The Young Person's Guide to the Cinema

Who: David L. Pelfrey, writer and editor Regarding any particular movie covered here, I’m not necessarily saying it’s good. I’m saying you need to see it. Also, movies are almost always superior to real life. That’s why they cost so much to make. Note: re-blog and share at will, but for any other uses, bear in mind that many of these reviews are previously published works, © 1992-2013 Black & White

[5starcinema]

Half a century ago this week,  Martin Scorsese won the Cannes Film Festival's top award, the Palme d'Or, for Taxi Driver.

Movie Haiku of the Week:  Taxi Driver

Is it Iris or Betsy I see when I write: They. Cannot. Touch. Her.

[5starcinema]

Why We Watch: Roma (1972), directed by Federico Fellini

In a bravura sequence that surely must have inspired and influenced the river journey in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Fellini mounts a production within a production on the Raccordo Anulare motorway that circles Rome.

On paper, the idea reads like nothing more than ten minutes of traffic footage.

In Fellini’s always grand and ever-warped vision, however, it evolves as a noisy, marvelously orchestrated collage that interprets rush hour along the ring highway as a lost circus caravan.

The director’s trademarks — pans of bizarre tableau, incidental characters depicted as gargoyles, carnival atmosphere, a subtle but pervasive tone of malevolence — enjoy a gorgeous presentation to render mere traffic as a kind of dark, ominous road trip.

If there’s a better example of flamboyant style overcoming mundane substance, I’m keen to see it.

[5starcinema]

Yes, it’s a superb and concise example of pure cinematic craftsmanship (no surprise from Anderson), with its visual/narrative economy, establishment of unmistakable rhythm and tone, and note-perfect, obsessive attention to art direction and set design. But I think I admire most of all the theme of this tiny yarn, which anyone who’s ever had to make do, or do a lot with a little, during a holiday setback will instantly grasp. That Brodie goes about rescuing Christmas with a resigned but dutiful demeanor is the star on top of Anderson’s little tree. It’s always been the case with the best pictures: showing always beats telling, every time.

[5starcinema]

How wild, on a scale of 1-10, was 1975 in cinema?

[5starcinema]

Why We Watch:  The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, directed by Orson Welles)

That the studio took control of the production, edited out a large portion, and then reshot the ending is a well-documented horror story that Orson Welles told for years, but frankly, you have to do more than that to ruin a good Welles picture. There is simply too much that is grand and masterful in its presentation for anyone to muster much concern about how the story ends. Pauline Kael noted “Even in its truncated form it is amazing and memorable,” and other critics have declared it Welles’ best work. 

Indeed, this is one of the few efforts at cinematic story-telling that, alone, may justify the invention of the motion-picture camera. Absolutely stunning cinematography by Stanley Cortez and a knockdown-drag out performance by Agnes Moorehead certainly elevate this melodrama, as do effortless, indelible turns by many of Welles’ Mercury Theatre regulars.

Even the unusual closing credits sequence is joy to behold. There are no titles, just shots of production elements and the cast accompanied by the director’s voice-over, after which a boom mic swings away and the RKO logo appears. It’s a remarkable cinematic—and Wellesian—flourish if ever there was one.

[5starcinema]

Re: where we left off in our discussion of key characters in The Godfather II.

I actively dislike Hyman Roth. And there's so much to dislike.

Sharing that damn birthday cake like he fucking invented frosting.

Perpetually shirtless. Always sad-sacking over some medical condition. That weird glottal/upper respiratory tic that flares up when he's talking, and Jesus when is he not talking. Going on for days with that whole phony indignation over the Las Vegas hit ("I wasn't angry" he says).

Not angry? He's the walking manifestation of deep resentment, holding grudges and nursing past slights and injuries the way most of us remember our names.

I swear I would take a beating from Willie Cicci if Michael had just stopped Roth mid-speech and said "Holy shit, you were fucking Moe Green?"

[5starcinema]

Happy Birthday Jean Cocteau.

Anyone who has experienced the poetic wonder of Cocteau's motion pictures understands why today should be noted.

His insanely complex preoccupations and aesthetic contradictions were a treasure chest from which he selected assorted gems—or sometimes just the odd bauble. His name, his works, and his very visage (he was obsessed with being photographed) are inextricably linked to almost every art movement of the 20th century, and the self-promoting, ever-evolving artist was never shy about exploiting his experience and ubiquity.

