights are killed by angry villagers and buried in an abandoned castle, only to come back to life to drink the blood of some modern day victims. These zombie knights are all blind, but somehow possess acute hearing. Even more amazing is that they are skilled equestrians, riding around on zombie horses. Both films show a young woman trying to escape on a zombie horse which got me pondering if someone should make a film called Night of the Living Seabisquit.

Where the first film lives up to the promise of the poster and the still is in the imagery of the knights on horseback. De Ossorio filmed the horseback riding scenes in slow motion, creating dreamlike imagery. It's likely that De Ossorio was inspired by the scene of the ghostly carriage in Mario Bava's Black Sunday. If not enough to sustain an entire film, these images provide a sense of cheap but effective visual poetry amid the narrative nonsense.

While it isn't a consistent source of information, re-checking the cast list on Return of the Blind Dead provided a little chuckle. Briefly appearing among the zombie knights and their victims is an actor who would lead the renaissance of filmmaking in Spain. Cast as Farmer #2 is a future director, Pedro Almodovar.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:10 PM

August 27, 2005

Two films by Two Oswalds

Crime of Passion
Gerd Oswald - 1957
MGM Region 1 DVD

Different from the Others
Anders als die Andern
Richard Oswald - 1919
Kino DVD

One of the blogs I regularly check in belongs to Girish. About a week ago he was trying to explain to his mother about how his choices in films are usually director driven rather than star driven. A film discussed was Crime of Passion. I hadn't yet seen it myself, but it was on my Netflix list as I've wanted to see more films by Gerd Oswald. My interest in Oswald originates from reading Andrew Sarris' brief essay in The American Cinema, and the later realization that Oswald was a frequent director of one of my favorite television series from the Fifties, Perry Mason. In its own right, Crime of Passion is an interesting film, primarily because of its commentary on gender and society. Gerd Oswald is the son of Richard Oswald, a German director whose career primarily spanned from the silent era until the mid-Thirties, who also was a socially conscious film maker.

The stories of Richard and Gerd Oswald illustrate why film companies need to do a more consistent job of making older films available on DVD, as well as why there are still gaps in films scholarship. Only two films by Richard Oswald are currently available on DVD in the United States. From the evidence of his filmography, Richard Oswald was not only prolific, but worked regularly with several top German actors, primarily Conrad Veidt. In addition to the socially conscious films, the senior Oswald made musicals, horror films and comedies. Gerd Oswald's filmography is much smaller but still has gaps worth filling. Based on what little I could find through a Google search, most of the interest in his career has been for his direction of several episodes of the original television version of The Outer Limits. A major portion of Gerd Oswald's television series work is easily available while only three of his features are on DVD. Gerd Oswald's career influence could be evaluated better if his version of Screaming Mimi becomes available. According to Dario Argento scholar Maitland McDonagh, Oswald's film, along with the original novel by Fredric Brown, contributed to the Italian giallo genre.

Crime of Passion is primarily valued because of its feminist message. Kathy Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) is a female reporter based in San Francisco who is famous for her advice column. Ferguson is a variation of the character Rosalind Russell played in His Girl Friday. She agrees to use her column to lure a murderer who is in hiding after murdering her husband on behalf of two Los Angeles based detectives. Ferguson writes an open letter to the murderer about how woman live in a "man's world with men's rules". Oswald shows several different types of women reading excerpts from the letter such as a housewife, a couple of young woman at a movie theater concession stand, and a couple of butch looking cabbies. For reasons that require a major leap of faith, Kathy decides she is so in love with one of the Los Angeles detectives, Bill Doyle (Sterling Hayden), that she ditches a career offer in New York City to be the wife of a Los Angeles Detective. Kathy soon finds that socializing with policemen's wives is less fun than hanging out with the most male reporters, and is frustrated by Bill's seeming lack of ambition. Kathy tries to manipulate Bill's career and her social status by ingratiating herself with Police Inspector Anthony Pope (a relatively svelte Raymond Burr) and his wife, Alice (Fay Wray, playing the wife to someone a bit more proportionate to her than King Kong).

My internet research on screenwriter Jo Eisinger revealed little more than her filmography. With her gender ambiguous name, Eisinger has written both original and adapted screenplays, with films such as Gilda and Night in the City among her credits. One of her later films, Mistress of the World, was directed by William Dieterle. Dieterle began his career as an actor in Germany where one of his directors was Richard Oswald. I am not sure if this is coincidental, but in checking the principal cast, the wives were all older than the husbands. At the age of 50, this was one of Stanwyck's last turns as a romantic lead. Certain aspects of Crime of Passion appear to lend themselves to a "queer" reading. Early on, when Kathy quips that the lovelorn "other woman" should leave a married man and run off with his wife. A conversation between Raymond Burr and Stanwyck takes on a more personal reading especially when Stanwyck mentions "people like us". Crime of Passion concludes with Barbara Stanwyck punished ultimately for having acted against her true nature.

Conversely, in Different from the Others, Conrad Veidt is punished for acting in accordance with his true nature as a gay male. The film can not be fairly evaluated because what remains is only part of the original footage augmented by explanatory titles and stills. The version of Different from the Others that is we see is presented with an explanation of the history of Germany's Paragraph 175 which made male homosexuality illegal. Additionally, the film is placed in the context of film history, made during a time before stricter film censorship, and when film was seen as a medium to educate people on various controversial topics including prostitution and drug addiction. Pioneering sex researcher Magnus Hirschfeld contributed to the script and appears as a lecturer. While certain aspects of the film may appear naive, the main message of the film concerning the need of respect for homosexuals is unfortunately is still as needed now as it was in 1919.

Richard Oswald made his last German movie in 1938, and made three American films for "Poverty Row" studios. His last film, The Lovable Cheat seems of particular interest based in the assessment of the contributor to Internet Movie Data Base, although that is contradicted at Answers.com. Maybe this is just an interesting cultural footnote, but I also view it as reason enough for better film preservation and film scholarship.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:50 PM

August 24, 2005

Kirk Douglas Double Feature

Strangers When We Meet
Richard Quine - 1960
Columbia Pictures Region 1 DVD

Town Without Pity
Gottfried Reinhardt - 1961
MGM Region 1 DVD

A couple of weeks ago I saw Lee Grant's "documentary" about Kirk and Michael Douglas on HBO. While it was sort of heartwarming to see Kirk Douglas' Bar Mitvah at the age of 83, I would have preferred more clips from his movies as well as some better informed commentary. Jack Valenti made the claim that Kirk Douglas was the first star to have his own production company. Ignoring that United Artists was founded by three of the biggest stars of the silent era (Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin), the first sound era star to be his own producer was James Cagney. Douglas was also credited for breaking the Hollywood Ten blacklist by giving screen credit to Dalton Trumbo for Spartacus. My understanding is that this is partially true, as it was it was already known at the time that Otto Preminger was planning to give Trumbo screen credit for Exodus, released two months later.

There was a clip from the Academy Award broadcast of 1958 which seemed to be symbolic of Kirk Douglas' career. Douglas and Burt Lancaster perform a duet singing about how they are glad not be nominated for Best Actor of 1957. In addition to singing together, there is a little acrobatic bit with Kirk Douglas standing on the shoulders of Burt Lancaster. It's an image that seems to sum up Douglas' own sense of self. Call it penis envy, but the guy born Issur Danielovitch always seemed to look up to the guy born as Burton Lancaster. In spite of his self doubts, Douglas and his films have proven that they could stand on their own.

Douglas and Lancaster's duet seems more ironic in view of the films they made in 1957. Together they starred in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, John Sturges' very entertaining western. 1957 was also the year that Douglas produced and starred in Paths of Glory, while Lancaster produced and starred in Sweet Smell of Success.

Stangers When We Meet and Town Without Pity were the films Douglas starred in before and after Spartacus. Strangers' novel and screenplay were by Evan Hunter. It is a bit incongruous to see Kirk Douglas and Kim Novak introduced in the film as suburbanites and parents. More interesting that the story about adultery between housewife Maggie Gault and architect Larry Coe, is the film's exploration of artistic expression in a commericial context. Coe is designing a house for best selling author Roger Altar (a very subdued Ernie Kovacs). Coe is caught between the demands of his client, Altar, and the ability of his builder to create a dream house that all are happy with. Altar is encouraged to write a novel that is more true to himself at the risk of commercial success. While Hunter is undoubtedly writing about himself, he wrote as Evan Hunter for his more literary works and as Ed McBain for his police procedurals, this part of the narrative is also clearly a commentary on the compromises of film making. In an interview Evan Hunter praised Richard Quine for being faithful to his screenplay. The dream house built for the movie was not only real, Quine bought it and lived there with his real life love, Kim Novak.

The most memorable aspect of Town Without Pity is still the theme song. Lyrics by Ned Washington, music by Dimitri Tiomkin, wailing by Gene Pitney, the song was rightly nominated for an Academy Award. The movie makes an interesting contrast to The Young Savages made the same year. Douglas plays a military attorney in what appears to be a clear case of rape. The Young Savages was about a seemingly clear case of murder. Douglas' defense lawyer and Lancaster in The Young Savages both go through a crisis of conscious which leads to the defendants in both movies being saved from death sentences. Town Without Pity is one of those films that isn't bad but should have been better. Of interest is seeing a young Robert Blake and Gomer Pyle's future Sergeant Carter, Frank Sutton, take the stand. But the best part is the music, hearing variations of the theme song, including a twist version.

For those keeping notes on where Burt and Kirk cross each other: In addition to Stranger When We Meet, Evan Hunter wrote the novel that The Young Savages was based on, and Disney ingenue Roberta Shore appeared in both films. Town Without Pity was the English language debut of Christine Kaufmann, who would later star in Taras Bulba, a film produced by Burt Lancaster's former production partner, Harold Hecht. Kaufmann would marry her Taras Bulba co-star, Tony Curtis. Curtis, of course, acted in several films with Lancaster and Douglas. Curtis, Douglas and Lancaster also were in the same film, though not all three together, in The List of Adrian Messenger. Town Without Pity is about a small town in Germany where everyone seems to know everyone else, kind of like Hollywood.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 02:22 PM | Comments (3)

August 23, 2005

Fugitive Lovers Double Feature

Burnt Money
Plata Quemada
Marcelo Pineyro - 2000
Strand DVD

Wanda
Barbara Loden - 1971
MK2 France Region 2 DVD

I haven't read Edward Anderson's novel, Thieves Like Us. Written in 1937, and officially filmed twice, by Nicholas Ray and Robert Altman, the story seems to be the literary template for films about criminal lovers on the run from the law. Anderson's real life inspiration, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow have of course inspired not only biographical, if not truthful, films, but also have served as a model couple for other films. The two films can be viewed as reworkings of the Bonnie and Clyde story.

Burnt Money is based on a true story that took place in Argentina and Uruguay in 1965. Nene and Angel are a gay couple, together known as "The Twins". They participate in a botched payroll robbery and escape to Uruguay. The majority of the film is about the pair hiding out in Uraguay with the other gang members, biding their time until they can escape to a county where they can avoid extradition. During the extended period of hiding, Angel decides he no longer wants sexual activity with Nene. When the fugitives are allowed limited time in the streets, Nene has clandestine relationships with men and one woman, Giselle. The ending of the film seems inevitable, with the lovers trapped by the law, guns blazing until the last possible moment.

The director, Marcelo Pineyro, was also the producer of the film The Official Story (1985). This is a very moving film about the unanticipated impact of the military junta on a well-to-do Argentinian couple. Burnt Money has been Pineryro's only film to have wide international distribution. Noted in imdb.com is that he has made two films so far that have been Argentina's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. Eduardo Noriega, the actor who plays Angel, has worked with some of the best Spanish language filmmakers like Amenabar (Open Your Eyes) and Del Toro (The Devil's Backbone). For those who haven't seen it, I would also strongly recommend the romantic and fatalistic The Yellow Fountain.

Wanda is one of those films where the story behind the film is, at least for me, more interesting than the film. There is a very lengthy analysis about Wanda and Loden at Senses of Cinema. I have to assume that Loden saw her screen character as a version of herself had she not moved to New York City. Both the real life relationship with Elia Kazan and the relationships with men in the film are abusive. The screen character may be realistic and indicates that she is doesn't seem to learn from her past actions, essentially being a willing victim. Not only is the character of Wanda not very sympathetic, but she is also not particularly interesting.

What is interesting to me is that as volatile as Loden's relationship with Kazan may have been, Wanda may have influenced Kazan as a filmmaker. Pretty much forced into retirement following the box office and critical failure of his film The Arrangement (1969), Kazan worked outside of the Hollywood system in 1972 with his film The Visitors. Photographed by Nicholas Proferes, again doubling as cinematographer and editor as with Wanda, The Visitors is a much less polished film than any of Kazan's other films, even America, America. In retrospect, Loden and Kazan provide an interesting intersection in film history where the younger artist was a pioneer of independent film, providing a new sylistic path for the established artist.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:10 PM

August 20, 2005

The Alligator People

Roy Del Ruth - 1959
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

A few days ago there was a news story from Reuters explaining that crocodiles had an immune system that could kill HIV. Scientists are at work developing a drug for humans. While I am all in favor of a cure for HIV and AIDS, this story sounds like Fifties science fiction. I took it upon myself to investigate what happens when reptiles and humans mix.

The Alligator People was somebody's idea of a follow-up to the massive success of the original The Fly. On the eve of her honeymoon, Beverly Garland's husband disappears after recieving a telegraph. Garland uses various clues which lead her to a remote plantation in Louisiana bayou country. After being met at the train station by hook-handed Lon Chaney, Jr., you know she's in trouble. Actually, we know Garland would be in trouble simply by sitting on a box of radioactive material, which she does. Her husband looks like a Marvel comic reject, the Hulk without bulk. For a while he is still human enough to play piano. What does an alligator person play on the piano? Scales? Crocodile Rock? Actually, schmaltzy movie music. Chaney, who's hobby is to shoot alligators with his pistol, saves Garland when she's lost in the swamp. Doing his darndest to get her drunk and naked, the alligator husband saves Garland from Chaney's hook.

The scientist who created the alligator people explains that his goal was to cure injured people in the same way that certain reptiles are able to regenerate body parts. Garland's husband, thought to be cured of severe injuries, has a severe skin problem and the need to play in mud. Chaney causes the husband to get more radiation than needed causing him to have a rubbery upper torso and an alligator head. You would think he would get stumpy legs and a tail, but not according to this film. Garland sees her mutant husband and screams. It's a moment that wishes it duplicated the scene when Patricia Owens sees David Hedison, and the CinemaScope screen shows the fly's eyes view of the scream heard 'round the world.

The Alligator People was the second to last film directed by Roy Del Ruth. Del Ruth made a fair number of purely entertaining films based on the handful I've seen, primarily Taxi, Blessed Event, and Du Barry was a Lady. Into his sixties, his career was limited to low budget horror films and television series work. While overshadowed by John Huston's version, Del Ruth made the first film version of The Maltese Falcon which is reportedly interesting in its own right.

I also am something of a fan of Beverly Garland, primarily from her films with Roger Corman. When I was a contestant on The Ultimate Film Fanatic, I stayed at the Beverly Garland Holiday Inn in Los Angeles. Not only can one get various memorabilia, like a poster for It Conquered the World, but the television has a channel dedicated to a documentary on Beverly Garland's career. After the age of 77, she seems to have retired, but I am convinced Beverly Garland was the hardest working woman in show business.

While The Alligator People isn't scary, the biggest shock for me is that it is on DVD when so many other films from 20th Century Fox are still in the vaults. I wish someone at Fox could explain how this film was given priority over such films as Pretty Poison (Noel Black - 1968), a film Pauline Kael declared the best debut film since Cititzen Kane, Royal Flash (Richard Lester - 1975) , Yellow Sky (William Wellman - 1949) and Frank Tashlin's best work. It's bewildering decisions by unknown studio executives that always manage to haunt me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:49 PM

August 18, 2005

Russian Horror Double Feature

Viy
Georgi Kropachyov & Konstantin Yershov - 1967
Ruscico Region 1 DVD

Night Watch
Nachnoy Dozor
Timur Bekmambetov - 2004
Russian Region 1 DVD

My significant other loves vampire movies. She asked me if I knew anything about a new Russian vampire film that 20th Century Fox was to distribute in the United States. I did a little research and found that the film in question, Night Watch, was indeed available on DVD. This is a good thing as Fox has no release date set for the U.S. and because there are questions as to the if the film will be altered for the U.S. market. The first part of a proposed trilogy, there is conflicting information regarding whether there will be a third Night Watch, or if the story concludes with a reshot Part Two.
In any event, for those interested, the Russian DVD is available for those who either can't wait for the official U.S. version, or like me, would rather see a movie in the comfort of your own home.

Night Watch isn't really a vampire film, though it does have vampires. It's Russia's entry in the good versus evil genre with the conflicted character doing his best to prevent the apocalypse from happening. There are bits of Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Satan is coming for Y2K movies. What makes Night Watch somewhat amazing is that it was done only a little more than Four million dollars. Yes, I am as stunned as the guys at Fox probably were when they found out some Russians made their own version of Constantine for less than it cost a American to make a film about two middle aged guys having a road trip around California vineyards. It should be no surprise that director Timur Bekmambetov has a background in commercials and music videos just like some of the American directors making CGI heavy films.

The story is a bit confusing. Good and evil are at a standoff as of the year 1342. The forces of light and the forces of darkness keep each other in check in the present day. As it turns out, the good guys aren't always good, and the bad guys aren't always bad. There's a virgin witch who brings trouble just by showing up, kind of like the cartoon character with the cloud over his head. An owl turns out to be a bird of a different feather when she transforms herself into a woman. While the story centers on the emergence of "The Great One", the choice is simply between light and dark. Unlike many of its American counterparts, Night Watch is not a replay of God versus Satan or a variation of that theme. In spite of the sometimes unclear narrative, Night Watch is very watchable, kind of like Constantine without the religious trappings. At its best, the film as a couple of Keanu Reeves moments where you marvel at the action and go, "Whoa".

I figured that while I was watching a recent Russian film, I should check out an old school horror film. Viy is based on the same story that was the basis for Mario Bava's Black Sunday. The Russian story is about a less than devout seminary student who is asked to pray for three days over the body of a recently deceased young woman. The young woman is actually a witch who tries to break through the seminarians devine circle of protection. Most of the film is devoted to showing the student, Khoma, getting drunk on vodka. The film, shot in color, as some pretty good low tech special effects in some scenes that would almost make it in Bava's Black Sabbath or Roger Corman's Poe films. There's lots of dizzying circular pan shots. The scene with the witch conjuring all manner of creatures to terrorize Khoma is more funny than scary. The viy, which is suppose to be the most horrible of creatures, looks more like a large, deranged teddy bear. I'm assuming the filmmakers of Viy were hoping to compete with Bava, Corman and Hammer Studios. Their big scene of horror made me recall instead Mexican horror movies like Brainiac.

