The Black Stallion (1979)
Director: Carroll Ballard
Screenwriter: Melissa Matheson, based on a novel by Walter Farley
Cinematographer: Caleb Deschanel
The Black Stallion is a movie unremarkable except for one thing: it is almost perfect. The story of a boy (the piquant Kelly Reno) who is saved from a shipwreck by a beautiful Arabian horse, the movie belongs to the “winsome child plus animal” genre that includes such classics as National Velvet and The Yearling. Unlike those movies, however, The Black Stallion achieves true artistry. Through director Ballard’s use of minimal dialogue, exquisite cinematography and the subtle acting of its cast, this remarkable movie transcends its genre and reaches the pantheon of truly great films. I have many qualms about the AFI Top 100 Movie List, but its exclusion of The Black Stallion is unacceptable.
The most striking feature of Stallion is its lack of dialogue. Much of the movie is silent but for the sometimes charming but just as frequently irritating music of Carmine Coppola. The most striking sequence in the film, the shipwreck and subsequent isolation of the boy and horse on a deserted island, is a dialogue free forty-five minute sequence that tells the film’s story with pyrotechnic manipulation of film’s basic ingredients, image and sound. Compare this to the endless chatter and noise of most movies, especially ones geared toward children, and you will see how a master filmmaker achieves his goals with transparency and grace.
The cinematography by Caleb Deschanel (father of actresses Emily and Zooey) is sensitive to the mood and plot of the story. On the island, it is harsh and gritty. Once the child returns to civilization and the suburban embraces of his mother (an amusing Terri Garr), the colors become softer and richer. The pacing of the movie, which starts off idyllically and then turns explosive, only to turn idyllic and thrilling once again, is masterful.
Stallion’s one inarguable fault is Carmine Coppola’s music, which is on occasion somewhat overly obvious. The worst example of this is an underwater sequence for the boy and horse, which turns coy with its use of “ballet” music. However, much of the rest of the score is really lovely, and that one sequence does not spoil the movie.
Kelly Reno, the child actor playing the lead, turns in a performance remarkable for his ease on screen and his emotional transparency. Garr is very funny in the stereotypical part of the bewildered mother, and the ageless Mickey Rooney, here playing a retired horse trainer, turns in a subtle performance notable for its comic grace. However, the great performance here is by the stallion himself: a horse named Cassolé who embodies Ballard's questioning attitude towards man's treatment of animals. The stallion, like the child, is happiest when free, and his eventual subservience to man's wishes (in the film's climactic high-stakes race) seems tragic rather than celebratory. The final shot of the movie, of the stallion shucking off its halter and shaking its mane, is both joyful and deeply unsettling. We know that the horse is not truly free, and neither is the child. Their freedoms were temporary, and no less joyful for that.
I’m always amused by the dismayed or unbelieving responses of adults to whom I recommend this movie. It's a "children's movie" because a child can understand it, but its thematic complexity and great beauty make it worthy of adult attention. Put aside your fear of sincerity and your twenty-first century post-ironic attitudes and you will be greatly rewarded by The Black Stallion.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
UP IN THE SKY
Man on Wire (2008)
Director: James Marsh
The documentary Man On Wire portrays Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers as an outlaw artist’s championship feat, an action disconnected from normal social interaction and free of any historical significance. It’s like an adventure story from 1930s Hollywood. As in She or King Solomon’s Mines, no one questions the reasonableness of the adventure, and the story takes place in a vacuum, simultaneously heightening the drama and making it more unreal. Proponents of the auteur theory will love Man on Wire’s re-creaton of the basic ingredients of a Howard Hawks film: brave men, unquestioning female, hopeless task which no one expects to return from. Man on Wire is a tidy little film about an almost impossible, inhuman feat that occurred on the site of a future tragedy. The tidiness both disconcerts and fascinates.
The story of Petit’s obsession with walking between the towers began when he saw an article about the building of the towers while sitting in a dentist’s office in 1968. From this humdrum beginning, Petit and his accomplices — who include his girlfriend, his best friend, plus a wire-walking expert and a fluctuating assortment of starry-eyed countercultural types — planned the walk over a five-year period. Petit had been obsessed with wirewalking since childhood and previous to the WTC walk had planned and executed outlaw walks on Notre Dame and a bridge in Sydney Australia.
The details of the planning are one of the fascinations of the film. The construction of the wire bridge on the roof of the WTC at dawn after a night of hiding from security officers makes for a great little caper film, and the director James Marsh plays up the sequence with some noir-esque touches. The other great charm of the film is the personalities involved in the feat. Petit himself is magnetic and playful, and it’s a salute to his magnetism that his friends and accomplices hardly seem to question his sanity. The accomplices are just as interesting: his girlfriend and best friend are as wholeheartedly committed as Petit, and their matter-of-factness about the nuts and bolts of the enterprise make their obsession all the more striking. The other accomplices are a mixed salad of 1970s post-flower child types: the songwriter who chickens out at the last moment, the be-whiskered bureaucrat who helps Petit’s team gain access to the building as part of his anti-establishment stace
The film’s refusal to acknowledge Petit’s feat as part of the history of the World Trade Center and their destruction gives the film an unusual power: it makes 9/11 seem more like what it is, a historical incident in a series of historical incidents, rather than what politicians and public hysteria have turned it into.
Director: James Marsh
The documentary Man On Wire portrays Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the World Trade Center towers as an outlaw artist’s championship feat, an action disconnected from normal social interaction and free of any historical significance. It’s like an adventure story from 1930s Hollywood. As in She or King Solomon’s Mines, no one questions the reasonableness of the adventure, and the story takes place in a vacuum, simultaneously heightening the drama and making it more unreal. Proponents of the auteur theory will love Man on Wire’s re-creaton of the basic ingredients of a Howard Hawks film: brave men, unquestioning female, hopeless task which no one expects to return from. Man on Wire is a tidy little film about an almost impossible, inhuman feat that occurred on the site of a future tragedy. The tidiness both disconcerts and fascinates.
The story of Petit’s obsession with walking between the towers began when he saw an article about the building of the towers while sitting in a dentist’s office in 1968. From this humdrum beginning, Petit and his accomplices — who include his girlfriend, his best friend, plus a wire-walking expert and a fluctuating assortment of starry-eyed countercultural types — planned the walk over a five-year period. Petit had been obsessed with wirewalking since childhood and previous to the WTC walk had planned and executed outlaw walks on Notre Dame and a bridge in Sydney Australia.