As a writer of films and plays, librettist, painter, sculptor, set and costume designer, film director, actor, essayist, social butterfly, and dandy, Cocteau stubbornly acknowledged only one title throughout his career: poet.

More significantly, he professed only one cinematic goal: that we might, in his words, "all dream the same dream together." It’s all up there on the screen.

[5starcinema]

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965, directed by Martin Ritt)

Everyone in this bleak, intriguing spy thriller seems to be pondering the key Cold War espionage question: what if both sides are up to no good?

Alec Leamus (Richard Burton), a depressed, moody, booze-soaked British agent working in Berlin for MI6, has actually moved past those doubts; he’s wondering if taking another breath is such a good idea. His perpetual gloom — which can escalate to brief moments of simmering rage — conveys a grand dissatisfaction, and consequently he has the look and feel of a prime candidate for defection. His East Germans counterparts thus conclude he’s a double agent prospect, but then, that’s what the British want them to think, or at least that’s what we are supposed to think they think.

This is Richard Burton’s picture, but Oskar Werner steals a few scenes as an East German intelligence officer way too decent for the line of work he’s in. Claire Bloom is here to remind us what happens to decent people in the spy business. Or what happens to anyone at the center of the world that novelist John le Carré concocted, where glum but calculating (and now legendary) figures such as George Smiley and Control move humans back and forth as though each agent and operative were mere chess pieces. Which is what they are, end of day.

Therefore the bewildering narrative moves away from the daring of Ian Fleming’s James Bond toward a perverse Kafka-esque doom, and concerned parties cross the Berlin Wall’s Checkpoint Charlie like mythic figures passing through the gates of Hades.

[5starcinema]

I can’t say enough about Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars without spoiling a lot of surprises, and this one is full of those (in the same way that certain climbing roses have extra thorns you can’t see until it’s too late).

I will urge anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear to revisit Robert Aldrich’s The Big Knife (essential) and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane (not so much) beforehand. It wouldn’t hurt to give Sunset Blvd. another glance, either.

Meanwhile, it gives nothing away to mention that Mia Wasakowska owns this picture. She’s calmly invading Hollywood as Uma Thurman, circa Pulp Fiction, yet reworked as Joan of Arc having actually survived being burned at the stake because enough Seroquel and Klonopin will get you through anything.

Julianne Moore is catching no one off guard by showing us the hellish ways of the ultra-privileged, but making nice now and then by channeling Drew Barrymore is a new wrinkle, give her that.

But mostly I admire John Cusack for turning into Gene Hackman: phrasing, inflection, facial expressions. He’s just a trimmer version, always in black and always on full alert as a monstrous massage therapist / self-help guru who seems to know a LOT about the demons we all need to purge from our psyche. It’s almost like he’s met them somewhere for coffee.

Cusack moves from patient to family to television and back again like a cat burglar, looking as though he just leaped off the cover of The Strangler’s album Black and White. Then there’s that poem that lies at the core of the story. I wrongly guessed it was Andre Breton, but no, it’s even more obscure (although related). Cronenberg offers a gothic Hollywood black comedy structured around a poem, Paul Éluard’s majestic “Liberty." If that doesn’t draw you deeper into wondering what's at play here, what will?

[5starcinema]

Hud (1963) Directed by Martin Ritt

Yes, we all enjoy Paul Newman in The Sting, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and The Long Hot Summer. For a few fans, Slapshot is a number one cult item. Characters Butch Cassidy and Cool Hand Luke are icons now. Yet in order to witness Newman embody a role—to lose himself in a character in the manner of Brando or Olivier—Hud is essential viewing.

Newman plays an ornery cuss named Hud Bannon, the ill-tempered, unredeemable son of rancher Homer Bannon (Melvin Douglas, dominating the screen). He’s a smartass in a Stetson and boots; he likes to drink hard and break hearts, and he can handle himself in a fight. He tears across the desert highway in a giant Cadillac convertible like he owns the state, and one might get the impression he was having a good time were it not for that Texas-size chip on his shoulder.

