My June movie-watching (NOT a ten-best list) I
Jul 01 '06
The Bottom Line the best (and hardest to take) was "City of God"
When my file of jottings on films for the month overflows the size of an Epinions container, I usually split it by date. Having been channeled by Ifif1938's French finds writeoff and jps246's gay etc. one, I'm splitting my June postings between those with one or more major gay characters and those without—though this is a division that mostly approximates splitting into older and newer, with many French coming-of-age movies from this millennium in the second list, many Hong Kong movies in the first one.
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"Der Golem" The Golem (1920, directed by Paul Wegener) looks marvelous. The sets by Hans Poelzig remind me of the Barcelona constructions of Antonio Gaudí—more curvaceous than the expressionist sets in movies such as "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"— and the camerawork was done by the legendary Karl Freund (who shot "Metropolis" and the first Hollywood "Dracula" movie and directed the original "The Mummy" and "Mad Love"). The plot is simple, though it simplifications in/for inter-war Germany are not. The golem (played by director Wegener) looks to me like one of the Xian terra cotta warriors with a face somewhat like Mao Zedong.
Mauvaise Graine (Bad Seed, 1934, directed by Billy Wilder, 3.2 stars) is the first movie Wilder directed (between his Berlin script-writing days and Hollywood ones before directing again). It has a Franz Waxman score (Waxman was also in transit through Paris), a remarkably dowdy-looking Danielle Darrieux, an entertainingly Jean-la-Cravate (Jean of the ties), played by Raymond Galle, vintage automobiles, and location shooting of driving around Paris.
Two-Faced Woman (1941, 3 stars) is known—if known at all—as Greta Garbo's last movie. It is a screwball comedy that its director George Cukor did not think was funny. It reteamed Garbo with Melvyn Douglas. In "Ninotchka," Garbo started a dour commissar and was loosed up by Douglas. In "Two-Faced" Garbo alternates between being a ski instructor with no interest in fashion or night life and masquerading as a party-girl twin sister trying to seduce her husband (Douglas) to test his fidelity. The stay-at-home ski aficionado is more convincing, though she kicks up her heels in Manhattan. The complications are pretty silly, but the movie ends with Douglas('s stunt double) on a ski run considerably beyond his skiing ability. It was filmed at Sugar Bowl near Donner Summit. I was particularly impressed that the stuntman's skis stayed on through multiple tumbles. As if an unfunny comedy was not enough of a problem, the movie was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency for an "immoral and un-Christian attitude toward marriage: impudently suggestive scenes, dialogue, and situation; suggestive costumes." The movie was cut without Cukor's involvement.
Anthony Mann's first directorial credit, Two O'Clock Courage (1945) involves An amnesiac (Tom Conway) discovering that he's wanted for murder, which sounds like a film noir, of which Mann made a number of classic ones during the late 1940s. However, it is more in the "Thin Man" mold of wisecrack-filled murder detection comedies with a plucky woman unwilling to follow instructions to stay home and wait. This role is played with relish by Ann Rutherford, who is a taxi-cab driver who nearly runs into the befuddled Conway. Jane Greer was also on hand on her way to being one of the great noir femmes fatales. It kept me smiling through most of its 68 minutes.
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William Wellman's noirish-looking 1948 western Yellow Sky has a dash or two of "The Tempest," but not a Caliban. Anne Baxter can be viewed as an Ariel with a punch and her grandfather, played by a wry James Barton, has some resonances of Prospero, but it is Gregory Peck's film. He plays "Slim" the leader of a restive gang of bank robbers finding refuge, lust and greed in a ghost town after crossing Death Valley). Gregory Peck as a bank robber is as unsettling as John Wayne as one in "Three Godfathers," which also involves the gang nearly perishing of thirst crossing a desert, but was filmed in vivid color. "Slim" has a sense of irony not unlike that of Peck as "The Gunfighter" (but no mustache).
There's also a young and sneering Richard Widmark as a stylish villain (charming, in contrast to some of the psychopaths he played around that time). "Yellow Sky" was well shot by Joseph MacDonald (My Darling Clementine, Panic in the Street, Pickup on South Street, Viva Zapata) and gets noirish for its climax, a nocturnal gunfight in a ghost town rather than a living city. (4 stars)
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André de Toth's (1949) Slattery's Hurricane (from a Herman Wouk novel) was sharply photographed by Charles D. Clarke (whose many credits include the aerial photography in two Korean War Air Force flicks, "The Bridge at Toko-Ri" and The Hunters).