The details of the planning are one of the fascinations of the film. The construction of the wire bridge on the roof of the WTC at dawn after a night of hiding from security officers makes for a great little caper film, and the director James Marsh plays up the sequence with some noir-esque touches. The other great charm of the film is the personalities involved in the feat. Petit himself is magnetic and playful, and it’s a salute to his magnetism that his friends and accomplices hardly seem to question his sanity. The accomplices are just as interesting: his girlfriend and best friend are as wholeheartedly committed as Petit, and their matter-of-factness about the nuts and bolts of the enterprise make their obsession all the more striking. The other accomplices are a mixed salad of 1970s post-flower child types: the songwriter who chickens out at the last moment, the be-whiskered bureaucrat who helps Petit’s team gain access to the building as part of his anti-establishment stace
The film’s refusal to acknowledge Petit’s feat as part of the history of the World Trade Center and their destruction gives the film an unusual power: it makes 9/11 seem more like what it is, a historical incident in a series of historical incidents, rather than what politicians and public hysteria have turned it into.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I DON'T WANT TO GO TO REHAB, PART 1 (FIVE STAR MOVIES)
Everyone's got an addiction - mine, like many people's, is Netflix. My queue is stuffed to saturation, my day revolves around making time to watch a movie and keep my queue moving, and I've become overly familiar with the pickup times at my local mailboxes – but there's a silver lining: a cornucopia of reviews.
The reviews are broken up into three sections by their starred rating: 5 stars, 3 to 4.5, and 0 to 2.5. Movies that make my Top Ten or Top Twenty are marked as such. There's also a hall of shame -– the Bottom Ten.
FIVE STARS
Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People (1942, 1944)
Top Twenty
Cat People is one of the great fright films. Simone Simon stars as a young woman convinced she turns into a murderous feline. She’s right, but not everyone believes her, to their clawed regret. Jacques Tourneur directed this masterpiece of shadows and suggestion; the terror highlight is a nighttime walk through Central Park. However, the sequel is an entirely different affair, a weird, daffy fantasy about an unhappy girl and the strangely helpful spirit of Simon’s cat person.
Jules et Jim (1962)
Top Ten
A signpost of cinema, Jules et Jim is one of Francois Truffaut’s masterpieces, an exploration of love and its bitter discontents. Jeanne Moreau is unforgettably alluring as Catherine, the romantic cynosure of Jules (Oscar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre). Jules et Jim has acquired the weight of a masterpiece, but its gracefulness in telling a disturbing story belies that weight. Possibly the most adult film ever made, Jules et Jim is a must-see.
Liza with a 'Z' (1972)
Electrifying. Liza with a 'Z' is a long lost TV special from 1972, directed by Bob Fosse and starring a youthful Liza Minnelli. The picture’s a little grainy and the music might be called kitschy, but Liza is nuclear fission incarnate, a true star basking in the well-deserved love of her glamorous audience. A peak number is “I Gotcha” – the pink spangled Halston minidress, the supersexed-up Fosse choreography and Liza’s wacked-out divaness add up to camp nirvana. If her tabloid exploits obscured Liza’s talent and left you wondering what the original fuss was, Liza with a Z is your answer. The extras include an interview with Liza and the video restoration team that’s as pure an example of fan worship as you’ll ever see.
The Red Shoes (1948)
Top Ten
The Red Shoes is essential viewing, a Technicolor extravaganza unlike anything else in the movies and so uniquely designed, acted and filmed that it singlehandedly justifies the elevation of the movies into an art form. Based on the Hans Christian Anderson story about a doomed ballerina, and filmed by the writer/director team of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell in a style describable as celestial kitsch. Stars the glittering Moira Shearer as the doomed ballerina, Marius Goring as her composer and lover, and Anton Walbrook as the Diaghilev-like impresario. With its glimpses of post-Ballet Russe dancing and Leonide Massine’s performance as the ballet master, The Red Shoes is catnip for ballet fans. Its aesthetic descendants include Jacques Demy’s equally entrancing The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Rififi (1955)
Top Ten
Jules Dassin’s heist flick has a hurtling dramatic power. Almost lighthearted at the beginning but ultimately a Shakespearean tragedy, Rififi is a true original, a scathingly misanthropic hair-raiser. The famously dialogue-free heist sequence is remarkable. Rififi is clearly indebted to John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and an inspiration to cinematic sponger Quentin Tarantino.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Top Ten
Hitchcock’s 1937 film of the John Buchan adventure novel is one of his best and is the ur-text for the spy film genre, the stylish Bourne Identity being its most recent variation. Suave Robert Donat stars as Hannay, accused of murder and racing to find the real killer with persnickety blonde Madeleine Carroll as his unwilling accomplice. Hitchcock’s storytelling verve is at its purest: the escape by train, the pursuit through the Scottish highlands, the encounter with the man with the missing finger are all prime examples of Hitchcock’s remarkable genius. Its ramshackle special effects are a special delight. Check out the helicopter!
Further Viewing: The Lady Vanishes, 1938.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Top Ten
Magic. Jacques Demy’s unforgettable pop-art musical of young love is one of the supreme cinematic creations. Breathtakingly lovely Catherine Deneuve stars as a young woman in love with a handsome but penniless garage mechanic (Nino Castelnuovo) who is sent off to the Algerian War. The sung dialogue is startling at first and the art direction is goofy to the point of psychedelia, but Demy spins these potential distractions and Michel Legrand’s elegant music into fairy tale gold. If you have the chance to see it on a big screen, jump! Restored to its original glory in 1992.
The reviews are broken up into three sections by their starred rating: 5 stars, 3 to 4.5, and 0 to 2.5. Movies that make my Top Ten or Top Twenty are marked as such. There's also a hall of shame -– the Bottom Ten.
FIVE STARS
Cat People / The Curse of the Cat People (1942, 1944)
Top Twenty
Cat People is one of the great fright films. Simone Simon stars as a young woman convinced she turns into a murderous feline. She’s right, but not everyone believes her, to their clawed regret. Jacques Tourneur directed this masterpiece of shadows and suggestion; the terror highlight is a nighttime walk through Central Park. However, the sequel is an entirely different affair, a weird, daffy fantasy about an unhappy girl and the strangely helpful spirit of Simon’s cat person.
Jules et Jim (1962)
Top Ten
A signpost of cinema, Jules et Jim is one of Francois Truffaut’s masterpieces, an exploration of love and its bitter discontents. Jeanne Moreau is unforgettably alluring as Catherine, the romantic cynosure of Jules (Oscar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre). Jules et Jim has acquired the weight of a masterpiece, but its gracefulness in telling a disturbing story belies that weight. Possibly the most adult film ever made, Jules et Jim is a must-see.
Liza with a 'Z' (1972)
Electrifying. Liza with a 'Z' is a long lost TV special from 1972, directed by Bob Fosse and starring a youthful Liza Minnelli. The picture’s a little grainy and the music might be called kitschy, but Liza is nuclear fission incarnate, a true star basking in the well-deserved love of her glamorous audience. A peak number is “I Gotcha” – the pink spangled Halston minidress, the supersexed-up Fosse choreography and Liza’s wacked-out divaness add up to camp nirvana. If her tabloid exploits obscured Liza’s talent and left you wondering what the original fuss was, Liza with a Z is your answer. The extras include an interview with Liza and the video restoration team that’s as pure an example of fan worship as you’ll ever see.