No one has a clue as to what’s really bothering Hud. His younger nephew (Brandon de Wilde in the wide-eyed-admirer role that he patented in the classic western Shane) is baffled, as are most of the folks foolish enough to get in Hud’s way. The family housekeeper (a mighty sexy Patricia Neal as a plain country girl whose plainness warrants a closer examination) is less baffled. What’s obvious to her is that this fine old family line has finally produced a bonafide S.O.B — an heir abhorrent, as it were — who rejects and despises everything his father represents.

This is Greek tragedy stuff, made even larger than life by a bristling script that plays as well on its 60th birthday (this coming November) as when it first hit screens. It looks as good, too, compliments of cinematographer James Wong Howe’s breathtaking skill with a Panavision camera and black-and-white film stock.

[5starcinema]

Charade

(1963) Directed by Stanley Donen

Shot in Paris with a wild color scheme that would embarrass Vincente Minnelli, it's the result of writer Peter Stone and director Stanley Donen offering a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Hitchcock’s North By Northwest. It stars Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant. Therefore it’s no surprise that Charade is the definitive meet-cute romantic thriller. Or that, at 60 years of age, it has lost none of its charm.

Audrey Hepburn has recently lost her husband (and all of the belongings at their Paris apartment) to some mysterious forces with whom her late husband may or may not have been associated. Someone is looking for money, of course, and Hepburn can't trust anyone but Grant, whose name keeps changing and even he can't be trusted after all.

The idea, nonetheless, is to avoid those henchmen (George Kennedy and James Coburn chewing scenery) who show up at the oddest times to terrorize the fetching Ms. Hepburn.

There again, the bad guys are burdened with an impossible mission; they're up against Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. These two, scampering around Paris in trim-fit suits and a suitcase full of Givenchy, aren't really a couple so much as the combined elemental forces of masculine panache and feminine poise. Their witty repartee, in the most dangerous of circumstances, takes the script's droll sophistication into the stratosphere, where the oxygen is rare. In short, the whole enterprise is lighter than air.

Marvelous cinematography and a superb Henry Mancini score render a classic example of popcorn-movie sophistication. A bonus—and it’s no small thing—is Maurice Bender’s brilliant opening title sequence. A masterpiece of abstract design and invention, it served as a kind of resumé for Bender, whose next job would be creating the legendary gun-barrel sequence for the James Bond series. 

poster image at top by Maura Kearns

[5starcinema]

The Passion of Joan of Arc

(1928, Denmark-France, silent, directed by Carl Dreyer)

Carl Dreyer's legendary picture about the martyr Joan of Arc has been cloaked in mystery from the day its production began. French nationalists were concerned that such a controversial project was being carried out on French soil by avant garde (read: non-Catholic) artists. Predictably, censors severely edited the film for its French premiere. Meanwhile, Dreyer's original version was destroyed in a fire. After the director composed an identical second print from remaining elements, a second fire destroyed that print. As the notes in the Criterion DVD version of the film point out, Dreyer's film endured the same fate as Joan herself: judges, scissors, and fire.

Over decades, badly altered and "musically enhanced" versions could be seen in theaters, and Dreyer is said to have been devastated by the sorry state of affairs. He died believing that his greatest work had been lost forever. However, in 1981, someone discovered in an office closet several canisters of film, one of which contained an original print . The office was located in a mental institution in Oslo, Norway.

For almost half a century, the only audiences enjoying an authentic version of this marvelous film were comprised of the mentally ill and their caretakers. Yet there's an uncanny consistency in that fact. Renee Falconetti, the actress who portrays Joan, is said to have never worked in motion pictures again because she was so emotionally spent by the experience (she did suffer some emotional breakdowns during and after production).

Another key player, Antonin Artaud, the Dada-Surrealist wild child, opium fiend, and Theatre of the Absurd founder, was eventually institutionalized (after a short and notorious career) because he was tormented by "voices." All of the bizarre circumstances of the film's history notwithstanding, Dreyer's work remains a landmark example of cinema as art.

Regarding its impact—primarily through a highly stylized conveyance of a real event—Jean Cocteau commented, "It seems like an historical document from an era in which the cinema didn't exist."

Dreyer's achievement is remarkable considering that he abandoned every common cinematic technique that might convey anything approaching reality. Art director Hermann Warm (The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari) found inspiration in the primitive art of illuminated manuscripts, in which perspective is entirely ignored. The result is an Expressionist take on medieval art (a successful convergence of Surrealism and medieval minimalism, one could argue) manifested in one of the most peculiar sets in film history. In this realm, physical structures, light, and angles do not observe geometry, and it is not possible to perceive their scale in relation to the actors.

