Dekalog (1989), directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. This is a ten-part television mini-series based loosely on the Ten Commandments. I will comment on it in two parts. Here is Part One. Dekalog: One deals with a father and young son who are both computer geeks. The father, a university professor of computer science, is at best an agnostic. His son, Pawel (Wojciech Klata), is a curious boy who asks his father questions about life and death, questions his learned father finds difficult to answer. But answer he does. The two of them make calculations regarding the safety of the ice on a nearby small lake, and Pawel takes his new skates for a try-out.  Meanwhile Pawel’s aunt is concerned for the boy’s spiritual training. The film presents us with believable people, and plausible situations. It also presents us with serious questions regarding faith, science, and human fallibility. Dekalog: Two turns to questions of love. Here we have a woman, Dorota Geller (Krystyna Janda) with a problem. Her husband is gravely ill with cancer and she carries the chid of another man. Should she have an abortion or not? She seeks the help of the doctor (Aleksander Bardini) who is treating her husband and who happens to live in the same apartment complex as she does. This doctor proves not to have the greatest bedside manner. Anyway, the film keeps us focused on the inner turmoil experienced by both Dorota and the doctor. Both have suffered and are suffering. Both face the dilemma of going on despite life’s difficult turns. The resolution here just may offer a bit of hope in a barren and chilly world – Coleridge’s “cold world.” Dekalog: Three introduces us to Janusz (Daniel Olbsychski) a taxi driver who comes home on Christmas Eve dressed as Santa Claus. He and his family are having a fine night before Christmas when the phone rings. Ewa (Maria Pakulnis), Janusz’s former lover has called to ask for his help in finding her husband who has apparently gone missing. Thus begins a night of searching and discovery. What we discover is that Ewa’s husband is not missing and that she has hopes of reigniting an old flame. The night’s events have something of the sensibility of Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) without the over-the-top surreal feeling or the comedy. Atmosphere is everything in this play with adultery and prevarication. Brightly lit Christmas trees dot the city streets and squares. The highlight is the station person who rolls up on a skateboard. She is amusing. All the actors are subtle. And morning brings resolution. Dekalog: Four focuses on honouring your mother and father, although the honouring here is closer to Sophocles than to the Ten Commandments. A young woman has lived for twenty years with her father, her mother having died just five days after giving birth. Father and daughter are close. He leaves on a business trip and while he is away, the daughter, Anka (Adrianna Biedrzynska), discovers a letter left for her by her mother. Does she read this or not? She tells her father when he returns that she has learned that he is not her father. She also confesses to having affection for him that is deeper than that of a daughter. Here the Oedipal theme finds a twist. The experience of this Dekalog is intense, very intense. And uncomfortable. Most of the action takes place inside the father and daughter’s apartment, giving what we experience a claustrophobic feel. Quite amazing. Dekalog: Five takes us to a dark place, and the look of this one reflects a glumness, a sickly green with a touch of orange letting us know we are in a hellish place. Thou shalt not kill. A young lawyer defends a young man who has murdered a taxi driver, but this young lawyer loses the case and the young man is sentenced to hang. The lawyer is devastated. Punishment, he asserts, is a form of vengeance and we know what the Lord saith. This short film on the evil of killing, no matter who carries out the killing, individual or the state, is expanded in Kieslowski’s A Short Film About Killing. Both the shorter and longer versions are released in 1988, the same year in which Poland abolished the death penalty. This film, Dekalog, appeared on Polish television, and it is quite stunning. Highly recommended. Stay tuned for Part Two. 