The Viy DVD also has excerpts from three silent films made between 1915 to 1918. For me, it was interesting to see examples of Russian filmmaking that were closer in style to Griffith, as opposed to the usual film history examples usually centered on Eisenstein.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:15 PM | Comments (2)

August 17, 2005

Girls! Girls! Girls!

Norman Taurog - 1962
Paramount Region 1 DVD

During the 4th of July weekend of 2004, I was at what may be the most American place to celebrate the holiday, Graceland. I stayed at, yes, the Heartbreak Hotel in all its wonderful tackiness. One of the features of the Heartbreak Hotel is that there was a television channel dedicated exclusively to showing Elvis Presley movies. In honor of the passing of "The King", I took it upon myself to see one of his films.

Like most Presley films, Girls! Girls! Girls! is an amiable time waster. While not as good as Flaming Star, it's not as rotten as Kissin' Cousins. I'm not sure why the film is called Girls! Girls! Girls! as Elvis is caught between Stella Stevens and Laurel Goodwin. I guess it would take a genius like James Toback to come up with a film titled Two Girls and a Guy. Second bill Stevens is hardly in the film. Mostly seen singing in a nightclub, she does one somewhat jazzy piece. Stevens' talents were put to much better use the year before in the infinitely hipper Too Late Blues by John Cassavetes. As for Laurel Goodwin, she's sort of cute, but I kept thinking she was essentially a stand-in for Deborah Walley.

As it is, the title song is not particularly interesting. The musical high point is actually one of the handful of Elvis songs I like, Return to Sender. In addition to being sung over the opening credits, the title song is used for a musical number at the end of the film. Costumed dancers representing "girls" from around the world (Africa not included), surround Elvis.

What is somewhat remarkable about Girls! is that there are a more Chinese actors in this films than usual for an American film. There are more than one even sees in Wayne Wang's last few films. I bring this up because of the low profile Asians have in most American films period. Where the film also gets it right is that it is actors of Chinese descent playing characters of Chinese descent, unlike the upcoming Memoirs of a Geisha which has Chinese actors as Japanese characters. Unfortunately the characters speak as if they are in the old Charlie Chan movies, with references to honorable ancestors and Number One son. At least Elvis is game enough to let two cute little Chinese girls steal the film from him.

The film was directed by Norman Taurog. If I were Christopher Nolan, Sam Raimi, or Bryan Singer, I would have a shrine devoted to Norman Taurog. Norman Taurog has probably made lots of fairly routine films most notably with Jerry Lewis and Elvis. Norman Taurog not only won an Academy Award for Best Director, but he won directing a movie based on a comic strip. Who in the name of John Avildsen did Taurog beat in the year of 1931? Josef von Sternberg for Morocco and Lewis Milestone for The Front Page to name two contenders. Clarence Brown, six nominations and zero wins was another nominee as was Wesley Ruggles who saw his film Cimarron win Best Picture. Taurog's film, Skippy, starring Taurog's nephew, Jackie Cooper is unavailable on tape or DVD, so I have to assume that based on the Academy's esteem, Taurog actually had one good movie in him.

There is one good aspect of the screenplay by Edward Anhalt. Producer Hal Wallis assigned Anhalt the screenplay to Girls! Girls! Girls! has his condition for allowing Anhalt to next adapt the screenplay for Becket. Thanks to his time with Elvis, Anhalt won his own Academy Award.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:10 PM

August 16, 2005

Ab-normal Beauty

Sei mong se jun
Oxide Pang - 2004
Universe Hong Kong Region 0 DVD

Well before it became a staple on the Sundance Channel, I saw the Pang Brothers' The Eye theatrically. My interest was seeing one of what were several Asian films listed as being sources for American remakes. Danny and Oxide Pang are two ferociously talented twin brothers who have made films together, such as The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous, and individually. From Hong Kong, they started their professional careers in Thailand, and have filmed both in Thailand and Hong Kong. The Eye is everything one would want in a horror movie: scary, suspenseful, artistic and apocalyptic. A warning is in order here - Tom Cruise has the American remake rights.

Ab-normal Beauty is a solo effort by Oxide Pang. The story is of an art student who gets herself enmeshed in images of death once she photographs a car accident victim. The film has its clear antecedents in Rear Window and Peeping Tom, with nods to De Palma's 8mm, Amenabar's Tesis and Dario Argento's "animal" trilogy. Beautifully photographed, much of the color is very rich, with much tinting using phosphorescent red, green and blue. Ab-normal Beauty is somewhat like The Eye in suggesting that the greatest horror may be confronting the truth about one's self.

In having a female protagonist, Pang touches on such subjects as sexual abuse, real and false memories, voyeurism and the objectification of women, without direct comment. Not only is Pang's protagonist, Jiney, a stand-in for the viewer who is fascinated with artistic representations of death, such as horror movies, but Pang plays with the audience by having a scene where Jiney is videotaped by an unknown person while she is in the act of photographing a woman falling from a building. By extension, Pang is exploring the difference, or lack of difference, between an artist like Joel-Peter Witkin or Oxide Pang, with the creators and consumers of images that may be more arguably exploitive.

My attempts to translate the Chinese title with Babelfish have failed, but the English language title is worth commenting on. Ab-normal Beauty works as a double entendre. Jiney could be considered abnormal based on her interest in photographing scenes of death, as well as her persistent trauma from sexual abuse at a young age and ambivalent sexual orientation. The photographs created for the film, like the photographs refered to by Witkin and Weegee, are simultaneously brutal and beautiful, a distance from the more traditional "beauty" of nature photographs. Maybe I'm stretching here, but because of the hyphenated title, I wonder if this is a play on AB blood, or even the A and B rolls of films.

* * *

Ab-normal Beauty was available through the web rental outlet Nicheflix. Fellow film blogger Girish wanted to know more about Nicheflix and my experience with this company.

My overall experience with Nicheflix is that they are pretty good. They specialize in films that are not available through U.S. sources. If you have a code free DVD player, you can view anything they offer. For those who are limited to Region 1 DVDs, many of the DVDs from outside the U.S. are NTSC Region 1 or 0. While there are some duplications of titles with Netflix, I have been able to see films I might not have been able to enjoy otherwise, and saved substantially by not purchasing titles of interest.

The downsides to Nicheflix are relatively minor. As this is a small company based in Indiana, the gap between receiving films and sending them back is several days. The selection of titles seems abitrary. I have a queue list of about one hundred films, yet I can always name other titles only available as imports that Nicheflix does not carry.

These negatives are minor when one considers some of the films I have been able to see like Gumnaam, the Bollywood musical thriller best known for the excerpt shown in Ghost World, the Italian classic Bitter Rice, and several films by Cedric Klapisch and Marco Bellochio. All in all, I'm glad I stumbled upon Nicheflix when I was Googling for a now forgotten title one night.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:32 PM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2005

The World of Jacques Demy

L'Univers de Jacques Demy
Agnes Varda - 1995
Wellspring DVD

Both of Agnes Varda's documentaries on her husband, the late Jacques Demy, have left me frustrated. Not that it's her fault, but I can't help but feeling frustrated when I see can see excerpts of films, but not the full length feature. In the case of Jacques Demy, it's as if the twenty years following The Young Girls of Rochefort didn't exist.

The World of Jacques Demy can be viewed as a kind of companion piece to Varda's earlier film, Jacquot de Nantes. While Jacquot was primarily a kind of biography of Demy, particularly his childhood, World is more interested in Demy's films. The structure is not totally chronological so that while Lola is discussed early on, Bay of Angels is not covered until near the end. In addition to the excerpts from Demy's features, Varda included interviews with actors and other collaborators, as well as "home movie" footage.

Dead at the relatively early age of 59, I had to wonder what a Jacques Demy film would look like were he still alive and active. In addition to his best known film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy would demonstrate an interest in a stylized use of color, especially in settings and costuming. One could only assume that had he been able to make a film using computer generated special effects that Demy would have perhaps created yet another film with totally unanticipated images. At the very least, I would hope that Demy's later films, especially A Room in Town and Three Places for the 26th, along with his English language films, are made available on DVD. In terms of subject matter, Jeanne and the Perfect Guy is probably as good an homage to Demy as possible, starring the Demy and Varda's son Mathieu.

One person I wouldn't expect to see in a documentary on Jacques Demy is Harrison Ford. With just a handful of supporting role credits, Ford was Demy's original choice to star in The Model Shop, Demy's only American film. The top executives at Columbia Pictures vetoed the unknown Ford in favor of Gary Lockwood, fresh from 2001. A footnote to The Model Shop is that the script supervisor was Shirley Ulmer, wife of director Edgar G. Ulmer, a filmmaker dedicated to making the best film he could with the most limited of budgets.

In 1975, I had the chance to sit in on an interview with Demy's most famous musical collaborator, Michel Legrand. I don't remember what was said other than that I asked about Legrand's piano driven score for Bay of Angels. I found out a little later that Legrand was appreciative that someone knew him for more than Umbrellas or his Hollywood scores.

The World of Jacques Demy gives on a taste of Demy's entire filmmaking career. One can only hope that one doesn't have to wait long for the full meal.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:22 PM

August 13, 2005

Prince Valiant

Henry Hathaway - 1954
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

Is it possible that Dudley Nichols was a teeny bit subversive in his screenplay for Prince Valiant? Keep in mind that the screenwriter has an interesting history beyond the films to his credit. Nichols was key in organizing the screenplay writers in Hollywood in what eventually became the Writers Guild of America. Because the conflicts between the writers and the studios had not been resolved, Nichols was the first person to refuse an Academy Award, which happened to be for The Informer. In Prince Valiant, Robert Wagner is held prisoner by Sligon, a Viking trying to overthrough the rightful Viking king, Valiant's father. Several times, Valiant is asked to name the enemies of Sligon. After Valiant refuses, Sligon mentions that he already has a list of the names of traitors. Taken out of context, it is not too big a stretch to imagine that Nichols was making a little dig at both Joseph McCarthy and the Hollywood Ten trials.

Prince Valiant was made at a time when it was far more unusual to make a film based on a comic strip or comic book. It's more likely that the film was made primarily as a response to the success MGM was having with films like Ivanhoe and Knights of the Round Table. I'm not sure if the film would have been visually better had the compositions and lighting more resembled the work of the comic artist Hal Foster. What is fairly obvious is that director Henry Hathaway and the cast seem lost in the CinemaScope screen.

Released in April 1954, this was only the seventh film in CinemaScope, made during the first year that the new format was imposed on virtually all 20th Century Fox productions. An interesting comparison to make would be with Sam Fuller's Hell and High Water, the fifth CinemaScope film. Made as a challenge by Darryl Zanuck to have a widescreen film that was primarily shot in a confined space, Fuller proved adept at handling both the new screen shape and color. Until the final swordfight at the end of the film, Hathaway is too distant from the action, making the film less involving then it should be. The only other time that Hathaway and cinematographer Burnett Guffey have figured out what to do with the wide screen is in scenes of jousting with the shots of the long lances in action.

The film is an entertaining trifle with Robert Wagner looking awkward with his pageboy wig. Nichol's script pretty much gives away the identity of the mysterious Black Knight early on. Among the other actors lost under their wigs are Sterling Hayden as Sir Gawain and the title character of The Informer, Gypo Nolan himself, Andrew McLaglen as a big, blustery Irishman in Viking warrior drag. Janet Leigh seems to basically marking time between films with then husband Tony Curtis, and those films that made use of her acting talents. Prince Valiant isn't boring or badly made, but even compared to similar films of its time it is not particularly memorable. Compared to John Boorman's Excalibur and the under-rated Antoine Fuqua's King Arthur, Prince Valiant is just another Knight at the movies.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:30 PM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2005

Call Girl and Nurse Double Feature

Secrets of a Call Girl
Anna, quel particolare piacere
Giuliano Carnimeo - 1973
No Shame DVD

The Sensuous Nurse
L'Infermiera
Nello Rossati - 1975
No Shame DVD

Maybe it was a coincidence, but based on the names of the two main characters of No Shame's newest releases, these films could be boxed together as "The Passions of Anna". (Apologies to Ingmar Bergman.) What is good about these films being on DVD is that while they will mostly be appreciated by fans of Edwige Fenech and Ursula Andress, for more scholarly types one can get a better idea of the kind of bread and butter filmmaking that went on in Italy in the mid Seventies.

Secrets of a Call Girl is as misleading a title as the original which roughly translates as Anna, a Particular Pleasure. Either title suggests a sex romp which this film is not. The film is primarily a drama following Edwige Fenech descent from gangster's girl friend to prostitute. After witnessing a murder, Fenech attempts to escape her past. I have only seen one other film by Giuliano Carnimeo, The Case of the Bloody Iris which I thought was a kinder, gentler variation of Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace. While Secrets isn't as visually stylish, there is one nicely framed scene with gangster Corrado Pani in the background shooting at Fenech, who is stopped by glass doors in the foreground. Fans of Edwige Fenech can also enjoy more nudity than in the thrillers currently available.

The interviews with Fenech, Carnimeo and screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi are of interest in explaining the history of the filmmaking process not only for Secrets, but for those involved with genre films in the early Seventies in Italy. For me, the highlight of some of the No Shame DVDs has been the interviews with very informative Gastaldi. A very attractive brunette with long black hair, big brown eyes and cleft chin, Fenech is perhaps even more attractive today as a woman "of a certain age". Now working primarily as a film producer, her best known credit is Michael Radford's recent version of Merchant of Venice.

The Sensuous Nurse is the answer to the oft asked question: What does Ursula Andress look like without the white bikini she wears in Dr. No? This is another film about greedy relatives waiting for the wealthy patriarch to die so they can spend the anticipated inheritance as quickly as possible. Andress is the nurse who is hired to hasten death by exciting Mario Pisu with her presence, thereby causing a heart attack. There are a few chuckles as well as generous nudity provided by Andress and Carla Romanelli as a maid frequently out of uniform. Andress' fellow (fellow?) Bond girl, Luciana Paluzzi is seen frequently fighting to keep her clothes on in scenes with Duilio Del Prete. Keeping his clothes on is Jack Palance as the businessman planning to buy out the family's wine business, pending the death of Pisu. Somewhat similar to his role in Contempt, there is a scene of Palance on a hotel bed, phone in one hand, tweaking the breast of his female companion with the other hand. The Sensuous Nurse was made for those who enjoy, pardon the pun, broad comedy.

It may be worth noting that both The Sensuous Nurse and Secrets of a Call Girl were produced by Carlo Ponti. I may be wrong about this but one of the clients of Edwige Fenech is a short, older guy who suspiciously looks kind of like Ponti. While Ponti is better known for his association with films with loftier ambitions such as Contempt, with these new DVDs one can see a more pragmatic sensibility at work, the kind of commercial filmmaking that allowed Ponti to finance the more risky artistic expression.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 08:04 PM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2005

The Deadly Companions

Sam Peckinpah - 1961
Platinum Disc DVD

One of the blogs I've been reading regularly is titled Self Styled Siren. Around the time that I started checking in, the Siren was posting articles on Maureen O'Hara. I was never really a fan of hers although I like some of the films she was in like The Quiet Man and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Siren's report on Ms. O'Hara's autobiography indicates that she has had some serious issues with various men in her life. My hope for Maureen O'Hara is that she is remembered for more than playing John Candy's mom in Only the Lonely.

The Siren inspired my to play with my Netflix queue and see the one film I had starring O'Hara, The Deadly Companions. My main reason for seeing it is that it is Sam Peckinpah's first feature. I still have a couple of films to see, but as mediocre as the DVD is, I'm glad I saw this film. I don't know if a good print of this film is available, but it should be noted that the DVD is standard screen format of a Panavision film.

Looking at The Deadly Companions in terms of a career retrospective, the film is something of a sketchbook of ideas and images that Peckinpah would rework or amplify in later films. Children playing at swordfighting would later become children playing with the scorpion in The Wild Bunch. Steve Cochran flanked by two prostitutes would be redone and doubled with Tector and Lyle Gorch. A key scene involves a bank robbery gone awry. O'Hara's character of the fallen woman would be reworked to better effect by Stella Stevens in the far superior Ballad of Cable Hogue. Peckinpah was dismissive of The Deadly Companions because he was essentially a hired hand on behalf of O'Hara who produced the film. Still there are moments of visual audacity including Steve Cochran manically shooting at his mirror image, and fur coated Chill Wills draped lengthwise on a branch like a large Chesire cat. Maybe I was looking too hard, but I saw bits and pieces that anticipate the films more characteristic of the director.

In some ways, the narrative reminded me more of Budd Boetticher's films. Three former Civil War soldiers, one Yankee, and two Rebels, escort a dance hall hostess across Apache territory. The woman is taking the coffin of her young son to be buried in another town, in the graveyard where the son's father is buried. The son has been accidentally been shot by the Yankee. With the majority of the film following four characters through a desolate stretch of Arizona, The Deadly Companions resembles the films Boetticher made with Randolph Scott as described by Andrew Sarris in The American Cinema.
While The Deadly Companions involves characters who call each other's bluff until the end, Peckinpah's Odyssey is less allegorical and more psychological.

One aspect of O'Hara's performance that I did not anticipate is that she seemed set on reminding the audience, and probably Hollywood, that at the age of 40 she still had a great body. Previously appearing as Lady Godiva, Maureen O'Hara was clearly not shy about hinting at nudity. With two scenes in The Deadly Companions, O'Hara was probably making sure people knew she was as attractive as Marilyn Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. As it turned out, O'Hara and co-star Brian Keith worked together again in 1961 in The Parent Trap. As far as Hollywood was concerned, Maureen O'Hara was from then on trapped in the roles of wives and mothers.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:50 PM

August 10, 2005

Burt Lancaster

The Young Savages
John Frankenheimer - 1961
Turner Classic Movies

Valdez is Coming
Edwin Sherin - 1971
MGM Region 1 DVD

Lawman
Michael Winner - 1971
MGM Region 1 DVD

When I was much, much younger, I decided that Burt Lancaster was my favorite movie star. I was so determined to see Birdman of Alcatraz that I petitioned my parents for several weeks before they finally allowed me to see the film. Buying and reading Thomas Gaddis' book was no problem, but at that time in my life, I couldn't see movies without parental approval. I loved the film as much as I thought I would. I saw Birdman again on television, in part with my parents. My mother got sarcastic when Lancaster and Edmond O'Brien, playing Tom Gaddis, embraced. Like a lot of other people, I found out later that Gaddis' biography idealized Robert Stroud, and that the real Birdman remained imprisoned for several very good reasons. I saw A Child is Waiting, The List of Adrian Messenger, and Seven Days in May theatrically. After those films I saw Lancaster films mostly on television. As a budding auteurist, I only saw films starring Lancaster based on who the director was primarily, which is why I didn't see Burt Lancaster in a theater again until he made Ulzana's Raid.