The Red Shoes (1948)
Top Ten
The Red Shoes is essential viewing, a Technicolor extravaganza unlike anything else in the movies and so uniquely designed, acted and filmed that it singlehandedly justifies the elevation of the movies into an art form. Based on the Hans Christian Anderson story about a doomed ballerina, and filmed by the writer/director team of Emeric Pressburger and Michael Powell in a style describable as celestial kitsch. Stars the glittering Moira Shearer as the doomed ballerina, Marius Goring as her composer and lover, and Anton Walbrook as the Diaghilev-like impresario. With its glimpses of post-Ballet Russe dancing and Leonide Massine’s performance as the ballet master, The Red Shoes is catnip for ballet fans. Its aesthetic descendants include Jacques Demy’s equally entrancing The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
Rififi (1955)
Top Ten
Jules Dassin’s heist flick has a hurtling dramatic power. Almost lighthearted at the beginning but ultimately a Shakespearean tragedy, Rififi is a true original, a scathingly misanthropic hair-raiser. The famously dialogue-free heist sequence is remarkable. Rififi is clearly indebted to John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle (1950) and an inspiration to cinematic sponger Quentin Tarantino.
The 39 Steps (1935)
Top Ten
Hitchcock’s 1937 film of the John Buchan adventure novel is one of his best and is the ur-text for the spy film genre, the stylish Bourne Identity being its most recent variation. Suave Robert Donat stars as Hannay, accused of murder and racing to find the real killer with persnickety blonde Madeleine Carroll as his unwilling accomplice. Hitchcock’s storytelling verve is at its purest: the escape by train, the pursuit through the Scottish highlands, the encounter with the man with the missing finger are all prime examples of Hitchcock’s remarkable genius. Its ramshackle special effects are a special delight. Check out the helicopter!
Further Viewing: The Lady Vanishes, 1938.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Top Ten
Magic. Jacques Demy’s unforgettable pop-art musical of young love is one of the supreme cinematic creations. Breathtakingly lovely Catherine Deneuve stars as a young woman in love with a handsome but penniless garage mechanic (Nino Castelnuovo) who is sent off to the Algerian War. The sung dialogue is startling at first and the art direction is goofy to the point of psychedelia, but Demy spins these potential distractions and Michel Legrand’s elegant music into fairy tale gold. If you have the chance to see it on a big screen, jump! Restored to its original glory in 1992.
I DON'T WANT TO GO TO REHAB, PART 2 (3 TO 4.5 STARS)
THREE STARS
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Keir Dullea (of 2001), Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward star in Otto Preminger’s dank melodrama about a missing child and a hysterical mother. Not a particularly good movie, but the savory Olivier hams it up and Coward, along with a host of British actors in cameo roles, make it worth a once-over.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Jeanne Moreau stars as an adulterous murderess in this French film noir, the first directorial effort from Louis Malle. It’s like Godard’s Breathless fleshed out with a good plot and realistic characters and is much superior to that overrated “masterpiece”. Maurice Ronet co-stars as Moreau’s patsy of a boyfriend and Jean Wall is her rich but unwanted husband. The plot mechanics twist around an elaborate murder plot that goes without a hitch – except for that wayward elevator. Miles Davis composed and performed the score. The one drawback to the movie is a long sequence that features Moreau wandering through a glitteringly noctural Paris while she mutters inanities about love. It’s really silly and quite out of place in what is otherwise a trim little thriller.
Peyton Place (1957)
Lana Turner stars in this Technicolor soap opera, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. Risqué for its time, Peyton Place now seems rather talky and stiff. Youthful co-stars Hope Lange and Diane Varsi bring some zip to the proceedings, but it’s still a long slog.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Walter Matthau stars in this gritty thriller about a subway car hijacked by a gang of go-for-broke criminals led by Robert Shaw and including a youthful Hector Elizondo and the perennial Martin Balsam. Matthau leavens the somewhat repulsive goings-on with his patented brand of hang-dog cynical humor. The movie is fascinating for its glimpse of a much different New York City. One of Quentin Tarantino’s many sources for Reservoir Dogs; the Pelham hijackers are code-named Mr. Blue, Mr. Pink, etc.
3.5 STARS
Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials
My Name is Barbra and A Happening in Central Park are the clear winners in this package and are essential viewing for all Barbraphiles. Both specials show Streisand at her singular best. Color Me Barbra is campy fun, but the other two segments are only sporadically entertaining. The whole package charts the evolution of Streisand from an affected but powerful performer to glossy Hollywood royalty.
The Deep End (2001)
Tilda Swinton and Goran Visnjic star in this remake of genius director Max Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment (1949). Swinton is the mother desperate to save her gay teenage son from a possible murder charge and Visnjic is the morally confused blackmailer on her trail. Swinton uses her remarkably ascetic and powerful screen presence as a hermetic weapon; she doesn’t engage with others so much as plow them over or bounce off them. The Deep End was filmed around Lake Tahoe and co-stars Jonathan Tucker as the son and Josh Lucas as the dead guy.
Divorce, Italian Style (1961)
This acerbically plotted, highly amusing comedy stars Marcello Mastroianni as a beleagured husband who wants to divorce his wife and marry his lovely and much younger girlfriend. Mastroianni’s finely tuned performance as a hangdog roué caught in a comic web of lust and murder is memorable.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott star as newlyweds whose honeymoon is interrupted by a body-snatching monster in this 1958 low budgeter. More like film noir than sci fi and part of the paranoiac tradition that includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Blade Runner, Married displays a cynical intelligence about societal mores that make it a distinctive addition to the genre.
Swimming Pool, France (2003)
Fans of Patricia Highsmith’s glowering suspense stories will enjoy this sun-kissed twister. Charlotte Rampling plays a repressed mystery writer who goes on vacation to the South of France and gets a lot more than a nice tan. Voluptuous Ludivine Sagnier co-stars as the fly in the ointment. Rampling’s witty performance is the polar opposite of her melancholic turn in Under the Sand, also directed by François Ozon.
Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (1996)
Everything you always wanted to know about… George Balanchine and dancer Suzanne Farrell’s professional and personal relationship. If you’re interested in ballet history, this is a must-see. The footage of Farrell in performance is revelatory.
The World of Henry Orient (1964)
The eccentric but affecting tale of two footloose adolescent girls in pursuit of rakish, dimwitted classical pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellars). Angela Lansbury and Paula Prentiss co-star and both turn in distinctive performances, Lansbury’s a close cousin to her malevolent turn in The Manchurian Candidate. Henry Orient might be billed as a comedy, but its bitter view of the machinations surrounding romantic love give the film a distinctively melancholic tang.
FOUR STARS
Contempt (Le Mepris) (1963)
Godard’s Cinemascope essay on the perils of filmmaking stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and fabled director Fritz Lang as himself. Contempt is fascinating and infuriating, beautiful and boring, sincere and cynical. Filled with references to classical mythology, his own films and his personal life, it’s catnip for serious-minded filmgoers. For the rest of us, even if much of the film seems tedious, the beauties on display – Bardot, Rome, Capri – are entertaining. The most brazen sequence in the movie is a twenty-minute long argument between Bardot and Piccoli that’s shot within one small room in real time. It’s like being trapped in someone else’s marital disarray and is a most disquieting experience, itchily, uncomfortably entertaining. Contempt justifies Godard’s exalted reputation as a rebel genius much more than any of his other films. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger star as a black Philadelphia cop and a small-town Southern sheriff involved in solving a murder. Heat hasn’t dated as message movies are wont to do; it still carries an emotional punch. Both lead actors are excellent (Steiger won an Oscar) and Lee Grant, as the victim’s wife, makes her few minutes of screen time really count. The cinematography by legendary Haskell Wexler is both beautiful and dramatically pungent. Wunderkind director Hal Ashby was the film editor.