Part Two: Dekalog: Six warns about coveting our neighbour’s ass, as it were. Nineteen-year-old Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) spies on his neighbour Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska). After fiddling with her mail (he works in the local post office)  and arranging to deliver her morning milk, he finally meets her and admits that he has been watching her with her lovers. Rather than go to the police, Magda encourages the young man, going so far as to bring him into her flat and attempt to seduce him. The experience for Tomek is harrowing and he attempts to commit suicide by slicing his wrists. The film is intense and discomforting. Has Magda acted wisely? What motivates her? Has the young man’s loss of his parents driven him to this neediness? The film may raise such questions, but I am not sure it answers them. Dekalog: Seven asks “Can you steal something that is yours?” Thou shalt not steal, and yet who has stolen the child Ania (Katarzina Powowarczyk)? Ania’s birth mother, Majka (Maja Barelkowska), was 16 when she gave birth to Ania, and Majka’s mother, Ewa (Ana Polony) assumed the role of Ania’s mother. Six years later, Majka wishes to take on the role of mother. Since Ewa is unwilling to relinquish her role as mother, Majka kidnaps Ania. All of this plays out amid talk of wolves and fairy tales and family and lives broken by the events of six years before. Young Ania remains confused. Majka remains outside, expelled from school and from her life as mother. All that is left is departure. Dekalog: Eight concerns bearing false witness. University Professor of ethics, Zofia (Maria Koscialkowska) receives a visit from the American translator of her works, Elzbieta (Teresa Marczewska). Elzbieta attends one of Zofia’s classes where we hear recounted the events of Episode Two. We also hear Elzbieta’s story of a Jewish child turned away from a safe haven during the war. It transpires that Elzbieta is the child and Zofia is the woman who turned her away. Before going back to Zofia’s for dinner, the two stop at the place where the events in the war took place. Here Elzbieta disappears for a short while, effectively abandoning Zofia and allowing her to experience the fear of abandonment. The two women spend the night together and the following morning turning over the ethical knot that was their war time experience. Dekalog: Nine focuses on Romek (Piotr Machalica) and Hanka (Ewa Blaszczyk) who are trying to come to terms with Romek’s impotence. Romek had appeared briefly in Dekalog Six, and now we revisit the difficulties that love can cause. Romek suggests that Hanka take a lover, but when she does, he becomes obsessed with fear of diminution. Mirrors and distance shots suggest people beside themselves, people losing a sense of confidence and importance. The situation leads to near disaster. Dekalog: Ten actually has comedy, perhaps of the darker sort, but comedy nonetheless. It ends in laughter. The narrative, succinct and efficient as always (no need for “five days earlier” or that sort of slippage through time), concerns two brothers whose father has died leaving a fortune in stamps. Their attempts to decide what to do with this collection prove complicated, to say the least. These attempts involve barring windows and doors, getting a guard dog, dealing with a small assortment of people with designs for the collection, and a donated kidney. You will just have to see this for yourself. As a television series, this is daring and thought-provoking.

 Some silent German cinema:

The Student of Prague (1913), directed by Stellan Rye and Hanns Heinz Ewers. This one stars Paul Wegener who later plays the famous Golem in three films (two lost). Here he is the student Balduin who suffers depression because he has no money. He wants to join the hoity toity and when a Caligari-type fellow named Scapinelli (John Gottowt) visits him with a proposition Badluin cannot refuse to accept it. Scapinelli will give Balduin a ton of money and in return asks to take whatever he wants from Balduin’s room. Since Balduin has nothing of importance in his room, he accepts. Scapinelli proceeds to take Balduin’s reflection from his full-length mirror. This scene provides the high point of the film. From here we go on to have a doppelganger story in which Balduin, now wealthy, woos a local countess, kills her fiancé in a duel, and generally finds himself embroiled in terrible goings on thanks to his other self. Made in 1913, The Student of Prague is remarkable. It does not, however, have the brilliance of later German silent cinema, including the ones below. It runs on rather too long and drags with scenes of a swooning countess and unremarkable encounters between Balduin and his alter-ego. As an example of early narrative film, The Student of Prague is interesting, if ponderous.