Although mostly shot by day, the adulterous passion Richard Widmark has for the very buxom Linda Darnell is very noirish. Darnell looks like a femme fatale, but is hesitant and has less screen presence than Veronica Lake. Lake is surprisingly effective and affecting as the good girl (!) here. She was de Toth's wife at the time, and one or the other of them decided to dispense with her trademark lank, peek-a-boo hairstyle.
Richard Widmark plays a heel who is a brave, skilled, and insubordinate a pilot (though his head clears when it is away from Darnell) and the supporting cast (especially John Russell as another pilot who has become Darnell's husband since her earlier affair with Widmark's Slattery) is good. The black-and-white hurricane footage with late-40s cars, etc. is interesting, and de Toth brings the aviation and romance action to an obviously censorship-decreed ending in brisk fashion.
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The Tall Target (1951, directed by Anthony Mann, 3.6 stars) has Dick Powell as a New York policemen named John Kennedy (1) trying to stave off a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln before he could be inaugurated. Adolphe Menjou as a brevet colonel greases some skids. Ruby Dee and Will Greer have significant roles, Barbara Billingsley an uncredited red herring one. It's not as tense as "Day of the Jackal," but is set nearly entirely in train stations and onboard a New York-Washington train, prefiguring "Narrow Margin," and bearing some resemblances to "Shanghai Express," not least the leading male character's victory through defeat.
Boccaccio '70 is a 1962 compilation of short (albeit not short enough!) films directed by Mario Monicelli(2.9 stars)., Federico Fellini ( 3.4 stars), Luchino Visconti ( 3.7 stars), and Vittorio de Sica (3.5). The men are no match for the women in any of the four. The women (Marisa Solinas, Anita Ekberg, Romy Schneider, Sophia Loren) keep the men in a slavering dither and call the shots, although sometimes in ways in which the men think they are making the decisions.
Alberto Giacometti, a 1963 documentary made by Jean-Marie Drot shows an extended conversation with the sculptor while he was working and accompanied Giacometti to a major retrospective exhibition at the Künsthaus Zürich set to somewhat obtrusive but not uninteresting music by Swiss composer Frank Matrin. (5 stars) It is available on DVD with the 2000 documentary "What Is a Head?"
Night of the Iguana (1964, directed by John Huston). Although I mostly wanted to look at the Puerto Vallarta locations (having finally been there), I couldn't help but be impressed (again—I've seen the movie m any times) by the performances of ( Gardner, Deborah Kerr, and Richard Burton. The one that received an Oscar nomination (Grayson Hall as Miss Fellowes, a censorious, repressed lesbian) seems falser—or at least more stereotyped—than ever. I've come to regard her as the weakest link and to think that Sue Lyons plays her "baby doll" part well. Gabriel Gugueroa's cinematography is splendid. The movie is at times talky, but does not seem stage-set bound. Most of the characters live to see the dawn (and the exception dies happy at an advanced age) and there is hope for most of them (but not for Judith Fellowes)
Illustrating an autobiographical novella by Thomas Mann rather than presenting it in cinematic terms, Tonio Kröger (1964, directed by Rolf Thiele) looks very good with fluent camerawork (credited to Wolf Wirth) and attractive leads. The title character, like Mann, had a solid burger father and a mother from the South. The young writer attempts to get in touch with his Mediterranean side, but soon flees back to the Baltic. In that I remember first reading Mann's story on a train, it is satisfying to have train and train station scenes. In the title role, Jean-Claude Brialy looks very much like the bearded Max Van Sydow playing the title role in Bergman's "The Magician." Brialy's Kröger is affectless (as the child. Mathieu Carrière —who played The Young Törless for Völker Schlondörff two years later—, as the child Tonio is more an observer than an agent, too, but his yearnings are apparent). There is very heavy-handed voice-over telling what the film-makers fail to show.
Lacombe, Lucien (1974, cowritten with Patrick Modian and directed by Louis Malle, 4.2 stars) starts slowly and proceeds at a languid, dreamy pace (with bursts of violence). It is a disconcertingly lyrical look at an 17-year-old Frenchman in rural southwestern France (near the Pyrennes and the Spanish border) who joins the Gestapo in 1944 (that is, after Allied forces have landed in Normandy) and develops a very complex relationships with three Jews (a young woman, her father, and his mother) who are in hiding.