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960)
An enchanting record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, cherishable not just for capturing jazz immortals – Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Big Maybelle, Louis Armstrong, among others – in their prime but also for its luxuriously tactile record of a sensuous East Coast summer. The peak of the movie is a wackily behatted Anita O’Day giving the performance of a lifetime – hers, yours and mine. If you need a summer vacation or have the wintertime blues, watch this movie for an instant cure.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
One of the highly overrated Robert Altman’s few good films. Raymond Chandler’s 1954 novel – his best and a true American classic – is updated to the 1970s. Elliott Gould stars as a hapless post-hippie version of gumshoe Philip Marlowe, Sterling Hayden turns in a monumental performance as a deranged alcoholic, and Frigidaire-cool blonde Nina Van Pallandt is the femme fatale. Also stars Mark Rydell as a vicious thug and Jim Bouton as Marlowe’s erstwhile friend.
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Top-notch British sci-fi/horror from the late 60s, Quatermass is the story of a London subway excavation that unearths remnants of Martian civilization on earth. The results are predictably dire, but the film’s suggestiveness and simple but terrifying effects make it a very special movie. Highly recommended.
4.5 STARS
Caballe: Beyond Music (2003)
A documentary about Montserrat Caballé, the Spanish opera singer and one of the great stars of classical music. Caballé is almost impossibly endearing, with a winsomeness that belies her magnificence. Performance films and interviews with her family and operatic compatriots give a good sense of her prodigious talent and the regard with which she is held. The only drawback to the film – it ends. There’s no such thing as too much Montsi.
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
Another Pressburger/Powell success. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman on her way to her wedding on a remote Hebrides island. Her obstinacy in the face of nature’s unwillingness to accommodate her plans causes havoc for all. A delightful, very relaxed adult comedy.
It's a Gift (1934)
W.C. Fields at his considerable best. The shambolic, almost surreal plot lets Fields and his cohorts (including Fields’ infantile nemesis Baby LeRoy) make unforgettable comic hay. Essential viewing for fans of American comedy.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Hitchcock demonstrates both his mastery of the spy film genre and his genius in transforming its basics into an experience uniquely thrilling and comic. Dame May Whitty is the disappearing lady, Margaret Lockwood is the suspicious fellow passenger, and Michael Redgrave (father of Vanessa and Lynn) the foppish folklorist who helps Lockwood uncover the truth. The character actors who give the film its distinctive tang include Paul Lukas, Googie Withers, and most especially Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as two cricket-obsessed passengers. Most of the action takes place on a train trip across unnamed but hostile European countries and the tone of the film clearly reflects a late 1930s anxiety about war.
Petulia (1968)
The ineffable Julie Christie stars as Petulia, a young woman with a bad husband in gorgeous rich boy Richard Chamberlain and an adulterous yen for George C. Scott’s divorced doctor. Christie is in her prime both as an actress and a great beauty, and Scott is hammily effective as the bewildered object of her affections. The last shot of Christie will haunt you. Shirley Knight and Joseph Cotton are also on handto give notable performances, and Janis Joplin performs in an early party sequence. The movie is worth watching just for its late 60s San Francisco setting, exquisitely photographed by Nicolas Roeg (soon to turn to directing himself). Richard Lester directed.
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Keir Dullea (of 2001), Carol Lynley, Laurence Olivier and Noel Coward star in Otto Preminger’s dank melodrama about a missing child and a hysterical mother. Not a particularly good movie, but the savory Olivier hams it up and Coward, along with a host of British actors in cameo roles, make it worth a once-over.
Elevator to the Gallows (1958)
Jeanne Moreau stars as an adulterous murderess in this French film noir, the first directorial effort from Louis Malle. It’s like Godard’s Breathless fleshed out with a good plot and realistic characters and is much superior to that overrated “masterpiece”. Maurice Ronet co-stars as Moreau’s patsy of a boyfriend and Jean Wall is her rich but unwanted husband. The plot mechanics twist around an elaborate murder plot that goes without a hitch – except for that wayward elevator. Miles Davis composed and performed the score. The one drawback to the movie is a long sequence that features Moreau wandering through a glitteringly noctural Paris while she mutters inanities about love. It’s really silly and quite out of place in what is otherwise a trim little thriller.
Peyton Place (1957)
Lana Turner stars in this Technicolor soap opera, based on the best-selling novel of the same name. Risqué for its time, Peyton Place now seems rather talky and stiff. Youthful co-stars Hope Lange and Diane Varsi bring some zip to the proceedings, but it’s still a long slog.
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (1974)
Walter Matthau stars in this gritty thriller about a subway car hijacked by a gang of go-for-broke criminals led by Robert Shaw and including a youthful Hector Elizondo and the perennial Martin Balsam. Matthau leavens the somewhat repulsive goings-on with his patented brand of hang-dog cynical humor. The movie is fascinating for its glimpse of a much different New York City. One of Quentin Tarantino’s many sources for Reservoir Dogs; the Pelham hijackers are code-named Mr. Blue, Mr. Pink, etc.
3.5 STARS
Barbra Streisand: The Television Specials
My Name is Barbra and A Happening in Central Park are the clear winners in this package and are essential viewing for all Barbraphiles. Both specials show Streisand at her singular best. Color Me Barbra is campy fun, but the other two segments are only sporadically entertaining. The whole package charts the evolution of Streisand from an affected but powerful performer to glossy Hollywood royalty.
The Deep End (2001)
Tilda Swinton and Goran Visnjic star in this remake of genius director Max Ophuls’ The Reckless Moment (1949). Swinton is the mother desperate to save her gay teenage son from a possible murder charge and Visnjic is the morally confused blackmailer on her trail. Swinton uses her remarkably ascetic and powerful screen presence as a hermetic weapon; she doesn’t engage with others so much as plow them over or bounce off them. The Deep End was filmed around Lake Tahoe and co-stars Jonathan Tucker as the son and Josh Lucas as the dead guy.
Divorce, Italian Style (1961)
This acerbically plotted, highly amusing comedy stars Marcello Mastroianni as a beleagured husband who wants to divorce his wife and marry his lovely and much younger girlfriend. Mastroianni’s finely tuned performance as a hangdog roué caught in a comic web of lust and murder is memorable.
I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958)
Tom Tryon and Gloria Talbott star as newlyweds whose honeymoon is interrupted by a body-snatching monster in this 1958 low budgeter. More like film noir than sci fi and part of the paranoiac tradition that includes Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Blade Runner, Married displays a cynical intelligence about societal mores that make it a distinctive addition to the genre.
Swimming Pool, France (2003)
Fans of Patricia Highsmith’s glowering suspense stories will enjoy this sun-kissed twister. Charlotte Rampling plays a repressed mystery writer who goes on vacation to the South of France and gets a lot more than a nice tan. Voluptuous Ludivine Sagnier co-stars as the fly in the ointment. Rampling’s witty performance is the polar opposite of her melancholic turn in Under the Sand, also directed by François Ozon.