 

The Indian Tomb (1921) directed by Joe May. The film is an adaptation of Thea von Harbou’s novel, Tomb, and the script is by von Harbou and Fritz Lang. What they produce is orientalism print large. The film is rather slow and ponderous at nearly four hours, but it is also lavish to a degree. May pulls out all the stops with this presentation of an India filled with lepers, tiger pits, snake charmers, magical yogis, and massive architecture. Indeed, the large sets rival those in Griffith’s magnum opus, Intolerance (1916). Conrad Veidt appears as Ayan III, an Indian prince who revives an ancient yogi and sends the yogi to England to fetch the architect Herbert Rowland (Olaf Fonss). Ayan wants Rowland to create a tomb for his wife. Rowland goes, leaving his fiancé Irene Amundsen (Mia May) behind. Rowland soon discovers that Ayan’s wife is not dead. She is very much alive and has had an affair with the Englishman, Mac Allen (Paul Richter), putting both their lives in danger from the vengeful Ayan. Meanwhile Irene has followed her fiancé to India. Both Herbert and Irene find themselves prisoners of Ayan, and Herbert becomes leprous after knocking into the head of a buried leper. Yes, you read that correctly, a buried leper. Then we have Mac Allen finding himself inside the tiger den. Ouch, this does not end well. The production has huge sets, and much exotica. As far as silent films go, this one is not the most engaging, and it does run on for far too long (4 hours, remember). However, as an exercise in colonialist thinking, it has its interest.

 

The Hands of Orlac (1924), directed by Robert Wiene. Compared to Wiene’s most famous film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Hands of Orlac is minimalist, using few tricks of the camera to underline the psychological state of the protagonist. The minimalist sets sometimes move to complete emptiness and blackness, a telling mark of Orlac’s inner darkness. This is a Freudian film with images of castration, desire, and even a bit of the family romance tossed in to stir things up nicely. The emphasis on Orlac’s psychological torment is impressive. His doctor tells him that the mind controls the body, the spirit controls the hands, but Orlac does not heed this advice/warning. Instead, he allows his repugnance to take over. Orlac is a successful concert pianist who suffers irreparable damage to his hands in a train wreck. The damage to his hands is so severe that his doctor replaces his hands with the hands of a murderer. Once Orlac learns this alarming news, he goes wildly bonkers, reviling his new hands and going so far as to plead with his doctor to remove them. He fears the murderer’s hands have the power to control his will, even to the point of turning him into a murderer. Indeed, a murder takes place and from all appearances, the murderer is Orlac. But is he the murderer? We have a mystery, not too complicated a mystery, but a mystery nonetheless. This version of the story finds a happy ending that is, perhaps, less satisfying than the ending might have been, but the focus on Orlac’s ordeal is impressive and convincing. One reason for the success of the action is Conrad Veidt’s acting. His Orlac is lean, gaunt, distraught, agonized, demonic, terrified, conflicted, and engaging. Things move along at a glacial pace (that’s glacial in contemporary terms – they are melting quite rapidly), and the acting is histrionic in a good way. 

 

Variete (1925), directed by Ewald Andre Dupont. This is a remarkable film, not least for the camera work of Karl Freund. The camera swings, slides, follows, and at one important moment remains still. This moment of stillness allows the characters (3 of them here) who are drunk to stagger in and out of the frame, accentuating their drunkenness. We also have skillful use of double exposure, and even deep focus. The story is familiar and looks forward to films such as Murnau’s Sunrise (1927) and von Sternburg’s The Blue Angel (1930). As in the latter film, Emil Jannings stars here as the man whose obsession for a woman leads to tragedy. Jannings is Boss, a carnival trapeze catcher who has a wife and child. Then an orphaned refugee, Bertha-Marie (named for the ship on which she arrived in Germany) comes into his life, and he falls for her flirtatious ways, leaving wife and child and finding a new life with the Artinelli group (actually just one Artinelli played by Warwick Ward) performing at the Berlin Wintergarten. Scenes of the trapeze artists in action are impressive, especially for 1925. Anyway, trouble ensues when the oily Artinelli has eyes for Bertha-Marie. For her part, young Bertha-Marie (Lya De Putti) tries to have both Boss and Artinelli. Can this end well? Not a chance. Boss learns of Bertha-Marie’s fling with Artinelli, and he flies into a jealous rage. Actually, he does not fly. He simmers until his rage boils over and he ends Artinelli’s life. He goes to jail, and his jail time bookends the film, most of which is told in flashback. This is an impressive film that has touches of expressionism to compliment the realism of events. 