Down by Law (1986 Jim Jarmusch, 3.9 stars) has striking (though immobile) black-and-white cinematography and provided an exuberant introduction for American art-house audiences of Roberto Beningi. He and his attempts to manage the two blockheads (Tom Waits, John Lurie) with whom he escapes with from a Louisiana prison into the bayous are very funny, but the movie is too long. It seems to me that Jarmusch has good ideas, but not ones that are good enough to sustain interest for as long as he spends showing them work out (for instance, I think "Dead Man" would have been better at about a quarter of its length, "Stranger than Paradise" at half its, etc.)
Wong gok ka moon (As Tears Go By, 1988, directed by Wong Kar-Wai from a script heavily influenced by Martin Scorcese's "Mean Streets," 3.8 stars) Wong's first movie was more an action(/gangster) movie than his later ones (though most of them have bursts of violence interrupted the languid failed romances). In it, Ngor (Maggie Cheung) comes (from Lantau Island to Kowloon) to get medical treatment and stays with her cousin, up-and coming mobster Wah (Andy Lau). They have nothing (except blood) in common and can hardly communicate, though they become more comfortable with each other. Wah's other, longer-durations significant relationship places him in great danger, recurrently. Fly (Jacky Cheung) has an even shorter fuse than Wah and Wah frequently has to come to his aid/defense. Just when it seems that romance will bloom (Wah visits Ngor on Lantau, and "Take My Breath Away" throbs from the soundtrack) Fly gets himself in deeper-than-usual trouble. Wah rescues him (again), but this infuriates the (scenery-munching) gang leader Tony (Alex Man Chi-leung). Lau, Cheung, and Cheung are outstanding. The stories are not at all original, but at least it is clear what the stories are!
Days of Being Wild (1991, 3.2 stars), the second movie directed by Wong Kar-War has Andy Lau as a good cop and Leslie Cheung as a narcissistic playboy trying to figure out who he is. Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau play young women cast off by Cheung with all the oversaturated colors and minimal plotting of Wong movies filmed by Christopher Doyle.
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Baz Luhrmann's (1996) modern-dress Romeo+Juliet updated swords to guns, added music from Prince, Radiohead, Richard Wagner, et al., and pruned dialogue. The lines that remain are Shakespeare's. The visual flamboyance is undercut by Claire Danes (who was 17 but looked too old and was way-too-lacking-in-ardor) as Juliet and a forced performance by Leonardo diCaprio as Romeo (who looked boyish enough). Juliet has most of the good lines, but none of Danes's delivery of them had much impact.
While the gunplay is a reasonable surrogate for the swordplay of the original, the zombification and poison (which is hard enough to credit in medieval Verona) does not time-travel well. For me, what happens after Tybalt is killed is mechanical nonsense in the original. Even with a helicopter and police-car chase and a thousand-candle funeral-byre for Juliet, the movie seems dull after Tybalt falls dead into a fountain. John Leguizamo's seething Tybalt is quite entertaining, and Harold Perrineau's Mercutio (always my favorite character in the play) is somewhere beyond flamboyant, yet conveys hurt and pain far more convincingly than Danes and DiCaprio convey passion.
The director's gallery DVD extras are 5-star-plus! For the movie? 3.6.
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Pen Densham's Moll Flanders (1996, 2 stars) largely wastes some extraordinary actors (Robin Wright, Morgan Freeman, Brenda Fricker). Only Stockard Channing makes a strong impression (as a vicious bordello-keeper). The movie has nothing of what I remember as the spirit or tone of Daniel Defoe's rollicking 1722 novel, and little of the plot or characterization. Instead, rather pedestrian Masterpiece Theater suffering and romance supplants Defoe (and this is not the Masterpiece-Theater miniseries based on the book).
The look and plot seems more 19th-century than 18th. The dialogue would ring false in any century; the ending and the beloved, separated daughter are just too gaggingly cute. I guess that warning was given the attentive in the opening credit "Based on a character created by Daniel Defoe" instead of "Based on the novel" (which had a whole plot summary in its title: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Moll Flanders, &c. Who Was Born in Newgate, and During a Life of Continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, Besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Wh_re, Five Times a Wife Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at Last Grew Rich, Liv'd Honest, and Died a Penitent. I loved the book when I was 15, so my memory of it is hazy. There is also a PBS miniseries adaptations (and the mid-1960s Kim Novak version; neither of which I've seen).