As part of my constant stream of rental DVDs, I've been catching up on Burt Lancaster films. I also read the biography, Burt Lancaster: An American Life by Kate Buford. A lot of research went into the book which is not always flattering. There are little errors that make we wonder if there were some other, larger errors. Executive Action, which I saw theatrically, is in color, not black and white. The Colorado town is Canon City with a ~ above the n, not Canyon City. The U.S. version of The Leopard was not in Cinerama, but CinemaScope, the format of virtually all 20th Century Fox films until 1967.
Still, the book is most interesting in showing the history of an actor who not only became a star almost overnight, but one who immediately took control of his career as his own producer. I got around to seeing a couple of films Lancaster made in his transistion to mature character actor, as well as seeing an earlier film on cable.

The Young Savages was Lancaster's first film with John Frankenheimer. Aided in no small part by Lionel Lindon's black and white cinematography shot in the streets of Spanish Harlem, the film is visually striking. In spite of being a box office failure, Frankenheimer not only was asked to work with Lancaster again, but had the remarkable year of 1962 which saw the release of Birdman, All Fall Down, and The Manchurian Candidate. The Young Savages is sometimes described as West Side Story without singing or dancing, which may in part explain why it was not commercially successful.

Based on a novel by Evan Hunter, The Young Savages could be categorized as the type of socially conscious film that United Artists seemed to specialize in until the late Sixties. Lancaster plays an Assistant District Attorney who is set to prosecute three punks who have stabbed a blind young Puerto Rican man. It's not quite Rashomon, but Lancaster learns that the truth is more complicated than what the various people affected by the killing acknowledge. Liberal and humanistic impulses are challenged, as is the desire for swift, severe justice. The film was something of a homecoming for Lancaster who was born and raised in the part of New York City known as Spanish Harlem, an area predominantly Italian in the years of Lancaster's youth. Shelley Winters portrays the mother of one of the accused punks as well as Lancaster's former flame. According to Buford, Lancaster and Winters were intensely involved ten years earlier. The film appears to have been shot entirely on location including the interiors of the slum apartments. Frankenheimer had a great eye for composition which is why The Young Savages is still worth watching.

Ten years after The Young Savages, Burt Lancaster was doing what many of his contemporaries were doing, making Westerns. Especially after The Wild Bunch, westerns were the most commercially viable films for male stars of Lancaster's generation. In Lancaster's case this also meant doing films that still served as a form of social commentary. Buford makes it interesting to speculate on what Valdez is Coming could have been. The film originally was planned to star Marlon Brando in the title role, with Lancaster as his nemesis, Tanner, with direction by Sydney Pollack. Pollack and Lancaster had worked several times previously. The screenplay is credited to longtime Pollack collaborator David Rayfiel, and Roland Kibbee, an associate of Lancaster's since Ten Tall Men in 1951.

Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard, none of the characters are the likeable sleazebags of Leonard's crime novels. Bob Valdez is a constable who is manipulated into killing an innocent man by Tanner. Attempting to collect one hundred dollars to benefit the innocent man's wife, Valdez finds himself shooting it out with Tanner's men and kidnapping Tanner's wife. The film is not particularly visually interesting with novice film director Edwin Sherin doing better work on television, most notably Law and Order. With Lancaster as Valdez, the role of Tanner went to Jon Cypher. In this film, Cypher looks suspiciously like a thinner version of Lancaster, with the sideburns and mustache similar to how Lancaster appeared in The Leopard. One could argue that the oppressed Indians and Mexicans of Valdez is Coming are the American equivalent to Visconti's poor Sicilians.

Lawman is interesting for watching Lancaster with veterans Robert Ryan (the second of three films together), Lee J. Cobb and Joseph Wiseman. Michael Winner was a bit zoom happy with this film, his first of two with Lancaster. Lancaster is the marshal who comes to the town of Sabbath to collect several men wanted for an accidental murder. Lancaster's character has echoes of his previous roles in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Vera Cruz. Ultimately, the ending undermines Lancaster's declaration of movies being "the hero business".

As inconsistent as his films after Airport were, Lancaster remained interesting to watch. I remember seeing Cattle Annie and Little Britches in a theater where it played with no advertising. Being part of the audience was like being in a secret club, with members with special knowledge. I'm not sure how meaningful Burt Lancaster is to a generation that knows him mostly as an old guy in Field of Dreams, but in his words: "We're all forgotten sooner or later. But not films. That's all the memorial we should need or hope for."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:01 PM | Comments (1)

August 09, 2005

Abbas Kiarostami Double Feature

Close-Up
Nema-ye Nazdik
Abbas Kiarostami - 1990
Facets Video DVD

Crimson Gold
Talaye Sorkh
Jafar Panahi - 2003
Wellspring DVD

I've been making a point of getting better acquainted with Middle Eastern cinema. Part of it is my own need to have a better sense of international film culture. Part of it is also a form of political action to have a little more knowledge of people who are usually stereotyped or marginalized. I do find it ironic that the films most available and interesting are from the country declared an "axis of evil".

If I have learned anything from Close-Up, it's that while not everyone may want to be Paris Hilton, the desire to impersonate a celebrity may be universal. A semi-employed print shop worker was arrested for impersonating Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf. Kiarostami read the account in a newpaper and recreated the arrest as well as filmed the trial with the actual participants. The worker, Hossain Sabzian, not only convinced a comparatively well to do family that he was Makhmalbaf, but believed he could actually make a film. The highpoint is after Sabzian is released from his month long prison term and meets the person he has impersonated.

Both Kiarostami, who is heard but not seen, and Makhmalbaf show warmth towards Sabzian. We see Sabzian crying when he meets the man he pretended to be, and Makmalbaf embracing him as if they were the long lost brothers that they resemble. During the trial, Sabzian admitted that being an actor might be easier than being a director. Briefly, Sabzian was able to realize his dream.

Crimson Gold, written by Kiarostami, is also based on a true story. The film begins with the interior shot of a jewelry store being robbed. The shot is static with people moving in and out of frame, with the only camera movement being a very subtle zoom and tilt at the end of the shot. Like Close-Up, Crimson Gold is about the marginalized people in Teheren, people who are barely getting by. Much like Panahi's previous film, The Circle, the police and the application of law are criticized. More extreme than Close-Up is the depiction of class disparity in Teheren.

The story is of a pizza delivery man with an increasing sense of alienation, and sense of injustice towards himself and others. The jewelry store and the homes he delivers to represent unobtainable affluence and success. In a scene that seems to encapsulate Pahani's view of the situation of Hossein, the delivery man, and of Iranians in general, Hossein is prevented by the police from making a delivery
and can neither leave nor call his restaurant. The police are waiting to arrest people who have been attending an illegal party in one of the apartments, where men and women are dancing together. No one is immune from being a potential victim.

Near the end of Crimson Gold, Hossein walks around the enormous townhouse of a customer. He views Teheren from the roof, seen in a very wide shot. The shot was eye opening for me in that I had no idea how spread out Teheren is, kind of like Los Angeles with smaller buildings.

With two films based on true stories of two marginalized people in contemporary Teheren, this quote by Kiarostami from wsws.org is of interest: "The biggest impact of cinema on the viewer is that it allows his imagination to take flight. There are two possible results of this. Perhaps it will make his ordinary day-to-day life more bearable. On the other hand, it may result in his day-to-day life seeming so bad that as a result he may decide to change his life. We become more aware of the day-to-day hardships. As Shakespeare says, we're more like our dreams than we are our real lives."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:15 PM

August 08, 2005

Santa Sangre

Alejandro Jodorowsky - 1989
Anchor Bay U.K. Region 2 DVD

After reading an article on Santa Sangre by Roger Ebert describing the film as unlike anything he had seen, I was intrigued. I finally saw the DVD. I even spent a couple minutes listening to the commentary between Jodorowky and someone named Alan Jones. Jodorowsky claimed that he wrote the screenplay entirely himself and that Roberto Leoni and Producer Claudio Argento shared credit in order to obtain Italian financing. Based on what I saw on the screen, Roger Ebert hasn't seen any of the films Claudio Argento usually produces, and Jodorowsky may be less than honest.

The film is about a young boy named Fenix who is the son of a circus strongman, Orgo, and an acrobat, Concha. Fenix also is a magician. His mother has also created a church centered on a created saint, a woman who was raped, had her arms cut off, and was left for dead. Her remaining pool of blood is claimed to be holy, but a visiting priest declares that it is only red paint. Concha finds Orgo with the tatooed lady and spills acid on Orgo's genitals. Orgo cuts off Concha's arms so she resembles the "saint" she has worshipped, and kills himself. Young Fenix goes mad seeing the fate of his parents, and is institutionalized. As an adult, Fenix is reunited with Concha. He provides his arms for her as part of a stage act. Additionally he murders women on her demand, acting without a will of his own. Concha claims she is keeping her son pure.

There is a scene where Fenix is watching James Whale's film of The Invisible Man. Concha reminds Fenix that he is invisible, that no one notices him. The filmmaker most echoed in Santa Sangre though is Tod Browning. Between the dwarf that his Fenix' best friend, as well as the several physically deformed people throughout the film, I was constantly reminded of Freaks. Unlike Freaks, Santa Sangre's freaks are not confined to the circus, but are part of the larger world. Another film by Browning that has a circus setting is The Unknown with Lon Chaney as an armless knife thrower, and Joan Crawford as his protegee, found in the arms of the circus strongman. One of the key characters, Alma, is a deaf-mute like the parents of Lon Chaney. So much of Santa Sangre's basic narrative seems made up of various elements from Browning's films, the best of which were about performers and illusionists, often a small band against the outside world.

Some of the scenes of murder could easily be a part of Italian gialli, horror thrillers. This is hardly coincidental as Claudio Argento is the brother of Dario Argento, as well as his producer. The psycho-sexual aspects are a staple of giallo. Assuming that the Argento brothers have similar interests, the circus setting is not distant from Dario Argento's films which have performing artists as protagonists. The other credited writer, Roberto Leoni, has several thrillers to his name. Keeping in mind that Hitchcock's Psycho was a major influence on giallo, it should surprise no one that Fenix is ultimately a variation of Norman Bates, the most famous screen serial killer and mama's boy.

Actually, I liked Santa Sangre. For me, it was more watchable than the earlier Jodorowsky films I've seen, Fando and Lisa and El Topo. I can see why Ebert brought up comparisons with Fellini and Bunuel, but I also think there were other filmmakers that inspired Santa Sangre.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:38 PM | Comments (2)

August 06, 2005

Zombie Double Feature

Dawn of the Dead
Zack Snyder - 2004
Universal Region 1 DVD

Zombie Lake
Le Lac des Morts Vivants
Jean Rollin - 1981
Image Region 1 DVD

A bit over a week ago, my significant other and I caught the last half hour of a movie called All Souls Day on the SciFi Channel. It was pretty obvious that this was a George Romero inspired zombie movie that took place in Mexico. Once again you had characters trying to outwit and outrun slow moving zombies. I mentioned to S.O. that a contributor to cinematical.com wrote that he felt the reason why Romero's recent Land of the Dead wasn't a hit was because most film audiences prefer the new fast moving zombies as seen in the remake of Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later. The writer may have a point there. In Romero's defense, I think Universal could have promoted Land of the Dead better, rather than sticking it into theaters rapidly as a way of staunching their losses from Cinderella Man.
In any event, my S.O. encouraged me to look a little closer at zombies past and present.

While I'm not an expert on zombie movies, I have seen all of Romero's Dead films. I liked the recent Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later. It's been decades since I last saw White Zombie (the movie, not the band) or I Walked with a Zombie, two older classics of the genre. I've also seen a couple of Lucio Fulci's zombie movies, but frankly, I'm not enthusiastic about Fulci's propensity for eyeball gouging.

I enjoy French cheese (the food), and I enjoy the cinematic fromage of Jean Rollin. I first learned about Rollin from a White Zombie, Rob, who's song Living Dead Girl is the title of one of Rollins better known films. Usually Rollin makes films about lesbian vampires who extremely sheer lingerie. In Zombie Lake, Rollin cobbled a slapdash story about Nazi zombies. The film has plot holes, continuity errors, and actors who are clearly embarrassed to seen in this mess.

Zombie Lake begins with a young woman tossing away a sign that indicates that a certain lake is to be undisturbed. Swimming nude, her presence awakens zombies in World War II era German uniforms. Zombie soldiers start emerging from the lake to eat the villagers of a small French town. The mayor explains to a reporter that the soldiers were shot by villagers and tossed into the lake. According to the mayor, scenes of black magic and witchcraft occurred at the lake. I should point out that the DVD has two audio tracks, French with NO subtitles, and an English language dub. Now I don't know if the film would have made any more sense with a better dub or with accurate subtitles, but even if one can gloss over the plot point of a cursed lake, another major plot point makes even less sense. One of the village women decides she would rather "collaborate" with a handsome, very Aryan soldier, than "resist" him. The woman later dies giving birth to a baby girl. During the present day scenes, the child of the soldier meets her zombie father. Maybe I'm being picky here, but I like some logic in my zombie movies. As best as I can tell, Zombie Lake takes place during the year it was filmed, about thirty-five years after the end of World War II. The daughter of the village woman and the soldier appears to be no older than twelve! Much of the lack of logic in Zombie Lake may be attributed to a screenplay by Jesus Franco, the man of many pseudonyms. Depending on one's point of view, the prolific Franco's films are surrealistic or incomprehensible or both.

Maybe Rollin was as embarrassed as the woman seen trying to stifle laughter in one scene. The director's credit goes to J.A. Laser. The Franco connections include frequent Franco star Howard Vernon as the mayor. The trippy score, kind of like John Cage doing lounge music, was by longtime Franco collaborator Daniel White. Zombie Lake lacks the intellectual pretensions of Rollin and the flat out loopiness of Franco. I give it a barely passing grade simply because this film is as funny as it is inept.

To put a more contemporary spin on it, Zombie Lake reminded me of Uwe Boll's House of the Dead. The difference is that in Zombie Lake, the underwater scenes are obviously shot in somebody's pool, and the zombie masks don't always fit. On the plus side, the full nudity of Zombie Lake is something Boll can only dream about.

Zack Snyder's remake of Dawn of the Dead is more problematic for me. The story is essentially the same with a small group of people trapped in a shopping mall, surrounded by flesh eating zombies. I liked an early scene when Sarah Polley's daughter, a recently transformed zombie, takes a bite out of Dad. Dad turns into a zombie and chases Polley into the bathroom. Once Polley escapes from her zombie husband, the film becomes less interesting. I admit that fast running zombies are scarier than zombies that just stumble and stagger. But with even with a bigger budget, Snyder has far less to say.
Romero's Dead films have always been understood to be about more than zombies. While one could enjoy his films as energized genre entries, the social commentary has always been to clear to miss. While Romero's Dawn of the Dead was a parody of consumer culture, Snyder's Dawn is just a bunch of people trapped in a shopping mall, fighting off zombies. There's a depth to Romero's humans and zombies that Snyder's version completely lacks.

While watching Dawn of the Dead, I listened to the director's commentary. A couple of times, Snyder complains that he was working with low budget and short shooting schedule. According to imdb.com, the budget was about 28 million dollars, and shooting took about three months. Universal was much more generous with Snyder in his first feature than they were with veteran Romero. Land of the Dead was produced for the more modest sum of 18 million dollars, with better known actors taking pay cuts to work with the beloved Romero. The zombies of George Romero may be slow moving, but the movies of George Romero have a lot of heart.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:38 PM

August 05, 2005

The Religion Hour (My Mother's Smile)

L'Ora di Religione (Il Sorriso di Mia Madre)
Marco Bellocchio - 2002
Elleu Italy Region 2 DVD

Bernardo Bertolucci and Marco Bellocchio will probably always be linked for me. Both are about the same age, Bellocchio in 1939, Bertolucci in 1940. Bertolucci's first feature, The Grim Reaper was made in 1962. Bellocchio's debut feature, Fists in His Pocket followed in 1965. Both contributed short films to the omnibus feature Love and Anger. I first saw films by both filmmakers at about the same time in New York City around 1970. Unlike Bertolucci, Bellocchio has remained an Italian filmmaker both in language and subject matter. What this has meant is that his films have received inconsistent distribution theatrically. I have only recently started to catch up on some of Bellocchio's films through video and DVD.

Not being Italian or Catholic, I am limited in my understanding of certain aspects of The Religion Hour.
Still, there is much to appreciate in this film. Ernesto, a painter, and declared atheist, learns though a Vatican representative that his mother is being considered for sainthood. Ernesto is asked to testify to his mother's status as a martyr. While not containing the black comic anarchy of his early films, Bellocchio is still examining the institutions of the Church as he did in In the Name of the Father, and the institution of the family as in the aforementioned Fists in His Pocket and China is Near. Again Bellocchio has a protagonist who is placed in the situation of having to confront others with their hypocrisy while fighting to hold on to his ideals.

The film begins with a scene of Ernesto's young son, Leonardo, alone, talking, telling someone or something not seen to not bother him. Leonardo explains to his mother, Irene, that he has learned in school that God is omnipresent, and Leonardo would like to be totally alone. The Religion Hour of the title refers to the class Leonardo is taking in school. Leonardo and some other characters take the Catholic identity as a form of insurance to go to Heaven. Ernesto has to confront other family members who have pointedly identified as Catholic, and are campaigning for the mother's beatification for social status. The mother's smile of the title refers to the smile that the family members share. The meaning of the smile is subject to misunderstanding. Ernesto sees his mother's smile as an indication of passive indifference. Ernesto's smile is viewed as mocking and insulting by others.

Not knowing Italian, I was not able to take advantage of the interviews with Bellocchio and the actors on the DVD. In cineuropa.org there is an interview with Bellocchio discussing The Religion Hour. The conclusion of the interview can also be applied to Bellocchio's other film. "A persistent state of dissatisfaction should encourage us to fight. This film is not about resignation and is not depressing."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:05 PM

August 04, 2005

Johnny Got His Gun

Dalton Trumbo - 1971
Fremantle U.K. Region 0 DVD

I never saw Johnny Got His Gun at the time it was initially released, which according to imdb.com was on August 4, 1971. Trumbo's novel was so vivid, with many disturbing images. I had enough horrifying images imagined after reading the novel that I felt uncomfortable seeing these same images on the big screen. I decided to see the film now primarily because it seemed quite appropriate when the United States is again in a war, with some parallels to when Trumbo's film was released.

Dalton Trumbo's novel and film are about a young soldier who is severely wounded during World War One. Missing both arms and legs, with his face "scooped out" in his words, Joe Bonham is presumed to be a vegetable with no feelings. The film cuts between black and white scenes of the hospitalized Joe, mostly under blankets and bandages with only the top of his head visible, and scenes in color of Joe remembering his past or in his dreams. Much of the real and imagined horror of the novel is muted for the movie, yet Trumbo succeeded in conveying the frustration of having an active, thinking mind trapped by almost total physical inability.

Not all of Johnny Got His Gun succeeds in translation from novel to film. Some of the problems could be attributed to Trumbo obviously working with a limited budget. The dream sequences are very stagey, and some of the exterior scenes look like low budget Fellini. While some of the name actors appeared in this film as a way of supporting Trumbo and his vision, it is still disconcerting to see Donald Sutherland as a blue eyed, blond hippie Jesus. Jason Robards is better as Joe's father, the person who explains the relationship of war and democracy to his young son in flashback. The film was also the debut of Timothy Bottoms, released just two months before his more widely seen turn in The Last Picture Show.