Suzanne Farrell: Elusive Muse (1996)
Everything you always wanted to know about… George Balanchine and dancer Suzanne Farrell’s professional and personal relationship. If you’re interested in ballet history, this is a must-see. The footage of Farrell in performance is revelatory.
The World of Henry Orient (1964)
The eccentric but affecting tale of two footloose adolescent girls in pursuit of rakish, dimwitted classical pianist Henry Orient (Peter Sellars). Angela Lansbury and Paula Prentiss co-star and both turn in distinctive performances, Lansbury’s a close cousin to her malevolent turn in The Manchurian Candidate. Henry Orient might be billed as a comedy, but its bitter view of the machinations surrounding romantic love give the film a distinctively melancholic tang.
FOUR STARS
Contempt (Le Mepris) (1963)
Godard’s Cinemascope essay on the perils of filmmaking stars Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli, Jack Palance and fabled director Fritz Lang as himself. Contempt is fascinating and infuriating, beautiful and boring, sincere and cynical. Filled with references to classical mythology, his own films and his personal life, it’s catnip for serious-minded filmgoers. For the rest of us, even if much of the film seems tedious, the beauties on display – Bardot, Rome, Capri – are entertaining. The most brazen sequence in the movie is a twenty-minute long argument between Bardot and Piccoli that’s shot within one small room in real time. It’s like being trapped in someone else’s marital disarray and is a most disquieting experience, itchily, uncomfortably entertaining. Contempt justifies Godard’s exalted reputation as a rebel genius much more than any of his other films. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger star as a black Philadelphia cop and a small-town Southern sheriff involved in solving a murder. Heat hasn’t dated as message movies are wont to do; it still carries an emotional punch. Both lead actors are excellent (Steiger won an Oscar) and Lee Grant, as the victim’s wife, makes her few minutes of screen time really count. The cinematography by legendary Haskell Wexler is both beautiful and dramatically pungent. Wunderkind director Hal Ashby was the film editor.
Jazz on a Summer's Day (1960)
An enchanting record of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, cherishable not just for capturing jazz immortals – Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, Gerry Mulligan, Big Maybelle, Louis Armstrong, among others – in their prime but also for its luxuriously tactile record of a sensuous East Coast summer. The peak of the movie is a wackily behatted Anita O’Day giving the performance of a lifetime – hers, yours and mine. If you need a summer vacation or have the wintertime blues, watch this movie for an instant cure.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
One of the highly overrated Robert Altman’s few good films. Raymond Chandler’s 1954 novel – his best and a true American classic – is updated to the 1970s. Elliott Gould stars as a hapless post-hippie version of gumshoe Philip Marlowe, Sterling Hayden turns in a monumental performance as a deranged alcoholic, and Frigidaire-cool blonde Nina Van Pallandt is the femme fatale. Also stars Mark Rydell as a vicious thug and Jim Bouton as Marlowe’s erstwhile friend.
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Top-notch British sci-fi/horror from the late 60s, Quatermass is the story of a London subway excavation that unearths remnants of Martian civilization on earth. The results are predictably dire, but the film’s suggestiveness and simple but terrifying effects make it a very special movie. Highly recommended.
4.5 STARS
Caballe: Beyond Music (2003)
A documentary about Montserrat Caballé, the Spanish opera singer and one of the great stars of classical music. Caballé is almost impossibly endearing, with a winsomeness that belies her magnificence. Performance films and interviews with her family and operatic compatriots give a good sense of her prodigious talent and the regard with which she is held. The only drawback to the film – it ends. There’s no such thing as too much Montsi.
I Know Where I'm Going! (1945)
Another Pressburger/Powell success. Wendy Hiller stars as a headstrong young woman on her way to her wedding on a remote Hebrides island. Her obstinacy in the face of nature’s unwillingness to accommodate her plans causes havoc for all. A delightful, very relaxed adult comedy.
It's a Gift (1934)
W.C. Fields at his considerable best. The shambolic, almost surreal plot lets Fields and his cohorts (including Fields’ infantile nemesis Baby LeRoy) make unforgettable comic hay. Essential viewing for fans of American comedy.
The Lady Vanishes (1938)
Hitchcock demonstrates both his mastery of the spy film genre and his genius in transforming its basics into an experience uniquely thrilling and comic. Dame May Whitty is the disappearing lady, Margaret Lockwood is the suspicious fellow passenger, and Michael Redgrave (father of Vanessa and Lynn) the foppish folklorist who helps Lockwood uncover the truth. The character actors who give the film its distinctive tang include Paul Lukas, Googie Withers, and most especially Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford as two cricket-obsessed passengers. Most of the action takes place on a train trip across unnamed but hostile European countries and the tone of the film clearly reflects a late 1930s anxiety about war.
Petulia (1968)
The ineffable Julie Christie stars as Petulia, a young woman with a bad husband in gorgeous rich boy Richard Chamberlain and an adulterous yen for George C. Scott’s divorced doctor. Christie is in her prime both as an actress and a great beauty, and Scott is hammily effective as the bewildered object of her affections. The last shot of Christie will haunt you. Shirley Knight and Joseph Cotton are also on handto give notable performances, and Janis Joplin performs in an early party sequence. The movie is worth watching just for its late 60s San Francisco setting, exquisitely photographed by Nicolas Roeg (soon to turn to directing himself). Richard Lester directed.
I DON'T WANT TO GO TO REHAB, PART 1 (ZERO TO 2.5 STARS)
ZERO STARS
Two for the Road (1967)
Bottom Ten
Unendurable, faux-sophisticated tripe about a married couple (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) and the various stages of their marriage, from carefree youth to embittered middle age. Hepburn and Finney are two of the most charismatic of movie stars but their roles as a shrew and a bully waste their talents. Hepburn wears some astonishing outfits, but fashion shows are usually ten minutes long, not 112. The broad caricatures of Americans (William Daniels and Eleanor Bron) are symptomatic of the reflexive English snobbery this movie wallows in. The idiotic script, a cornucopia of trite dramatics and moronic ponderings on the emptiness of success, is by Frederic Raphael and was nominated for an Academy Award. Go figure.
1.5 STARS
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
A Billy Wilder misfire. After Jack Lemmon is hurt at a Cleveland Browns football game, his lawyer brother-in-law Walter Matthau steps in to make them both a fortune. Matthau is a breath of fresh air in what is otherwise a stale, sour comedy.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Irritating and overlong animated film about a bicyclist, his mother and the eponymous triplets. The theme song will crawl into the corner of your brain reserved for irritants like Achy Breaky Heart and The Macarena.
What's New Pussycat? (1965)
Spoilt milk disguised as a frothy romantic comedy. The animated opening credits are the high point of the film. Paula Prentiss, who’s made far too few films, brings a goony comic punch to her scenes, but the rest is almost unendurable. Also stars Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, Romy Schneider and Woody Allen in his first big-screen performance. Allen also wrote the film. He’s improved since then.