The "geometry" and rhythm commonly associated with motion pictures are also absent from Dreyer's work. Spatial relationships between actors are seldom consistent, if they can be determined at all. There are no establishing shots as such, and cuts from one player to another do not always match dialogue or action. Most of the shots are close-ups of faces—but what amazing faces they are. Gifted veterans from the French stage are captured in carefully sustained, intricately detailed shots, and the result is unforgettable. Except for a few brief glimpses, almost none of the set is visible.

Dreyer's production notes indicate that he merely wished to employ a set that could immerse his actors in a milieu that might emotionally transport them to the historical setting. That speaks to Dreyer's confidence considering that he was working with gifted set designers at the peak of their talents. Notes also suggest that the disorienting visual style works at "unmooring from the present" the imaginations of viewers.

This method provides a stunning emotional immediacy appropriate to a historical subject. The resulting series of images is also beautiful (that's hardly surprising with cinematographer Rudolph Maté at the helm), and at some point it is uncertain if the film seems like a work of art because we are so disoriented, or if encountering such a deeply satisfying image disorients us. Add to this Renee Falconetti's performance, which utterly defies comparison, and you have a rare motion picture experience.

[5starcinema]

Westworld (1973, Directed by Michael Crichton)

Half a century ago; hard to believe.

The current fascination with dystopian narratives and themes in motion pictures recalls a lot of Hollywood's output of the early 1970s (Silent Running, Logan's Run, The Omega Man, Soylent Green, et al). This picture was MGM’s top box-office draw in 1973. 

Richard Benjamin and James Brolin share the screen portraying good-natured guys visiting a Wild West theme park in which the western characters are robots programmed to entertain guests. Benjamin finds the whole thing mildly amusing, but the strutting James Brolin is clearly thrilled to be back in the saddle again, and not just with the fetching saloon girls. He takes perverse pleasure in out-drawing sundry gunslingers in town, but he hasn’t met the black-hatted villain (Yul Brynner), who’s about to get all Hal-9000 on everybody’s ass.

Playing the android villain, Brynner just plain steals this picture. That may be due to his bald, menacing presence and piercing blue eyes, or simply because he’s engaged in a furious, riveting parody of his The Magnificent Seven persona. In any case, one wonders if director Crichton had a terrible experience at a theme park when he was young. This was as light and tongue-in-cheek as he would ever get.

[5starcinema]

I'll be DJing at the old house just behind the motel, tonight and next Saturday. Gonna drop mad science (hey, we all go a little mad sometimes). Anyway, plenty of rare vinyl, even though the sleeves have that damp basement smell now. Kind of a creepy smell.

[5starcinema]

Uh oh.

[5starcinema]

Uh oh.

[5starcinema]

The Black Cat (1934) Directed by Edgar Ulmer

Best known for the low-budget, bizarre film noir Detour, Ulmer is a cult icon who managed to convey a consistently grim, peculiar cinematic vision while working on poverty-row pictures for most of his career. Schooled in German theatrical and cinematic directing techniques (he worked alongside G.W. Pabst, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, and Max Reinhardt) and possessed of an innate fondness for Bauhaus, futurism, and utopian themes, Ulmer may have been the most gifted man in early Hollywood who never landed a major project. The Black Cat offers a few hints at what might have been, even if this low-budget thriller is rather wooden in spots. It’s a truly odd story of a cult leader (Boris Karloff), based loosely and exploitatively on the life of satanist Aleister Crowley and loaded with grim matters such as necrophilia, black masses, and sadism. Karloff’s mansion, built over the ruins of a World War I fort where thousands were buried, is a glistening, Bauhaus riot of sleek corridors, metal and glass structures, and odd angles. This setting, unlike the standard gothic domains associated with sorcery and necromancy, lends a certain hypnotic glow to the occult affairs that go on there.

More bizarre are some restrained performances by Bela Lugosi and Karloff, who seem to move in slow motion and speak as though in a trance. For almost every exchange, their conversation reveals a weird fascination with death and suffering, and both characters look more than qualified to participate. This picture simply has no analog in American cinema.