That Johnny Got His Gun was made into a film seems almost inconceivable today. Trumbo's novel, published in 1939, questioned whether the goals of the first world war had been achieved in view of the number of dead and wounded soldiers following the armistice. The novel was republished in 1970 when the United States was involved in Viet Nam. Trumbo, a blacklisted screen writer in the Fifties, had by the end of the Sixties re-established his career more successfully than any of the other Hollywood Ten. Perhaps it was more commercially viable in the early Seventies, but it is difficult to imagine a film expressing clear anti-war sentiments made by Hollywood today.

One could almost imagine Trumbo being blacklisted again for this statement made in 1940:
"If they say to us, 'We must fight this war to preserve democracy,' let us say to them, 'There is no such thing as democracy in time of war. It is a lie, a deliberate deception to lead us to our own destruction. We will not die in order that our children may inherit a permanent military dictatorship.'"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:07 PM

August 03, 2005

What the Bleep Do We (K)now?

William Arntz, Betsy Chasse, Mark Vicente - 2004
20th Century Fox Region 1 DVD

First, some brief information about myself. I am a Buddhist, and have been for over thirty years. More specifically, what I practice is Nichiren Buddhism. This is the practice that includes the repetition of the phrase Nam-myo-ho-renge-kyo, and the belief in simultaneous cause and effect as symbolized by the lotus flower. I took the time to see What the Bleep because several fellow Buddhists love this film. I even know one person who has seen it several times.

Here is where I get in trouble with some people: As a Buddhist, I can understand why this film is popular among some of my friends, and why this film has become something of a grass roots hit. But the film historian and critic in me has to also acknowledge that a film one agrees with philosophically is not always a good film. If that were true, Stanley Kramer would the great American filmmaker.

The film tries to convey quite a few thoughts, mostly concerned with quantum physics. At the most basic level, the various talking heads, most with science backgrounds, explain how our thoughts influence our interaction with the world. One of the scientists explains how people are one with the universe. All well and good, no arguments from me here. Where What the Bleep stumbles is in the choices the filmmakers have made in the assembly and presentation of these ideas.

Perhaps the intention was to not have the viewer prejudge the speaker, but we never know who those talking heads are until the end of the movie. I can understand that point of view in the case of the person who is channelling a 35,000 year old mystic named Ramtha. When I don't know who the scientist or physician is on screen, I have to wonder who I am listening to and why? Some of the computer generated illustrations are helpful for showing how neurons and atoms theoretically work.

Where the film is wrongheaded is in its narrative presentation of the ideas in action. Marlee Martin portrays a photographer having a very bad day. Her interaction with her boss, her room mate, and participants at a wedding are coupled with computer generated graphics to help explain how Martin influences her world with her particular emotional baggage. Some of the concepts that What the Bleep purports to explain have been portrayed in other, much better films.

To show cause and effect, Run, Lola, Run repeats the same story three times. The first two times, Lola actions bring about tragedy, while the third time shows that things can change with a little politeness and accomodation to others. Robert Bresson's last film, L'Argent does a masterful job of explaining through the actions of the characters, the ripple effect of one person and the unintended consequences upon others. The interconnectedness of people has been handled in interesting ways particulary by Robert Altman and Guy Ritchie.

It may be somewhat simple and simple minded, but to show the idea of oneness with the universe, I love the final scene from The Incredible Shrinking Man. After continually getting smaller, and battling a spider, Grant Williams, in voice over narration, accepts the fact that he is going to keep on shrinking beyond human comprehension. The camera shot is his point of view, looking up a the sky, while blades of grass tower around him. Thanks to the Internet Movie Data Base, here is that soliloquy:
"I was continuing to shrink, to become...what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I STILL EXIST!"

While author Richard Matheson used a Judeo-Christian framework, the conclusion for The Incredible Shinking Man is both a universal picture, and a Universal Picture.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:12 PM

August 02, 2005

Persona

Ingmar Bergman - 1966
MGM Region 1 DVD

Today's poll at the Internet Movie Data Base was a vote for the greatest living director. The poll was inspired by Roger Ebert's declaration, following the release of his new film, Saraband, that Bergman is the best director alive. As far as the imdb.com voters are concerned, Bergman runs a distant third behind Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorcese. I have to wonder how many people who voted for Bergman did so on the basis of actually seeing his films, or based on his reputation. It's been over thirty years since the release of Cries and Whispers, Bergman's most financially successful film in the U.S. Considering that Bergman declared himself retired from directing films at the time that Spielberg and George Lucas were ascendant, I have to ask how meaningful he is to a younger generation of film goers.

The poll spurred me to see the one Bergman film I currently have in my DVD collection. The working title was Kinematografi which seems very fitting. More than anything, I think Persona is Bergman's meditation on filmmaking. From the images of the projector and film at the beginning to the fade out of the projector carbon at the end, the viewer is always reminded that a film is being viewed. Some of the shock value of images of film ripped or burned in the projector is lost seeing the film as a DVD rather than projected on a theater screen. Still, there is something new to glean from seeing Persona again.

One thing different about seeing Persona on DVD is that I chose the English language option. I probably will never do that again. The actress who dubbed Bibi Andersson had too high a voice, almost like Jennifer Tilly. I had wished that Andersson had dubbed her own voice. Her English was good enough to make her American film debut in Duel at Diablo, also in 1966. Andersson also starred in Bergman's first English language film, The Touch, in 1971. I watched the film dubbed in order to see all of Bergman's images without the distraction of subtitles. I felt like I was a little more conscious of the interplay between Andersson and Liv Ullman seeing the entire frame rather than looking at the bottom to read the dialogue.

In having the film's narrative be about an actress who chooses to be mute, Bergman has Ullman personify the power of the image. Ullman is challenged, primarily by Andersson as to if her silence and other actions are genuine or are manifestations of acting. Ullman's actress challenges the gap between her stage image and her sense of self. Stage and screen imagery is challenged by the reality of documented images of war - a monk burning himself in Viet Nam, and Jews rounded up by Nazi soldiers in the Warsaw ghetto. Andersson voices her admiration for Ullman's devotion to acting while Bergman seems to be questioning the value of filmmaking in the face of much greater human suffering.

I have seen Persona at least three times. Almost forty years old, this film is still vital for me. Perhaps because of the sparse settings of the interiors, and the rock and shrub exteriors of Faro, Persona does not look moored to a specific time or place. Perhaps Bergman's own feelings about Persona are best:
"At some time or another, I said that Persona saved my life - that is not exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. Today I feel that in Persona, and later in Cries and Whispers, I had go as far as I could go. And that in these two, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:30 PM

August 01, 2005

Francoise Sagan Double Feature

Bonjour Tristesse
Otto Preminger - 1958
Columbia Tri Star Region 1 DVD

A Few Hours of Sunlight
Un Peu de Soleil Dans l'eau Froide
Jacques Deray -1971
Vanguard DVD

After finally seeing Bonjour Tristesse on cable a couple of years ago, I decided that while I might not read anything by author Francoise Sagan, I would see a couple more films based on her novels. My significant other and I saw La Chamade a couple of months ago. More recently, I saw A Few Hours of Sunlight. Additionally, I was encouraged to read Sagan, so I read Bonjour Tristesse in addition to seeing the film on DVD.

For me it was jarring to see Preminger's film immediately after reading Sagan's novel. Jean Seberg was the right age for the role of Cecile, the self absorbed 17 year old, and looked similar to Sagan with her boyishly short hair. The film takes the novels first person narrative from the point of view of Cecile, but that point of view is expressed differently in the shift from book author (Sagan) to film author (Preminger). What makes the difference is that while Sagan was writing for a young French audience, Preminger's characters are Anglo-American in both speech and attitudes. Cecile's father, played by David Niven, maintains his facade as the English gentleman by sleeping in the little guest house, while Sagan's roue of a father clearly shares his bedroom with his mistresses. Sagan's Cecile actually discusses a passage from Bergson, while Preminger's Cecile drops the names of Pascal and Spinoza. Perhaps it is in part the difference between what one can do with literature as opposed to film, but Sagan's Cecile is an intellectual slacker, while Preminger's Cecile sometimes appears as an American teenage girl who happened to vacation at the Riviera.

There is also some parts of the film that Preminger and screenwriter Arthur Laurents seemed to put in that may have been intended to lighten Sagan, but seem to play to a tourist's view of France. Created for the film are three identical sisters, played by the same actress, as the villa's maid. A scene of a town dance seems to have been created to show American audiences how free spirited French people are. A minor character in Sagan's novel, a drunk South American millionaire, is too cute by half. The trailer, included in the DVD, indicates that audiences were sold a more lighthearted romp than what was written by Sagan.

The difference could also be that literary audiences are more receptive of precocious writers and literary characters. Sagan was 18 when she published her novel about a 17 year old girl who is possessive of her father, and undermines his relationship with Anne, a woman he is about to marry. The novel was an international success, and Preminger's film was the first of many films based on Sagan's novels. Sagan had a long, successful career as a novelist that was undermined by her novels eventually becoming formulaic, and addictions to alchohol and cocaine. Jean Seberg was 18 when Otto Preminger cast her as Joan of Arc following a publicized nationwide talent search. The film, Saint Joan, was a box office failure upon its initial release. I have only been able to see this film in a VHS copy and feel that it has been seriously undervalued. Seberg was only three years younger than Sagan, and with her hair still short from playing Joan, looked like a prettier version of Sagan. While Bonjour Tristesse was a modest success, Seberg never was accepted as a star by American audiences. If Seberg was never a star, she became attained icon status having co-starred in Breathless. She also made a second film based on a Sagan novel, La Recreation. Seberg's life was as tumultuous as that of some of Sagan's characters with two unhappy marriages and several affairs. Seberg ended her life following harrassment by the F.B.I. for her political activities in 1979. Seberg wanted to be taken seriously from the beginning, while audiences prefer young girls to be cute and unchallenging.

In addition to writing novels that were filmed, Sagan made an uncredited appearance in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus. Also appearing in that film was a young actress named Claudine Auger. Not only did Auger star in a Sagan based film eleven years later, but she made two films in 1971 with Barbara Bach. The former Bond girl from Thunderball also was in the giallo, Black Belly of the Tarantula, with the future Bond girl of The Spy who Loved Me.

A Few Hours of Sunlight is a much less interesting film than Bonjour Tristesse. Marc Porel, who looks something like a young Alain Delon, plays a journalist who is going through some unexplained existential crisis. He fall in love with small town married woman, Auger, and dumps his live in American girl friend, Bach. Porel acts like a cad to Auger once she moves in with him.

Here is where Sagan repeats herself. In Bonjour Tristesse, Deborah Kerr overhears David Niven telling his mistress that his marriage proposal wasn't serious. Kerr hurries to her car and is found dead. Her death is officially an accident although the book and film suggest it may have been suicide. In A Few Hours of Sunlight, Auger overhears Porel in conversation, runs off, and is found to have committed suicide.

I've seen a couple of good films by Jacques Deray, but A Few Hours isn't one of them. Of course it doesn't help that the DVD is a standard frame version that crops off parts of the side, the color is very faded, and there is a constant hiss during scenes that should be silent. Seeing a very young Gerard Depardieu as Auger's brother is a tiny bright spot in a dull film. By the time Porel begins to reflect on the error of his ways, I was glad the film was over.

Bonjour Tristesse ends with an extreme close up of Jean Seberg. Looking at a mirror, she is literally reflecting on her deliberate shallowness. Even if the shot lacks the sense of loss explained in Sagan's novel, seeing Seberg in tears is heartbreaking. Preminger's Bonjour Tristesse is not the same as Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse, but that final shot is where he gets it exactly right.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 07:18 PM

July 29, 2005

Solomon and Sheba

King Vidor - 1959
MGM Japan Region 2 DVD

One of my favorite scenes in Frank Tashlin's Rock-a-Bye Baby (1958) is of Marilyn Maxwell as an actress starring in a Hollywood costume epic of ancient Egypt. Tashlin's best moments were usually loving bites of the Hollywood hand that fed him. In this case, the Maxwell and cast are singing the title song to the film she is making, The White Virgin of the Nile. Within the span of a few minutes, Tashlin had satirized the costume epics of the Fifties that followed success of The Ten Commandments.

I was reminded of Tashlin's spoof by a scene in Solomon and Sheba. Gina Lollobrigida, as Sheba, presides over a "pagan ceremony". Her cloak removed, she is wearing an outfit from Bellydancers 'R' Us. Moving her arms and hips like a hootchie kootchie dancer, she is joined by a cast of men and women who leap and shout in what looks like a parody of Cecil B. De Mille or is the worst Broadway musical number ever choreographed for film. The scene comes to a, ahem, climax, when Yul Brynner, as Solomon, and Lollobrigida, along with the other men and women, get to know each other (in the biblical sense).

Between Solomon and Sheba, and his previous film, War and Peace, King Vidor must have felt more like a general than a director. For the second time in a row he was dealing with what must have been extraordinary logistics, with literally hundreds of people on screen in several wide screen battles. Some of the shots of riders and chariots were similar to his work on Duel in the Sun. Compared to the older film, Yul Brynner and George Sanders are even less convincing as brothers than Gregory Peck and Joseph Cotton. As voluptuous as she is, Gina Lollobrigida is a less compelling love interest than Jennifer Jones. Having original lead Tyrone Power die before the completion of filming probably took its toll on Vidor. As it turned out, this was Vidor's last Hollywood film, although he made himself available to mentor some younger directors.

At 141 minutes, the film starts to feel overlong until the final battle. The Egyptian soldiers and charioteers are blinded by the sun reflected in the shields of Solomon's army. In their zeal to attack Solomon, the Egyptians cannot prevent themselves from going forward towards the canyon that separates them from Solomon's army. Hundreds of soldiers and horses are seen hurling into a literal valley of death. For a few minutes, one is reminded of what "spectacular" meant in the days before computer generated special effects.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:35 PM

July 28, 2005

Tigrero: A Film That Never Was Made

Mika Kaurismaki - 1993
Fantoma Region 1 DVD

The title of this film is misleading. Tigrero is not quite like It's All True with its recovered footage shot by Orson Welles, or The Epic That Never Was which documented Josef Von Sternberg's aborted attempt to film I, Claudius. Tigrero is an amiable, though clearly staged, documentary of Samuel Fuller returning to a remote part of Brazil where he visited almost forty years previously.

The Finnish filmmaker Mika Kaurimaki shows Jim Jarmusch gamely tagging along with Fuller to a remote indian village where Fuller shot test footage in 1954 for a film to star John Wayne at the request of Fox production chief Darryl Zanuck. Fuller insists that the villagers will remember him. Jarmusch is doubtful. In what is the best moment of Kaurimaki's film, we see the villagers watching the old footage, eyes lighting up at the recognition of some of the people on screen. Some of the indians thank Fuller for bringing their relatives and friends temporarily back to life.

Some of the footage shot in Brazil is familiar to anyone who has seen Shock Corridor. Shots of a fertility dance and waterfalls were incorporated by Fuller, with the cinemascope imagery distorted to reflect the madness of the characters. One of the extras of the DVD shows the original footage in the correct aspect ratio, which includes shots of Fuller on horseback as well as chopping his way through the brush with a machete. With his ever present cigar in his mouth, Fuller always looks ready to take charge.

One of the other extras on the DVD is of still shot by Jarmusch. There is a shot of a villager playing with a tripod, with his head where the camera is normally placed, pretending to be a cameraman, or even, perhaps, a camera. The shot made me think of Dennis Hopper's The Last Movie. Samuel Fuller played the part of a director shooting a movie in a remote village in South America. After the production crew leaves the village, the villagers re-enact the production process with mock cameras.
I have to wonder if Jarmusch was thinking of The Last Movie when he took the photograph, or if any of Fuller's anecdotes were the inspiration for Hopper's meditation on film and reality.

Fuller's story of his not making Tigrero is also recounted in his autobiography. In addition to John Wayne, Ava Gardner and Tyrone Power were set to go to Brazil. Due to the remote and sometimes dangerous location, production was cancelled due to exorbitant costs of insuring the stars.

I had the opportunity to see Sam Fuller in person in Denver, in 1982. Denver briefly had a cinemateque. The person in charged vetoed screening Fuller's version of his little seen White Dog in favor of the more familiar Pick-Up on South Street. Until I saw him in person, I did not realize how short Fuller was, standing barely more than five feet tall. He graciously autographed my copy of his novel 144 Picadilly. I normally don't seek autographs from anyone. The exception is this fireplug of a man who whether on film, in print, or in person, always had a story to tell.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:52 PM

July 27, 2005

Robot Monster

Phil Tucker - 1953
Image Region 1 DVD

It's summer, it's hot, and sometimes I have the need to sit back and enjoy some Grade A cheese. For those who are unfamiliar with Robot Monster, this is the movie in which Earth is threatened by a guy in a gorilla suit wearing a deep sea diver helmet. Even though it's listed at #55 of the Internet Movie Database's Bottom 100, this film is actually not without merit. The story is pretty silly with plenty of head scratching moments. What makes Robot Monster worth watching, or at least listening to, is a terrific score by Elmer Bernstein early in his career.

My favorite Bernstein scores were mostly those done in the early to mid Sixties. The influence of mentor Aaron Copland is very clear, most memorably in The Magnificent Seven and To Kill a Mockingbird. Bernstein's film scores fit in a time when movie composers were incorporating jazz tempos and dissonance, in general breaking away from the patterns set by traditional film composers like Max Steiner. Bernstein ended up doing the score for Robot Monster, as well as Cat Women of the Moon, during a time when he was temporarily gray listed for suspected left wing activities. The music for Robot Monster seems influenced by the jazz age French composers like Poulenc. The ultimate disappointment of Robot Monster is that within the confines of an extemely low budget science fiction film, only Elmer Bernstein demonstrated his creativity and soon established his very distinguished career.

The movie was written by Wyott Ordung, a sometimes actor and director as well as writer. His best known credit was for directing the first film produced by Roger Corman, Monster from the Ocean Floor. Like Ordung, director Phil Tucker has had a sporadic career with very low budget films that would usually appear on the bottom bill of a double feature. Tucker's other film of note, Dance Hall Racket, featured the young Lenny Bruce. While the most famous image of Robot Monster is of the creature, Ro-Man, carrying off starlet Claudia Barrett, a chord may have been struck with star George Nader. A minor beefcake star of the Fifties, Nader was also a closeted homosexual. After coming out in the mid-Eighties at the time of colleague Rock Hudson's death from A.I.D.S., Nader wrote a science fiction book titled Chrome. Nader's book is about homoerotic love between man and robot. Unlike Robot Monster, the reviews for Chrome have been generally positive. And yet I wonder it there was a mad moment when Nader had dreamt that it was he who was carried away to the cave instead of Claudia Barrett.