TWO STARS
Funny Face (1957)
Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn star in this theoretically lighthearted musical about a photographer (Astaire) who discovers the mousy Hepburn in a bookstore, turns her into a world-famous fashion model and falls in love with her. The big problem is that Astaire, thirty years Hepburn’s senior, is simply too old to play the part of an antic genius. Their December-May romance is both unbelievable and a little disturbing; watching Astaire woo Hepburn with a song and dance act is embarrassing, and his trip to the “bohemian” side of Paris is no help. Fortunately, Kay Thompson, gonzo musical comedy performer (and author of the Eloise books), is on hand to liven things up. Her solo number “Think Pink” and her duet with Astaire are the highlights of the film. She’s a confident pro whooping it up. The film is not without some other pleasures. The satire of the fashion world is fitfully amusing, and the springtime Paris locations are beautifully shot by cinematographer Ray June. Songs by Gershwin include S’Wonderful, He Loves and She Loves and the title tune.
Muriel's Wedding (1994)
Married With Children meets Diane Arbus, Muriel’s Wedding is a queasy mixture of comedy and unpleasant family melodrama. Many viewers describe it as funny, but it’s cheap sadistic voyeurism, like laughing at tone-deaf karaoke or the dimwits of The Jerry Springer Show. Toni Collette is fearless as the matrimonially desperate Muriel and Rachel Griffiths pizzazzes things up.
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Highly praised, heavy-handed melodrama about social class based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Place is mostly remarkable now for its shockingly beautiful co-stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Clift has one of the great film entrances: first seen hitchhiking with his back turned to the camera, he turns to face the audience and his handsomeness is thrilling. Unfortunately that’s the high point of the movie, and there’s two more hours of predestined tragedy to grind through. Co-stars Shelley Winters as Clift’s lower-class girlfriend.
Repulsion (1965)
Roman Polanski flick, admired by many. Catherine Deneuve, young and almost impossibly beautiful, stars as a deranged young woman. That’s the plot – she’s deranged. She’s deranged in the kitchen, she’s deranged in the living room, she’s deranged in the street. The bathroom, too. In spite of Polanski’s considerable technique and inventiveness, all the derangement is really quite dull.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Strangely celebrated late 60s high-toned schlock. Faye Dunaway plays a beautifully dressed insurance investor on the track of gentlemen bandit Steve McQueen. Dunaway is fun to watch in spite of the thin material, but the handsome McQueen brings his minimalist acting style to a new low. He’s got one facial expression and he uses it profligately. Remade with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in 1999.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Oddly tension-free thriller directed by Sidney Pollack. Robert Redford plays a low-level CIA employee on the run from a cabal of rogue CIA agents, Faye Dunaway is his unwilling accomplice, Cliff Robertson is Redford’s boss, and Max Von Sydow plays an amusedly amoral killer. The first twenty minutes, during which all of Redford’s coworkers are murdered, is nerve-crackling but the rest of the movie mosies by. Redford makes much of the movie work through star power and physical beauty, but Dunaway is miscast as a stereotypically helpful handmaiden. She’s just not a passive presence – asking her to be a girlish victim is like hiring Bette Davis to water your houseplants. She has one good, very funny scene in which she helps Redford kidnap Robertson; you can see the relief in her eyes at having something to do other than simper. Robertson sports one of the more astonishing of cinematic hairdos, a combover so elevated it approaches Eraserhead status. The dialogue has one classic howler: Redford: “Well, at least I haven’t raped you!” Dunaway: “The night is young!”
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Steve Coogan is great as Tony Wilson, record producer and TV personality who spearheaded the Manchester music scene of the 1980s. The movie itself doesn’t quite come up to his level – it’s a scattershot affair, excitingly filmed but dramatically inert. The most moving part of the film is the saga of Ian Curtis, the doomed lead singer of Joy Division. Also starring Shirley Henderson.
Two for the Road (1967)
Bottom Ten
Unendurable, faux-sophisticated tripe about a married couple (Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney) and the various stages of their marriage, from carefree youth to embittered middle age. Hepburn and Finney are two of the most charismatic of movie stars but their roles as a shrew and a bully waste their talents. Hepburn wears some astonishing outfits, but fashion shows are usually ten minutes long, not 112. The broad caricatures of Americans (William Daniels and Eleanor Bron) are symptomatic of the reflexive English snobbery this movie wallows in. The idiotic script, a cornucopia of trite dramatics and moronic ponderings on the emptiness of success, is by Frederic Raphael and was nominated for an Academy Award. Go figure.
1.5 STARS
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
A Billy Wilder misfire. After Jack Lemmon is hurt at a Cleveland Browns football game, his lawyer brother-in-law Walter Matthau steps in to make them both a fortune. Matthau is a breath of fresh air in what is otherwise a stale, sour comedy.
The Triplets of Belleville (2003)
Irritating and overlong animated film about a bicyclist, his mother and the eponymous triplets. The theme song will crawl into the corner of your brain reserved for irritants like Achy Breaky Heart and The Macarena.
What's New Pussycat? (1965)
Spoilt milk disguised as a frothy romantic comedy. The animated opening credits are the high point of the film. Paula Prentiss, who’s made far too few films, brings a goony comic punch to her scenes, but the rest is almost unendurable. Also stars Peter Sellers, Peter O’Toole, Romy Schneider and Woody Allen in his first big-screen performance. Allen also wrote the film. He’s improved since then.
TWO STARS
Funny Face (1957)
Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn star in this theoretically lighthearted musical about a photographer (Astaire) who discovers the mousy Hepburn in a bookstore, turns her into a world-famous fashion model and falls in love with her. The big problem is that Astaire, thirty years Hepburn’s senior, is simply too old to play the part of an antic genius. Their December-May romance is both unbelievable and a little disturbing; watching Astaire woo Hepburn with a song and dance act is embarrassing, and his trip to the “bohemian” side of Paris is no help. Fortunately, Kay Thompson, gonzo musical comedy performer (and author of the Eloise books), is on hand to liven things up. Her solo number “Think Pink” and her duet with Astaire are the highlights of the film. She’s a confident pro whooping it up. The film is not without some other pleasures. The satire of the fashion world is fitfully amusing, and the springtime Paris locations are beautifully shot by cinematographer Ray June. Songs by Gershwin include S’Wonderful, He Loves and She Loves and the title tune.
Muriel's Wedding (1994)
Married With Children meets Diane Arbus, Muriel’s Wedding is a queasy mixture of comedy and unpleasant family melodrama. Many viewers describe it as funny, but it’s cheap sadistic voyeurism, like laughing at tone-deaf karaoke or the dimwits of The Jerry Springer Show. Toni Collette is fearless as the matrimonially desperate Muriel and Rachel Griffiths pizzazzes things up.
A Place in the Sun (1951)
Highly praised, heavy-handed melodrama about social class based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Place is mostly remarkable now for its shockingly beautiful co-stars, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. Clift has one of the great film entrances: first seen hitchhiking with his back turned to the camera, he turns to face the audience and his handsomeness is thrilling. Unfortunately that’s the high point of the movie, and there’s two more hours of predestined tragedy to grind through. Co-stars Shelley Winters as Clift’s lower-class girlfriend.