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Watching the much overrated François Ozon's "Regarde la mer" (See the Sea, 1997, 1.5 stars) only subtracts 50 minutes from one's life, although it seems much longer. Indeed, on the first try, I fell asleep just after the second adult character appeared.
The musical score kicks in "Menace!" even earlier, but the only suspense is about whether it will be mother (Sasha Hails), baby, or both who will be the victim of the sullen young woman (Marina deVan) who shows up asking to pitch her tent and who intrigues Sasha, a mother implausibly willing to leave her prized infant with someone about whom she knows nothing, and who, after going through the visitor's bag and seeing a truly ominous notebook, invites her to stay inside. Sasha also wanders off for some casual (heterosexual) sex, making her a slut who should die in some cosmologies. DeVan strips on entering Sasha's bedroom. marking her as a lesbian slasher; I prefer Sasha's gratuitous nudity to DeVan's coded stripping.
The photography of sand and sea at Ile d'Yeu by Yorick Le Saux is the only part better than watching lead paint dry on an asbestos ceiling.
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Days of Being Wild (1991) has all the hallmarks of "a Wong Kar-Wai film" that enchants some and annoys more. (I'm more in the latter camp than the former, but seemingly unable to leave any of his films unwatched): a fairly simple pair of stories that are dressed up by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle in saturated colors and have some point (or more) of convergence, with very arty camera angles and jagged editing (jump cuts of what was shot with a hand-held camera), male Hong Kong superstars moping around in their underwear for extended periods of time, attractive female Hong Kong superstars frustrated by a playboy (an uncharacteristically nasty Leslie Cheung in this instance) and sympathized with by an unprepossessing, yearning policeman (an unusually nice Andy Lau). Plus explosions of violence, lots or rains a lot, and the humidity that never appears to drop below 99%. Most importantly, no one is happy. Doom and ennui alternate or overlap. Maggie Cheung and Carina Lau were outstanding as the playboy's discarded toys. All very glum and artsy (and existential?). Amazingly, the (generally teeming!) streets of both Manila and Hong Kong are empty except for the characters. (3 stars)
Bor lei jun (Gorgeous, 1999, directed by Vincent Kok, 3.3 stars) with Jackie Chan playing a hollow Hong Kong magnate who, with the aid of a very queer Tony Leung, a dolphin, and a romantic Taiwanese girl (Shu Qi) is redeemed. There are two primarily comic fight scenes and two more serious duels (that are not without laughs). Chan (returning to Hong Kong after his commercial success in "Rush Hour") looked too old for the part.
My reactions to "Hei kek ji wong" (King of Comedy, 1999, written and directed by and starring Stephen [Sing-Chi] Chow, 3 stars) were similar to my reactions to After the Fox: "This is not very funny" most of the way, and the surprise of feeling the characters' pain late in the movie. The spoofs of Hong Kong action movies (particularly John Woo bang-bang-bang-without-reloading massacres, especially "Face-Off" and the Woo-influenced Tarratino "Reservoir Dogs") are amusing, but most of the pratfalls of the would be movie-extra Wan Tin Sau (played by Chow) who wants to get a lunch box for working in a movie are not that funny, and a great deal of time is spent on mostly unfunny training of others by the "professional actor" who is repeatedly fired as an extra (and denied a lunch box). (He mounts a production of "Fist of Fury" with lots of squirting hot sauce). "Shaolin Soccer," Chow's next movie, is much funnier (and as touching). The 1992 "King of Beggars" is funnier (and at least as touching). From the few I've seen ("Kung Fu Hustle" is the only other one directed by him that I've seen), Chow's characters are always tenacious (beyond the edge of madness), charming, and unglamorized. (BTW, Chow had a cameo in "Gorgeous," Chan one in "King.")
What Is a Head? (2000, directed by Michel Van Zele (available on DVD with the 1963 Giacometti interview, 4.3 stars) has some color footage of Giacometti wearing glasses while working and analytic reminisces of many who knew him, the most famous of whom is the painter Balthus. It is also more biographical than the earlier documentart—though not at all linear. It examines the genesis of several specific works rather than his general philosophy of art. It uses music by French modernist composer Henri Dutileux. (plus some faux-ancient choral work).