For me, Robot Monster is likeable enough for some its nuttier ideas of science fiction. Ro-Man's cave features a Salvation Army dresser that's suppose to be some kind of intergalactic television. There is also an old table with what looks like old audio equipment, a reel to reel tape deck, a television antenna, and a bubble machine. The scenes of revived dinosaurs include the creaky animation of special effects pioneer Willis O'Brien, as well as shots of two lizards playing Twister in extreme close up. Much of the lack of logic can be charitably explained by the twist ending.

Robot Monster ends with the image of Ro-Man walking towards the camera. The image is repeated three times. It is during these last few seconds that Robot Monster achieves its moment of goofball cinematic poetry.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:56 PM

July 25, 2005

Casque d'or

Jacques Becker -1952
Criterion Region 1 DVD

In the supplement to Casque d'or, Claude Dauphin comments on how the film should have been shot in color because the opening scene resembles paintings by Pierre Auguste Renoir. Dauphin was correct. One can see echoes of The Boating Party and The Seine at Asnieres in both subject matter and framing. The resemblance to Renoir's paintings is no coincidence as Jacques Becker began his career as the assistant to Renoir's son, Jean Renoir on several films including Grand Illusion. The Renoir connection did not stop there as Becker's films were edited by Marguerite Renoir, Jean Renoir's partner.

Taking place in the 1890s, Casque d'or is about a prostitute (Simone Signoret) who falls in love with a carpenter (Serge Reggiani). Marie, the prostitute, is distinguished by her casque d'or - her "golden helmet" of hair. The carpenter, Jo, is set up by the local crime boss, Leca (Claude Dauphin) to fight Marie's pimp for the right to be with Marie. The fight between Jo and the pimp is done without music or dialogue. For just a few minutes, the characters are reduced to animal instinct for survival.

I am just starting to get acquainted with Becker's films. While I read a little bit about him as an influence on the Nouvelle Vague directors, I can not recall his films every being shown while I lived in New York City during the early 70s. I saw Le Trou on DVD a couple of years ago and strongly recommend that film. The acclaimed Touchez pas au grisbi has recently been made available on DVD as well. While there are those who love Casque d'or, I can only say I liked it. Of the two films by Becker I have seen, it lacked the impact of Le Trou.

What made the film interesting was the presentation of France during La Belle Epoque. Gangsters were better dressed and had somewhat better manners, but otherwise were not to different. Leca's front is as a seller of wine. He also has a police inspector on his payroll. Especially compared to American films of the same time, Casque d'or is especially frank in showing Signoret and Reggiani in bed together, as well as the peripheral sight of a carriage driver relieving himself by a tree. Becker was a filmmaker who loved to tell stories of society's outsiders. As Becker himself stated: "I am French; I make films about French people; I look at French people; I am interested in French people."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:42 PM

July 23, 2005

The Mind Benders

Basil Dearden - 1963
Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD

The Mind Benders is one of those films that struck my curiosity in my youth and never let go. I was eleven at the time it was released. Something about the title and the advertising struck a chord. The title, if not the film, seems to have made an impact on an older bunch of British youth as there was the British band that followed in the wake of The Beatles, modifying their name as The Mindbenders.

The film was directed by the British film maker Basil Dearden during his topical phase. After touching such subjects as racism (Sapphire - 1959) and homosexuality (Victim - 1961), Dearden has made a film "inspired" by reported experiments with brain washing and isolation chambers, pointedly in the United States. A distracted appearing Oxford professor is seen traveling by train, followed by a man who later reveals himself to be a government agent. The professor hurls himself out of a moving train. The government agent, Major Hall, knows that the professor had been involved with experiments with isolation tanks. Now dead, with one thousand pounds in his possession, did the professor sell scientific information, or was he brain washed?

In order to discover if being in the isolation tank caused the professor to be brainwashed, Hall convinces the professor's colleague, Longman (Dirk Bogarde) to duplicate the experiment. To determine how easily influenced someone is following isolation, Longman is to be told something counter to his belief system. The physically and mentally weakend Longman is made to believe that his happy marriage is a sham.

Maybe it's general British good manners of the time, but The Mind Benders suffers from not being more dramatic. I'm not familiar with James Kennaway's novel, but brainwashing in a domestic setting lacks the tension of something like The Manchurian Candidate with its war hero turned political assassin. There is one nice visual touch with a scene of Bogarde, immediately after being brainwashed, with his wife Oonagh (Mary Ure). The couple are sitting in an old open top car, parked by a stream. Ure's face is completely lit in full view, while Bogarde's face is half in shadow to indicate that the brainwashing has taken effect. While not an artist, Dearden's films have revealed him to be a consistent craftsman.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:03 PM

July 21, 2005

Les Belles

Qian jiao bai mei
Doe Chin - 1961
Celestial Pictures Hong Kong Region 3 DVD

I was seriously intrigued by the excerpts of older Hong Kong films included with the Criterion DVD version of In the Mood for Love. Just as seeing the films of the Nouvelle Vague sent me scrambling to see more American films from the forties and fifties, Wong Kar-Wai has me looking at the cinema of Hong Kong past. Certain historical aspects to Les Belles were for me more interesting than the film itself.

The film is an attempt to be a Hollywood style musical with Mandarin elements. Plot elements are from American movies or in some cases, the memory of musicals from various eras. The title is a variation of George Cukor's Les Girls (1957). The main story, about an antagonistic couple who are also unknowingly romantic pen pals, can be figured out faster than you can say Shop around the Corner (1940). A scene with the entire troup practicing a tap dance number looks so much like something from an early Busby Berkeley Warner Brothers musical that I almost expected James Cagney or Dick Powell to make an appearance.

The many musical numbers are more interesting as a presentation of popular culture in Hong Kong in the early sixties. The first numbers have a South American Carmen Miranda type flavor. A more modern dance had a large spider web on stage. I wasn't sure whether the dancers were flies or spiders though. There was also versions of Chinese opera which had the most elaborate staging. One scene also attempted to be abstact in the style of Singin' in the Rain. Instead of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse alone on an undefined set marked by changing colors, Les Belles has a solo pianist on stage with images of ancient China superimposed on screen. The featured musical number from the posters shows star Linda Lin Dai dressed as a Can-Can dancer suggesting that the film Can-Can (1960) had been a popular success in Hong Kong. All of the musical numbers are done on stage and director Doe Chin is unable to work around his budgetary and spacial limits.

More interesting than Les Belles is the story of star Linda Lin Dai. The closest comparison I can make is to say that she was the Hong Kong equivalent to her contemporary, Doris Day. Lin also won four Best Actress awards. According to the DVD commentary, Lin made over forty films from 1953 until her death by suicide in 1964 at age 29. Lin's death was as devastating to Hong Kong film fans as the death of James Dean in the U.S. with both stars dead at the height of their fame. That Maggie Cheung's hair in In the Mood or Love is done somewhat in the style of Lin's is hardly coincidental. At the very least, seeing Les Belles helps me deepen my appreciation of Wong Kar-Wai while I scratch the surface of Hong Kong film history.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:46 PM

July 19, 2005

The Castle of Sand

Suna no Utsuwa
Yoshitaro Nomura - 1974
Panorama Entertainment Region 0 DVD

Once again, taking a chance on a film and film director I wasn't familiar with paid off. I noticed The Castle of Sand listed with Nicheflix. The DVD is from a Korean company that has several Japanese classics made available under the grouping "One Hundred Year of Japanese Film". It wasn't until I saw this film and did a little research that I found that The Castle of Sand was one of the top critical and commercial successes in Japan at the time of its release.

The main narrative is a mystery. An unidentified man is found murdered. Two tenacious detectives try to make sense out of two clues, the regional dialect that was overheard from the victim, and a name spoken. Nomura introduces clues indirectly. People and events that first seem to have no relation to the story are explained later. Even when the viewer knows who the murderer is, the motivation is kept until near the end.

The Castle of Sand is the English language title. The film is also known as The Last Symphony. Either title works. The first title is more symbolic of the characters. Like sand castles, public image and false stories easily fall apart. Nomura has many long shots of people dwarfed by nature. Just as the connections between characters seem distant, the story takes place in several remote beach and mountain areas of Japan, far from the density of Tokyo. The visual message of the film is that people may try to fight against nature in its many forms, but nature will always win. The alternate title of The Last Symphony refers to the symphony composed by one of the characters. The symphony, if acclaimed, will be a stepping stone for the composer's future. The inspiration for the symphony lies in the composer's past. The symphony written for the film is unfortunately less than inspired. Titled Destiny for Piano and Orchestra, it sounds more like the overture destined for a Universal melodrama starring Lana Turner.

The film won the prestigious Kinema Jumpo award for Best Screenplay of 1975. It should be noted that the screenplay was co-written by Shinobu Hashimoto and Yoji Yamada. Hashimoto, who also produced this film, is probably best known for writing several of Akira Kurosawa's classic films from the Fifties. Yamada is still actively writing. His best known recent credit is Twilight Samurai. Tetsuro Tamba, the persevering detective, is still active into his eighties. A smaller part is played by Chishu Ryu, the father in several Ozu films. Nomura, who died last April, was a second generation director. After seeing this film, I am looking forward to seeing his newer films that are available on DVD and hope that his earlier work will be available soon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:15 PM

July 18, 2005

2046

Wong Kar-Wai - 2004
Mei Ah Region 0 DVD

Rumor has it that Wong's newest film, 2046, is scheduled for a U.S. release next month. No reason is given for why it's taking so long to be shown here. Maybe there's a quota on Chinese films shown within a given period. Additionally, here in Miami Beach, the showing of art and independent films is somewhat inconsistent, with many films playing a quick week long engagement. In any case, I decided to take advantage of Netflix already carrying the Hong Kong DVD.

The film is a loose sequel to In the Mood for Love. What is interesting about the Criterion DVD of the older film is that the several of the deleted scenes were of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung consumating their relationship. Had those scenes been included in the final version of In the Mood for Love, the dynamics of the relationship would have been totally different. That relationship was platonic, as opposed to the relationship of their characters' spouses. The narrative of 2046 is initiated by Tony Leung's memory of Maggie Cheung.

Leung continues with the character of Chow. No longer a journalist, Chow writes a column for a newspaper. He also writes a science fiction erotic serial. 2046 is both the room number he has had a brief encounter in, and the year people travel to in order to regain lost memories. 2046 also refers to the year that the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese is completed.

Unlike the cautious relationship Leung had with Maggie Cheung, much of the new film is of the sexual and mercenary relationship with Zhang Ziyi. Leung also acts as a go-between for a young Hong Kong woman and her Japanese suitor. Finally Leung encounters Gong Li, a gambler with the same name, Su Li Zhen, as Maggie Cheung's character. Most of the events take place during several Christmas eves, beginning with 1966, a time Leung notes when people seem to need each other more. The characters speak to each other in their native language or dialect - for example the Cantonese Leung has dialogue with the Mandarin speaking Gong. Perhaps we are to view the film as an allegory of Hong Kong's place in pan-Asia, especially as most of the action takes place at the Oriental Hotel.

Wong uses scope wide screen for the first time. Shots are partially blocked by walls, doors and windows. While many of the visual elements are as elliptical as in earlier films like Fallen Angels, the main portion of the narrative is easier to follow. Even if the historical references are lost on viewers, one cannot help but be awed by the cinematography, again primarily the work of longtime Wong collaborator Christopher Doyle. In keeping with spirit of erotic longing in In the Mood for Love, 2046 is punctuated with shots of Gong Li seen from her waist to hips, in a black form fitting dress with a black glove. Wong is said to be working on a film titled Lady from Shanghai with Nicole Kidman. Any relationship to the Orson Welles film of the same title remains unknown. One thinks that given his several films of romantic longing, that one can easily use the title "Cherchez la femme".

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:33 PM

July 17, 2005

The Red Shoes

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger - 1948
Criterion Region 1 DVD

A couple of days ago, there was a news item regarding Martin Scorsese. As part of the promotion of Philips' ambient light plasma television, Scorsese created a list of his favorite color movies. The article only listed a few of the favorites: Singing in the Rain, Duel in the Sun, Jean Renoir's The River, and The Red Shoes. I was unable to find a complete list of films cited by Scorsese. It did make me wonder if his list would inspire more people to see some of the classic films on DVD.

I happened to have a copy of The Red Shoes. My memory is that I saw the film theatrically at a revival house in Denver in either the late 70s or early 80s. I know I also saw The Red Shoes at least once when it was a staple on Bravo, back when Bravo actually showed "art" movies. Between The Red Shoes, Black Narcissus and Peeping Tom, I have developed what I call "The Michael Powell Theory of Color in Movies". Simply stated, the theory is that Technicolor was invented to photograph red-headed women. Moira Shearer's presence in The Red Shoes is the main justification for shooting in color.

There is some exaggeration here. One of the benefits of the DVD is that we get to see Hein Heckroth's pre-production paintings for the title ballet. In addition to the commentary contribution by cinematographer Jack Cardiff, we understand how much planning was put into every visual aspect of the film - the photography, the costumes, the set design. One clear difference between the paintings and the realized film was that Heckroth's costuming of Shearer indicated the possibility of more translucent dressing and a greater suggestion of nudity on stage. Aside from production codes prevailing in 1948, the paintings allude more directly to the sexuality of Shearer's on-stage and off-stage character.

Frankness in sexual matters is what undid Powell's career. It took about twenty years for Peeping Tom, a film with several red-headed women, to be regarded seriously. One of Powell's last films, The Age of Consent took Kubrick's Humbert Humbert, James Mason to Australia to romance the teenager played by a young Helen Mirren. Still, based on Heckroth's paintings, it is interesting to speculate on what The Red Shoes would have been like had Powell been able to follow his more avant-garde instincts. Which is not to take anything away from co-writer-director- producer Emeric Pressburger, but the commentary confirms that Powell was primarily responsible for the visual side of films by The Archers.

While The Red Shoes was one of the first British films shot with three-strip Technicolor, the last film done with this process was Dario Argento's Suspiria. Both films are linked in having ballet dancers as the protagonists. The basis of the earlier film is in a fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Suspiria begins with a voice over introduction suggestive of a fairy tale. Those familiar with the unexpurgated fairy tales of Andersen and Grimm, for example, know that these are violence filled stories with the female protagonist usually coming to a bad end. In Tenebrae, Argento has a key character who very pointedly wears red shoes. More so in Argento, than in Powell, but both filmmakers have artists as their main characters in several films. In an interview in videoscopemag.com, Argento is asked about his tendency to go over the top, something Powell is sometimes accused of. Argento's response shows him to be not too different from Powell: "I'm loyal to the dream, the fantasy. It's like a painting, no?"

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:30 PM | Comments (2)

July 16, 2005

Lady Snowblood

Shurayukihime
Toshiya Fujita - 1973
AnimEigo Region 1 DVD

A few days ago my significant other decided I should read some magazines she had bought in order to get a bit more acquainted with current culture. In the July 2005 issue of Wired, the magazine has several articles devoted to remixes and what they call cut and paste culture. One of the articles was on the movies that Quentin Tarantino used as basis for for his own films. I was already familiar with City on Fire as the inspiration for Reservoir Dogs. What was news for me was learning about Kill Bill's origins in Lady Snowblood. By coincidence, Lady Snowblood was way up on my Netflix queue, and I had the opportunity to view it, followed by Kill Bill Volume 1 on cable.

Lady Snowblood is similar to yakuza films of its time with its scenes of lopped off body parts and geysers of blood, and carefully composed wide screen and color imagery. One of the elements that makes this film unique is that it clearly refers to its manga origins by breaking from live action to black and white graphic drawings. Director Fujita also plays with color with scenes of red snow, as well as using wide screen composition in unusual angles as a way of referring to the manga source material.

The title character is a female assassin with the goal of killing the four people who raped her mother and her mother's husband. As is found in many genre films, the story is not particularly original, but the way the story is told makes it interesting. In this case it is Fujita's use of color, composition and editing that drive the film to its satisfying conclusion. Both Fujita and Tarantino break up their films with titled chapters. One could say Tarantino double dipped from Fujita, using the basic narrative of Lady Snowblood for both the character of The Bride, the avenging female assassin, and for the back story of O-Ren, the girl who kills her parents' murderer. Both films have sword fights in the snow. Tarantino also used the Lady Snowblood theme song at the conclusion of Kill Bill Volume 1.

I have yet to see other DVDs from AnimEigo. If Lady Snowblood is any indication, this is a company that has gone beyond other companies in presenting Japanese genre films. Not only are the subtitles colored to make for easier reading, but the subtitles change colors in conversation so that one characters lines will be green while the response will be red (no pun intended). Sur-titles will appear on the screen to briefly explain cultural or historical references. The DVD also includes a chronology of general Japanese history as well as notes refering to how Lady Snowblood relates to the history of Meiji era Japan.

The only other film by Fujita currently available on DVD is the inevitable sequel to Lady Snowblood. Still, based on the first film I would take the time to see the second.

While there has yet to be a definitive annotated Kill Bill, those interested in checking out Tarantino's inspirations should check out www.geocities.com/lost-highway.geo/.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 12:12 AM

July 14, 2005

Gozu

Gokudo kyofu dai-gekijo: Gozu
Takashi Miike - 2003
Pathfinder Region 1 DVD

Like many U.S. film viewers, my first encounter with Takashi Miike was with Audition. I was both horrified and fascinated by the finale that I viewed the ending scenes twice to verify what I had seen. While I saw Audition on DVD, I took advantage of seeing The Happiness of the Katakuris durings its brief theatrical run in Denver. The second string Denver Post critic indicated a total ignorance of Miike. The review was more of a list of scenes that upset this man's delicate sensibilities. I figured that any film that got an alleged film critic this offended was worth checking out. Since that time, I have learned to expect the unexpected with the transgressive films of Miike, and to know that he has a way of pushing people's buttons.

Gozu goes in several unexpected directions. The opening scene is of a yakuza, something like the Japanese equivalent of a wise guy, telling his boss not to take anything he is to say seriously. The yakuza, Ozaki, than states that the teacup size dog held by a woman outside the restaurant meeting place is actually a trained attack dog. Ozaki steps outside, grabs the dog, and swings it against the sidewalk and restaurant window to its death. In the next scene, another Minami is driving Ozaki from Tokyo to Nagoya with the assignment of disposing of the deranged gangster.

Once we are in Nagoya, reality and fantasy collide. Minami loses Ozaki, and encounters a burly transvestite, eccentric brother and sister inn keepers, and a man with a cow's head - the Gozu of the title. As explained in the DVD notes, a Gozu is a mythological creature from Buddhism, a guardian to the entrance of hell. Miike constantly undermines our expectations of what will happen from scene to scene. Characters are not always who or what they seem to be. What begins as a yakuza film veers into black comedy and horror before concluding into a trio of elliptical shots reminiscent of the Nouvelle Vague.

Miike has given much of the credit for Gozu to screenplay writer Sakichi Sato. Sato is best known to U.S. audiences for his role as Charlie Brown, the hapless restaurant owner in Kill Bill Volume 1. Sato appears in Gozu as the transvestite coffee shop manager. Much of the supporting cast is made up of veteran actors, the best known being Tetsuro Tamba, still active at age 82.