 Lots of films for August.

The Truth About Charlie (2002), directed by Jonathan Demme. Trying to capture the excitement of his film Something Wild (1986), Demme sets out to remake Stanley Donen’s Charade (1963). I fear he overreaches with this glitzy and dizzying film. I say dizzying because of the angular, mobile, and downright baroque camera work, along with extreme close-ups and point of view shots from dead people. The actors here, Mark Wahlberg (in the Cary Grant role!), Thandiwe Newton (trying to be as pixie-like as Audrey Hepburn), Tim Robbins (as Walter Matthau), and the three toughs who threaten the bewildered young widow, are, I guess, okay. They have big shoes to fill, and those shoes do not fit as comfortably as we might like them to fit. For cinema buffs, Demme tries to channel the French New Wave, going so far as to have the likes of Agnes Varda, Anna Karina, and Charles Aznavour appear in cameos. We also have a few frames from Truffaut’s Shoot the Piano Player. All of this is, perhaps, earnest, but also perhaps a bit misguided. If you have seen Charade, then my advice is simply to stop there. On the other hand, maybe Mark Wahlberg in hats, including a beret, are what you are looking for.

 

Nope (2022), directed by Jordan Peele. A gigantic cowboy hat in the sky that sucks up puny humans and maybe even horses. Or is this simply a flying saucer winging its way across the California desert? In these days when a “whistleblower” tells us about aliens on earth, Nope seems pertinent. I guess it is, although more pertinent is the vacuuming of black people from history. The brother and sister who are left to run a horse ranch that caters to Hollywood films just happen to be the great great great grandchildren of the jockey, Domm, who rides the galloping horse in Eadweard Muybridge’s early attempt to capture motion on film, or at least in a series of photographs (1878). In other words, a black person is the earliest motion picture star. Who remembers the name of that jockey? A poster in the ranch house advertises the film Buck and the Preacher (1972), a sly reminder that western movies (and the west in American history) did have persons of colour, although these people have, for the most part, been sucked up into that alien machine that is Hollywood. Nope is about the movie business, about spectacle, about erasure, about seeing and not seeing. I wish I could say I enjoyed the film, but truth to tell I found it rather lumpen. The pacing is slow and the ideas somewhat ragged. The film, dare I say, ought to be better than it is. The concept is intriguing and the play on genres is attractive. Ultimately Nope is about saying no to history that refuses to tell everything there is to tell.

 

The Boy with Green Hair (1948), directed by Joseph Losey. This is Losey’s first feature film, one that Howard Hughes tried to sabotage for its pacifist message. Three years after its release, in 1951, Losey was blacklisted in Hollywood. As for the film, it is an anti-war film, but it is much more. It deals with bullying, small town mentality, xenophobia, magic, and story. Storytelling is at the heart of this movie. The frame has young Peter (Dean Stockwell) tell his story to the good Dr. Evans (Robert Ryan), and within Peter’s story we have stories of war orphans, stories of a song and dance man Gramp (Pat O’Brian), stories of Peter’s parents. As for Peter’s story, is it true? Did he really wake up one morning to find that his hair had turned green? Dr. Evans says he does not believe this story. And yet we have young Peter with a shaved head. And yet, we have clear indication that Dr. Evans is moved by the story. We have the obvious connection between Peter’s green hair and the oh so vividly green plants that his mother nurtured, and the green of the forest. Peter is, after all, “Nature Boy.” He is young and in the spring of life. He is hope for the future. His innocence puts a stay to a world of experience. This little boy is not, in the long run, lost. The ambiguity that is at the heart of his story is that necessary teasing that all good stories offer listeners, a teasing that promotes thought and empathy and understanding. After the local barber shaves Peter’s head, something he does in order that Peter no longer look different, although a boy in 1948 with shaved head looks as “different” as a boy with green hair I would think, the barber asks the assembled – Gramps, the milkman, the grocer, and so on – if they would like a lock of the green hair. No one takes him up on this offer and so the barber simply sweeps the hair away. I guess everyone wants any evidence to disappear. The green hair, however, remains, it remains in story, and story remains and remains. Story has a stubborn power to remain, and perhaps even to influence. And then again, perhaps not. We still have war, bullying, xenophobia, orphaned kids, and small minds. We also still have The Boy with Green Hair, and perhaps we are the better for having this story.