Repulsion (1965)
Roman Polanski flick, admired by many. Catherine Deneuve, young and almost impossibly beautiful, stars as a deranged young woman. That’s the plot – she’s deranged. She’s deranged in the kitchen, she’s deranged in the living room, she’s deranged in the street. The bathroom, too. In spite of Polanski’s considerable technique and inventiveness, all the derangement is really quite dull.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Strangely celebrated late 60s high-toned schlock. Faye Dunaway plays a beautifully dressed insurance investor on the track of gentlemen bandit Steve McQueen. Dunaway is fun to watch in spite of the thin material, but the handsome McQueen brings his minimalist acting style to a new low. He’s got one facial expression and he uses it profligately. Remade with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo in 1999.
Three Days of the Condor (1975)
Oddly tension-free thriller directed by Sidney Pollack. Robert Redford plays a low-level CIA employee on the run from a cabal of rogue CIA agents, Faye Dunaway is his unwilling accomplice, Cliff Robertson is Redford’s boss, and Max Von Sydow plays an amusedly amoral killer. The first twenty minutes, during which all of Redford’s coworkers are murdered, is nerve-crackling but the rest of the movie mosies by. Redford makes much of the movie work through star power and physical beauty, but Dunaway is miscast as a stereotypically helpful handmaiden. She’s just not a passive presence – asking her to be a girlish victim is like hiring Bette Davis to water your houseplants. She has one good, very funny scene in which she helps Redford kidnap Robertson; you can see the relief in her eyes at having something to do other than simper. Robertson sports one of the more astonishing of cinematic hairdos, a combover so elevated it approaches Eraserhead status. The dialogue has one classic howler: Redford: “Well, at least I haven’t raped you!” Dunaway: “The night is young!”
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Steve Coogan is great as Tony Wilson, record producer and TV personality who spearheaded the Manchester music scene of the 1980s. The movie itself doesn’t quite come up to his level – it’s a scattershot affair, excitingly filmed but dramatically inert. The most moving part of the film is the saga of Ian Curtis, the doomed lead singer of Joy Division. Also starring Shirley Henderson.
Monday, March 17, 2008
SAME TIME, LAST YEAR - OR NOT?
Last Year at Marienbad
(L’Année dernière à Marienbad)
(France, 1961)
Directed by Alain Resnais; Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Plot Summary: Enigmatic tale of a love triangle in an unnamed, sumptuous but gloomy resort hotel. The hotel’s guests are sleekly dressed sophisticates who repeat inane dialogue while playing nitwitted board games. The three main characters have no names. The woman (Delphine Seyrig) may or may not have had an affair (last year at Marienbad, or was it Karlstadt?) with the man (Giorgio Albertazzi) and she may or may not be married to the other man (Sacha Pitoeff) who may or may not have killed her. After many eye-popping costume changes for Seyrig and no resolution of the non-plot, night falls over the hotel and its lights are extinguished.
According to a flyer posted in the theater lobby, Francis Ford Coppola has seen Last Year at Marienbad several times and is still not sure what it means, quite a comment from the man who brought us the inexplicable One From the Heart. It’s also a tribute to his fortitude as a moviegoer. At its hypnotic best, Last Year at Marienbad is a piece of art, striking, original and well out of the aesthetic orbit of most movies. It’s also so repetitive, sophomoric, and somnolent that its 94-minute running time is an endurance test to rival anything by Godard or Bresson.
Resnais and Robbe-Grillet use film technique to mesmerize the viewer into a queer semi-conscious state of half-remembered dreads and existential angst. Loopy, repetitive dialogue, a disregard for temporal clarity and fascination with baroque visuals are Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s ingredients, and the recipe works for about forty-five minutes. After that, you might tire of the Last Year's warmed-over ideas about love and death and the nature of society. That the ideas are never very clear might be an indication of their insubstantiality – it’s the emperor’s new clothes, philosophy department, subdivision existentialism. You’ve encountered the ideas if you have seen or read any Beckett or Sartre, but Last Year's are clothed in haute couture instead of Beckett’s antic humor or Sartre’s intellectual rigor. The high-style is no substitute for depth.
Last Year's visuals are astonishing. Seyrig’s costumes are like a Diana Ross concert: she can’t possibly top the last frock, but she does. The most amazing of all is her second-to-last, a white feathered creation that looks like the product of an erotic encounter between costume designer Coco Chanel and an egret. The camerawork, lighting and art direction are also on this stratospheric level. The camera floats sinuously through the hotel for the first ten minutes of the film, only the first of many examples of the cinematographer Sacha Vierny’s art. (Vierny was also the cinematographer for The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, another example of beautifully photographed pretentiousness.) The use of quick cuts to dislocate the viewer are so well done that its eventual overuse is forgivable, and the film lighting, baroque and sinister, is a painterly. But no matter how sumptuous, the visuals can't carry the movie over its trouble spots, most specifically its plot, dialogue and music.
That side of the picture is torture. The music, a swill of glamorous but forgettable orchestral music and organ dirges, could be sold as an over-the-counter sleep medication. (It couldn’t possibly be addictive.) The dialogue – the man endlessly beseeching the woman to remember last year and woman’s relentless rejections – is maddeningly repetitive. His narration is just as irksome. I silently cheered every time the woman suggests that he leave her be and go away – maybe the movie will finally end! But no, he keeps on narrating... it’s a metafictional Agatha Christie, Death by Narration.
Last Year is so unique that I’d suggest you see it at least once — it’s required viewing for the cultural sophisticate and not without its merits. But drink some strong coffee first and bring along a forgiving friend to poke you awake.
Rating: 5 out of 5. Essential viewing, but consider yourself warned.
(L’Année dernière à Marienbad)
(France, 1961)
Directed by Alain Resnais; Written by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Plot Summary: Enigmatic tale of a love triangle in an unnamed, sumptuous but gloomy resort hotel. The hotel’s guests are sleekly dressed sophisticates who repeat inane dialogue while playing nitwitted board games. The three main characters have no names. The woman (Delphine Seyrig) may or may not have had an affair (last year at Marienbad, or was it Karlstadt?) with the man (Giorgio Albertazzi) and she may or may not be married to the other man (Sacha Pitoeff) who may or may not have killed her. After many eye-popping costume changes for Seyrig and no resolution of the non-plot, night falls over the hotel and its lights are extinguished.
According to a flyer posted in the theater lobby, Francis Ford Coppola has seen Last Year at Marienbad several times and is still not sure what it means, quite a comment from the man who brought us the inexplicable One From the Heart. It’s also a tribute to his fortitude as a moviegoer. At its hypnotic best, Last Year at Marienbad is a piece of art, striking, original and well out of the aesthetic orbit of most movies. It’s also so repetitive, sophomoric, and somnolent that its 94-minute running time is an endurance test to rival anything by Godard or Bresson.