The DVD includes interviews with Miike which help explain the genesis of Gozu and give one a somewhat better understanding of Miike. Best are the discussions with fellow filmmakers Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) and Guillermo del Toro (Hellboy). Interestingly, the interviews touch on the possibility of Miike working in the U.S. While not on the scale of Takashi Shimizu remaking The Grudge as an English language film, Miike is to contribute an episode to the anthology Masters of Horror for cable channel Showtime. The results should be worth watching. Miike will both return to his straight-to-video roots and reach a larger, unsuspecting audience.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:17 PM

July 12, 2005

Zero Kelvin

Kjaerlighetens kjotere
Hans Petter Moland - 1995
Kino DVD

While his newest film, Beautiful Country, appears to have his strongest distribution in the U.S., I first heard of Hans Petter Moland from his earlier film, Aberdeen. That film was a dark comic road trip from Scotland to Norway, about the reluctant reunion between a materially successful daughter and her disolute father. Made five years before Aberdeen, Zero Kelvin is an even darker film of a simultaneous inner and outer voyage.

The film takes place in about 1925. Larsen is a struggling poet who goes to an isolated part of Greenland for one year. His job is to help trap animals for the fur trade and write a journal for eventual publication. Prior to his leaving Norway, we see him with a woman, Gertrude. While they express love for each other, their mutual sense of committment seems uncertain. At the outpost in Greenland, Larsen is assigned to be with a scientist, Holm, and a trapper, Randbaek. The film follows the uneasy relationship of the three men. In particular, Randbaek and Larsen have the strongest dynamic, bringing out the best and worst in each other.

What I especially liked about Zero Kelvin is the sense of wonder conveyed about Greenland. The rocky beach and vast plains and mountains of ice are a landscape that one doesn't see to frequently in films. The sense of maddening isolation is palpable. There are scenes where the only sounds are the wind and the cracking of ice. One image of surreal beauty is of a partially sunken ship, frozen in the ice, with one end sticking up and sideways.

Moland indicates an interest in people in alienated from their environment and each other. Based on the two films I've seen to date, I am looking forward to seeing his first film, The Last Lieutenant, as well as his newer work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 10:14 PM

July 11, 2005

Twenty-four Eyes

Nijushi no hitomi
Keisuke Kinoshita - 1954
Hong Kong DVD Region 0

Keisuke Kinoshita was a contemporary of Akira Kurosawa. Both began their directorial careers in 1943. While Kinoshita was a more prolific filmmaker and more commercially successful in Japan, he now seems only known through the writings of film scholars like Donald Richie. Maybe I wasn't paying attention, but I can't recall any of Kinoshita's films playing in the New York City revival houses when I lived there in the early 70s. While I still have admittedly large gaps in my knowledge of Japanese film, I took advantage of being able to see Twenty-four Eyes on DVD.

The film is about a young teacher portrayed by Hideko Takamine. She is assigned a First Grade class at a poor village in one of Japan's islands. The year is 1928, shortly before the militarization of Japan. Takamine causes a stir in her introduction to the community with her western style clothing, riding a bicycle. The villagers all wear kimonos and live according to traditions handed down through succeeding generations. The twenty-four eyes of the title refers to the twelve students that are Takamine's first class. The film follows the relationship between the teacher and students over the course of almost twenty years.

While the film takes place in Japan over fifty years ago, Kinoshita's critique of nationalism is still quite relevant today. A teacher is accused of being a communist for having his class read writings that have anti-war sentiments. Patriotism is equated with unquestioning nationalism. Takamine's fears that her male students and husband will die in the war come true. One of Takamine's sons asks why she does not see the glory of having someone die in battle. She responds that she wants to be an ordinary mother. Later, when asked by her son if she will cry because Japan lost the war, Takamine states that she has cried enough for the dead.

The film also portrays people trapped by poverty or tradition. By the end of the film we have seen some of the children able to manifest their dreams. One student even becomes a teacher. Several other of the children have their dreams thwarted by the needs of their parents to help in family trades or take care of even younger children. Three of the boys die in combat while one returns blind. One of the girls dies of tuberculosis. This is not to say that Twenty-four eyes is bleak. Kinoshita's viewpoint might be described as cheerfully stoic. While there is much crying and sentiment, there is also a sense of pragmatism.

The print used for the DVD looked a bit worn and scratched. The subtitles had some mispelled words. This is the complete film at 155 minutes. When Twenty-four Eyes had its original U.S. theatrical run, the version shown was 116 minutes long. The film is also a fitting showcase for Hideko Takamine, one of the biggest stars of Japan who was both the girl next door and a very independent woman.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:07 PM

July 10, 2005

Le Peril Jeune

Cedric Klapisch - 1994
French Region 2 DVD

I have to wonder why Cedric Klapisch wasn't introduced to U.S. audiences earlier. I also have to wonder why his earlier films aren't available in Region 1 DVDs. Le Peril Jeune is a very accessible film, very much in the tradition of I Vitelloni and Diner.

The young men in this film are younger than their cinematic predecessors, being Parisian high school seniors. The film has been given the English title of Good Old Daze which is somewhat suggestive of the general confusion encountered by the characters. The film's title literally translates as The Young Danger which may be more representative of how the characters see themselves.

The majority of the film is told in flashback. Four men meet in the maternity ward awaiting the birth of the child of their friend, Tomasi, who has recently died of a drug overdose. Except for a barely remembered reunion three or four years previously, the four had last been together in school, in 1975. In the days leading up to the baccalaureate exams required to graduate and to qualify for possible college, the five confront the conflict between the ties that keep bind the friendship, and the needs to take responsibility for their future selves.

One of Klapisch's little jokes that while the friends meet ten years after high school, the film's main musical theme is by the band Ten Years After. The song used, I'm Going Home suggests a headlong rush to the past. The songs used in the film, by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Steppenwolf were all from the late sixties. One of the scenes shows the students involved in a strike that is broken up by police with tear gas. With the scenes of political discussions and activities of the students, the film seems to convey a sense of nostalgia for 1968, when rock music truly seemed to matter, students and workers were unified against the government, when being a hippie was considered a career option. The youthful nostalgia based on a previous generations' experience is echoed when one of the characters mentions having seen Amarcord, Fellini's fanciful recreation of his own childhood.

Klapisch is clearly a filmmaker who loves his characters no matter whether they are smart or stupid, funny or boorish. While his films are lighter than than those of his contemporaries, Klapisch has been thematically consistent in his stories of families or a group of outsiders that bond as a temporary family. With acknowledgment to Truffaut and Godard, Klapisch continues the youthful spirit of the early Nouvelle Vague.

For those who can read French or wish to trust computer translations, Klapisch has his own website
cedric-klapisch.com.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:49 PM

July 06, 2005

Gambling City/Almost Human

Gambling City
Sergio Martino - 1974
No Shame DVD

Almost Human
Umberto Lenzi - 1974
No Shame DVD

What I like best about what has happened since the advent of DVDs is that I can see more foreign films and older films than I could when I was dependent on theatrical revivals or television showings. Additionally, I like that I am able to fill in gaps of knowledge of various filmmakers and genres. Conversely, I do sometimes feel certain frustration that while some films are now available, others are not. Nonetheless I feel that the DVD release of various Italian genre stylists is beneficial not only for cultists, particularly of Italian thrillers or gialli, but also for film historians. One can regard the release and critical re-evaluation of Italian thrillers from the 70s as being somewhat analagous to the re-evalution of American film noir films.

Sergio Martino established his reputation with gialli. A contemporary of Dario Argento, Martino worked as an Assistant Director on Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body. In Martino's best moments, he bathes dramatic shots with a prime color, red or green, in the style of Bava. Martino makes use of framing devices and well as positioning characters for dramatic effect.

Gambling City shows Martino taking a break from thrillers to make something lighter. The film follows a professional gambler, Luca, played by Luc Merenda. Luca crosses a casino owner, known as "The President" as well as the casino owner's son, Corrado. Luca runs off with Corrado's girlfriend, Maria Luisa. Luca plays father against son until the son takes over the casino and his father's gang of enforcers.

My favorite moment in Gambling City is during the scene when the son of the casino owner is abandoned by his father's business partners. Martino frames the actor, Corrado Pani, sitting alone at his desk, a small character seen through an open door seen on the left of the screen - a diminished person, isolated, surrounded by vast blackness. An earlier scene shows Luc Merenda, his face partially obscured by a glass room divider, looking at Dayle Haddon from across the casino. We see Haddon as Merenda sees her. We can see but not hear Haddon arguing with Pani.

Gambling City isn't as visually dynamic as Martino's earlier thrillers or his Western, Manaaja. Martino does keep a sure hand on the proceedings so that the action never lags.

* * *

The first time I saw anything by Umberto Lenzi was at showing of Orgasmo at the University of California - Berkeley. The film was shown under the title of Paranoia. While Carroll Baker was the star, I spent most of the time wondering how Lou Castel had gone from making Fists in his Pockets with Marco Bellochio to a film with lesser aspirations. Lenzi is best known for his cannibal movies which have a devoted cult as well as his thrillers. Of the handful of Lenzi films I've seen to date, Almost Human is his strongest achievement.

Almost Human is about a small time thief, Giulio, who attempts to go big time by kidnapping the daughter of a millionaire industrialist. The thief is portrayed by Thomas Milian. As Almost Human was made the year after Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, I had to wonder if Milian had seen that film. Milian's bravura performance seems modeled on Robert De Niro's Johnny Boy. Milian has the same shaggy haircut and a similar manic grin. Giulio is a more psychotic and dangerous version of Johnny Boy. As counterpoint to Milian's nervous energy, we have the expressionless Henry Silva as the detective attempting to make sense of a series of seemingly random murders.

Almost Human was written by Ernesto Gastaldi, the prolific writer frequently associated with Sergio Martino. The film was produced by Luciano Martino, Sergio's older brother for the Dania Film company. Is it coincidental that Lenzi's association with Dania has made Almost Human one of his better movies?

It should be noted that No Shame makes sure that their films are seen correctly and understood not only within the context of the work of the respective filmmakers, but also within the context of Italian film history. In addition to seeing the films in their correct aspect ration, one can choose English or Italian, with optional subtitles. Keep in mind that these films were all shot silently and dubbed later, a traditional practice in Italian filmmaking made necessary with international actors speaking lines in their native language. The interviews with select cast and crew members is sometimes informative, although I got the feeling that Dario Argento is the object of much envy. I especially enjoy the clips of Ernesto Gastaldi. Even if his memory fails him, he comes off as a jolly uncle with funny stories. Gambling City also has a commentary by Luc Merenda that is so casual, this may be the only DVD commentary to be interrupted by a cell phone call. The enclosed booklets are contain information and filmographies for the director and principal star. What I liked about the booklet for Almost Human was the first section placing the film within the context of Italian events following the late 60s, as well as an overview of the Italian film industries peak and decline.

While I can't share the enthusiasm that some people have for Umberto Lenzi, I am intrigued enough to see more films by Sergio Martino. At his best Martino's use of color, composition and montage editing are the work of a genre stylist worthy of more serious evaluation.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:06 PM | Comments (2)

July 05, 2005

The Maltese Falcon

John Huston - 1941
Warner Brothers DVD

Last Saturday I decided to take a break from watching some Italian thrillers from the 70s to re-see something more classic. I usually make a point of seeing The Maltese Falcon about once a year, and had finally gotten around to replacing my old VHS copy with the DVD version. Otherwise, this is The Maltese Falcon that most everyone is familiar with, with Bogart as Sam Spade.

Most of the time when I see The Maltese Falcon, I forget that I'm watching a remake. The reason I bring this up is because remakes are popping up on screen more frequently, and I'm often one of those people who complains that someone is trying to cash in on a good, if older film, with something that is not as good. Maybe the lesson of The Maltese Falcon is that if you are going to do a remake, make a point of doing something better than before.

The Maltese Falcon DVD contains the trailer for the second version which was titled Satan Met a Lady. Bette Davis starred in this 1936 version, directed by William Dieterle. From what I could tell from the trailer, the Dashiell Hammett story was reworked to have the same comic tone as The Thin Man, also based on a book by Hammett. There is also the original film version, made in 1931 by Roy Del Ruth which I have yet to see. The third version is the one most people think of as the only version of The Maltese Falcon, and perhaps that is how it should be.

Another example of a remake that may perhaps be the definitive film version is The Age of Innocence. If you read my bio, then it should be obvious that I have a bias for Martin Scorsese. There is a silent version made in 1924 by Wesley Ruggles. I did try to see the first sound version, made in 1934 with Irene Dunne in the Michelle Pfeiffer role. Thanks to Turner Classic Movies, I actually tried two times, and turned off my TV two times. Maybe the problem with this version is that it is faithful to the play be Edith Wharton and comes off as stiff and talky. The version Scorcese made is both dialogue rich and sumptious visually, and as watchable as anything Scorsese has made.

While I haven't seen it since its initial release, I may have to reconsider Brian De Palma's version of Scarface. In 1983, the Howard Hawks version was largely unseen and unavailable for television or home video. The copy of the Hawks film I saw was a 16mm version that I managed to see through one of my contacts at NYU. This version is now more easily available, yet most people now associate Scarface with Al Pacino. I'm one of those people who would never have guessed that a film trashed by critics in 1983 would be revered twenty years later. Of course living in Miami Beach I can't avoid Scarface. T-shirts and posters of Pacino as Tony Montana are displayed in stores on Washington Avenue. Even my dentist has a painting of Pacino as Montana in the room where he drills my teeth!

I may be meandering here. I guess my point here is that remakes in and of themselves aren't automatically bad. It's more that those who choose to do a remake to frequently fail to make a film that is as good or better than the original film, as John Huston did with The Maltese Falcon.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 09:52 PM

July 01, 2005

Ocean's Twelve

Steven Soderbergh - 2004
Warner Brothers DVD

There are two reasons why I like getting DVDs from my local public library - 1. It opens up my Netflix list. 2. I have the benefit of seeing movies for free.

This second point is important for something like Ocean's Twelve in that I at least have the consolation of knowing I never paid to see it.

In some ways, Ocean's Twelve comes closer to the spirit of the original Ocean's Eleven. The older film was primarily an excuse for Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the other members of the "Clan" to hang out together. Even though Lewis Milestone was credited for direction, it was really Sinatra who called the shots. As a caper film, it's mildly diverting. What made that film a box office hit was the goodwill of the stars. Of the films that Sinatra and company made together, Ocean's Eleven is a much lesser film than Some Came Running or even Robin and the Seven Hoods.

Ocean's Twelve likewise has a plot involving an impossible heist as do both versions of Ocean's Eleven. However, the film comes off as a collection of improvised scenes strung together primarily for the amusement of the participants. George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the others have the goodwill of their precendants to have drawn a substantial audience for an alledged good time at the movies. By the end of the film I felt like I was sitting with someone constantly nudging me, reminding me that what was on the screen was hip and funny, when all I could feel was a sense of annoyance that not only did I see too many scenes that made no sense, but that I didn't really care anymore.

At this time, the film I think is Soderbergh's best, King of the Hill, is only out on tape. Made in 1993, this is a truly heartfelt story from writer A.E. Hotchner about growing up poor during the 1930s. The film was one of several films Soderbergh made following Sex, Lies and Videotape that did not achieve anything close to the financial success of his debut. King of the Hill is sad, funny and warm -hearted, sometimes all at the same time. Jesse Bradford, who was 13 at the time the film was made, conveys intelligence and care as the young Hotchner. Hopefully a DVD version of this film will appear in the near future.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:32 PM | Comments (1)

June 29, 2005

High Tension

Alexandre Aja - 2003
Chinese Region 3 DVD

It's no surprise that Alexandre Aja's next film is to be a remake of Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes. Even before I read interview after interview with Aja naming Craven as an influence, High Tension made me think contantly of Last House on the Left because of the brutal nature of this film. With a scene that is reminiscent of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I was left with the impression that if Aja had his way, he would have been the house director for New Line back in the early 70s when low budget splatter films were their bread and butter.

I opted to see this film on DVD in order to see it unedited and in French. From what I understand in Aja's interviews, the film was partially dubbed as well as slightly cut in order to get the film as wide a release as possible. As it turned out, the audience that showed up for remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror stayed away. Unlike a film like The Blair Witch Project that creates a sense of constant dread, but doesn't show anything, High Tension lives up to its title by creating both the constant unease of the viewer and assaulting the viewer with intense gore.

The film begins with two female college students, Marie and Alex, driving to the remote farm house which is the home of Alex's parents and little brother. While on the road, Marie describes her nightmare of being chased in a forest. In the meantime, we see a stocky man in a battered van, somewhere in a field, being orally serviced by a woman. Moments later, in a long shot, we see the arm stick out of the truck, dropping the woman's head on a rural road.

Aja is undeniably talented, and still very young. He was twenty-five when he directed and co-wrote High Tension. In terms of getting his career established, for this, his second feature, he had the backing of Luc Besson. Along with Besson, Aja can be seen as part of a group of younger French directors like Louis Letterier and Florent Siri who, if not making Hollywood films per se, have their respective eyes on genre films with international appeal. As it is, I am hoping Aja can show he can make a film with true substance now that he shows he is capable of style.

Aja is also a second generation director. His father is Alexandre Arcady, who while unknown in the U.S., has had a long career as director in France. Arcady's longtime companion is filmmaker Diane Kurys. While I don't recommend High Tension except for those of strong heart and stomach, I suspect that Aja is on track to eventually join the ranks of such second generation film stylists as Gerd Oswald and Jacques Tourneur.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 01:34 PM

June 28, 2005

Don't Look Now

Nicolas Roeg -1973
British Region 2 DVD

I read the announcement yesterday that plans were made to remake Don't Look Now. According to the producer, Mark Gordon, the original film was, "very much a product of its time with a lot of atmospherics that wouldn't necessarily work today . . ." What has me confused is that Gordon is essentially criticizing the very things that make this version of Don't Look Now venerated as a horror classic.

For those who have never seen the film, a couple who's daughter has drowned accidentally, go to Venice. The husband, John, is restoring the artwork of an old church. The wife, Laura, meets two older women. One of the women is blind but has apparent psychic abilities. The blind woman claims to be able to see the dead daughter. During the time that John and Laura are in Venice, there is a serial killer on the loose.

The reason why Don't Look Now has achieved classic status is not for the story but the way the story is told. Nicolas Roeg's films from his first ten years are noted for their fragmented narratives and dynamic visual compositions. While I was aware that Roeg was a cinematographer prior to being a director, I learned from further research that he actually started out in the editing department of a small studio. While most of the narrative of Don't Look Now is linear, Roeg plays with the imagery so that shots from the past and present echo each other, and the viewer is as visually disoriented as the characters. One of the main visual motifs is in the use of the color red, the color of the raincoat that the drowned daughter wears. Maybe I'm slow, but it took me over thirty years and several viewings to notice that there is a photo of the killer in the beginning of the film.