Night Train to Munich (1940), directed by Carol Reed. Often compared to Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938), Night Train to Munich has the same screen writers, Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. The two films have a train ride in common as well as the comedic pair, Naunton Wayne and Basil Radford, and female lead Margaret Lockwood. The hero and his adversary are played by Rex Harrison and Paul von Henreid (Victor Lazlo in Casablanca) respectively. The whole thing plays out with intrigue and earnestness, but without Hitch’s comic touch or the master’s handling of suspense. Made near the beginning of the war, the film does touch on atrocities of concentration camp life (before the full horrors were known) and the ins and outs of war. Of the many films made during this troubled time, Night Train to Munich is something of a slight, if diverting, entry. Paul Henreid’s character, Karl Marsen, is effective; he is an example of someone completely captured by an ugly ideology and capable of disguising this ugliness – for a time. The film is a forerunner of Reed’s most famous film, The Third Man (1949).

And speaking of Casablanca,

Casablanca (1942), directed by Michael Curtiz. “Vultures, vultures everywhere.” This film is arguably the finest example of Hollywood film making that we have. We have seen this film umpteen times, and it never fails to please. From script to costumes to cinematography to performances to sets to soundtrack to story, this film has it all. It is collaborative film making at its best. I will say that one character uses the word “lesser” when he ought to have said “fewer,” but we can forgive this one faux pas because the whole thing is so rich and satisfying. I need not mention the leads because they are so well known, but I will mention minor characters such as Carl (S. Z. Sakall), Sascha (Leonid Kinskey), Yvonne (Madeleine Lebeau), and the Pickpocket (Curt Bois). These performers sparkle, as does the whole cast. The film has humour, music, tension, melodrama, and even a bit of violence. “What nationality are you?” “I’m a drunkard.” Louis asks Rick why he came to Casablanca, and Rick replies that he came for the waters. “But we are in the desert,” Louis notes. Rick’s response: “I was misinformed.” There is so much to admire in this film that I have no doubt we will watch it again before too long. Watching it for the first time, one knows that this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

 Let's add a miscellany of films:

Assassin (2015), directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. This film looks as if it is going to be an example of wuxia, a martial arts film. However, it is something else indeed, a mood piece with a plot that is both simple and daringly opaque. Unlike most martial arts films, or films in general these days, Assassin moves at an excruciatingly slow pace, with moments, long moments, of silence and stillness. The few bursts of action punctuate the stillness forcefully. Mostly we have beautiful people in beautiful costumes placed carefully in beautiful sets or in beautiful landscapes. The plot has the eponymous character exiled in order to prove herself a ruthless assassin, and the film places the viewer in something of an exile too. Do we have the patience to see the film to its end? Well, we do, and we did. And the assassin, Nie Yinniang (She Qui), proves herself a woman with heart and compassion. She wanders off with the maker of mirrors.

 

The Land (1969), directed by Youssef Chahine. This is a film in the tradition of Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth (1930). It tells the story of a community of small farmers in Egypt who find their livelihoods put in jeopardy by a local landowner who sets out to build a road where the farmer's fields are. Their only hope rests in solidarity, a solidarity that proves illusory, impossible to achieve. Chahine's work, or at least the work of his that I have seen, champions the peasant and the worker, but rarely does this support for the common person end in disarray. We usually have a ray of hope at the end. Not so here. The workers cannot put aside selfish interests for the greater good. One member of the "camel police" proves a friend to the peasants, but his friendship is not enough to make things go well. Things definitely fall apart. The film sprawls, it tells a story with many characters and many story lines following the interaction of these many characters. The overarching theme is clear, but the intricacies of human interactions sometimes are less than clear.