Resnais and Robbe-Grillet use film technique to mesmerize the viewer into a queer semi-conscious state of half-remembered dreads and existential angst. Loopy, repetitive dialogue, a disregard for temporal clarity and fascination with baroque visuals are Resnais and Robbe-Grillet’s ingredients, and the recipe works for about forty-five minutes. After that, you might tire of the Last Year's warmed-over ideas about love and death and the nature of society. That the ideas are never very clear might be an indication of their insubstantiality – it’s the emperor’s new clothes, philosophy department, subdivision existentialism. You’ve encountered the ideas if you have seen or read any Beckett or Sartre, but Last Year's are clothed in haute couture instead of Beckett’s antic humor or Sartre’s intellectual rigor. The high-style is no substitute for depth.
Last Year's visuals are astonishing. Seyrig’s costumes are like a Diana Ross concert: she can’t possibly top the last frock, but she does. The most amazing of all is her second-to-last, a white feathered creation that looks like the product of an erotic encounter between costume designer Coco Chanel and an egret. The camerawork, lighting and art direction are also on this stratospheric level. The camera floats sinuously through the hotel for the first ten minutes of the film, only the first of many examples of the cinematographer Sacha Vierny’s art. (Vierny was also the cinematographer for The Cook, The Thief His Wife and Her Lover, another example of beautifully photographed pretentiousness.) The use of quick cuts to dislocate the viewer are so well done that its eventual overuse is forgivable, and the film lighting, baroque and sinister, is a painterly. But no matter how sumptuous, the visuals can't carry the movie over its trouble spots, most specifically its plot, dialogue and music.
That side of the picture is torture. The music, a swill of glamorous but forgettable orchestral music and organ dirges, could be sold as an over-the-counter sleep medication. (It couldn’t possibly be addictive.) The dialogue – the man endlessly beseeching the woman to remember last year and woman’s relentless rejections – is maddeningly repetitive. His narration is just as irksome. I silently cheered every time the woman suggests that he leave her be and go away – maybe the movie will finally end! But no, he keeps on narrating... it’s a metafictional Agatha Christie, Death by Narration.
Last Year is so unique that I’d suggest you see it at least once — it’s required viewing for the cultural sophisticate and not without its merits. But drink some strong coffee first and bring along a forgiving friend to poke you awake.
Rating: 5 out of 5. Essential viewing, but consider yourself warned.
Monday, March 10, 2008
YOU CALL IT PATINA, I CALL IT TARNISH
Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day
Director Bharat Nalluri
Writers David Magee and Simon Beaufoy
Cast Amy Adams (Delysia Lafosse); Shirley Henderson (Edythe Dubarry); Ciarán Hinds (Joe); Frances McDormand (Miss Pettigrew); Lee Pace (Michael); Tom Payne (Phil Goldman); Mark Strong (Nick)
Plot Summary Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged London governess and a complete failure in her profession. Finding herself jobless, homeless and friendless, she inveigles herself as social secretary to starlet Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). She soon discovers that she has become involved in a lovers’ roundelay involving Delysia, her three suitors and Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson), London’s premier dressmaker and supreme gossip.
If you have dangerously high blood pressure, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or are just easily scared, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is the movie for you. Not only will you avoid the risk of precipitating even the most minor medical crisis, you may actually accrue unexpected psychic balm from the soothingly predictable, tried and true, reliable-as-Lassie nature of this film. The reflexive banality of Miss Pettigrew is reassurance that the dusty corner of CinemaLand devoted to tasteful period romances remains untouched by the winds of time or the dogs of war or even the new paradigm shift. Pardon my clichés – and blame Miss Pettigrew.
Researching the idea of cliché led me, via Wikipedia, to “thought-terminating cliché”. What a lovely turn of phrase! Here’s the link, which contains a list of some of the offending phrases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
But back to the task at hand. The charm of Pettigrew is its three lead actresses, who clearly relish the challenge of filling out the time-frayed contours of the golddigger with the heart of gold (Adams), the put-upon mousy governess (McDormand), and the stylish but shallow socialite (the delicious Shirley Henderson). Adams and Henderson are particularly delightful, the first for her expertly charming mixture of Betty Boop and Debbie Reynolds and the second for her highly stylized, almost Erté-esque socialite, all slink and moué and insinuation. Both actresses deserve a better, more challenging movie. So does McDormand, who has some very funny moments but is mostly a sounding board for her co-stars. Mark Strong, Lee Pace and Ciaran Hinds are the manly side of the picture, Hinds being the standout for contriving to make the entirely improbable acceptable in his role as Henderson’s straying fiancé.
When I bought my ticket, I noticed that the senior citizen price was a full four dollars less than my absurd $11.25 stinger. I thought “How lovely to be retired! I can hardly wait.” I do love a discount, but if Miss Pettigrew is what I have to look forward to I plan to be a full-price model for as long as I can.
Rating 2.5 out of 5
Director Bharat Nalluri
Writers David Magee and Simon Beaufoy
Cast Amy Adams (Delysia Lafosse); Shirley Henderson (Edythe Dubarry); Ciarán Hinds (Joe); Frances McDormand (Miss Pettigrew); Lee Pace (Michael); Tom Payne (Phil Goldman); Mark Strong (Nick)
Plot Summary Guinevere Pettigrew is a middle-aged London governess and a complete failure in her profession. Finding herself jobless, homeless and friendless, she inveigles herself as social secretary to starlet Delysia Lafosse (Amy Adams). She soon discovers that she has become involved in a lovers’ roundelay involving Delysia, her three suitors and Edythe Dubarry (Shirley Henderson), London’s premier dressmaker and supreme gossip.
If you have dangerously high blood pressure, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder or are just easily scared, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is the movie for you. Not only will you avoid the risk of precipitating even the most minor medical crisis, you may actually accrue unexpected psychic balm from the soothingly predictable, tried and true, reliable-as-Lassie nature of this film. The reflexive banality of Miss Pettigrew is reassurance that the dusty corner of CinemaLand devoted to tasteful period romances remains untouched by the winds of time or the dogs of war or even the new paradigm shift. Pardon my clichés – and blame Miss Pettigrew.
Researching the idea of cliché led me, via Wikipedia, to “thought-terminating cliché”. What a lovely turn of phrase! Here’s the link, which contains a list of some of the offending phrases:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A9
But back to the task at hand. The charm of Pettigrew is its three lead actresses, who clearly relish the challenge of filling out the time-frayed contours of the golddigger with the heart of gold (Adams), the put-upon mousy governess (McDormand), and the stylish but shallow socialite (the delicious Shirley Henderson). Adams and Henderson are particularly delightful, the first for her expertly charming mixture of Betty Boop and Debbie Reynolds and the second for her highly stylized, almost Erté-esque socialite, all slink and moué and insinuation. Both actresses deserve a better, more challenging movie. So does McDormand, who has some very funny moments but is mostly a sounding board for her co-stars. Mark Strong, Lee Pace and Ciaran Hinds are the manly side of the picture, Hinds being the standout for contriving to make the entirely improbable acceptable in his role as Henderson’s straying fiancé.
When I bought my ticket, I noticed that the senior citizen price was a full four dollars less than my absurd $11.25 stinger. I thought “How lovely to be retired! I can hardly wait.” I do love a discount, but if Miss Pettigrew is what I have to look forward to I plan to be a full-price model for as long as I can.
Rating 2.5 out of 5
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