The film is also very much about atmosphere especially at the end, with Donald Sutherland lost in foggy streets, with Julie Christie unable to find him. Because of the set ups, there is more tension and surprise in the two moments of terror - the scene with Sutherland almost falling off the scaffold, high inside the church, and the climax at the end. I don't know if Roeg watched any Italian thrillers that were released at the time he was shooting in Venice, but there is similarity to scenes particularly by Dario Argento. I wouldn't be surprised if Don't Look Now has had an influence on some of the current makers of Japanese horror films, particularly Deep Water.

If the remake of Don't Look Now is actualized, I suspect that the narrative will be totally straightened out, the horror amped way up, and the eroticism totally muted. The scene of Christie and Sutherland cross cut to alternate between shots of love making with shots of getting dressed isn't as erotic for me as it was on first viewing. It is an important scene showing the re-establishment of intimacy after grief. While Christie and especially Sutherland were game for on screen nudity, I can't imagine this scene being duplicated in any way especially within confines of the almost obligatory PG13, and the general lack of interest is Hollywood to depict adults in love.

Looking back at Don't Look Now, in SFX Magazine - August 1999, Roeg has stated: "It had a situation in which people were in danger, as we all are, permanently. That's part of life. And God knows that now that I'm in my 70s its all 'you must be careful of this and careful of that', or 'don't do this or don't do that'. Well, it's not going to make much difference anyway. We're only hanging by a thread, and we're here to live. We think we can control life, but we can't control anything. We're constantly taken by surprise. And in the best science fiction or fantasy you can never really second guess it because it does away with all the expectancy of behaviour."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 06:41 PM | Comments (1)

June 20, 2005

Inferno

Francesco Bertolini, Adolfo Padovan, Giuseppe de Liguoro - 1911
British DVD

I saw this film listed at Nicheflix and decided to check it out. In general, I like seeing silent films with contemporary music scores. The music commissioned by Turner Classic Movies for some of their silent films is as good as anything on the big screen and certainly more interesting than the stuff John Williams grinds out for the likes of Lucas and Spielberg. In terms of rock scores for silent films, I have to admit to being somewhat more ambivalent. I'm pretty confident that Fritz Lang wasn't dreaming of the day that Bonnie Tyler would be wailing along with Metropolis. I haven't bothered with version of Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera with the goth rock soundtrack. Still, if it gets more people to see a silent movie and get a tidbit of film history in their life, I say more power to you Giorgio Moroder, et al.

In my case I was baited by Tangerine Dream. The music is OK but nothing as good as the score they did for Thief. Mostly the music could be described as stately and spiritual, very similar to the kind of music Hans Zimmer does in collaboration with Lisa Gerrard as in Gladiator.

The movie itself is sort of interesting. Visually taking cues from Dore, the film is a series of full shots of Dante and Virgil exploring the circles of Hell. The film is very much pre-Griffith with only a few panning shots. Most of the the time the camera doesn't move. From what little information I could find, this was the first feature length made in Italy and took three years to produce.

In some ways Inferno illustrates that while the technology has changed, the essence of block buster filmmaking has remained the same. The special effects are pretty much at the low tech level established by Melies. There are a lot of superimpositions and combination shots using masking to make it appear that giant demons are appearing with the mortals. Angels fly in and out with the use of wires. We know all the camera tricks because some of us have used them ourselves in our own amateur or student movies, making objects appear and disappear . . . LIKE MAGIC! Sure, the special effects in Inferno look pretty hokey in the age of computer generated effects, but really it's not too different from, for example, Constantine, except it has more literary source material.

What amazed me about this film was the amount of nudity. This was in keeping with the visual inspirations of Dore, Blake and others who have illustrated Dante. I'm sure Cecil B. DeMille was envious of what the Italians could do. According to one source, Inferno made two million dollars in the U.S. This was when top admission prices were ten to fifteen cents. Some of the images of hell reminded me of the scene of hell in Lucio Fulci's The Beyond. I'm sure that Fulci was inspired by the same material as his predecessors.

Not having read Dante, I was taken aback by one bit that is very timely. One of the condemmed is Mohammed, apparently for being a disruptive influence. Dante may have written a parable about his time, but once again we see that some things haven't changed.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:43 PM

June 19, 2005

Taras Bulba

J. Lee Thompson - 1962
Japanese DVD

Taras Bulba is a film I originally tried to see when it was released. At the time, most of my film viewing was done with the approval of my parents. I figured I had a shot as the movie was based on a book by Gogol and my father was big on Russian literature. The reviews of the film were less than enthusiastic. My parents usually went by the word of Bosley Crowthers of the New York Times. In this case he trashed the film.

The story is essentially about the son of a 16th Century Cossack who betrays his father to save the life of a Polish princess. Even worse, his father kills him for his action.

The Cossacks are mostly burly guys who love getting drunk on vodka, dancing, and tossing each other in the air. They're led by Yul Brynner who wears a mustache and queue of hair from the middle of his head. Tony Curtis, who is ten years younger than Brynner, plays the son, Andrei. Curtis, of course, is pretty much playing his usual eager to please persona. Curtis falls for Christine Kaufmann. Christine was seventeen at the time, twenty years younger than Curtis. Even though Curtis dies at the end of the film, he got Kaufmann in real life.

Aside from the age discrepancies of the lead actors, we see Curtis and his brother go to college in Kiev where all the students are at least thirty years old. Even more unbelievable are the faux Russian folk songs with lyrics by Mack David. Breaking up the action with songs is something I'll allow in westerns, usually in something by John Ford or Howard Hawks. It's a convention that pretty much ended after Rio Bravo. Within the context of a costume drama made in 1962, the musical numbers are pretty cornball and more glaringly anachronistic. Maybe producer Harold Hecht figured that Yul Brynner should get another chance at singing on the big screen since The King and I.

The music can be described as rousing. This was one of the last scores by Franz Waxman and was rightly nominated for an Academy Award. The music can by described as old fashioned, but in a good way, which is to say comparable with his contemporaries like Erich Korngold and Miklos Rosza.

In terms of J. Lee Thompson's filmography, Taras Bulba pretty much marks his decline from earlier artistic and commercial promise. This was his first film after back to back hits with Gregory Peck, The Guns of Navarone and Cape Fear. This film was a commercial flop, reportedly earning about four million dollars with a budget of seven million. It's not that Taras Bulba is a bad film as much as it is uninvolving. The best moment comes early when Yul Brynner unexpectedly lops off Guy Rolfe's had hand with a sword. Thompson lovingly films Curtis and Kaufmann in iris shots with the lens smeared with vaseline. If ever a screen romance could literally be called gooey, this is it.

At cinema-scope.com, Jonathan Rosenbaum has an article titled Global Discoveries on DVD: Anomolies and Experiments. Rosenbaum discusses his own exploration of various films found either in foreign DVDs or in the DVD-R format. While Taras Bulba is hardly a classic, it is another example of the arbitrary policies regarding DVD releases of older films. While a U.S. VHS version is available, I saw this film as a Japanese DVD. While I understand that there may not be a great demand for certain titles, especially older films, this is for me another reason by region coding is detrimental to film scholarship. Especially as most of the older films are commercially played out, it would make sense to me to have DVD versions of older titles released code free. This would allow the greatest number of people who appreciate less popular or obscure titles to view the films rather than forcing serious film lovers to either purchase code free DVD players or go without seeing certain films. As it is, the film production companies, like much of the audience it aims for, is made of people with short memories.
This is why a recent box office failure like the remake of Flight of the Phoenix gets a second life on DVD. With the current state of older and classic films on DVD, I'll see what I can and appreciate those opportunities that exist.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:31 PM | Comments (1)

June 17, 2005

Eyes Wide Shut

Stanley Kubrick - 1999
Warner Brothers Region 2 DVD

No deliveries from Netflix or Nicheflix, so I finally got around to watching my DVD of Eyes Wide Shut.

I made a point of buying a British copy as I wanted to see the film as Kubrick made it. Keep in mind that because Kubrick died only four days after he delivered his final version to Warner Brothers, that the alteration of his film for North American release was done by his producer and brother-in-law, Jan Harlan. True, Kubrick was contractually obligated to make an R rated version for Warner Brothers, but one will always wonder if the digitally inserted people who partially block the orgy scenes are what Kubrick intended. This is especially of concern in noting that the MPAA, as I understand it, never saw the original version of the film. I have problems with the ratings anyways because: they are often abitrary, I believe that some films are not intended to be seen by children or by people under a certain age, parents have proven to be stupid by bringing babies and young children to R rated films, and the film companies have realized that they can make more money by releasing unrated versions of movies on DVD instead of or in addition to the rated theatrical version. One bit of irony, Warner Brothers has an unrated version of True Romance on DVD for North American audiences, but has thus far refused to release a Region 1 unrated version of Eyes Wide Shut.

You're wanting to know if getting that extra bit of nudity was worth it. Yes, it was.

I recall some so-called critic complaining that Stanley Kubrick made a film about sex that was not erotic. Well, gee, I think that was the point. By baring all, as it were, we are able to share in Kubrick's dispassionate view of the world. It's no accident that Kubrick's New York City is filmed in the same style as 2001 and Clockwork Orange. What too many less than thoughtful viewers of this film forget is that Kubrick's films since Lolita represent a viewpoint of detachment from the world. There is discussion on love, sex and the erotic in Eyes Wide Shut, but the sex and nudity in the orgy scenes are about class and power.

Just as Kubrick short circuited expectations by making a film about sex that was deliberately not erotic in the most graphic moments, he reduces Tom Cruise to a reactive character. Only Kubrick could get away with having a scene where Cruise is hassled by a group of men he passes on the sidewalk with accusations that he is gay. Unlike the real Cruise who has successfully won libel suits, or Cruise's typical screen persona who would fight back, Kubrick's Cruise avoids fights and encounters of possible negative consequence.

I would say Kubrick was smitten, yes, smitten is the correct word, with Nicole Kidman. Not only is she the character with the most power, but Kubrick gives her the last word, not only of this film, but significantly, of all Kubrick movies.

About thirty years ago, my friend Ric Menello told me about an interview that Pauline Kael did in the late fifties with two Hollywood directors, an established veteran, and a newcomer.
The veteran was Nicholas Ray, the newbie was Kubrick. As the story goes, Kael had asked the two directors what they most wanted to film, and they both responded that they wanted to show a couple fucking. Maybe they were having a laugh at Kael's expense. Kubrick did first announce plans to film Dream Novel, the literary basis of EWS, in the mid 70s, so that it is clear that the Dream Novel was a dream movie for quite a while.

Going back to the discussion of the two versions of EWS, I have to wonder if Kubrick and the film would have benefitted from being made about thirty years earlier. During the brief time between Midnight Cowboy and Last Tango in Paris, studios supported films for an adult only audience. Kubrick's home base of Warner Brothers released not only Clockwork Orange, but also Ken Russell's The Devils, Visconti's The Damned, and Roeg and Cammell's Performance. Kubrick almost always had a problem with his films being appreciated during the time of their initial release. Then again, made during a time when the President of the United States was impeached for his sexual activity, Kubrick may have been making a comment on our new era of puritanism.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 05:52 PM

The Idiot

Akira Kurosawa - 1951
Japanese DVD

The most enduring image in Kurosawa's version of The Idiot is snow. Lots and lots of snow. Big, fluffy mountains of snow covering roofs and streets. Throughout most of the film there are blizzards or snow showers.

Made between Rashomon and Ikiru, The Idiot has virtually fallen through the space separating the two acclaimed films. There are several reasons to suspend a critical eye on The Idiot. The only version available is 166 minutes long. Kurosawa's original version which may never have been publicly shown has been documented at 265 minutes. In the initial Japanese release, the film was 180 minutes long. What we know by this information is that the version of The Idiot is not the film Kurosawa intended to make, but one that was compromised for a more commercial length. In his autobiography, Kurosawa also notes that it was soon after The Idiot was released in Japan that Rashomon won the grand prize at the Venice Film Festival, the first of several awards for that film, paving the was for Kurosawa to make films pretty much his way through 1965, and probably in the view of his producers, primarily for the international market.

The quality of the print based on the DVD is suspect. Perhaps Kurosawa's ambitions were far greater than what was allowed in his budget, but many of the exterior shots were filmed with a jarringly different film stock, with the effect similar to that particularly of war films with stock and documentary footage inserted into for polished footage. As the film was a major financial and critical failure for Kurosawa, there was probably less care in preserving the negative or existing prints by the studio.

Still, this film is of interest, at least for those of us who care about the entirety of Kurosawa. The film is an update from Dostoevsky, taking place in post WWII Japan, in Hokkaido. The title character is a passive man, an innocent, whose blankness is given meaning by those in his environment. The convoluted plot is essentially that this man is caught in a triangle between two women who accuse each other of trying to manipulate the innocent for their own benefit.

What was of more interest to me than the story was seeing Setsuko Hara as one part of the triangle. Based primarily on her roles for Yasujiro Ozu, and even Kurosawa's earlier No Regrets for Our Youth, Hara is the most selfless, self sacrificing woman is cinema. In comparison, Meryl Streep is a selfish, conniving bitch. Apparantly Ozu was upset by this film as it deviated sharply from how he presented his muse. Unlike the somewhat mousey woman in Ozu's films, Kurosawa recreates Hara as a woman of fashion, who is able to be assertive, at least for part of the film.

There is a sequence, with the title character, Kameda insistently wooing Akayo. We see a series of short shots, with changes of scene and dress. Most of the dialogue belongs to Akayo, insulting Kameda in one shot, apologizing in the next shot, and later telling Kameda not to visit her every day. This sequence made me think of the breakfast scenes in Citizen Kane, shot to illustrate the changing dynamics in Kane's first marriage. I would not be surprised if this was intentional as Kurosawa loved American film, especially John Ford, and it is quite possible that he had seen Citizen Kane sometime after 1946.
There is also a scene of Kameda sitting alone on a park bench, waiting to meet Ayako. Kameda is totally alone. The scene, from the perspective of Kurosawa's future films, could be viewed as a rough draft for the very similar scene from Ikiru done the next year, with Takashi Shimura sitting alone on a park swing.

Kurosawa's sentimentality gets in the way of making The Idiot as compelling as the films made up through High and Low. As admirable as it is to believe in the "brotherhood of man"' Kurosawa comes to close to overstating his case. Still this is a very watchable film, not as good as the well known films usually associated with Kurosawa (name your own favorite here), but far better than the syruppy sweet Mandadayo.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:59 PM

Love is a Many Splendored Thing

Henry King - 1955
20th Century Fox DVD

I had seen parts of this film on TV about forty years ago. While Henry King is barely remembered nowadays, I did meet him in Telluride in 1975. Since then, I have made it a point to see his films where available. More about my meeting Henry King later.

As for the film in question, yeah, it's nice to finally see it in color and cinemascope. The film is dated in its attitude towards Chinese culture, and in the casting of the very caucasian Jennifer Jones as the Eurasian Han Suyin. It is interesting to consider than only five years later, William Holder would return to Hong Kong to star with a genuine Eurasian, Nancy Kwan in The World of Suzie Wong. By 1960, civil rights were more significantly in the forefront, and Hollywood had pretty much abandoned casting white people as Asians or in bi-racial roles, with the most glaring exception being Mickey Rooney as the Japanese photographer in Breakfast at Tiffany's (why Blake Edwards, why?)

But throughout this film, I kept on thinking, how would Wong Kar-Wai make Love is a Many Splendored Thing? Thematically, this would be an appropriate film, as Wong explores themes of physical and psychological dislocation. The discretion shown by King primarily due to the cultural constraints of 1955 are not to disimilar to the discretion of Wong's adulterous couple in In the Mood for Love. Of course in the older film, the clearest indication that the relationship has been consumated is the close up of William Holden's cigarette igniting Jennifer Jones' cigarette. Of course at the time the film was made, you couldn't show Jones and Holden in bed together period. But consider that in our more graphic era that Wong deliberately chose to delete the scenes of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung fucking. In the Mood for Love's erotic power comes from the shots of Maggie Cheung's hips encased in the Cheongsam dress.

What Wong would probably bring to a remake of Love is a Many Splendored Thing is a greater sense of Hong Kong in 1949 so that the history is less distant and abstract. In King's film the surge of refugees into Hong Kong is discussed but is not visually represented. The discussions of what Chinese identity means to individuals whether politically (Hong Kong vs. People's Republic) or having a bi-racial and bi-cultural identity are only lightly touched on. Wong immerses you into a Hong Kong he knows intimately. King's vision of Hong Kong and the Chinese is that of a tourist.

A side note is that King's Ramona also explored similar themes with Don Ameche as a Native American and Lorretta Young as the half-Native American heroine.

Back to my meeting with Henry King - I went to the 1975 Telluride Film Festival where King was one of the honored directors. I was studying film at NYU at the time. I sat in on his interview for Denver Post, and as I was more knowledgable about his films than the Post critic, I essentially conducted the interview. We met outside, by a creek running through town. The somewhat pastoral setting was appropriate, looking as it did as the kind of setting for one of King's silent films or films from the 30s. I mentioned to King that I had seen The White Sister (1923) at the Museum of Modern Art. I explained that most of the audience was hostile torwards the idea that Lillian Gish was committed to being a nun, even after seeing her reportedly dead lover, Ronald Colman, alive following years of separation. As a recent convert to Buddhism, I could feel more sympathetic to Gish's reasons to remain a nun. King told me that he converted to Catholicism at the time he made Song of Bernadette. While I do not remember details other than that part of our conversation, what I do remember is that King recounted growing up in rural Virginia, and discussing his time making making movies without getting out of the silent era. He was 79 at the time. Although his produced film was Tender is the Night (1962), King still went to his office, and mentioned that he was working on a film about Mexico.

King's films can usually be remembered as amiably as the man himself. Carousel is the best of the films based on Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, especially compared to the heavy handed South Pacific and Oklahoma. The Gunfighter holds up as the epitome of films about the reluctant fastest gun in the West attempting to retire peacefully. If King is remembered at all now, it is thanks to Robert Evans. Before becomine production chief at Paramount, novice actor Evans appeared in a small role in The Sun Also Rises. In spite of a major campaign by author Ernest Hemingway and most of the stars to have Evans fired, Fox head Darryl Zanuck insisted that, "the kid stays in the picture." Unfortunately for Henry King, one of his dullest films, with a cast of stars too old for the parts they play, is the film of any significance for contemporary audiences.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:56 PM

Here Comes the Groom/Just for You

Here Comes the Groom/Just for You
Frank Capra -1952/ Elliot Nugent - 1952
Paramount DVD

Am I a "completist"? Not really. Do I try to see as much as I can by favored directors? Yes. Sometimes to diminishing returns.

Such is the case with Here Comes the Groom, a film Frank Capra made primarily to fulfill his brief contract with Paramount. This is the kind of film that helps illustrate the difference between a classic and "an old movie".