 

Unknown Origins (2020), directed by David Galan Galindo. This is a Spanish film about comic books and superheroes. It has something of the sensibility of the Canadian film, Bon Cop, Bad Cop. It plays with a seriousness belied by a delight in costumes and allusions to Marvel, DC, and even the old Detective Comic. It is clever, if a bit nerdy. Perhaps the cleverest costume is the lead character's. This is David, a police detective who wears a conventional dark suit and tie. If the film is slight, then it is also campy and not without charm. If you have an interest in comics, then you might well find this an hour and a half worthwhile. If you do not like comics, then you might find this nonetheless an offbeat detective story.

Detective K: Secret of the Virtuous Widow (2011), directed by Suk-Yoon Kim. This South Korean film reminded me of the Detective Dee films from China/Hong Kong. It is a period piece, set in the late eighteenth century, and involves court intrigue, fancy costumes, much running about, a few disguises, and quite a bit of humour. Frankly, the plot lost me quite early in the film, but this hardly mattered because the pace is swift and the characters likeable. Detective K reminded me of Sherlock Holmes with his deductive powers and his Watson-like sidekick who is something of a dog whisperer. Oh yes, then we have the very large dogs. The virtuous widow is suitably virtuous and mysterious and alluring. I confess that I would have liked to know what was going on, but nevertheless I enjoyed the film.

Shutter (2004), directed by Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom. We first watched this horror film from Thailand ten or more years ago and it scared the heck out of us. Since Halloween is about to arrive, we decided to dust off the DVD and watch it again. The viewing did not disappoint, although I have to confess it did not scare the heck out of me this time. The film does, however, know how to construct a convincing and creepy psychological thriller and without all the Kensington gore we see in Hollywood attempts at horror these days. Shutter is closer to a film like Hitchcock’s Psycho, than to the Saw franchise or the Hostel franchise or to the remakes of Japanese horror films or even the remake of this film. In fact, we have one jump scare that comes right from Psycho. The two directors begin the creepiness near the beginning and never let up. Scenes in the developing room are frightening as is the "bed scene." The walking-on-the-ceiling scene is cool. A second viewing also allows us to see just how much of what we see throughout prepares for the revelations as we close on the end, an end that is a zinger, a hum dinger, and both inevitable and satisfying and creepy. As horror films go, this is a worth putting on your viewing list.

Jodorowsky's Dune (2013), directed by Frank Pavich. The greatest movie never made! Actors include Mick Jagger, Orson Wells, Salvador Dali, artists include H. R. Giger and Jean 'Moebius' Giraud, and music by Pink Floyd. Oh, and then the participation of Dan O'Bannon because Jodorowsky had liked the film Dark Star (who wouldn't like Dark Star?). This documentary has an infectious appeal as it traces the work of Jodorowsky through the collation of the script and story boards for Dune. Oh, and did I mention that Jodorowsky had not read Frank Herbert's book? I found this film a hoot. And of course El Topo and The Holy Mountain have their moments here.

Furious (2017), directed by Dzhanik Fayziev. Set during the mid 13th century, this film follows in the wake of late Eisenstein masterpieces Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible. It is a rousing patriotic song with lots of crunching battles. Echoes of Eisenstein conjure up the heroic history of Russia, but there is a touch of Tarkovsky too, especially in the palette. This celebration of Russia even has the Russian Bear; the Bear turns up just when things seem lost, like the Cavalry in so many Hollywood westerns.

 Just a few films for the beginning of August.