"Cidade de Deus" (City of God, 2002, directed by Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles, 4.7 stars) is as violent as a John Woo movie, but with frighteningly young armed and dangerous gangsters in the title slum on a hill above Rio de Janeiro (the only way in which it is closer to heaven; Augustine's civitas dei it decidedly is not!). Its narrator want to lose his virginity, but the poster/DVD box cover suggests there is more romance than there is. The violence is less operatic (grittier, more realistic) than in John Woo movies, and most of the characters are scary. They are doomed, but devoid of the courtliness and style of gangsters in many a Hong Kong and Hollywood movie. (Benny, played by Phelipe Haagensen with dyed hair seems a cool dude and is positively genial in contrast to his lifelong friend, the raving homicidal maniac Li'l Dice/Lil Zé (Douglas Silva then Leandro Firmino da Hora)). What is stylish about the movie is the daringly digressive (serpentine?) narrative structure. Budding photographer Rocket (Luis Otávio then Alexandre Rodrigues) tells it, with frequent backtracking, but without losing the thread or confusing the viewer. César Charlone's hand-held camera work was brilliantly edited by Daniel Rezende.
"Bob, la Flambeur" is my least favorite Jean-Pierre Melville movies. The remake adapted and directed by Neil Jordan and called The Good Thief (2002, 2.5 stars) has Nick Nolte in the title role, a man who used to be good at heists, who remains popular despite his compulsive gambling and heroin-shooting—which I find highly implausible. There are many stock figures and a complicated heist plan that is even more implausible. The art direction is outstanding and the songs used also stand out (the movie sometimes seem to pause for them, in contrast to the way well-known songs fit into "The Crying Game."
I have to say that "Der Untergang" (Downfall, 2004, directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel [Das Experiment]) is well-made, though I question why a film portraying the last days in Hitler's bunker was made (and commanded the largest budget of any German film ever made). The caged Hitler has some of the pathos of Lear as he alternates between fantasies of rolling back the Red Army and fury that the German people have betrayed him and that— in April of 1945— the rest of the duration of the "thousand-year Reich" can be measured in hours. Bruno Ganz is eerily convincing as Hitler, a thoughtful boss of his secretaries and cook, doting on his dog and Eva Braun. Do I care? No. I'll grant Magda Goebbels (played by Corinna Harfouc) the courage of her convictions as she becomes a higher-tech Medea, and that there is a certain pathos to the fall of the mighty, even a hideously murderous despot who wanted to pull their whole people into the grave with him. With Hitler ranting against compassion, why should we fell any for him? or care to sort out is he was betrayed in his understanding of betrayal by his generals?. IMO, what is interesting is how they came to power, and their certitude about the rightness of what they were doing, how they were enrolled in a crusade against a demonized minority, not what they did when all was lost. And the perspective being that of the 22-year-old secretary Traudl Junge ( Alexandra Maria Lara) is not consistent (though the film begins and ends with the real-life model nearly six decades later, from "Blind Spot").
The 1992 six half-hour programs "Billy Wilder, wie haben Sie's gemacht?" showed Billy Wilder being interviewed by German critic Hellmut Karasek and director Völker Schlöndorff . An hour and a quarter of this, introduced in English by Schlöndorff (who is very fluent in English) was shown on Wilder's 100th birthday on TCM, titled Billy Wilder Speaks, with only Schlöndorff posing questions. For German tv, they spoke mostly in German, though Wilder and Schlöndorff switch between German and English (and the film clips are all in English). There was little that was new to me, but it was pleasant to have Wilder back, chatting about directing Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Raymond Chandler, Marlene Dietrich Audrey Hepburn, William Holden, Jack Lemmon, Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Swanson et al. If I heard correctly, the conversations took place in 1988. Wilder wanted to make more movies, but "Buddy, Buddy" (1981) was the last one he was able to get financed. (Schlöndorff asked Wilder if he would make a movie for which he was not paid, and Wilder said no way. ("Are you crazy?" I think were his actual words. Wilder was a skilled raconteur and insightful about the business of making movies and pulling out good-to-great performances.
©2006, Stephen O. Murray
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