As many times as I've seen it, I still get engaged by It Happened One Night. I might be channel surfing, or in one case, eyeing it on the television at my neighborhood bodega in Denver. In any case, I know the story of journalist Clark Cable and runaway heiress Claudette Colbert almost by heart. No matter how many times I see Colbert flash her leg to hitch a ride, the film still makes me laught. I love this film enough to have it in my collection.

With Here Comes the Groom, all the contrivances of the story appear, well, contrived. It doesn't help that the leads, Bing Crosby, Jane Wyman, and Franchot Tone all are clearly too old to play the parts of the itinerant reporter, his long-suffering girl friend and an eligible bachelor. There were a couple of mild chuckles when Bing plays a record with the recorded letter of Wyman, and a minuture Wyman appears standing on the rotating disc, a fuzzy image, a low tech prototype of Yoda (thanks Lumena}, repeting gestures when the record needle gets stuck. Othewise, I don't care if it won an Academy Award, I can go through life without hearing "In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening" again. This may be the most overplayed song in one movie with the possible exception of "Over the Rainbow" in I Wake Up Screaming. (Yeah, that's right, more times than in Wizard of Oz.)

Just for You gets points from me mostly for having Natalie Wood appear as Bing Crosby's daughter. Not a girl, not a woman, to paraphrase a recent song, but you see glimpses of a 14 year old who will be a heartbreaker when she meets Nick Ray in three years for Rebel. Elliot Nugent made the kinds of films that are entertaining but not memorable with stars like Bob Hope and Danny Kaye. Nice use of color in the stage productions, but Bing Crosby was never a compelling screen presence for me.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:45 PM

Gun Crazy

Gun Crazy
Joseph H. Lewis - 1949
DVD

I once came across a quote from Nelson Mandela where he said that what helped him during the time he was imprisoned was remembering favorite movies. I have wondered if he has ever had the opportunity to see any of these films again. The reason I ask is because my own experience is that sometimes the memory of a movie can be better than seeing the film again.

I first saw Gun Crazy over thirty years ago in New York City. The story is about two young people who love guns and each other. The guy is a former soldier, an expert shot unable to shoot living beings, whether hunting or in self defense. The woman is a carnival trick shooter who has no trouble shooting to kill. Modeled somewhat after the real Bonnie and Clyde, the film is a chronicle of the pair's decent into crime. The quick and easy robberries are replaced by more challenging heists that eventually undo the duo. The film ends with the two out of bullets and luck.

Since I had seen the film before, I decided to watch it with the commentary on. This is by someone named Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant. Some of the information was interesting. The best was knowing more about the legendary single take done of a bank robbery. The back of a car was set up to carry a 35mm movie camera, plus sound equipment including several microphones. The robbery scene is one continous take with stars Peggy Cummins and John Dall. The car is parked in front of a bank, Dall walks out of the car and into the bank, the camera holds on the bank until we see Dall run out and into the car. The camera continues to run so that we continue to watch the action as if the audience was in the back seat, while Cummins and Dall drive out of town. Not only does this single take take several minutes, but according to director Lewis, was shot in the first take.

When I first saw this film theatrically, it was because of the acclaim given this film by Andrew Sarris in his book, The American Cinema. Sarris's view was that Gun Crazy was "subtler and more moving" than Bonnie and Clyde. What I remember was the feeling of euphoria after seeing this film. I knew that it was shot on a relatively small budget with Lewis making the most of his resources. The one thing I remembered was that the sexuality suggested at in Gun Crazy was, and still is, more evocative than whatever is hinted at between Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.

And yet... seeing the film again was not quite as good as how I remembered it. Maybe I shouldn't have bothered with the commentary, or at least at the first pass after more than thirty years. I know that I only have a handful of films I have watched several times since I bought them on tape or disc. I have to wonder if the act of buying movies is in a sense a way for people to totally possess and own dreams and memories.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:33 PM

Bad Guy /Lady of Musashino

Lady of Musashino
Kenji Mizoguchi - 1951
Region 2 DVD

Bad Guy
Kim Ki-Duk - 2001
DVD

Two films came in from Nicheflix that unintentionally complimented each other. Made fifty years apart, the films are linked by shared theme of a woman's honor. Where they are different is that Mizoguchi's fallen women, whether that descent is real or percieved, often commit suicide at the end of the film in response to the codes of society. Kim's female protagonists live by their own moral code in defiance of society.

Mizoguchi's film takes place in an area outside of Tokyo in the years following World War Two. Michiko is introduced as the dutiful daughter who has impulsively married a teacher, Tadao.
Just before he dies, Michiko's father discusses the marriage and characterizes Tadao as vulgar. Shortly after, Michiko's cousin, a former soldier and prisoner of war, Tsutomu, returns to Musashino. Mizoguchi dramatizes the post war search for absolute moral values by positing the platonic love between Michiko and Tsutomu against Tadao's attempts at adultery in the name of rebellion towards social order.

All of the men are opportunistic and deluded. Tadao sees himself as a version of Stendahl's Julien Sorel, and sees the post war era as a time to fulfill his desires as the wartime demand for self-sacrifice is over. Michiko's other cousin, Eiji, has profitted from manufacturing munitions. With the war over, he persuades Michiko to mortgage her land so he may keep his business, lessening her security. Tsutomu, returning to college, has some casual affairs with other students who share his nihilistic viewpoint. He also becomes absorbed with the history of Masushino.

Michiko can be viewed as also deluded. Her actions are guided by thoughts of not shaming the family name. There is no traditional family following the death of Machiko's parents. Her own marriage is characterized by both her and her husband as loveless. It is also childless. The family name idealized by Machiko ends with her. Her cousin Eiji has a tradional family, but his marriage is also described as loveless. Eiji is open about his affairs. Tsutomu has thus far lived with situational families - the military, his cousin, and other students.

Mizoguchi concludes with the encouragement to live in the world as it is. Musashino's identity as a separate city has given way to its merging with metro Tokyo. Likewise Tsutomu has to find a way to live that is not rooted in a long lost past, nor is totally transient.

Mizoguchi's final film was about prostitutes, Street of Shame. The prostitutes of Bad Guy are less idealized. While Mizoguchi's characters are often in their situations due to an otherwise hopeless situation, Kim's characters are less thoughtful, living on instinct and impulse. We are introduced to Sun-hwa as a college student, waiting on a park bench for her boyfriend. Han-ki, a street punk, is sitting on the bench, occassionally glancing at Sun-hwa. Her boyfriend initiates a fight with Han-ki who grabs and kisses Sun-hwa. The fight spills to the street and ends with several soldiers holding down Han-ki. Sun-hwa spits on his face. Later, Sun-hwa is seen at a bookstore by Han-ki. He has a crony leave an wallet near her. Sun-hwa is caught stealing the wallet. She finds herself taking out loan for money that is claimed to be missing by her "victim", for $15,000.00 with her face and body as security. The only way she can repay the loan is by working as a prostitute for Han-ki. For Mizoguchi, the prostitutes are victims due to circumstances. Sun-hwa's dishonesty to herself and others has forced her into prostitution.

The pimps, prostitutes and gangsters of Bad Guy are the marginalized of society. The characters live in an insular society that has its own peculiar code. Sun-hwa's eventual acceptance of her fate is counterpointed by the emergence of Han-ki's stunted humanity. The ideal of Mizoguchi's world has been replaced by ambiguity, ambivalence and resignation. In a recent interview, Kim discusses that his goal for the audience is to be "psychologically happy". "I wish to show human behavior and human nature rather than show talking. I think actions are a more powerful media to deliver my message. There are no lies in the movements of human beings. They are honest, no matter whether it is good or bad."

Kim's films are now getting theatrical release in the United States. While I have his other available films in my rental queues, I strongly recommend The Isle for those who haven't seen it. This is one of the best films in terms of visual composition, perhaps more striking now when too many contemporary directors seem to plant the camera without thinking. What also makes Kim interesting is that he deliberately pares down dialogue with the goal of making his films understood visually, by the widest audiences possible. Says Kim, "I think that laughter and crying are the best dialogue."

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:31 PM

The Village / Spirit of the Beehive

Spirit of the Beehive
Victor Erice - 1973
Region 2 DVD

The Village
M. Night Shyamalan - 2004
DVD

I finally got around to seeing The Village on DVD. I know M. Night has a lot of fans but I'm not one of them. For me, every film from The Six Sense on has turned out to be a big budget, elaborate Twilight Zone episode. But compared to M. Night, Rod Serling had more wit and irony in a compact half hour. I am glad I didn't spend money to see The Village in a theater. Not only did I figure out the 'twist" to the story well in advanced, but I was distracted by lapses of logic that undermined the premise. With William Hurt and Sigourney Weaver and cast in 19th Century dress, and the glacial pacing of the narrative, this is what a horror movie would look like if it was made by Merchant-Ivory.

The Spirit of the Beehive was a film one of my teachers at NYU encouraged me to see. I didn't for some reason. I made a point of catching up with this film in part because I have since had greater interest in Spanish language cinema.

The story is about two young girls in a small village in 1940. A travelling projectionist presents Frankenstein at the town hall. The younger of the two girls, Ana, is entranced by the monster, and is told by her slightly older sister, Isabel, that the monster lives on the outskirts of their village as a spirit visable to only a few. The two girls visit the empty barn where the monster is said to live. Ana finds a man in the barn during a solo visit. While it is not clearly explained, the man is presumably a political fugitive of some kind. Ana brings the man food and clothing. Eventually she and the fugitive are discovered. Ana is seen hiding by a lake in a scene that replicates the seen of the Frankenstein monster and a young girl in James Whale's film. Ana has her own encounter with the monster.

Ana Torrent was six years old when she appeared in Spirit of the Beehive. She has grown to be a gorgeous woman. While I haven't seen her most recent work, I noticed from her filmography that I did see her in Vacas (1992) by Julio Medem, and Thesis (1996) by Alejandro Amenabar, two of Spain's best younger directors.

What is interesting about the narrative of Spirit of the Beehive is that it reminds us about how powerful movies can be when we are younger, when we are at an age of total belief in what we see. I was six when I first saw the original King Kong on tv. I asked my mother how the film makers were able to get a giant gorilla to climb the Empire State Building. About three years later some neighbor kids told me the story of William Castle's The Tingler. Gullible child that I was, I endured several nights of insomnia, afraid that this tingler creature would attach itself to my spine and eventually kill me. I was even certain after seeing George Pal's film of The Time Machine that there would be nuclear war in 1964. O.K., cold war jitters aside, that actually almost happened. It is possible that for many people, there is the need to believe what they see, as in the conviction of many at the truth of The Blair Witch Project.

What The Village and Spirit of the Beehive share is the shared belief in the power of story telling.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:19 PM

The Killer Must Kill Again

Luigi Cozzi - 1973
DVD

First I want to get a cheap shot out of the way - the somewhat redundant title this film is saddled with makes me think this film should play on a theater marquee with Nightmares come at Night.

The story behind The Killer Must Kill Again is in some ways more interesting than the actual film. The title was changed from The Spider, indicative of the webs the characters create to trap others, as well as trap themselves. The director's commentary is a history of making a film with one compromise after another. Several of the actors were cast at the insistance of the producers. The film was re-edited and held up for release for two years. In spite of the obstacles, Cozzi still has a pride in his first theatrical film.

We see a man, Giorgio Mainardi, arguing with his wife, Norma. She controls the accounts that support his business ventures. He leaves to meet with a girl friend, and stopping to make a call from a pay phone, sees a man, only identified as D.A., pushing a Volkswagen into a river. The Volkswagen has a dead woman inside. Mainardi blackmails D.A. into murdering Norma. D.A. strangles Norma while Giorgio is at a party. D.A. hides the dead woman in the trunk of a very large Mercedes and goes back into the house to wipe fingerprints. The Mercedes is stolen by a couple of teenagers who are off to the beach. D.A. pursues the car thieves to a large, abandoned house.

While Cozzi is most know for his association with Dario Argento, this film is in some ways an anti-Giallo. For those unfamiliar with the term, Giallo is Italian for yellow. Paperback crime thrillers had yellow covers, and the books were the inspiration for movies characterized by extreme violence and sexuality. While Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace from 1964 is generally considered the first true Giallo film, the genre's cycle peaked during the early 70s following the release of Argento's Bird with Crystal Plumage, eventually fading in the next few years. Cozzi deliberately works against the genre conventions.

Unlike Giallo, Cozzi introduces the killer in the beginning of the film. D.A. is not the compulsive, illusive killer of other Giallo but a person reluctantly put in circumstances that force him to kill again. The plot is propelled by D.A.'s ineptness, first not noticing Giorgio, and then allowing the car to be stolen. The initials D.A. that are on the killer's cigarette lighter are an obvious reference to Dario Argento. While Cozzi confirms in the commentary that the scene of the Volkwagen sinking in water is his tribute to Psycho, the film has other Hitchcockian references. Death by strangulation and hidden corpses have popped up throughout Hitchcock's films, such as Frenzy and Rope. Cozzi has also populated the film with several blonde women, although much more voluptuous than Grace Kelly or even Janet Leigh. The Killer Must Kill Again is more old fashioned and linear in its narrative.

The film does have a great visual reference to the genre. The house of the Mainardis has a bold yellow interior decorated with pop art. What was amazing to learn in the commentary is that the interior belonged to a real house with nothing changed for the film.

The commentary was done with Pete Tombs. Tombs co-wrote one of my favorite books, Immoral Tales: European Sex and Horror Movies 1956 - 1984. That one book has determined quite a bit of my Netflix list. Tombs has expanded from writing about films to establishing his own DVD label, Mondo Macabro, for the Anglo-American market.

I first learned about Luigi Cozzi from a Dario Argento internet list I use to belong to. Cozzi's career as a film maker has been erratic at best. His last original film was made in 1989. Since then, Cozzi has been the director of record on a couple of films documentaries on Dario Argento. The only film by Cozzi I have seen previously was The Black Cat (1989). This is a film about the making of a film inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. While Poe supplied the title, the narrative is about an angry female spirit, connecting the film more directly to Argento's Suspiria and Inferno. There is even a scene where the characters discuss Suspiria while the theme music by Goblin is played. I saw the film on the SciFi network several years ago. As only a couple of his films are currently available, it may be a while before Cozzi's career can be more fully assessed.

There is an interview with Cozzi at Devildead.com from February 2004. In addition to running a bookstore with Argento in Rome that specializes in horror and science fiction, Cozzi has acted as a publisher on books on film, as well as author on books on Argento and Bava. Cozzi has stated that he has been unable to make films due to changes in the Italian film market. One has to wonder, based on the career paths of his peers, if Cozzi no longer had the stomach or passion needed to continue being a director. Based on the this one online interview I could find, I suspect that the battles and compromises outdid the rewards for the completed work.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 04:14 PM

Cinemania

Angela Christlieb and Stephen Kijak - 2002
DVD

I first heard about Cinemania about a year and a half ago when Lumena saw it on cable. I later read about it after the Ultimate Film Fanatic series first aired. At least a couple of viewers asserted that the contestants on UFF were nowhere near as knowledgable about films as the people profiled in Cinemania.

The documentary covers the life of five residents of New York City who basically live to watch several movies a day, more precisely movies playing in theater type venues. I lived in New York City for about seven years so I know it's easy to do, provided you have the funds and are willing to let go of other aspects of having a life. I use to know people like this that I use to see usually at screenings at the Museum of Modern Art.
My alibi, and I'm sticking to it, is that I was a Cinema Studies student at N.Y.U. Besides, I didn't want to disappoint one of my teachers, film historian William K. Everson, who told us students that there was no excuse not to see at least one movie a day.

A couple of the characters have been classified as disabled, while another is living on unemployment checks. One lives at his parents' home, while another is able to live off of inherited money. Four usually make the rounds of the venues that are devoted to film art and history such as Film Forum, the American Museum of the Moving Image, and even the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The very cheerful Harvey will take in two or more films when he can at a mammoth New York City multiplex. Bill and Jack are both avid readers. Jack is seen reading a book on political theory and also discusses how his reality of sitting at a Parisian cafe was nothing like the experience presented in French movies. Bill proclaims that one his occupations is a writer, but except for a personal ad, nothing is written, much less published. Eric is an older man with a preference for classic musicals. Roberta is an older woman who insists on keeping her admission tickets untorn, and who collects a dozen or so programs or other written material that occompanies the presentation of a film in the name of preservation.

To describe some of these people as pack rats is gentle. Having lived in New York City, I know that it is very common to live in a very small apartment with too many books. But garbage is part of the clutter shown. I guess the camera lights were to bright for New York City�s legendary rats to make a cameo appearance.

The film makers generally do not make any judgment on their subjects, but let them speak for themselves in their activities. Jack and Bill are the most self reflective. Bill attempts to create a social life for himself, albeit one where he can have friends to see movies with. Jack is seen at a gym, attempting to deal with girth developed with years of bad food and little physical activity. The film presents the subjects as part of New York City's film going infrastructure.

Are these people more fanatic than the participants of Ultimate Film Fanatic? Yeah, sure. Do they know more about film than the UFF crowd? Not necessarily. Eric, for example, mispronounced Antonioni and Fassbinder, and discussed skipping a retrospective of Alain Resnais. These names may mean nothing to most contemporary audiences but are respected with critics, historians and other film makers as three highly influencial European directors. So maybe I'm being a bit of a snob here, especially since the UFF series was pretty much about mainstream American films. Based on my experience, at least the contestants from the "Mountain" region all had jobs, except for Vince who was a student. Two are married. Everyone bathed, and wore clean clothing. I guess the biggest difference was that the UFF participants all were willing to not go to the movies long enough to attend the audition, and then go to Los Angeles for the taping. We didn�t even go to any movies during our time off. We did take advantage of our per diems to eat well at dinners where we sat around and mostly talked about movies.

One of the film makers, Angela Christlieb, initiated making the film as the result of meeting with Jack at a large number of screenings. Christlieb even characterized herself has having been similar to her subjects with her film going compulsion. As Christlieb is a film lover who has transitioned to being an active film maker, this film provoked questions in my regarding the relationship between art and the audience.

There are bibliophiles who do not write. I am certain many of the Dead Heads who followed the Grateful Dead from town to town are not musicians. The cinephiles in Cinemania have neither made films nor have added in any way to film scholarship. There are countless non-athletes watching ESPN whose lives revolve around televised and live sporting events. Are these kind of devotees something new, as the result of mass media? Have there always been an audience that had their lives center on art? Are they more visible now? Is it that there are more of this type of person now? Why is the person who can rattle off sports statistics with ease more cool than the guy who carries filmographies in his head?

On a more professional level, is there a balance between art and life? Who decides? What I am thinking about here are the truly dedicated film critics and historians who manage to both watch a prodigious amount of films and also write about them.

Maybe Cinemania can be viewed as a document about one symptom or result of living in a consumer culture. One may argue that the subjects of the film are no better or worse than the average American who watches several hours of television a day, or the recreational shopper, or those who need to keep up with the fashion of the moment such as in music or clothing. No easy or facile answer here, other than that the characters of Cinemania aren't that different from the rest of us, just a bit more obvious in the way they live their lives.

Posted by Peter Nellhaus at 03:28 PM