Les Bonne Femmes (1960), directed by Claude Chabrol. This is Chabrol’s third film, and it is a strange character study that focuses on four shop girls. Jane (Bernadette Lafont), Rita (Lucile Saint-Simon), Jacqueline (Clothilde Joano) and Ginette (Stephane Audran) are all clerks at a light fixture and electrical appliance store owned by a flamboyant old tyrant (Pierre Bertin). The film begins with a shot of the Arc de Triomphe, an irony if there ever was one. The Paris we see here is drab to the point of dullness (in Alexander Pope’s sense), neon at night with loud clubs and nudie shows, a public swimming pool, a zoo with animals in small cages (we get the point!) and an array of shops. The four young women have little ambition beyond finding a man. One woman sings at a cabaret at night, and another has a creepy fellow with a motorcycle who follows here from place to place, and another has a stuffy boyfriend. None of these young people has much of a life beyond a dull job and nights of carousing. There is a bit of a mystery here, and things do not end well for the young woman who finally encounters the motorcycle man. None of these women has much beyond kitchen appliances in her future. Just as the women lead dull lives, the film delivers dull entertainment with just a whiff of misogyny. 

 

L’Amour Braque (1984), directed by Andrzej Zulawski. Supposedly based on Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, this film is idiotic in the extreme. Kinetic, loud, boisterous, confusing, fast-paced, wild, and overly flashy, L’Amour Braque is a film easy to dislike. And I disliked it. The violence, the misogyny, the crassness, the pretentiousness turned me off almost from the beginning. I say “almost from the beginning,” because the first scene in which Disney-masked men rob a bank is fun, and we have a bit of cavorting that is reminiscent of scenes from The Joker. Such cavorting, however, soon becomes tiresome. No one here has a trace of likeability, although the camera enjoys lingering over the face of Sophie Marceau. She is one of several women in the film who appear abused and in undress for no apparent reason. The title translates as ‘Mad Love’ but the only madness here is madcap capering by all involved. Characters say they are in love, but I find no love here, just plenty of human behaviour that is demeaning. If I were you, I would not go out of my way to see this film. Perhaps it captures the 1980s and films penchant for kinetic editing that surfaced in music videos of the time, but this does not make it an involving film – or even interesting in any satisfactory way.

The Children Are Watching Us (1944), directed by Vittorio de Sica. This is an amazing film, partly because of the compelling performance of Luciano De Ambrosis as the child protagonist, Prico. Prico is a five-year-old child caught in a family experiencing dissolution because of the mother’s adulterous affair. We watch as young Prico does typical child things: ride his scooter, play in a hayloft, try to swim, and so on. We also look on as Prico watches his parents squabble, and as he peers in puzzlement as his mother meets a strange man in the park, or as he looks through windows or bannisters at goings-on he does not understand. The camera work recording the watching and the playing is fluid with long tracking shots that seem to depart from characters, to intensely intimate close-up shots, to the masterful final shot of Prico turning from his mother and walking the length of a huge cavernous room and departing through the doors. As I watched, Henry James kept coming to mind. Like James, De Sica and his screenwriters, especially Cesare Zavattini with whom De Sica collaborated on many films, are sensitive to the child’s bewilderment in a world of adults whose actions he does not comprehend. This poor kid is passed from one adult to another, from one place to another, while his mother and father attempt, vainly, to work out their differences. This is a film that deals with daring themes, especially the break-up of a family, themes that went against Fascist values of the time. Quite remarkable.

 

Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. The first of five films Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman, Stromboli brings together the Italian realist style with Hollywood melodrama. The action mostly takes place on the isolated volcanic island of Stromboli. Here Karin (Ingrid Bergman) finds herself a fish out of water, newly wedded to Antonio (Mario Vitale), a humble fisherman. Karin is Lithuanian and has survived the war using any means available; she now finds herself, rather unwillingly, in a strange and even hostile environment. She married Antonio while in an internment camp because her application for an Argentinian visa failed. Now she finds herself in a place she cannot abide.  Her attempts to have the local priest and then the local lighthouse keeper help her get away prove less than successful. She is beside herself, finds that she is pregnant, and decides to cross the island on her own to find a boat to somewhere else, anywhere else. The film has the volcano, flying birds, barren rocks, thrashing tuna captured in huge nets, a ferret and a rabbit, labyrinthine pathways to communicate the emotional inner life of the film’s protagonist. The island contains elemental life, life in extremis. Simple Antonio cannot understand why his wife does not just settle in and conform to the ways of the island, ways Karin finds primitive and uncivilized. The ambiguous ending has Karin wake near the top of the mountain to express a sense of renewal, although whether this sense of renewal means she will return to the village and her husband or continue on her trek across the island to find escape remains unclear. This is a slow bubbling boiling film.

 

Europe ’51 (1952), directed by Roberto Rossellini. This is the second of Rossellini’s collaborations with Ingrid Bergman, and it tells the story of Irene Girard (Bergman), the wife of a wealthy American living in Rome with their son, Michel (Sandro Franchino). Feeling neglected and unloved by his parents, especially his mother, Michel dies after trying to commit suicide by throwing himself down a spiral staircase. The spiral is a motif that turns up elsewhere in the film as a reminder of the spiralling out of control that enters Irene’s life after the loss of her son. The film reminded me of Sam Fuller’s Shock Corridor (1963) in its narrative arc. Europe ’51 is, of course, quite a different film from Fuller’s raw portrait of a descent into madness. Irene may end up in a mental institution, but she is decidedly not mad. She is more saint than insane. Rossellini positions Irene between the Marxist left and the Christian right. She quotes scripture, much to the consternation of a priest. She is at the bedside of a dying prostitute. She works in a factory and decides the labour market is more aptly thought of as a slave market. She seems most content with a gaggle of children about her. Her desire is to spread relationship and love, and of course this desire must be thwarted by the “powers that be,” men! Irene’s activism does not conform to either the right or the left politically, and consequently she is made to suffer. This film sits comfortably alongside Rossellini’s Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954).

 

Journey to Italy (1954), directed by Roberto Rossellini. Here is a film that looks forward to Anotonioni, Godard, and Wenders in its use of space and its concentration on the existential tangle of its characters. The two main characters are Katherine (Ingrid Bergman) and Alex Joyce (George Saunders), an English couple on a trip to Naples to sell a villa that Katherine has inherited. Finding themselves alone for the first time in a long time, Katherine and Alex discover they do not like each other. She spends her time visiting museums and archeological digs, and he spends his time flirting with other women. We have Vesuvius to remind us of emotional turmoil below the surface of things, and Pompey to remind us of life’s brevity and life’s surprises. In other words, the setting becomes another character influencing these two English persons. The interaction between these two is fraught with tension. Things reach a crisis when the two, encapsulated in their metal automobile, find themselves amid a throng of pilgrims following a statue of the Madonna. They must emerge from their encasing and enter the throng, resisting the pull of the acolytes. Here in this moment of fervour, they realize their love for each other. 

 

Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (1959), directed by Jean Delannoy. Starring Jean Gabin as Inspector Maigret, this is a traditional whodunnit. All the elements are here: country village with an assortment of characters, big country house with faded aristocracy, local priest, and seven suspects for what Maigret thinks is a murder, although the local doctor has issued a death certificate stating “heart attack” as the cause of death. And indeed, Maigret’s friend, La comtesse de St. Fiacre (Valentine Ressier) does die from a heart attack while sitting in a church pew. She has just opened her missal and discovered a newspaper clipping inside. This causes her heart attack. Who could have placed the clipping there? Who would want this unassuming woman dead? Is it the wastrel son? Or the ne’er do well secretary/art critic? Or the priest, the doctor, the grounds keeper, the grounds keeper’s son, the driver/butler? Maigret will sort things out. He gathers all the suspects at a dinner to expose the dastardly murderer. All this is carried out efficiently and nostalgically. There is nothing left to take from this mansion except the 12:15 train.